So Long 2013

Crazy how fast a year goes. And a lot happened this year. I mean, I graduated from college. WHAT?! I mean, you've been following a good chunk of my 2013. You know whats been going down. Hopefully 2014 brings just as many awesome things! 

For NYE I had a few friends over. We kept things pretty chill. Homemade Margaritas. Lots of food. Lots of other alcohol. YouTube videos. All good things. We went big last year. It was nice to not have to figure out the hotel/cab/club/bar thing this year. And I think my bank account liked it better too. =]

These are my two favorite NYE songs.

The Weirdest Work Week

So, let me tell you about my weird week. I worked today, but my 960 hours that started in June ran out today so I have to take tomorrow off (shoot...). Our company is closed on the 1st. Then my new 960 hours restart Thursday so I work Thursday/Friday. Though hardly anyone will be in the office and I have little to work on so... It's gonna be an odd one. But I can't complain about it. I'm excited to have extra time to sleep and celebrate New Years!

This is a candle I got for Christmas. I didn't know sparkling icicles had a scent. But apparently they do!

This was lame. Here are more videos!

This is so legit. The more I watch it the more impressed I am.

I just love Tom Hiddleson.

But not as much as this dog loves snow!

Bloodys and Brunch

Nothing is better than Sunday brunch. Except going to Sunday brunch with two good friends you haven't seen in a while. 2 of my favorites were back in town after moving elsewhere (one to LA, the other to Eau Claire) so we decided to celebrate by brunch at Hazellewood. We ended up spending a good chunk of time there then ended up going to Caribou next door for another few hours. It was a lot of fun and a lot of catch up time. 

Who knows when we will all be here at the same time again. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Centennial Lakes

How awesome is this place. After hearing that its the place to go skating LW and I decided to try it out. It was the first time I had gone skating in probably 8 years, but after a while it came back to me. Phew. It's always a challenge having all high school friends who were skaters back in the day. But it was a really cool place to go skating. I'll have to get back there before the winter is over.

After skating we went to grab dinner and then went to About Time. It was an AWESOME movie. I recommend it. For sure.

B-Ville.

One of my new favorite things is my annual trip to Bentleyville with KB. Last year we decided to go after both of our finals were done. We met up, drove up, went to Bentleyville, then drove home. This year we did something similar. We both left work a little early and hit the road. Probably got to Duluth around 6:30 or so. Walked around and enjoyed the sights. Then went to a restaurant nearby and grabbed some food before a drive home through strange and eerie fog accompanied by INSANE stars. As K said, it was "the summation of awe" (or, awesome). 

Until next year!

Awards Season!

Its one of the best times of the year: Awards season!! With SAG and Globe nominations out its time to start catching up on movies. Today I went to two of them. After getting back to work, I went to Frozen (again) with the fam. This time in 3D (though I didn't think the 3D enhanced it at all). And after saw Wolf of Wall Street. Which was well done, not exactly what I was expecting. I'll be interested to see how that one does at the awards. I hope Frozen wins Best Animated Picture though. I just love it. And Elsa is my new favorite Disney Princess Queen.

And I hope this song (by Elsa, sung by Idina Menzel, from Frozen) wins Best Song (if you haven't seen the movie you can watch this. It doesn't give anything away that the trailer hasn't already).

God Jul

Since we celebrated Christmas so early, today we packed up and hit the road back to the cities. We always drive by the cabin on the way home. Often we will stop, though this year we were heading to the other family Christmas so instead drove around the new round-a-bout into the city and kept on our merry way. I'm already looking forward to cabin season.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Lily

This is one of the coolest plants ever. You can almost watch it grow it grows so fast. There were no flowers 3 days ago when we arrived and now there are 4. It was fun to check on every morning when we walked into the room. Plus then you just cut off the stock and it will grow again! The magic of bulb based plants. 

Merry Christmas Eve!

BOWS

Tonight, my family celebrated Christmas. Swedish meatballs, rice pudding (blech), mashed potatoes, and, of course, presents! Again, I had fun running around with the lil cuz most of the night and keeping her occupied while the other adults cooked. I did help make the salad though. I'm so good.

Check out this awesome bow. I love bows. Especially awesome ones.

Last Minute Shopping

Our biggest form of entertainment around the holidays? This kid. She's basically the cutest thing ever.  Tonight she found the newspaper and had fun throwing it around, ripping it apart, all those kid things. Then she sat down and started looking at the ads. Apparently she still has some shopping to do before we open presents tomorrow. 

The 90s are back

How retro is this tree, complete with fiber optics. So legit. I can still remember when my grandparents got this tree (when we had Christmas on the North Shore). And my grandma still uses it today! Mainly cause its small and fits nicely in her apartment. Plus, it is pretty cool. And fun to watch the lights change color. I could sit and watch it all day.

How old am I?

The Mix

Holidays are the best time to have chex-mix. And nothing beats homemade Chex-Mix. Mmm. I went to a holiday party at EJohn's tonight and everyone had to bring an appetizer or dessert. Naturally, I brought this. And made an extra batch to bring to Bemidji tomorrow for family Christmas. I could literally sit and eat it all. day. long.

Reliving last year's holidays

Last year, all the girls of The Kingdom made cookies for the holiday season. AP made the most delicious chocolate covered pretzel sticks. So delicious that I had to hide them in my room to keep her from eating them all. Well, tonight I headed over to her apartment to make some more! And they are still just as delicious as they were last year. Plus it was the first time I got to see her since graduation so it was nice to catch up!

Also: HBD Bro!

Rollerdome

Last time at the Metrodome! JO and I went rollerblading at the Dome tonight. I don't think I've done that since I was probably 10. But it was a lot of fun. Plus it was the first time I got any sort of exercise in about the past 3 months. So that was another perk. I can only imagine how crazy the last Vikings game will be there. 

Under the Tree

Even though I thought I would have all this free time once the show ended, I was wrong. I mean, I didn't have to be at rehearsal but I do have things to do each night before we leave town on Saturday. Tonights activity was present wrapping! At least, wrapping the ones that I have. I'm still waiting on a few things to come in the mail/FedEx. 

Hopefully they make it in time.

Bells, Stars, Trees

Treats!

Since the show is over and its rapidly approaching the holiday season, I spent my Monday night making chocolate covered pretzels and watching How I Met Your Mother. It was a pretty relaxing evening. Though making little pretzels like this instead of the rods is a lot more tedious and challenging. 

But they sure taste great!

C'est Fini

Thats all she wrote! Oliver came to a close after another round of back to back shows today. I ran up and snagged this picture before the house opened for our second show. 

All in all it was a good run. Couple of incidents with some actors... food poisoning, broken bones, dislocated knees. But, you know, all fun things you get to deal with in live theatre. The show must go on!

Except not, cause this one is over. Hello free time!

Jobs

Cards on cards on cards! 

After making a whole bunch of them I finally found the time to start writing out some holiday greetings. It gave me something to do during our 3 hour long break in between Oliver shows today. However I got a little sidetracked and ended up watching Jobs instead (the Steve Jobs movie). I thought it was super interesting. I can see why critics didn't really like it. But it was nice to finally learn some of the back story to Apple. (Regardless of how much of it was true or not...)

GAC-venture!

Day off! That means it was time to head back down to GAC for a while. Since I didn't get to go to Christmas in Christ Chapel last weekend I decided I wanted to visit people before everyone takes off for winter break. Plus I had a few christmas gifts to pick up for family members. 

It was fun to be back, totally brought me back to days of studying for finals. Shockingly, I don't miss having to do that at all. 

Plus I got to run into some old CAB friends. Always a plus.

Video Shoot

Today I got to spend half of my work day in St. Paul watching a photoshoot/videoshoot for some tools we provide. Since I've never actually been on a "film" set (though this was a pretty small one) it was really interesting and fun to watch. Much more fun than sitting in my cube all afternoon. 

A dogs best friend?

Everyone knows Man's best friend is his dog. But what's dog's best friend? His moose. Moose? Deer? Critter. Awwww. He's so cute. 

Also, YouTube released their rewind stuff today. (At least I noticed it today...). They hit the nail on the head with their video this year.

Craft Day!

Who knew that they would have crafts at a Fortune 500 company. But they did! We all took a break this afternoon and ran down to our cafeteria and had hot chocolate and cookies and, most importantly, CRAFTS! 

Plus, look at how cute he is!

West Jet is my new favorite. These will show you why.

Bokeh

Free time? What do I do with free time?

Enjoy the christmas tree lights, obviously. And watch Invictus in honor of Nelson Mandela. 

It was a great first night off for me, thats for sure!

And then there were none

And in 45 minutes, our set was gone. 

But don't worry! It's coming back! There are a bunch of concerts and rehearsals on the stage this week so we had to pull our set apart so they could use it (how kind of us. I know). So come Friday we will have to start rebuilding the whole thing and we only have 3 hours to build it. 

Good thing we took it apart in pieces, huh?

Here's my new favorite song.

The show must go on...

Holy wow. Not the day I thought I would have. 

I woke up to go to Frozen in the morning (its awesome. See it. See it right now). Got back, got ready for opening night, and headed to the theatre. When I got there ran into our Tech Director who told me "You are about to have a busy night." 

Well that was nerve-wracking to say the least. And for good reason. He then informed me that 1. Our spot op broke his arm snowboarding or skiing today and could no longer work for us. (awesome...) Then he said, but thats not that big of an issue (what do you mean thats not that big of an issue... of course its a big issue!) because 2. The person who plays Bill Sykes (one of our leads) for some reason can't be here tonight. (WHAT?! HOW THE HELL DO YOU MISS OPENING NIGHT?! It could be a number of things, family emergency, bad car accident, etc, we don't know...) So. That was fun to hear the second I walked in the door. Apparently they had been working with an unsuspecting cast member to train him into the role (in about 2 hours) for a while so that was being taken care of and we had a replacement spot op on the way. I spent my pre show figuring out what our understudy needed from me, who would take his scene shifts, informing the cast, etc. It was a hectic night. 

By some miracle, the understudy got all songs and lines and blocking memorized and miraculously played three different parts. I don't know how it happened. But it did. And the show went better than any of us could have expected.

Here we all are enjoying a well deserved post-show drink.

That's a wrap!

For tech week at least. We had our final run tonight. It went way better than I expected to and I'm almost feeling ok about opening tomorrow. Of course I would love one more night to fix the things we missed tonight... but I suppose thats theatre for ya. You just gotta make it work. 

And now. So much sleep. Good thing I have nothing going on till 5 tomorrow. Plus, it is a cool set. At least, I like it.

Wish List

I'm clearly running out of ideas... Here is our scene shop! Its about triple the size it was when I was in high school and its SO MUCH NICER now. Though, I have no idea where anything is anymore so I feel like an idiot... Oh well. That will happen. 

One more day of tech!

Here is a christmas song for you. It's one of my favorites.

Black on black on black

After my day off in Margaritaville, I went back to tech tonight. We had a normal run through. Things are slowly coming along but I'm glad we have an extra day to rehearse before we open. It was our first dress rehearsal tonight though and those costumes look great! It's also fun to pick out where I've seen them before ("Theres the shirt so and so wore in Les Mis. Theres the hat we used in Jekyll and Hyde... etc). After rehearsal ended around 10, it was time for the crew to come in and fix up the stage. It got a little beat up during the tap number in the last show they performed there so it needed a fresh coat of paint. 

We also set the fire alarms off tonight from using too much haze... whoops. =]

Wastin' Away Again

Tonight was the night. It was a big one. It was the night my family embarked to...

MARGARITAVILLE!

That's right. Jimmy Buffett was in town tonight. I don't think I have ever been to such a large party (or seen as many drunk 50/60 year olds...). He played all the classics, a few new ones, some of the songs he has collaborated on with Zac Brown Band and Toby Keith (I think it was Toby Keith...) and was all around just a cool dude. He knew how to target his Minnesotan audience (reference the wild logo in the photo below), cracked some jokes, and best of all, played barefoot. 

I've found my people.

"When life hands you limes, make margaritas!"

3,000

They're back! Actually they never left. 

These stupid envelopes. Probably around 3,000 of them here. You're welcome UHC. 

Anyway I took this picture in preparation for my final intern presentation which is on Friday, so I was working on the deck for it. Exciting.

Time for more videos?

How 'bout an 8th grade throwback!

This is another classic (though less old)

Miss Minnesota USA

I did something tonight I never thought I would. I went to a pageant. 

One of the girls I work with was running for Miss MN USA, so I and another intern decided to cheer her on. We laughed at a lot of the things that were said and how odd of a culture it is. But it was fun to experience once. 

Plus she got 1st runner up! (Which means 2nd place) Which means that if the current Miss MN can't perform her duties or gets in trouble or anything then she takes over! Super proud of her. 

Plus how awesome does this stage look!