Sunshine and Breezes

The thing I notice most about Los Angeles (from here on out "LA") is their misconception of "hot" weather. Having left my fair homeland of Florida when it was a sweltering 94 degrees outside, you can forgive me if I think 78 is far from "hot." Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the weather here, but I find the weather person a bit too quick calling things hot. :-)

While Danielle was here we ran around town and did lots of the touristy things. Along the Hollywood Walk of Fame I snapped a photo of one of my favorite stars.

After the walk of fame we headed to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We had a lot of fun posing with the "stars" in here. Below are a few of my favorites.

This one is for Mom, a lover of all things Jackie Chan. Pardon the workout clothes, we had just come from hiking runyon canyon... where I almost fell down a few times but made it out ok.

This is as close as you'll ever get my clumsy self to skateboarding. I find it funny that even on a board that is affixed to the ground I still look scared and like I am bracing for a fall. :-)

I couldn't resist.

Since I have yet to find a steady job, I have had some free time on my hands during the day. I have started to fill some of this time by hiking in Griffith Park. You may know the park as the place near the Hollywood sign and where the Griffith Observatory (from lots of movies, like the second Charlies Angels) or the Greek Theater are located. The park is huge and has lots of hiking trails. The problem I found pretty early on was that the trails are not marked, and I couldn't find a map.

So what did I do? I started following other people (particularly single girls, cause I figured if they felt safe enough to do a trail, it would be ok for me). Hiking for me is an extreme sport. I don't mind the climbing up part, but the coming down part is quite the experience. As mentioned above, I'm clumsy. The inclines tend to be pretty steep, but they also tend to be covered in gravel so it is VERY easy to slip and slide on the way down.

Everyday I hoped that I would find the trail to the Griffith Observatory, on the day depicted in the photos below I didn't make it to the Observatory. After hiking for quite some time and getting quite high, I decided to call my mother and ask for her recommendation. I could do one of two things:

1. I could keep going, across a tiny bridge I had just come to, up another very steep incline, and then it seemed like the trail would start going down... pretty quick.

or

2) I could turn around and head back.

I decided for option 2. I figured it would be best to learn where the trail went before I committed to navigating the trails back down.

One more shot.

One of the next days I was sitting on the couch and I smelled smoke coming from the kitchen. I panicked. I had not been cooking anything yet that day, but I figured that didn't mean that something wasn't on fire. As I headed to the kitchen I started to see a bit of smoke, but I couldn't see a source in the apartment. That's when I looked out the window and saw this.

The store down the road from the apartment had caught on fire and the wind was kind enough to blow the smoke into the window and the apartment. I was thankful the apartment wasn't on fire, but not happy that someone's business was.

After a few more attempts hiking to the observatory (I'll admit, it was somewhere around 6 or 7) I finally found a map that clearly marked the trails and made it all the way up there!!

Another thing that added in the success of this hike was that I had a new friend who joined me. We made a few wrong turns, but recovered pretty quickly to make it to this view.

Another weekend I got to explore downtown LA with two of my favorite Pasadena natives, Catherine and her son Evren (whom you may remember from my adventures in Italy last summer since Catherine was a classmate).

We started the day at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and then headed to Evren's favorite place, Little Tokyo. In Little Tokyo we got lunch at a noodle place that was highly rated on yelp.

Here's my meal... it was fantastic! Real ramen, not the stuff that comes in the plastic wrapper with the packet of "flavoring."


While exploring downtown we walked into the Bradbury building and found Mr. Charlie Chaplin having a seat.


You may recognize the Bradbury building from some movies. My favorite is from the last scene in 500 Days of Summer. The architecture is gorgeous!

I still have some catching up to do, but there is a tease of some of the fun things I've been doing in LA.

From Coast to Coast

Hello from bright and sunny Hollywood! I made it over and had a lot of fun along the way. I have to apologize for my complete negligence in not posting more quickly upon my arrival. My arrival in LA was similar to my arrival in Amelia last summer in the internet sense. AT&T has cancelled my internet service 4 times, but I think I am online now.

Onwards to fun! So I started the trek from Tampa to LA on May 1st. I was fortunate enough to bring my cat Cleo and have a good friend accompany me and we all had a lot of fun. The first leg of our trip started out a bit late, we left Land O' Lakes at 1pm because of a charity walk we were both participating in that morning. Since we were not sure when we would tire we didn't make any concrete plans as to where to stop night one. We contemplated Tallahassee, but pulled up and went right on pass with energy to spare. We started to tire out as we neared Mobile, Alabama, but we decided to push on for 2 more hours to hit Gulfport, Mississippi. Unfortunately when we pulled off in Gulfport every hotel was booked solid, thanks to the epic BP oil spill. So sadly, the closest town we could find with a room was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2 hours further down the road. So, we put in a serious day 1 and didn't make many stops, so no pictures or video for you to enjoy.

The next leg of the trip was from Baton Rouge to San Antonio. We got a good start in the morning and made some fun stops in Houston. Stop #1, to see a large sculpture of an armadillo.

A new feature to my blogs, video!!! This one has a real live cowboy complete with 2 revolvers in hip holsters! I apologize ahead of time for being a bumpy walking camera girl.

After the Armadillo we made one more quick stop in Houston to the Beer Can House. Listen carefully, the beer cans make a pretty wind chime like noise... when I'm not talking.

After Houston we made the push to San Antonio and got there with just enough light to see the Alamo and the largest mosaic of the Virgin Mary. Let me fill you in on how we pick places we stop at. The iPhone has this great app that finds weird roadside stops along the way, that's how we pick all of these.

After our fun in San Antonio we went back to the hotel to get ready for the longest drive of our trip. The next morning we partook of the continental breakfast which included Texas shaped waffles!! How cool is that? Just so you know little Cleo was with us every step of the way, she got to see the Alamo and all the other sites (except for the Biosphere 2, which is coming up, there the gift shop lady kept an eye on her). I don't film her cause I try to not draw attention to the cat in the bag.

The next day we woke up with a plan... a plan besides make it through the drive and end up in Tucson by evening. We wanted to stop and see Stonehendge 2, which was located 60 miles outside of San Antonio on our way. We drove through a really adorable town on our way there and then we rounded a corner and were greeted with this site. And to think that some people go all the way to England to see this. :-)

Here I am, proof!

They also had some random Easter Island Heads. I am giving this one a kiss.

After San Antonio we focused on the finish line... which was about 11 hours away. For lunch we stopped in Fort Stockton... mainly because of the huge road runner sculpture. Here I am preparing to race the road runner.

Here we are ALMOST in Tucson. We stopped at "The Thing" because it came highly recommended by Kelly. A shot by the mountains.

And "The Thing." I can't tell you what it is, you are going to have to visit yourself one day.

Sunset in the desert on I-10.

We made it to Tucson, got some dinner and went to bed. The next morning we started out on our journey to Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 is the Earth, a good trivia question). It was a little out of our way, but since today was our last day on the road we decided to make a good stop. The biosphere is most important because it reminds me of the fantastic Pauly Shore movie, Biodome.

Here I am in the big part of the biosphere. The biosphere was the place of a great experiment in the 90's where they sealed scientists in to see if they could sustain life without any outside interference... no outside oxygen, no outside water, etc. They lost some weight but successfully spent 2 years in the biosphere. For future (on the moon) plans, they would need to find more ways to get the inhabitants calories.

This is the "ocean" which is quite covered in algae for one big reason... the glass that creates the roof blocks UV rays, so they have not quite figured out how to prevent the growth of algae without the UV rays.

The Biosphere 2 from outside.

Our last stop on our trip (before landing in LA) was at the Joshua Tree National Park. Sadly we were not on the side that had joshua trees, but it was still a good stop and a pretty place to stretch our legs.

That night we arrived in LA and Kelly surprised me by still being there (I was under the assumption they would have left in the morning and we would just meet them). All in all a fantastic trip. We only got stopped once by immigration and after answering a very tough question ("Are you both US citizens?"... "Yes") we were sent back on our way.

Next blog is all about the fun filled first few days in LA.

New Adventures

This is a picture deprived posting, but I am sure that once I am in LA you will be overloaded with pictures so don't worry!

It seems as though May brings about changes in my life. Last year on May 31st I spent the night in the air on my way to Amelia, Italy. That was followed by three months of amazing adventures. This year on May 1st I start my trek across the United States. Kelly is going to be going on tour with the Buzzcocks and she needed someone to watch Bella and the apartment, and I figured it may bring about good job luck for me to try some new scenery. So new adventures here I come.

I'd like to thank everyone for their suggestions of road trip stops, I think we have a pretty good list started. I am really looking forward to seeing the worlds second largest pecan which is about a block away from the worlds largest mobile pecan. What exactly constitutes a mobile pecan? I am not sure, but rest assured I will let you know when I figure it out.

Now, back to my old random ranting blogs. I went to Publix yesterday to do some grocery shopping and I picked up a bunch of random items including a box of Snyder's sourdough pretzels (yumm yumm). After driving home, putting away the groceries and then reaching for the box to have an afternoon snack I realized something was wrong, the box was way too easy to open. Usually I have to be careful not to give myself a huge paper cut when trying to open the top of the box. Once I looked inside I realized that something was definitely off, the cellophane bag in the box was turned on it's side. I reached inside to find that the bag had not only already been opened, but a pretty good portion of the pretzels had been eaten.

This was all slightly annoying, but it got me thinking... who does that? For those of you that are not fortunate enough to have a Publix near you, they are definitely an upper level grocery store, always clean, always courteous. In fact when I returned later that day to exchange the box of pretzels the manager couldn't stop apologizing. I didn't really mind, it's not that far out of my way to swing back by and they are never rude, but still... who does that? I mentioned that maybe a small child picked up and opened the box and bag (a pretty big task) without the mother/father realizing (pretty impossible I think) and the parents just thought the child had an unopened box in their hands and returned it to the shelf. When I posed this scenario to the manager she disagreed. She said it isn't uncommon for people to eat items while shopping and then place them on the shelf before they leave. Who knows what person put my mystery box back on the shelf, but I think it goes to remind us that it is never ok to eat someone else's food without asking... especially before they've even had a chance to buy it. :-)

Has anyone else bought something at the grocery store only to get home and realize that someone else had enjoyed it previously? If so, please share. I have a feeling this could lead to some pretty entertaining stories.

Smitten Kitten

You can love your pet and then you can looove your pet. There is a line, and I believe the line has been crossed. While prepping for my cross country trip I have been looking for items necessary to bring Cleo along for the car ride. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of meeting her, Cleo is my precious kitten.

I adore her, would do anything for her, but I would not do this (nor would Meatloaf... hee hee)...

Wow! Yep... there was the line, and that lady just jumped right over it. I can sort of understand people wanting to walk their cats in a stroller, I wouldn't do it, but I can see my mom doing it one day. But this? We have reached a new level of "my pet is my baby."

I luckily have some fantastic friends that have created limits so that I won't cross over to crazy pet owner. One example, I am not allowed to get any dogs (like a teacup poodle) that would fit in a normal purse, I have given my word and that is golden. I am also never allowed to have more than one cat while single. This was actually a rule I gave myself, I see the second cat as the gateway into crazy cat lady land.

For your almost Wednesday enjoyment here are a few of my favorite "I can't believe that's intended for animals" products:

It's a girl!

Hmmm... what does this remind me of? Oh right, a crib. :-)

"dvd for cats... While you are gone"

I don't know about your cats, but when I am gone Cleo looks out the window, eats, sleeps, chases a shadow, sleeps... I don't think it would be possible to get her to watch a TV... cause OH RIGHT, she's a CAT! :-)

Until next time, make sure to spay and neuter your pets. ;-)

California or BUST!!

I am super excited to be heading to LA soon to housesit for Kelly while she is on tour May-June, and while this alone is pretty cool I have also decided to drive as opposed to fly, so I get two adventures in one. I was hoping that you guys could help me out with some ideas though. My best friend Danielle has graciously offered to drive with me, and we are planning on leaving May 1st and want to arrive in LA by May 4th. Our tentative route is Tampa to San Antonio, Texas. Then San Antonio to Phoenix to LA.

What do we need help with? Does anyone know of any fun stops to "stretch" at along the way? You know like the worlds largest _____ or whatever? Send me a message if you have any ideas. :-)

Thanks in advance for any help!

I have a new blog in the works, but need a few more photos before I can post, look for it soon!

Hairy Situations

Any of you that have known me for any prolonged period of time understand that hair has always played some kind of role in my life. For those of you that don't know this you are going to get a crash course in the hair cutting stages of Katie. You should definitely be excited. :-)

When I was born I was one of those babies that came out with a full head of hair (as the picture above demonstrates). One of the earliest stories associated with my life is when my mother was being wheeled to the nursery to check on me. As she rounded the corner and got the first glimpse of the wall of windows she was a bit perplexed by the small crowd giggling and pointing at one of the babies. You can only imagine her hormonal response once she realized that everyone was pointing and giggling at me, the "Don King" baby with the hair. My mother quickly made them all feel bad by sobbing and pointing out that I was a beautiful baby, but the relationship between me and hair had begun. :-)

As time went on the gravity defying features of my hair calmed down and my hair grew quite long and lovely. Below you see my hair pretty close to the time of the next story in the hair cutting stages of Katie (I thought the barber chair was a nice touch).

One more shot of the long and lovely locks before...

Before I decided to cut my hair on mother's day. :-) Yes, I really did do that. Yep, on mother's day. Was it a mother's day present? I don't know, but it certainly was a mother's day surprise.

The events were as such: my mother was taking a nap, my dad was supposed to be watching us but instead left me in the care of Kelly (who was probably about 6) while he mowed the lawn (You have to understand that at this point in his life the care of the lawn was sacred, and we were pretty good kids).

Kelly and I were watching something on TV and playing with some craft stuff when I started playing with her Hello Kitty scissors. Now you have to understand that Kelly's scissors were AWESOME because they actually cut things, and at this point in my life I still had the fake scissors unless I was under direct adult supervision (which was apparently a good idea). So, as I was playing with Kelly's super cool scissors I decided to see if they could cut my hair... and guess what? They could! But uh oh, now my hair was uneven... hmm... how to fix that? Oh I know, take a little off the other side. Ooops, now I have two fists full of hair, hmm... I better hide the hair in the couch cushions. Let's take a look at that hair, oh no, not even yet, lets take off a little more. Now we have more hair, I know hide it behind the books in the bookcase.

So it went, for who knows how long, until I got caught. True to my form the picture below was from a planned (pre-haircut) family photo session, my poor parents. What are the repercussions of cutting your hair at that age you may ask? Are there any? Oh yeah, there certainly are:

1. I had to leave preschool for a while, so that I didn't tell the other kids what I did and start a haircutting fiasco.

2. I had to get a haircut to try to repair my piecemeal work.

3. I had to get my ears pierced and wear more dresses so that my mom wouldn't cry when people said, "what a sweet boy you have."

4. My parents kept finding little clumps of hair in random places around the house for months.

I don't regret it though, and I doubt my parents do either. It's a pretty fantastic story. Below you can see a few months after the cutting incident as the hair was growing out. :-)

So began my haircutting adventures. There aren't many adventures in my haircutting life, but the few that exist are fun and entertaining. There was the one incident where a boy in my first grade class refused to take his "rat tail" off of my desk (for those of you not familiar with the term, a rat tail is when a boy basically has a crew cut, except for a very long small portion of hair near the base of his neck) . I asked him once, I asked him twice, and SNIP, I didn't ask again; I simply handed him his rat tail. Unfortunately that turned into a parent teacher conference, but I don't really recall getting into trouble for that. :-)

My next real haircutting adventure did not occur until I was about 25. Pre-chemo my Aunt Laura decided to donate her hair to locks of love, so in her hospital room I cut the ponytail, colored her hair and gave her a bob. I have to say that I think my haircutting skills immensely improved over time (Perhaps it was all of the "practicing" I did on Barbie dolls).

My next haircutting adventure happened yesterday. I had the immense pleasure of spending the day with my Aunt Patty. We watched Price is Right, went to the mall, made a bunny at the Build a Bear Workshops, and Patty got a picture with the Easter Bunny. While walking around and teasing her about getting makeup for her upcoming prom she mentioned it might be fun to color her hair. To be fair we, as a family, had teased her the night before that maybe she should color her hair purple for Easter. Those of you that know Patty know that she would have giggled and dismissed the idea. However, it seems as though she was paying more attention that night than I thought.

So yesterday at dinner we asked what color she wanted, she said blonde or red. After dinner we went and bought some dye, she had decided to go with an ash blonde. Below you will find the picture by picture steps of the events that unfolded.

1. I created my "hair station" in the kitchen.

2. Patty pre-hair adventures.

3. On goes the color. (yeah, I am rocking a candy corn apron and yellow cleaning gloves. I make that look good! ha) On her lap you can see Patty's bunny Hoppy that we made earlier in the day.

More color.

4. Processing time. Patty decided this time was best spent picking out clothes for my mom to buy her.

5. Washed, combed and ready for a cut!

6. We somehow missed getting photos of the actual cutting, but here we are with the styling. (I'm concentrating)

7. A little bit of hairspray... and Patty asking that I make the bangs a bit more short.

The finished product! :-)

So there you have it, the hair cutting adventures of Katie. I have to warn you that for my planned mother's day post we will revisit hair a bit, but it will be worth it. And yes, you heard me right I am actually already planning another post. You should be pleasantly surprised I have a few more in the works, so I hope to improve my posting speeds.

She's done it again.

Who? Martha Stewart, who else? Once again Martha has ruined the Dove chocolate wrappers. What's my fascination with Dove chocolate wrappers? I blame the professor that I was a G.A. for in Grad school. Don't get me wrong, she was one of my favorite people and professors, but she was a horrible influence when it came to chocolate. :-) Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Periodically (who am I kidding? weekly) she would bring in bags of the Dove caramel chocolates and we would line the back of the office door with the wrappers.

So this is why I have a fascination with Dove candy wrappers, and why I take it so personally when the phrases go downhill. Back to Martha. It took me a while to amass some of her "Valentine's Day" collection of phrases, but here is what I have thus far:

1. Use a heart-shaped punch to create Valentine cards.

- Yeah... cause I keep my heart-shaped punch handy just for things like this.

2. Rewrap a store bought chocolate bar with a love note.

- Ok, I'll admit it, this is a good idea, but you know that if Martha was doing it she would have vintage paper with hearts on it that would be "just right" for this kind of a project. Then she'd show off her calligraphy skills, which in turn pisses me off.

3. For a Valentine card photocopy a rose between sheets of acetate.

- I am so glad I have all of those sheets of acetate hanging around, I keep them with my heart punch.

4. Try wrapping a floral bouquet in a classic love poem.

- I don't know about you, but I think Martha is issuing us a challenge here. Just read it again, she is daring us to wrap a floral bouquet in a classic love poem because she knows the following.

a) We don't know what size paper to use, which will take time for us to perfect, because I know that an 8 x 10 sheet of paper will not actually fit around a bouquet. Don't ask me how I know, I just do.

b) What kind of paper should you use? I mean it has to be strong enough to not break apart once damp flowers (we don't want them dead) are placed in it. etc.

5. wait for it... this one is one of my favorites.

Use the cut end of a head of radicchio to form a rose stamp.

- Riiiight. Umm...I can't tell you the last time I saw fresh radicchio in my grocery store. Perhaps it's just not in season? But I bet that the bagged stuff won't make as good of a rose. We can't all grow radicchio on our ridiculous estate like you Martha.

6. Create a heart using two pats of your own ink-stained finger.

- Yep, you all should expect a 2"x2" card in the mail with a heart made out of my finger prints. Oh wait... no you shouldn't, I'm not Martha. :-)

So to all of you who are preparing to enjoy the long Valentine weekend, have fun. To all of you who do not have plans for this weekend...I bet the bars have pretty good two for one deals. :-)