We have arrived!

We have arrived in Texas! Wooohoooo!! Currently, Max and I are at my mom’s house in Poteet, Texas – the town where I grew up. We are gearing up to look for rental houses this weekend but at this current moment I am stationed on the recliner in the living room protecting my mom’s two wimpy dogs from Clementine. Bailey is her biggest fan and will not stop licking her vagina and Bridget is completely terrified – I just had to coax her out from under the chair by promising her complete protection from the big bad Clem.

ANYWAY – now for an update on what happened over the past week.

Friday was our last day in the Live Nation office. I was at work for approximately 3 hours. That night we had our going away / birthday bowling party. The night started at The Well, our faithful bar downstairs from work. Then we bowled the night away with a TON of friends/coworkers – it was a lot of fun and I was so happy at how many people came out. I can’t wait to see the pictures that Julie took!

The next day we packed up the U-Haul with a few friends and ate some delicious pizza from our favorite place, Palamero. YUM. And again, so happy to have a few friends willing to help us load that truck up. It made the day SO much better. Sunday was my 27th birthday and the day we left L.A. It was a fairly uneventful day…as expected I suppose. We stopped for an early dinner in a place called Blythe, CA and went to some random local diner instead of a fast food place. The waitress was so sweet and when she found out it was my birthday she put a candle on our carrot cake and made the 3 other people working there come out and sing. This was particularly sweet because we were the only people eating there at the time – the place was DEAD. It really made my day though so a big thanks to Courtesy Coffee Shop in Blythe. I have to say that in general though, my birthday was a total bust this year. Max and Tony both got me books and Julie made a really awesome picture collage thingie of Los Angeles. All wonderful gifts but guess what – that was IT this year. I didn’t get as much as a card from my mom, dad or sister/niece. RUDE! If it wasn’t for Facebook I have a feeling I would have gotten even less. Owell though, right? It’s not like 27 is all that important anyway.

We arrived in San Antonio on Tuesday night and as we finally exited I-10 (all the way from LA to SATX!) this song came on the radio that went “Is anybody going to San Antone?” Perfect timing! Wednesday we unloaded our belongings in to my dad’s storage unit and ate Mexican food TWICE in one day. We had a great late birthday dinner with my dad and stepmom and my dad made me a lemon birthday cake...which we were too full to eat. So, we ate it for breakfast on Thanksgiving and it was DELICIOUS. We followed up the birthday cake breakfast with THREE Thanksgiving meals. 11:30am at my stepmom’s sister’s house, 2pm at my Uncle’s house and 4pm at my mom’s. I was so full after each meal…and was in extreme discomfort at the end of the night.

Sarah (my niece) just woke up so now it is time to go. Below is a link to some pictures from the drive…they are taken from the iphone so not perfect but better than nothing! I loved the windmills in Eastern CA and again in the middle of nowhere West Texas. Clem made herself very comfortable around the car and was forced to pee in the designated “pet area” despite the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere with empty land all around us. We found a stuffed jackalope in NM and mariachis sang in San Antone.

Drive to TX

The Final Days

So here we are with 3 days left in LA. Today is Thursday – tonight we go to Jason’s for dinner. Tomorrow is Friday and will be our last day in the office (and Max’s last day at Live Nation) then after work we are having a going away bowling party that should be AWESOME. Saturday we pick up the U-Haul to load it up and Sunday morning we leave. The cubicle is packed and walls are bare – the house is packed and boxes are taking over.

I consider myself a pretty nostalgic person. I like to reminisce about “the old days” and things like that. People have been asking me if I will miss Los Angeles and honestly, I don’t think that I will. However, I know that I will feel nostalgic about a lot of things. I won’t necessarily want to revisit these places but I will think about the times that I spent there and remember how happy or sad I might have been at that point. With this in mind, I have compiled a list of things I think I will “miss” the most. I also felt it necessary to point out the things that I will not miss. Enjoy. :)

Things that I will miss:
- The view from the Griffith Observatory and the hike up to the top.
- Barnsdall Art Park right by my house. I’ve loved exercising there and the views of the hills above Los Feliz are gorgeous.
- The weather. I’m pretty sure I will never live somewhere like this again – 75 degrees pretty much all year and oh so much sun.
- The beach. Texas has a coast but it’s just not the same as the ocean here.
- The endless options for Thai food and tacos.
- The over abundance of flip flop wearing people. Angelinos love flip flops. I understand that the entire world wears flip flops these days but I have never been to a place where they were accepted as year round attire. I have on more than one occasion seen a man wearing a full on business suit with flip flops. And Travis…well he wears flip flops pretty much every day with every outfit. I think the only time I saw him in real shoes was at Dang’s wedding.
- Northern California. I know it’s not LA and I didn’t live there but MAN I love the Northern coastline of this state. Big Sur and everything around that area must be one of the most beautiful places in this world.
- The mountains and hills – the landscape here is really so pretty. Though…sometimes it’s all burnt to a crisp and that’s not that pretty.
- The people at work. Each person has their own weird little quirks and being in an office full of them has been a pretty fun experience. I bet they will not miss me yelling at them to turn down their music though…
Things that I will not miss:
- The homeless people and how cracked out they are. No, really – NY had a lot of homeless people but here they yell at themselves and others a lot more. I’ve always had this fear of walking by a sedate homeless person on the street and then they attack me out of nowhere. Well, I saw it happen on my way to work here one day to a woman on the sidewalk. Scary.
- The traffic at all hours of every day.
- The expensive apartments with annoying neighbors. I want a YARD!
- The lack of trees on the streets in certain parts of town. We need some shade here!
- Working on the 17th floor of an office building in a city where there are earthquakes.
o Working in a cubicle in the middle of 40 other cubicles
o Working in a room with only fluorescent lights
- The people that come here looking for that “Hollywood” oh so cool life style. You are ruining this city. Going to night clubs and wearing designer sun glasses does not make you cool. Having head shots does not make you an actor, musician or anyone really. Try to come back to reality…aka get your head OUT of your ass!

That’s it for today – updates to come once we’re on the road or in Texas!

The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar

I’m starting to remember the things that I love most about Texas. People who hear that we’re moving and have never been or are just small minded like to react “Texas, ugh…why?” Then, when I tell them my entire family lives there they say oh, well that makes sense I guess. Unfortunately, they are missing part of the point of our move. We’re not JUST moving to be closer to my family. We are moving for a different life and for those of you that are un-aware being in Middle America does not mean that life sucks. Texas is not a place where republicans sit on every corner cursing you for not attending church last weekend. Just like any other place there are extremists but mostly, people are just really nice and polite. They are proud of their home state and the wonderful things there.

For example, I stumbled upon an amazing looking Christmas event that takes place in Austin called The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. Armadillo?! Can you imagine a festival in Los Angeles or New York featuring an armadillo or any animal for that matter? It just doesn’t sound very cool…and yet, I bet it will be! I love how unpretentious it seems.

I am so excited to be around for the time of year when every little town has their special festival. The infamous Strawberry Festival in my hometown of Poteet, the Peanut Festival in Floresville, and the list goes on and on. Don’t even get me started on the rodeo’s…I can’t remember the last time I went to one but I do remember how much I LOVED them.

So, in short – Texas is going to be AWESOME. Max and I are going to be able to afford to rent a house with a yard for what we pay to live in shoe box here and we are both so excited to embrace the new life style. I might make him start wearing cowboy boots and we’ve already discussed western dance lessons. Watch out Dancing with the Stars…

Sorry if this is boring

We had a great week last week…so great that I wasn’t annoyed enough by anything or anyone to prompt a blog entry. No witty observations this time. Here are the highlights:

Thursday we went to House of Blues to see Dinosaur Jr. – whoa was that loud. I don’t know any of their music but Max really wanted to go so I agreed…over the past week I’ve come to realize that they are a total guy band. We went to dinner with Jessica/Mike and mentioned that we went to the show – Mike and Max talked about it for at least 15 minutes while Jessica and I moved on after about 2 (where we both basically agreed that they were too loud). Max had fun though and that’s what counts, right? Right…

Friday we ate at Father's Office for lunch - YUM! The Office Burger was amazing and so worth the thousands of calories that I'm sure it contained. You should go there if you haven't been before. Excellent beer as well.

Friday night was the Pixes at the Palladium. That was a great show! I was on celebrity watch that night and spotted Jillian from The Biggest Loser, Brian Posehn, Jessica Alba, the drummer from No Doubt and Tim and Eric from…the Tim and Eric show? Again…I think that show is a guy thing because I’m clueless.

I think those two shows are the last we will go to while here in LA…sad, but true.

Saturday and Sunday I packed and it was AWESOME. I love looking at shelves half full and seeing the boxes start to pile up in the dining room…it makes this all finally very real. We moved our departure date back to Sunday instead of Monday after finally realizing the drive is going to take much longer than we want it to. So, now we’re less than 2 weeks away. :)

Silly String

I saw this amazing sign on Sunset just west of Vine. There were a few of them around this area notifying citizens of the illegality of silly string. I just can’t believe the city of Los Angeles actually had to print and post signs about silly string.

Halloween was fairly uneventful, just as I predicted. We went to a movie at the Arclight and had dinner at the best Thai place in LA, Jitlada. My food was so spicy I could barely eat it (it actually made me a little dizzy) but I still love the place.

While we were out I was reminded of another one of the sad facts of life when you live in a large city. The kids can’t really trick or treat! I completely forgot about this until I saw a swarm of children dressed up trick or treating to the local markets and restaurants. How sad is that…you take your children walking up and down the sketchiest part of Sunset Boulevard to collect candy from Janice’s Mini Mart and El Pollo Loco. They did this in New York too but for some reason it wasn’t as sad to me…seeing as the entire downstairs portion of the city is made up of businesses. This is just yet another reason to not raise children in the middle of the city. Or, if you’re going to do it, at least have the sense to drive them to a local rich neighborhood with houses! Come on people.

The aftermath of Halloween was very evident on Sunday morning as these same kids obviously ate candy and dropped the wrappers as they walked down the street. Wrappers everywhere and Clem tried to lick every single one of them.