Things I Miss in Iowa

"Old Blue," my car || Okoboji Sunsets || My kiddos! ||The Cruise Ship || My parents' boat on Lake Okoboji || My BFF Michelle! || The big screen TV in my parents' basement || My Mom and Dad || My little brother || My piano

Santa Barbara!

Nothing too exciting has been happening in the life of Rachel. Last weekend I headed to Woodland Hills to spend the weekend with my uncle and Dana. We went to Santa Barbara on Saturday for a day trip. It was beautiful!! I finally saw sand and ocean!! I was in heaven :-) We ate lunch, did some wine tasting, and did some shopping. It was a fun day!

I started work at Michael Kors this past week and absolutely love it!! I've been doing a lot of training and product knowledge, but the days have flown by. I hope it continues to go great!

The Pier at Santa Barbara

Beautiful!

(Un)Blessed with my Mother's Sense of Direction

First and foremost, thank you Mom for passing on your sense of direction to me! Not good!

I went to a taping of The Voice this past weekend which was absolutely AMAZING!!!! Anyway, we couldn't have phones there, so I printed off GoogleMap directions. Foolproof, right? WRONG!! The call time on the tickets was 7:30 and they recommended being there at least 30 minutes prior to that. So my friend and I set out at 6:00 am. We get off the train at 6:30 (GoogleMaps said it was a 10 minute walk from the Metro station) and have no idea where to go. None at all! So we pick a direction and walk. We were headed to Gate 3 at Universal Studios and saw a sign for Universal Studios. We walked up this GIGANTIC hill for a good 20 minutes and find ourselves at the theme park. Sooo we walk back down and study our map again. Still completely confused! We picked another direction that looked like it was the right way. We saw Gate 5 and decided this was the way to go (the gate only said Gate 5...no other signs around at all). So after walking a few blocks I look up at the intersection and the street sign says Main Street--the opposite direction we were supposed to be going according to GoogleMap directions. So we once again turn around and walk like 4 or 5 blocks the other way and run into a residential area. We finally asked someone at Subway and they had no clue, but knew we had to go back the way we came from. So we did. And we finally made it...after over an hour of wandering around lost. My biggest fear was that we wouldn't get in since the tickets were free and they clearly stated that they slightly overbook. But we made it in and had AMAZING seats!! (The studio wasn't very large at all.) We were right across from the coaches!! The performers' backs were to us, but we could see plenty. It was such an amazing experience! My next mission is to find tickets to the live performances ;-)

See! Clearly not our fault!!!

In other news, I'm headed up to wine country with my uncle and Dana this weekend! Should be fun! It'll be nice to get out of the city for the weekend as well!

Random Fun Fact

I came across this today: "All job listings on Craigslist lead you to a warehouse in downton LA "wearing something nice with shoes you can walk in." So true!! I went to an interview at an online magazine office this afternoon. My iPhone map app has gotten me anywhere and everywhere I've ever needed to be so far, so obviously I relied on that. Well...I walked like 20 circles for 15 minutes trying to find this stupid place when my phone said I was standing right in front of it! (For once in my life I was actually early and had the time to spare.) As it turns out, the number wasn't on the outside of the building and as a last resort I turned a corner into an open door in a building and happened to stumble upon a sign that said the place was upstairs. Keep in mind, this isn't the nicest part of LA by any means, so asking for help and alerting anybody that I was "lost" wasn't an option. Back to that quote...before we even started the (7 minute) interview, the interviewer asked me if I came across this job posting on Craigslist or FIDM. Red flag right there!! I just laughed when I came across that quote.

One of my roommates and I went to the Dodgers game tonight. They played the Rockies and it was kind of a battle of the worsts. It was still fun and we got ballpark food. Although, school rules were that we couldn't have any beer...party poopers! It was a pretty uneventful game...until the end. I can't decide if the guy with the tag on his hat, the fight between the umps and Rockies coach, or the guy dancing in the video was the highlight for me! Enjoy!

This sunset is why I love California!

One of my roomies, Darshna, and me at the Dodgers game. It was sooooo hot!

This was the heated argument between the Rockies coach and the umps. It even involved hat throwing!

I loved the blue socks :-)

This is a true gem ;-)

Unit 604

It's been quite an exciting week for unit 604! First, a leak magically appeared in our hallway, so we had this huge, NOISY fan in our hallway for three days. Fun story...smelly carpet is a result of a leak. It's great, let me tell ya! They're supposed to come and clean it on Monday, so hopefully the smell goes away then. Also, fans are deadly to toes if you're not expecting it to be there. Ouch!! Another fun story is that the shower drain in my bathroom stopped working! It worked just fine Friday when I showered, but by the time I got home Friday night, there was just a few inches of standing water and dirt in the tub (roommate says she doesn't know what happened, either). Maintenance came suuuper early this morning (yes, it took them two days to get here) and made it worse! We now have about two feet of black standing water in our tub and a disaster in our bathroom. Gross! Another guy came, I'm assuming a plumber, while I was at the pool this afternoon and STILL didn't fix it! So we have no clue what's going on other than the fact that our shower is unusable. It's a fun game! Also, our AC has been bipolar and only picking certain days and times to work.

In other news...no new public transportation fiascos...other than the bus driver almost crashed us into a turning car last week. It hit me yesterday: what in the world did I get myself into out here?! My dad just laughed when I told him that and said he didn't think it would take me this long to realize it. Love you, too, Dad! :-)

The wonderful fan that was our friend (and almost broke my toes) and our disgusting bathtub!! 

I had every intention to stay in Friday night and do homework...this is what homework turned in to :-)