Le Tour de Strand

Last Saturday, Anderson hosted Le Tour de Strand, a pub crawl with a twist: instead of walking or being shuttled between bars, we biked. With seven bars that stretched from Santa Monica all the way down to Hermosa Beach, Le Tour de Strand is an all day event that brings together current students, Sig-O's and alumni.

Including the ride from our apartment (point A on the map below) to the first bar and then along the route to the last bar, we biked about 19 miles, 16 or so which were right along the beach. It was a beautiful and sunny day, not too hot, and they scenery was splendid as was the company.



One of the funniest parts of the ride happened as soon as we arrived at the first stop. We didn't realized that this was a costume-encouraged event. There was a giant chicken and a giant banana, cowgirls, cops, neon yellow leaders (who got us lost once), a hula girl on roller blades and a boy in a tutu. I was in my sensible tennis shoes and layers because it was chilly in the morning and I had a backpack full of water, snacks and sunscreen. I'm already planning for next year's costume so I can make up for this year's nerdiness.

It was a long ride that lasted 9 hours, and we were SO tired by the end. So tired in fact, that we somehow  convinced our good friend to load our bikes into his car and drive us home (don't worry, he had not been riding or drinking that day).

I had to practically drag Mike to this event, but by the end of the day, we both agreed that it is now one of our Top Three All Time Favorite activities from this past year. We will definitely be Tour de Strand-ing again next spring.

Fashion Show and Celebrities

Last Thursday night was one of the Top 10 social events at Anderson: the Retail Management Association's Fashion Show. The RMA is a student run club and every year in the spring they blow their budget on a fashion show. They bring in professional designers, both big (Banana Republic) and small (usually friends of friends), hold tryouts for student models, and practice their best Blue Steel faces. Professors are also involved as models and even the dean gets out there and struts her stuff (in her own clothes I'm told).

The show as a lot of fun. Forty or so of my classmates sat through hair and make up sessions and then got up on stage of walked the runway. The event started out, however, a few hours beforehand, when the Wine Club held their annual pre-party. For a couple of hours, I sat with a large group of classmates in the Executive Dining Room at Anderson and drank wine. For the wine club, it was also a year end blow out as they emptied the wine fridge and spent the last of our dues on prosecco and snacks.

After the pre-party, I made my way up to Alumni Plaza, a big outdoor courtyard used for a variety of events. Welcomed by a mini-red carpet, we entered the show a constant flash of light bulbs and the small of Mexican food and more wine. For those of you who know me, I love Mexican food, so this was a pleasant surprise. After grabbing a plate of food and a beer (Meg's the wine drinker in the relationship), I found a good spot to view the festivities. There were a handful of seats, but only for VIPs. I'm not really sure who the VIPs were, but most of the seats remained empty throughout the show.

About an hour after I got there, the show started. First up was casual wear (knit pants and tennis clothes), followed by athletic wear and then what I'm told qualifies as "snappy cas." At "half time" the mood changed with one of my classmates singing a song from a musical (which one escapes me right now), followed by three dance routines (a hip hop dance, a lip synch, and an Indian dance). After the performances, the fashion continued with the professors, the dean and more students showing off their business and clubbing attire.

When all was said and done, and all the wine and beer consumed, the party continued with the after party at the W Hotel in Westwood. The place was packed, as most of the people who attended the fashion show managed their way over to the W. Megan joined me at this point (she had a phone interview in the afternoon and was focused on that - more on that from her later). The W was fun, we danced a little, talked to some friends and hung out with Charlie Sheen. Ok, hung out probably isn't the right word, more like gawked from behind his security perimeter. Yes, good old Charlie was there at the W, although no one from Anderson got to meet him. He and his crew sat in the outside patio with fake plants and trees cordoning off his private area. A big English bodyguard named Mack (we became buds as the night wore on) stood blocking anyone hoping to get too close.

All in all it was a fun night. It was my first fashion show and my "biggest" celebrity sighting since moving to LA. And, with the quarter coming to a close in two weeks and summer internships awaiting us all, a great way to hang out with some friends. Who knows, maybe next year I'll have the courage to get my butt up there and walk the runway.

Zac Brown Band at the Hollywood Bowl

Country fans, prepare to be jealous.

Last night I had the opportunity to go to the Hollywood Bowl for the first time and see Zac Brown Band's debut performance at this historic site. Mike's cousin, music reviewer for the Orange County Register, was able to score an extra ticket for the event, (thank you, thank you, thank you, Ben!!) and Mike generously let me take it. It was AMAZING.

First, let's start with the venue. It is epic. Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Elton John, Cher, The Beatles, Pavarrotti and many others have performed here. FDR, Fred Astair, and Mikhail Baryshnikov have graced the stage, too. It sits less than a mile from the Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theater in the heart of Hollywood. Last night it was a sold-out crowd of about 17,000 people, and I was sitting close enough to be able to comment on the shoes of lead singer of the opening act, Blackberry Smoke.

The concert itself was awesome. Blackberry Smoke, a southern rock band based in Atlanta, opened the show. These beard-sporting guys were a throw-back to Skynard and ZZ Topp, complete with bell-bottoms, platforms, and the 70's electric organ that is iconic of that era. I was totally digging them.

Zac Brown and company came on shortly thereafter and rocked my world. They played all their hits which I thoroughly enjoyed, but my favorite parts of the night were when they totally rocked out. You will have to read the review to figure out where and when they did this because I lost track; but there were multiple times throughout the 2+ straight hours that they played that they just went nuts jamming. Clay Cook, one of their guitarists, was phenomenal. They also played a few covers. One of my favorites was "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (Zac Brown is also from Georgia). I've probably heard that song several hundred times in my life, both the original by the Charlie Daniels Band and other live renditions. But I have never heard a band play it as fast as they did last night. It was crazy. And crazy good. One of my other faves of the evening was "Isn't She Lovely" along with John Mayer's "Neon," who also happens to be another Georgia artist. It was sick.

I was very sad that Mike couldn't go, too. I know he would've liked it. But I can't lie - I'm really happy that I had the chance to go. I've promised that no matter what he gets first dibs on the next concert.

Save the Date

Meg's slaving away in front of my computer working on the save the date announcements. She's creating her own design instead of using one of the prefab ones. But that means a lot more work. I should say that this is actually the second design she has created. The first one was in a demo of a program called Serif. The problem with Serif is that you can't really do anything except print to paper. The vendors we're using for the magnets require either a PDF or JPEG and all of the freeware for creating PDFs or JPEGs from other programs don't produce the highest quality documents. So now Meg is redoing the design in Publisher. It's amazing how much time and effort this whole wedding planning thing takes.

Lack of Self-Control

I went to the library today on my bike with the intent of getting a couple of research items. And came home with 13 travel books in my book bag for my uphill ride. My buns are burnin' and I'm regretting my "I'll just take this one, too" attitude. I'm intent on figuring out where to go on our honeymoon, which is harder than you might think. We want some beach/so absolutely nothing time, some action/adventure time, some great food, some warm weather, and something we've not done before. By the books you can see we are heading South. However, December is the wet season in the South Pacific and the busy season everywhere, so we have our work cut out to find the perfect destination.

Any suggestions?

Hats and Heels

Yesterday was an epic day of fun. First, we had one of my most favorite sporting events of the year, the Kentucky Derby. I don't know the first thing about horse racing. That is a lie; I know they run around in a circle and the first one to the end line wins. They also have ridiculous names that I enjoy, like Mine That Bird, Fusaichi Pegasus, Thunder Gulch, and my favorite Burgoo King. We went to a classmate's apartment with a bunch of other folks. I wore my hat, as you can see from Mike's last post, as did many other ladies. We sipped mint juleps - I wouldn't recommend them, they are pretty gross - watched the race, placed a bet, and cheered on Comma to the Top, my pick as the winner. Comma was in second place for nearly the whole race. Until the end, when it mattered. He came in last, which I think is as hard to pick as 1st, and I wondered why I didn't get a share of the pot. I only found out today that Comma hurt his ankle, poor guy. Regardless of the outcomes, I had a grand time. Mike and I stopped at our favorite Mexican dive on the way home to get ready for our next social engagement...

... Which was prom. Anderprom, as it is affectionately known, is a chance for all the students and their significant others to dress up in their finest and dance the night away. I wore a pretty dress and Mike wore a very handsome suit. We walked about seven blocks down our street to meet a big yellow school bus which took us downtown to the party. And it was nothing like the prom I remembered. First, there was alcohol at this shindig, which significantly enhanced the whole experience. Second, the dresses were much more stylish this go around. There were far fewer bedazzled skirts and men actually filled out their suits instead of looking  like sticks swimming in wool. Third, there was a lot less awkward conversation at this prom then at the first. I think it has to do with the fact that we are ten years older and, you know, actually capable of having adult conversations now as opposed to when we were seventeen and unable to look members of the opposite in the eye without awkwardly giggling. I digress. We had a whole lot of fun. I can't wait until next year's.

Derby Party

Meg won the best hat award.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Wedding Planning

We've purposefully tried to keep this blog mostly free of our day-to-day wedding planning because didn't want this to become a boring wedding blog. If you will, permit me the opportunity to deviate from that a little as we accomplished a lot over the last few weeks, with a lot of that coming to fruition today.

Over that last three weeks, Meg and I have sat through about 10 or so meeting with various vendors, including photographers and DJs. Today we finally pulled the trigger on three vendors and decided on a DJ, hotel and photographer. Our DJ will be Bill Lovelace, an independent DJ based out of Long Beach. Ben Aguirre will be snapping photos, his part-time profession when he's not being an engineer. Don't worry though, we selected Ben (and Bill for that matter) because of his experience at the Ebell Club. He shot the wedding of the owner of the Ebell Club and does most of their promo stuff.

More importantly for you readers (how ever many of you there are) is that we are finalizing the hotel arrangements for our guests. We're getting a block of rooms at the Marriott Renaissance, which is a little more than a mile from the Ebell Club.

And more importantly for us, we've spent a good amount of time over the last week trying to figure out our honeymoon plans. After fruitlessly searching online for about a month, we were struggling to come up with anything. So today we went to Barnes & Noble and scoured the travel section looking for inspiration. After about an hour or so flipping through Lonely Planet books, we've narrowed our choices down to four: Thailand, Costa Rica, Argentina and the US Virgin Islands (a back up option).

Has anyone ever been to any of those three locations? We're looking for any and all advice people have.

The Royal Wedding

All day Thursday I was watching TLC because they had non-stop shows about the upcoming Royal Wedding. I'm not a celebrity follower, nor am I a royalist or even a monarchy sympathizer. But I do like pretty wedding dresses, hats, and princesses. (I mean, come on, all girls like princesses, and if they say otherwise, they are lying.) So my fascination with fascinators prevailed and there I was at 1am flipping through the numerous channels that were covering the grand event. Before Mike went to bed, I had him retrieve my own hat collection from the top shelf of our hall closet. I honor of the occasion I donned my biggest, most ridiculous hat. It is slightly off-white, with a black netting bow, black feathers and a diameter about three feet across. No kidding. I originally purchased the hat back in college when I went to horse race with some friends. I plan on wearing it again this weekend for the Derby. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it for you.

I did doze a couple times during the night/morning. I missed the live first kiss on the balcony but caught most everything else. She was such a beautiful bride. Radiant, glowing, every hair in place. Mike and I are getting married in a little over seven months, and I wont become a queen, princess, or even a duchess. BUT, I bet I will feel like all the above. And watching the Royal Wedding certainly got me excited about my own.

Staycation and History in the Making

I'm behind on posts. It happens. I'm going to try to catch up on some important life events over the next few days. First, as Mike mentioned in his last post, my good friend Anna visited me over her spring break. We had a really good time as she vacationed and I staycationed. Beaches, wine, ballgames, minor celebrities including Miss Maryland and the Harris brothers from Deadliest Catch, shopping, and good eats were all had that week. See some earlier posts for some good pics. Anna was a trooper and enthusiastic about sleeping for 5 nights on "Chocolate" - the nickname she gave my brown couch - while she was here. We had such a great, relaxing time. It was a little disappointing that we didn't have warmer weather. We went to both Santa Monica and Malibu beach, but I was in jeans both time because it was a little nippy.

As many if not all of you know by now, it has been an eventful night across the world. For posterity reading this, 3 hours ago, President Obama announced that American Special Forces killed Bin Laden. It is hard to describe the mix of emotions that I'm feeling. It is tough to take pleasure in death. But seeing the spontaneous gatherings of Americans in D.C. and New York make me proud to be an American, and I feel, perhaps hopeful is the right word, that Americans have reason to celebrate in the elimination of the worst enemy my generation has seen. I remember the exact seat in which I was sitting in my senior high school economics class on 9/11 when I learned that the towers had been hit, and I remember how my stomach dropped the first time I saw video of the second plane hitting. I think I will remember, nearly 10 years later, that I was sitting in my overstuffed pink chair tonight watching West Wing with Mike when he showed me CNN's homepage announcing Osama's death. We stopped the DVD and turned on live TV, and I suppose the rest is history.

Some of my friends from D.C. have been posting on Facebook about heading to the White House. This is the first time since we moved that I wished I still lived in D.C. Even living outside the city I would've been tempted to brave the traffic and craziness to be a part of history in Lafayette Park. Anyhoo, I'm sitting on my couch chanting with the rest of the country: U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!