Girl Scouts and Rock 'n' Roll

This weekend was a whirlwind and I am seriously exhausted still! It started out visiting a good friend who just had a baby girl on Friday night. It is fun to see her as a new mom and to meet my new 'niece', who is tiny yet so cute!

Saturday day was spent at Girltopia.  Girltopia is convention put on by the Girl Scouts.  As a former Girl Scout, as they say once a Girl Scout always a Girl Scout, I signed up to volunteer.  The Girl Scouts are also one of the philanthropies for my sorority, so I volunteered with friends who are also sorority sisters. We ended up in the Barbie station for Daisys and Brownies.




This station was a lot of fun.  They had three sections for the girls to participate in for the Barbie I Can Be campaign.  This campaign is designed to encourage girls to dream about being whatever they want to when they grow up.  Saturday, they experienced being a ballet dancer, an architect and a chef.  At the Ballet station they danced around in tutus, the architect station they colored houses, and the chef's station they decorated Girl Scout cookies.  Once all stations had been visited they earned a Barbie I Can Be patch.

This station was a HUGE hit.  By the time I left the line was two hours long and the girls LOVED it.  The marketing team for Mattel was phenomenal and I enjoyed watching everything I learned in my summer marketing class play out in real life.  It was refreshing to see a team work hard and really believe in the product/message they putting across to girls.  They were also having a blast.


When I was a little girl, that bag would be THE coolest thing ever!


That evening, I went to Halloween party at a friend's house and had the most amazing home cook Mexican food ever!  It was the perfect meal to eat the night before the LA Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon.

It was 5am & I was running late..

I did my best to dress up for the race on a tight budget.  I wore knee high socks, the sequined shirt and a hot pink sequin headband.  I was going for an 80s theme but ended up sparkle-y and realized that I must have been tough to look at running in the bright sun.  Some runners really got into their customes - gumby, super heroes, giraffes, and bunch of Waldo from Where's Waldo.

The race was really well done.  They had bands every few miles to keep you going.  I had a good run.  I was three minutes faster than my first post-surgery race.  I am slowly getting back into shape but I am not comparing post-sugery runs to pre-surgery runs. My ego can't handle that.

The reason I run these...

After the race, I got my complimentary beer from MGD. Honestly the best thing after a race is the taste of beer. Even Bud Lite tastes amazing after 13.1 miles.

After the beers, I listened to some of the live music then headed home to spend the rest of my day carving pumpkins, watching scary movies and cooking dinner with my roommate.

Nostalgia

The other day, I learned that my family would be spending Thanksgiving in Los Angeles this year.  This is opposed having the LA Crew drive to Fresno, which we have done almost every year for the past ten years. This works out perfectly for me as I was planning on driving back to LA on Friday to work on my Finance presentation due the Monday after Thanksgiving and my Econ paper due a week later.

Finance is a puzzle to me

I recently realized that I have officially lived most of my life somewhere besides Fresno.  Granted Fresno is the one place I have lived the longest, it was also the place I could not wait to escape for the thirteen years I lived there.  The fall of my senior year of high school, I remember proudly telling my parents that a year from now I would no longer be living there. Despite how that may have made them feel, I was just itching to get out and start my own life.

Now, there is a little part of me that is sad that I will not be spending Thanksgiving in Fresno this year.  Fall is my favorite time of year in Fresno.  The 100+ degree heat is finally gone, the leaves start to turn orange and yellow, and the fog comes.  I LOVE the fog of the San Joaquin Valley.  It quiets the city and gives you an eerie feeling of being all alone.  Going to school on foggy days, there was always an inner hope of the school actually disappearing and we could go home. On very rare occasion we would get a foggy day schedule in which school would start late.  This is the closest to having a snow day in Fresno.

Fall is also football season everywhere.  I am not a football fan, but in high school I was.  I loved going to the games sitting in the student section wearing the t-shirts designed by you and your friends while dancing to Brass Monkey and This is How We Do It.  When it got colder and foggier (sometimes you couldn't see the stands across the field) we would wear our lettermans jackets, which were perfect for this weather and so warm.

I wish it were still cool to wear these.
**not my actual jacket**

I have not gone back to a Homecoming game at my Alma mater nor did I attend the any formal/informal class reunion.  I had no desire to and I am not sure if that has changed or not.   I do know that I have recently been thinking fondly of my life in Fresno.  I am glad that my family will be together for Thanksgiving, but I will miss the Fresno setting this year.

Playing Tour Guide

My cousins from Ohio came to California last week to visit.  They spent a few days in San Fransisco with my brother and a few days in Fresno with my parents.  I met them in Fresno and brought them down to Los Angeles for the Hollywood portion of their vacation.  For a person who typically avoids Hollywood and Highland, it was fun to put on my figurative fanny pack and play tourist for the day.

Our first stop was a tour of the Warner Bros. Studio lot in Burbank.

I realized on the tour that I do not watch any of the shows that are currently filmed on the lot, so I geeked out over past shows and movies.

It's a hard-knock life

This building was the orphanage in Annie.  I love Carol Burnett as Ms. Hannigan - We Love you, Ms. Hannigan!

We just missed a Smelly Cat performance

Warner Bros. kept the coffee shop from Friends in tact so visitors can take pictures on the famous couch.

The Whomping Willow did some serious damage

Harry Potter - eeek!  I might have sat on the stool from the movie and got sorted into Gryffindor at the private museum on the lot....

We also got to see vehicles from various movies, the prop department, the set of Mike and Molly and Conan O'Brien!  Yep Conan was walking around the lot and gave us all in the tour a wave.  I was glad because my cousins did want to see a celebrity and that is not always guaranteed out here.

After unsuccessfully waiting standby to try to see the taping of Conan, we headed out to Hollywood and Highland to see if our hands are the same size as our favorite celebs.

I can't figure out how to rotate...

We walked around the Roosevelt Hotel and then headed to see where Richard Gere rescued Julie Roberts at the end of Pretty Woman.

"So what happened after he climbed up the tower and rescued her?" 
"She rescues him right back"

All in all it was a fun day to run around LA taking in all the movie magic and to see it through the eyes of someone who has never been here before!

What am I getting myself into

I recently became interested in starting a blog.  I composed numerous entries in my head during my hour commute to and from work, all ah-maz-ing.  Of course when I took the plunge to create a blog, I immediately got stuck on the name and all ambition/creativity fell away.  So I am going to start this out slowly to see what happens.

Who am I? I am girl on the verge of turning 30 living in Los Angeles.  I work full time and go to grad school at night. In my spare time I run half marathons and am training for my first full.  I am almost recovered from hip surgery last January (torn labrum, not a hip replacement, but still hip surgery at age 29 ~ I never thought that would happen).  I also volunteer on the Chapter Advisory Board for the local college chapter of my sorority.

My goal is to start posting once a week and see what happens.