da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da

That's what my cell phone ring sounds like these days. I changed it to the Hawaii 5-0 theme and do a little air-surfing whenever it rings. The new banner is my attempt to say "No Day but Today" in Hawaiian, and I'm fairly certain I botched it. Maybe I'll learn something more when I get there.

Remember when the Brady Bunch went to Hawai'i? Bobby found that Tabu necklace in the ancient burial ground, and Peter woke up with a tarantula on his chest, and Greg almost drowned during his surfing competition, and then all 3 boys got kidnapped and kept in the Tiki caves, and the girls didn't do much except worry what to tell their parents when they boys weren't back for dinner. Ahhh, the 70's. Guest-starring Don Ho and Vincent Price. Classic.

So, I leave tomorrow for a couple of days in LA with Ashley, and then straight on to Honolulu on Thursday, where Lena, Rori, Breanna and I plan on lying on the beach (in ascending order of skin tone, so I don't have to look SO white, lol). We might work a little, as well (OK, we unfortunately will be working our a$$es off, but I haven't quite faced that fact just yet).

On June 10, Breanna and I are headed to Maui, where we have big fun planned:

• The Road to Hana
  
• sunrise bike trip on Haleakala
• a lavender garden
• a traditional luau
• surfing lessons
• snorkeling and dolphin-watching

For starters. How we intend to cram all that fun into 4 days of vacation, you might ask? Well, very carefully, is the answer. I promise to post pictures and anecdotes.

After Maui I will be spending a weekend in San Diego with my friends Sloane and Rob, and then I have another week there working with my friends Superman and Wonderwoman. I will be home the 24th of June.

Please call me while I'm gone. I love hearing from you guys, and now have the added bonus of the ringtone.

Hawai'i Countdown: 6 Days.

Sorry I haven't updated in so long. I've been feeling a little under the weather, and I think I've figured out this vegetarian thing has made me a bit anemic. It was the bruising that tipped me off, but explains the fatigue and headaches as well. Apparently women need a minumum of 18mg/day (that's 2.5x what men need) and unless I'm eating 6C of spinach a day, I'm not getting it. I'm going to get an iron supplement before I go out of town. If I am still feeling poorly when I get back then I will go see the doctor and get my blood work done.

Updates: I had 3 doctor's appointments on Tuesday and it looks like I need to have 4 places removed and biopsied when I get back from Hawai'i. She wanted to do them immediately but the sutures have to stay in for 10 days at least, and on top of finding someone in Honolulu to remove them, I didn't want to have to deal with sunscreen and saltwater on open wounds, so we decided to wait. The worst part is that she's taking my blue freckle! It's always been my favorite because it's not like the others (which is why, of course, it is dangerous). Stupid skin cancer.

Next issue: I bought these shoes at DSW. They were 40% off and I had a $10 coupon, so I ended up spending only $20 on them!! How awesome is that?!



Next issue: (SPOILERS) I finally watched the Gilmore Girls series finale. I thought it was almost perfect, except that kiss between Luke and Lorelai. It was all awkward and forced; they have ZERO chemistry, and she could have just said thank you with all that love in her eyes and it still would have been a pitch-perfect episode. Great Lor-Ror dialogue, great grandparent interaction, great townies (loved the moving tables bit and then scurrying back behind the girls), great ending. I mostly loved it.

Just finised LOST (SPOILERS)- Whooooooo BOY!!!! Ok, no spoilers. That's all I have to say. When this show is on, it's ON.

I still have Grey's, 2 weeks of The Sopranos, and 2 weeks of Heroes to watch.

I'm almost done planning my Hawai'i trip. More details in next post.

atlanta

This show has been pretty crazy and I'm still sleeping horribly, but I am having a pretty good time. I flew in at the buttcrack of dawn on Sunday for no reason, as suddenly out of nowhere, I didn't have to work, but it was OK, because Krysten and her mom and I went to eat Turkish food, smoked a hookah, and saw a belly dancer. She was really good and the place was really fun. We also watched The Last King of Scotland, which I thought was really well done.

I worked on Monday until about 6, and then Breanna and I took the MARTA (!) and met Krysten and her mom and her mom's friends for a birthday dinner at Raging Burritos. Turns out 2 of her mom's friends work in my industry, so I totally recognized them from various places (Dave had just been in Denver with me a few weeks ago), and a 3rd friend lives literally around the corner from my old apartment in Jersey City (and for the record, Nathaniel McSnobberson, she introduced him as "my friend Ty from New York"). We all joined hands and sang "It's a Small World."

The waiter there thought I was sooooo cute, until I called him "Beardie." He wasn't such a fan of that nickname. Or the fact that I whipped a Cylon doll in my purse. But then he still bought me a drink and asked me to come back before I left town. Bwahahahaha! Oh, Beardie. That's never going to happen. As if I'd be interested in someone who doesn't know what a Cylon is.

Tuesday night, Breanna and I met our friend Lena at the Django Gypsy Kitchen (inspired by Django Reinhardt). The food was amazing but we neglected to make it down the see the live jazz downstairs because of an early call the next morning. I guess I should have gone anyway, since it's not like I slept or anything.

Last night, Breanna and I went to eat Indian food at Havela, and it was soooooo GOOD. And also, I found a pea with a smiley face on it. I'm not joking, y'all.

For real! I find this is way cooler than finding the Virgin Mary in a tomato. Also, our waiter totally looked/sounded like John Waters, and when I said "do you know who John Waters is?" he replied, "Oooh, Uncle Mark is sitting down!" and joined us at our table. Apparently he's a big fan. Anyway, after that I watched Lost and took an Ambien and actually got 8 whole hours of sleep. I feel like a new woman. Except I'm the same woman. Just a little less tired.

finally!

"I've had a pretty good couple of days," she says with trepidation.

Yesterday I had lunch with Danael and then hung out with Bill, and then he and I met Amy for dinner at Tin Star and then we saw Waitress, which is FANTASTIC... funny, sad, hopeful, wonderful. We stood in the parking lot for over an hour talking, and then I came home and spent another hour on the phone with Brad for an hour, pontificating about life and the pursuit of happiness, etc, and then I took an Ambien which ensured my first full night's sleep in about a month.

Today I met Madison for some Jamba Juice, shoe shopping, and girl conversation, went to yoga, and am now sort of packing and making my classic "whatever's left over before I go out of town" soup. Tonight's has onions, leeks, carrots, celery, tomatoes, brown rice, and corn in it. I'm going to watch a dvd and make sure I get to bed at a decent hour, since I have an 8:20am flight tomorrow.

I get to have dinner with Krysten and her mom tomorrow... middle eastern, my favorite, complete with hookah bar! That's right, I just used "mom" and "hookah bar" in the same sentence. Seriously, I can't wait to meet this woman.

next stop, crazy... wanna come?

This morning I had a dream that I was kidnapped by Buffalo Bill and I tried to send a text message back to my work friends Breanna, Denise, and Vaughn (who I had just left when I got kidnapped) but he (Buffalo Bill) took my phone away, and then a lot of other stuff happened (including my making microwave french fries in a popcorn bag, and his killing 2 cops) before he got shot my Mrs. Landingham, and then I had to go back to the place where he was holding me, and Krysten was there watching television and smoking a cigar. I can't remember the last time I had a real nightmare but I woke up drenched in sweat.

Which reminds me, the other day I was reading an article about lucid dreaming, and how if you can recognize that you're dreaming, you can in a sense "guide" your dream, thus doing things in your subconscious that you could never do in real life, like fly. This one scientist suggested drawing an infinity sign in the air with your hand to prove that you were cognizant that you were dreaming and had some sense of control over your actions, no matter how insignificant. So, that night, I was having weird, hopped-up Nyquil dreams, and I knew that I was, and I kept pausing the dream action to draw an infinity sign in the air with my hand, and every time I did it, I just slipped further into the dream, and Dream Jamie kept thinking/saying "Stop trying. It's just a dream." It was all very Vanilla Sky and then this morning I was sort of remembering that during my 10-minute post-alarm snooze, and I was drifting in and out of my nightmare, and thinking that if I got my phone back from Buffalo Bill, I needed to text Danael and see if we were still having lunch tomorrow, and then my phone beeped that I had a text message. It wasn't from Danael but it still made my eyes pop wide open and my heart beat fast.

Is anyone else worried that I am actually crazy?

school's! out! for! summer!!!

It's 10pm and I just got home ... but in a nutshell:

• I'm fairly certain I got my worst test grade ever on the final but I calculated that I only had to get like a 72 to still make an "A" in the class, and really, that's all that matters, no? I'll know by Friday.
  
• I got to see Amy G in San Diego. We ate Indian food and I liked it.
• Tom Miller (aka "Digital Daddy") gets a shout-out for being one of the all-time greatest people to work for, ever. Go 3-hour lunches! Choose 3-hour lunches!!
  
• I can breathe through both my nostrils again, unmedicated.
  
• I had dinner with Erin tonight and it was the first time I've had dinner with a friend in my home town in like, a month. It was really, really nice.
  
• I see Krysten in 5 days!!
• Now I can read a book that's not about Anatomy & Physiology (...without feeling guilty!)
  
• I get to sleep in my own bed tonight. And it's raining!!

Someone wise reminded me that I'm the master of my own domain. It's time.

the cherry on top

I'm sick. A couple of days ago I woke up with a sore throat, and I took lots of Emergen-C and ate oranges and drank green tea, and then yesterday I had some pretty hefty sinus pressure, and today I'm just full-on sick. I'm miserable. I hate being sick on the road. I took some Tylenol Cold Head Congestion PM stuff last night and ping! woke up at 3am, consulted the box, and discovered the instructions state to take 2 pills every 4 hours. Who the hell wakes up in the middle of the night to redose on PM medicine?? Lame. It was too late for me to take more because I had to get up at 6, so I just tossed and turned and blew my nose until 5:30, when I couldn't take it anymore. Now I'm on the daytime Sudafed Cold & Sinus, which makes me have that weird, I'm thinking 900 miles per hour but also in slow motion at the same time thing... Krysten has a name for it but I don't remember. See?

UGH~

hello, southern california!

So, this weekend is Derby weekend in Louisville. Which means at the airport, I saw 1.2 trillion hat boxes, like Kentucky is the frakkin' Ascot Gavotte or something. I even heard the Queen was going to be there! Anyway, apparently due to some inclement weather in Dallas, my flight got cancelled, and I had to be re-routed on Frontier through Denver. So after getting up at 6am on the east coast, 7 hours work, 4 hours wandering the Louisville airport (where, btw, it is very hard to be a vegetarian), and undoubtedly losing my American Airlines Platinum Challenge due to my cancelled flight, I got to chase the sunset across America, which is actually pretty awesome. For now though, it's almost 1am on the west coast, I've been up for 21 hours, and I have to be at work in the morning. I do love southern California. I get to sleep with my window open tonight.