then i left him home to study and finish recuperating from his horrendous work week, and took myself over to the hollywood bowl. a few LA friends had called that afternoon with an extra box-seat ticket to the julie andrews/hollywood philharmonic show that night, so i HAD to say yes to that! i mean, hello, it's julie andrews, one of my lifelong heroes/idols/whatever...and what's summertime without singing along to "do re mi" under the stars anyway? (yes, i've done that more than once.) plus i was excited to see my old friends, so i hightailed it over.
(tangent: for anyone on my side of the hill planning a trip to the hollywood bowl, i highly recommend the shuttle from the la zoo. for just $3/person you can park in their nice lot, avoid the traffic and moronic parking situation at the bowl, and get home way quick after the show. brilliant! i'll never be able to repay the baers for teaching us that little secret.)
we had a great time at the show (although i maybe could have done without the extended fairy tale after intermission) and then i took my shuttle home. this morning i realized that my digital camera, which i had taken to the concert, was not in my purse and briefly freaked out. LUCKILY i called the h-bowl lost & found and they had it! (my camera has taken a beating lately and brandon keeps giving me crap about not having a case for it, so i recently stuck it in a little workout sock for added protection. when i called today and sheepishly explained that i lost my camera and that it was probably in a sock, the guy put me on hold, came back and said in a surprised voice, "wow, yes, we actually did have someone turn in a black camera in a sock." LOL. just for the record...i'm not crazy :) can i get a shout out for miraculous returns of missing cameras? (you know who i'm directing that to, b.fo, even if you are en route to china right now)
so today i drove back out to h-wood to retrieve the camera, fully in tact and safe as ever. however i will still post pictures courtesy of whitney vandermyde because hers came out better than mine:
yeah...vocal cord surgery and she's still amazing.
ashley, kinohi, whit & me
saturday i went to brunch with my PR mentor/friend and her adorable baby. can i just say how great it is to be able to talk with people who get you and help you clear your head. i feel SO much more at peace about life, just being able to talk some things out with her and get new ideas. thanks linds!
(on another tangent, i really think i've been feeling subconsciously deprived from female socialization...or any socialization for that matter. brandon enforced a moratorium on our collective couple social life a while back so he can focus on the GMAT -- can you imagine how hard it is for me to not be able to invite peeps over for game night, dinner etc. after moving into a new ward?? BOO -- but apparently i've been missing out on girl time as well. last week i hung out with friends, sans the husband, three different times and LOVED each venture. thanks to my great friends for hanging out with me and getting me out of the house :)
after that brandon and i, along with most of the adult american population, went to see the dark knight. don't get
me wrong, i love a good action flick as much as the next person, but i'm still not really sure why everyone loooooves this movie so much. brandon had been foaming at the mouth for weeks to see this thing and he and my brother still maintain they'd be willing to watch it another five times in theaters at least, but i'm okay with my single viewing. it was very entertaining, pretty funny at times and had great special effects. i'm a big christopher nolan fan so of course thought it was well done...and the music was awesome.but other than that it was a little unnerving, to be honest. first of all i kept staring at heath ledger trying to see any tiny trace of the cute boy who sang and danced at julia stiles' soccer game in 10 things i hate about you, but he was definitely nowhere to be found in this movie. it's still so sad to me how he ended up. and the way they have taken a formerly comical comic book character and turned these movies into such a dark, gritty message on society is more of a sad take on our culture than anything else to me. oh well...still worth seeing, i'd say, but just know it's def not a feel-good flick.
we rounded up the day with a trip to pinkberry and working on our plans for europe. a while back we discovered a guy named rick steves and have since become his biggest fans. we check out all his relevant travel books from the library and read his web site all the time; he is SO helpful, at least to someone like me who has never been to europe and is easily overwhelmed by the quantity of things to do over there, in guiding us to the best deals on hotels, tourist activities, planning our trip, etc. i love him! we ordered our train passes last week via rick and received a travel dvd in the package, so we've been watching that and getting so excited.
sunday my hermano came to visit because my parents are stillll out of town (returning today from the world's biggest kayak race, located on the missouri river...my uncle founded this whole thing a few years back, and my dad oversees his web site and flew out this year to help him out. read more about it here or on my mom's blog. random? yes.), so we brought him to church, let him take a nap at our house, cooked him dinner, made him play a rousing game of sequence and then sent him on his way. fun weekend had by all.
6 comments:
I am a total Rick Steves fan... We have gone to Europe twice and he has great advice and tips. I watch him on PBS all the time.
I'm jealous that you got to see Julie Andrews.
How much fun! I'm glad you had such a good time. I'm apparently the only person alive who didn't see the Batman movie. I actually didn't even know it was out...shows you how much I'm paying attention these days!
Sounds like so much fun. I opted for Mama Mia instead this weekend (and dragged my husband kicking and screaming), it was okay. You will LOVE Europe! I'm so jealous, I want to go back.
wow, wow, wow. I don't even know where to start. I miss the Heath Ledger of 10 Things also. Actually, I think I liked Julia Stiles dancing on the table to Notorious BIG better. But, well, fun movie.
Great that you went to the H-bowl. Sherri and Josh were there for Julie Andrews as well! Good to know about the LA Zoo shuttle.
And hilarious about your sock camera. Glad you found it though.
And glad you got out of the house wednesday night (mostly for my girl-time sanity too)
Fun weekend!
Rick Steeves. Oh my. I'm addicted to his shows - even if he bothers me so much.
As for Batman. I loved the movie. LOVED. I think people are wrapped up in what the TV show did to Batman (which was to camp it up) - but I think this movie is true to its comic-book roots. The Joker is not a laughable character. I had no past invested in Heath ledger - so I wasn't bothered by his amazingly spot-on performace.
From Wikipedia: "In his initial dozen or so appearances, starting with Batman #1 (1940), the Joker was a straightforward mass murderer...In the 1950s and 1960s, following the imposition of the Comics Code Authority censorship board, the Joker shifted toward becoming a harmless, cackling nuisance..."
As such, I don't think the Joker speaks to some greater degredation of society -- I think it mirrors what we fear most. In that, it's a warning. (I was disturbed by those who thought he was so cool and funny... Yes, he was funny, but in a "wow, this man is a psycho, I shouldn't be laughing" sort of way. This Joker returned to the roots. Batman has always been, at its roots, a dark and twisty tale full of gray -- nothing is black and white. Nothing is straightforward....
But - yeah. Anyway. :)
Sooo fun! I want to go to that sing-a-long you were talking about!!
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