Human Coachellapede

Howww am I alive right now I have no idea, but what a great past week and a half. There was crazy errands to run and things to take care of of before Kathleen and I left on Thursday afternoon for a weekend of Coachella fun. It was fantabulous, even better than last year. It was my first time camping, and clearly that makes all the difference. What a great, fun community, always with tons of stuff going on, from snowball fights, dance parties and food to giant games of Twister, yoga and pilates classes, art studios and more.

Everyone there is awesome, and happy and fun, and we made great friends with our camping neighbors too, all around! People from Australia, Mexico, England and San Diego. Our huge camping group was so fun too. Happy, energetic, nice, fun, the works. Coachella keeps getting bigger and bigger! The vendors this year went crazy. The Heineken tent had free cooler and fridges to use... if you brought in Heineken. Sephora did free makeup and skin care refreshers in their tent, some place gave out free popsicles, and the H&M tent would give you a makeover and let you walk the virtual runway. It was fun! But, really nice to get refreshed and makeup re-done in the afternoon after sweating out there in the 100+ degree heat dancing to bands, cause bandsa make her dance.

And of course, the music! Got to see so many bands that I already know and love, plus discover some new ones. My favorite acts included Chvrches, The White Lies, Kid Cudi, TJR (always a damn good time in the Sahara tent!) and Arcade Fire!! Kathleen and I were front and center for Arcade Fire as Sunday's closer and I SWEAR to you, Win Butler (the lead) pointed right to me and the heart I was holding up and said "I see that heart, and I'm sending the love right back!" SWOON!

Here are pictures of the weekend that will live in infamy!!

In the driveway, hitting the road with popsicles and Coachella wristbands officially in place!

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The infamous wind generators at Palm Springs that means you're close!

Our group all met at a parking lot in Palm Desert to get together and then caravan our way in. Here was a look at our line of cars getting on the road for the last stretch into the venue

Getting cars searched and in order and into the campgrounds literally took hours. No matter though! We all got out, opened beers, played ball, made friends, and hung out. No stress!

The line of cars waiting to be searched and allowed into the campgrounds

Cheers! Waiting to get in

You're eligible for "Carpoolchella" to win VIP passes for life if you decorate your car and have at least 4 people. Kathleen and I just put four names on the car for a chance, and we chose Tina and Louise, an homage to Bob's Burgers. We're obsessed.

Morning in the campgrounds! This was the way into the area with the general store, activities tent, food, art studio and dancing dome. Kat and I even entered into a water balloon toss contest... and lost

The dancing dome in the campgrounds at night where they had dancing and silent raves til 3am. There was a T-Rex sculpture with its head sticking inside the dome, but you can't see it here

Coachella art! It's me and Kathleen with another sister duo in our group who went to explore the first night together

Its what I like

A sunflower with a sunflower

The Twister floor turned dance floor in the activities tent

Morning yoga!

Lotus pose

Met up with one of my best girlfriends Alyse and her friend Kortney. They had even visited me in NYC in January 2013

Playing in the campground

Sunshine and music!

Caterpillar flower garden dome in the music venue

They have the best stuff inside the venue

The Sahara tent! It's the rave tent that is ALWAYS  good time, from dawn to dusk. Seriously.

Coachella at night

Palms and the Coachella wheel

The walk in from the campgrounds to the venue had all different kinds of house structure, it was neat! Gingerbread houses, space shuttles, popsicle stick houses, lifeguard towers, etc etc

Lifeguard tower at night

Because the campgrounds are so freaking huge and vast, many cars bring something to help their own car or camp spot stand out, especially if you plan to meet up with others or have other come visit you. Anything from flags, balloons, traffic cones or... gigantic bags of Cheetos apparently. We loved this one

Friday fun

Inside at sunset. The best!

Morning beer pong with our Australian friends

American girls vs. Australian boys (we won!)

Beer pong became shot pong. Oops.

Saturday in the Sahara tent. This was for TJR, who was one of the best!

Friends at Chvrches. Also, notice the photobomb?

They have the best art and stuff around. This was blocks of mirrors that turned to colors at night

The astronaut

Mine and Kathleen's feet after TJR in the Sahara tent

Photobooth fun!

Totem poles

Woot woot

Mirror blocks at night

Sisters and sisters. Caroline and Lisa were awesome!

Oh Lord. Sunday morning, King's Cup with our group...

...that brought in tons of neighbors. It was insane

Moustaches...

Cheers to Lana Del Rey Day!

This guy got the King's Cup. That giraffe for 50 ounces of death: rum, vodka, gin, whiskey, beer, pedialyte, Gatorade... and I promise you in less than 20 minutes, this was him...

For a few minutes before he collapsed in his tent. Good news was that after a few hours he really bounced back and was back in the venue for Arcade Fire!

Robot Man

Coachella Palms at night

Saturday night turned into an awful sandstorm. There were too many people that we still wanted to see, so Kat and I went back to the campgrounds to regroup in warmer clothes, bought some scarves from the general store, and headed back in for Muse looking suuuuper cool, obviously

Hey, it's worth it for Muse!

Arcade Fire!! Like 4 rows back from the stage. They were/are incredible!!

Loving Arcade Fire!

The view behind uss

Confetti let out during the finale

I found Waldo on the last night!

Packing up the camp was so sad! But we got a group shot with (most) of us before we all took off

Chinese Fire Drill! We changed up spots

Crazy shot! Human Coachellapede of 2014 a great success!

Happy Easter! I shall regale you with tales of Nicaragua when I have more time... I am exhausted and start my new job tomorrow and still unpacking and regrouping from Central America. Happy Easter!

Is it Coachella 2015 yet??

Caution: Exciting Times Ahead!

Shannon left yesterday back to England. It's really quiet around here again, it's sad. We were having fun being the two around the house the most, what with our unemployment and all. Sigh. Here we are at the Ontario airport

At least I know I have plenty of upcoming events to keep me occupied otherwise.

After months and months of a very slow life and uncertainty even to the next hour, life has really picked up steam. This week has been spent running around in preparation for the next week and a half, which will include a departure tomorrow for a weekend of fun, music, and being a free spirit at Coachella through Monday. On Tuesday, I will leave to Nicaragua, come back on Saturday and start a real grown-up job again on Monday!

Once I was hired, I immediately set to looking up a flight... anywhere, really. I've had all this free time, but not the money. But knowing I'll slowly be making money again, I really want to take advantage of this last bit of free time. I feel like I've been stir-crazy... I haven't been out of the country since Montreal in November of 2011, and even that was just a couple hours trek north of the border. Before that, I had a few months in Europe in 2008. I am long, long overdue!

With Coachella on a weekend sandwiched right in the middle, it prevented me from taking any sort of substantial trip anywhere too far. So I knew it couldn't be too crazy. My minimum requirements were to be somewhere new, and somewhere with a beach. My preferred requirements were to be south of the border, and somewhere more exploratory than springbreaky. And then the major considerations and constraints included the time available relative to the place I would be going to, and the cost of airfare. If last minute deals really do exist, I never found them. It was getting dicey. ($800+ flights to Costa Rica with 22 - 30 hour layovers?! I'm serious. I was pulling my hair out). But while Cabo San Lucas and Cancun were both pretty doable as far as airfare, I really wanted to have the feeling of traveling again, and hostels and adventure... not beachside resorts with college kids doing body shots next to me. And there were some tempting "deals" with some Caribbean islands, but again, I wanted to explore more, not so much lounge, especially since I'm going alone.

I would have loved to go to South America, honestly (and was thisclose to buying a ticket to Peru) but they were more expensive, and further, longer flights, and less time to see much with the few days that I have free. Three or four days really wouldn't be sufficient for taking in Lima and then flying to Cuzco to hike Macchu Picchu... and why go all that way if you can't do that?

But I always had my eye on Central America. I spent a week and a half in Guatemala in June 2003 and loved it. Loved it. L-O-V-E. I loved the heat and the humidity, I loved the afternoon rains, I loved the smells and I loved the architecture. I loved the beaches and the jungles and the volcanoes in the skylines. I loved the lush, wet trees and huge colorful plants and all the tropical animals. I loved the people and the food and the way you could practically see from one ocean to the other, making you feel like a dot you could pinpoint on the the face of the planet, and you could perfectly picture the tiny strip of connecting land that you were on, like you knew where you were in the world and didn't have to guess or feel lost. So I wanted to go back, but I still wanted to try somewhere new.

Basically, I just kept refreshing flight searches to Belize (a friend of mine did a yoga retreat there), Costa Rica (due to its growing popularity, becoming pretty pricey), Panama (I hear they have a canal?) and Nicaragua, where my friend from New York (you might remember Pooja) had gone last summer and raved about. And finally, out of nowhere, a pretty good deal to Nicaragua showed up and not only because I'm really pushing it on the timeframe but also because I felt a little biased to it after Pooja had gone, I knew this would be it... so I booked it. And I already have my lodging lined up (in what looks like amazing and beautiful hostels, everything I've ever wanted from them!) and can hardly hold still in expectation for the playas, lagos, lagunas, ciudads y volcans!

But first... COACHELLA!!

Le French Test

...I passed it! I passed it! I passed that last French test!

I've now officially passed all 3 of the French CSET's which means I am eligible to teach French to secondary education students once I receive a credential!

The test is good for credentialing for 5 years, so as long as I enroll in a credential program in 5 years, then I will be set for life. Feels nice to cross that off a life to-do list.

Game of Thrones Viewing Feast

Warning! Nerd Alert Entry. Last night was a very long-awaited (at least on my part) season 4 premier of Game of Thrones, and I got quite the treat! Instead of my original plan of just reserving the downstairs TV and forcing Shannon to watch it with me, Shannon invited me to her friends' house where a costumed feast and viewing party was being hosted! Shannon dressed me up in some garb to be Khaleesi (including a white wig that had since been made over to be a mermaid, so it was a little wonky for Daenaerys but still did the trick!) and Shannon was able to throw together stuff to be Melisandre, The Red Woman.

The feast was awesome! They had made banners of major house sigils, and had such neat finishing touches, like Khaleesi's dragon eggs!

L to R: Cersei, Shae, Man of the Night's Watch, Margaery, Melisandre (aka the Red Woman) and Khaleesi

Jayna said my wig made me look like the Crack Khaleesi hahahaha. And of course a picture of the two Khaleesi's...!

The food was great, and was all based on actual food from the books, like stuffed chicken, vegetable stews, tons of fresh loaves of bread, berries, and lemon cakes.

Everyone who dressed up was someone else, it was very impressive! Margaery, Cersei, Melisandre... They all took pictures with a much better camera that will probably come out later, so that's all I got for that for now.

And then of course the episode itself was great, and went by so fast! I'm so happy to know that it'll be on every Sunday for the next few months now! Yaysies.

Hollywhat?

Well it finally happened. I had a bad day subbing. With spring breaks everywhere and subbing so often in Riverside, I forgot how challenging they could be in Jurupa. My day started by a kid filing in the door stopping in front of me and saying "excuse me ma'am, I'm going to have to search you for drugs" and then shining a laser in my eye. I was so livid! Who does that?! And it was all downhill from there. All they had to do was watch a (short!) movie on weather (narrated by Martin Sheen. How does that happen?) and answer simple questions from a handout as the movie went along. But, they couldn't do even that. When I was paperclipping a class' collection together, I did notice this student's paper (Question #3) and laughed at the stupidity.

Can you find the error yourself?? Here, let me help you...

A friend of mine had been pestering me to go to Hollywood that night, but I kept insisting that I wasn't going to go. Of course, when it came down to it, after the day I had, I needed a drink, so I got ready and they picked me up. Our first stop was the Formosa, which was nice enough. It had a huge reputation during the silver screen years of being frequented by celebrities due to its proximity to the studios, and without realizing I sat directly in front of Audrey Hepburn's picture. How nice! After that we went traipsing down and around the city and then relocated to the Roosevelt Hotel. Boy was that fun.

There was some sort of event going on, and this was me posing "like I'm talking to the paparazzi."

We had a lot of fun there, made a lot of friends, and a guy I hadn't seen since high school came and met up with us too, what a throwback! It was fun. We went outside often (it was a nice night!) and they had a lot of the street partitioned off in preparation for the Hollywood Hills Marathon, so I ran a length of it and declared myself the winner, since I figured I was the first person to do so. Also, a star of a star with the name spelled right!

We hit up a Del Taco (tell me something I don't know) and a gas station, and somehow made really good friends with another guy at the gas station. He was so nice and funny (and drunk, and his friend gave up trying to get him in the car) and we all ended up following each other on Instagram, searching our user names and everything while in the middle of the pumps.

And today, Kathleen and I had to start preparing for Coachella 2014, so we picked up a tent and practiced putting it together.

Less than a week away!

Khaleesi vs. Prince William

Not that Prince William... my iPhone Prince William. (I've had my one and only iPhone since February 2011, and remember 2011 was the year of the Royal Wedding, and I had Royal Wedding fever and wished I was Kate Middleton).

Khaleesi hates my phone! And who can blame her? I'll be petting her with two hands when my phone will ding and then I stop and am texting, and she watches. Or I pet her with one hand and am constantly scrolling on the screen with the other. She's fed up with it and has started attacking the phone when this happens. I'm not even kidding! She starts chewing on the rubber of the Otter Box case. The other day, I left my phone on the bed after the alarm went off and got up to get ready. When I couldn't find it exactly where I left it, I ended up finding it very far away... Khaleesi had actually been able to carry it in her mouth and drag it to a corner where she was going to town on chewing it up and attacking it. Her fiery jealousy is so adorable! So appropriate for the Mother of Dragons.

Khaleesi chases her own tail too. A lot. And will even do it while balancing on the toilet seat. I foresaw bad things coming, but you know cats have incredible balance and always land on all fours.



Also, Marisa and I tried to hike the M in the Box Springs mountains but after the first 1.4 miles of "Difficult" Two Trees trail to get to the other trailhead and seeing the M was another 3.8 miles of "Difficult" we said no thanks and my knee is still recovering even from that. Oops.

And Happy Coachella Month errbody!!