Shortly before lunch today, my office started shaking.  I immediately knew it was an earthquake. I got up looked around at everybody looking around at each other.   I then started looking around for doorways.  Two rules are banging through my head over and over; stay away from windows, stand in a doorway. The following is the view from my desk... I work for a sick company.

I immediately start to view my other available options. I chose the copy room door a few feet in the other direction away from me desk. No boobytraps lurking here except a possible electrical explosion. Better fried than being speared to death? The jury's still out.

A couple of seconds later a fellow consultant comes running out of his cube toward my doorway. I give him a look that said' Hey, I got here first. Darwin picked me'  It was like an adult version of musical chairs with a little Russian roulette post-game for the losers ;)

My first prom since...Oh yeah, my first prom EVER!!!

A friend from my Disney project works for Accenture and was able to get all of the Avanade workers tickets into the big Accenture summer social event by getting the Avanades to be +1s for all his dateless friends. My "date" ended up having a girlfriend in Europe but was weaseled into letting me accompany him through the front door.

Tangent - I had wanted to get my hair done for the night by paying someone to flat-iron it. One lady wanted $35 bucks to do it, and I was like 'you do realize that my hair is already straight right?' I don't think the average hourly rate for a hairdresser is $210 dollars an hour. I went home and straightened it myself on principle.

LA people get spoiled because the entertainment at these kinds of events is ALWAYS good. There are hundreds of entertainers to choose from so its hard to mess it up. The theme of the night was 1920-1940s Hollywood, and the first of three bands was a swing band with a suave Frank Sinatraesk singer. The second performer was violinist Paul Dateh who was stunning. The third band was a straight hip hop act.  The last choice was a painful example of misjudging your target audience.

See this photo makes me a little angry and confused.



I had felt that it was time for me to tone up my arms and add some strength because me and a friend were looking to take some Tissu classes (Trust me, only in Los Angeles). So I started doing some weight lifting at the gym after some of my training runs. And I'm not talking lifting, lifting here. I'm talking about 10 reps on a couple different machines as I cool down from running. And LOOK WHAT I GET!!! Freaking MAN arms. And how did it happen so fast!

I've never wanted to lose muscle before, but I do now. If I can put it on fast, how can I get rid of it fast. Suggestions are welcome.

Also, as a side note, the pose is the retarded 'for real' gimmick that the 'So You Think You Can Dance' show characters are doing this year. This is a photo of me and fellow SYTYCD fans.

Me and my team in our office building. The wallpaper in the background is film magnified 10000x's. This is right before we went on our exclusive, NOT open to the public backlot tour

On the set of Eli Stone (New episodes, On this fall after Dancing with the Stars) We promised to watch in exchange for a looksie onto the set.

Disney has an extensive underground tunnel system that was originally built so that film could be transported without ever seeing light. But recently it has been the set of countless Alias episodes and for employees to avoid rain on the 3 days that it isnt perfect weather in LA.

By some original drawings of Cruella Devil

So I picked my gym solely based on the fact that the gym had built-in TVs on all of the cardio machines. So as to trick myself into running longer. It is hard to stop running when you don't yet know who's been eliminated from So You Think You Can Dance.

But Lately, as I've been running, I'll get an electric shock about every 30 seconds to 5 minutes into my ear from my headphones. My headphones are plugged into the treadmill TV. The first couple times it happened, I thought that maybe my earrings where flipping up and smacking me in the ear. But that was so wrong, I'm just really bad at interpreting my senses. (I mean how does getting smacked ever translate into what feels like an electric shock?) But I did take off my earrings and of course I kept getting zapped. I've been running under these conditions for days now. I've switch treadmills to no avail. And what was worse is I don't even know WHICH ear I will get zapped in every couple of minutes. So now I run in a constant state of nervous anticipation for this unpredictable and random form of punishment. Hopefully, I don't sweat in my inner ear or else this irritating annoyance could fry my brain

So my big birthday weekend started with a nice trip out to Wokcano's, an Asian restaurant. I had some Korean Spare Ribs, and they were yummy. It wasn't just my birthday, a fellow coworker also had a birthday this weekend, so it was a joint party. The birthday treat from the restaurant was green tea and coffee ice cream. Thank God I got the coffee one.

Here I am looking upset for some unknown reason.

On Saturday, I didn't do a whole lot. Except I visited an exhibition event at a local cupcake shop (Big Sugar Bakeshop 12182 Ventura Blvd Studio City, CA 91604 ). The shop was promoting a cookbook and was selling many of the items seen in the cookbooks. I wrote down the website for the cookbook, but I can't seem to find where I did that. I promise if I find it, I'll upload the link here. (the cupcakes look like a lot of fun, but I'm not sure what you couldn't figure out how to cook on your own just by looking at these... eh.

Finally, its my 24th birthday on Sunday, and I decided to go whale-watching. I haven't  been since I was nine, and I remember having a Fantastic time yelling out clock positions, so I couldn't wait to go again. (I was a little nervous at first being that it was a 2 1/2 hour tour, I thought it might run a little long, and then I'd be in real trouble wouldn't I (I hadn't brought nearly enough gowns)). It wasn't very expensive, just 30 bucks for an adult. Unfortunately, I didn't see any whales, but I did see some Sea-Lions and some dolphins. And I saw A LOT of dolphins. There was one pod that had between 100 and 150 dolphins. I couldn't believe how cool it looked. And there were all these little kids around screaming and jumping up and down, and it was kind of hard not to join it. Fortunately, I restrained myself and took some pics instead.

I ended by super birthday with a trip to a sea-food restaurant with some friends of mine. It freaked me out cause the place had sawdust ALL over the floor. We spent some time wondering if they vacummed it up every night and threw some more down every morning or else how did they clean? For some reason we never got around to asking the waiter for insight. It shall remain a mystery.

Yeah, so my landlord just offered me reduced rent in exchange for some accounting tutoring. So the lesson for all the kiddies out there... be cool stay in school. Now if only I could convince them to have the dogs put down in exchange for increased rent...wait...no...I can't afford what they're asking......one day

I attended a fourth of July BBQ with my friend AnneMarie. We had a blast sitting by the pool and making smores. This was actually my first time going to a 4th party where they set off their own fireworks. They were really loud and swhirlly. (Pronounced swuuully)

AnneMarie and I with some Cracklers

I had a dentist appointment today. I went in at 7:00 AM because I didn't want to take any time off of work. I had called ahead and asked for a couple of hours because I knew there would be damage. Well, I was right. (Like I always am) and it turns out I have a "couple" small cavities. The dentist was really nice, and it turns out that he is intimately familiar with my hometown of Enfield Connecticut becuase he lived for a couple years in Longmeadow, MA which is exactly 3.9 miles away. We spent some quality time talking about Chi Chis, the lego factory, and the Big E (which my parents never took me too - I'm still bitter)

After the cleaning, the dentist went right to work fixing me up. I was a little nervous at first; I don't know why; It's probably the fear of the unknown. So becuase I hate to have anything unknown, I started asking a zillion questions about the anethetics, equipment, and techniques he was using. He finally just started giving me a detailed running dialouge about everything while he did his work, and he set up some mirrors so that I could see my teeth while he was drilling and filling them. It was like being in class with some top line visual aids. It was very cool and very educational. I almost can't wait to go back on Monday.