7:30 on New Years Eve

I'm sippy a cocktail and getting ready to get into a fly girl party dress and head off to a party at the boyfriend's friend's house.

Wow this isn't where I thought I'd be 365 days ago when I was sitting at Sushiya with Kristin and Kenny and Amber. I wasn't sure what 2010 was going to bring.

It brought a lot of changes. A new job. New love. New house. New city. New friends.

Man who knew?

I didn't.

Last year I wrote a blog on New Years Eve called "Just say F@#k it" because life had just been too hard for too long and I decided to take up the motto "F#@k it." It sort of served me pretty well this year. I did things I never thought I would. Had great experiences. Moved forward (but not completely on, y'all back home are still in my heart big time, always.) and just hoped for things to get better.

I guess they finally did.

Happy New Year.

familia

I'm not an only child by any means. I have two sisters, but I am the oldest. I've never had any brothers and have no idea what it would be like.

However when I was working at the Sea Shanty down in SLO I seemed to acquire a few of them. My two favorites being my boy Jojo and my big brother Danny.

This is at my going away party. This picture is on my desk.

I think about these two all the time. My last few months in San Luis Obispo, man I wouldn't have made it if it hadn't been for them listening to me freak out and cry and these two knuckleheads constantly making me laugh and putting up with the fact I would just walk into their office and sit on the floor and cry like an idiot. I could be 811 years old and I will always consider them not just my friends, but my family.

It's funny I miss them like crazy and am often reminded of this fact when I'm on the Facebook, like this morning. I was very blessed with my time there at the Sea Shanty and I'll probably never not be grateful for it.

There are more, the lovely DJ Slick, the amazing Sauve Javi, the very cool, talented and extremely nice DJ SOL... Damn man, I miss you all so much. There isn't anything like that going in Nor Cal, this is certain.

I'm grateful because all of these people helped me find my way when I was so lost. I can't thank them enough, which means you'll hear about them again someday.

Love you guys lots. xoxoxo

Day 29 - A song from your childhood

I was a kid when MTV was new, so there are a ton of songs but here are two.


Madonna - Open Your Heart

I love Madonna. Sue me. I listened to a lot of Madonna growing up. But I remember this video from being little.

I also listened to a metric ton of Prince but he's a butthole and won't let his music be posted on Youtube. This is annoying.



The Bangles - Hazy Shade of Winter

I also LOVED the Bangles when I was in 2nd & 3rd grade. My friend Ria and I tried out for the talent show lip syncing to Walk Like an Egyptian. We didn't make it obviously but we had great outfits. Ria had all the best clothes. I can't remember when she moved away, but I do remember her mom telling her we couldn't be best friends anymore after she moved away. Stupid, who tells their kids that?

Tomorrow is the last day of this meme and I'm actually going to have to write real posts after this. Wow. Should be...fascinating.

Day 16 - A song that you used to love but now hate

The Starting Line - "Bedroom Talk"

I discovered this song on a road trip with an ex of mine I'll call Q. I'm gonna be straight up here, Q was a jerk. He was mean and manipulative and he'll never admit it or apologize. But I was in love with him in this really weird oblivious way because I thought he was THE ONE or something equally idiotic. This was our first road trip, we'd gone to Santa Barbara so he could cover some film conference for work and I walked around at the downtown area and went to a few record stores.

I bought a couple of "punk" compilations for the punk show I used to host and this song was on one of them. It came on as we were leaving Santa Barbara on our way to some wineries and he asked me if I'd spend the night at his house again that night (two nights in a row?!) and everything felt perfect.

Later when he dumped me in this really cruel manner and then fell off the face of the Earth, I decided that song sucked and I never wanted to hear it again.

Day 03 – Your parents, in great detail

Instead little 30 day meme, I'm just going to show you some pictures of my dad and I. Because my dad rocks the free world.

My dad and I in Anaheim, catching the Red Sox game.

Dad and Mama D, who's my second mom and is amazing. So glad she's part of the family!

Dad and I on Sunday Funday during the NFL play offs one year when the Seahawks went. This is at Marti's in SLO.

Drowning our sorrows at McCarthys in SLO after the Seahawks blew it that year. Oh well...

Run this town...

This song came out about a year ago.



About a year ago I worked somewhere that played this song constantly. It's one of the first songs I remember really liking that we played. Every time I hear it I think of how weird it was to go back into the business after a year off. And how alien it was to go back into it, in a format I hadn't done in over 10 years.

I remember one night driving down the 101 to meet Teresa at a party because I was going to DJ a wedding for some friends of her parents that weekend, I was hustlin' pretty hard there for cash at that time. I was listening to our station, because I fell in love with it after about five minutes and I remember hearing this song. It might have been September by that point, and feeling kind of excited... I can't explain it but even then, I knew that going to work in that building was just the start of the next phase, that something was on it's way for me. And maybe it was going to be in SLO, maybe something else would come along, but thanks to a few people who constantly had my back, especially then when everything was new and scary, I knew things were going to get better.

It's funny because here I am in a new situation again. And those same people? Man they have my back still and regularly talk me off of whatever mental ledge I throw myself on. And some of them, I've known forever and some of them I wouldn't know on sight a year ago but now I can't imagine not knowing them and having them in the familia as it were...

This song sounds best cranked up loud in a car, windows down,driving. Doesn't matter where you're going... you'll get there baby.

im a sick bitch baby

So I seem to have some summer allergy attack and or a cold right now because my throat is all sore and swollen. Great.

This naturally led to me having one of those "Oh my god I'm 400 miles away from anyone who would bring me soup or notice if I croaked" moments last night and I slept like crap because of it. Awesome.

It's not that I really think I'm going to die of a sore throat or that I'm a needy girl by any means, but when I don't feel good, sometimes I'd like someone to take care of me. And in the moment I realized I had no one here I could ask for a hug or to buy me some soup or bring me some juice... I felt pretty lonely for the first time since getting here. Such is an occupational hazard of living on the moon.

I ended up talking to Teresa on the phone for awhile last night and Jennifer online and I felt a little bit better.

As evidenced by my post yesterday I'm a little homesick these days. It's not like when I moved from Bakersfield and I could just get up and go home any time I wanted. There's definitely some logicistal night mare ish to get home from here.

This month would've been my year anniversary at Mapleton. Weird.

What the hell is it with ants at radio stations?

Back when I first started working for Wild and the Beach back in SLO we had this epic ant epidemic. Like you opened the freezer and a thousand ants had marched to their freezing cold death in the freezer. You'd turn on the kitchen light and it would look like the floor was MOVING. Insanity. We figured our building was built on some sort of ancient ant burial ground, but no, it was just out in the middle of nowhere, where all kinds of critters would be hanging out.

This is my third week in Chico and by week two it became painfully clear that we too are being overrun by ants. And these are weird HUGE mutant black ants and no matter how much ant spray we spray on them, they just won't die or go away. We'll get them out of one studio and they'll move into another. It's frustrating and kinda gross to be honest.

It was also kind of fortunate because I got to introduce the good people of the Chico radio group I work for to the ant eater meme. Remember these guys?




We now have ant eaters in both rock stations, but I don't think they're actually helping anymore than the ant poison. Nuclear mutant ants! I even tried the unthinkable this weekend... I cleaned the studio. I'm talking on my hands and knees with disinfectant wipes, cleaning the shelves. I was richly rewarded for this by stabbing myself in the finger with an industrial strength staple that was hidden up in the shelving unit somewhere.

Never let it be said I don't bleed for my work.

had this one in my head for awhile now...

Been on an Incubus kick lately...

got my smile got my orange crush

Well in this case Cherry Crush.

I was at the Food For Less yesterday and noticed that there are two liter bottles of Crush on the market. You might remember this soda from the 80's.



When I was a kid, my grandpa used to take me to this place in a town called Pumpkin Center. It was a feed store. Yes a feed store, we had cows, wanna fight about it?

Anyway this feed store was in my little kids mind enormous and had all kinds of weird stuff in it, that I couldn't find a use for. I mean I was six or something. I have no idea why we were at the feed store. I just know my grandpa seemed to know everyone, much like when we'd go to the "junk sale" on Sundays. And at the end of the feed store outing, I'd get to get a soda out of the soda machine that sold glass bottles. Seriously, these things existed in the world.



My favorite was always Cherry Crush, followed by Orange and in extreme emergencies, Grape, but usually if it was left between Grape and Coke, I'd just get the Coke. I'd pop the top on the little bottle opener and then it'd be off to the pick up truck to take whatever contraption or food we'd bought back to my grandparents house, sometimes even listening to 8-track tapes.

I bought a two liter of this Cherry Crush yesterday, and it's really sweet and not in a glass bottle but if I close my eyes really tight and take a sip, I smell hay and I smell home.

the end of an era

The other day I was scrolling through Facebook and Twitter and kept seeing stories pop up about how this place, Woody's Bar and Grill in Bakersfield closed down. You wouldn't think something like that would be news, but for the handful of people on my list that used to work with me back there in Bakersfield, it kind of was.

See the radio stations I worked for, now owned by Clear Channel, are basically on the same lot as Woody's. You could run there in about oh 2 minutes if need be and so we all seemed to spend a lot of time there, either eating or you know, drinking very large glasses of beer. (Not me, I wasn't old enough for most of the time I worked in that building. Being the baby on the staff sucks.) But it was always a place we could have a staff party and everyone, yes even us babies could go and hang out.

I remember quite a few times sitting at the bar with my dad while the Sonics game was on or whatever having a coke and some fries after work.

The other thing that made it kind of neat was during the time I worked nights, myself and whomever was working down the hall on KKXX or KRAB (depending of course which one I was on) could call down and order our dinner. And because radio was different then and everything was on a CD or a cart (it's a big clunky tape) you would actually have to time out when you did things. So the order for the basket of chicken strips and the tereyaki burger would get put in and then when it was done, whoever took our order would call us back and ask us when we could come down and get it.

Whoever had the longest song coming up would then sprint down two flights of stairs and meet some poor server who had to come out to the parking lot and bring us dinner would meet you out back while the other person on the air would run back and forth between the studios making sure both stations were on the air. Good times.

Woody's was also particularly good on weekend night shifts because many many people thought that it was a closed restuarant and that the building we were in was a closed office building. There were always some interesting hi-jinx going down in that parking lot and it gave some very sleepy overnight jocks some strange entertainment over the years.

I don't really think it was the food or even the service that made that place special to everyone who worked in my building. It was just near by and the place you went to talk shop and unwind after a long day of making radio. It was really just an extension of our break room and anyone who's worked in radio knows the stations become your home, the people you work with become your family, so the places you hang out become special.