Christmas came early this year :)

This week at home has been quite relaxing and incredibly enjoyable. And I seem to have done exactly what I told people I was going to do: eat, PUPPIES, eat, eat, family, oh- and eat.

After getting off the plane incredibly delirious, my parents and I stopped by our friends Dan and Sara's house to drop some fire wood off and say hello to everyone at their beer and cheese tasting (Dan brews EXCELLENT beers and Sara makes DELICIOUS cheeses). We stayed for a quick beer and I got a short chance to catch up with people.

Then I got to see my puppies :)

I don't think they quite remembered who I was at first, but after they got their jollies of "Mom's home!!" out they both jumped in my lap and showered me in kisses. It was a glorious reunion. Oh- and so was seeing my brothers! Epic back-cracking bear hugs and making fun of me... I was definitely home.

On Sunday I met up with some of the Bakery Babes at Hollister Brewing Company :) The Mac-n-cheese is still excellent and it was so much fun catching up with the girls. After that we did a family trip (minus Logan, who was in the throws of pulling together Holiday Package) to Santa Barbara's very own REI store! I thought they did a very nice job with it, though the layout of the store threw both my mom and I off a bit. We don't know why but the store felt backward. My mom made Beef Stroganoff that night. OH MY GOD I MISSED MY MOM'S COOKING SO MUCH!!!

I had to make a few stops to the old stomping grounds and enjoy EXCELLENT raise donuts. I still have not found donuts as good as Anna's Bakery on the east coast... God they are good! We went on Monday morning early (since it was Lauren's last day) and Wednesday. It was great seeing my old bosses too :) I certainly do miss working there...

Noms!

My mom and I decorated the tree after the bakery adventure. They got their tree at Costco this year and I think it's the last year they'll do that. It was a bit tricky decorating but fun nonetheless!

Yay!

Around 9:30 I started craving an In-n-Out burger (Ya gotta understand, I'm on East Coast time...) so I went and got one and some animal fries. Totally worth it!

Animal fries. I only eat them once a year but hot damn they are delicious!!

Sunset on the way to UCSB, picking up the pops from work.

Monday evening we all went to see opening night of Holiday Package. For those of you who are not familiar with Holiday Package it is a student written, directed, and produced sketch comedy show that Dos Pueblos High School has been putting on for 41 years (or some crazy number like that). They have 2 weeks to put it on and it's all about making fun of the school, teachers, silly holiday traditions, and culminates with the male ballet. This year Logan is the Theater Arts Boosters (TAB) president so he and 3 other officers were in charge of putting it on. I must say, for only having one week to throw a whole show together, they did a fantastic job! The first night was a little rocky, and it was definitely the most risqué Holiday Package to date, but quite enjoyable.

On Tuesday I had lunch with my dear friend Sydney at Super Cucas. It was SO great seeing her and catching up with her. She is a baller and going to Panama with the Peace Corps at the beginning of January to teach high school age kids english. I love see old friends after a long stretch of time and you pick up right where you left off :) Best of luck to you Sydney! I'm hoping I'll be able to pull my act together at some point to come visit you!! We had my mom's famous flank steak for dinner... So. Freaking. Delicious.

Wednesday was fraught with purpose! Since I wasn't home for Thanksgiving and I will not be home for actual Christmas day we decided to have our early Christmas celebrations on Thursday. So naturally Wednesday is when we all did our elfing. We went and took advantage of the sale at the UCSB bookstore and had lunch at Freeb!rds :) Yumm-o!

Thursday was the Michaels Clan's Christmas celebration! Yay! My mom and I spent most of the day cooking a Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner (we called it Thankschristming dinner, cuz we're just that cool...) 

This is the best way to cook a turkey. Brine that sucker. Oh- and this was also the smallest turkey Costco had: 20 pounds.

We are such good little helpers!

So it didn't quite fit in the pan...

and it barely fit in the oven. But Mama Michaels made it work.

Stuffing makings....

Spencer carved the beast this year. Papa Michaels you trained him well!

This is pretty standard in our house...

Merry Christmas from the Michaels Clan!!

The dinner was SO GOOD!! The turkey was perfect. And per Thanksgiving tradition I ate entirely too much but loved every bite of it. My mom bought some poppers at Costco so we popped them open after dinner and had some fun with the prizes inside.

While my mom and Logan were off at Holiday Package, Spencer, my dad and I did some last minute elfing and gift wrapping. My brothers wanted gifts to open on Christmas morning so my family opened my gifts and a few others, and we got our stocking stuffers, and my dad surprised our mom with a very nice gas grill. She's been wanting one for YEARS but my dad would never cave to using a gas grill (he's a charcoal man all the way) so this was a huge surprise for her :)

Friday morning was spent lounging around with this guy. It was pretty wonderful. Then my parents and I went into a deserted IV for some Bagel Cafe. God I missed Bagel Cafe and it's chive cream cheese :)

Noms!

After bagels I figured I could not be that close to the beach and NOT make a quick stop. I miss this coastline.... So gorgeous.

The rest of Friday I napped. My mom and puppies had a terrifying experience with a rottweiler/pitbull mix. It busted through a fence and went for Gus and Xander. My mom was a baller and pinned the dog between the ground and fence, while calling Spencer to come help her and keeping Gus and Xander away from the dog. The wounds were minimal (thank goodness!!) but Xander got a straight through puncture on one of his ears, and both dogs were really shaken up by it :(

Saturday came all too soon :( My dad had to go on a camping trip with the Boy Scout troop his Assistant Troopmasters for so we said our goodbyes very early in the morning. My mom, brothers and I went to breakfast at Cajun Kitchen. It was a great last meal to have in Santa Barbara. My brothers and I said our goodbyes at the house (they wanted to stay and play the new xbox games they got for xmas). So my mom took me the airport and sent me on my way back to New York.

It was great being home, but it was incredibly odd as well. Santa Barbara didn't feel like home anymore. I felt like a guest, only visiting for the week. Besides being able to get a decent burrito anytime of the day/night, the thing I miss most about SB is my family. I also didn't realize how much I really do LOVE living in New York City. It's where I am suppose to be, right now, at this point in my life. So, while I was sad to leave my family I was quite excited to get back to the east.

My flights were boring and uneventful. THANK GOD!!! I was thrilled! I got back into the city around 1 am, passed out, and was up again at 7am to get ready to go to Philadelphia for a friend (Claire) from UCSB's wedding! I took the train there and arrived SUPER early, Kelsey had taken the train on Saturday since she was a bridesmaid. I got to see Claire in her gorgeous wedding dress; she wore a modified version of her mom's dress and looked absolutely stunning! Kelsey and Savannah looked pretty in their bridesmaids dresses and the venue was beautiful. It was interesting being at an orthodox jewish wedding. The bride and groom are separated for the entire week prior to the wedding and the moment when Claire and Arkadiy first saw each other was magical.

All in all, it was a very fun and joyous occasion and a great ending to a wonderful break!

Now the job hunt begins again. I received an email from my bosses at Dolce Vizio, and after a month of being open for breakfast they realize that they are losing more money than they are making. So they will no longer be serving breakfast. They love working with me and offered me different hours but I am taking this as my sign to get out of the food industry. So I'm hoping to find some tech work or a temp job. I am still demoing for Zola, so there's that, but I do have to pay bills/rent. Ah, adult life...

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Trekkin.

Holy. Fuckin. Shit. Who knew getting to the airport would be SO FREAKING DRAMATIC?!?! But first, let me give you a quick update on this green-eyed girl:

The last two weeks have been fairly uneventful with the exception of the last 3 days. I’ve been feeling incredibly lost the last few weeks; mentally, emotionally... Ugh! And having many more existential crises than I thought I would. So I thought about it and I haven’t done any work in a theatre in over two months. I can’t remember the last time I went that long without doing SOMETHING (acting, directing, costuming, stagehanding....). So I asked a couple friends if they knew anyone in the city who needed some help (tech theatre, coffee runs, whatever) and if they could point me in said person's direction. My friend Elisha sent out a few emails and e-introduced me to his friend Michael Roderick. Michael and I set up a time to get coffee, and Wednesday we met. I went into the meeting thinking it would be more like an interview but instead it was more a “if you could have your dream job in the theatre what would it be and how can we get you there?” type deal. It was a fantastic hour talking about networking and people he could introduce me to in the New York theatrical scene. He invited me to a reading of a musical the next day and I gladly accepted.

The musical was called Apathy and it was probably the most excruciatingly painful two and a half hours I have ever spent in a theatre BUT I got to meet an awesome composer (and of course I cannot remember his name for the life of me, I should probably work on that...) and Joan Kane, who was recently named one of New York’s most influential people by nytheater.com. Michael mentioned that I had just moved here a couple of months ago. She asked me where I was from,

“Santa Barbara, CA.”

“No way! My son went to college out there! I was actually just there visiting him last week. BEAUTIFUL town! Did you go to school there as well?”

“Yes I did! I actually recently graduated from UCSB’s BFA Acting program.”

“Oh that’s wonderful!”

And then it was time for us to file into the theatre for the reading. Right before it started she leaned over and told me to email her my headshot and resume and handed me her card :)

Totally made the next painful 2+ hours worth it. I did some research about her company (Ego Actus) and loved what they’re all about. They’re putting up Pizza Man next month at a theatre in Midtown, I definitely plan on attending.

Friday I worked all day, went home and napped, then met Kelsey at the New School for the New Visions 2011 festival. We saw 2 plays The Boston Marriage by David Mamet and The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel. Both plays were fabulous and very well done. After every show the New School does they have a little wine and finger food reception, which is awesome but last night I decided I should probably head home and pack since I hadn’t yet and it was 11 pm.... It was at that point that I decided to pull an all nighter.

It didnt take me very long to pack. I forgot how little I really need to take home with me haha 1) I don’t have a whole lot here and 2) I still have a full closet back home.

Once I had finished packing I decided to keep myself up with a How I Met Your Mother marathon. It worked until around 2:15 am... then I decided to take a 30 minute nap. Thank GOD I woke up in time to head down to catch my shuttle!

Now the dramatic beginning to my first fairly epic trip home for the holidays.....

I’ve used Super Shuttle to get to and from the airport here in New York both times I’ve flown here. They’ve been professional and gotten me where I needed to be pretty much on-time (at least when I was heading to the airport, heading into the city is a whole other ball of wax). After today I’m not sure I’m going to use them again and here’s why: 

The driver picked me up on time (3:15 am), and the next three passengers were picked up in a timely fashion as well. The next set of people we picked up however were not. I swear we waited outside their apartment for a good 15-20 minutes. Did the driver call headquarters and have them notify the passengers we were waiting? No. Did he do anything to move us along to the early flights we were all catching? Nope. He read until they came outside. The next two people we waited 10 minutes for, a piece. By the time we got on the road to the airport it was 4:15 am... And then we took the most roundabout way to get to JFK. Thankfully my terminal was the first one we stopped at. And here’s where it gets REALLY crazy.

The driver of our van cut in front of this SUV who was just sitting at the green light at the terminal drop off. He pulls up curbside and myself and another passenger get out. The driver goes to open the back doors to get our bags and the guy he had cut off pulled his SUV so close that he couldn’t open the door without hitting this other guys bumper. So, instead of pulling forward more (like ANYONE else would have done) he calls the other driver out and starts tapping/hitting this guy's car. As soon as the SUV man opened his mouth I knew this wasn’t going to end well. I don’t like to stereotype at all but I kind of felt like I was in an episode of Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of New Jersey mixed with some kind of Eastern European flair (because I can't tell exactly where our driver was from).... Things begin to escalate between the Super Shuttle driver and the SUV man, his wife, and teenage son. Meanwhile, this other guy and I are standing on the curb, both looking for security, and really just wanting to get inside and on our way. Finally the Super Shuttle driver opens the back door and it taps the front bumper of the SUV... and the fighting begins. Yup, you read that right: FIGHTING. At 5 in the morning!! It started with shoving and pushing. Then the teenager gets involved and they go behind the van, punches are thrown; the people still in the van don't know what to do... All the while I’m saying out loud “Are you fucking kidding me? It’s too fucking early for this shit...” The other passenger agrees. Airport security slowly saunters up and says “Hey! Stop this shit!” I kid you not, that's exactly what he said.

After about 5 minutes of fighting, I get my one carry on item and head to security. I didn't even mind the crazy full body scanners after that, I just wanted to get through and sit at my gate!!

At the moment I am sitting at my gate; delirious from the lack of sleep mixed with my excitement of going home. Its a weird combo and I definitely feel like I'm on drugs.

I really hope this mornings excitement isn’t an indicator of how the rest of my travels home will be.... Only time will tell.

8 HOURS LATER...

So, this morning was totally an indicator of how the rest of my day as gone.

We boarded the plane on time, everything was going great. So I decided it was safe to pass the fuck out. I wake up an hour and a half later, open the window and see we're on a tarmac. "Sweet! I slept all flight! Hello, Phoenix!" And then I realize we're still in New York. Then I hear the Captain say that there is a problem with the hydraulics on the right engine and that we would be back at a gate shortly. I turn on my phone. It's 7:45 am.... I start freaking out a bit because something like this (where I'm going to miss my connecting flight) has never happened to me before. Shows you how much I've flown haha.

They have us deplane so they can run a full diagnostic on the right engine... I stand in line to figure out what the hell I'm going to do while I'm texting my mom who is asleep because it's SUPER early on the west coast and not 15 minutes later they have us boarding the plane again. I quickly texted my mom the situation, asking her to call the airline to find out about my connecting flight in Phoenix.

I'm all for safety first, especially when it comes to flying. But the two and a half hour delay was caused by a malfunctioning indicator light.... seriously dude. Whatever. As soon as the plane took off I passed out. I slept for most of the flight, which was so needed!! The flight itself wasn't terrible. I had an ENTIRE row to myself so I could stretch out :) We hit a bit of rough turbulence but it wasn't crazy.

We arrived in Phoenix around noon. I went to US Airways Customer Assistance counter (like most of the people on my flight) and got my new boarding pass for my connecting flight. I felt bad for the customer service people working the desk. People were being such bitches to them even though the problem occurred in NY... I smiled and said hello as I approached the counter, told her politely where I needed to go and handed her my original Phoenix boarding pass. As she was typing she asked me if I worked in customer service, I replied that I did and she thanked me for understanding and being flexible with the situation. I told her I knew it wasn't her fault and that I would get home at some point :) She wished me a "Happy Holidays."

After I got my boarding pass I found a bar that served food as well since I had not eaten an actual meal since 3 pm Friday. I enjoyed a delicious beer and some yummy nachos. It was EXACTLY what I needed at that moment.

Now I'm sitting here at my gate, charging my phone, waiting for my 5:49 pm flight home, enjoying the silliness of traveling during the holidays :)