i have fallen into a LastFM addiction hole.

yay.

i am the same name i am everywhere, there (and here!).

i am wearing formica green tabeltop nail polish. it seems to be a hit with customers. one dude thanked me for "having cool nail polish" last night.

Kermit & are are going to go to a crazeh par-tay in LA for NYE. WOOO. We are staying at the hotel the event is at and everything...so swanky. And then, on the 2nd, we're gonna drive to Vegas and go to another one! and stay in that hotel, too! WOOOOOO!

Remember how i said i would drive 6 hours to see Above & Beyond anyhow anywhere anytime? Well, they're playing both shows. I am a woman of my word.

time to clean house.

had *such* an amazing weekend in Vegas seeing Markus Schulz and Above and Beyond and visiting Canadian!David... AMAZING!

Markus Schulz is... not my style... too hard-trance for me. But is he ever a nice guy! He actually stuck around an extra day and came to the A&B event the next night and danced in the crowd and gave a heartfelt little speech at the end about how great A&B were :) heh... nice dude.

Both shows were at The Palms in Vegas - Schulz was at Rain, first floor, which was kinda like a supermini massive. Good production values and these crazy lighting racks that moved...acrobats, dancers, fire, giant projection screens, etc... just like a big show, only in a smaller club. I'm guessing it holds like... 2K people? no idea, but it was fun. good layout. their sound system leaves something to be desired, though - kinda mushy. I hadn't bought tickets to this event because I wasn't really sure if i wanted to go and it was twice the cost of the A&B show the next night, plus...wasn't sure David would tolerate being dragged to TWO raves in one weekend, much less one... but then I got an e-mail in my box saying that I had won one of 25 pairs of free tickets to see the show and figured... hey, can't hurt to check it out if it's free! The biggest bonus was, once we finally found the right front-door chick with the right list, they let us right in, no waiting in the big line, no hassle, no nothin' - we were in in about 5 minutes. it was like VIP service, dude. ILU, Vegas :P

Above & Beyond was at Moon which is at the very top of The Palms (53rd floor). They have an outside balcony/patio area that faces the strip and you get this amazing panoramic view of it and Vegas/Henderson beyond. So freakin shiny... it looks pretty from far away :) But the truly awesome thing about Moon is that... inside, above the dancefloor...is this awesome curved roof... that opens up. That's right - they open the freakin' roof. I think this is, by far, the coolest indoor location i have ever attended a show at. The decor was awesome, the sound was great, the indoor/outdoor options were nice, the layout was easy - the bathrooms were easy to find and there weren't any huge lines (omg, this is key) - and it was small and intimate (500 people, man, only 500 PEOPLE!) and freaking AMAZING.

Above and Beyond completely rocked my socks off. It was like Armin, but with enough room to dance, less insane fans and everybody having the time of their freaking lives. Paavo kept holding up a laptop with short little notes to the crowd on it... "this night is for you".... I swear, they played *every* one of the songs that I put on the A&B favorites cd i had made for the drive out there. I sang along and danced like a loon. The energy was great, the people were friendly and even the bartender was nice. We didn't get yelled up by security or strip-searched at the door either, which was a change from past events. It was beautiful and transformative and funny and I think even David had a good time, despite it being the polar opposite of his scene :)

I'd go back in a heartbeat. I'd drive 6 hours to see them anywhere.

David also took me along on a work call while we were there and i got to see the Zumanity theater at NYNY, backstage and all, while no one was there... it was really fun! We hung out, went to the M&M store, watched Star Trek, finally saw the Belagio gardens, watched the Mirage volcano go off and climbed a neverending hill in suburbia to see the sunrise on my last night there. Good times.

I'd do it again in a *heartbeat*. Any day.

( I'm up to ep 6 of TVD (hah, and yes, it does feel like i have a venereal disease now, thanks, CW) )

i'm so behind on everything else... I did watch the Halloween ep of Castle and tee heeeee, cute. I started watching FlashForward and, seriously, does nothing sum up this crap better than the chief of whatever he is shouting "IT WORKS FOR ME!" over all the other character's rational objections to the gaping plotholes? YAY. i guess that's the stance they expect their viewers to take :) I hope that wasn't considered spoilery or anything, 'cause...too late now. I appologise. This is up to, like ep 7 or something now, right?

Altho at least 2 eps behind on all of this, I'm still in love with Mad Men. Still in love with Glee. Finally watched the pilot for Caprica and it was stupid. Still watching Eastwick altho I don't know why. No, lie, I do. It's called Paul Gross's smile. I have not watched FNL yet. I don't know if my eyeballs can take it! I may try my damndest to hold out all season and then mainline that puppy with a Costco box of kleenex at the ready. We shall see. My will may not be that strong.

Anyhow. Here we come, holidays. The day after Halloween and now the whole store looks like a Christmas tree. Whoopee. I'm wearing more halloween-y nail polish today in defiance or something. I had a dream with TONS of black widows in it the other night. Creepy. Conflict with the mother or heaps of good foturne coming to attack me in the near future?

Stuff and things in the hills tonight. Should be good times. Hopefully not frozen good times.

frick on a stick, ageing hippies can be such absolute flakes. it's not just for teenagers anymore.

there is word that i might be able to start eating some sort of grain again soon...? *hopes* i guess i'll find out in 2-3 weeks. sucks to still be sugar-free for Halloween, but what can ya do... does anyone out there drink...Almond Milk? *shakes head* apparently i have to start having some. this just gets funner and funner.

there is little else of import going on... i wish i was working more. i wish any of the managerial staff communicated with each other in order to schedule me efficiently, but...alas, still surrounded by idiots. it's still dull without the entertaining people around, but not nearly as dull as only being scheduled 2-3 days a week! wutwut, people, i have rent to pay. at least they let me drink water now :)

it's hard to make new friends when alcohol isn't allowed in the equation, y'know? what is there to do around here after dark besides go to a bar? nada! i miss the Sportsman, if you can believe that. I miss bar fights and being really bad at pool. I miss Carrows and Spudnuts and even the freakin' reggae night at Sandbar. with enough alcohol, anything is fun :) mostly, i miss my friendly outgoing co-workers. [/whine]

it's a wonder i don't post more :) HA.

that prousciutto cost 34 dollars a pound and she fed it to the dog. does the screen go blue when the movie is over? she left the tv on and waked upstairs. where did they find that legal pad? what was out of place? shoes - on or off? i hear the rhythmic squeak of plastic on wood, towels hung up to dry, and all the missing pieces come knocking. so many things i still don't know.

i wonder, but it's not melancholy or unduly macabre. every unfinished puzzle gets its turn.

the laundromat was unusually hoppin' this evening. a woman wearing a track suit and abnormally loud clicking high heels asked me where the key for the bathroom was but didn't stick around to hear the answer. now everything is clean and smells like baked cotton. i started Girlfriend in a Coma tonight and, even though it's written in the first person, it doesn't annoy me in the slightest. I don't know why it's taken me 6 years to actually take this off the shelf. I tried to start that book my aunt left here, but it's that stupid tall book format and, 2 pages in, my wrist started to hurt. publishers are on crack. the writing may have also been a little bit attrocious.

i have a playdate in the foothills tomorrow. time for some sleep.

there is a higher incidence of y's in this post than normal.

Why yes, 1AM *is* the ideal time to climb rickety ladders in dark rooms to change lightbulbs with ancient sketchy wiring while no one is home to spot you or call 911 if you electrocute yourself.

Spread the word.

And behold, for I bring the light! This office is now twice as bright as it's ever been in recent memory. I can finally edit photos without going blind. Goodbye, mood lighting! You are not for workspaces!

Also, sometimes you just need to spend $25 on ice cream because it's the right thing to do. FOR AMERICA.

So, I am like, officially *obsessed* with Jon Hamm now. It's those tailored suits on Mad Men, I just know it. And really, who wouldn't be? Speaking of which, what an awesomely fantastic show. REALLY NOW.

All the interesting people are abandoning my work... so sad. No more Adam, Spencer or Unoriginal David :\ I am not amused! Work is incredibly dull lately...there's no one to have nonsense conversations with or anything.

There are so many options for moving, it's making me a little crazy. I was looking into Chicago for a while there and then it turns out that it's a dark frozen wasteland or some such thing 6 months out of the year and...eh, I'm still down. It's a long way to go, though, and cross-country moves are expensive. I'd love to go to San Francisco, but...yeah...jobs. Le suck. I need to figure out what to do next.

I am considering a year in South Korea teaching english. It seems to be the one job that my stupid degree will actually get me! Yay! and it would be exciting...new country, new language... I just don't know what other job to transition into. Lazy Acres is a unique thing, it seems. I need to travel and work with other people. A teaching degree here would just take forever. I'm pretty sure that TEFL courses are something i could take while i was there during breaks...eh, we shall see. I have only barely begun to look into it.

I've been feeling trapped by nothing to do for a while here. I want to dance like a crazy person and run around in the rain. I miss the scene, even. Ooooh. The rain seems to have stopped for now, but I'd still love a night of dancing and friends and talkign to strangers. I am starting to feel like myself again and the possiblities are endless.

Paul Walker came in yesterday afternoon. He's cool. We're checkout buds. Whatever.

ANYWAY. Lupe, one of the girls who works in the deli, came up to me after he left and said, "Didn't that guy look *a lot* like the guy from the Fast & Furious?!"

I just kinda looked at her for a sec, but she was totally serious, so I said, " Loops, that *is* the guy from The Fast & The Furious. He comes in here *all* the time."

"Oh," she says, "Really? ...I guess I gotta be nicer to him next time."

hahaha....oh, kids these days... for the record, Paul Walker is really nice (at least since he dropped the posse and stopped carrying that damn chihuaua everywhere he went - like, hello! that's against health code. leave it outside. leave it in your friend's enormous SUV.). He pays with $1s and can't figure out the POS terminal like the rest of us :)

Some dude came into the store today with a *dire* flower arrangement need. I wasn't even clocked in anymore and the floral chick was on break and he just would *not* stop asking me questions. I told him to wait 20 minutes and the experts would show up. "Good, 'cause this is REALLY important!" ooookay, dude, byebye.

Excited for Tron. Excited for Where the Wild Things Are. Excited for Sherlock Holmes. Almost done with 3rd season of Criminal Minds, 8th season of 24 and 3rd season of The I.T. Crowd.

I need a couple of good books to read on vacation. Non-fiction, fantastic in nautre, preferred. Well-written, please? No Harry Potter or Twilight or any of that nonsense, por favor. I do like me some wizardry, though :) And vampires :) Any good sci-fi/fantasy/plain old fiction would be lovely, though. I haven't bought a book in ages and there is, surpisingly, nothing pressing in my queue.

Also, if anyone has ever been to Japan...good places to go? We're thinking Tokyo for a week or so and then some other places within reasonable train distance. I don't want to spend an excess of time on trains, cool as they are. We're thinking March. Also...good places to stay in Tokyo? not too expensive...we're trying to make it affordable :)

okay, so my newest obsession is Criminal Minds. I started with season 1 and i'm only halfway in, but I love it already (except for that "Derailed" one...wtfcrap.) :) Good writing, some cool cinematographic tricks, good acting, interesting stories...good stuff. <3 Reid, of course.

I think i ate some...bad something...on Monday. I spent a good portion of the night hurling and then slept on the floor outside the bathroom. fun stuff. i tried to go to work the next morning, made it for an hour and a half before i felt like i was going to pass out, so...they eventually sent me home. went back to sleep on the floor for the rest of the day. I woke up this morning feeling pretty much normal, tho. one awesome thing about sleeping on the floor, no back/neck issues at all...and yet this morning, after sleeping in bed, they're back! it's time for a new rock-hard mattress, for sure.

My parents are coming to visit tomorrow for a week...yay! Now that they're living in Michigan, I hardly ever see them anymore. It's a big change from them living half an hour away :( thankfully, i've got the weekend free to spend with them. the next weekend, we're going to EDC in LA, so we'll miss out on those last few days with them, but, we are going back to visit them in September.

also, i have finished watching T:SCC and it's over forever and ever and ever and I'm all tragified about it and now i need excellent fanfic recs. good story stuff. does it even exist? i haven't read fanfic in ages.

word.

and it rained on Friday.

now it's perfect.

also, an update on that 100 movies in 2009 thing (not really in order, 'cause i haven't actaully been keeping track):

1. Gran Torino
2. The Wrestler
3. Slumdog Milionaire
4. Revolutionary Road
5. Taken
6. Coraline (3D)
7. The Dark Knight (IMAX)
8. Watchmen
9. Sunshine Cleaning
10. 17 Again (i watched this one alone :P but it was great! you hush!)
11. I Love You, Man
12. Monsters vs Aliens (3D)
13. The Soloist
14. Wolverine
15. Star Trek (IMAX)
16. The Brothers Bloom
17. Terminator: Salvation
18. Up (3D)

and somewhere in there, we watched these at home:
19. Step Mom
20. Twins
21. True Lies
22. The Punisher
23. LA Story
24. Lars & the Real Girl (alone)
25. Blindness
26. Blades of Glory
27. Coneheads

we're neeeeeeeever gonna make 100 :) we watch too much TV instead! i'm beyond certain we've watched 100 episodes of that this year. maybe 200 :)

how do the Dutch do it, man? how are they so tiny and adorable and awesome?! i do not know.

We went to the Armin Van Buuren show at the Vanguard in Hollywood Saturday night. I don't remember the other two guys that were on before him - they just weren't my speed - but he was the last 3 hours of the night. The last three AMAZING hours of the night. And, now that I'm thinking back, we *have* been to the Vanguard before for a Bassrush event, but it was probably 4+ years ago and they've clearly remodled since then. It's really nice now. Their gigantosaurus steps up to the back patio are still weird and frekish and I don't know *why* you'd do that to drunk & high people, but...that's LA. We deal.

We did rent a hotel room for the night just because we needed a place to get ready, park the car for free (we *thought*. more on that later.), and because we had no idea how tired (or sober) we'd be at 4AM and the thought of driving home...needed to be an option, not a requirement. So we stayed at the Westide Rentals Hollywood Hotel. The hotel itself is fine. I'd totally stay there again...except...they completely and utterly screwed us over with regards to the parking situation. Kermit went in to check in and find out where to park while I waited in the car in the 5-min passenger whatever spot. They told him to "park in the public lot around the corner on Cahuenga."Right. THE public lot.

We had dinner at Sharky's. It's some fresh-mex chain in LA? I don't know. We read about it on TripAdvisor - the poster said it was the safest place in LA because it was where all the cops ate in Hollywood :) We looked, when we went in. No cops! I was disappointed :) On the other hand, their food was really good, some of it organic, all the meat was all natural, and the veggies were really fresh. We went back to the hotel to get ready and headed out around 8:30. We figured, for once, we'd get to an event early, get out tickets and be there from start to finish. Groovetickets is insane. Why on earth would you not open the will-call window until 9:30 when the event *begins* at 9:30? Especially when you have a line wrapping around half of LA that indicated that 95% of the people attending this event are in your will-call line? WTF, yo? I was glad we got there early and were only maybe 20-30 people back in line instead of 1000+.

We did a lot of wandering around. We met some nice people (wut up, Mike with the wife, who was there celebrating his neighbor's gay son's 21st birthday! And wut up, little asian couple who were there celebrating their own 21st birthday! don't worry, Plur ain't goin' nowhere.). Lots of people loved our shirts. We killed a lot of time and i whined about being bored, but eventually it was midnight and the 2nd opening guy was kicking things into a gear i finally enjoyed, so we went inside and spent the rest of the night, moving slowly but surely up to the very front, where Armin signed the back of one of our tickets during a moment of downtime :) heh. That makes the 2nd celebrity to sign the back of something (thanks, Keanu.) at a concert.

Allow me a moment to fangirl and squee at the highest volume possible because, Armin Van Buuren? Totally rules the school. Rocks my socks right off. And has THE single best freaking smile on the face of the planet, I swear to you. THE BEST! You cannot look at that face while he's jumping up and down and grinning like a loon and be unhappy, at all, ever. EVER! So we had three hours of amazing THAT, with great music and the kind of closeness and room to breathe that you never get at the bigger events. Totally ruled. Loved every minute of it. $6 bottles of water, but hey...that's how it goes. Worth every penny, to watch that show!

So when we got out of the concert, Kermit was still wide awake and I was thinking...damn, let's just go back to the hotel, shower and drive home tonight. Screw sleeping for 5 hours and *then* getting up to drive home. So we went to the parking lot to get the car...( which was no longer there. )

So now I get to start the search for another lime green jacket (I gave it to Kermit to drape over his little messenger bag type thing...turns out we should have tied it on there, what with all the people pushing past and dancing like wild monkeys) and my first civil suit. Go, America!

everyone's doing that 100 movies in 2009 thingy so...

so far i've seen:
1. Gran Torino
2. The Wrestler

both were excellent.

okay, did that song at the end of Gran Torino creep anyone else out?

just me, then? yeah, i'm a bad person.

i also never update.

Christmas was wonderful, in it's own way, even though 80% of the family was missing. New Year's Eve was fantastic, even though it only lasted 11 minutes. New Year's Day was a beautiful conglomeration of love, music, light and sleep. and the most gloriously foggy walk through the sketchiest neighborhood in LA at 5am. and giant bath tubs!

the odd years have it. this year i will be 30. i have been looking forward to this for a long time :)

muahahahahahahhaha WALL-E, muahahahhahahaha Kung Fu Panda, muhahahahahahhaa whatever that other thing we saw was!

like, i kind of love *everything* right now.

i need something green and silver to be for halloween this year. yes, i'm planning ahead. yes, this has only happened one other time in the history of things, BUT that happens to have been the one time i actually ended up with a costume, so... IDEAS! silver and GREEN (preferably a warm vaguely chartruese-looking green, but i'm not about to be picky)! go.