Abbi's L.A. Times

Yesterday, Joanna and Chris had an RA event. They planned a beach bonfire and cookout at dockweiler beach. Aside from it being a kind of dreary and cold day, it was awesome! They had to arrive at the beach really early to save a pit, but there was a decently sized group by around 3pm. It was actually a really far drive, about an hour, from Oakwoods, which was annoying, but apparently there aren't many beaches that have fire pits at them. We cooked hot dogs on special metal sticks over the fire, and I ate a ton of smores! The fire was nice and warm to stand around, and I would totally love to do this again sometime. We all smelled like the fire by the end of the night, but Mom and I both love that smell, so it was fine by me. We all hung around talking, walking on the beach, and playing paddle ball until the fire went out at around 6pm.

Tonight we went to the King's hockey game against the Anaheim Ducks, and what Canadian doesn't love a hockey game? It was really fun! Shelly and I took the subway to get there, and it was kind of a walk from the station to the Staples center in Downtown LA. We got there when the first period had started, but it was alright. It was fun cheering with Elijah and Jill, die-hard hockey fans from the program. The stadium was kind of flashy; the music was good, and there was a light show with the King's logo on the ice. I got a nice present for Ben there too :). Saddly, the Kings lost! They aren't that good, but whatever, it was still fun to watch. Walking back to the metro station with Shelly was kind of interesting. Downtown is a little bit of a scary area. It's creepily empty of people and cars. I wouldn't go there at night if you can avoid it. Still, we got back to the apartment alright. I've now seen a Dodgers and a Kings game; I'm definitely getting to do some uniquely LA things with the program. I really enjoy it.

This week, I got to have an awesome time with my cousin, Kate. I hadn't seen her in about 2 years, so it was awesome to be able to catch up. We basically stayed up until 2 most nights chatting about different things, and I actually did like having a roommate to take my extra bed for the week. I was exhausted by the long nights and early mornings (for work) all week, but it was well worth getting to spend time with Kate. I was a horrible host! Kate was teaching me how to cook some good meals, so she spent a lot of time in the kitchen. She also had to bring a lot of ingredients I didn't have in the house, and she brought bed sheets and a blender for me to borrow! I felt really bad for making her do all of this, but it was really nice of her still, and I do feel better able to make good food for myself, so that's awesome too.
She arrived Monday night/Tuesday morning at 2:30am! We unpacked everything and got things set for the morning when I had work. Supai, her new puppy, promptly peed in my room, so we had to deal with that as well, but he was cute none-the-less. We finally got to sleep at about 4, and I had to get up at 7 for work. I made the omelet she put together for me for breakfast, and I promptly forgot my lunch as I walked out the door! Kate decided to meet me for lunch at work, and instead of bringing the sandwich I had put together for myself, she brought me tabbouleh!  It was delicious, and she taught me how to make a different kind later on for lunches the rest of the week. She took Supai to a nearby dog park for a while before picking me up from work. We went back home to drop the dog off with my friends who were going to watch him while we attended a taping of The Big Bang Theory. We met Shelly at Warner Bros. as the taping was just starting. It was awesome to get to see all the actors from one of my favorite shows. I was glad to get to see the taping with Kate because she likes the show equally as much. We got to see the apartment sets and basically all the characters were in the episode we saw tape, so we got to see all the actors. The MC was the same weird/creepy guy from Mike and Molly, but we just ignored him. Although, I did stand up and say that my boyfriend was most like Wolowitz in order to get candy from him. Sorry Gianni! I also got to teach Kate a little something about TV production because she had never seen anything like this before. Always glad to share a bit about my field of choice. When we got home, we made a spicy shrimp dish, which was really good but meant to have rum in it. Kate forgot I couldn't buy rum because I'm not legal yet! Oh well. It was good even without it. Another recipe I might have to try again. I also made a new flavor of tabbouleh for myself and her for lunch the next day. I had no idea what quinoa was, but it's like couscous with protein in it, and it was really good.

On Wednesday, I had my internship again, but because I got off at 4:30pm, Kate and I decided to take a walk to the Hollywood sign to give the dog and ourselves some good exercise. On the way up, we met some girls named Hillary and Lauren. They were walking their dog too, and they were really nice. They both graduated from Emerson and are living out here now working. Lauren is a photographer and Hillary is a set designer, so both in the biz! We talked for basically the whole way up and down, and I got their information, so hopefully I have some good contacts in them if ever I need it. Networking really does happen everywhere! When we got back, Kate showed me how to make the best steak recipe I've ever had. It was an Asian dish, and the steak had a nice, salty flavor. We had green beans covered in sesames and sesame oil, and a vegetable salad with a home-made dressing. This week, I've probably eaten more of a variety of vegetables than I've ever eaten in that short a time period in my life. I still have tons of leftovers of all the food Kate taught me to make, and we didn't even get to the Mexican chicken recipe she was going to teach me because we had so much other food to eat.

Thursday, I had to get up early for my RA meeting, but when I got back, Kate and I made pancakes from Aunt Margie's recipe. They were really really good! Then, we spent a few hours with Supai at Rosie's dog beach in long beach. He had a fantastic time and tired himself out. He basically slept the whole day after that. While I was in class, Kate hung around the apartment, and we went to the hot tub when I got back. We ate leftovers for dinner, and I got a smoothie ready for the morning. She has me making fruit/vegetable smoothies to get some more servings in during the day. They are really good.  We watched the premieres of Big Bang and How I Met Your Mother before bed.

Kate left to go back to Arizona on Friday, so she ate with me in the morning before I headed out to work. I had a really great week getting to see her and learn some new recipes. I was sad to see her go, but at least I get to see her again in November!

I was at 6 Flags today with Siobhan, Maddie, and Jeff. We drove together and hung out together the whole day. This was my RA event a lot of people were able to come, which was nice. The roller coasters at 6 Flags were AWESOME! We went on a ton of them, and the only bad line we encountered was at X2. Aside from that, we got on all of them in 40 minutes or less. We loved Tatsu, where you go through the whole coaster lying on your stomach, and Dejavu, where you get shot up really high in the air once forwards and once backwards and then free fall back down again. We got to go on Green Lantern, which spins you as you go vertically up. That one is cool because it doesn't take up a lot of space in the park, it just has you wind up the coaster vertically. It was really hot today, so we were all really tired by the end of the day. We got to the park just after it opened and stayed until it closed! It was a great time and awesome to be around 3 other people who were as crazy about roller coasters as I am. We all probably lost some brain cells getting our heads tumbled around on the rides, but at least it was fun!

Last night, Danielle, Kelsy, Shelly, and I went to see The Lion King in 3D. It was a limited, 2 week release, and being that it, and the other Disney movies, were basically a staple to every child in the 90's, we had to go see it. Seriously, Disney made the best movies during that decade, and I want to buy them all on DVD. Stupid Disney Vault. I need to buy them more as they come out. It's so annoying. Anyway, The Lion King was beautiful on the big screen! It was just as emotion and amazing as I remembered. It was great to hear those songs with surround sound for a change. The 3D was done tastefully. It was mostly just layers where the nature seemed to be closer than the characters, or the animals popped out a big more. I thought it actually looked really cool that way. We were all tearing up even though we knew what was going to happen. It's one of Disney's best movies, and I love being nostalgic and seeing it in a movie theater again. It was a wonderful decision of things to do for the night. Thanks for planning that "event" Danielle (she makes fun of me having to plan RA events all the time, telling me always to plan an event for everything she wants to do. I told her to plan this one, and she did. She says she'd make a great RA!)

I had another RA event this past Sunday to the La Brea Tar Pits. Gage and Andy recommended them to me when Gage was living in LA two summers ago. I got 5 people, including myself, to go to this one, so not too many people, but whatever. I had a great time. We watched two videos about how the tar pits came to be, and how the paleontologists do their work there. The La Brea Tar Pits were formed when the oil under the earth rose through the ground due to pressure and formed pools. The bones they have found date back to animals from 40,000 years ago (after dinosaurs has died off, so none of them are present). Water would cover the tar sometimes, making it so animals couldn't tell it was tar. The animals would get stuck, and over time, more layers of tar would come up over them.
The Page Museum houses all the bones collected in the tar pits over time. It holds the largest and most diverse group of extinct plants and animals from the Ice Age. It was really cool to see skeletons of mammoths, saber toothed cats, short-faced bears, and extinct species of horses and wolves. You can also look into the lab to watch the paleontologists work a little. They pull tons of bones every year and do their work primarily in the summer when the tar is warm and easier to excavate. I had a great time learning a little bit about something unique to LA, so good suggestion Gage and Andy!

Tonight was fantastic! I had the opportunity to work with On-Camera Audiences as seat filler crew at the Creative Arts Emmys. The Creative Arts Emmys are a section of the Emmys done before the normal Emmys. It gives out awards for technical achievements, makeup, costumes, and things like that. Seat fillers take the seats of the celebrities who get up to accept awards or go to the bathroom. They want the theatre to look full when the cameras show the audience. Basically, my job was to look around in my section for empty seats and take seat fillers to sit there at the appropriate times. It was a TON of fun. My feet are killing me, but I had a great time helping to coordinate for the event. The people I was working with were really friendly and complimented my ability to pick up on the job quickly. I got to feel really special because I had "credentials," a badge that said I had all access to the Nokia theatre where the event was held. I stood right at the front by the stage! I was so close to all the presenters, and I saw a lot of really awesome celebrities. Here's a list:

Mia and Seth from SNL
Chris Colfer (Kurt from Glee)
Alison Brie (Annie from Community)
Joan Cusack (The principal from School of Rock)
Kristin Chenoweth (April Rhodes on Glee and the original Galinda from the musical, Wicked) Dot-Marie Jones (coach Beiste from Glee)
Louis C. K. (comedian)
Pee Wee Herman (Pee Wee's Playhouse)
Gene and Nick Simmons (Kiss band member and his son, Gene Simmons Family Jewels)
Howie Mandell (host of Deal or No Deal, judge on America's Got Talent )
The Gregory Brothers (the auto-tune the news guys, creators of the Bed Intruder and Double Rainbow songs)
Jorma Taccone (one of the Lonely Island Boys)
Jeff Probst (Survivor host)

There may have been more that I forgot, but it was incredible to get to see all those people. My organizational skills could really come in handy in a job like that. The best news is that Dani from On-Camera Audiences asked if I'd like to do the American Music Awards in November!!!! It's going to be an incredible event. It's like a huge concert with even more celebrities to spot! I can't wait!

 Today was my first day working at The Bold and the Beautiful. I got a cool CBS badge that makes me feel really important! Sarah, one of the girls on the LA program with me, was working at the same time as me today, which was cool. We met with our internship coordinator, Rachel, who gave us a detailed tour of the building. CBS Television City is kind of complicated, but I think I got it by the end of the day after doing a few errands. Rachel was nice enough to give us maps anyway. After our tour, we read/sorted the mail, put together rundowns/scripts, wrote script synopses, and distributed scripts to different departments around the building. All in all, I'm just really glad to be working at The Bold and the Beautiful. I think it's going to be an awesome internship where I get to learn a lot. I'm really excited to be working there!

 Today, I didn't have government and media, so instead I decided to go see The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson! A few days ago, my tickets got upgraded to priority, which meant we got to go in first. It was awesome! All the Late Late Show people were really nice and helpful. After waiting in line for like an hour and a half, we got moved to another line sitting down. There was a gift store there, in which I bought a replica of Craig's snake mug!!! It's actually really big, and will be awesome for tea! The warm up comedian, Chunky, was hysterical, and not at all as creepy as the one from Mike and Molly. He came outside to talk to us, but it was so hot he basically said screw this let's go inside. He gave Shelly a Late Late Show guest mug, which was nice of him.

From the moment we got there, I was asking the people who were lining us up if I could please sit in "Lesbian Row," which is what Craig calls the first row on stage right. We actually got to sit there! I was soooo excited! It was an awesome view. We were sitting right next to Geoff Peterson! We even had to sign release forms incase we got on TV. Chunky pointed us out to the rest of the audience, and he asked if we had pillow fights in slow motion often. We said, "all the time." It was really funny. He also kind of grinded on Shelly! She was totally shocked! At one point in the show, we were laughing really hard at something, and Craig looked right at us, and Geoff said "Bunch of Lesbians!" They actually put us on the show!!!! I'm going to watch tonight, but I think at least Danielle and I were on national television!!!! It was literally my dream come true. Craig looked at me, and I was on TV! Lisa Kudrow and a reporter for MSNBC were on, which was really cool even though I had apparently already seen Lisa before. The show was really funny, and I got to see Craig do all the inside jokes he normally does on the show. Kind of sad I didn't see Secretariat, but oh well, I did get to see Geoff. I even got the voice of Geoff to autograph my ticket for me afterwards!


Today was really the best day ever. I had such a good time cheering and clapping and laughing at Craig's jokes. It was wonderful!

Also, randomly Big Brother emailed saying that tickets had just opened up for TONIGHT'S taping of the show. They emailed me at 4:30, and I would have had to have been there at 5:30. I wasn't able to go because I got home and looked at the email too late. Oh well. I do love Big Brother, but I had a great time today. At least I'll get to see most of the shows I love while I'm out here.

Today, I held an RA event to take a group of 30 people to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was great to have so many people come out to one of my events. The museum itself is really big. It has 7 buildings with different things in them ranging from contemporary art to the Renaissance to Asia. I do find myself thinking about London again though. I've been to so many bigger and very impressive museums in Europe that it's kind of hard to compare. I mean I saw the biggest collection of Renaissance art in the world at the Uffitizi Gallery in Florence. The British Museum has one of the biggest collections of artifacts in the world, and the V&A had some great stuff too. It's just really hard to look at a museum here and think it's as good as those were. Still, it was really interesting, and I'll definitely have to go back when I have more time to check it all out. I saw a big blue balloon animal dog and the Urban Light art installation outside the museum is cool (it's columns of huge, old light poles).

The Tim Burton exhibit itself was really cool. They had sketches of his, some models from his movies (Jack Skellington!), some of the costumes (the Edward Scissorhands glove and costume!!!!), and some short films. It was packed, and it was a lot bigger an exhibit than I thought. The exhibit was so big that most of the group kind of split up once we went inside. There was one section that was lit by blacklight and had some glowing paintings and a huge model of one of his sketches. The paintings were acrylic on black velvet! The cape from Sleepy Hollow was there as was some Batman costumes.

I hope my residents had a good day. I did enjoy the time out of the house. We got to see some pretty cool things in the Tim Burton exhibit, and I would like to go back to see the rest of the museum later. There is a sculpture garden I'd like to look at, which reminds me that I need to go back to deCordova again in MA and take some pictures there.

This week has been pretty uneventful. Not much going on. I should be starting my internship next Wednesday, which will be good because I've had nothing to do recently. Just to get out of the house I went with Sarah to Downtown Burbank on Wednesday to check out the mall and look for dresses for the Creative Arts Emmy's next weekend where we will be seat fillers. It was nice just to get out of the house. I got my eyebrows done at the brow bar in the mall there, and it was really nice to just get pampered for a minute, even if it did hurt. That night, Sarah, Siobhan, Danielle, Maddie, Shelly, and I went to the hot tub and a bunch of other Ithaca people were there. It was really fun to just chill with everyone.

Friday night was the Food Truck Festival that happens on the first Friday of every month at Venice Beach! It was really cool. There was a parking lot full of different food trucks. There was Dim Sum, BBQ, cupcakes, and burgers. If you know me, you know how much I love grilled cheese. I ate nothing but grilled cheese when I went out to dinner for like 13 years of my life. After waiting in line with Melissa and Shelly for an hour, I finally got a mac n' cheese grilled cheese! It was so worth the wait. I was starving, and mixing two of my favorite foods together is definitely a must do. They had a ton of different cheeses, breads, and add-ons, so you could basically make your own panini, which was really awesome, and they had dessert grilled cheeses too! I definitely need to track the grilled cheese truck down again later. After that, we went to Cool Haus for an ice cream sandwich. You could pick one of like 7 kinds of cookies, and fill it with one of about 10 different flavors of ice cream. The cookies were huge, and you couldn't even bit into the sandwich. I got red velvet cookies with sea salt caramel ice cream. It was definitely a yummy night!


Saturday, I went back to the mall with Siobhan, Sarah, Danielle, and Maddie just to browse. I basically decided just to wear my black pencil skirt and shiny top to the Creative Arts Emmy's, saves me buying a new dress. I did see a really nice leopard print dress with pockets that I liked at Charlotte Russe. I may have to get it later anyway. Downtown Burbank is always just a really fun and relaxing place to be. And I got to go to Yogurtland twice in one week, so anytime I get Yogurtland, I'm happy.

Sunday, I went with a group of 9 girls to Let's Make a Deal, a game show on CBS hosted by Wayne Brady. It was really awesome. We got to sit really close to the stage, so hopefully I'll be shown on TV in the episode. None of the people in our group got to play, but it was still fun to dance and have fun at the taping. I did find out though that neither me nor my family are allowed to play! I'm not affiliated with CBS because I intern with the Bold and the Beautiful, a soap opera on CBS. Oh well, I'll trade off not being able to play the CBS game shows for such a wonderful internship. Sorry though family! Didn't meant to get you involved too!