Duck Beach Fun

Ok so I admit it. I'm home. I'm not necessarily happy about it. Don't get me wrong. I love San Francsico and I have wonderful friends, a great job, and I'm happy here. I just love North Carolina so much and even more than that, I love being with such good friends in such an awesome place. We had some great times this past weekend and more than that, I feel relaxed, happy, and motivated to be a better person than I am. How often does that happen while you're on vacation? Yeah...not too often.

I don't have a plethora of pictures, but here are a few to give you a general idea of the great times that I had.
I flew into DC on Thurday and met up with Mel for dinner. We've been living so far away from each other for so long now that I forgot how good it is to be with her. Sure love her. On Friday morning, Adrian and I started our journey to Duck Beach, but along the way, we stopped in Williamsburg and Jamestown with Dave. I'd never been to either place and I'm so glad that we stopped. I learned a lot and enjoyed the scenery immensely.

Here I am in Williamsburg giving the "Colonial" look a try. What do you think? Next time I'm there I'm going to rent the full Colonial Get-up and walk around town in it. You think I'm kidding. But I'm not.

It was over $60 to take a tour of the Governor's Palace. I'm hoping that if anyone wants to see it that bad that they at least give you a t-shirt or some gold encrusted chocolates.

Dave & Adrian were so in love with Pocahantas at Jamestown. They both wanted to hold hands with her. Supposedly Dave is a direct descendant, so its kinda creepy that he was holding hands with a statue of one of his grandmothers. Whoa.

The pictures wouldn't be complete without this one of a group playing the "Dip dip dip" game on Saturday night. If you're lucky, I'll teach you how to play.

At our Saturday night barbeque...Around the table starting at about 7 (if the table were a clock) we have...Brandon, Steph C, Brent P, Scott P, Mauri, Steph Z, and France. There were 2 Brent's, 4 David's, 2 Scott's, and 3 Stephanie's...and I think there were more duplicates in there, but that is all I can remember right now.

Last year Brent P taught us the fine art of the North Carolina dribble. You mix sand and water and then carefully dribble the mixture onto the already placed "towers." You may think that this is a joke; but its not. Brent wanted me to make sure and get his tattoo in the picture while he was demonstrating the NC Dribble.

Of course Dave H's part of the castle was impeccable.

And here's a small group photo of us with our sand castle. The water was quickly destroying our fortress so we took a picture before it was completed. Ah, good times.

OBX in shells on the front of the castle.

And just because this picture make me laugh every time I see it, Scott Porter, ladies and gentlemen. This picture was taken at about 5am Tuesday morning. Why he's trying to get bracelets to stick into his eye sockets is a question that I'm still trying to answer.

Dear Duck Beach,
I miss you so much and will be back again, I promise.

Love,

Sizzle

Home.

Did i mention that i don't want to come home?

Sand castle

Happy Memorial Day

I love San Francisco and all, but just so you know, I don't want to come home. Just as I expected, I'm having the time of my life here on the beach.

ok I'm missing out on the fun.

out

still loving life at the beach. :)

I love vacation.

Don't even be jealous of my rental.

Out...

I'm off. I'll have my computer with me, so I may post occasionally from the beach. But don't count on it. I'll be back next Thursday.

The Big Finale

Soon after moving to San Francisco, my new friend Rick Buck told me that he liked to watch American Idol when he lived in Provo. I had watched the previous two seasons off and on with friends in Provo as well, so we started watching it together every week. There have been very few instances where I have missed watching an episode of American Idol with Rick Buck in the past three years. We always get tired of the audition shows and we hardly pay attention during Hollywood week, but we've stuck together through it all. Some of the favorite contestants have been: Carrie Underpants, Anwar, Bo, Scott Savol, Constantine, Ace (I'd like to show you my scar) Young, Kat McBoobs, Chris Daughtry, Taylor, Elliott Sing-like-Yamin-it, and many more. We even went to American Idol together last year. We. Are. Serious.
Buck graduates from the UoP school of dentistry in the next few weeks and so it is with great hesitation that I watch the Finale of the 6th Season of American Idol tonight because it also marks the end of an era. I realize that Idol isn't on cable, so I can get it with the rabbit ears on the TV, but it just isn't the same. Buck...what am I going to do without you and your TV? ha. just kidding.

not really.

So did you watch last night's final performances? In my opinion, Jordin won it by a land slide. I like Blake more and think that he's fantastic, but I just don't think that he'll win tonight. Sad, but true. Check out this performance:

To see Jordin's other performances from last night, click here and here. For Blake, here, here, and here.
I'm going to bring kleenex to Buck's tonight. I have a feeling that I'm going to cry through the entire episode at the thought of him moving away.

Roadtrip Music

Ok I'm going on a loooooonng plane ride tomorrow (my day will start at 4am and end at an hour much later than midnight if I know Melissa well...) and then I'm going to be in the car for about 6 hours + on Friday.

Lets get some roadtrip music suggestions from my readers. There are lots of you out there reading this, so leave a comment and lets see what you've got.

PS. Here's a picture of where I'm going.

Making Myself Honest

So sometimes when you go public with a goal or resolution, it's more likely to stick. Maybe its because you feel like people will know that you're a failure if you fail, so pride stops you from failing or at least stops you from trying to fail.
By the way, do you ever write a word so much that it stops making sense to you??
Ok so here's my opportunity to come clean about some goals that I have. Drumroll please:

1. No more eating crappy for Stephanie. I've decided that if I work out multiple days in a row than I can give myself 1 treat. Yea, that's right. 1. And remember...it's not a diet. This is a lifestyle change.
2. I am resolving to not buy another book until I have read all of the unread ones that sit on my shelf. Yes, I know that there are a lot of them. I should be saving a lot of money over the next 10 years. :) Well, I doubt that it will take that long, but it will honestly probably take me a few years. Accepting books as gifts or checking them out from the library is completely acceptable. I just don't need to add to my collection for a while. Included on the unread shelf are the following: (well, a small part of it)

• Northanger Abbey
• Mansfield Park
• Sense & Sensibility (I've owned the book for years but am afraid to read it because I love the movie so much)
• All 7 of the Chronicles of Narnia
• A Room with a View
• Howard's End
• On a Winter's Night a Traveler (I was supposed to read this book my senior year of college, so don't tell my teacher that I never read it)
• David Copperfield
• Devil Wears Prada
• Tuesdays with Morrie
• The 5 People You Meet in Heaven
• The Mermaid Chair
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Emma
• The Four Loves
• Lots more that I can't even think of....
  

5 Questions

So Heidi emailed me 5 questions that I am supposed to answer here for all of you to see. Here you go:

1. What is your most memorable vacation? Why?
Growing up my family went on a lot of trips. We moved to North Carolina from the Bay Area when I was 7 years old. My Dad is really into American history, so we took advantage of living on the East Coast. I've seen almost every single Civil War and Revolutionary War Battle site known to man. Some of them I've seen more than necessary. We drove across the United States every summer to visit friends and family along the way to California, but one summer, our family (with another lds family) did a Church history tour. We started out in Palmyra, saw the Hill Cumorah Pagaent, drove to Kirtland, Ohio, drove all night across the Mississippi River (this was summer of '91) to get to Nauvoo. We also went to Independence, Missouri somewhere in there. It took us about a week to do it all and I'll never forget all the things we saw and did. Amazing.

2. What is your idea of a perfect day?

Honestly, my idea of a perfect day is pretty simple. I would spend the day somewhere beautiful surrounded by my family and good friends, laughing the entire time, eating all the crap I wanted with no side effects including tons of chocolate cheesecake and tacos. An alternate perfect day would include me and someone that I love on a train somewhere in Europe on our way somewhere awesome.

3. If you suddenly won 1,000,000 dollars, what would you do first, second and third? (Tax free, we're talking about 1 million smackers to spend!)

I know that this sounds dumb, but I probably wouldn't change my life too much. I'd probably invest it so that I could buy a piece of property here in San Francisco and travel to places more exciting than the places I go now. I don't have much to complain about, so things would pretty much stay the same. Except that I might hire a full-time personal trainer (don't worry, I know whose I am) and buy myself a new wardrobe.

4. What is your favorite thing about San Francisco?

There are so many amazing things about this city. I fall more in love with it every day. I love the great restaurants, the amazing friends that I have here, the weather (even though its sometimes easy to complain) is great because it never changes, I love that the people aren't afraid to be who they want to be, I hear the ocean at night, the shopping is great, I have an awesome job, I'm close to family, there's always something going on in the city to go to, there's a temple close by. Oh...wait. Did you want me to pick just one thing or list some of my favorite things?

5. Do you have any strange habits or odd tendencies you would like to admit?

Well, when I get tired, I literally can't keep my mouth shut. My mom is the same way. Its the easiest way to tell if I'm really tired. You look at me and I'm staring off into space with my mouth wide open. Sad, but true.

Ok so if you want questions, ask Heidi...

Beehive

Have you ever wanted to know how to do your hair like this? I think that this could be a great party theme....Here are some directions.

SF Botanical Garden

On Saturday I went to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens with some friends and it was amazing! I can't believe that I hadn't ever been before. There were plants there that I had never even thought existed. It just seemed like every time I turned a corner there was something else to be amazed at. I didn't take these pictures, but they're all of plants at the Botanical Gardens. Enjoy.
This plant was huge and all of the little spiny things were like little sticks. Kinda like a huge wooden koosh ball. Remember those?
This cactus plant was super cool. Kinda like lettuce, but mostly like a wound up cactus.
Bamboo shoots.
Who knows what this is...but isn't it awesome?!

4 days...

I just can't help myself

Ok so I really will give you a prize if you can guess who I "made" these babies with. One of them is a close friend and the other is a celeb. And FYI....no one has correctly guessed the other one that I posted yesterday. Get on it people!

No One

I found this post today on Angela Corinne's blog. She wrote this I guess...and it pretty much sums up how I feel about dating. So here you go:

I am convinced that technology has ruined dating. Seriously. Before we all had cell phones or the internet, it wasn't unusual to call and leave someone a message on an answering machine and then wait a day or two to hear back from them. We would just think they were busy or didn't get the message or whatever. But now, it's totally different. We all know that they have their cell phones on them and can see that we are calling and if they don't call back or text back or whatever than there is obviously something wrong. So we jump to all sorts of conclusions. And now with myspace and LDSlink up you can tell if someone is online, which just adds insult to injury, because they also can see that you are online and are just choosing not to correspond with you. So whether there is something wrong with your relationship or not, you just assume that something is because they aren't making contact when they have so many opportunities to do so.

Now I am not talking about my life currently. I have experienced this in the past and I have just been thinking about it. Currently I am dating No One and he's great. I haven't dated No One in a long time and I have to say that I have really missed him. I normally have Someone waiting in the wings even if I have a guy I am dating, but not now. I am starting to think that No One is the perfect companion for me. I never have to worry about him not returning my calls or not emailing me, he never says mean things or hurts my feelings and I never have to tell him to go home. No One takes me to the movies, No One buys me dinner, No One sends me flowers and I'm ok with that. I think No One and I have a real chance of making a long term go at it. At least I am going to try for a little while with No One. It just feels right.

Amen.

Hilarious

I don't know how to put sound clips on my blog or else I'd post this. Chances are I emailed this to you yesterday. If I didn't and you have no idea what I'm talking about, click here to see Pace & Joy's blog and listen to the clip that I emailed out to the known universe. You won't be sorry. If you're not lds, you'll still find it humorous, but not as funny as we will. Enjoy.

Better Late Than Never

If you're friends with the infamous DF, you probably got an email today with these pictures in it. But...since most of them include me and things that I've done recently and don't have pictures of, here you go:This picture is going to be framed in our house....most definitely.

I heart Rick Buck and Dan Fife...


One of these things is not like the others...


KABOOOOOMM!Insert "Awwws" here.

Delicious Dinner

So as you all know, I've got a celebrity twin. You'd think that I'd have her cookbook or something, but I don't. I do get her magazine, which I love, but I'd never tried any of the recipes in it before last night. This was my first attempt at any Rachael Ray recipe and it turned out awesome. Fairly healthy and YUM-O!

Have you ever wondered what your kids would look like if you mated with a certain person? Click here to find out. Any guesses on who I get to share this horrifyingly ugly baby with?

Flickr

Why does Flickr always have something cool to help you waste your time? It is a mystery.

I know you love these...

BLUE

You give your love and friendship unconditionally. You enjoy long, thoughtful conversations rich in philosophy and spirituality. You are very loyal and intuitive.

Find out your color at QuizMeme.com!

Was I Dreaming?

I woke up this morning thinking: "I talked to Scott Wolf. I talked to Scott Wolf."

Ok so read this to prove that it really was possible that I sat next to him, shook his hand, and he asked me what my name is. His wife was really nice too. Whoa...still in denial that it happened. Just in case you're wondering...he's even more gorgeous in person.

The Countdown in on...

Only 11 days until I'll be here...

Its Reasons Like This...

...that I love San Francisco. These pictures were found via Flickr. My camera was out of battery on Saturday so I didn't get many pics from my weekend adventures. I will however steal as many pictures as I can from my friends. In the meantime, enjoy these from someone else that I don't know. The fireworks were amazing. I LOVE this picture:

Gotta love kaboom.

Best Month Ever

Do you remember all the awesome things that I did last May? So many fun things happened. Good news! Fun things are happening again this year as well. In fact, most of the same things are happening with some added bonuses such as this and this and this. I'm going to Kaboom this weekend, a relaxing vacation is in two weeks, and I'm going to see my crush again. Can life get any better?

Well....I am planning trips right now to go here and here. Maybe I should brush up on my Spanish. Yes, life is good.

PS....I really hope you're clicking on these links...

Will

This is my 4 year old nephew Will. I love all my sister's children, but Will has always been my little buddy. My mom called me this morning to tell me that Will was tested for kindergarten yesterday. The lady who tested him told my sister that his test scores are the highest that she's ever seen. So...next time I tell you that my nephew is smarter than yours, I really mean it.

I LOVE this.
UPDATE: This is Ray Lamontagne & Damien Rice for those who are curious.

Lord of the Rings, the Musical

I am a wus. Always have been. Always will be, I guess. When I was at Disney World in the 10th grade, my best friend and I got in a huge fight because I wouldn't go on the ride with her where the "alien" comes up from behind you and breaths in your ear. The thought absolutely terrified me.
I just don't like scary things at all. I won't go to haunted houses and I don't watch scary movies. Some past boyfriends have thought that I was just kidding when I told them that I didn't like scary movies and that I'd really just snuggle up to them if they took me to see a movie like "The Ring." Ummmm. . . snuggling is the LAST thing on my mind if anyone takes me to see a scary movie. Punching is more like it.
Have you ever seen an on-stage production that scared you? In all my experience with seeing plays here in the U.S. and in London, I've never really seen anything that I would consider scary. Last November I saw Blue Man Group in Las Vegas. It wasn't scary, but when these guys got all up in my face, I got real nervous.So when I heard about this, I thought that it sounded fairly interesting for those fascinated with Middle Earth. For the most part, Lord of the Rings doesn't scare me. However, if an Orc was all up in my face, you'd better believe that you'd be reading a post today about when/where my funeral is being held because I think I would die of a heart attack. If you're into that sort of thing and feel like soiling yourself...and you happen to be in London, check it out. I just hope that you're ok with this guy being all up in your grill.

Which is Better?

OR


Here's another comparison for you:

OR

Personal DNA

Take the test yourself by clicking here.

Lets get a few things straight.
1. I'm not really dating anyone named Luke. Its a show. I wish I was dating Luke! :)
2. Idol last night was pretty bad in my opinion. Who did you vote for and who do you think will be going home?
3. I'm pretty much normal again after not being able to walk very well the past few days. In fact, I'm going to go for a jog tomorrow.
4. Only 2 weeks until I leave for Duck Beach!

Insomnia

Last night I got into bed at about 11pm. I had been hanging out with Lorelai and Rory since getting home from work since I couldn't do much else yesterday. I never have problems falling asleep. Once my head hits the pillow, I'm gone. But last night, nothing. This half-marathon has really rocked my body. After staring at the ceiling for about 45 minutes, I gave up and decided to go date Luke again until about 3:30 a.m.. Ah. Such is life. The even odder thing is that despite my 4 hours of sleep last night (if that), I'm not the least bit tired today. What the heck!??

If you're wondering what was going on in my head before I destroyed all the muscles in my legs on Sunday, here you go.

Still Alive

First off, this past weekend was amazing. Have you ever been up the Redwoods? If the answer to that question was "no" then stop what you're doing right now and get in your car. Such a beautiful place! We wanted to start the trip off right by driving through a redwood tree to see what the fuss was about. Then we decided that we needed to climb inside of one just for good measure. Seriously...that is one HUGE tree!Here we are about to start the race. It was a little chilly out there so we were all hiding our racing numbers underneath a few layers.

So here we are after the race. We had a camera man so I was hoping that we'd have pictures of each one of us crossing the finish line, but unfortunately, we had to fire him for not taking any pictures. I'll probably just end up buying the ones that the professional photographers took along the trail.And here we are all fresh and clean again. Hooray for us! Karen and I ran quite a bit of the race together and when Rita and Kristy passed us heading back towards the finish line, we yelled for each other and I screamed "This was the worst idea we ever had!!!!" At least we all finished!
Good job girls. Seriously. How lucky am I to be friends with amazing people like you? So....October in San Jose? Any takers?

And just in case you're wondering, I'm having a little trouble walking today. :)