I almost feel like I actually live out here...

Hmmm, not the most eventful week since my last post.

Monday at Intuition was a pretty average day. I am racking my brain to remember what I did, which probably means nothing exciting. I kept pretty busy between two scripts Keri needed me to read, so that was good. It's just funny how that works out because I took work with me for my class to work on and I didn't have time to do it and other days I don't take work and I end up not having anything to do all day. The parking garage where I park in was completely flooded from all the rain we got last Sunday, so that was an interesting start to the day. Other than that, not much was really going on.

Tuesday I was the only intern at the office, so I was pretty busy that whole day as well. Keri heard about this Adidas shoe sale happening across the street from our office, so her, Patrick, and I went to check it out. The sale was incredible, brand new Adidas sneakers for $15, 2 for $20. They also had a lot of clothing there too, but by the time we got there everything was pretty much picked over, so none of us got anything. Afterward Keri bought us drinks at Cafe Etc. because we were right there, so that was nice.
Tuesday night was also the first night we had class since Spring Break was over, and we found out we got an extension (one week) on the research paper we thought was due this Tuesday, so that was good because up until that point I hadn't started doing any research for it yet....

Wednesday I worked at The Doctors because someone somewhere along the chain of importance has decided they want the season to wrap before Easter instead of in May, which was what was originally scheduled. Because of this new decision, we are now going to have a bunch of three day weeks to finish in time. At first I didn't care, but by the end of the day on Friday I was completely exhausted and I am not really looking forward to doing it all again this week...
No one exciting was on the show Wednesday, and we wrapped at the perfect time because I have to leave at 4 on Wednesdays to make my work study shift at the Pendelton Center.
That night we went to Millions of Milkshakes because Mia's friend is here for a few days. I was surprised to see they completely redid their menu! They took off a few items (from what I remembered) and added a lot more. Now they supposedly have every single shake ever made by a celeb at any of the Millions of Milkshakes locations available there, but the menu isn't that big so I feel like they are missing a few. Oh well! It was really good, as usual, but the shakes there are so thick they always make me cough a lot while I'm drinking them.

Thursday we had two celebs in back-to-back shows, so it was a pretty busy day for us. Adrienne Maloof, from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, was there with her husband because he is a doctor. I don't watch the show, but a few other people in my department do and they say she is the best one because she stays out of all the stupid drama, so I guess that's pretty cool! The entire Bravo crew was there taping her every move, so all the people that had to talk to them about one thing or another were asked to sign a release. I pretty much stayed away because I have no interest in being on the show, still pretty awesome that I could have been though!
Michael Waltrip, a Nascar driver, was also there talking about the safeties of driving (surprise!). Now living near the Pocono Raceway made me think, "why have I never heard of this guy?" turns out he is no longer racing. But the interesting thing about him is, that he won the race in 2001 that Dale Earnheart was killed during. He was pretty good friends with Dale & Dale Jr. and the three of them were in first, second (Jr.), and third place when the crash happened during the last lap. All I keep thinking is how hard it must have been for Michael to have his name on a trophy for a race that will only be remembered as the race that killed his friend. Didn't get to interact with Michael much, but I did drive his dad back and forth to the parking lot on the golf cart and he was really nice. We talked a lot about Pocono and, surprisingly, Ithaca. It is crazy how many people are interested in what I am doing out here, where I go to school, and what I want to do when I get out. I mean, maybe they are just making conversation, but it is still nice that people ask.

Friday was my boss, Josie's birthday, so we did this thing called "Fun Friday" where everyone brings something to share with the group to munch on throughout the day. No one exciting was on, but it was a pretty easy day so it was a perfect type of day to have all kinds of food.
Friday night we went to see Danny in a comedy show at this place in downtown Burbank called, Flappers Comedy Club. It was a cool little place and most of the comedians were actually funny, so that was good. Danny was the only one, from what I can tell, that was still in school, so it was definitely a good opportunity for him. There were some IC alums there as well so it was nice to see some familiar faces.

Yesterday was the ICLA Volleyball tournament here at the Oakwood, so Ginny and I went to watch part of it. It was really cold and started raining at one point so we decided (after Danny's team lost their second match) that we would go work on our research papers a little at the Pendelton Center. After the tournament was over, there was a cookout (which turned into cold-cuts because of the rain) for everyone so we went back to the clubhouse for that.
At night we had some people over, and I guess between the amount of people that were here and the fact that our sliding door was opened, our "neighbors" complained that we were being too loud, so we got our first noise violation. Apparently all that happens is that we get a warning letter in the mail because it was our first time, so we just have to make sure it doesn't happen again. When in Los Angeles....right? haha

Today I went grocery shopping and I am about to write some more pages for my spec script. I wanted to get to the public library in Burbank today, but that doesn't look like it is going to happen before Tuesday because we have Media Industries tomorrow. Once this paper is out of the way, I need to seriously start thinking about who I am going to interview for the assignment for that class. Next Monday starts the only other Mini-course I signed up for, so it looks like I can kiss my Monday nights goodbye for a little while. Hopefully the class will be as interesting as it seems so it is worth it!

Another thing worth noting is that I have my skype interview to be an Summer Orientation Leader on Wednesday during work. I already asked Josie about it and she said it would be fine for me to stow away in a vacant dressing room for half an hour, so that's good. I'm really nervous about it because I have pretty much banked all my plans for the summer on getting the position AND it is something that I have wanted to do since I went to Orientation myself three years ago. Man, time has certainly flown by since then....

Spring Break!

It has been a crazy week!

Sunday we went to Zuma Beach in Malibu, which I think is the cleanest and prettiest beach I have been to so far. Though it was a little cold for the beach, we had a great time and took some great pictures!

We stopped at this place called Malibu Seafood for dinner where you literally order from a window and take your meal over to these picnic tables to eat at. It was really cute, someplace I would definitely go again if we were in Malibu. The place is also a fish market, and as we were standing in line to order, in walks Patrick Dempsey! I found out later he was on the way home from an event that one of the girls I intern with at Intuition was at, so we both saw him that day. I was really excited because it was my first official celeb sighting out in the wild. He is another one of those guys that looks just as flawless in real life as he does on TV. I don't watch Greys, but I can totally understand why he is Dr. McDreamy! hahaa

Sunday night I watched 127 Hours, which was an incredible, but really trippy movie. James Franco did an amazing job, but I was glad to be watching it with my friend who had read the book before hand because he explained stuff to me that the movie didn't have a lot of time to get into.

Monday at Intuition, Patrick was out sick so it was just me and Roda (the other intern that was at the event I mentioned earlier) there by ourselves almost all day. Keri called and said we could go to Chipotle for lunch on her, so that was exciting because that hadn't happened to me while I was there before. It probably was one of my favorite days of work there ever because we literally just talked about TV shows (mostly Firefly) all day.
That night I watched The King's Speech (Keri gave me a copy of it at work), which means I only have two more Oscar nominated movies to watch until I have seen them all! I struggled a little with different aspects of the movie, but overall I thought it was very well done and that Colin Firth most definitely deserved his Academy Award for his performance as the Duke. I read somewhere that he would literally have headaches all day long because he was forcing himself to stutter so frequently, and I can only imagine the strength it took to successfully play that role as well as he did.

Tuesday was even more interesting because I came in an hour late after taking my car to get fixed in the morning and there was no one at the office when I got there! Little did I know, Patrick was still sick and the other intern Nicole had two job interviews that day and wasn't coming in. Keri called a lot, so it wasn't too stressful, it was just so weird being there by myself all day.

Wednesday we went to DISNEYLAND! The happiest place on earth! We had a great time and got to ride a lot of stuff. However, for a Wednesday it was insanely busy and we didn't get there right when it opened so there were three of the bigger rides that we didn't get to go on. My favorite rides were definitely Space Mountain (which I thought was cooler than the one in Florida) and the California Screamin' rollercoaster. I plan on taking my Mom and my brother there when they visit because one of the girls we went with got Ginny and I free tickets and parking (she used to work at Disney World) so we have two tickets already, we would just need to buy one more. I really enjoyed it there, something about that place is magical, no matter what your age is. There also was this really cool water show that we kind of saw, but we were so far back we missed a lot of it so I can't wait to go back and see it  again up close and do everything that we didn't get to!

On Thursday after a 4 show day on The Doctors, Kelsy (our friend from IC) came over to visit and have dinner with us. I made pork chops, green beans & almonds, and potatoes, and let me tell you, it was the best dinner I have cooked to date. I was so proud and happy that Kelsy could enjoy it with me. :) We were so glad to see her and catch up with her, it definitely was one of the highlights of my week. After dinner we went to get frozen yogurt, which is always a good time, and then took her back to her hotel. She seems to be having a lot of fun out here, and I think it's really smart that she is vacationing in LA before her semester here because she can start to learn her way around and get all the touristy stuff done now while she has a job...haha

Friday we had 54 guest on our three shows (as opposed to the usual 25) so it was absolutely crazy. It was also the finale of the weight loss program that has been airing every 17 days, so all the contestants brought their entire family along to watch the show, making our job insanely more difficult than it usually is. I got to work a little bit with the audience, and I discovered that I don't much enjoy it...haha. People are literally asking you questions every 3 seconds, it's a job that requires a lot of patience for sure. But I was glad to have the experience with it, and therefore I was glad when the day was over.

Yesterday, we stayed in most of the day. I watched the movie Serenity, which was made for all the obsessed Firefly fans that needed some closure after the show was cancelled. As with anything else done by Joss Whedon, the ending of it brought every emotion I have ever felt to the surface. That man is a genius.
That night Ginny, Danny, and I went to dinner in downtown Burbank at this place called The Market City Cafe. It was a great little Italian place that we discovered with reasonable prices. We were all really satisfied with our meals (I had Salmon in pesto sauce!) and I would definitely go there again. We also discovered a three story mall downtown, which we missed somehow the other times we have gone there, so we were happy to find the chain stores that we are used to in a mall close by if we need them.

This morning we got up early to go to this event Ginny was assigned to for Angeleno called Milk and Bookies - The Second Annual Story Time Celebration. At the event you could donate books to kids that aren't fortunate enough to have access to them, as well as create books of your own, take pictures with characters like Alice & the Mad Hatter, Waldo, The Man with the Yellow Hat, Pippy Longstocking, and more. There was obviously milk & cookies there, as well as free lunch and a chocolate fondue fountain. Throughout the day, celebs that support the cause have story time with the kids and read one of their favorite books. This place was packed full of children and their families, and it was just a really nice event that seems to have a lot of support. We saw Jason Biggs (American Pie),  Jeff Probst (host of Survivor), Nathan Fillion (from Firefly! eek!), Julie Bowen (Modern Family), Maya Rudolph (SNL, Grown Ups, Away We Go), Josh Holloway (Lost), and Jack Black read! We also saw Rainn Wilson (The Office), DJ Lance Rock (Yo Gabba Gabba), and Leslie Grossman (What I Like About You) there supporting the cause. It was really cute to see all the celebs with their kids! We had a great time.

I said something to my aunt on the phone the other day that we decided was worth mentioning on here. She asked me how my experience was compared to what I thought it would be and I told her, "It has been everything I thought it would be, everything I didn't think it would be, and everything I could have never imagined possible." She thought that was really nice and it just reminded me how blessed I am to have a family that supports me and the decisions that I make in my life. :)

Now I really have to do this homework I have been putting off all week. Break is over :(

One of my More Boring Weeks...ha!

So Shitty Jobs was hysterical! Donald Glover (Community) and Ben Schwartz (30 Rock) were both in it and I honestly can't say I have laughed that hard for that long in a really long time, maybe ever! Who knows.

Monday ICLA went on The Price is Right for their college spring break addition. It was kind of annoying because we had to be there at noon and the taping didn't start until like 4:30, but it was worth it because my friend Kelsey, who was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME, got on! She then won her bid (for a PSP and a bunch of games) and got on stage to play that squeeze a number out game, but she was off by one number...booo. Atleast she won something though! And we will all most definitely be on TV! eeek!

Tuesday was another typical day at Intuition, but at Government and Media that night I proposed my topic for my research paper to our professor - The Development of the Right of Publicity in the US and How it Varies from that in Other Countries...pretty serious stuff. James said I only picked that topic so that I could write about Elvis for a little, he would not be wrong...

Wednesday I went into the office for The Doctors because we were dark this week. It literally felt like a work day straight out of The Wizard of Oz because I went in at 10, went to lunch at 1, came back at 2, and was done by 3. Simplest day, ever. However the  4 hours I did work were nonstop, which probably contributes to the fact that I got done so early.

Thursday I went grocery shopping and had my midterm meeting with my academic advisor because sadly, we are half way through our time out here already. :( Thursday afternoon we tried to go to a Craig Feurgeson taping, but we got there too late and they overbooked the green room, so there was no room for us. The audience guy felt really bad though and said any time we wanted to go back we just had to call him to let him know we were coming and he would bring us straight to the front of the line, so atleast that was nice of him.

Yesterday I went in to work at Intuition because I took off Monday to go on Price. I got to leave early because the other intern had to go to work at 2 and Patrick wasn't feeling well, also Keri is currently in NYC so not much was going on at the office anyway. I used my free time to make a nice pot of chili for dinner...haha.

This morning we took Mia to the airport because unlike anyone else, she is actually going somewhere for Spring Break. The rest of the day I just kinda hung out. Ginny is getting paid to create a website for one of the local restaurants here, so she mostly worked on that and I finished the one and only amazing season of Firefly. I'm sad it's over, it was really a great show! However, I still am gonna watch the movie that they made for the obsessed fans that were mad the series was cancelled, so atleast I have that to look forward to.

Tonight we are going to see The Adjustment Bureau at the City Walk theater with these movie passes that we got 2/$9, so that's exciting!

I am also super pumped because our friend Kelsy is here this week! However, she is on family vacation so she can only spend like one night with us, but it is still exciting that we get to see her for a little! Ginny and I were discussing the other day how much we miss Ithaca and the people we got accustomed to seeing every day...

AND, we are officially on Spring Break now! So all that really means for me is no class this week...big difference...However, I am going to try to use my new free time to start my paper for Government and Media and work on my Modern Family script. In fact, if I don't use the free time to do those things I'll be in trouble, so hopefully I get a lot of work done this week!

Disneyland on Wednesday, the happiest place on earth! Whooooooo.

Only in Los Angeles...

So later in the day on Tuesday, Patrick asked the other intern and I if we wanted to go to a movie at the Arc Light on our lunch break so I was really excited because I heard a lot of cool things about the theater. However, we couldn't decide on a movie that none of us had already seen that fit into our time frame, so we didn't end up going :(

Wednesday was a pretty average day. The highlight of the day being, a girl I intern with on The Doctors has a sister that is a hair stylist so she cut my hair for cheap, and it looks really good! One of the best haircuts I have gotten since the lady we went to my entire childhood moved to North Carolina when I was in high school.

Thursday on The Doctors was an incredibly easy day. All three shows were light on guests, so we go out relatively early. 

That night at class we read the first scenes of all of our scripts out loud. At first I was really nervous that mine sucked because I waited until the last minute to write it, but it went over fairly well. My faith in my writing was restored a little.

I was dreading Friday because we knew it was going to be extremely long with 4 shows packed full of guests. However, things went pretty smoothly! The little boy (who’s name is Max Page) dressed as Darth Vader and trying to use the force on everything from the car commercial that first aired during the Superbowl was on the ‘A’ show. However, the star of the day was Alicia Silverstone, who I got to pick up in the parking lot and drive to the stage. Little did I know, she is very pregnant, so I tried to drive as slow and carefully as possible….She was really nice though! She was on the show promoting the Kind Diet, which she is the face of. 

Whenever we have celebs on the show, we order a flower arrangement to put in their dressing room for them to take home. However, Alicia left hers behind so when they do that someone in the talent or wardrobe department will take the arrangement home if we don't need it for someone else the next day. My boss asked me if I wanted to take hers, so we now have this beautiful flower arrangement sitting on our kitchen table. Thanks Alicia!

Yesterday, the ICLA program went to a Kings game. Even though our seats were at the very top in the last row, it was still a lot of fun. They ended up loosing to Vancouver, who we heard is the best team in the league, but it was close until the 3^rd period and therefore still a good game to watch. The ICLA program was the group of the evening so a bunch of people got to go down and sit on the visitor’s bench during the break between the 2^nd and 3^rd period. They showed them on the screen, which was cool, but even cooler was the fact that a few members from the Glee cast (including Heather Morris, Cory Montieth, and Matthew Morrison) were sitting in the box seating right next to them! I didn’t care too much about being on the screen for all of 4 seconds, but I was pretty jealous I didn’t get to see some Gleeks up close!

That night four of us went to the 8 o’clock showing of Avenue Q  that was at the Pantages theater for the national tour like Spring Awakening was. We all put our names in the lottery as usual, and my friend James actually won so he and I got seats in the front row! I heard a lot of good things about the show, so I had some pretty high expectations. Let me tell you, Avenue Q did not disappoint! It was hysterical and all the people in it were extremely talented, I couldn’t believe their ability to not only act, but have to show emotion through up to two puppets at a time! AMAZING!

We had to laugh because as we were standing in line for rush tickets we saw, Josh Sussman (from Glee) buying tickets in front of us. The joke of the evening was a hockey game & a musical with a side of Glee! Love seeing the cast members out in the 'wild'...haha

Today our other weekend program was a bonfire at Docweiler Beach, one of only two beaches in SoCal that has pits for bonfires. It was really fun, but we only stayed for a couple hours because it was pretty windy/cold and the beach is right next to LAX so loud planes kept flying over our heads every couple minutes. Other than that, it was another beautiful beach experience that you can only get in California!

Tonight I am going to a comedy show with some people at this comedy club called the United Citizens Brigade (or UCB). The show is called ‘Shitty Jobs’ and from what I have heard, it is extremely funny. They ask people in the audience what the shittiest job they have ever had is and do an improv set based off their answer so I am looking forward to that!

Also, a group of us are going to The Price is Right tomorrow so I am super excited! Hopefully someone from our group gets on, we are making t-shirts so we stand out a little more, haha!

Oscars Weekend

Figured I would update this now since I got to Intuition early for a change :)

SO! Turns out the sponsor of the lounge changes everytime. It was Extra's lounge this time instead of HBO's. Saturday was fairly epic, however it was so extremely cold that it hailed in Beverly Hills and snowed in Burbank (the first time in over 75 years!) so I think between the awful weather and the fact that there is a ton more going on during Oscars weekend versus Golden Globes weekend kept people from coming to the Luxury Lounge. I was honestly a little disappointed that more A list celebs didn't come, but beggars can't be choosers when you are getting paid for the day!
I escorted Michael Arndt (the writer of Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine), Daniel Sunjata (from Greys Anatomy and Rescue Me), and Matt Weiner and his wife (the creator/producer of Mad Men). All three were great guys. Daniel registered for a TiVo account (because they had a booth this time) and the lady gave me the paper they needed filled out, which includes full name, address, telephone number, and email address. I filled in his full name but it's not like I knew any of that other information so it was kind of funny. He was just like "I'll take it from here. I would be scared if you did know all that." So that was pretty entertaining.

The lounge had a lot of the same vendors as last time but there were a few different ones. Trident was there this time giving out a year supply of Trident, which I thought was pretty awesome. Also Heineken was there, TiVo as I mentioned earlier and this new video game called YooStar. It is basically like movie karaoke, you put yourself in a movie as one of the characters and have to deliver that characters lines. It seemed really cool! You can then download the videos to facebook and other sites so your friends can you see in a movie. The wonders of technology...

Also saw at the lounge: Leslie David Baker (The Office), Eric Johnson (one of the writers of The Fighter), Heather McDonald (Chelsea Lately), Isabel Gilles (Law and Order SVU), Lake Bell (No Strings Attached), and Anna Pacquin (True Blood).
However the people I was most excited about seeing (which is ironic because they aren't really celebrities...) was the actual people The Fighter was based off of! First Mikey and Charlene came in, but they tried to keep a low profile by getting in and out pretty quickly. However when Dicky and Alice (the mom) came in I didn't even have to ask anyone who they were because Christian Bale and Melissa Leo did such an amazing job portraying them! Dicky was really friendly, talking and taking pictures with everyone. He kept answering his phone and saying that he was at "the lounge of luxury." At one point he went up to one of the escorts named Caroline and stroked her cheek and started singing "Sweet Caroline" to her. I couldn't take my eyes off of them! I was telling Matt Weiner that I was star struck over them and he said something like, "it's funny the people who make you star struck, you would never guess it."

Sunday morning I returned with Ginny to the Four Seasons because she was planted at the brunch at the hotel there for her internship to see what celebs were eating there. We were getting really disappointed that we weren't seeing anyone until we saw the man of the day, Colin Firth! Some walked right up to him and said "Good luck tonight Colin!" So we thought that was pretty cool, especially after he won the Oscar later. We also had fun pretending like we fit amongst the people that could actually afford the $68 brunch (her internship reimburses her for everything).

After that Ginny, Kelsey, and I decided to go stalk the red carpet for the pre-Oscars coverage to see if we could see any celebs. It was hard to find a spot at first because so many of the streets were closed down, but we eventually found this area right by the red carpet blocked by this giant fence. There were TONS of people there though. I literally was getting squished on all sides and got stepped on everytime a limo would pull up and the door was opened. It was really uncomfortable so we didn't stay long, however we did get a chance to see Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, and Amy Adams! So that was pretty awesome.

Almost won this competition we were having through the ICLA program about who guessed the most correct winners of the Oscars, but I lost because I picked The Social Network for best picture instead of The King's Speech. boooo. The prize was two free movie tickets! haha

Last night we had our first Media Industries class (a mini-course we are all required to take that meets three times during the semester). There was a panel of IC alums there that came to talk about what they are doing now and how they got there from their time at IC. It was really interesting and it really made me think about my future because I was so adamant about what I wanted to do, not realizing that the path to getting there doesn't need to be as straightforward as I was imagining it to be. One of the panelists said, "sometimes you'll be taking jobs just to be employed and it is those jobs that you'll not only make contacts at, but that might lead you to something you couldn't imagine yourself doing but you find that you actually enjoy." That gave me a lot of peace of mind and honestly it made me look forward to the future because I don't know where I'll end but I am excited to see where that is and how I'll get there.

Guess I should go read a script now that one of my bosses are here!