today's delights

first of all, just to clear up any confusion, no i did not FLY to san diego from LA. haha. i agree, that would be ridiculous. i drove down here, but part of my job this week is to greet the media when they arrive at the airport. because multiple groups arrive each day and flights inevitably get delayed, that means i end up sitting in the airport for a while -- hence the blog post. and hence my new cold, which i'm convinced was sparked by the frigid recycled airport air i breathed for 10 hours straight on saturday.


today was a good day; i feel like i'm hitting my event stride. it's nice when you switch over from feeling like you are wasting your life doing something, and instead realize that you are in fact still living -- you're just doing it in a different way than normal.


this morning i drove two dutch (are people from the netherlands dutch? they're from amsterdam, holland. does that make them hollandish? i have no idea) journalists to the airport to pick up their rental car. it actually kind of worked out because i had to trade in my rental car anyway, the brakes were shot and made a horrible grinding sound. not my fault, though i am quite an aggressive braker.

so anyway we were chatting in the car and one of them told me i had to go to jim morrison's grave while in paris. the other guy made a joke about how morrison isn't really dead, just like elvis, and as an afterthought he added that elvis is delivering newspapers in indiana. i kind of laughed, figuring he was referring to some longstanding joke i wasn't aware of.


then he started saying how he had watched an american tv show where elvis was the newspaper delivery man -- and it totally clicked in my brain. he was talking about eerie indiana, one of the greatest shows of my lifetime! for anyone who cares to remember, this was a great disney channel show -- the main guy is the boy from hocus pocus, another lifetime fave -- about all these weird things that happened in erie IN. my favorite episode involved a woman who didn't want her kids to age, so she made them sleep in tupperware and they'd been the same age for 50 years. oh, so classic. anyone else feeling me here? i'm not crazy...i swear.








anyway, i've never met anyone else who remembers the show including my own sister, who watched every disney channel show with me, AND lacy jean sparks baldwin, who has also seen saturday's warrior, home alone and anne of green gables (all top favorites). i was quite delighted to hear that my new friend, all the way from holland, knew and loved the show too.

then, while dining at the hotel for lunch, my co worker and i were nonplussed while scoping out the dessert menu. i asked the waitress if i could just have a cookie, an item noticeably missing from the menu (you can do things like that when you live in a hotel for 10 days...we can get anything we want around here) and she said she'd check. when she came back she brought me THIS:





anyone who knows me knows that cookies are my reason for life. each one of these babies were about the size of my face (proud to report i haven't finished them off yet, but i'm about halfway through) and so delicious. if i can't have my husband, cookies are a great runner up.


what a great day :)

tales from the biz

today it took me one and a half hours to find a mcdonalds by the airport. pathetic. by the time i got there i was so so excited for my asian salad and 3-pack of cookies, i could barely think straight. on a positive note, i did get to drive by the beautiful sd harbor four times. i love it here. but what's a girl gotta do to get some golden arches??

then in the airport i saw an olympian. it was a girl and she was talking on her phone about doing stuff in the olympic village with the other athletes, and she had a big beijing 2008 bag. she didn't look like a superhero but i'm pretty sure she was anyway.

so far, so good on the trip. no scary bugs, plenty of room service. blogging from the sd airport on a saturday night...what a great date night with myself.

and i'm off...

tomorrow i'm going to san diego, where i will stay for the next week and a half. i'm pretty sure this is the longest time i've ever been away from the husband (luckily he gets to come down and stay with me on labor day weekend...that's the least they could do for making me work over a holiday! ;) and i am starting to be a little sad. i always get this way right before a trip...i'm usually excited all the way up until i leave, and then fine once i'm gone, but slightly clingy right when it's time to go.

i won't lie though, there is something nice about a business trip. being away from laundry, groceries, dirty counters, carpet that needs vacuuming, husbands who dump their crap all over the place...even though i'm working, it's still a vacation from the usual reality. and it's even better when i get to stay in a nice hotel. hello huge comfy bed (all to myself!), all the free desserts i can eat and a fun change to the day-to-day.

this will be much better than georgia! (no scary bugs in san diego, right?)

tourist capital of LA

saturday we went to universal studios. one of brandon's former interns works there part time and got us some sweet hook ups (which is really the only reason i'd ever go to US) and we invited our amigos heather and tyson to accompany us. heather's friend ali was fortunately in town, so she came along too.

i've been to universal studios quite a few times in my life (and i've been to citywalk way more...my mom and grammie used to take us there multiple times every summer to run off our energy in the fountains) and every time i go i wonder why i'm there. the rides aren't that amazing, they don't have anything particularly interesting to show you (i'll admit that the tram tour is my favorite, but it's always the same stuff) and it is missing that disney sparkle that i love so much about that other competing them park. it's just sort of corny and materialistic. and i just get cranky thinking how much fun it would be to be a director or producer, two jobs that i'm definitely am on the wrong train for.

anyway, despite my pessimism, we had a grand time.

we took pictures at all the obligatory tourist areas:





we went on fun (yet oddly structured) rides like the mummy:



and the simpsons ride (which was quite fun, i will admit -- maybe that's just because in our household we watch simpsons episodes two times per day, on average -- but i do miss back to the future):



we saw the backdraft show and the waterworld show (their fire is SO HOT! it's really amazing that you can feel the heat like 200 feet away):


then, against my better judgment, we went on jurassic park. this is a water ride. i do not like water rides. i was reminded of this after we went on and THEN found out that the "water effects" were on full blast. boo.

me, before (this is my nervous face):


and me after (this is my NOT HAPPY face):


thanks to some really oddly positioned lap bars, we were totally drenched except for a one-foot section of our torsos.



after a strenuous five hours in the park (yep, by that time we'd done everything there was to do...except the curious george bounce house. i can live without that one) we had dinner at a delicious cowboy bbq place. coincidentally i remember eating there with the extended fam when i was about 10...i vividly remember that my cousin meghan was a little baby and we fed her a lemon in that place and she made the most hilarious faces i had seen up to that point in my life. good times.

then we came home and i baked cupcakes and went to the gym. i love weekends...have i mentioned that?

no pictures for sunday, but it was such a busy day that it is worth a mention. after church we went to east LA for a good old fashioned mexican bbq (we LOVE our mexican friends that live there...they are awesome. plus we're always down for authentic carne asada, non-english conversations, meeting family members who just got out of jail -- he still has the ankle bracelet! sweet! -- and dining in their concrete backyard. so fun). we sped home from that, fed the missionaries dinner (i was super full by that point) and i went visiting teaching. not the most relaxing day but it was definitely fun.

laughing till i cry

every once in a while i stumble across an online gem that MUST be shared...and today is one of those days.

i was just cleaning out my google reader and saw this post from my favorite cupcake blog...and it's saturday morning, i'm eating cereal and enjoying the fact that i am still in my pajamas, so i figured i'd check it out. go ahead, click on over to www.cakewrecks.com and read a post. or a few. or all of them. i swear, i was practically choking on my mini wheats -- this girl is HILARIOUS. the pictures are awesome and her commentary is even better.

i don't know all the rules of blogger copyrights, but here is an example of one of my favorites so far:

poor bunjamioh



Not only did his parents saddle him with that awful name, but he also got one of the ugliest birthday cakes this side of fuglyville. Check out the mismatched neon orange borders, burgundy roses (for that feminine touch), and rotting swamp-mud colored leaves.

Take heart, Bunni; when you're 18 you can change your name AND buy your own birthday cake.

why don't i think of this stuff??

shades of 96

watching the olympics tonight makes me remember how the last time i got super into the games was the 1996 olympics because of the women's gymnastics team. ohhh man i loved them. i had the wheaties box, a book, the people magazine with "the magnificent seven" on the cover, etc. etc.

i was in sixth grade and spent every afternoon for a month after the olympics out on our trampoline, trying to do flips and keep my balance on a "balance beam" i drew with chalk. too bad at that time i was already probably a good two feet too tall to ever be a gymnast. oh well. i still love dominique moceanu, kerri strug, dominique dawes and all the rest. maybe i'll sign my future daughters up for gymnastics and live vicariously through them ;)

and speaking of flashbacks...tomorrow in pershing square they are doing an outdoor concert featuring none other than sophie b. hawkins. um, seriously? i totally loved her "as i lay me down to sleep" song...i think i was in 6th grade for that heyday as well. and now she's performing midday concerts in the middle of downtown LA. interesting switch.

i'm just sayin...

nothing really new to report. the weekend was severely anti-climactic due to a stressful week, a baby shower and a botched up date night (sorry again, dana & casey...next time i'm getting there two hours early!). i did clean my house though, i guess that was exciting.

yesterday i was in san diego all day prepping for a motorcycle event next week. i spent 8 hours in the car. how does just sitting wear you out so much? i was wiped out when i got home.

today i had a meeting in cypress so i had to drive into downtown. twice. i hate driving. taking the train is so much better.

tomorrow i'm actually in the office all day. how exciting is THAT. having a full 8+ hours to work on projects is great.

next friday i'm going to san diego for a full 11 days. motorcycle event. i will miss my husband but i think he gets to come visit me. i'm also trying to talk my boss into letting me go to church while i'm there because i don't think i could emotionally handle two full weeks without. haha.

we eat a lot of packaged food these days. gross. i mean none of it is that bad, mostly frozen food items from trader joes and typically low fat etc. but i just feel bad that i never have time/energy to actually cook.

um...and that's all. my life seems sort of boring right now. maybe because my brain is shot from too much work.

more letters to the universe

the best way to phrase my random thoughts (reminder of format inspired by erica wilkinson xoxo):

dear brett favre:
seriously? seriously. you are a JOKE. wasn't it like five months ago that you were a hero of professional football with the whole world in love with you? and now you are a freaking emo waffle (and that says something, coming from a girl who almost called off her wedding four times).
make up your dang mind and don't be mad when you get traded. and don't even get me started on the re-cover of madden 09.

dear pasadena 24 hour fitness:
your new idea to physically rope off the "personal training area," aka the only place with mats and weights less than 25 pounds, is totally stupid. a. because no one was even using it and b. how am i supposed to stretch out on the hard dirty ground?? i was already mad at you for your lack of competent yoga teachers but this is the last straw.

dear beverly hills 24 hour fitness (and raghavan, yoga instructor extraordinaire):
i really miss you (see letter above). we used to make fun of the fact that you were in the basement of a trimana but your women's only weight/cardio room was the bomb. and yoga will never be the same!

dear breaking dawn fans the world over:
i try to keep this on the DL so as not to alienate 98% of my friends, but i am not and have never been a twilight fan. (yes, go ahead and gasp.) i still keep up on the news for sake of pop culture value, and i must say that the spoilers i've heard about for this new book are crazy.
this is unhealthy for all of you to be so enamored in girl porn! get over it. just because it's written by a mormon doesn't mean it's not another (albeit cleaner) version of a harlequin romance.

dear college football season:
24 days. can't wait. (and never thought i'd say that.)

ain't no holla back girl

today was kind of a long day, so when i was standing in the subway station at 7:30 p.m. i was feeling sort of sorry for myself -- that i had to stay so late, that i still have so much to do, that my poor husband was still AT work. i was listening to shawn mcdonald and trying to feel happy when a black guy wearing a doo rag but no shirt walked his bike right up to me.

for those of you unaware, the LA subway system gets kind of freaky after 6:30 p.m. because you're with the street crew, not the white collar commuters (really, even then it's still a little scary sometimes). i'm not really an eye contact kind of girl anyway, but i really try to avoid looking at/talking to any people on the trains especially at night.

so he's standing like three feet away from me staring at me, but i'm tough and i don't look at him just because he's trying to get me to. then he taps my arm so i finally glance over. and what does he say to me? "do you go clubbin?" um, no, sorry. "well, you fit the profile." i'm never very quick on my feet with retorts -- i usually think of something very witty to say about 10 minutes after the fact -- so unfortunately i wasn't able to ask exactly what that profile included. instead i said "i don't think so, i'm married so that's not really my thing" and then hopped on the subway, which had fortuitously arrived.

thanks, crazy guy, for brightening up an otherwise dull night.

maybe paris isn't so bad...

definitely the best thing to come out of the presidential election yet. (click the link :( i can't figure out how to post the vid to my blog)

i thought i hated paris hilton but i think this makes me like her a lot more.

filipino feasting

this weekend my aunt/uncle/cousins, the gratils, were visiting from arizona. they are lots of fun to have around for many reasons, not the least of which is that my uncle melchor always cooks us a giant filipino feast. and this trip was noooo exception.

melchor grew up in the phillipines and met my aunt susan when she was on her mission there. they got married when i was three so i never thought any different of having a cool filipino uncle. then when we all started catching on to his magical cooking there was really NO problem at all.

yesterday brandon and i drove to rancho to see the fam and have dinner. melchor cooked a ridiculously large amount of lumpia and pan sit and it was de-lish-ous. mmmm. my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it.



loom-pee-uh. (n.) kind of like a filipino egg roll but with meat. dip it in some garlic-vinegar sauce and you have pure heaven.



pan seet. (n.) some crazy kind of tasty noodles with chicken, snow peas and various veggies thrown in for good measure.

(we usually also get some yummy sticky rice for dessert but unfortch due to the travel schedule we had to skip that. so we made up for it with some coleman/payzant family classics.)



this is garlic bread from the smoke house -- we went through four loaves in less than 10 minutes. if you don't know what that is and you live within a 100-mile radius of burbank CA you are SERIOUSLY missing out. seriously.



we also had tea cakes from martino's bakery in burbank. (can you tell my family has deep roots in the valley?) the poor gratils have missed these treats so they had to stock up, and we all got to share in the spoils.



everyone feasting.



this is what the boys did after dinner.



saying goodbye to the gratils. jeremy, on the left, is one of the coolest kids i know and is leaving next month on a mission to brazil. sad sad day. (and my aunt is really 4'11" -- i've been taller than her since 4th grade. as have the rest of her family.)

not a bad way to spend a sunday, i must say. and we have leftovers to boot! (haha...am i too into food? maybe.)

reupholstery inc.

so saturday brandon and i ventured down to the fabric district in downtown LA, searching for some lovely fabric to redo our dining room chairs. this is something we've been meaning to do for approximately the past 22 months -- our dining room set is pretty nice, but as we purchased it pre-marriage for $25 at a garage sale we were sure to have a few issues to deal with. (although it does help having a beat up table when i do things like hammer the top of it while crunching peppermint candy for the first annual wells cookie exchange. whoops.)

issue number one being the dirty abstract covering the chairs came with (how we waited almost two years to do this, i will never know). grosssss:



we went from that to this:





so much prettier, don't you think? it actually matches the rest of my house now. it was super easy too -- i'm very good at any crafts involving a staple gun. basically brandon and i are ready to open up shop -- we love working on home-related items together. sign up now to get the wells family reupholstery special!

tooth? what tooth?

okay, so maybe i was really just overreacting when i was so nervous to get my wisdom tooth out. once again let me remind you it was only a TOOTH, not "teeth" -- i only had one, it was on top, and it was already halfway out of my gum so when i walked in the oral surgeon said this should be a piece of cake.

except that the worst part was the three shots of novocaine they shot up into my brain via the roof of my mouth...ouch. my eyes teared up a little then and i think the surgeon thought he was dealing with a crazy nervous patient (probably because i had also told him "i'm a little nervous" with a freaked-out little giggle) so from then on he didn't really tell me what was going on.

after some other guy explained what to do when i went home, they laid me back in the chair to "test the area." my mouth was numb at this point and they had me bite on a bite block, turn my head, etc. while it felt like they just poked around and tapped some of my back teeth. then they sat me up and said i was good to go! WHAT??!? i had felt no yank, no blood in my mouth, no cutting, nothing at all. i was biting down on a piece of gauze but convinced the tooth was still in my mouth -- i had been in that chair, start to finish, no longer than 20 minutes. um...yeah. i'm glad i did't pay $500 more to get put to sleep for five seconds.

i haven't had very much pain (no vicodin even -- my 800 mg motrins are doing just fine on their own) and the only time i believed it had really been done was when i came home to eat dinner and pulled out a nasty bloody chunk of gauze. i considered taking a picture of it but decided to spare my blog readers the horror :)

so basically...this was no big deal. i'm eating mushy foods and just hanging out today, short one little tooth that i don't even miss.

piece. of. cake.