So, What Have I Been Up To?

I am finally doing a good blog update to make all of my blog followers happy! (Aka Meghan and my sister) So after my first official week of work and then my first weekend with Jordan here, things are looking a little better. I am surviving solely on Ramen noodles and PB&J’s which is actually working out pretty well. Being poor is something I’m ridiculously good at. My big splurge of the week was a giant gallon of wine at the local Vons for $5.99. (It was about to be $9 since I didn’t have a Vons card, but thank God that old man behind me offered his card—it literally made my day) The week went by so slow, which may be something I have to get used to? Yikes. My new work wardrobe is turning out pretty well, I bought a good mix of separates in neutral colors (mostly from Gap on sale for $15 or less) so I can mix and match throughout the next 3 months.

Thursday brought about a good surprise when my friend Brett texted me saying he had some good tickets to the LA Kings game that night. I had no idea he worked for the Kings, but I was definitely not going to pass up anything free. Especially free tickets! So I headed back to the apt. after work, and Jordan and I headed to the Staples Center. The seats were Unreal. We had so much fun, even though we sat next to the two dumbest girls in LA (Two FULL minutes after the entire crowd stood up and cheered for the King’s first goal, Dumb Girl 1 turned to Dumb Girl 2 and said, “Oh I think they scored.”) After the game we went to a bar/restaurant by the Staples Center and ate some food and had some beers. Then it was back home since I had work early in the morn.

Friday night was probably one of the least exciting Fridays that I’ve had in quite awhile. Jordan and Jenna were at Disneyland, and I headed right home after work to throw on my pajamas, grab some wine and enjoy hours and hours of TV shows on Hulu. I caught up on all of my shows, which sounds like a lame Friday night, but it was exactly what I wanted to be doing that night. Saturday Jordan and I headed to the mall to do some returns, and then went back to the house to get ready for the night. We went out to a bar in West Hollywood that night. It was pretty fun, definitely better than last weekend.

Then yesterday was the big Oscars day. I watched the Red Carpet preshow that started at 3, and then we had to turn off the TV when the Oscars started because we were going to Jennas for a watch party that night. It. Was. Torture. We finally had to force ourselves out of the house because we wanted to watch it so badly. We ventured to Jamba Juice for a little bit of heaven. Jenna finally made her way back home, and we were able to watch the Oscars at last. To sum up my opinion of the night Mila Kunis killed it in the lavender Elie Saab dress, and I was so happy to see Colin Firth win for A King’s Speech. All of the movies nominated for Best Picture were awesome though, but I would’ve liked to see The Fighter win. A King’s Speech was a bit, um, slow for my taste. Overall, the weekend was good. I’m still missing home, but who knows if/when that will ever change.

Today I am getting through the day with the knowledge that I have two solid hours of The Bachelor to watch tonight. For some reason I am super homesick today, and I woke up feeling like I wanted to just sit at home and cry. When I go home in 2 weeks it’s going to be really hard for me to come back out here. Who knew I was such a baby? Prairietown, Oh Prairietown! (Only my sister will get that) Alright it’s back to work, and another looong week.

Real Jobs are Exhausting

This update is basically only for Meghan because she has been hounding me to update my blog. Sadly, having a job that is 8 to 5 means that I wake up tired and get home tired. I'm always tired! And this is only the second day of being a working woman. Terrifying. For those of you who didn't hear, I started a full-time paid internship at FormulaPR. It's a pretty awesome company with a lot of young interesting people. I'm already feeling like I'm fitting in which is great. However, adjusting to having a job to go to everyday has yet to sink in. I figure after a few weeks it will feel pretty normal. Ok this post sucks but I'm sooo tired. I'll update it better this weekend!

Holy Heart Attack

As if two interviews in one day wasn't stressful enough, I came home today to find that my computer was not responding. Sure, falling asleep to this week's episode of The Bachelor playing on Hulu may not have been the most sensible idea, but I didn't think it would cause my computer to completely shut down. Anyone who knows my loyalty to this old Mac knows that I wasn't going to give up easily. After consulting with my parents and trying every trick they could find online, I decided to consult an Apple technician. Well short of laughing at me, he basically said my computer was so old there was nothing he could do about it. Really? He thought I should just say goodbye to my loyal iBook and move on to a newer more expensive model? Shocking. Well sorry "Dan from Apple" I don't have $1,000 laying around for a new computer. Wish I did.

After getting off the phone with the unhelpful Dan, I was close to full blown hysteria. How can I survive in LA without my computer? I was losing it. Then I thought, what if I hit the button on the back by the battery at the same time I hit the power button? Nobody had suggested that yet, and I was desperate. Needless to say, it WORKED! I jumped around, did a few cartwheels, called Brock (not excited as he was eating dinner at Applebees) and my Dad (a little more excited that I did it on my own), and then realized that I might just be becoming an (gasp!) adult! After that I decided to head on down to my trusty old Jeep to fix my brake light. Using tools and even getting my hands dirty, I fixed my brakelight within the same few minutes as my computer! Adulthood here I come!

iBook G4, How I love thee.

The New Apartment

Well I'm finally all moved in! The apartment is fab, spacious and just what I wanted, now I just need Jordan to get here. Since I'm on a low (no) budget, I'll have to wait to decorate more until I get some money. My absolute favorite part about this place is the outdoor patio! Love, love, love it!

Brock's Dream Come True- Four Corners Part Two

Brock at the Four Corners Part One

Day Five- “Which was your favorite serial killer?”

The first thing we did on Friday morning was head to Midas to get my brakes fixed because they had been squeaking the entire time we were in LA which was beyond annoying. After dropping the car there, we walked to the Museum of Death that I found by googling museums near the Midas we were stuck at. We walked over to the museum, which was a somewhat small building covered in ivy. What was inside I will not soon forget. Since Brock is obsessed with horror movies, I knew he would love this. The museum did not disappoint. From letters from serial killers in prison to an actual electrocution chair, this place had tons of rooms with lots of creepy stuff. Unfortunately, Brock thought it would be funny to put me in the chair and strap me completely in. I was not thrilled.

From there we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. To sum up that place, we were too cheap to pay for the museum so we walked around and checked out the pits. The highlight of that place was when Brock decided to chase the birds around the park. I tried to get a good picture of it, but he was so fast I only got one from when they had all flown away.

We headed to Santa Monica and scored a free parking spot- yay! We walked down to the beach and collected rocks and put our feet in the water. Then we walked to the pier and got some ice cream and enjoyed the view from a bench. After that we rode a sweet roller coaster and grabbed some dinner at Bubba Gumps. (It was both of our first times there, so we were thoroughly excited.) We watched the sun set along the beach which was gorgeous, and then we headed back home to fall asleep by 7, and not wake up until the next morning. We are always tired here!

Day Four- “I Feel Like a Zombie”

Thursday we woke up really early since we hadn’t adjusted to the time difference, and I started to get ready for my interview. Brock tried to sleep in, and I headed downtown to my interview. Afterward, we headed to Los Feliz for some lunch. Brock was still really tired and starving so he was in a bit of a "zombie mode". But lunch was delish, and then we headed to the Kodak theatre to check out the Walk of Fame. There were tons of tourists of course, and we walked up and down the street taking it all in (including watching like four different guys get arrested in a 20 minute period). We also discovered that Brock's hand and foot twin is Denzel Washington and mine is some director guy because my giant hands and feet could not match any of the women. Splendid.




That night we hooked up the TV and went to the local Radio Shack for an antenna to ensure we would have NBC for our Thursday night line-up. We finally found it thanks predominantly to Brock's expertise with a pair of antennas, and then enjoyed The Office and Parks and Rec while chowing down on two Dominos pizzas. Then off to bed early like the losers that we are.

Day Three- “You’re putting out a lot of negative energy in the car”

We got an early start in the morning and headed out to conquer the Four Corners. After getting tricked by the GPS and going a little out of our way, we finally made it to where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all meet. We showed up and had to pay $6 to go to an abandoned area known as the four corners. There was one car that got there right before us, and it just happened to be filled with some overly excited foreign kids who took a bajillion pictures while we stood outside in the freezing cold. Brock got rid of my bad mood, and we posed for pictures in what turned out to be Brock’s favorite part of the roadtrip. After that we headed to a local “Trading Post” aka gas station to look at t-shirts and memorabilia. Then we were off to the Grand Canyon!

We arrived to the entrance of the Grand Canyon and paid the $25 fee to get inside the park. So expensive! But it turned out to be totally worth it. We went to the first lookout point where I lost Brock when I went to the bathroom and thought I was going to have to walk home. Turned out he was just perusing the gift shop. Typical. Then we went and looked over the edge, and it was pretty spectacular. We stopped at a few more points where Brock was able to spit over the edge of the canyon (a personal dream of his), and we did some snow angels on a cliff. Then we headed to get some souvenirs and get on our way to LA.

I finally drove a bit so Brock could rest, and we arrived in LA about 10. It was a shock hitting traffic when we got in the city because we had become so used to being the only people on the roads. Traffic soon became our biggest annoyance. Traffic and hobos.

We moved all of my stuff in that night which was great, and the place was exactly what I wanted. Simple, clean, pretty big and lots of light. After moving everything in we were exhausted so we headed to bed.

Day Two: Big Texan Style

Our second day began with a great start because we slept in until 10:00--which was fabulous. While watching tv, Brock put on the Travel Channel only to see the Big Texan Steakhouse being named the #1 Steak eatery on this particular Travel Channel program. Weird that it was showing right where we happened to be. We decided it would be unacceptable not to head over to the Steakhouse to see what it had to offer. Plus we had to put our $2 Off the All You Can Eat Breakfast Buffet to good use.

For anyone not as obsessed with Man V. Food as Brock and I are, the Big Texan Steakhouse is home of the Free 72 oz. steak meal if you happen to finish the whole thing in under an hour (our boy Adam finished in 30 min, what a beast). When we ran across the freezing parking lot to the steakhouse, we were instantly greeted by a giant stuffed grizzly bear and a whole lot of people in cowboy hats. They were all very friendly, and we were seated in a cozy booth. What happened next was purely magical. Since I was still suffering from the previous night’s fried meal, I decided I would just have a breakfast sandwich and let Brock try his hand at the buffet. Since we arrived at 10:50 and the buffet ended at 11, the waitress warned Brock that he would have only 10 minutes for the buffet. This prompted him to ask her if he could just fill up as many plates as he could. Her response, “Of course darlin’” (Did I mention I love southern hospitality? It’s seriously the best.) So Brock jumped up and began his quest to eat everything the buffet had to offer. This included an omelet the size of his head, French toast, pancakes, sausage, bacon, biscuits and a fruit plate. My order was “messed up” which meant that I ended up getting biscuits and gravy and four additional biscuits for free. They can mess up my order anytime.

We ended our meal, which totaled $13.00 for the two of us (unreal) and then went to explore the gift shop. Brock found the perfect shirt that had the Big Texan scene on the front, and I decided to just keep the cups from breakfast as my souvenir. We then took a picture in the giant chair along with every other possible photo op in the entire place. This proved to be somewhat difficult since it was -13 degree windchill outside, but we still made it work. We then rushed to the car and put the GPS to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Right as we were leaving we faced a blizzard with only a couple feet of vision in front of us on the road. This slowed us down a bit, but Brock was great and we ended up getting past all of it. We googled what there was to do in Albuquerque and chose the Natural History Museum since it had a walk through volcano and was only $7 a person. Once we actually got to the museum, they let us go in for free which was great. The only bad part was that the museum sucked. We made the most of it by taking pictures with everything that we saw which was actually quite entertaining. Plus Brock was able to get the best tee shirt in all of Albuquerque, so it was worth the trip.

We then headed out to Farmington our place to stay the night closest to the sacred Four Corners. Brock’s dream destination. He even talked to the woman at the museum gift shop about how excited he was to go there, and who admitted that it was a “Bucket List” type of place to go before you die. I said I could pass, but he’s so excited we are going to go no matter what. We drove through New Mexico and were able to see the most amazing sunset over the mountains and plateaus, so the ride was really nice. Once we finally found a hotel for the night after calling every hotel in Farmington, we arrived and headed out to dinner at the Three Rivers Brewery. However, this place turned out to be closed and the attached bar seemed terrifying so we just went home and went to bed.

Day One: "Megan and Brock's Roadrip to Hollyweird"

Well Roadtrip Day One was a long driving day. We packed the car up with chips, powerades and delicious fruit gushers, and we were on our way. We didn’t leave until noon because Brock waited until the last minute to do his laundry (of course) but once we hit the road we made pretty good time. Since we made it our mission to hit up as many Man vs. Food eateries on our trip, we set the GPS to the Steak and Catfish Barn in Oklahoma City, OK. We only stopped a couple times for gas and to stretch our legs, opting for Slim Jims instead of a real lunch.

Nearing our catfish destination, we only saw a creepy dark road and an unlit diner. Then we finally made out the words on the shack.. Steak and Catfish Barn. Yes this abandoned looking diner was where we would be having dinner. Brock ordered the All You Can Eat Fried Catfish and I opted for the more nutritious Fried Catfish meal. The staff was really cute and friendly. Our waitress kept calling us “Hun” and was very attentive and talkative. The ambiance was great with pictures of Adam Richmond on the walls and a whole lot of Elvis memorabilia. The only other people there seemed to be regulars and they kept talking about how Christina Aguiliera botched up the National Anthem.. lets get over it already. Brock ended up eating his whole meal plus another order, so 9 fillets in all. Only 20 away from Adam’s record… Pathetic. But he beat me since I basically only ate the amazing mashed potatoes and gravy along with the delish fried okra. Yummy.

We headed out of there full and ready to get to The Big Texan Motel and Steakhouse where we would be staying the night. Since Brock had a special request to stay in a themed room, we made sure that the rooms were going to be decked out in Western gear. Little did we know that Amarillo was synonymous with frozen tundra because when we got there it was FREEZING. We headed to the room and were beyond excited to see a cow print pillow, swinging saloon doors leading to the bathroom and a suede fringe shower curtain. Exhausted, we headed to bed for the night!