Halloween came and went very quickly. Now it's November, which means I need to start getting serious about outlining...once I survive my OA on Wednesday at least. This is, of course, assuming I don't get more sick than I seem to be now before Wednesday.

This semester has gone by way too fast.

I could write about a lot of things right now, but I'm going to write about Juliet Naked, the newest Nick Hornby book. I got it a week or so ago, but didn't get around to reading it until I had a long train ride to SF for the Treasure Island Music Festival (which was amazing, by the way). Since then, I've had a difficult time putting it down (or alloting as much time to it as a law student can allot to a non-law book).

Anyway, as you might have noticed, I fell way off track with that 50 books in a year thing. I mean, I got through a couple of other ones since the last one I posted about, but the momentum from earlier in the year has been missing. Part of this is because I now watch TV while I work out and that was my primary reading time. It was a good run, however, and I think it did get me to branch out to read a lot of books that I might not have read otherwise.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the book. I think it might float somewhere between A Long Way Down and About a Boy, if I had to rank it.

My problem is that the book just kind of stopped and left us with an ambiguous ending. I don't know anyone who's read it either, so it's going to drive me nuts until I find someone who's read it.

That's it. I'd go to bed now, but I have to wait for laundry to finish...And i told myself I'd start my IP outline today.

It's storming like crazy right now. This is good because we need the water. On the other hand, when I decided to try to take BART in, I took two steps before the umbrella broke by the wind and it took another minute before I was completely soaked. Like through all of the 4 shirts I was wearing today. Re-parked and made it to the station when I found out that I forgot the space number and could not pay for parking. I was frustrated by that time, so I decided to drive in until I ran into super traffic because of all the accidents and decided that if I was going to air conditioned classes all day in wet clothes, I'd probably catch something. I was also about to miss my first class. So I just went home and am now warm and will be studying for my midterm all day.

Also, interesting coincidence. I finally got around to emailing my KALSA 1L buddy. We totally went to UCI together and worked at TOP together. What a coincidence huh?

Bruce is going to town on one of my old flip flops. By that, I mean that he's been chewing on it of course. The strap's almost broken through so it's pretty much unwearable now, which is unfortunate because it's what I wear when I go outside in the backyard to play with him and no other shoes are around. I took it away from him. now he's sulking.

Anyway, I just got back from San Francisco. Late night. Went with Amanda and Dinah to see Rent play at the Curran. As in the worldwide tour with Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp.



As cool as the thought of seeing Rent with THE Roger and Mark was, I also was kind of worried that they'd gotten too old for the roles. Not true. They were amazing. Much better live than in the movie too. The rest of the cast was phenomenal too. Rentheads are nuts, though. They went crazy over everything. Made for a fun experience.

I wanted to stay around the stage door to meet them. It was cold, super crowded, and we had to get back, we did not stay around. Sad.

They were amazing, though.

It was also really nice to see Amanda and Dinah again. I haven't seen Amanda in forever because she's been living the fun life in NY. I hadn't seen Dinah since we saw the Fleet Foxes last April. We were both home for the summer, so there was no excuse for that. It was fun hanging out.

I shall be listening to Rent on repeat for the next day or two, but next Sunday is TREASURE ISLAND, so I've got to start prepping for that :D

All right. Hoping to post here more often. I'm not feeling well so instead of lying around and doing nothing (rather than writing my brief), I'm going to post about the Sondre show. A short one as I have a brief to write and reading to do.

Saw Sondre Lerche on Sunday. Promoting his latest album, Heartbeat Radio. Amazing album. I missed him last year when he was at the Great American Music Hall because he was playing the second day of school and I didn't know anyone to go with. Did want to miss it this time around, so I got two tickets and said Chris would go as default. But because I didnt' want to drag Chris because he usually puts a damper on things like that, so I ended up getting Yaeri to go with me.

Anyway, drove into the city and picked her up from the Tower. Drove to the parking garage near the Great American Music Hall. I had no idea how the cheap tickets for the GAMH worked, so we wandered around for a while asking everyone until someone at the movie theater told us we validate it at the venue. Fair enough.

We got to the GAMH around 7:30 and it was kind of awkward. So they do this thing there where you can get dinner before the show for a more expensive ticket. The one other time that I went there was for the Noise Pop festival so we didn't really experience it. But it was kind of weird coming into the venue and seeing all of these tables with people eating. And the security guards were like super anal about it too because they were more expensive tickets. So if you even thought about getting near the tables they were on top of you.

The show starts and it's still like that. People are eating and us cheapos are lined up behind the tables. This left a super awkward floor space in the front. It was kind of awkward. Anyway, other than that, the opening act, JBM was really good. I really enjoyed his set and was kind of sad that I wasn't closer to the stage for it.



Also he was kind of cool because he was playing guitar and drums at once. That's a level of multitasking that I will never attain because I can barely play the drums on Rock Band. ...among other things.



Great set in general.

After he finished, we grumbled a little more about the whole table set up until Sondre went on stage. He started with Good Luck, which is a great song. I'm pretty sure that's what got me through OCI. Haha.



Once he finished the song, he said that there was too much empty floor space in front of him, so Yaeri and I rushed the stage and got pretty front and center spots. As in we were front and center. As in we were within spitting distance. It was nice.

Anyway, trying to keep this short because I have a brief to be writing, so let's do highlights.

x he's got an amazing voice

x he puts on an amazing show

x unplugged rendition of two way monologue





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x did mostly songs from heartbeat radio, but he did a lot of songs from two way monologues and faces down. he also did one song from phantom punch. nothing from duper sessions though.

x he did words and music

good show over all












after the show we stood in the line to meet him. never mind the fact that i'd met him twice before but i got kind of star struck this time around. ... it was a really good show.



i also got jbm's album because i really liked him.

on the way back to the car, some girl stopped me and asked me why i knew all the songs he performed. ...they were on all of his albums except for the one cover he did, so i don't see why i wouldn't have known them. it was a strange question and an awkward moment because i wasn't sure why she was watching me and not him. i just responded with an awkward laugh. wasn't sure how else i was supposed to respond to that.

anyway, it was a great show and I can't wait for the next time he rolls around this part of the country.

I haven't posted here in a long time. After we got back from Korea things got super hectic with school starting and OCI and everything. 2L in general has been a very hectic year and I'm waiting for some breathing room.

I did see the Dodos last Friday at amoeba. that was fun. And Sondre on Sunday!

I just wanted to hop on with the hope that i'd get back into this and also to comment about how Gossip Girl's portrayal of college students is just a tad off-base. College students do not generally turn down free sushi and alcohol, especially when the other option is to watch a documentary about a local garden. of course, if you haven't seen the episode, this doesn't make sense to you.

I got a new car this weekend because Gianni is stealing the CRV. 2008 Hyundai Accent. I'll post a picture maybe.

I just have to jump on here and say that now that I am in Korea, it's really hard to not be able to pull out the phone at random points in the day and text in Tweets. I never realized how addicted to Twitter I actually was.

Oh. If I freak out because I can't find my Treasure Island ticket, it's in the LOL Europe Shutterfly book. As I will probably not remember this and will freak out over losing my pretty expensive ticket, someone please remind me when the time comes.

Going to Korea tomorrow. Won't be blogging here, but will be using a special Korea (take 2) blog. It will be here: http://whoamgkorea.blogspot.com/. We're watching Coraline right now. Part of my summer of nerding over Neil Gaiman. Even bought another one of his books for the trip. Woot.

I spent this past weekend in SoCal. Decided to fly down for Kristina-izzle's birthday party. Weekend went by super fast and somehow I managed to squeeze in a decent amount of OCI research. Speaking of which, I need to hurry up and finish the research process so I can start the actual application process. Whatever. I'm working on it.

Anyway, flew in on Friday. Umma and James dropped me off pretty much right after work because they had to go somewhere. This meant that I spent a lot of time getting reacquainted with the San Jose airport. It's actually beginning to look pretty nice. Like real airport-looking. Not that I looked around much. I situated myself in one of those comfortable seats that Southwest set up, plugged in my phone and played a lot of Monkey Island. In a perfect world I would have finished it by the time I was in Irvine so I could rub it in my lovely boyfriend's face. Unfortunately, I have yet to finish it as I've been working on OCI stuff.

I got to Irvine a little after nine. Chris and Mia picked me up and we went straight to Second Spin. I used to be intimidated by this place, but they had like absolutely none of the CDs I wanted. I found this lame and sadly mourn the loss of the Tower Records that was once down the street and the Virgin Megastore in the other direction. So sad. Anyway, we went there and then we drove out to Fountain Valley and got extremely healthy carne asada fries fom Alertos for dinner. Played a lot of Monkey Island when we got back. Good times.

Saturday we woke up super early. Well, by early I mean 8 am on a weekend. I don't know why. It just kind of happened. We eventually decided to leave and went to Wing Stop in Lake Forest for lunch. Mia decided to be a cocky Asian person and get their Atomic wings even though the guy there warned her several times that this might not be a good idea. Man they were hot. Even when you coated them in Ranch Dressing. Mia could only finish two. There were two left, so Chris and I decided to have another dumb competition and see who could finish their wing first. We assumed that I would win seeing as Chris has always been weak when it came to spicy foods. We were wrong. Not only did he win, but he was the only one who didn't die afterwards. Good times. Their lemon herb wings, or whatever Chris chose, were really good.



I also checked Twitter right as we were finishing our meal and found out that the Kogi truck had just set up shop in Costa Mesa. Too bad they didn't post anything about that before! We so would have gone.

After that we went to the Spectrum to get Kristina birthday gifts. This resulted in us looking at puppies in the puppy store. They were really cute. Not as cute as Bruce, though.

We got back and I did some research for OCI. We got ready and drove to Taps in Brea for Kristina's birthday party.





We were actually one of the first people there even though we got there right at 7:30. It was fun seeing a lot of the UCI group again and catching up. The food was also super good. Kristina set up some three course meal thing for us. So I got gumbo, fillet mignon and crème brule. So good. It also came with some cream ale thing. Good stuff.



We drove back and I think pretty much Chris played some Monkey Island and I did some research when we got back.

We got up early on Sunday to go to a morning showing of Food, Inc. Before that, we stopped by Newport Beach to get cupcakes at Sprinkles for breakfast. Good stuff. Mia didn't want to see Food, Inc., so she saw 500 Days of Summer. Food Inc was very good. It's a documentary about a lot of the sketchy practices of the food industry. It kind of covered a lot of stuff that I had read about in Omnivore's Dilemma, but it's definitely a must-see movie. Kind of made me not want to eat meat anymore. We'll ignore the fact that I have eaten meat several times since seeing the movie. It'd be hard to do anything until school starts anyway. Will just reduce meat consumption for now and see where that goes.

We ate at Avanti Cafe afterwards, which is this little vegetarian cafe in Costa Mesa that I have always wanted to try. They were like real vegetarian, not “fake meat” vegetarian. Didn't quite expect that, but the caprese salad I had was very good.

We went back and I packed and got ready. Hung out for a couple of hours. Ate artichokes together, got Red Mango, and then Chris dropped me off at the airport.

That's about it for the weekend. This week's been going by super fast and I cannot believe that I'm almost done with my summer externship. This summer went by way too quickly. Not done yet. Got Korea next! Woot.