Thursday, August 30, 2007

WICKED

last night i rode the subway down to hollywood and vine and met lottie and arianna for dinner and a show. the place we wanted to eat at was closed down so we schlepped ourselves in our party dresses and heels down hollywoood boulevard, narrowly avoided a few propositions, and made it to musso and franks safe and sound. after three delicious grilled cheeses (thats one for each of us NOT three for me) we made the hike back and settled in to watch wicked, the new it broadway tour.

lottie's friend and my acquaintnce tera is good friends with the girl who played elphaba, the wicked witch of the west. basically the storyline was told from the perspectives of elphaba and glinda and how they grew up together and how elphaba is really just misunderstood. the performances were stellar, and the script was hilarious. the only negative thing was the people sitting directly behind us, but we were able to change seats at half time.

i am sure some of you guys have seen the musical and prolly liked it. but if you havent and you get the chance definitely go! especially for all you kansans - youve been hating the wrong person this whole time! and youll never guess who the real bad guy is! the big bad wolf! just kidding.

it is always good to get a reminder that other people have the other side to the story and youll never get the whole story unless you were a part of it. all of the ozzians had no idea why elphaba was the way she was, and they hated her, but once they understood the circumstances, things were different. anyways, not to get tooo depp, but the moral if you will was a great one to keep in mind. look at life through other people's green lensed eye glasses. :)

!m!

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

big bang theory

edward pickup 2 take 1. cameras a, b, c, x on my mark

we went to warner brothers studio last night to watch the filming of a new cbs show called big bang theory. it was soooo much fun. we watched the pilot first on tvs scattered strategically through the studio audience and then they began filming the show. they went in order chronologically so we got to actually see the whole show. sometimes they would film a scene multiples times with a few different lines to see which go tthe most laughs. it will be fun to watch the show when it airs (september 24th on cbs) and see which lines they chose. they gave us free pizza and the emcee (who was possibly the most annoying person i have EVER had the privelege of being locked in a room with for three hours) told jokes and did magic and handed out candy during the resetting of the scenes/transitions.

the sound stage the show was shot in was where they made cultural classics like casablanca, batman and robin and gremlins 2. veronicas closet was the longest running tv show previously shot there. it was stage 25 which is directly across from 24 which was the friends sound stage. instead of the usual plaques on all the other buildings that one has a special plaque that just says "the friends stage." i would have liked a tour but that was on the program for the evening.

it was so interesting to watch the guy up in the scaffolding manuevering the boom and all the cameras... you could watch the action live or see it on the aforementioned tv sets with the different camera angles like it would be on tv.

it was cool to see these relatively unknown actors (they are the types who have been in a lot of stuff and seem vaguely familiar but arent superstars by any means) and how excited they were to be the leads of this new show. they were all super professional and knew all their lines - they only had to reshoot because of a missed line once or twice. the concept of the show is good and the script is actually really funny. it would be cool if the show really takes off and we can say we were there for the first episode. it is about these two nerdy genius guys and their across the hall neighbor who is beautiful and blonde. the jokes that they make are super intellectual and funny because i only have half an idea what they are really talking about.

i think we might add this show to our regular weekly rotation. you should all watch it and see. maybe you will even hear me laugh! :)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

google talk

so most days i talk to anna and lottie all day long on google talk. i sometimes get to talk to my mom, and nikki and christina are on sometimes too. it makes my day when emay is able to talk for a few minutes in between hanging out with rachie poo and being a homemaker (heres me jealous!)

but the best is this conversation i am having with anna. (we are playing scrabble on facebook)

anna.ostrander: you took my spot!!
meaghan: :)
anna.ostrander: i have all vowels and only 3 different ones
meaghan: yuck
anna.ostrander: gotta go get a lung brb
meaghan: ok cool

she has to leave the conversation and get a lung. thats sweet.

!m!

beverly hills cop

on sunday sarah got a bunch of people from the westside service, which meets at beverly hills high school, to go to cpk for lunch. joel, the bhhs representaive that does lights for us, agreed to join us. we all got there first and we were ordering our food and jeremy saw joel through the window walking toward cpk. we thought oh good he is almost here. then he saw him walking away. we saw a big commotion in the street and police cars with their lights flashing but there was a big pillar blocking our view of what was actually happening. by the time joel actually arrived, we had all started eating already. but boy did he have a story.

so he was walking by starbucks and these two men were yelling at each other about one guys (a french tourist) little dog sniffing another guys (regular old american) big dog and the big dog growling at the little dog. joel steps in and says why dont we just calm down no harm no foul etc and the frenchman starts yelling at him and then follows joel down the street cursing at him loudly and in a very cliched manner (someone should tell him that "f***" is not the only curse word in the english language... cmon get creative...) and in a strong french accent and then he spit on joel. joel very calmly told him that was assault and he was calling the police... pulls out his cell phone and dials 911. the frenchmans girlfriend also spits at joel but misses. they take off and cut through chipotle to the back alley. the police come take his statement and start looking for the dude.

meanwhile joel comes, orders, starts to eat and relay the story. the beverly hills cop comes into cpk and tells joel that they have a guy in custody and want him to come identify him. so he leaves and does that. apparently when the guy went into the alley he took his shirt off (to avoid drawing attention - which completely backfired/as a disguise) and people dont do that in beverly hills and thats how they found him. so they took him and booked him and he has a court date in a couple of weeks. if he doesnt show up (which he prolly wont since i imagine he will be safely back in france) his priveleges of coming into the united states will be revoked and if he ever goes through customs trying to enter the country he will be immediately arrested.

becasue a big dog growled at his little dog. talk about needing to just relax.

i had no idea the french were soooo uptight.

total eclipse of the heart

last night was a totaly lunar eclipse. i was safely in my bed soundly sleeping like all good little boys and girls are at 4 in the morning and the tears are pouring and i want to make it worth the fight... sorry i am aparently channelling gwen stefani today. anywasy like i was saying before i so rudely burst into song (cant a girl finish a song around here?!?!?) jeremy got up at 4 this morning to watch the eclipse. he said it was pretty cool.


im getting a hair cut today! yay! mostly just a trim but i am contemplating bangs. i think i have hair add. im not one of those people who will look back at pictures from high school and realize that my hair looks exactly the same. i know girls like that and it stresses me out. its like cmon take a chance... its just hair. you can dye it back and it will grow... so go crazy!


fran leaves on thursday and we leave on friday to go to phoenix for the long weekend. we get to see uncle ron and aunt sharon and matt and noelle and if i am really lucky fatou and cassie. we will just see. when we get back carolyn? caroline? carolynn? carolyne? some other girl is coming to stay with us. she is also a protege. i think she will be living with us for about a month but im not sure.

!m!

Sunday, August 26, 2007

rock it out...

after the vh1 countdown was over i ran some errands then jeremy and i went to sarahs open house in her new house that she is renting with a bunch of cool girls. she gave us the grand tour and we even got to open the trap door in the floor of the dining room... she and jeremy played fooseball but the game was a draw... too many people arriving and she had to play hostess... they are living in a house of a mosaic family that moved overseas. the house is totally pimp and in a great area. there is a huge yard and they have it decorated super cute...


after we got home i made some cucumber sandwiches (because they are like my favorite thing ever!) and took my rock star self over the kriss to finish makeup and help set up. we made the living/dinig room look like the green room backstage at a concert... lots of black and red and candles. you would never know we were at a baby shower! here is the night in pictures:

the first picture is me with the momma to be aka christina dronen aka gwen stefani in preggo mode. then we have the poster that kris customized for the party. the babys name is gonna be ashley claire dronen (acd) so we just went to the next natural progression of acdc and rocked it out! the four of us were the hostesses (me - 80s groupie, lottie aka baby spice, kim aka 1983 madonna and kriss look is inspired by sanjaya recently of american idol infamy).


we also had an air guitar contest. which was freakin hilarious/awesome. this was the best baby shower ever!!!!! for those of you facebookers all the pictures from that are posted there. if you arent you should be.


!m!


ps a rockers life is never dull... except after the after party...

Saturday, August 25, 2007

i love fridays

fridays during the breaks (when teachers and students arent at school) are the best. no one really does anything. karla and i went to target and i bought party favors and prizes for the baby shower tonight. the best game we are going to have is an air guitar contest. yep. at a baby shower. we will have some other more traditional games too. i got some cool stuff. yay!


i finished thinning the files from 2002. i got seven boxes down to 3. that means there is four boxes worth of room for the files from this year. this is a seriously vicious cycle!


i met jeremy at the mall after work. i got my toes and fingers done. i asked the lady to put lightning bolts on my toes and she had to ask someone what those were. and finally another dude came over and actually did them. all of the other nail people gathered around and were watcing him do them. i was like a training video. it was cracking me up. little bit of a language barrier there. kinda looks more like a n but its cool. then we went shopping. he bought me this really cute dress at ae (that he picked out) and some staples at old navy. there is no gap at the mall in burbank which is sad.


after we got home i finished a book called friday night knitting club. very good. and we watched psych which is rapidly becoming one of my all time favorite shows. early to bed early to rise... right now is vh1 video countdown... i love saturday mornings!!!!!!!!!!!
!m!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

thinning files

so the process of thinning old student files is arduous and boring. and dirty. i worked on it for about 2 of my 8 hours of work today and that was soooo more than enough. my pod was running out of juice and there is no radio in the conference room so i decided to stop long before i was actually finished. and thats just with the files from 2001 and 2002. down in the garage the files go back to the 80s. and thats my job to thin them out and keep only what we need. hurrah!

sprouted spaghetti is not as good as those bleached enriched sticks most of yall prolly eat. healthier, but just not quite the same. it gets mushy even when it is stil al dente. we used our last 2 lb block of koci beef when i made spaghetti sauce last week - there was enough to have again tonight. sadness. i dont know when we will get more. anyone in the topeka want to fly some out? i would really apreciate it thanks.

i did get in-n-out for lunch... protein style burger and animal style fries. does life get better?

lately anna and i have been obsessed with playing scrabble through facebook. it is scrabulous! (i didnt make that up. its actually the name of the application.) we play one or two games a day. i also like playing with random people... so far i am a big scrabble loser. i have only won 4 games but im having fun so it doesnt matter. it is fun to play with someone who lives across the country. so everyone get a facebook page and add scrabulous. i will play scrabble with anyone. and apparently i am easy to beat. so there.

!m!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

comings and goings

every time someone at work leaves or starts the hr manager sends out an email with that title. we have been getting a lot of goings and not as many comings. my boss, theresa, who was the principal, left to go work as a teacher at a school closer to home. so the vice principal is the interim principal (she calls it on probation). so karla is my new boss. we spent the better part of yesterday cleaning out theresas office and throwing away multiple trash bags worth of stuff. karla has been moving her stuff out of her office downstairs and is almost settled in. i am happy with the transistion. karla is younger and a lot more easy going and we have worked really well together in the past. since we are not hiring a new vice principal any time soon, ceci and i are getting a lot more responsibilities. i get to go to my first work conference at the end of september. cant say i am too thrilled. i will have to be at karlas at 6 in the mornign so we can get down to anaheim by 8. waking up at 4:30 am doesnt make me happy. but i have over a month to prepare mentally.

i have also been working on cleaning out the student files from over five years ago so there is room in the storage garage for the recently terminated student files. it is a stupid boring dirty job, but thats why they pay me the big bucks. oh wait...

!m!

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

that good old air mattress

having got our air con problems mostly worked out (as long as we dont run any small appliances in the kitchen or watch tv, it doesnt blow the breaker) the living space of our apartment feels great. cooling the bedrooms has always been hard because of the layout of the apartment as well as the fact that the little window unit can only do so much against the unstoppable forces of heat in the valley. usually the temperature drops enough at night that it is comfortable to have the windows open and fans going in the bedrooms. the past couple nights have been hot. our roomie fran is in vegas with the other proteges yesterday today and tomorrow.

yesterday after work i took the subway down to hollywood and highland (only a little scary by myself) and went shopping. i went to the costume stores and wig stores looking for the perfect outfit for this weekends rock n roll baby shower. i found some good stuff, but nothing in my price range (as awesome as a michael jackson wig would be... $40??? its not like im going to get multiple uses out of this thing). i decided that instead of dressing as my favorite rock star, it is going to be easier (a little bit more fun) to dress as a groupie. so i got a little tank top and some cheesy jewelry and im good to go. the tank top is actually something i would wear again, although not with my short jean skirt and leggings with glitter on them. intrigued? the party is saturday so check on sunday for pictures... :)

when i got home i cooked dinner (tuna steaks... yum!) and we went to two of my favorite stores. bevmo and vallarta. yay. then, since fran i gone, we blew up the air mattress and slept in the living room. i actually got cold last night. it was a wonderful feeling - waking up at 4:30 am shivering. i think we are sleeping out there again tonight. it brought back good memories of camping out on the floor of kevin and nikkis apartment when we first moved out here. gt gt.

!m!

Monday, August 20, 2007

more than meets the eye

so on saturday afternoon we went to a movie. it has been forever since we went on a date to the movies just the two of us. we saw bourne ultimatum a couple of weeks ago with al and lottie, but before that it had been months prolly since we were at the theater. but i digress.

we saw transformers. it is seriously one of the best movies i have ever seen. i know that sounds totally dorky but have you seen it? it is totally sci-fi, but you dont feel like you are watching a sci-fi movie. all of the technology being used by the humans seems totally legit. the only thing that seems out of the ordinary is the alien that take the shape of vehicles. the action was intense... shia leboef rocks my face off... tyrese and josh duhamel are yummy... the plot was decent (as in there actually was one, which is becoming rarer in movies these days).

anyways. go see it. youll like it.

!m!

Sunday, August 19, 2007

does life get better?


last night was a cookout at lance and kris's house... we ate the chicken that we forgot to take camping with us. one of the best parts of the night was all the guys except jeremy were wearing blue shirts and blueish grey shorts. so they left him out and made him stand in the corner. all night long. actually only for as long as it took to take these pictures. but still. good story huh???

yesterday morning some girls came over and we worked on crafty projects and hung out. i finished my baby projects. ha ha. not for my baby. for kayla and ricky's baby and eric and christina's baby. thanks though.

today after church we went to the beach with lance and kris. i fell asleep for like an hour or something. i think kris has a picture of my drooling all over the sheet on her facebook page. but that was the best nap ever. and due to my skillful application of sunscreen - no burn. yay for me! after i woke up i was stretched out on the blanket reading and i sat up to take a drink of water. when i laid back down i felt somethig wet... a bird had pooped alllll over the sheet. well all over half of it. but it is a queen size sheet - thats a lot of doody. that pretty much killed the mood and we left shortly after. but it was good while it lasted.

!m!

Friday, August 17, 2007

seriously?!?!?

last night jeremy took the busted air con to home depot and traded it for a new one. they didnt hassle him or anything so we were thinking great. this is working out well.

he gets home, and i help him install it (yeah i really did. although installation of a window unit in an apartment in la is a matter of lifting the thing in to the premade hole in the wall. but still. its shake and bake and i helped.) he turned it on and ahhh blessed cool air. we were watching the chiefs play the dolphins on monday night football on thursday nights (in what universe does that make sense i ask you) and the breaker blew. so we unplugged the tv from the same breaker as the air con, turned everything back on and watched the game.

the breaker blows again. we figure out the some of our small kitchen electrics are on the same breaker, even though they arent being used, so we unplug those and reset the thing. watch a couple more minutes of the game and...

it blows again.

this happened four or five mroe times and the guy downstairs (the apartment nmanager) comes upstairs to check on the new air con.

he wants to put a new plug type in the outlet that is specific to just the air con and so he does. we tried to explain to him that that is what blew up the other one because too much power is runnig through that circuit but he didnt listen. we get everything set up and test it on one of our little fans. it burns up the motor in the fan, but he still had us try the air con in the plug.

it ran for about five minutes before blowing up.

that was our third air con in four weeks.

it took forever to fall asleep last night as i was wallowing in a pool of my own sweat.

an electrician is supposedly going to come over tonight and fix it. we will see. im not holding my breath.

!m!

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

meaghan's no good, terrible, very bad day

it all started last night when the brand new air con stopped working. so we slowly roasted meanwhile...

last night: three of these and one of these

this morning: one of these

and then come home and sweat to death.

yuck.

but i got the day off work... :)

!m!

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

more movie and book reviews...

we watched a movie called aspen extreme sunday night... kevin said it was great... well, it was a very 80s movie - the clothes the hair etc. the storyline was interesting i guess, but it kept going on and on at the end after you thought it would be over. not going to be on either of our top ten lists, but not on the bottom ten either. the most interesting thing in it wasnt that interesting until yesterday's street drama jeremy witnessed... but there is a drug deal gone terribly wrong in the movie and it reminded me of the story jeremy told. i wonder if the guy on the bus yesterday was looking for steve. also this omvie features an extremely young teri polo. if i hadnt seen her name it would have taken me a loooong time to figure out who it was. we have been watching west wing season 6 and she is congressman matt santos's (a democratic presidential candidate) wife. not as much young looking in that one though.

i read a book yesterday called the kommandant's girl. it is set in poland during wwii. the main character is a jew who poses as a protestant polish girl and winds up working for the nazis. it was really really good. you should all read it. well all the women reading this blog anywyas. wasnt a very guy sort of book. the plot was arresting, the writing was well done - two thumbs up. one of the most serious books ive read in a long time thats for sure.

we watched football this weekend. only 18 more days until k-state plays. and i think we will be able to watch that game here because they are playing auburn and it is on espn. but my tv guide channel doesnt go ahead that far for me to check. but i am keeping my fingers crossed!!!!! also i am waiting for the bucs to repeat their super bowl victory. can i get an amen? :)

!m!