April Fools & Blues

Sunday started the month of April and what a gorgeous day it was!  It had rained on Saturday night so it was a beautiful, clear, but breezy day, so of course, I took a nice long walk around the neighborhood, once again, heading up a major hill on Palms Blvd that takes me to an amazing view of all of LA and even the Hollywood sign.  The sky was such a beautiful shade of blue with just two big clouds over parts of the city.  Along with enjoying the view I chatted with my Wolfdog, Andrea, about her upcoming Housewarming Party next weekend.  Exciting!

My Mom had called me earlier giving me this story about Facebook and accidentally adding someone and not realizing it, and I started to get frustrated as to why she would add this random person when she yelled out April Fool's and started laughing. I didn't think it was funny but had to give her props for actually fooling me.  I tried to play a little joke later and mine didn't go over so well.  Well, ya win some, ya lose some.  I remember a couple years ago I told my Mom they had fired me from my job because of something ridiculous and I had her going for a while, so I suppose this was probably payback.

That evening I met up with a couple friends at Mom's Bar in West LA where Nick, my old Manager from Saint's & Sinner's works.  We had a mini S&S reunion including Canadian Carrie!  We all went in for Karaoke but apparently that quit a couple weeks ago, and has been replaced with Ping Pong.  Really?  I've got one more week until Easter, so less than 7 days till I can drink shots with my friends or have some french fries and I feel like I've really been tested this past week!  So soon...

On Monday I kicked off the week with a crazy Yoga Work-out with an emphasis on opening and stretching your hips to improve flexibility and flow.  Over 75 minutes later my legs felt like jelly but it was such a great breathing exercise and vinyasa.  I just hope I won't be too sore tomorrow for my run!

Of course, the March Madness Championship game was on Monday night as well.  University of Kentucky vs Kansas.  Both blue teams but I was cheering on Big Blue as I had picked them to win my bracket and I have been a fan of Cheerleading Team for the past 10 years as they were always the best and performed amazing!  I got together with some friends at Bru Haus and got to see some of the old Cabo Crew so that was nice.   My crew was cheering on Kansas so I was the Lone Ranger being a Kentucky fun and happy I was because Kentucky won.  The game wasn't all that exciting, until the end when Kansas started coming back, but couldn't overtake the powerful Wildcats!  And my Kansas boys were definitely feeling the blues after that game.  Sorry Boys...there's always next year ;)

Thi & Ting Tings

A very T filled day...literally :)

This afternoon my girlfriend, Thi, picked me up in her brand new Mini Cooper and we had lunch at Tender Greens in Culver City and caught up!  She's been in Alaska working on a show there for a few months, so I was so glad to have her back in LA before she's off to NY to work on another show.  Tender Greens is one of our favorite spots, super healthy, super yummy, and perfect outdoor seating, even if a tree tried to attack me.  Of course I'm going to describe my meal...Perfectly cooked Prawns on a bed of Arugula and Butter Lettuce in a Lemon Vinaigrette, with carrots and Parmesan cheese.  Absolutely amazing, and our conversation was as well!

Even though March Madness is going on, and I'm actually doing fairly well, I could only watch bits and pieces of the game since I found a UCA Cheerleading Championship on ESPN 2.  I found myself cheering and getting excited for the teams (since they're practically all the same teams that are in the March Madness play-offs, I didn't feel too guilty).  I even found myself getting nervous if stunts weren't hitting, or someone got off balance.  I miss Cheerleading so much and I remember when our Winona State Cheerleading Team went to Nationals in Florida, two years in a row.  We had such a blast, and it's so neat competing on that stage!

Then tonight, Morgan and I went to The Mayan in Downtown LA to see The Ting Tings in concert.  We got there a little after 9:30 and they started shortly after 10 pm.  We got to check out the whole venue, and decided to sit in the balcony area because you could see the whole stage, even though we could have been down in front in the standing room.  We couldn't bring our drinks there though, so to the balcony it was.  The show was good.  I've never seen them before, and only knew a couple songs by them, but they were interesting and unique.  Since it's only the two of them, I was really impressed by their sound.  The guy would be playing the guitar, and then go back and play the drums.  She would be playing a small piano, and then put on a guitar and sing.  She did change guitars through the whole show, which was kind of distracting, but overall it was pretty good.  Morgan and I were mostly excited for the popular songs, but glad to be spending some time together and catching up as well!  The concert only lasted a little over an hour which was kind of a bummer, but neither of us knew what to expect, so we didn't mind heading out early and getting home before midnight.  And boy oh boy, did both of us want Bacon Wrapped Hotdogs when we left...they smelled so darn good!  Thank goodness Lent only goes for another couple of weeks!

Mayan Theatre for The Ting Tings with Morgan!

Lucky for me, my week's been off to a great start, and is taking stride...

Knock yourself out putting on the Rogaine and the Speedstick!

I'm getting very excited about my Casting Workshop on Saturday, and now that I know what scene I'll be doing, I just need to rehearse it with a scene partner.

I'm doing a scene from 'Sex & The City' that's got some great underlying humor, but allows me as an actress, to build, and show varying ranges of emotion.  I've worked on the scene and memorized it so this afternoon Neil came over to rehearse it with me.  I'll have a Reader at the Workshop, which means, whomever is reading it, will probably be seeing the scene for the first time, and while I'm on-stage doing my lines, they'll be reading along, and hopefully, great at cold reads.  When Neil and I were rehearsing, we practiced initially, expecting the worst of what could happen, just in case, so that I can be strong no matter what.  After reading it a couple times, Neil couldn't help but be awesome at it, so it made my job so much easier :)  We worked through the scene, Neil giving me notes, and me making small changes to better the scene.  I definitely feel better after rehearsing it and hope we'll be able to practice it a little bit more before Saturday.  But I feel as though it will have more of an impact then when I originally had rehearsed it alone, so that's great!

After our rehearsal Neil and I went to The Arsenal to watch the Bulls game, but since they couldn't turn the sound on, and I had already ordered because Happy Hour was ending, we drank our drinks, ate our food, and left.  Definitely a bummer.  So then we headed over to Gabe's to watch the 2nd half of the game.  I'm not a huge Basketball fan, although I loved cheering for the boys in College, because as a Cheerleader, you're right there in the action which made it so much more exciting, and I knew all the guys playing so I was genuinely happy when they were playing well!  When I moved to LA I became a Laker fan, because I wasn't all that into Basketball, and went to my first game out here and sat in the 6th row, right behind Jordan Farmar.  That's why I became a fan of the Lakers!  Since he left the team, I kind of lost interest in Basketball, but have watched some Bulls games with Neil the past couple seasons.  The first Basketball game I EVER went to was a Bulls game, and we had great seats when I had gone, probably in 1999 or 2000, so I've always considered myself a Bulls fan because I enjoyed watching and knew all the players at that time, Pippen, Rodman, etc.

Since we were at Gabe's, it made it easy to get Karaoke started!  I opened the night with Seether's version of 'Careless Whisper,' with Neil doing some background vocals.  I've always loved that version and had heard it on my run earlier in the day, so I thought I would try it, since it would be my new song of the night.  It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to sing it again now that I'll be more comfortable with it.  Neil and I also sang Seether & Amy Lee's 'Broken' which was a first for Neil, and had been a long time since I had sang it.  Karaoke was really steady for most of the night, but slowed down around 11:30 and I was able to get out before 1 am so that was nice.

All in all, a very creative and productive day!  

Rock & Roll.

PS.  The title of this blog is a line from my scene...great scene in 'Sex & The City!'