Sunday, March 11, 2007

Concert, visit, looking forward.

So, activity in the post-move era of Melinda's life has been both ceaseless and fantastic. I'm pretty worn out, but a lot has been going on. Everything is so much easier, closer, more accessible now that I live in the city, therefore, I do not quite have the same lame excuses (JLee) as I did when I lived in Berkeley. A few things of note:



Josh Ritter concert - amazing! So utterly refreshing and full of goodness. It's hard to explain how or why, but it was. First off, get his last two albums (Hello Starling and The Animal Years) pronto, then go see him in concert, thirdly, feel great about life. Honestly, that's how it works.



Some of you will remember Jon McSparran, who recently came to visit (actually he just left) and check out West Coast law schools. It was really great seeing him again (so all of you that are worried about imposing on me, don't! I love visitors) plus we got to see and do a lot in a short time. Visitors are actually great, in that they really force me to go out and see the city, which is what I needed, being such an SF newbie. The visit included 5 straight nights of drinking (surprise surprise) and lots of sightseeing, including two days of 15 miles+ gigantic walks around the city (including up some massive hills, which my legs are currently thanking me for). I think I may plot out our routes (they were really good ones) and figure out exactly how long it was. Jon doesn't like to take pictures, but Amber did get this one at a bar:



Looking forward, my life is going to get even more hectic, I believe. Today I'm supposed to meet up with my mother's best friend for dinner. Then I'm going to Vegas next weekend with coworkers (degenerate gamblers all!). After that, I think the lovely Susannah Grossman will be in town, so I will have to make sure to bump into her at a coffee shop or watering hole or someplace. Then my sister Katie is coming to visit for 10 days, which is going to be AWESOME. She is the coolest kid on the planet, I do believe. Then I'm going back to Philly for conferences and seeing friends and family (and Ben Folds). I may include a couple days in New York City during that trip as well, so let me know if you want to meet up! After that, I haven't made any plans, but I'm sure something will come up. Actually just making this list was exhausting, so I think I may take a lie-down. Last thoughts: if you haven't watched HBO's Extras yet, do so immediately (especially season two) and Evan, I finally got out and bought Post-War - LOVING IT! I hope that you are all doing as well as I am on the beautiful day. Hugs and kisses for all!

Monday, February 19, 2007

Movin' to the cit-tay

So, my dear friend Cassandra and I found an apartment in San Francisco today. It's super fabulous and located in wonderful Pacific Heights. So, it's time to start bidding farewell to my lovely Berkeley apartment - we shared so many good times. As a tribute, I'm posting pictures of my final, finished apartment.The living room, with new properly-colored couch!



Living room #2

Kitchen - with new island.

Kitchen part 2 - complete with sunset.




Bedroom with new bookshelves. Sigh, I will miss you, Berkeley apartment.





New haircut!




These are self taken photos, obviously, but for those of you who I don't see very often - this is what my hair looks like now. I've gotten "pat benetar" a lot, but I think it's pretty darn cute. The left one is with all of my hair down and the right is with it pulled up. Comments?

Monday, February 12, 2007

Good story from PB



p.s. Congrats to John Dagen for being the first one to name the quote from previous entry. =) Here's the gold star I promised:


"Bill Groundhog Day Ghostbustin' Ass Murray"

*If anyone can name the film that quote came from, I will offer a prize of one gold star + eternal respect

Ok, so I'm going to start this story off with a little clarification. I'm not a celebrity person - meaning, I'm not obsessed with them, I don't model my life after theirs, I'm well aware they're just people in a certain line of work with fame as a perk. However, just as there are certain business leaders or musicians or writers etc. I'm excited to meet, because they're so talented, so are there actors/actresses. Bill Murray would be one of them. I love his films; I think he's hilarious; he's just a very talented and fortunate man. He's definitely one of my favorite actors (let's do just a quick naming: The Life Aquatic, Caddyshack, Lost in Translation, What About Bob?, Stripes, Rushmore, etc. etc.).

Now, I got tickets to the AT&T Pro Am Tournament through work, as my boss plays every year, and therefore gets free tickets. I decided to go with a coworker, Amber, and her husband, Tim, and the plan was to leave San Francisco around 5:30 in order to get there for tee-offs. We left a little late, but definitely arrived pretty early in Pebble Beach. I slept the entire way though, so when we did arrive on the golf course, I looked terrible. No real makeup, disheveled hair, the works. So we start walking, look to the left, Kevin James and Ray Romano were playing, and we set off to find Bill Murray. Coincidentally, right in our path, there he was, surrounded by a group of fans seeking autographs and perhaps playful banter. He seemed in good spirits as he made casual comments about fans' choices of what he signed etc. but as soon as I walked over and stood to his right, he started mentioning that he probably should go and play golf. I was disappointed, but I'm not into harassing people in general, so bowed my head and moved to the side so he could get through. The next thing I know, I hear this "Oh my god look at you!" Bill Murray had noticed the intense shade of red comprising my hair currently and apparently was shocked (my friends said he did a double take when he saw me). Now, my hair is red, to be sure, but not that red - I think it was the juxtapositioning against the brilliant green of the golf course that added the extra shock value. Anyway, back to the story. So Bill Murray puts his hands in my hair and starts rubbing my head and tousling my hair saying, "This is fantastic! My goodness... I just want to take a clipping... I could graft it to the back of my neck..." At this point, I'm pretty much paralyzed as one of my movie idols has his hands in my hair and I'm fairly certain all I did was giggle. Eventually I get up the courage to say something, but it turned out to be the stupidest thing I could have thought of... after the skin grafting comment I meekly responded "You can have it, if you want it." He laughed and then left to go golf but I was pretty much stunned for the next few minutes. Then later, we were walking by another hole and he started coming up from behind us and I just heard, "Hey girly! Keep moving!" I turned around and saw who it was, smiled and he smiled back. It was quite the moment. So, needless to say, that pretty much made my week. I wish I could've looked a little more together though! =)

Oh, and the other cool thing about that day (besides getting to see Tom Brady, Emmitt Smith, Don Cheadle, Peter Gallagher, Andy Garcia, etc. up close) was that both Amber and I were able to get an interaction with the star of our choice. Amber is a big Kevin Costner fan (early works - say Dances with Wolves era, and of course, Field of Dreams!) so we waited for him by the 10th hole green as we watched those ahead of him play through. He's supposed to be a fairly good golfer, but he hit a woman at the 10th hole (he made it up to her by going over and giving her a hug). After the teams were finished putting, there was a walkway to the next hole, on which fans wait in order to get autographs. Amber said she was going over to get him to sign her ticket. While over there, she later reported, people were just handing him whatever to sign and not talking at all (with the exception of a few murmured "thanks"). So when KC got to her, she made sure to say that she really was a big fan. He said thanks and signed her ticket and she turned to leave, shortly hearing "Hey, wait a minute!" She turned back around to see Costner retrieving a golf ball from his pocket, initialed, and he handed it to her. She was, needless to say, thrilled.

The concensus was then that Saturday = good day! Sunday was a lot less exciting, but I did get a snazzy new haircut (I think I'll post a picture soon), give my first Penn interview (alumni volunteers interview potential candidates for admission into the university), and catch up with a GREAT old friend - the original lovely redhead, Katie Timbers. In general, things are going well. There's several other things I want to post about (including Inland Empire, David Lynch's newest, which I saw last Thursday) but I'll have to save it for another time. Hope everyone else is doing just as well! M. xoxox

Friday, February 02, 2007

Happy Groundhog Day!

Speaking of which, I'm really excited for the AT&T Pro Am Tournament in Pebble Beach next Saturday, where a friend and I will be stalking Bill Murray. =)

Not much to report, got a new computer, Vista is weird, been using my scooter, oh and do yourself a favor and get "The Animal Years" by Josh Ritter. Especially the song "Girl in the War" - amazing.

Monday, January 29, 2007

blogging

I need to work on doing it more often. If you look at the archive, 2006's total posts were about half of 2005's. If I don't work on changing that, they could continue to go down exponentially, and soon I may not have an internet presence at all! *gasp*

I'm kidding, but I am trying to do this more often, for myself mostly. I'm not even sure who still reads this (besides you lovely people who leave comments). I read some of my old blog (melindaupenn.livejournal.com) today and found it oddly reassuring (my style and way of thinking has changed dramatically from 2 years ago, or at least, more than I expected it to). I like having this written record, and although I've tried to keep a journal at least a dozen times, it always fails. For some reason, this whole internet online thing (it's just a fad, right?) makes it a lot easier.

Fun link

http://www.westegg.com/cliche/

The ten random cliches function is fun for writing e-mails - I like to do it and then try and use them all. Here's an example of the output:

beats the band
put on ice
take one for the team
on the Fritz
when shit hits the fan
he thinks she hung the moon
to come the raw prawn
I always complained because my work was being interupted - until I realised the interuptions were my work.
as interesting as two blind men having a conversation in sign language.
The is FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair)

The continued demise of Hollywood...

Proof that we really are about two steps away from Awesom-O.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

I knew I moved to California for a reason...

COACHELLA! I totally forgot about COACHELLA! Tickets go on sale Saturday and wild horses couldn't keep me away. Quite a few gems in the line-up:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=22218577&albumID=0&imageID=1804424764
In case that doesn’t work:
http://www.spin.com/features/news/2007/01/070122_coachella/

I forgot to bring my iPod to work today and rediscovered one of my favorite internet thingies - www.pandora.com - check it out!!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Good news!

Well, a) I didn't actually lose my iPod like I thought I did and
b) I realized (after living here for over 5 months) that I have a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from my apartment - it's fantastic! Oh and I also realized that there are a few concerts I'm going to try and see in the Bay Area (hopefully I can find someone to join) - here are highlights:
M. Ward
Camera Obscura
Badly Drawn Boy
Josh Ritter
Of Montreal
The Cat Empire
Cold War Kids
The Books

Deceivingly hilarious

If you're thinking about going on a vacation, this article by The New York Times references a new site for hotel bookings and reviews. The best part, though, is this part of the site.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Jumping out of a plane....

Skydiving was so surreal! Here's a picture - although I'm not looking my greatest, it is still a fun shot. There should be several more coming, plus a dvd which I may put on YouTube for my family (my sisters are dying to see what it's like). First, I'd like to thank the random Australian dude in Florence for putting the idea of skydiving in my head, and secondly, Cassandra for taking the first step and finding the trip and then making me follow through by both purchasing the dive (for herself, not me) and offering to drive us there. We went through a group called the Outdoor Adventure Club and only one other member joined us, whose name was also Melinda and she was also a redhead - weird! That NEVER happens!

Anyway, my tandem instructor was named Neal and was super cool and very experienced (which made me feel a lot better) although Cass got the much cuter Alex. I was actually surprised at how rational I felt UNTIL I got to the edge of the plane's open door and looked down (although I did giggle a lot on the way up in the plane). Then all of a sudden my body was like, "THIS IS WRONG!!!!" even though my mind was really looking forward to jumping. It's a crazy experience - hard to describe. But anyhow I had a BLAST and would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone - I'm actually looking forward to going again in the near future. The other great part was talking with all of the skydiving junkies hanging around the "airport" - they all seemed really cool and were very into it.

Other fun parts of the day - waking up early in the morning with about 3 hours to think... "holy crap, I'm actually going to jump out of a plane today", writing my will on a post-it note (always classy), and the GREAT legal video they showed us where the guy had the most mesmirizing 80's ZZ-Top style beard I have ever seen. Here's the sight for the company who organizes the skydive: SkyDance - they may take some of me and Cassie's footage and put it up, but who knows?

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

New Year's Resolution?

To have more fun, of course! Actually I don't personally subscribe to New Year's resolutions - but I'd love to hear some of yours - post 'em!

The exclusive YouTube premiere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw74NTMHEWc

Felt like it was about time, just in case they shut down my Wharton page. I have graduated, after all.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Do not drink cough syrup while reading this post

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/pet/254137440.html

This is exactly why I shouldn't look at the pet section of Craigslist. I want a puppy so bad, but I can't have one in my current apartment. I'm moving next year, and definitely into a pet-friendly building, but in the meantime "they will most likely be euthanized". GRRRRRRR!!!!! Frustrating as hell!

P.S. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

WSJ Time Waster

I can't believe that, even in this era of useless information overload, that a dignified publication such as the Wall Street Journal would actually have a section entitled 'Time Waster.' Who has time to waste anyway? Oh well, I decided to check it out today and was pretty impressed.

Check out the article:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116581381680846327-4bXK_kaeVYG3SFKVhvmnhMtIw5M_20071211.html

And the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

More later, get ready for the holidays!!!

Thursday, November 16, 2006

New political phrase

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/11/16/violetblue.DTL

This is the 200th post on this blog!

Also, flying to Australia tonight, will be back on the 28th of November. Try not to miss me too much.