Random updates

So, it's been awhile, and recently the blog has kind of seemed broken on occasion? As in, you come to the URL and there is nothing there? This has happened to me a few times, not sure if that's why no one has been leaving us any comment love, but I will push on! Writing about things no one cares about! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm completely ripping this format from Amalah's last post. Seriously. Click on the link and you will see how unoriginal I am. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots has happened in the few weeks since I last posted cute pictures of Jean's puppy. That same day we visited, Dan and I went to the Jelly Belly factory which was fun because you have to wear a paper hat in the factory even though you get NOWHERE near the jellybeans in the process of being made. Also, the day we were there they were making cotton candy and raspberry flavors and wow, headache. But, you get to try a lot of flavors you don't see a lot of places (jalapeno anyone?) and new flavors (pomegranate is yummy) and be around too many kids on a sugar high. Exciting. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the factory, but outside where they have jelly belly motorcycles, a jelly belly car, a jelly belly RV and a huge blow up jelly bean, you feel free to take pictures to your heart's content! But, it was a factory tour, which completely fascinate me, and free, so hooray! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan is in Austin again for South by Southwest working really long days, and I'm still in Berkeley, sleeping in too late. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Um, this won't be exciting to anyone else, but I'm going to see Dave Matthews in September. This is exciting because I requested my tickets through their fan club system (of course I'm in the fan club) for a venue that I've never been to before but have always wanted to go to where they always do amazing multi-night performances. The trick is, the venue is the Gorge, about 2 hours east of Seattle. So this year, they're spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend there, and I requested tickets for all three nights to hedge my bets and I got ALL of them! Honestly, when I found out I danced around the apartment ala Dana's dance of joy from Sportsnight. No words. Too excited. Yes, I will be making the pilgrimage for a weekend o' dave. Dan is, well, not as excited. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I also have no words to describe how excited I am about this summer (before the concerts). Dana and Larry are coming out to visit in June, and she already has quite the itinerary planned out :) July means Houston craziness with the CC, followed less than a month later by CC craziness is New York. These are good times my friends :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finished my second RAD class today! We had 12 students which is a new record for us - woot! Seriously, teaching this is basically the highlight of my job. It's awesome seeing women who don't think they have any strength go through simulation at the end. *smile* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Friday, I went to the campus production of the Vagina Monologues and it was SO good. The cast did an AMAZING job, I laughed and cried, and cried some more. They also include monologues here that Cal women have written, and the original pieces were really powerful. What was NOT as amazing was the guy who came with his girlfriend sitting next to me who, no lie, brought a bottle of Jack in his jacket and, throughout the show, pulled it out to pour into his Coke and drink. And dropped it on the floor a couple of times. And smelled like I was in a bar, at last call. Then, he would pull his girlfriend over to him at completely inappropriate times and make out. NOT OK. All I could think about was that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry makes out with his girlfriend at Schindler's List. I mean, women are on stage talking about being raped, and you're getting drunk and sloppy. You, my friend, are pure class. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will be on the East Coast in 9 days! We're going to be doing a bit of a whirlwind visit - up to Johnstown, over the bridge to Maryland, back to DC for a conference, down to Richmond for a night and back to DC. Whew! Dan will be flying directly from Austin to meet me in DC, and he isn't coming back to Berkeley until we fly back together on April 6th. He'll be away from home for about 3.5 weeks, which is sad, because I think Lily misses him already. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Spring Break starts in 5 days! THANK HEAVENS. Time for a break. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fin.

Viva Las Vegas

This was Kristin's third time to Vegas, but my first, so you'll hear our tales from my virgin eyes. Vegas is a strange town, there's drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Oh yea, and there's gambling too. I think there are many different ways you could see Vegas, and I'm thrilled with how we saw Vegas, plus we didn't gamble a cent. Strangely, we stayed up working 24 hours straight before our trip, because we're crazy! After a 6am flight, you might think we took a nap. Wrong. The hotel couldn't give us a room at 8am, so we freshened up in their staff bathroom and hit The Strip.

We felt like we actually stayed in MGM, as we were there 2 to 3 times a day because we had a free shuttle from our hotel to MGM. I learned there are no real attractions besides the gigantic themed monstrosities. Everybody knows of the Bellagio dancing fountains, and they didn't disappoint. We stood by the lake and watched the fountains for over an hour, and that was just the first day! The view of the entire city (and the Bellagio fountains) from the Paris Eiffel Tower is rather incredible. (Edit by KK: Also incredible, the number of callgirl cards that Dan managed to collect in 2.5 days. It's really a pretty impressive stack sitting here in our apartment.)

We saw Ka, one of those fancy Cirque du Soleil shows. Actually, it was amazing! The theater is apparently the most expensive in the world, specifically built for Ka, and the show itself was somewhat reminiscent of traditional Japanese theater. There is no spoken word in the entire show and it's a bit startling when the guys grunt at you when you hand them your ticket. Apparently people walkout because they don't like it, my guess being that they don't understand it's not a traditional Cirque show and don't pay attention to garner the nuances of the plot. We were fortunately had a nice long chat with the gift store lady, who filled us in prior to going to the show. So if you plan to go see Ka, we'll pass on the tale, or you can just buy a program.

My critique for the rest of Vegas can be summarized as follows:
MGM -lions! big lions! in the hotel! We watched them for about 45 minutes one day. They look just like James and Lily.
NY, NY - Actually enjoyable inside walking "the streets of NY." Didn't get to ride the roller coaster...next time.
Excalibar - You could skip it, except it's where Krispy Kreme is.
Luxor - The side of the pyramid is a huge ad for Absolut now, but the elevators go diagonally.
Mandalay Bay - they must pump incense or perfume in; it smelled amazing. KK's favorite.
Bellagio - Fountains! That's all really. Didn't overly love it.
Planet Hollywood - It's where we sat in the bar and watched Tech play, which ended up being very disappointing. Go-go dancers among the card tables at night. Saw Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher filming a movie.
Venetian - Please donate to the "So Dan & KK can stay here next time" fund.
Paris - Eiffel Tower is worth it. Minus the old lady next to us giving us advice on shows (thumbs up: Jubilee, the topless revue at Bally's. thumbs down: Cirque. hmmm.)
Ceasar's Palace - they have fountains and stuff. But go for Vosges chocolates!
The Mirage - ummm....we ate at the Jewish deli? Otherwise, nothing remarkable.
Treasure Island - I'll be honest, the vixen sirens vs. shipwreck pirates show sucked. It felt like a renaissance fair when you can't tell if people are pirates, or fairies, or goth, or what.
The Wynn - gorgeous, screams extravagance, and they charge you $10 just to walk in the Ferrari Maserati showroom. But gorgeous.

What involves Sex questions, the theater, football and a sweet concert? Last week.

I never got to update about a fun program that I did last week. Each of my RAs (I supervise 12 of them) have to do various programs throughout the semester - one that builds community (primarily social), one that is educational/academic, and one that either relates to service or leadership. Juan, one of my RAs, decided that for his educational/academic program, he was going to do one related to sexual health. So, for a week, he left slips of paper and boxes out in each building lobby for people to submit anonymous questions, which would be answered in a seminar type fashion the following week. So, he got an OB/GYN nurse practitioner from the school health center to come in and...me. Yeah, my name was on the flyers people, I'm kind of a big deal. The program was really well attended and we answered maybe 50-60 questions? And programs like this not only reaffirm my enjoyment of talking to students about sexual health, but also reinforce my belief that students, in general, do not have nearly enough education about ANYTHING related to sex, sexuality, sexual health, etc. Need examples? Here's a list of questions (I am not making these up) that people wrote down to have answered:

"So...where do you put it in?"
"What/where is the clitoris?"
"What happens if a guy takes the morning after pill?"
"Do vaginas make noise?"
"Does sex always hurt?"
"I can't have an orgasm. What should I do?"
**If you would like any of these questions answered, maybe email me seperately.**

So, that started last week off on a really good note. I love doing programs like that. In the beginning, even saying the word vagina makes people turn bright red and giggle, but by the end, students are asking questions and gettnig involved and ah, the magic of learning.

Since then, we've been really busy taking advantage of lots of events living near a big city and everything. Last Thursday, we went to see the touring production of Sweeney Todd with a group of staff and students. This production is really minimalist and really awesome. 10 people put on the entire show. The ENTIRE show. As in, there is no orchestra. The actors sing, act and play all of the accompanying music for the show. Every person is on stage the entirety of the performance and wow, it makes me tired to even think about. Sweeney Todd in general is a morbid, but fascinating show, but this production of it was really powerful and very very good. Besides the really amazing acting and performance of everyone in the show, the other highlight was after the show after all the ovations and curtain calls and bowing and everything, the woman in front of us stood up and mentioned to her date, "I totally thought there was an orchestra! It took me a long time to realize that what they were doing on stage was the ACTUAL music we heard!" Yeah wow. Sadly, we have no pictures to memorialize this event, which is doubly sad because it was held at a different theater than Avenue Q, and the theater is small and beautiful. Hopefully, we will be seeing more shows there and we will take pictures next time.

Saturday, aka football "what the hell is going on" day, was really interesting. As you may know from reading previous posts, we have season tickets to the Cal home games, and Saturday was homecoming, and Cal was playing Oregon State. Honestly, before the game started, Dan and I were not stressed out about rushing to the game, we didn't foresee any riveting football, honestly. We actually ended up staying home to watch the LSU/Kentucky game until the bitter end, which was an amazing game. I was sad LSU lost, but excited because Cal would have totally have become the #1 team in the country, and that's pretty awesome. So, we got the stadium actually only a couple of minutes before halftime and the crowd was pumped because they had announced LSU's loss. Too bad Cal was LOSING. To Oregon friggin State. They were losing at the half, they were losing going into the fourth quarter and honestly, with 6 minutes left in the game, Cal was down by 10 and I was asking Dan to look up Pizza Hut's phone number to have them deliver by the time we got home (no, we couldn't leave early...I have a thing about it). So, I had kind of already accepted the loss. And then, Cal scored a touchdown. Hope returns. Crowd is beyond excited. With 51 seconds left, they are marching down the field to field goal range to tie the game and send it to overtime. With 6 seconds left, our freshman quarterback called a running play, didn't get the ball out of bounds and the clock ran out. YEAH. Oregon State rejoices. Cal fans are dumbfounded. The girl behind us cries. Seriously, the picture below was taken about 2-3 minutes after the game ended. Notice all the fans still in their seats looking a little lost.



While I share in the sadness of the loss, I maintain my position that Cal, ranked #2 in the country going into the game, should not have had to rally to tie the game with 2 minutes left. They lost the game long before the clock ran out before they could kick a field goal. So, I am simply trying to remember that hey, Tech is still doing well, Penn State put a hurt on Wisconsin and hey, Dan and I still have tickets for the Cal/USC game. Good times.

Sunday and Monday=nothing exciting.

Last night, Dan and I went to go see Missy Higgins in concert in SF. She was introduced to us senior year in college and is a folk singer with an amazing voice, who is actually from Australia. She's released two albums, but you can hear everything for free on her website http://www.missyhiggins.com/. So, we found out VERY recently that she was on tour and would be in SF last night at a bar/lounge called Cafe du Nord and also that presale tickets were sold out. Awesome. They told us that they would be selling some tickets at the door as well. So, last night I made Dan leave all sorts of early to get to the bar so that we could get tickets. Too bad when we got there we joined what felt like a huge line. We then found out that they only had 40 additional tickets available. But, we waited, and being the Debbie Downer that I am, I started making alternate plans in my head. So, as the line moved we got to the front to check IDs.

Bouncer: Did you already buy tickets?
KK/Dan: No
Bouncer: The two girls in front of you might have gotten the last two...we're counting now, hang on one second.
KK/Dan: *exchange horrified look*
Bouncer #2: I have one ticket left.
Bouncer #1: They're together.
Bouncer #2: Alright, you can both go.
Bouncer #2 to Bouncer #1: No more non-presales.

Um yeah. THAT WAS AWESOME. I kind of wanted to do a little dance down the street past all the rest of the people in line. But instead, we went in, hung out and ordered dinner, and had a couple drinks, and got a table with a sweet view of the stage and Missy came on and she sang for a solid 90 minutes. She's just an amazing talent and sounded exactly the same live as she does on her CDs, which is reassuring you know? What has been recorded is actually her voice. Anyway, she just belted out song after song after song. Not any messing around, just performing. I really appreciated it, it's been a while since I've been to a concert in a small venue and it was nice to find a great new place to go for live music. Also, the place was really amazing - it was a speakeasy in the 1920s and has a really dark but classy look to it. The bar itself is all wooden and carved beautifully, they have a lot of small tables and big plush chairs, and the walls and ceilings are covered in crushed red velvet. So, yeah. Enjoyable.









And now, Dan's parents are visiting which is exciting. Tomorrow, Dan and his mom and dad are going to go to Sausalito (I have to work..wah wahhhhhh) so I'm sure there are more posts to come.

Avenue Q

So we went to see Avenue Q last night, and it was pretty much fantastic. I haven't seen anything quite so hilarious in a long long while. Of course, working at Berkeley, and seeing as how Dan and I went with both students and professional staff, we're already thinking about how we can use it as a training tool to talk about things like racism, sexism, other isms, etc. (The pictures below are from the theater we went to - Dan hearts our camera.)

Also, tomorrow is the first college Game Day - it's about friggin time!! Dan and I (today) bought Cal season tickets. We decided to just bite the bullet and buy them, since we were looking at buying $60-$70 tickets for the game tomorrow (Cal vs. Tenessee) and we figured we might as well spend not 6 times as much for 6 times more games. So look for us at 8 PM on ABC tomorrow at the Cal game.

We're also excited about getting to watch the first VT game tomorrow, and all the pregame stuff from Blacksburg. Good thing pregame starts at 7 IN THE MORNING here. Yeah. (LB I hope you have a fantastic time and that it strikes a lovely balance of emotional and drunken good football times).

This weekend, after the game, seems like it is shaping up to be another weekend full of festivals - there are at least 3 fine arts festivals nearby, so we'll probably be there! Hope all is well :)