Posted by Colleen on Feb 16, 2010 in
Adventure,
Family,
Good times So far, London has been everything I expected it to be: gorgeous architecture, awesome sites to see, fantastic food, and cold & rainy. All in all, it’s been so far so good.
February 12-13, 2010:
We arrived on Saturday after an overnight flight out of JFK, where Diana Ross touched me. Yes, she did. Well actually, she technically brushed aside me as she cut through our security line to go ahead to the front of the line. Even though seeing celebrities at JFK is about as expected (yawn) as seeing them at LAX, it was still kinda random. Oh and she definitely looks fabulous. Like, really fabulous.
After we arrived on Saturday morning, we went through customs, met up with Christie, got our Tube passes and were on our way back to our hotel, The Regency in South Kensington. At this point, we were utterly exhausted so my parents and Christie graciously allowed Katelyn & I an entire hour of rest/nap time. Woot. While we were napping, flowers came to our door. They were Valentines’ Day gifts from Jay & Jeremiah. My flowers are yellow & red (as seen below) and Kate’s were red. Yay, flowers, pretty. Post-nap, we headed out to Picadilly Circus (reminded me of Times Square), Trafalgar Square (they had a huge screen set-up that the Olympics were broadcasting from), and the National Museum. At the National Museum, we saw original artwork from Vincent Van Gough, Monet, Manet, Leonardo DaVinci, Rafael, Michelangelo, Claude, Rembrandt, and a whole bunch of others. Despite being incredibly tired, it was still really, really cool and something that I’d recommend to try some day.
Side bar: This entire time I’ve been in London, I’ve been having terrible problems with my rental World Edition Blackberry. Word of advice: Get the Tour if you’re a traveler and avoid all of this annoyance/phone time with Verizon. Katelyn has a Tour & has had no problems getting service. I constantly have to reset the phone (taking the battery out) to find a signal & then hope that it actually connects with the network once it recognizes it. It’s such a pain in the ass. #VerizonFAIL.
Following the National Museum, Kate & I went back to the hotel to nap for an hour and a half because Christie wanted us to go out with her and her friends for one of the girl’s 21st birthday. My old ass must have looked like a chaperon hanging out with all those 20 & 21 year old girls lol. I ended up having a great time.
Sunday, February 14, 2010:
My parents graciously let us sleep in while they went to mass. We did a crapload of walking on Sunday. We walked around Notting Hill (didn’t see the infamous house with the blue door from the movie), visited Portabello Market (totally did sing Bedknobs and Broomsticks in my head the entire afternoon), then walked a little bit through the Baker Street area. If you’re not into shopping as much as you are sight-seeing, then I’d say that perhaps this isn’t for you BUT it’s neat area & they have fun places to do a little shopping/browsing, so it is worth the walk thru. Before heading back to South Kensington, we went to Tottenham Ct & Oxford St. see where my dad lived when he studied here back in the fall of 1977. It was still there, only a hotel had bought out where he stayed. It was a quaint & quiet area and his face was so joyous when he showed us the ‘hood.
Rounding out Sunday, I sprinted in the rain to the Apple Store on Regent Street to get there like 3 minutes before closing time so I could buy an international adapter kit for my Macbook’s power cord. WORD OF ADVICE TO FELLOW TRAVELERS: Make sure you purchase the proper power adapters for your cell phones, computers, etc. BEFORE you leave for vacation. If you put it off til the last minute, you’ll end up sweaty and soaking wet in the middle of a London Apple store and that’s not fun or fabulous. We had dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant in our neighborhood on Sunday night. I still dream of that Italian sausage (that’s what she said) and broccoli in my pasta. I’ll have to ask my father for the name of it.
Speaking of dreaming, I should probably go to sleep now because it’s 12:35am and I did not get a good night’s sleep at all last night. I kept thinking about falling down the winding stairs at St. Paul’s Cathedral and then my heart would start pounding and I couldn’t breathe - if you haven’t heard me mention it on Twitter, I’ll tell that story next time. Then I also started having the first of my wedding planning anxiety attacks because well, I’ve never been married before and I have no idea where to even start. My mom said we should start with the guest list first because it’ll be the most difficult of decisions and already that’s causing me panic because we’ve had people contact us assuming they’re invited or joking about it and that makes me super stressed out because aaahhhh I have no idea; I don’t have a date or wedding party or anything other than a state and a possible color scheme picked out. So I was thinking about that crap all night too. AND NOW I’M GOING TO STOP WRITING ABOUT IT AND THINKING ABOUT IT SO I CAN GO TO BED TONIGHT…aka right now.
Tags: London, National Museum, Notting Hill, Picadilly Circus, Portabello Market, Portabello Road, South Kensington
Posted by Colleen on Feb 15, 2010 in
Picture Post Is this any good?
What should I try while I am here?
Posted by Colleen on Feb 14, 2010 in
Jay Glatfelter,
Picture Post The Jeremiahs 1 & 2 (aka Jay and Katelyn’s boyfriend Jer) sent us each flowers for Valentines’ Day since they’re still in the States. Aww, yay :) Here are mine:
Happy Valentines’ Day everyone! And if you’re not the type to care about V-Day, Happy Sunday!
Yesterday we went to the National Gallery and today we are going to start at Portabello Market (I keep singing Bedknobs and Broomsticks), followed maybe by Abbey Roll and a trip to the Apple Store or some kind of electronics store for me to buy an international adapter for my Macbook cause I totally forgot one…
Okay so I guess the Hawaii saga is going to be put on hold for a day since there’s obviously been some new developments in life over the last 22 hours.
So I’m leaving for London to go visit my sister Christie on Friday, Feb 12. I’m going with my parents and other sister Katelyn and we’re leaving from JFK Airport. This has been planned for a while. Back in the beginning of December, I bought my tickets on Southwest Airlines to fly out tonight, Thurs Feb 11 at 7:10pm from RDU & arrive on Long Island. Why did I plan to get in a day early? My mom had read in the Farmer’s Almanac that there was going to be a big storm this week & she was afraid that my flight from Raleigh would be canceled if I left on Friday and I’d miss the JFK flight. After some arguing & ticket-paying-negotiations, I agreed to leave tonight.
You may know that my birthday was on Monday, Feb. 8. Jay had to go to school that night and he has class all day long on Tuesdays (8am-4:45pm), so I knew that I’d have somewhat of a lonely birthday. He’s trying to get some music history classes that he took applied to his regular history classes and because my mom teaches at a college, I had asked her how he should go about applying to do that. She had advised us on some tips & that was that. I talked to my mom around 9:15pm on Monday night. I was talking to Jay around 11pm-ish that night over gchat and he mentioned he called my mom to thank her for helping him. He said this was around 9:00pm.
At this point, I’m a bit suspicious because I said goodnight to my parents 15 minutes after said phone call and no one said a word to me. I question Jay & his story is the same. Then I Blackberry message Kate. She basically tells me to turn the crazy off for the last hour of my birthday & go to bed. The next morning, she BBM’s me before 7am to tell me, “Mom didn’t say anything to you because she assumed you were in the room when he called.” “BULLSHIT!” I thought. “I talked to mom at 6pm AND 9:15pm and both times she knew that I was home alone with Zoe all night!” But that was at like 7:15am & when I went to put my key in my car door at around 7:50am yesterday morning, I had a premonition. I got in the car & that was that.
So we were going to go to Ruth Chris Steakhouse for Birth-entines’ Day. Since there’s only a week between my birthday & Valentines’ Day, we combine the holidays and call it that. It’s kinda like the kid born on Christmas Eve who shares their birthday presents with their Christmas presents ;). I kept questioning Jay on how expensive that place was and I’m going to miss a full week of work this month, so my paycheck would be lower and maybe we should just wait, blah blah blah blah blah. He kept saying “no, no, no”. However, I was talking to a co-worker yesterday & all of a sudden, I decided that I wanted Italian food. I asked Jay if we could switch from Ruth Chris to Carrabbas because I really just wanted Italian. He agreed over text, but in the car on the way there, he was all weird & pissy about how I had changed restaurants. I got annoyed and said “It’s MY birthday and if I want pasta, I’m eating pasta!”
On the way to the restaurant, we got word that my flight for 7:10pm tonight was canceled because I had a layover in Baltimore and well…Baltimore has some issues with some snow at the moment. Since we were in the car, I called my parents to ask them to change my flight. After a lot of trying, it turns out that the only flight I could get on left at 1:15pm & got in to Islip, NY at 9:55pm, with a layover in Tampa, Florida. I was *not* happy because I couldn’t miss an additional half day at work. In short, I was freaking out. Jack & Cyndi (Jay’s parents) ended up randomly being at the same restaurant as us, which was kinda funny lol.
Ohhh, time to board. Brb!
Okay back & it’s like an hour later, even though you guys don’t know that. Continuing, I was on the phone with my parents for quite some time during dinner, as they were trying to find me a flight. After about 30 minutes, it became clear that the 1:15pm flight was my only option. I resisted A LOT. I was panicking about leaving work 5.5 hours earlier than planned & not having packed yet, etc. al. Eventually I had no choice but to agree to get onto this fight. So I very reluctantly told my father that I’d do it.
At this point, Jay seems super annoyed. I think that it is just because we’ve been sitting at the table for 40 minutes and only just ordered appetizers. I felt reasonably guilty about being on the phone for so long & freaking out in public Little did I know…
We end up having a really nice dinner :) I was so distraught that I ate an ENTIRE loaf of bread by myself, then completely cleared my plate of lobster raviolis AND had 3 glasses of wine. Sadly, the 2,500 calorie meal cancels out the 3 glasses of wine lol.
So we get back home and I make a quick phone call to my parents to confirm with my mom that the random shit I’m literally throwing at my suitcase (not in or on, just at) is going to suffice for the cold London temperature. A few minutes later, Jay goes to me, “You look like you need a beer. Do you want me to get a beer?” At this point, my first thought is, “Wine AND beer?! It totally MUST be Birth-entines’ Day!”
So he hands me a beer and I put it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. Then he gets down on one knee and says something very sweet that you’ll have to ask him to repeat 
and pulls out a ring!!! As he got down on one knee and pulled out the box, I subconsciously knew what was going on but at first I thought he was just kidding and it was going to be a bracelet or something. Then I saw it and was completely speechless and I think I said something along the lines of, “For REAL?!?!?!“ But I didn’t cry!! I choked up & sobbed for a minute but I was too busy processing it all and nodding and everything all at once
I called my parents, who had Kate call me on Skype so they could video chat & see the ring. Then we called Christie in London and my grandparents and my aunt and basically everyone. Jay called his families & I called mine. Then we agreed that Jay could have the first Facebook announcement and I would do Twitter (even though by “first” we meant “45 seconds before the other person” lol).
So yeah, good times!! My ring is GORGEOUS. Funny story: I totally forgot that over the summer, Jay, Clif & I had been eating and then walking around Southpoint Mall in Durham for a change of pace. We all ended up in a Helzberg Jewelers in there, looking at all the jewelry, including engagement rings, that they had to offer. So I totally forgot about that when he asked me this morning over the phone, “Did he get you the ’sparkly’ ring?” I laughed SO hard. I was shocked that Clif remembered that day before I even did and that he even remembered which ring it was. Color me impressed
No date will be set until after I get back from London, although it’s going to be at least a year out in order to give friends & family who have to travel plenty of time to plan ahead to get there. It’s going to be in NY though and sometime in a month that is NOT cold because anyone who has ever met me knows that I despise the cold with a passion.
That’s all I’ve got for now and I’m SO EXCITED! So now I have to finish up my Hawaii story, tell all my London stories AND yak about wedding plans! YAY!!! It’s so nice to have things to look forward to!!
Oh, fine. Here is what Jay said to me and honestly, I only know it because he sent it to me.
“The first time I met you I knew you were special. After only a couple days of dating I knew I loved you and a couple months after I knew I wanted to be with you forever. Colleen will you marry me?”
Posted by Colleen on Feb 10, 2010 in
Announcement 
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.
Tags: Hawaii, Lost, Sunset on the Beach
Posted by Colleen on Feb 10, 2010 in
Ramble/Ponder/Rant Sometimes the worst part about having a blog that everyone can see is that you can’t really just take the liberty to say how you really feel about someone or something because it’s not something you can ever say out loud to them in real life or all hell would break loose.
Just sayin’.
More Hawaii posts in a little while.
Posted by Colleen on Feb 8, 2010 in
Adventure,
Airline Adventures,
Lost 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.
Friday, however, is when the fun REALLY started…
Tags: Delta, Hawaii, LAX, Lost
Posted by Colleen on Feb 3, 2010 in
Jay Glatfelter,
Lost,
Podcasting Adventures THIS IS SO COOL!!!! I’m so excited!!
From the very front page of iTunes, as in ALL of iTunes, not just TV & Film:
Tags: Jay and Jack, Lost, Lost Podcast
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.
Also, you can check out exclusive pictures taken by Cesar the Awesome from the Red Carpet by going here: http://yublog.org/2010/02/02/exclusive-red-carpet-photos-from-sunset-on-the-beach-cesar-altamirano/
Tags: Jay and Jack, Lost, Sunset on the Beach