Room with a View

So right now I am on a business trip in New York City. I really hate flying so I wasn't too happy about the 6 hour flight to get here but now that I on solid ground and in the city, the trip has been really enjoyable. My company is putting us up at this ridiculously wonderful 5 star hotel right at Central Park, and I don't know how I managed to get put on the 36th floor but I did and have a full view of Central Park and the surrounding NY Skyline.It's AMAZING!

Every time I come back to the room I just stare out the window at the tiny people walking on the sidewalks or I look at out and adjacent buildings and peer into peoples luxurious places that live in these high rises. Since the duration of my stay, I've been people watching a few people that are on similar floors I am on. I noticed one woman who eats dinner very late at a lavish dining room table. She has granite counter tops, modern fixtures and sub zero appliances but she's eaten alone for 2 nights. There is another apartment below where another woman reads every night on her couch surrounded by her two slumbering golden retrievers. I can't imagine how much these places I'm viewing cost to live in, but it must be nice to live that high up. There also seems to be people ice skating every night and every morning on the outdoor ice rink in Central Park even though it's freezing at both of those times of day. I wish I didn't have to go into the NY Office each day so I could continue to see this little glimpses into other peoples worlds. People watching is much better/more interesting from 36 stories up.

Blast From the Past

Then



Now
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Last night Tony surprised me with tickets to see Silverchair at the Wiltern. I was really excited as I use to love Silverchair, along with various other grunge rock genre bands from the 90s. I wasn't expecting much out of the show, I thought they'll play some old stuff, they're older, more mellow whatever but they were AMAZING! The boys are much more clean cut than in the old days and their newer songs definitely have a more mellow mainstream sound, but they sounded great! And when they played their old stuff it took me right back to the mid nineties at my parents house, listening to Fogstomp on my very large yet so cool portable boom box in my room.

Daniel Johns is truly an amazing performer. He got the crowd totally amped up, was rolling on the ground, jumping in the air, playing guitar with his tongue (the ladies in the crowd were loosing it at this point) laying on the piano playing with his foot. I was truly blown away with how great the show was. I was talking to Tony about how all music genres of the past are coming back. For instance, new wave is huge in the rock genre now, I wonder when someone will bring back the raw, edgy, heavy base/guitar sounds of grunge. I know it sounds nerdy, but I love grunge rock and I can't wait for someone to bring it back. So if anyone is a thinking of starting a grunge rock band, make it happen! I guarantee you will already have one fan!

Lazy Sunday

Today was my perfect Sunday and included the following things:

-Sleeping in.. plus bonus hour due to daylight savings
-Reading the magazines I never get to read during the week over a cup o' joe
-Not showering until noon
-Making Orange Chocolate Cookies
-Watching movies w/ my hubby and cat
-Not doing laundry
-Knitting part of Tony's never ending scarf
-Wearing Ugg boots around the house and not being ridiculed for it

Slutty Blog

So Halloween is on Wednesday but as usual, the Saturday before the big day there are plenty of drunken costume events to attend. My friend Angelica had a party where every lady attending had to come dressed as Amy Winehouse. Since I love Halloween and dressing up, I was happy to meet the challenge and pull together my best Amy Winehouse attire complete with bee hive wig, pounds of liquid eye liner and powdered sugar smudged nose.

So Saturday comes and before we went to Angelica's party, we have to make a stop at another Halloween party where one of Tony's bands was playing. I don't know why I didn't put two and two together before since the band we had to go see is a metal band, but when we got there I realized I was in the epicenter of a metal rock trash party. Everyone seemed to have the same costume theme.... Slut. I was a lone Amy Winehouse in a giant sea of slutty nurses, slutty fairies, slutty police and slutty angels. You name it, the girls added slut to the end. I mean, not that I'm trying to be old or prudish because when I was in college, sure I had my share of revealing costumes, but never ones where my whole ass was hanging out and barely covered by a pair of fishnets. And never did I wear a transparent shirt with stickers covering up my nipples.

Ahhh it was a classy event. Anyhoo, so I'm sitting on a couch with Tony (who is dressed as Amy Winehouse's husband but all scratched and beat up), and Jen (who is dressed like Lily Allen) and every two seconds some goth dude with chains and creepers or some drunk girl in one of the formentioned costumes above would come up to me and ask "ummmm like who are you supposed to be anyway?" Have these people seriously never heard of Amy Winehouse? I mean I'm wearing a bee hive wig and have the illusion of coke all over my face for God sakes!


I realized I needed to leave this party fast before the keg ran out of PBR and an angry mob of white trash swept through the party kickin' ass. We eventually went to Angelica's and everyone there definitely appreciated my costume. After that I came home, spent a good 30 minutes stripping of layers of eyeliner. Halfway through the deconstructing process, I realized that I totally looked like a drag queen. Thankfully, Tony snapped this picture below to capture this look.

Corporation Blues

TGIF pretty much says it all. This has been an incredibly difficult week as my company decided to implement a huge layoff that ended up hitting my department, which no one saw coming. I lost a friend and co-worker that started the same time as me and was essentially my "pledge brother." If that wasn't anguish enough, I have spent the whole rest of the week scared of loosing my job in the next round of layoffs. I keep getting reaffirmed that our department won't be "affected" (which is how the head honchos describe being laid off.. like it's some sort of grotesque disease) but that's what they said originally too. As my friend Andy puts it... I have a current case of the "corporation blues." I guess we all get them, I mean Elizabeth Shue did get a case of the babysitting blues.. I suppose.. corporate blues exist too. So in order to turn this frown upside down, I have been trying to take pleasure in the little things in life. The following things are helping to get me out of my funk (sort of)

-Dark Chocolate M&Ms.. damn are they delightful
-Watching 5 episodes of Weeds at a time.... I guess watching Mary Louise Parker's character Nancy go through her own dramatic issues of trying to balance running a suburban pot business, being a mom to two kids and a wife to a DEA agent makes me realize my life isn't so bad.
-Reading my TMZ gossip and laughing at Brittany dig a deeper hole in her giant ditch of a life
-Making Sheppards Pie
-Driving my car.. it's new, it's plaid, it's amazing, and it's all mine

I'm headed to the bay this weekend to visit my Aussie relatives who are visiting my folks. I haven't seen them in years and they always have cheery and bright dispositions so I'm sure I'll come back refreshed and happy.

Hipsters Always Ruin the Fun

Last night I went to see Justice at The Fonda. I was really excited to see them play because they were AMAZING at Coachella, however last night was definitely not like Coachella. The main differentiator was the abundance of hipsters that were present (at Coachella I don't remember seeing crazy hipsters when Justice played the dance tent, although they weren't that popular then and I was probably too busy dancing to notice anyone). So, I understand why hipsters exist, what I don't understand is why the do the following annoying things:

- Wear dirty mismatching clothes from the early 90' with a pair colorful Nike's and not wash their hair for 2 weeks and assume it's hip.
-Constantly bump into people and not apologize...when you become a hipster do you loose depth perception?
-Document every single second of a show with a digital camera even if blinds the people around them.
-Get into ridiculous fights with gay men.

So to note on that last point. We are all laughing, dancing, having a great time when all of a sudden this aggro hipster dude starts screaming at a group of uber fashionable gay men and starts up a fight for no apparent reason. There was pushing, there was shoving and it totally ruined the light hearted " I just want to dance my ass off" mood. Tony and Josh being the good guys they are,  jumped into break it up to try and end the scuffle quickly so we could all get back to enjoying the show, but of course that only opened up a can hipster worms and led to Muhammad Ali's drunken girlfriend stumbling through an explanation repeatedly about how her boyfriend was a "crazy Palestinian" and how "he'd fuck them up." After the fashionable gay men got kicked out, and the crazy hipster Palestinian dude returned to his drunk girlfriend to make out, the mood was sort of spoiled and we all called it a night. Next time I go to see Justice, I will tell them not to invite their annoying hipster friends.

Did the Great Pumpkin Pass Me By?

Fall is my absolute favorite season. I love everything about fall, the crisp smokey smell in the air, the crunching sound of dried leaves, the cool overcast weather that is warm enough to allow you to be outside if you want, but still cold enough to motivate you stay inside and snuggle by a fire. Not to mention the best clothing in the world are fall clothes.. cute boots, jackets, sweaters, knit dresses  etc. All of these things help to get me in the mindset for Halloween and Thanksgiving. All of these traits of Autumn are magical, unless you live in Los Angeles where there is no such thing as Fall!!

This past weekend everyone was complaining about the rain and cloudy weather. However, I took full advantage of this weekend and stayed in sweats all day, turned on a fire with our seventiesesk switch-on fire place, baked yummy treats, knitted the scarf I've been working on for Tony for over 2 years and curled up with my cat and watched movies. It was the best weekend I've had in a long time. Having seen LA affected by Fall-like weather for 2 days, I got excited and assumed that this great weather would continue until I turned on the TV today and saw the damn weather report that says the rest of the week is going to by sunny and in the high 70s! Ewww Gross!

So in order to try and keep up the ritual of welcoming the best season ever, I am going to celebrate Fall in my own little controlled environment by doing the following things:

-Continue to wear Fall type clothes but modified to SoCal (i.e. scarves with short sleeve shirts, boots with skirts but no tights :(, light jackets and light sweaters.. maybe I can trick the universe into being colder?
-Buy the best seasonal Fall products stores have to offer, the wondrously amazing Trader Joe's Pumpkin Butter and Pumpkin Ale and tiny drops of heaven otherwise known as Candy Corns
-Cook up Fall by making homemade apple cider, soups and stews served with hearty crusty bread, and dishes made with hearty squash
-Burn pumpkin and spice candles to create the illusion of Autumn smells

If anyone else feels the way I do, please feel free to celebrate your own personal Fall with any of the above ideas. In the meantime, I am going to do an "overcast rain dance" and keep my fingers crossed that the clouds come rolling in.