riding the train is a little scarier when it's pitch black outside no matter what time i leave work.
good thing i still have entertainment. when i told the homeless crazy in the subway station that i didn't have any change, she said "god bless. i like your hair." sweet.
also, i've been pretty much conserving my political power for all things prop 8 this election season, but i have to get this out. i'll admit i've been sort of on the fence about both presidential candidates, and even with all the things i've heard about obama's ties to islam, inexperience, etc. etc. i could still see some good in him.
but his beloved grandmother dying the day before the election??? don't hate me for saying this, but does that seem like a major sympathy ploy to anyone else??
Monday, November 3, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
all hallows eve
i love halloween. however, yesterday kind of sucked. but that's okay, i am beginning to learn that halloween isn't that much fun unless you are associated with small children or able to dress up slutty, neither of which i do these days, so i suppose everything worked out as expected.
to begin with, we have had some amazing southern california skies here lately. i guess i'm just easily excited by any type of weather, living here, but it has rained off and on in the area of late and the clouds have been amazing. i tried to take some pictures on my way into work yesterday:
i went into work in the morning, but had a meeting at toyota at 11 a.m. my office goes ALL OUT for halloween with costumes and prizes and the works, so i was pretty excited to see everyone's outfits and join in the festivities.
i even came up with a group costume idea for me and the three other girls on the auto team -- we were grapes:
i can't really take credit for the costume fully, because i was actually a grape in 11th grade and that was megan tanner's idea. (thanks megs! your brilliance lives on :)
anyway, i couldn't dress up with the girls at 9 because i had to leave for toyota right after. so i helped blow up balloons and pin them on, then went to my meeting -- which was supposed to be done at 11:30 but lasted TWO HOURS. i probably needed to be there for about three minutes of that two hours, so that was even more frustrating. the work halloween lunch/party started at 12:30. so by the time i got to the office it was 1:30 p.m., despite driving 90 mph on the 110 freeway -- and the party was just about over.
there was no more free lunch left (but it was panda express...yuck...so i guess it's okay), no diet coke, no one to see me as a grape too. we ran upstairs and pinned me up and ran back down, but everything was over. we took that picture above and then un-pinned so i could sit at my desk. i was effectively a grape for about 10 minutes.
i spent the afternoon busting my butt to get out on time, since my morning had been wasted. they announced the winners of the costume contest -- and best group costume went to the grapes! but when they sent out the email, only the names of the three other girls were listed along with a picture of only them. not me.
i managed to leave on time...even a little early...and came home to an empty house. brandon left on thursday for a spur-of-the-moment trip to san francisco (literally...he booked his flight less than 24 hours before he left for the airport) and wasn't scheduled to land until 8 p.m. friday night. that killed our fun halloween plans with the fujis, another bummer.
so i did what i'd do any other night of the week and took myself to target to get some stuff. on the way home i saw the CUTEST little trick-or-treaters out with their parents, all dressed up and running up and down the streets. adorable. but i just felt super lonely and sad. so i went home and watched what not to wear and thought about how crappy my day had been. so much for my wonderful halloween that i had been looking forward to.
but then brandon got home, saw me all depressed and tried to cheer me up. we lit all my new halloween candle holders and watched a treehouse of horror episode (it's not halloween without the simpsons) and my all-time favorite h-ween movie, hocus pocus. i guess the night ended up great after all.
happy halloween!
to begin with, we have had some amazing southern california skies here lately. i guess i'm just easily excited by any type of weather, living here, but it has rained off and on in the area of late and the clouds have been amazing. i tried to take some pictures on my way into work yesterday:
i went into work in the morning, but had a meeting at toyota at 11 a.m. my office goes ALL OUT for halloween with costumes and prizes and the works, so i was pretty excited to see everyone's outfits and join in the festivities.
i even came up with a group costume idea for me and the three other girls on the auto team -- we were grapes:
i can't really take credit for the costume fully, because i was actually a grape in 11th grade and that was megan tanner's idea. (thanks megs! your brilliance lives on :)
anyway, i couldn't dress up with the girls at 9 because i had to leave for toyota right after. so i helped blow up balloons and pin them on, then went to my meeting -- which was supposed to be done at 11:30 but lasted TWO HOURS. i probably needed to be there for about three minutes of that two hours, so that was even more frustrating. the work halloween lunch/party started at 12:30. so by the time i got to the office it was 1:30 p.m., despite driving 90 mph on the 110 freeway -- and the party was just about over.
there was no more free lunch left (but it was panda express...yuck...so i guess it's okay), no diet coke, no one to see me as a grape too. we ran upstairs and pinned me up and ran back down, but everything was over. we took that picture above and then un-pinned so i could sit at my desk. i was effectively a grape for about 10 minutes.
i spent the afternoon busting my butt to get out on time, since my morning had been wasted. they announced the winners of the costume contest -- and best group costume went to the grapes! but when they sent out the email, only the names of the three other girls were listed along with a picture of only them. not me.
i managed to leave on time...even a little early...and came home to an empty house. brandon left on thursday for a spur-of-the-moment trip to san francisco (literally...he booked his flight less than 24 hours before he left for the airport) and wasn't scheduled to land until 8 p.m. friday night. that killed our fun halloween plans with the fujis, another bummer.
so i did what i'd do any other night of the week and took myself to target to get some stuff. on the way home i saw the CUTEST little trick-or-treaters out with their parents, all dressed up and running up and down the streets. adorable. but i just felt super lonely and sad. so i went home and watched what not to wear and thought about how crappy my day had been. so much for my wonderful halloween that i had been looking forward to.
but then brandon got home, saw me all depressed and tried to cheer me up. we lit all my new halloween candle holders and watched a treehouse of horror episode (it's not halloween without the simpsons) and my all-time favorite h-ween movie, hocus pocus. i guess the night ended up great after all.
happy halloween!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
double tag
sorry, i usually value"tags" about as much as i do all the chain emails i receive (by valuing i mean ignoring), but when two of my favorite cousins BOTH tagged me i figured i was stuck. so here you go, seven random things about me:
1. i used to love jonathan taylor thomas. like, unhealthy love. i was about 12 and thought he was the cutest thing EVER. i religiously watched home improvement (which, in retrospect, is a pretty cheesy show), bought all the teeny bopper magazines, plastered his picture all over my room. on november 12, 1997 i went to a rehearsal of home improvement with some friends from my ward and got to go backstage and i met jtt. he was standing in the wings, eating a bowl of rice, wearing a green bomber jacket. he shook my hand and talked to me for a few minutes and at the age of 13 i was already four inches taller than he, who was age 16. i didn't wash my hand for 24 hours and i wore a plastic bag over it when i took a shower. glad i got over that.
2. i have all these weird rules about food handling and cleanliness. if a wet piece of food falls off my plate onto the table, i won't eat it -- but if a dry piece falls off, i probably will. i won't let brandon put a utensil on his placemat if he's already eaten off of it. i don't like skin on the upholstery (i.e. if b takes off his shirt, he can't sit on the couch). i eat peanut butter out of the jar with my finger or a spoon, but refuse to eat anything someone else has touched. my poor husband is very confused by all this.
3. in third grade we did a play of pandora's box and students got to try out to play each thing that came out of the box. i wanted to be hope, who comes out at the end to save the world. i memorized my whole audition script, practiced for days, even dressed up for the part. i was up against only one girl (who also happened to be the most popular girl in our grade). when we auditioned i totally nailed it...this was big because i used to be really shy...and i saw that my teacher wrote my name down as her choice after we both auditioned. but then someone said we should vote, and the class voted for the popular girl. she got to be hope and i ended up with a tiny minor part. i think i cried a lot.
4. most people know this: i was in marching band in high school. but most people do not know that band camp was my very favorite time of the year. during lunch we'd climb the fence and sneak into the school swimming pool to swin in our clothes, then run back to rehearsals all wet. another nice side benefit of this was that some days the boys' water polo team was out there practicing so we could watch them from the field. i loved band.
5. i have taken yoga classes since we got married. at my gym in beverly hills, my teacher's name was raghavan and he was probably 70. it seemed to me that he and hundreds of generations of his ancestors had taught yoga for eternity; i loved that our class was so authentic. now i live in pasadena and the 24 hour yoga teacher's name is amy. i don't like her classes much at all.
6. when i was born i had astygmatism and my eyes crossed. to try to fix it, i had surgery on my eyes when i was eight months old and again when i was two years old. they cut my eyes open, disconnected and reattached the eye muscles so they wouldn't cross, and then i wore glasses until i was 10. my eyes had fixed themselves and today i don't wear contacts or anything. i do, however, have bluish-tinted scars in both eyes from the surgeries. sometimes when i'm talking to people they stop me suddenly and say "do you have HOLES in your eyes?" to which i say yes.
7. i like to make faces. (okay, maybe i didn't have a seventh interesting fact about myself...but a blog is only good if it has a picture :)
1. i used to love jonathan taylor thomas. like, unhealthy love. i was about 12 and thought he was the cutest thing EVER. i religiously watched home improvement (which, in retrospect, is a pretty cheesy show), bought all the teeny bopper magazines, plastered his picture all over my room. on november 12, 1997 i went to a rehearsal of home improvement with some friends from my ward and got to go backstage and i met jtt. he was standing in the wings, eating a bowl of rice, wearing a green bomber jacket. he shook my hand and talked to me for a few minutes and at the age of 13 i was already four inches taller than he, who was age 16. i didn't wash my hand for 24 hours and i wore a plastic bag over it when i took a shower. glad i got over that.
2. i have all these weird rules about food handling and cleanliness. if a wet piece of food falls off my plate onto the table, i won't eat it -- but if a dry piece falls off, i probably will. i won't let brandon put a utensil on his placemat if he's already eaten off of it. i don't like skin on the upholstery (i.e. if b takes off his shirt, he can't sit on the couch). i eat peanut butter out of the jar with my finger or a spoon, but refuse to eat anything someone else has touched. my poor husband is very confused by all this.
3. in third grade we did a play of pandora's box and students got to try out to play each thing that came out of the box. i wanted to be hope, who comes out at the end to save the world. i memorized my whole audition script, practiced for days, even dressed up for the part. i was up against only one girl (who also happened to be the most popular girl in our grade). when we auditioned i totally nailed it...this was big because i used to be really shy...and i saw that my teacher wrote my name down as her choice after we both auditioned. but then someone said we should vote, and the class voted for the popular girl. she got to be hope and i ended up with a tiny minor part. i think i cried a lot.
4. most people know this: i was in marching band in high school. but most people do not know that band camp was my very favorite time of the year. during lunch we'd climb the fence and sneak into the school swimming pool to swin in our clothes, then run back to rehearsals all wet. another nice side benefit of this was that some days the boys' water polo team was out there practicing so we could watch them from the field. i loved band.
5. i have taken yoga classes since we got married. at my gym in beverly hills, my teacher's name was raghavan and he was probably 70. it seemed to me that he and hundreds of generations of his ancestors had taught yoga for eternity; i loved that our class was so authentic. now i live in pasadena and the 24 hour yoga teacher's name is amy. i don't like her classes much at all.
6. when i was born i had astygmatism and my eyes crossed. to try to fix it, i had surgery on my eyes when i was eight months old and again when i was two years old. they cut my eyes open, disconnected and reattached the eye muscles so they wouldn't cross, and then i wore glasses until i was 10. my eyes had fixed themselves and today i don't wear contacts or anything. i do, however, have bluish-tinted scars in both eyes from the surgeries. sometimes when i'm talking to people they stop me suddenly and say "do you have HOLES in your eyes?" to which i say yes.
7. i like to make faces. (okay, maybe i didn't have a seventh interesting fact about myself...but a blog is only good if it has a picture :)
Monday, October 27, 2008
definitely not vampires
saturday was a GREAT day in the payzant-wells household. brandon took the GMAT for the third time; we were really nervous (probably me more than him...my palms were sweaty when he left, and he seemed just fine) because he has worked SO HARD preparing for that thing. he has studied pretty much every day since january for the stupid thing, which has caused plenty of stress (on his part) and annoyance (on my part -- he wouldn't let me invite people over on weeknights OR go to the gym with me).
he had taken a prep course after the first time, but his score on the second test was only fractionally higher. but he didn't give up; he kept working on math, which is his toughest subject, and taking practice tests until he ate, slept, breathed GMAT.
and on saturday he aced it!!
well, not really; he didn't get a perfect score or anything. but he did do WAY better than before, achieving a score high enough to make him a highly competitive applicant and good enough to get him into the schools he is applying for. HOORAY! all of our prayers over the past 10 months were answered and i am so grateful. and so excited to see where we end up!
then...we celebrated the big 0-2 wedding anniversary that night. we spent some time at the los angeles temple which was peaceful, invigorating and much needed. and then we headed to the stinking rose, a garlic restaurant in beverly hills.
the stinking rose was located pretty close to our old apartment and we used to drive by and talk about it all the time (we're both big garlic fans) but never went, so we decided the anniversary could be a good excuse to go.
(count how many times i say garlic in this paragraph.)
we started out with delicious garlic rolls, dipped in garlic-infused olive oil and a little garlic-chive dip. brandon had a garlic-braised boneless short rib and garlic mashed potatoes; i had a chicken and arugula salad with garlic vinaigrette (boring, i know, but like i said...i'd eaten a whole bowl of cookie dough). all of this was quite tasty...and then we ordered garlic ice cream for dessert and that was when i'd had it. it tasted like normal vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce, but the aftertaste was pure garlic. kind of savory and definitely unique, but a couple of bites in and i was sucking back splenda packets, desperate for anything that didn't taste like garlic. two teeth-brushings and four hours later, my mouth still tasted pungent when i went to sleep.
all in all it was a fabulous day.
kind of a stoned picture, but myspace shots are hard to take of two people. happy anniversary husby!
he had taken a prep course after the first time, but his score on the second test was only fractionally higher. but he didn't give up; he kept working on math, which is his toughest subject, and taking practice tests until he ate, slept, breathed GMAT.
and on saturday he aced it!!
well, not really; he didn't get a perfect score or anything. but he did do WAY better than before, achieving a score high enough to make him a highly competitive applicant and good enough to get him into the schools he is applying for. HOORAY! all of our prayers over the past 10 months were answered and i am so grateful. and so excited to see where we end up!
then...we celebrated the big 0-2 wedding anniversary that night. we spent some time at the los angeles temple which was peaceful, invigorating and much needed. and then we headed to the stinking rose, a garlic restaurant in beverly hills.
the stinking rose was located pretty close to our old apartment and we used to drive by and talk about it all the time (we're both big garlic fans) but never went, so we decided the anniversary could be a good excuse to go.
(count how many times i say garlic in this paragraph.)
we started out with delicious garlic rolls, dipped in garlic-infused olive oil and a little garlic-chive dip. brandon had a garlic-braised boneless short rib and garlic mashed potatoes; i had a chicken and arugula salad with garlic vinaigrette (boring, i know, but like i said...i'd eaten a whole bowl of cookie dough). all of this was quite tasty...and then we ordered garlic ice cream for dessert and that was when i'd had it. it tasted like normal vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce, but the aftertaste was pure garlic. kind of savory and definitely unique, but a couple of bites in and i was sucking back splenda packets, desperate for anything that didn't taste like garlic. two teeth-brushings and four hours later, my mouth still tasted pungent when i went to sleep.
all in all it was a fabulous day.
kind of a stoned picture, but myspace shots are hard to take of two people. happy anniversary husby!
elections cant end soon ENOUGH
for real. i am counting the days till nov. 4.
i have been pretty fed up with the presidential election since about oh...2007. both mccain and obama just mudsling at each other the whole time; i'm so tired of it. i'm sick of the media throwing in their two cents, which is usually a completely biased two cents in either direction, depending on which channel you're watching.
but of course this election hits a little closer to home than usual thanks to our campaigning efforts for prop 8 (yes, i'm still voting YES). i hate how the "yes" voters have come to be known as intolerant, hate-filled people who don't want equality for all -- when in fact WE DO. it's not easy for me to get all activist and outspoken about this stuff because i'm not normally like that, but i will stand up for what i believe -- and that is the fact that children, who have no say in which family they are born into, deserve the right to have a mother and a father.
i'm not here to go over my position, though; that's been done. i would however like to say that the prop 8 debate has become riDICulously heated. "yes on prop 8" signs around the state don't even last overnight before they are stolen/vandalized/destroyed. people are being harassed, yelled at, flipped off, threatened. some people choose to wave "vote yes" signs on busy street corners in their towns and drivers come by and yell, jeer, intimidate. last week in fountain valley a group of people were waving signs (which, last time i checked, is not an illegal thing to do nor is it imposing on others) and some apparently-no-voters came and threw BLEACH on them. one of the wavers was a pregnant woman who got covered in bleach.
seriously? this is insane.
groups on both sides of the issue have every bit as much right as the other to express themselves and stand up for what they believe. but MY SIDE is not the one physically attacking people. who's the hater now?
i have been pretty fed up with the presidential election since about oh...2007. both mccain and obama just mudsling at each other the whole time; i'm so tired of it. i'm sick of the media throwing in their two cents, which is usually a completely biased two cents in either direction, depending on which channel you're watching.
but of course this election hits a little closer to home than usual thanks to our campaigning efforts for prop 8 (yes, i'm still voting YES). i hate how the "yes" voters have come to be known as intolerant, hate-filled people who don't want equality for all -- when in fact WE DO. it's not easy for me to get all activist and outspoken about this stuff because i'm not normally like that, but i will stand up for what i believe -- and that is the fact that children, who have no say in which family they are born into, deserve the right to have a mother and a father.
i'm not here to go over my position, though; that's been done. i would however like to say that the prop 8 debate has become riDICulously heated. "yes on prop 8" signs around the state don't even last overnight before they are stolen/vandalized/destroyed. people are being harassed, yelled at, flipped off, threatened. some people choose to wave "vote yes" signs on busy street corners in their towns and drivers come by and yell, jeer, intimidate. last week in fountain valley a group of people were waving signs (which, last time i checked, is not an illegal thing to do nor is it imposing on others) and some apparently-no-voters came and threw BLEACH on them. one of the wavers was a pregnant woman who got covered in bleach.
seriously? this is insane.
groups on both sides of the issue have every bit as much right as the other to express themselves and stand up for what they believe. but MY SIDE is not the one physically attacking people. who's the hater now?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
pumpkins
i took thursday and friday off to have a little break, after working so much in georgia. the first day i did laundry, went grocery shopping, took a nap, finished up project runway on dvr. yesterday i went out to rancho to have lunch and go shopping with my mom. she is super busy with all her efforts for the yes on prop 8 campaign, and i have been busy with life, so it was a fun day off for both of us.
we had a DELISH lunch at souplantation (i am always delighted by healthy-ish buffets) and made our first stop at tai pan trading.
my MIL got me hooked on tai pan a while back; it is a fantastic home decorating warehouse that started out with two salt lake city locations. seriously, this place is like a dream come true if you want to spice up your house. every time we've been to utah since we got married, i have made a trip there. unfortunately i was always limited to what i could purchase since i'd have to lug it home on the plane with me.
naturally i was ecstatic when i heard one was opening in california -- and even more thrilled to hear it was opening in my very own hometown. tai pan rancho opened on monday and it was everything i had hoped.
the place is so big it's sort of overwhelming (especially cause it's loaded with christmas stuff right now, but i can't remember what new decorations i bought last year) but i made off with a lovely collection of new halloween/harvest decorations for the apt. SO FUN. i highly recommend checking it out if you're ever in the 909 (or in utah). oh, and if you go on 11/15, you can meet marie osmond :)
and speaking of gourds (my favorite seasonal word...so ugly)...i think i ate my weight in pumpkin chocolate chip cookie dough today. gross.
we had a DELISH lunch at souplantation (i am always delighted by healthy-ish buffets) and made our first stop at tai pan trading.
my MIL got me hooked on tai pan a while back; it is a fantastic home decorating warehouse that started out with two salt lake city locations. seriously, this place is like a dream come true if you want to spice up your house. every time we've been to utah since we got married, i have made a trip there. unfortunately i was always limited to what i could purchase since i'd have to lug it home on the plane with me.
naturally i was ecstatic when i heard one was opening in california -- and even more thrilled to hear it was opening in my very own hometown. tai pan rancho opened on monday and it was everything i had hoped.
the place is so big it's sort of overwhelming (especially cause it's loaded with christmas stuff right now, but i can't remember what new decorations i bought last year) but i made off with a lovely collection of new halloween/harvest decorations for the apt. SO FUN. i highly recommend checking it out if you're ever in the 909 (or in utah). oh, and if you go on 11/15, you can meet marie osmond :)
and speaking of gourds (my favorite seasonal word...so ugly)...i think i ate my weight in pumpkin chocolate chip cookie dough today. gross.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
final thoughts on georgia
i was pretty excited for our event to end so i could come home...it was a long 10 days, so even though it went by quickly i was pretty worn out by the end.
after packing up on tuesday we got on the road...but couldn't leave clayton without visiting the famed "goats on the roof" gift shop and tourist attraction -- click that link, i guarantee it will make your day. i guess this is just one more piece of evidence toward how remote northern georgia is -- you put goats on a roof to attract people?? -- but i actually loved it.
we paid a quarter to get a handful of goat food, put it in a can and peddle it up to the roof where it dumped out. and to my delight all four of the sleeping goats up on the roof came over to check it out! so cute. here's one of my friends walking over:
it is beautiful there, that's for sure.
and a side note. i watched a whole lot of tlc on this trip. when i travel for work i like to keep the tv on for company while i'm in my room, typically on a friendly channel (can't watch food network if i'm hungry, so i switch to tlc). sometimes this is not a good experience like on monday when i watched some birthing baby show that may or may not have scarred me away from motherhood for another two years, but other times it works out great...like with a "what not to wear" marathon!
at first i was skeptical of this show...the first episodes i watched showed the grossest, most fashionably-challenged people EVER. gross. but jolee talked me into giving it another try, and i loved it!
i got hooked on an episode about some gross middle-aged balloon-sculptress lady who said she was often mistaken for a lesbian (probably because she dressed like she had no gender). by the end of the show she was so happy, her self-esteem obviously boosted with a few new outfits and a new haircut. i loved that they could improve her self worth with such simple measures, without implying that she lose weight or change herself drastically. cute.
from there i was more interested, for one because the hosts are hilarious, and for another because once in a while i could sort of relate to the featured people. (NOT because i'm frumpy...more because there were some who were trying to maintain their punky eclectic style and still be businesslike, etc. i told you i watched a lot of episodes!)
and then they featured a mormon girl from provo utah! i was so excited. probably because the girl was all artsy like my friend meridth (though mer is def more stylish than this chick started out). anyway, great show, so awesome to see a girl with modest cute outfits, and maybe i am hooked. thanks, tlc, for keeping me company for the past 10 days!
after packing up on tuesday we got on the road...but couldn't leave clayton without visiting the famed "goats on the roof" gift shop and tourist attraction -- click that link, i guarantee it will make your day. i guess this is just one more piece of evidence toward how remote northern georgia is -- you put goats on a roof to attract people?? -- but i actually loved it.
we paid a quarter to get a handful of goat food, put it in a can and peddle it up to the roof where it dumped out. and to my delight all four of the sleeping goats up on the roof came over to check it out! so cute. here's one of my friends walking over:
it is beautiful there, that's for sure.
and a side note. i watched a whole lot of tlc on this trip. when i travel for work i like to keep the tv on for company while i'm in my room, typically on a friendly channel (can't watch food network if i'm hungry, so i switch to tlc). sometimes this is not a good experience like on monday when i watched some birthing baby show that may or may not have scarred me away from motherhood for another two years, but other times it works out great...like with a "what not to wear" marathon!
at first i was skeptical of this show...the first episodes i watched showed the grossest, most fashionably-challenged people EVER. gross. but jolee talked me into giving it another try, and i loved it!
i got hooked on an episode about some gross middle-aged balloon-sculptress lady who said she was often mistaken for a lesbian (probably because she dressed like she had no gender). by the end of the show she was so happy, her self-esteem obviously boosted with a few new outfits and a new haircut. i loved that they could improve her self worth with such simple measures, without implying that she lose weight or change herself drastically. cute.
from there i was more interested, for one because the hosts are hilarious, and for another because once in a while i could sort of relate to the featured people. (NOT because i'm frumpy...more because there were some who were trying to maintain their punky eclectic style and still be businesslike, etc. i told you i watched a lot of episodes!)
and then they featured a mormon girl from provo utah! i was so excited. probably because the girl was all artsy like my friend meridth (though mer is def more stylish than this chick started out). anyway, great show, so awesome to see a girl with modest cute outfits, and maybe i am hooked. thanks, tlc, for keeping me company for the past 10 days!
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