Design For Humanity....and dinosaurs. Rawr.

In honor of Lefty's 29th birthday, we ventured out of our normal Wednesday night routine of softball and pizza for a night on the town...and by town I mean an amazing charity concert in Hollywood, CA at Paramount Studios. 

Design for Humanity is an annual concert/art/fashion event put on by Billabong to benefit the Cultivate Foundation.  I'm sure the fashion show and DJ exhibitions were awesome, but I'm not gonna lie: Lefty and I were there for the music.  We were able to watch most of Imagine Dragon's lineup and all of the Lumineer's.  Imagine Dragon's show was awesome and full of energy, but I was most impressed by the Lumineer's.  This Denver, CO based group has a rustic, folksy feel to their music that somehow evokes simple joy in their listeners.  When you listen to them, you don't have a darn clue WHAT you're so happy about, but you also don't care. Very few artists these days actually have the ability to transport a listener out of reality for a bit, but the Lumineers have mastered it.  They're also super cool and down to earth...they even pack up their own equipment at the conclusion of their shows.  Anyway, check them out: http://thelumineers.com/  (My favorite song by them is actually the one that's on the home page of their site.)

The Lumineer's lead singer ended their show saying, "This is the coolest fake city we've ever played in."  I see what he's talking about as Paramount Studios is just that: a fake city.  You see stores, apartments, town homes, banks, and business-looking buildings everywhere, but when you get close up you see that there's NOTHING in the buildings.  SO COOL.  I took this picture of the door to the "Antique shop" there.

ha.

 A couple of days later we celebrated Lefty's ACTUAL birthday day by having a dinosaur party!  We had traditional dinosaur party decor and cake with an adult spin.  So for example, after our guests played a little beer pong they were free to enjoy some funfetti dinosaur birthday cake.  Being that everyone was probably thirsty from the cake, the helped themselves to their cocktail of choice while the Dinosaur pinata was being prepared.  It was a great night and anyone who was here could attest to the fact that Lefty REALLY enjoyed himself - which was really the whole point.  =)

I'll end with that.  Everyone enjoy the Lumineer's and don't forget to tell Lefty how OOOOLD he really is.  <3

He must've liked it...

Because I surely gotta ring on it! 

So for those of you who know me personally, you know that Lefty and I have been engaged for a couple months at this point, but for my, few and far between, loyal, anonymous followers....TADA!!!  I'M ENGAGED! =)

It's taken me a while to post our engagement story for many reasons - the main one being fear that I won't do our story justice.  Just for tonight, I'll throw caution to the wind and finally share the moment that has made May 26th the best day of my life - to date. =)

For friends and blogosphere followers, you'll recall that I met Lefty in Vegas in December of last year and hit the jackpot when we learned that we would be in the same city (Los Angeles) for the remaining days before my return to Florida.  Our first date was Monday, 12/19 and Lefty pulled out all the stops.  He took me to Santa Monica Pier, a Thai restaurant, Westwood, a movie, UCLA's campus & arboretum, and a fantastic sushi restaurant.  A couple weeks after we moved me out to Anaheim we had casually thrown around the idea of recreating our first date.  A month or two came and went as we couldn't find a full day to set aside for this adventure.  Now...we had already had plans to see Chicago at the Pantages theatre in Hollywood (yes, the one starring Christie Brinkley) as that was my V-day gift from Lefty.  The day before our artsy outing, he said, "Hey why don't we leave a little earlier and recreate our first date tomorrow?"  So we did.  We walked around Santa Monica Pier, sat and people watched, ate at Latitude Thai again, and then ventured off to Westwood and UCLA.  Lefty immediately found the arboretum and botanical gardens and we walked around for a bit, soaking in the beauty.  After a while we stumbled upon the bench where we sat and shared our first kiss that day.  We decided to sit and turtle watch for a bit there when Lefty asked me to put his keys in my purse.  I thought it to be a little weird since he had been holding them the whole time, but I figured that guys are just weird sometimes.  When I turned back around he said, "So.  I love you."  I knew then that he was either going to dump me or propose.  Much to my relief he was down on one knee, before I could think another thought, asking me to marry him.  Yes...I cried.  And cried.  And cried.  We hugged and I was speechless, which most of you know is super uncharacteristic of me.  Eventually, he asked for clarification that my tears were a yes and it was official...we were engaged.  =)

The day didn't end there, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the proposal was the highlight of that particular day.  We're getting married this year on December 16th (the date we met) and we couldn't be more excited.  Plans are underway and we're counting down the days.

On The Other Hand....

...I did REALLY enjoy Are You There Vodka?  It's me, Chelsea, by Chelsea Handler - also a New York Times Bestseller.  Some of you may know Ms. Handler from her late night talk show, Chelsea Lately, on E.  I don't, but I'm tempted to start watching it knowing now how funny, intelligent, and candid she is.  The book contains a selection of memories of her life from when she was a young girl to her current age and fame.  It's got everything!  Misadventures in babysitting, real estate, midgets, boyfriends with stupid hair, and even some fitness!

It's a super easy read that will have you looking a fool.  I was laughing out loud to myself while flying back to CA from Cancun.  (I'm sure everyone thought I had a particularly fortunate form of Tourette's.)

Anyway, use your judgement, but this book gets two big thumbs up from me.  Enjoy!

50 Shades of Blegh

At the risk of pissing off my female readers I'm going to use this opportunity to bash the erotic novel of the moment: Fifty Shades of Grey.  I picked up this New York Times Bestseller from my local (online) Barnes and Nobles after hearing a raving testimonial from my little sister.  My sister started reading the 50 shades trilogy after hearing about it nonstop at work and learning that my mom really liked it. After this, I was sold...  My mom doesn't read a ton of books so for her to complete a book and move on to the sequel really speaks to it's quality. 

264 pages in....  I'm not sure that I'll be able to look any woman in the eye again...ever.  This book is S&M porn...straight up.  I have no moral objection to a woman enjoying her right to be spanked or clamp a man's nipples, but I'll admit - it's not for me.  Now, I could enjoy a good story line and around page 80 or so it did seem like one was certain to develop, so I was willing to draw my attention away from the porn.  I not only wanted to see where it went, but also I DETEST not finishing a novel.  Years ago, I read The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood and I never quite got into it, but I'll tell you what....I plugged through that book and about a year and a half later, I was finally finished.  No matter how long it takes and how much it bores me, I will finish the book 99% of the time.

Not so with 50 shades.  I was able to put the sex aside to continue reading, but I was not able to get past the following.

• Anastasia Steele (the protagonist) constantly refers to her sex drive as her inner Goddess.  It was clever (ish) for maybe the first, I don't know, 37 times she referred to her Goddess, but somewhere along the line, I got sick of her saying that her Inner Goddess was beaming, shaking it's little finger, or pouting.  Nice idea, E.L. James, but you need to trust your reader to remember that Ana has an inner Goddess and let it the frick go.  Too much.  

• Christian Grey (the billionaire and S&M addict) springs into phallic action at the very idea of Anastasia biting her bottom lip.  Two things, (1) same as my first complaint....repeated about 20 too many times (only in the first half of the book) and (2)  what man (especially one as experienced) as Mr. Grey can't control himself at such a common facial expression?  

• Ana Steele's first sexual partner was Christian Grey and from the very beginning of their sexual history, she experiences multiple orgasms with every single encounter.  This is just not realistic.  I think that this is irresponsible writing as it's going to set up America's pre-teen population (yes...they're reading this) for disappointment in their future love life.  

• The S&M I'm not going to harp on too much, because, you know...to each his own.  Again, not my thing, but what do I care if all of America secretly wants to be fisted in every oriface? 

To conclude, 50 Shades has accomplished the once impossible achievement of being the 1st book that I was entirely unable to complete.  I know that many women like it and good for them...and E.L. James' retirement home.    I do encourage everyone to do a little research on the book first to make sure it's for them before they spend their money on this book.

That's it. All done.  I feel a bit better now.  For those of you who missed this little gem, courtesy of SNL and of course daily motion:  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqmofb_saturday-night-live-fifty-shades-of-grey_shortfilms

Consumer Report

Today's post is largely a public service announcement to encourage you to be very careful about what you trust in your inbox.  I have an American Express account that I use as my main credit card and therefore I'm very accustomed to seeing emails from them on a regular basis.  They email me with an account snapshot whenever I make a charge.  They email me special offers for "valued cardholders".  Sometime I even get emails from them encouraging me to use my rewards points.  Today though, I got an email that concerned me.  It was an email (in the usual Amex email format) asking for my feedback about my recent call to them.  This call that they claimed I made was to activate my new card...  This made no sense to me as I (1) didn't call them recently, (2) don't have a new card, and (3) don't need a new card until 2015!  My first thought was that someone got a hold of my information, requested a card be sent to them, activated it, and I was about to be in for my own fraudulent card nightmare.  I called Amex customer service to detail this incident and find out just exactly what was going on and it turns out that the email was fraud.  COULD'VE FOOLED ME!  It had an opt out option, my full name as it appears on the credit card, and several links for me to click to respond as I saw fit.  (Luckily, I didn't click on these links.)  I suppose it's possible that whatever page I went to would have asked for all of my information and then my original suspicions would have rang true.  Anyway, the Customer Service Representative asked that I forward the email I received to their security dept so they could follow up and that's what I did.  I'll keep you all posted on what happens.

The point?  BE CAREFUL!  I consider myself very internet savvy and I was almost tricked by this. 

Stay careful my fellow Americans. ;)

(Photo: Courtesy of http://www.expandmywealth.com)

California, here I...am!

Nope, not on vacation this time.  This time I actually LIVE here.  For those of you who don't know, I took a medical leave of absence from school this past February and about a month and a half later made a cross country drive with my love ("Lefty" from former posts) to live with him in beautiful Southern California.  His home....SCRATCH THAT...Our home is a three bedroom, two bathroom house in Anaheim, CA.  There's a nice, spacious kitchen for cooking and a huge comfy couch for lounging.  Not to mention a wonderful man who invited me to be a part of it. 

Living in CA has certainly had it's ups and downs, though I'll admit it's mostly ups. =)  The main downer has to do with my job situation.  I got here (safely) on April 3rd and had a full time job with a 2 hour (round trip) train commute waiting for me the very next day. I was EXHAUSTED from the four day cross country drive, but thrilled to have reliable employment ready to go.  Sad thing was that the pharmacy I had gotten a job at was super shady.  They were paying me cash out of the register, never verified my HIPAA certifications, and were just letting me chill (unsupervised) next to vicodin without ever doing a background check or drug test on me.  I knew it was weird from the start and it turned out my hunch was right.  After about a week they were like, yea we needed help catching us up, but we're good now thanks.  They then handed me my pay and that was that.  =/  Since then, I've been searching for jobs like crazy.  There's not a whole lot available to me here, but I have gotten 2 weekly babysitting gigs and I'm teaching piano to two kids weekly.  It's not the M-F 9-5 that I was hoping for, but thankfully it is getting me by.  Also, Lefty is able to take care of me while I look for a job and do these spot babysitting jobs. =)

The ups.  Well for one, there's Lefty.  Now there's a man that any girl would be insane to let out of her life.  His kindness and care for me was something that I wasn't good at accepting at first as it was so unprecedented in my life.  I never knew that there was someone like him in the world for me.  He can tell by my eyes whether or not I'm genuinely happy and  if I'm not he does everything in his power to fix it.  He brings me flowers from the Farmer's Market some Friday's for no reason.  Just to show he cares.  Even though he knows it means I'm going to pay less attention to him...he encourages me to study.  He makes me want to make something of myself.  He makes me want to be selfless.  If you're reading this, Lefty, I love you babe. =)

Other ups, there's my crew!!  Yep!  I'm living within 45 minutes of The Designer, The Director, The Politician, The Filmographer, and The Baker.  I've gotten to see them fairly often and it's been wonderful.  Parties, game night, poker night, you name it...we do it.  It's nice to have a piece of home with me here in this foreign area. Of course, I'll always have Lefty, but it's nice to have something else of my own here.

The only other down I can think of: I miss my friends and family.  A lot.  In fact, I'm looking for cheap tickets now to go back at the beginning of June!  Yay!

Finally....we'll end on an up....I've met a ton of nice people here.  Lefty's friends have now evolved into my friends as well.  We can joke, laugh, and chill....even without Lefty.  (Although it's always better when we're together.)  =)

I still feel like this is just the beginning of my California adventure.  I'll keep you guys posted on the ride. 

This made me smile today =)

Actual writings from hospital charts

1 . The patient refused autopsy. 2. The patient has no previous history of suicides. 3. Patient has left white blood cells at another hospital. 4. She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night. 5. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year. 6. On the second day the knee was better and on the third day it disappeared. 7. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed. 8 The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1993. 9. Discharge status: Alive but without permission. 10. Healthy appearing decrepit 69-year old male, mentally alert but forgetful. 11. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch. 12. She is numb from her toes down. 13. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home. 14. The skin was moist and dry. 15. Occasional, constant infrequent headaches. 16. Patient was alert and unresponsive. 17. Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid. 18. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life, until she got a divorce. 19. I saw your patient today, who is still under our car for physical therapy. 20. Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation. 21. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized. 22 The lab test indicated abnormal lover function. 23. Skin: somewhat pale but present. 24. The pelvic exam will be done later on the floor. 25. Patient has two teenage children, but no other abnormalities.