Friday, Friday, Friday. I woke up on Friday, January 29 (our 2.5 yr anniversary!) at 6am. Why? Well other than my body thinking it was 11am, Clif’s phone kept making blooping noises because it was 1) Charged up and 2) getting text messages. Then at around 6:30am, his phone rang. He answered it and it was his father and he had a full out conversation with him at 6:30am. Honestly, I know that Jay got annoyed by it and talked about it on the Jay & Jack Show but it wasn’t that bad for me. I didn’t want to waste any of the day sleeping in.
I made Jay get up around 7:15am and we ended up going for a walk on the beach. We walked down one way on the beach and then back along the street. On the way back, I saw the hotel that my family had stayed in the first time we went to Hawaii, back when I was 15 or 16, the Moana Surfrider. Oh yeah and we also came across some pretty awesome leis in an ABC store…
Walking on the beach
The hotel that my family stayed at 10 years ago
My kind of lei…
So upon returning to the hotel, it was around 8:15am and we decided to go in the totally super awesome pool at the hotel. Around 8:30am, we saw Clif on the balcony of our hotel room and waved to him. I guess he was shouting down to us a little too loudly because that’s when Jack woke up and went onto the balcony to investigate. Here’s the picture Clif took while he was yelling down to us in the pool. You can barely see us, but we’re in there lol.
So we went back upstairs around 9:15am. In the interest of people want to actually continue reading this, I’ll speed it up a little bit. We gathered Clif and went into Jack & Cyndi’s room, where I did my whole “omg-I’m-so-excited-yaayyyy!” speale and everyone who doesn’t like to have fun in life looked like they wanted to kill me. Soon after, we all showered and got ready. Jack, Jay, Clif & I had not eaten breakfast yet. Jay, Clif & I decided to walk down to a local Jack in the Box and get something light to hold us over.
We had plans with Beth to give us an unofficial “Lost Tour”. We had to meet her on the set at noon. The set was on the North Shore, which was literally the furthest point from where our hotel was. It would take an hour to get there, so we left around 11am. I only had one of those Breakfast Jack thingys in my stomach. We figured that we’d get lunch on the North Shore with Beth after she finished showing us some famous filming locations. So we met up with Michael Purcell of Global Cash Card and hopped into a little rental car.
Well [pause]. Since Jay didn’t know where he was going and was relying on the GPS on Clif’s iPhone to get us to the meeting point, it took us well over an hour to get there. We saw the Grass Skirt Productions signs and turned into the lot. The guys doing security asked us if we were here for Lost and we told them yes and got in with no problem. We see dudes walking around in Others garb. Beth walks over to the car and Cyndi & Jack ask her if they can use the restroom. Michael’s face lights up and he follows them. This entire time, Clif is lecturing Jay & myself about the proper etiquette for being on the set of a TV show. You know, I may be loud and annoying in my every day life but I know how to be on best behavior when I want to be. I start nagging the hell out of Jay for us to catch up to them because I did have to pee pretty badly and I didn’t want to be stuck with professor-dad Clif over there. Jay doesn’t want to “get in trouble” so he resists until Beth waves us over.
We walk around what I think was the costume trailer and come across another set of trailers. My eyesight makes a total beeline to none other than Josh Holloway! Internal monologue: “Uh whaaatttt?!” In an attempt to try not to stare, I turn to face Jack. He mutters to me, “He’s talking to Matthew Fox!” Internal monologue: “flkajdflaudfahfOMFGokdafhia. Be cool. Go pee.” Then I remember my full bladder and natural instinct kicks in and I ask where the bathroom was. I think at this point, it was either Jack or Cyndi who quietly exclaim, “I just walked past Evangeline Lilly!” I nod and walk towards where Beth is motioning the bathroom is.
As I walk by Beth, I see she’s talking to Evangeline Lilly in her trailer but this time, I’m on a mission. I did my business (#1, don’t get any ideas) in Jorge’s trailer and return to the group. At this point, Evangeline Lilly is now outside talking to Josh Holloway and Matthew Fox. I must say that she really is quite a beautiful woman. Oh hell, everyone on that show is attractive.
End of fangirl geek-out paragraph. Start of just plan geek-out section.
So we set off with Beth (and since we all keep talking about Beth but never actually saying who she is, I should probably just clear up that Beth is Jorge Garcia’s lovely girlfriend). Since it took so long to get to the North Shore and we had to leave by a certain time to get back for the ABC press mixer, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked for the tour. But we made the best of it!
We hit up the camp that serves as the set for New Otherton:
And saw Benjamin Linus’s house:
And the beach where the filmed the pilot, Aljira 316 crash, etc:
Moving along from there, we went to the site where they keep the wreckage from Oceanic 815 and the little plane that Yemi’s body was on:
Oh and did I mention that Jay & I found pieces of the plane that had blown outside the fence? HA! 5 years ago when I stood in the middle of the DVD section of Wal-Mart trying to decide whether or not to buy Season 1 of Lost, I definitely never would have imaged that I’d be actually holding a broken piece of that set in my hand someday…
Next up, we made a quick stop at the set where young Mr. Eko’s flashback took place - the one where the kids were playing soccer.
On the way back to dropping Beth off on set, we stopped at the tree where Kate buried the NKOTB lunchbox. I wished we could’ve gotten closer to it because I wanted to climb it lol.
We dropped Beth back off - and no, there weren’t any more sightings because the actors were all off filming - and then began the long drive back to Waikiki. Clif got us a little bit lost and of course then his phone died BUT we managed to get back based on pure awesomeness and a good sense of direction.
Well, I think I’ve lived up to this blog’s name and rambled on long enough. Next up: Friday evening (well, what I can remember from it…).
P.S. Beth has a children’s book coming out in the spring. You can find it on Amazon.com by clicking here.
Okay so I’m a week late but hey, it’s my birthday today and I’m determined to not do much at work today lol so, I figured I’d share a bit about the trip to Hawaii. Since it may get a little bit long, I’ll break it up into a few parts. Here’s part 1 and it’s going to be the most boring part, to be honest. But if you return within the next few days, I promise to have better tales of beach, drinking, and debauchery. And I’ll even throw in a little bit of Lost.
So I left Raleigh on Thursday morning on a 8:35am flight. My connection was at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport in Texas. Everything went smoothly except we landed early and they had no gate for us because other planes were delayed a bit going out because of the weather. It was a bit of a mad dash from my arrival gate to the next terminal and my departure gate, but I made it in time for the last boarding call. This flight was awesome because I had the entire row to myself and there were TVs on board. I slept a bit for each flight, which was also awesome since I got about 3 hours sleep on Wednesday night.
Got to LAX (or LA X just to keep in line with the Lost/dork theme of the weekend) early and had to change terminals from American Airlines to Delta. I got a bit confused because LA X is the devil. I was stumbling around all groggy because I had just woken up and was still exhausted but I managed to find the Delta terminal and went through security with no problem.
That was the last time that day that I had no problem with anything.
So I got there with about 1.5 hours until my flight was supposed to leave, which was 2:45pm. Althought it was like 1:15pm in California, my body thought it was 4:15pm and I had yet to eat that day. So I found a California Pizza Kitchen by my gate (which wasn’t difficult as every single thing there was a CPK) and stuffed my face with a tuna fish sandwich. Made my way to the gate, where lots of people were already waiting. Called my parents and grandparents to tell them I was all safe and sound and as I’m doing that, I hear an announcement that my flight is going to be delayed 20 minutes. “No problem,” I figured and I texted Jay and reasoned, “We’ll make up for that time in air and I’m sure it’ll all be fine.” Ha, yeah right.
After a little while, it becomes a 30 minute delay. Then a 45 minute delay. The attendants at the gate tell us that there’s an “in-air CPU problem” that they need to fix before we can fly over the water. Of course there is! So I’m at this point getting a little bit worked up but hey, 45 minutes will still get me into Hawaii by 7:15pm and that’s still dinner time so I guess it’s okay.
Then it becomes an additional hour delay. They fixed the problem but now they have to run all the engine tests and that’ll take up to an hour. We can’t be on board during those tests. Now I start to get upset. I won’t get into Hawaii until like 8:30pm at this point and I’m dead on my feet from lack of sleep. I tell Jay to just go and eat dinner without me. He refuses. I tell him he’s stupid. I hang up the phone and go back to freaking out.
So this brings us to about 3:45pm-ish right now. They tell us that we’re going to be delayed until at least 5pm. I go up to the gate attendants and one says the next flight out that she can get me on is at 5:55pm. I say that I don’t want to risk getting on a later flight if ours is scheduled for 5pm. She tells me go come back at 4:30, because that’s when there will be another update. Great. Oh and the best part? They gave us $10 food vouchers for our troubles that did not even work on cocktails. WTF? Don’t they realize that the way to calm angry people is to give them money to buy a friggin’ drink?
So I’ve been around the airplane-delay-block a few (dozen) times before. I know that when you get meal vouchers for a 2.5 hour delay, it means that you’re going to be there longer than 2.5 hours. I reacted accordingly, as I tend to do in life. So I head over to the California Pizza Kitchen again and do my best Jack Shephard impression, which included crying to my waitress over a double Jack Daniels & Diet Coke. Then I ordered a Garlic Chicken Pizza to go just for the sake of spending Delta’s money.
So I head back to the gate at like 4:20pm because I see a crowd has started to gather again. Our plane’s pilot was making an announcement that the engine check had found that there was a problem with a valve that controls cabin pressure. Our new estimated time of departure was 7pm PDT. I was on the phone with my mom at that point and totally bust into tears. I knew I was embarrassing myself but I was so tired and frustrated and all I wanted to do was get to Hawaii and go to sleep that I couldn’t help myself. I went up to the desk to ask them what my options were. The pilot had seen me all teary-eyed on the phone during his announcement that he came over to me to ask me if I were okay. “No, I’m not okay!” I cried at him. He ended up having them put me on the 5:55pm flight, which was incredibly nice of him. I apologized for the outburst profusely and thanked him even more.
I went over to my new gate and ended up eating the entire Garlic Chicken pizza by myself. Which, as you will learn in my Friday story, ended up being a somewhat good thing.
We took off on time at 5:55pm. My first flight, which was originally supposed to leave at 2:45pm, ended up leaving at 6:00pm. It took us 6 hrs 20 minutes hours to get to Hawaii from LA X. It was supposed to only take 5 hrs 45 minutes to get there. There must have been some bad winds or they were letting the other plane land first.
One final story: I ended up falling asleep on and off for about 4 hours of that flight. The other part of that flight, I was reading the first of the True Blood books, “Dead Until Dark.” When the plane landed and I got up to stretch before they let us off, I noticed that none other than Carrie Preston (wife of Michael Emerson) was sitting two rows behind me. Carrie Preston plays Arlene in the TV show True Blood (the red head who has been married a bunch of times). I just thought that was funny. Jay texted me that Michael Emerson was waiting at the airport so he wasn’t surprised that Carrie was on my flight. He said that he was hiding in the corner though so he and Clif did not disturb him.
At this point, it was like 10:15pm in Honolulu and my body felt like it was 3:15am. I was beat. After we got to the Halekulani hotel, I went out to dinner with Jay, Clif, Jack and Cyndi (Jay’s mom). I know I wasn’t much fun though. I could barely keep my eyes open and didn’t eat anything other than Jay’s pickle (That’s what she said, now shut up). Went to bed almost immediately upon getting back to the hotel.
I have a gazillion pictures and some really great stories from this past weekend in Hawaii but it’s taking me a little time to get them all up/written. So to hold you over in the meantime (and you’ve probably seen this already but whatever, Clif kept us up til 1am working on it and both Jay & I happen to think that this is pretty bad ass), here’s the trailer for all the coverage that was done by Team nuDia from the weekend.
So Jay & Clif left today for Hawaii. They met up with Jack & Jay’s mom in LA(coughspacecough)X and everyone just set sail (flight) for Honolulu Airport. They won’t land until 3:45am EST but that’s okay because I have to wait until midnight EST to record ChuckCast with special guest host Ralph!
Anyways. I already am almost packed for Hawaii even though I have to work so I don’t get to go until Thursday. All that’s left to pack are my jacket, some bras, and my sneakers. Then I am good to go! I even sent Jay with all my toiletries, like mousse, a toothbrush, and contact solution. I wasn’t playing around. I’m prepared this time. Only 4 pairs of shoes: flats, sandals, sneakers, and dress scandals. Again, I mean business.
It’s been one of those really stressful weeks, starting last Wednesday. However, I swam a mile today for the first time! When I started swimming on November 1, I wasn’t very strong and barely made it to a quarter of a mile but I had a goal to swim one mile by the time I went to Hawaii and tonight, I finally did it! I’m very proud of myself and even had a beer to celebrate (we gave up beer for the month of January in order to try to lose weight for Hawaii).
Ahh, that’s it for now. More later and from Hawaii later this week.
Um, this is a really awesome trailer for Lost Season 6. It’s entirely in Spanish and really friggin’ creative considering Damon & Carlton won’t let any new material leak out in any of the promos. Honestly, it’s got me more excited than the crappy ones that ABC has put out. Best part? Matthew Fox isn’t talking whining about destiny in it.
So yesterday was Day 1 of San Diego Comic Con 2009 aka Preview Night. Woot. After Jay & I picked up our rental car (an oh-so-hot PT Cruiser), we made a much anticipated stop at In N Out Burger in Mission Valley. There, we (me, Jay, Jana & Clif) met up with Ryan & Jen Ozawa from the Transmission podcast and Alirio “I Have Free Health Care in Canada” of PauseCast.
We got our badges at about 2pm and then sat around the Convention Center outside Ballroom 20 for 4 hours until the doors opened for the Exhibit Hall at 6pm. I wanted to get a Benjamin Linus Bobble Head doll but by the time I got over there after my stop at the Diamond Toys booth to pick up Stay Puft Marshmellow Man limited edition banks for Jay, Derek, and Kim, the line was too long and I wanted to go up and see the previews for V (looks awesome) and The Vampire Diaries (craptastic-minus-the-tastic-until-Boone-gets-on-45-mins-into-it). Afterwards, we hit up some local bar for food/drinks with friends like Chris in Boston & friends, Adam of the Randy Rando Randonopolis podcast, Desiree in Pensicola, Alirio and Michael the Friendly Communist. Good times, good times.
Video and pictures below:
Criffy-Crif!
Ryan & Jen at In N Out
Jack, Clif, me, and Jay with Jay & Jack listener UKJay aka @jhewlett
Some random boys causing trouble.
Jen, JOpinionated, me, Jay, Jack, Clif, Alirio, Adam
Jay, Stuart, & Adam going to see the “V” screening
After planning this from October 2008, Jay & Jack’s 25 Hour Marathon Podcast for Autism Speaks was finally this past weekend. It was awesome. We were aiming to raise $10,000 by April 20, but we managed to raise more than $12,000 for Autism Speaks by the end of the 25 hours!
Anyways, we had a lot of fellow podcasters and listeners come to Raleigh to hang out and get us through the entire 25 hours. I really cannot wait for Comic Con 2009 or for next year’s event. Here’s a picture from the end of the 25 hours. We started at 5pm on Saturday and finished up at 6pm Sunday night. Can you say exhausted?
So at about 2pm on Sunday, when we were in the home stretch, Jorge Garcia (Hurley on Lost) came on and kicked ass for 3.5 hours. Except for when I got totally p’wned:
D’oh!
Donations are still coming in, via check to PO Box 40082 Raleigh, NC 27629 (made out to Autism Speaks) or via PayPal, by sending money to the email address LPDonate@gmail.com (we’ll have PayPal send us a check for the final total and then we send that check, along with the other checks, to Autism Speaks).
Thank you to everyone who came in person (I’m sorry if I left anyone out) and everyone who tuned into the live feed, whether it was for 5 minutes, an hour, 12 hours, or all 25 hours. Thanks Jana for keeping the riff-raff out of the chat room. Thanks Chris, Rob, Chris the Bostonian Banhammer, Jessica, Alirio, Sue, Robin, Mandy, Tommy, Michael, Daniel & his wife, Mark & his girlfriend, Allison & her friend, Elizabeth & the man in the Dharmalars shirt whose name escapes me right now (I’m sorry!)
I swear, I’d like to never have to pack/unpack anything ever again. Since 2002, I have literally moved back & forth between college, home, my grandparents’ house, Astoria, home at least once a year. I really, really hope that wherever I end up in Raleigh is someplace that I can call “home” for more than one year. I am just so sick and tired of packing.
But emo rant aside, at the end of Day 3, here’s what I’ve got:
One suitcase = done.
2 more suitecases = half full.
4 drawers = done. The remaining 2 drawers are currently sitting on the floor to my room. It’s 10:47pm. As soon as my blood pressure returns back to normal from tonight’s episode of Lost (”This Place is Death” - I say this so if I re-read this post in 3 years, I remember what episode I was talking about haha), I’ll fold the other 2 drawers’ worth of clothes and pack them. Jay’s up til at least 1am on Lost nights recording/posting “The Lost Podcast” & every week, I promise I’ll wait up. Naturally, every week I fall asleep lol. Oops. I swear I always try.
Pictures, including albums & ones in frames = wrapped/packed.
Purses = done. I even got rid of one.
Glass of wine = Drank. Actually, 2. One was red while we ate dinner. The second was white, while I watched Lost.
Ice cream cake = Eaten.
As far as tonight’s Lost goes: HOLY MOTHER EFFING SHIT!!! “Say hello to my son for me.” WTF does that mean?! Jack? Someone else? Is he Charlotte’s Dad too? Or is it Widmore? Or someone else? Did she and her mom leave before the purge? Miles’ had to have been there before because his nose bleed started 2nd, so why doesn’t have have any memory of it? Why didn’t we get a big dramatic, “YOU?!!!!” from Desmond at the end of the episode? What’s the REST of Danielle’s story?! Why did it end at 10pm and not just keep going on forever?!
My parents & I are taking our beloved 10-year-old family dog Strider to a doggie cardiologist at 9am because he’s having some issues with heart failure & has been breathing incredibly laboredly the last few days. He’s on lots of meds right now to try to drain the fluid from his lungs and I am beyond upset to see him go through all of this - I was crying so badly when my parents filled me in that I half-paid attention to the first 20 minutes of Lost. Yeah, I’m an overemotional human being. It’s 1am Thursday morning right now, but Wednesday started with a very sad funeral and ended with news of my dog’s status as mortal. Mixed in was my sad feelings about my last day of work and a phone call from Brian that he was canceling our plans to see The Daily Show on February 9, which I had been looking forward to for months. Oh well, I’m sure karma’s doing this to me & I can’t complain, just be…whatever. I didn’t really like today very much. I don’t know if I’ll be sharing any more details or not about Strider’s condition. It makes me upset even typing about it now & the last 40 minutes of Lost cheered my spirits. Hey Jin! Hey Rousseau! Wud up sluts?
This cracks me up. It’s being going around since Monday but I’m thinking about adding it to my “I Have a 10 Hour Drive to Raleigh, NC” playlist next week. Please tell me you love it. Jay, Robin & Chris enjoyed it. It’s Christian Bale’s tirade against the Director of Photography on the set of “Terminator: Salvation,” but remixed a bit.
