Summer Movie Update

(I haven't posted in so long that I had to go back and see if I reviewed Wall-E or not! Turns out I had - here)

I've seen Hancock, Mamma Mia!, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe in the last few weeks.

Hancock was good, not great. I was very entertained and I thought the concept was pretty amusing. I'll be honest though, I really didn't like the second half of the storyline. To be honest it's been so long since I saw it that I don't remember really what I thought of it.

Mamma Mia! was so fun!! Definitely not for men though, lol. Pierce Brosnan can not sing, but I thought his personality was very fitting. Meryl Streep was great, and overall the cast was well-selected. It's just one of those movies that puts you in a good mood for the rest of the day.

The X-Files - so we all know that I am a huge X-Files fan, so this is clearly a biased review (either towards liking it or towards not liking it). It was great to see Mulder and Scully again, and I especially think Gillian Anderson did a great job with a story which had much more to do with Scully than it did with Mulder. I think overall it was a pretty entertaining and exciting movie - Curtis is not a fan of the show and he said it was "pretty good". The downside was it was a pretty weak X-File in that the mystery could have been more "unexplained", plus I think it was poorly written. You had to make a lot of assumptions with the characters. And with the movie running at 1 hour 40 minutes, they could have taken a little more time to flesh some stuff out. But I saw it twice, so it couldn't have been that bad, right?

At this point I'm looking forward to Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, which opens soon. I haven't decided whether I'm going to see the new Mummy movie or not, we'll see. I also need to see The Dark Knight - I think we're going to try and see it on IMAX at the Irvine Spectrum. But we'd have to do it during the week because of the crowds on the weekends.

I'll continue to keep this blog updated for my movie reviews :-)

Yes - I'm still blogging :-)

Blogging during the summer has been a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I think the lack of a consistent schedule and less face time in front of the computer has caused this. Once I start law school and am living by myself again I should be blogging more. Also, even though I have my own camera, my laptop is so slow it takes awhile before the pictures appear here. I think I'm going to just load my pictures onto my parents' computer and go from there, at least until I get my new laptop.

First let me say that living at home has been really fun. My mom has summers off so I've been spending a lot of time with her. Plus I'm fortunate in that my friend Adelyn was also home for a few weeks too. And I can't tell you how nice it is to see Curtis everyday. Overall it's been a great summer. I've been very busy but (almost) everything I've done has been fun.

I was trying to figure out how to organize these updates, because there's so much to say! I have a few pictures from Palm Desert and my trip to SF, I got an apartment in LA and an iPhone this past weekend, and I've seen a few movies since I last posted.

So stay tuned, updates are coming!

(and yes, I changed the colors on my blog - we'll see how long it lasts)

Quick Update

It's been so long since my last post. It's been a crazy few weeks. Here are a few updates. I hope to write a normal Monday Updates on Monday and also put up my pictures.

Last I wrote I had driven home to Mission Viejo from San Francisco. I was home for a few days, not doing a whole lot, and then Curtis and I drove out to Palm Desert for the weekend. We had such a nice time - we went to the spa and got massages, layed by the pool, ate really good food, and overall had a fabulous time. We got back on Tuesday afternoon. I have a few pictures that I'll post next week.

While we were there we found out that Curtis' brother and sister-in-law had their baby! He was almost 10 lbs! His name is Aaron, which I love - and I'm generally pretty excited that I now have a niece and a nephew-to-be :-)

Yesterday my mom and I had a very girly day doing wedding stuff. First we went to pick up my dress (!) which was very exciting. We tried it on and it fit, so yay. We do have a length issue, in that it's like, 2 inches too long, so I think I'm going to look into getting platforms instead of spending the money on the hem (and then I'll be taller!) Now the dress sitting in a closet in my house. I'll probably try it on with the veil and jewelry when I get back from SF. In December/January I'll take it back in for any alterations that are needed. There actually shouldn't be too much but no matter what, the bustle will need to be configured.

We dropped the dress off at home and then headed to the mall to start my registry! It was pretty fun, they gave me a scanner and everything. I ended up with about 50 items, which is a pretty good start. I did a lot of my glassware and I found my flatware, but I still haven't found a set of dinnerware that I'm crazy about so I need to continue the search. And I'll probably wait on the linens until 2009 so we get the right season. We also did some work on the guest list this week, so I feel like I made some wedding headway.

That's all for now - tonight I'm staying at Tracy's house in LA and we're both flying to the Bay Area tomorrow morning for some fun w/ the girls in SF! I'll be back on Sunday morning.

4th of July Weekend

Here are the pictures from my weekend. When I arrived in SF at Melis and Juls', this was the view from the bay windows. You can actually see the Golden Gate Bridge from there. We waited for fireworks from Telegraph Hill. Unfortunately we ended up running down the hill because from where we were it was too high to see anything.
This is from Saturday morning as we were leaving to go camping.
We stopped in Marina to put our feet in the ocean, which was a really fun detour. It was eerie because there was no one there.


Except a hang-glider...

We saw this as we made our way back to the car:

Then we made the drive through Hollister and then on to Pinnacles National Monument.
Our lovely tent!
I go into this in detail on Facebook, but 30 minutes after this picture was taken, our cooler ranch Doritos were stolen by a Mama raccoon. We were 10 ft. away reinforcing the tent!

I tried to get a picture of the raccoon as it was peeking out to get the last remaining Dorito crumbs.

We went exploring and found this rock that was pretty easy to climb.
And we saw quite a few deer in the morning that were clearly not afraid of us.
We got back to town around noon on Sunday and relaxed the rest of the day. I left at 7 the next morning and drove to Mission Viejo! I was sad to leave but I'm actually flying back next weekend, so I'll be seeing most of my friends again soon. My last week and weekend were definitely a great way to say farewell to the place that I've called home the last 5 years.

Tuesday Updates - 7/8/08

I missed Monday because I was on the road for most of the day driving from San Francisco to Mission Viejo. The drive went really well - got home in 7 hours. I've pretty much been relaxing since.

Today is my Dad's Birthday! My mom and I took him to lunch in San Clemente. Festivities continue when he gets home.

I'm officially home, but I only have a few free days before I head out to Palm Desert with Curtis. I'm so excited to get away and spend a few days laying by the pool. I had a great last week up north. Between staying with Adelyn for 3 nights and spending the 4th weekend with Melis and Juls, it was just so fun and I'm exhausted! I'm happy that I can sleep on my home bed for a few days. I finally bought a new digital camera so I have pictures, but I'll post the rest of those later today or tomorrow.

Anyway, I'll reflect more on this later, because it's really surreal that I'm done with work. I think part of my thinks I'll be back next week!

A few pictures from yesterday

Reporting from San Francisco!

Happy Fourth of July!

I have had a fun 24 hours. After work I picked up a new digital camera, then headed to the city to stay with Melis & Juls. Last night we went to dinner at a yummy Italian restaurant and celebrated the end of my job w/ mojitos and wine :-). Then we headed to SFMOMA to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit. I have to say, I was blown away by seeing Frida's paintings in person. You can tell the level of raw emotion she put into her work.

Today we woke up, made breakfast, and then walked to the union square area to go shopping! We hit up H&M, Macy's, Nordstrom, Express, and Gap :-). I didn't go too crazy but I picked up a cute pink dress and a straw hat for the desert. Now we're going to go out and celebrate the 4th with drinks at a local bar and we'll the view the fireworks tonight from Telegraph Hill :-).

Last Day

I just spent the last 3 days going to work and staying in Campbell w/ Adelyn. I had so much fun down there that I'm exhausted!!! Luckily I don't have anything to get up early for tomorrow morning so hopefully I'll sleep in. Tonight I head to San Fran for a fun weekend with Melis & Juls. I'm so excited to see them and we have some fun stuff planned. I think for my end of work gift to myself I'm going to buy a camera before I head to the city so I can document my last weekend here.

Today is my last day of work - which is sad. I've really come to enjoy the people I work with and make some great friendships. I was already almost in tears this morning when one of my friends brought me my favorite Starbucks drink in honor of my last day. One of the partners in my group also baked pumpkin/choc chip bread and mint chocolate bars as a going-away treat. So now only am I sad, I'm also very full :-). 2 years is a long time for developing friendships and I'm sad that I will be far away. The one good thing is that I'm remaining in the state and will be up here for Stanford sporting events, so I will make a point to swing by Orrick for a visit. Plus who knows, I might be back in a few years!

This goodbye just adds to the fact that I am leaving this region which I have grown to love, and I'm not sure if I'll ever be back to stay. It feels like the end of an era, a fun era where I had a lot of freedom to do what I want when I want. I've grown and changed so much over the past 5 years that I feel like I'm returning to SoCal a different person. But we all move on, and I'm sure the next few years will be just as good as the last 5 - just different. I will be in tears driving away on Monday but I'm sure I'll be smiling when I pull into my driveway in Mission Viejo.

Rory's going to Yale (Part II)

For Part I click here.

(Note: this was going to be posted a long time ago and actually I did write a pretty good blog post but then Blogger quit on me and I was left blog-less. So I realize now that pretty much everyone knows where I'm going since I added it to my facebook and blog profile, etc., but nevertheless I figured that should finish this)

So I realize that this is a rather cryptic way of saying it, but I felt a lot like Rory when I had that moment and realized that I want to go to USC. Obviously it's a top-20 school in the job market I want with a small class size and a great scholarship. Most sane people would pick it hands down.

But I'm not most people and I'm certainly not sane when it comes to the choices I make. It's not that I make poor choices, it's that I make choices that intentionally complicate my life. For some odd and twisted reason, I like to make my life as challenging as possible. I've made a lot of decisions where, looking back on it I realize that had I decided on something different my life would be a lot different (like choosing my major for example). So when I was looking at GW vs. USC, my tendency was to pick GW, because it would such a huge change to move to DC and I've have this huge class of students to meet and compete with. Plus it came with a much smaller grant.

It even got to a point where I think my parents thought I would choose GW, just because everyone expected me to go to USC. It was my way of charting my own path. And that was true, I got really close to choosing GW. But then I started hearing from them more, and hearing from the students, and thinking more about what $60k means and what a smaller class size would mean, and what living in SoCal would mean, and what being at a Pac-10 school would mean and I realized that I got in there for a reason. I had that "a-ha" moment that Oprah always talks about when you realize that the choice has been made. I realized that just this one, I could make the easier and more comfortable decision and it would feel right.

It was like when Rory realized that she would want to go to Yale. It wasn't as adventurous since it was 20 minutes from home and her grandfather went there, but it was the right fit for her. She was able to put aside her long-standing prejudices towards going to Yale and embrace it. That's exactly what I'm trying to do with USC (supporting their athletic dept. is another story...). It might not be the most challenging option but I think it's the right decision. I guess I'll have to see how that pans out!

So yes, I will probably be at USC and I am looking forward to being back in SoCal :-)