Hooked on Phonics

It rained yesterday and melted some of the snow in Virginia away. An entire world was revealed to me once the snow was gone. Before everything looked the same – white. Now I can see the houses and it makes driving around much more enjoyable. It’s not as cold as I feared it would be either. Overall, a great turn of events for this vacation.

Christmas with the Trone’s was fun – I missed being at home with my family (2 years in a row now I’ve been away!) but I did get some yummy and nice presents and ate some good food.

The best news is that this trip has afforded me lots of time to read – I finished one 270 page book already and just started another this morning. Both are by Tom Robbins and I like them a lot. Woohoo for reading. It’s been over a year since I finished an entire book and it feels good to be back in the swing of reading again. I hope I keep it up when we get back to Austin and have been thinking about how to stick to that resolution of sorts all week.

Considering these thoughts, we had an oddly appropriate conversation after dinner on Christmas discussing how we all learned to read. Was it phonics or simply a visual memory of words? Oddly enough not many of us could even recall how we learned to read (actually only one claimed that they did remember). I just found it funny because I know that most people in the conversation are avid readers and yet I don’t think many of us had ever stopped to think about how we learned this magical talent. I remember how I learned to ride a bike but not read. Such an odd thought to me. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was phonics and the entire conversation started over one of those pens that kids have now that read the words for them. The idea is that they hear and see the word and will remember it the next time they see it?

Honestly, I’m skeptical. Sound it out, junior. Kkkkkk-aaaaaaa-tttttt – CAT!

There were a lot of great passages in the last book I read but this is my favorite. It’s from Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins:

“Who knows how to make love stay?
1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.
2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.
3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

That’s all for now. Nighty night.

Eating Out = Better than cooking

If you know me at all you know that I LOVE to cook. I have literally only cooked maybe 4 times since we moved over 3 weeks ago. My cousin Molly mentioned that she saw I had been writing a lot of reviews on Yelp and I realized yikes…we’ve been eating out a lot! I counted…We have lived in this house for 2 weeks as of tomorrow and have eaten out 13 times. That’s once a day except for that one day that I made breakfast, lunch and dinner. I don’t even want to add up my receipts to see the monetary damage we have done. There's also the physical damage to consider – gained about 2 pounds at this point. Is it horrible that I think 2 pounds is good considering the BBQ, burgers, tacos and beer that we have been consuming? I am proud though – I have gone to Weight Watchers two times since moving back and faced the scale. I figure as long as I keep seeing my weight go up I can’t deny it? hahahah…Hopefully this method works when we get back from Virginia and I get off my butt and back on track. I did go jogging this morning…that’s got to count for something…

Tomorrow is my big family Christmas party that happens every year. I’m excited to see everyone and showing Max off to family is always fun...lol. After the party we are having official Christmas gift exchange at my mom’s house in Poteet. The next morning we wake up and drive to San Antonio for official gift exchange at my dad’s in San Antonio. Then (SIGH) we drive back to Austin and Monday morning we leave for Virginia for 2 weeks. I’m DEVASTATED because Clementine has to stay with my dad while we are away. The puppy plane ticket was going to be $300…WTF airlines? The dog rides in a container under a freaking seat where my FEET are supposed to go…how can you charge that much? It’s ridiculous when you think about it…my plane ticket pays for my feet to reside in that area but I have to pay more to not put my feet there? Ugh.

Anyway…signing off for now. Hope everyone has a great weekend and gets their Xmas shopping done!

I <3 Gruene Hall

Last night we went to Gruene Hall (in Gruene, TX) for a singer songwriter night hosted by this artist that I used to like a lot right out of high school. I actually learned about him while interning at a small publicity company in San Marcos, TX. I’m fairly certain that this was actually my very first internship in the music business…the summer after my freshman year of college. In fact, I saw the woman that I interned for at the show and spoke to her briefly. Crazy!

Anyway…so we went to see him (Adam Carroll) and a couple of other guys just swapping off playing their songs to a little crowd in the bar area of the dance hall. It was so fun! Max definitely had a great time as well – it was totally the type of thing that he loves to do. In fact, he bought a CD from each of the 3 guys and is downstairs this morning listening to one of them already. The show was free, the beers were $3 and the place was heated entirely by a wood burning cast iron heater in the middle of the room. The place has aged so perfectly – it’s exactly what I think of when I remember being a kid and going to rodeo dances with my mom, grandma and grandpa. The paint is peeling off the walls, not one single door or window fits in to its frame or can fully close and the main hall has walls made of chicken wire…and everyone likes it just the way it is. In fact, I’m convinced that it actually requires a lot of upkeep because of its age (built in 1878) but they only fix enough to keep it from falling apart. In summary, I love it. I hope we go back regularly…especially once we learn how to dance.

My funny family

I’m already having a blast spending more time with my family. My niece, Sarah, helped us move over the weekend and we had the best sing along to the Taylor Swift CD ever – I’m glad that I have channeled my 15 year old self through that album and can easily identify with Sarah who is 12.

The funniest part of the moving experience with her was when we arrived to the new house. She had already seen pictures and was talking about how much she absolutely LOVED it and once we got here her opinion did not change at all. She claimed the guest bed and bathroom as hers and decorated the bathroom for me. The most hilarious thing she discovered that day was what she called her escape route from upstairs. The living room in this house has a loft area upstairs outside of the master bedroom that will eventually be my full time office when I get a desk. There is a railing that looks down in to the living room and kitchen. While we were up there she said, “Aunt Ashley, I figured out a way for you to sneak out from up here if you ever need to!” Basically, this involved climbing over the railing and walking along the wall upstairs then jumping from the wall to the top of the kitchen cabinets. Once there, you simply walk across the cabinets and climb out the window. Your feet never need to touch the ground! Why I would need this escape route, I did not understand but Max later decided it was in case the stairs were ever on fire. Good job, Sarah!

Next up in the funny family stories is my wonderful mother. I was telling her that I want to go shopping during the day when work isn’t too busy but I’m afraid to get a phone call from a client and it be too loud where I am at the time. She solved this problem right away. I simply need to carry around a large paper bag with me. If someone calls I put the paper bag over my head and tada, the outside noise instantly becomes a less obvious. Genius really…but what would the people at Target think of a person standing with a paper bag on their head? Unfortunately, she did not have an answer for that. ;)

Here are a few pictures of Sarah's escape route and of our house. These are the only two rooms that have furniture and not tons of boxes filling them so until we fix that, this is all you can see.

New House

Working from home

I know that I have much more important things to report on however currently I am most proud of my morning activities. Today is only the second official day working from home and I woke up at 8am, drank coffee and ate breakfast, actually took a shower and put real clothes on (and deodorant!) and am now working. Well…clearly I’m blogging at this exact moment but I am at the desk taking a break from working. I’m so proud of not wearing sweat pants all day.

Though, I did just realize I forgot to brush my teeth. Baby steps people!

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!