Wow, what a fun night that was. Props to Brie for getting us all together to take this fantastic photo.

I saw Wall-E at 12:01 AM on Friday morning. I am now a firm believer in my sister Abby's mantra that the only movies worth spending money on are the absolute first showing of the movie. Because the only people there  are going to be the die hard fans, and they're fun people. They like to cheer and react strongly to everything.

WALL-E is  a kids movie, but there wasn't a single kid in that packed out theater. I guess school night means more than work night.

I had to see it. There's going to be a ticket stub inventory taken on Monday at work.

My thoughts on the movie. The short at the beginning had me laughing for 5 minutes straight.  I won't spoil it but that ALONE was worth 12 bucks.  Also, the first half hour of WALL-E had NO dialogue and was riveting.  The rest of the movie I probably won't remember.

So today at Disney Studios, there was a huge WALL-E release party at lunch. They had Rubik's cube contests, free paddle balls, anti-gravity machines, Segways, WALL-E photo ops, video games, and lots of Pixar and Disney Big-Wigs. I really wanted to try some of the events, but the lines where longer than my lunch break

Me Holding WALL-Es Hand

With my Pals from Work

It was too busy to eat on lot like we normally do, so we went off campus to Weinersnitchel

Look what I found yesterday after my run at the gym.

I was being abused by my sports bra without even knowing it!

AAAAHHHHHH. I have had my questions in previous blog post thoroughly answered. And now I feel pretty sheepish.

My lovely aunts had bought me a Camera to go with the case. Which I just saw when I came home from work today. The case got here one day b4 the camera. I thought they had bought me a case to go with MY camera, but no, they bought me a case to go with the camera that they were buying me.

I haven't opened the camera box yet, just in case, but it looks much nicer then the one I bought myself. So I will be endeavoring to return my old camera to Circuit City tomorrow after work.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Today I was gifted with a Green Camera Case in the mail. I must admit; I'm a little freaked out. Today is what? Tuesday? I bought my camera what? Saturday night? I blogged about my camera what? Sunday ? How did my wonderful Aunts have enough time to read my blog, decide to be altruistic, go online shopping, and order me something in time for me to get it on TUESDAY? I mean doesn't the handling part of shipping and handling usually take like a day at least?

And I'm not done.

1. How did they know that I didn't already HAVE a camera case?
   Which I didn't.
2. How did They know what size camera I bought?
   They bought me a pretty slim case which my camera fits in perfect. Seriously, If my camera had been ANY bigger it wouldn't have made it.

3. How did they know that my camera was neon pink? They literally bought me a complementary neon green case. I'm stunned

I am definitely a little incredulous (but also very grateful).

Today a coworker and I were discussing previous jobs, and I mentioned that I had worked in 3 separate coffee shops at sometime in my past. The conversation went something like this

Coworker:

Wow, that's a lot of coffee shops. That had to have been pretty recent because you would have had to be 18.

Me:

Huh, why's that

Coworker:

Cause I'm sure they wouldn't let you work somewhere serving something that you weren't allowed to drink.

Me:

You can drink coffee when you're under 18.

Coworker:

It's Illegal to serve coffee to a minor

How did my coworker think that coffee would be any different then the Pepsi and Red Bull that kids Drink DAILY well before puberty? Pretty sure If I sent a four-year old into Starbucks right now to order a triple latte, the barista would say "OK that'll be $4.25". BUT just to be sure, I went on-line to look up laws on Caffeine and children and became VERY informed

I learned from Wikipedia that while it is not smart to give caffeine to kids (though not illegal) it is even less smart (and almost as funny) to give caffeine to spiders.

I also happened on a pious, preachy article by a Mormon about why drinking caffienated beverages is not in the spirit of the law and is utterly worldly. I then realized that I wasn't reading an article, I was actually reading a term paper that was posted on a very well known term paper purchasing site. Would you like a little plagiarism and dishonesty and with your milk, sir?

I went to see my beautiful and talented friend Shanti perform at the Key Club on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood. Shanti is an up and coming pop singer who I met while hiking and have since taken some golf lessons with.


This was my first night out to a club since I've been to LA. Sunset Blvd is definitely the place to be on a Saturday night. It's so bright and warm out that you forget its in the middle of the night. I went with my friend Lauren and had a blast.

The performer before Shanti was a band called Young And The Damned . We chatted a bit before the show. This band consisted of 2 British guys with surprisingly fantastic voices and almost fantastic pitch. The guitarist Jake sang a couple of solo ballads that were by far the best part about the show (Unfortunately, I couldn't find these ballads on their website). The keyboardist Patrick turned out to be a much better singer then he was a piano player but clearly liked to perform so I'll forgive him a little (especially since he dedicated one of his songs to me). I generally prefer melodic music, though, which this band had plenty of - so I was a content camper. I'll most likely download some of their songs for my running mixes.

Shanti Performing - Shanti does everything 100%. There were perhaps 20 people at the club for the first act, by the time Shanti went on there were well over 100 people there to see her. She generally sells out. She had 3 backup dancers as well as some videographers there to document her show. There will probably be some cool YouTube videos up soon.
Me, Lauren, and Shanti


Oh, By the way, I got a camera. :):)

Not a whole lot exciting to report without a camera.( I'm going to buy one soon I promise. ) Things are very hard to blog about without one. For Instance: Someone vandalized my car by putting a sticker on it. To bad I couldn't record the most exciting thing that happened to me last Saturday :(

I do have a critter story though. I was going tanning at a tan store to get a little color on my tighty wighty body and as I am buying a tan I feel some pressure on my Achilles tendon. I instinctively shook my leg and subsequently heard some loud shrieking. I turn around to see a foot tall white parrot screaming at my leg. I had accidentally kicked it; can't say I'm sorry at all; the thing had been trying to BITE ME.

The girl behind the counter seemed to have as much distain for the thing as I was beginning to have written all over my face. She was like 'Is he trying to bite you!!?',jumped out from behind the counter grumbling to herself, grabbed a spray bottle and started mercilessly squirting the critter in the face. He starts shrieking again and running away.

Next time that bird makes a move at me you're all going to see the results of a nice little experiment I'm going to call, 'Do white feathers get sunburned?"

 

Update: Pic

A wonderful piece of moving art by my always wanna-be artistic sister

What happens when your guardian angel is slaaaaacking...

I played my first 18 hole golf course today at Wilson and Harding golf courses at Griffith Park. Trying to put my five week golf lessons to good use. I had to rent clubs cause I don't own any myself. But that seems to be something I'll need to get ASAP if I want to keep doing this. Sorry, no pics. Don't got no camera anymore. I'm exhausted. Nighty night.

I'm now officially training for my marathon in October. It is exactly 17 weeks away. My training schedule is 18 weeks long so I've been following it this week. The schedule says I had to run 6 miles today, so I decided a couple of weeks ago to sign up for a 10k;

The race that was available to run this weekend was at the gay pride events in West Hollywood. This was one of the more interesting runs I've done. Where else am I going to find signs telling me that my running shorts are "Fierce", garbage cans sponsored by a lubricant company, and rainbow airfreshners in my swag bag. And best of all, Mr. Sulu was there. I thought about going over to talk to him but felt like I couldn't unless I knew his real name.

So a couple of accomplishments today. I completed the 10k in 1:03:30 which is better than I thought I would do considering half the course was uphill. And best of all, I added number 4 to the list of celebrities I've seen since being in LA.

I have some horrible news for the 3 readers of my blog. I dropped my camera and a battery inside of it exploded. So now there is battery acid goo all over the inside of my camera and all over the memory card that was in the camera.

This explosion happened after I had taken pictures of my fun night at the sumo wresting event. So no sumo pics :( Which is horrible, because I actually had some really good ones too.

Ok, so anyway, my impressions of sumo wrestling. It was sooooo fun. I got to see 30 to 40 of the top sumo wrestlers in the whole world. This tour hasn't come to LA since 1981 so this was defiantly a once in a life time opportunity. The sumo guys are large and fat, but not as fat as I remember seeing on the telly.

There are a lot of rituals. Every match went a little something like this: An announcer wearing a large purple bathrobe-esk outfit comes out with a fan and chants/sings something - the sumo wrestlers would come out and go to their respective corners and do some stomping and clapping. Then they would throw some salt out onto the court. Then they would go out onto the court and stomp and clap some more. Then they would look at each other and SOMETIMEs they would make faces and then get all mad and walk back to their corner and throw some more salt and slap their big nasty tummies.

Finally, after 5 minutes of these rituals, they just attack which ends up looking like two people belly-flopping each other. Also, there was quite a bit of slapping. In sumo, the one who loses either gets knocked of their feet or gets pushed outside of the circle. Man, when on 350 lb guy throws a 400 lb guy off of a 3 ft high stage, you really start to understand why this stuff is so popular in Japan.

The day before I moved [5/23/08], I went to the racetrack in Inglewood, CA. This is one of three horse racetracks in the LA area. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to eventually visit all three. The bets were much cheaper than I thought they would be. You can bet as little as 10 cents on any race. Of course, you can go up as high as you want. Also, I didn't know that there is no house advantage in horse racing. You are competing against everyone else in the stands, and the odds arnt fully calculated until seconds before the race starts. It is quite exciting.


Here is me winning .40 cents on a 2 dollar bet. I bet a show (1,2,3rd place) on the favorite horse in a 5 horse race. The odds were kind of on my side here :)


I ended up losing about 20 bucks the whole night (10 on gambling and 10 on admission). But it was worth it. Cheap adrenaline.

On June 1, 2008 I had my fourth visit to the LA Cupcake group. Went to the Lark Cake shop in SilverLake, CA. 3337 W. Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90026.

This place was almost impossible to find, but the cupcakes were really yummy. Their specialty is the salted caramel cupcake which sounds slightly gross but turns out to be pretty delish.

Lark Cake Shop