Tag Archives: sunset

Getting “Wicked” (or Santa, A Sunset, And A Perfect Show)

Posted on December 24, 2014 | Comments Off on Getting “Wicked” (or Santa, A Sunset, And A Perfect Show)

This past Sunday was the next show in my season at The Pantages. I was finally seeing “Wicked”!

“Wicked” had been in LA several times before, and sometimes for very long runs. I always wanted to go and see it, but there was always an issue. Tickets were pretty expensive so I wanted to enter the ticket lottery. But there never seemed to be a good day to do it. And when my sister-in-law and I went to NYC, I already knew that “Wicked” was part of my Pantages season so we didn’t see it there.

The group of us going to the show decided to go early to meet up for dinner first. On my drive, there was a ton of traffic. I couldn’t figure out why until I pulled up next to this vehicle.

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Santa and one of his elves were riding on the back of a truck blasting Christmas music! It was pretty crazy to see but made my drive entertaining.

I got to dinner a bit early so I hung out outside the restaurant waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. While waiting, we had another epic LA sunset.

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When we finally went inside to eat, I ran into someone who grew up down the street from me! I hadn’t seen her since I moved to LA and while we each knew the other lived in LA, we hadn’t seen each other. It was so crazy to see her and great to catch up!

After our quick dinner, my group walked over to The Pantages for our show. I’m loving having season tickets since our seats are in the same place for every show.

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We are pretty close to the stage and even though we are off to the side we don’t miss too much of what is on stage.

I know the story of “Wicked” and I’ve heard most if not all of the songs in the show. But even knowing as much as I did I was super impressed by it! The actors were all so amazing and the show was really really good! I’m even considering trying to go see the show another time while they are still in LA (they are here for a couple of months) if someone wants to go with me..

After the show when I got home, I went through my Kindle and found my e-book of Wicked. I bought it a while ago but never felt motivated to read it. But now that’s I’ve seen the show, I want to read the book that the show is based on.

I’m so happy that I’ve seen “Wicked” now. And it’s probably better that it took me this long to see it. If I had seen it before, I probably would have gone to see it at least once every time it was in town. That’s a lot of money on tickets or a lot of lottery attempts.

Since “Wicked” has a longer LA run, my next show at The Pantages isn’t until April. That’s a while to wait for another musical but I’m super excited for the next few shows in the season!

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Default ThumbnailAnother Round Of A Repeat Musical (or Seeing A Show A Different Way) Default ThumbnailMore Musicals! (or Another Season At Pantages) Default ThumbnailAnother Wicked Night Out (or Seeing A Show From Up High) Default ThumbnailThe Last Show Of The Season (or Ending On A High Note) Default ThumbnailTaking Time For A Show (or Seeing Summer) Default ThumbnailFunko and Frozen (or The Last Pantages Show For A While)

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After-Work Adventure (or I Love LA)

Posted on May 12, 2014 | Comments Off on After-Work Adventure (or I Love LA)

After I finished making calls for my recruiting job on Friday, I knew I had to get out of the house. I hadn’t been good about doing things after work most of the week, so I needed to force myself to put some shoes on (I do get dressed to work at home) and leave my house.

I asked around to see if any friends were free on short notice, but nobody really was. So I decided to take myself on a little adventure and go watch the sun set from the Griffith Observatory.

Since I was driving up there during rush hour, it took me a while to get there (not exactly sure how long, but it was over an hour). And then to find parking was a whole other issue. But I did the parking lot stalking thing long enough to finally get a space in the observatory parking lot.

It wasn’t the clearest evening, but it looked more like haze than smog from up there. And the observatory looked awesome.

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And it was surprisingly crowded there. I’m not sure if that’s a usual for the after-work crowd or if something special was going on that evening. But I had to squeeze in by the railings a few times to get some pictures. And of course, as soon as I got there I realized that I left my nice camera at home and only had my phone. So while I tried to get the best pictures I could, I know that with my real camera they would have been better.

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The Hollywood sign and the city were so beautiful. Even though I’ve lived here for almost 13 years, those views never get old. I still get excited when I’m close to the Hollywood sign. One day, I’ll have to do the hike to it, but I’ve heard that it’s not an easy hike to do.

I also checked out the moon, which was so bright in the sky even though the sun hadn’t set yet.

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I ended up watching the sun set from one of the side views where you can also see the Hollywood sign, but of course the camera on my phone could only get either the sunset or the Hollywood sign, not both.

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I stayed until the sun was completely gone and then I headed back to my car. I had wanted to take some awesome nighttime city pictures, but I’m going to have to go back with my real camera (and tripod) to do those.

Even though this was only a short adventure, it really revitalized me. It made the workday seem shorter (since there was a definite end to when I was sitting at my computer) and it made me appreciate my city even more. I have loved living in LA since I moved here (I wanted to move here as a kid). But sometimes I don’t really think about how lucky I am that I’m working on living my dream while living in my dream city.

But seeing everything from up at the observatory and realizing that below me were all people living their dreams and I was one of them, that was an amazing moment.

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff

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Sailing Time (or An Easy Day After The Big Day)

Posted on September 16, 2013 | Comments Off on Sailing Time (or An Easy Day After The Big Day)

The day after the wedding, my mom had arranged for a sailing trip for our whole group (almost everyone who went to the wedding was able to join us).

I actually never got pictures of the boat, but you can check it out on their website.

I was a bit nervous about going sailing. I haven’t been on a sailboat since 2005 and since I have a tendency to get carsick, I was afraid of getting seasick. But I wasn’t going to let that fear get in my way of having fun.

It was a perfect day to be out on the water!

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The boat was pretty spacious considering it was a sailboat. I spent most of my time sitting on the deck, but there were plenty of seats as well.

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We didn’t really have a destination on this adventure, we just sailed around for 3 hours. There was food served on board, but I didn’t want to risk the seasickness feeling. I’m sure I made the right choice because I never got seasick! I can’t say the same for my brother though.

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After Ross took a nap, he felt better.

I spent most of the sail just taking fun pictures of the group gathered on the boat.

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We even sailed by the rental house!

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You can’t quite see it in this picture, but we were able to find our neighbor’s house pretty easily due to some very colorful flowers they had in their yard.

Toward the end of the sail, the sun started to set.

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It was nice being able to watch the sunset on the water, however it was a bit of a dud sunset. The sky never really lit up like we’ve seen it do before.

Of course, I tried to get some pictures in front of the sunset, but it was getting a bit too dark by then.

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After 3 hours, we headed back to the marina. After the sail, I had to say goodbye to my cousin Adam, Ross’s friends, and Krystle’s family as we weren’t going to see them again on the trip. I’m actually not too sure when I’ll see any of them again, so it was a bit of a sad goodbye.

But I did still have one more day of vacation ahead of me. And tomorrow, I will have photos that prove that I got over my fear of the ocean (at least for that day)!

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Posted in Celebrations, Family, Fun Stuff, Travel

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Driving Around East Maui (or Crossing Things Off My Maui Bucket List)

Posted on September 11, 2013 | 1 comment

This day was all about East Maui. My Aunt Nancy decided to join me and my parents (my brother was spending the day with his friends), so the four of us headed out around 9:30am to start the big drive we had ahead.

One of the tourist magazines had an article on driving to Hana. We knew we weren’t going to go all the way to Hana and back (it’s like a 3 or 4 hour trip each way), but we decided to do a bunch of the stops that the article suggested. Also, I had a list of things that I wanted to do while in Maui (take a driving trip, see a waterfall, go snorkeling, drink from a coconut, have shaved ice), so this was going to help me do a bunch of those things.

Our driving adventure was on the Hana Highway and our first stop was to Twin Falls. This was a hike through the jungle and water to get to some waterfalls. The hike there was pretty much all uphill, and when you got close to the waterfalls, you had to go through some knee-deep water.

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But the end result was totally worth it!

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It was so nice and relaxing back there (after I got over my fear of slipping and falling into the water and ruining my phone and camera). We didn’t wear bathing suits so we didn’t go swimming, but just wading out in the water to get to the waterfalls was quite refreshing after the hike uphill.

After walking back through the water and downhill to the parking lot, we decided to enjoy some fresh coconut water.

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I’ve never drunk out of a coconut before, and I have to say that this was so much better than the coconut water you can buy in the grocery store! My mom, dad, and I shared one and it was the perfect after hike treat!

The next stop we made was at Garden of Eden, an arboretum and botanical garden. We drove up to the waterfall viewpoint area.

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And right next to that were some picnic tables with one of the most incredible views I’ve ever seen!

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We had packed some fruit, pita chips, and spinach dip in the car; so we had a snack with a view.

Next on the Hana Highway tour was Puaa Kaa to see another waterfall. You didn’t have to get into the water to see this one, but my dad decided to do it anyway.

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After that, we headed back towards where we started. We made a quick stop at Halfway to Hana for some shaved ice.

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I have to say, I was expecting something very different from what we got. I’ve seen photos of Hawaiian shaved ice where it looks really fluffy and almost like ribbons of snow. This was more like a normal snow cone (but still yummy). I got half strawberry and half banana and shared with my parents (we still couldn’t finish the whole thing).

Our last stop of the day was something that casting director Marci Liroff suggested to me on twitter. We drove up to the top of Haleakala Crater to watch the sunset. There were a couple of viewpoints on the drive up the crater that we stopped at.

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But we made it up to the top (over 10,000 feet above sea level!).

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As you can see, we are all wearing sweaters up there. It was so cold! It felt like the winter in Lake Tahoe (minus the snow). We found an amazing spot to watch the sunset, and it was fabulous.

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And as we headed back to the car, the sky on the other side was so colorful.

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Finally, it was time to head back down the crater and back to West Maui where we were staying. Once we got home, we had been out for about 11 hours, so we were all pretty tired!

But I did get a lot of stuff done on my Maui list! Only snorkeling to go (and we are hoping to maybe do that on our last day here).

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Day One In Maui (or The Only Way To Start A Vacation Is In The Hot Tub)

Posted on September 9, 2013 | Comments Off on Day One In Maui (or The Only Way To Start A Vacation Is In The Hot Tub)

I got to Maui safely on Friday (only minor panic attacks on the plane which was nice). I had a direct flight from Los Angeles, so there was 5.5 hours to spend watching movies that I loaded on my laptop (I only with I had invested in some noise canceling headphones but I will do that one day).

Once I arrived, I called my parents, whose flight landed about an hour before mine and had gone to get the rental car. They came to pick me up at Kahului airport and we were off to the rental house.

I had seen some photos of the rental house before when my mom emailed me the website, but it was way more awesome than I expected!

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It’s so amazing here! I’m so lucky that my parents rented such a cool place for us.

As soon as we arrived, we got a tour from the house managers, but all I could think about was getting into the hot tub. So as soon as the tour was done, we turned on the tub to heat up and we all went to get changed into our swimsuits.

I spent a good majority of my afternoon in there. It felt so wonderful! I also spent a lot of time on those patio chairs reading my book (I’m currently reading “Scarlet”). My parents are both book nerds like me, so we were all super happy to just relax and read.

My Aunt Nancy stopped by our house for some snacks and then it was time to go back into the hot tub!

And of course, as soon as the sun was setting, we had to take some sunset photos.

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I’m finally putting a photo of me in a bathing suit on here! I know it’s not the best photo, but I’m sure in the next week I’ll have plenty more. But I wanted to do this one at least.

Plus, check out my badass mom!

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We were all pretty jet-lagged (and Hawaii is 3 hours behind California time) so we all went to bed pretty early. But considering that I left LA at 9am and took a 5.5 hour flight, I think we got a whole lot done on our first day of vacation!

More fun and adventures to come (plus my brother’s wedding)!

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