Ringing in my Ears

I hear phones everywhere.  I am currently curled up in my fabulous (and newly Lindsay-fied) guest room and I swear to you, there are 4 angry agents, 2 producers and 3 late-for-audition actors trying to get my attention right now.

Three days into this job and all I hear are phones... everywhere.  They are haunting me.

The problem with the phones in the offices in which I work is that they ring at a very low volume.

So low that I imagine I am hearing them even when I am not.  So low that I have to carefully consider the blinking dot and analyze all the other blinking dots in the office to be sure I really do need to answer that call.

So low that when you accidentally confuse the blinking light for a call, when it is actually your boss on hold with the President of a major studio and you somehow inadvertently hang up on both of them, you feel like a doofus.

(Okay, so that didn't happen, but I came awfully stinking close.  Awwwwwwwfully stinking close.)

I think I might have nightmares about hostile phones with angry red lights tormenting me tonight. And constantly buzzing at a barely decipherable ring.

Brrrrrriiiiiiiiinnnnnggggggggggggggggg.........


Wish me luck.

P.S. Is there a "Mastering Office Phones with 57 lines for Dummies" book available?  Perhaps I should start there...

Wide Open Spaces

Guess what?!?!?

(I learned that little punctuation trick from my 13 year old sister, whose text messages usually contain 4x the amount of normally used punctuation.)

I MADE it to La La Land!

Er, well I made it close.  After a grueling 20 hours in the car with my Daddio, a pit stop and money-making venture in Vegas, and a final 5 hour stretch by myself, I rolled into Huntington Beach, where I will be residing with my incredibly generous and hospitable Uncle and Aunt until the big move to the city in about a month.

I guess I am a Californian now... weird.

(Every time I hear or say the word "Californian," it always comes out with Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent.  Again, weird.)

But let's start at the very beginning.  And pretend like I don't abandon this poor bloggie baby for weeks at a time.

My dad and I embarked on our adventure bright and early Wednesday morning, car packed to the brim and headed west.  We intended to stop in Flagstaff, Arizona, but alas, we didn't plan ahead and Flagstaff hotel rooms were a hot commodity on Wednesday.  So we carried on until 1 a.m. to Kingman, AZ.

We were tired.  17 hours and a little over 1000 miles is a lot of road to cover.

Sometime in those hours, the song "Wide Open Spaces" by the Dixie Chicks came on the radio.  Now, I clearly remember the album cover photo for this CD, because either all or some of the Chicks had tattoos on their toes.  And I remember thinking this was scandalous and awesome.  Anyway, I don't think I'd ever listened to the lyrics.  In many ways, it's me right now.  Heading west, needing to find her own place, make her own mistakes (can I skip this one, I wonder?) etc.  And I guess I had much more literal wide open space before, but I'm going to go with that anyway.

Also, we were in the middle of stinking wide open spaces.  For like, forever.

Next stop: VEGAS! My dad had the bright idea to swing by Vegas on the way, seeing as how I'd never seen this gem of a city and we are basically card sharks.

And I have to say, wow! Vegas! Look at you go!  This is a fun place folks.  We started with a quick tour of some hotels, which is entertainment in itself.

And the flowers in the Bellagio... swoon.

We dined well, saw some pretty incredible acrobatics, and hit the tables.

Now, like I said, we're pretty darn good gamblers.  We made a total of $125 playing Blackjack.  Super duper high rollers, as you can tell.

And then everything came crashing down.  The water and my tears.

Let me explain... The Bellagio has this fabulous water/light show every 15 minutes every night, and it is just plain gorgeous.  Who knew that water could be so captivating.  So we kept missing the start of the show, seeing the very end of "Your Song" once and the end of "One" from A Chorus Line the next time, until we finally got in prime viewing position for the last song of the evening.

The song was "Time to Say Goodbye." Possibly the most heartbreakingly beautifully haunting piece of music ever composed.

I love this song.  I listen to it when I'm feeling nostalgic and wanting to cry for no good reason.  I also want to walk down the aisle some day to a string quartet version of it.  (Staking my claim here and now, so don't even think about it friends.)

Here is a snippet...

Like, really, Bellagio? Time to freakin' say goodbye?

Ah, me.  So that was beautiful and tragic and amazing.

And now I've made it... to the land with absolutely zero wide open spaces.

And jobs looming on the horizon... translation: Monday.

Stay tuned...

Snake Farm

(WARNING: This post contains images that may induce nightmares, night terrors, and night seizures.  If you have night issues, it might be best to read this in the day.)

True life: My house is located on the edge of civilization.  We frequently have raccoons, tarantulas, coyotes, armadillos, centipedes, and even the occasional mountain lion roaming about.  To some this might seem scary, but we just like to think of it as our own little zoo.

With highly poisonous reptiles roaming freely, of course.

We were hosting a lovely little pool party on Friday night complete with Central Market cake (the addition of this novelty in Graham signals a super-special occasion) custom floral arrangements and queso.  Okay, so I arranged the flowers and Pioneer Woman inspired the queso, but I think you get the point... Clearly, this was one classy affair.

Our evening would have continued on uninterrupted if not for the appearance of one slithering friend.

This, city friends, is a copperhead.  (Sorry, city friends.  Y'all are just too easy of a target when I'm living in this wilderness.)  Copperheads are bad, bad, bad.  You can tell this by the triangular shape of their head.  You see, all the poison is stored in the jaw area, creating the "triangle" shape.

I didn't even make that up.

So, luckily my mom is a true Wilderness Woman and is always on alert for slithering friends at night time.  She shouted, my dad quickly grabbed a garden hoe, and we said our farewells to the serpent.

Seriously friends, click on the picture.  Or don't, depending on your aversion to reptiles and flesh wounds on said reptiles.

I mean, wow.  He almost looks alive.

So, as luck would have it, we met our second snakey friend of the weekend coming home from the lake.

Now our snake knowledge doesn't go much further than copper=bad, but all signs pointed to this little buddy being friendly.  Not too friendly though.  Anything that is four feet long and hisses must stay safely below the car window.  So we carried on.

Here's to hoping that was the last appearance of the serpentile variety for awhile.


Wait, they don't have snakes in California, do they?

Hair Feathering: Graham, TX Style

Hair feathers.  It is an interesting concept, no?  I mean, I guess I could see the appeal, there is a distinctly hippie-chic edge when feathering your head, and it seems to work well for Steven Tyler.

I mean, wow.  Who wouldn't want to look like that?

Don't answer that.

So, believe it or not, the craze that has swept everyone from Hillary Duff to Ke$ha has made it to small town America.  At the current time, there are approximately 3 school aged girls that are rocking the look, and there is a monopoly on the services to precisely one salon and one hairdresser in town.

Clearly, this is a hot-ticket item.

So, my younger sister decided that she wanted a feather in her hair to commemorate the last day of school and the beginning of summer.  Because she is the baby of the family, and my mom has some sort of desire to live her feathered-hair dreams vicariously through her, we had an appointment within the day.

Things like this seem to always work out for some people.  Am I right, middle children?

Anyway, my innovative neighbor was appalled at the idea of paying for a service such as feathering, when she had a perfectly good stack of feathers lying around her house just waiting to be stuck onto some poor, unsuspecting person's head.

This was her proposal.

These are pheasant feathers.  Like, straight off the bird.

That second one is an full blown wing.  Now wouldn't that be stylish?

(After reading on the official website that the feathers used in salons were sterilized and color-sealed, my neighbor was sure to note that these feathers were not sterilized.  Just to prevent any possible lawsuits.)

Anyway, she had also pulled out some sort of shot-gun shell type things to affix them to the hair.

(Actually, I don't really know what they were, but if I was making a hypothesis, I'd guess some sort of bullet.  But don't quote me on that.)

After we rolled on the floor for five minutes laughing, we tried to trim the feathers and shape them to appropriate hair feather dimensions.  Unfortunately, pheasant feathers have this annoying vein running through them that makes them stick out of one's head like some bad version of Black Swan.

And if you saw Black Swan, you know that we don't need anything more bizarre than what they offered up to begin with.


Here is the finished product, by the way.

A bit subtler than the wing, I guess.

Let's Pretend I have the Flu or something...

Instead of the fact that I am simply finding too many fun things to do in Graham, TX.

That's not a joke.

If you are still checking in to see what pithy remarks I might have today, bless you.  And I apologize for letting you down, day after day after day.

I like to console myself and my blogger's conscience by pretending that no one wants to read anything until I reach La-La Land (the big departure date is June 22, by the way), but that is just a lame excuse.

So, start expecting posts galore.

(Just what you wanted, I'm sure of it.)

Coming soon: Hair feathering: Graham, TX style.


I love y'all.  Seriously.  And I miss you like nobody's business.