Mini-Vacay

In 25 hours, I will be aboard a plane bound for my haven, San Clemente, for a quick weekender. Sadly, due to my previous vacations, I have to combine all of my SC activities into 2.5 days because I can't spend the week down there, but I have faith that it will be off the hook. Surprisingly, I have gotten a head start (meaning more than 4 hours before departure) on the packing--I know shocker--but I'm not going to go on and on about my hatred of packing and just follow my new motto, "throw it in the bag." And this picture so clearly paints that I overpack but hey, I'm proud of it.

You may be asking, what fun things are you doing in San Clemente, Julie? Well, that's a wonderful question, Kate. I plan on kicking it on the pier with my fave Fisherman's Margarita first thing. Then of course, other items on my to-do list include kicking it on the beach, kicking it by the pool, kicking it with the fam, maybe some tennis, maybe. But essentially a whole lot of relaxing and soaking up the sun! I don't think I'll be able to achieve a stable tan in time for the wedding next weekend, well without the help of Lady Jergens.

Even with a detailed list of funtivities like that I still have probably about twice what I really need. But, like I care! I gotta be prepared, you never know who you may run into -- ahem, perhaps a Real Housewife of Orange County -- a girl can dream...

Only 6 hours of work standing in the way though. And you know those hours are going to drag.

Small Town Hazard

Gossip just comes hand and hand with a small town, and there seems to be no escaping it. My number one source, although her reliability has been spotty, is of course, my mom, who gets her a info from her walking group or coffee dates, who get’s theirs from who knows where and so the cycle of he-said-she-said is in full swing. When she tells me anything these days I always say, “name your source” but that doesn’t stop me from believing it and who are we kidding, repeating it.

And this morning was a perfect example of the San Carlos gossip mill. First thing she says to me this morning was “Casey Anthony could in San Carlos!” Hold up, say what? First of all, how would anyone find San Carlos on a map and why? Without skipping a beat, she goes into detail about how her walking group says that there was a private plane traveling west Sunday from Orlando that made a stop in Phoenix, Phoenix to Orange County, Orange County to San Carlos. Then she says, she’s “allegedly” going to be living in San Mateo. So I went online this am and went to my first stop for all things news, People.com. THEY said that she’s “allegedly” in Orange County. Now I was at a crossroads, who to believe, my mother or people.com? I'm leaning towards People. After some further investigation, I was able to confirm the flight pattern (thank you ABC News) is correct but no one knows where she is (as of 7 PM on Tuesday night).

THEN I hear that the biggest excitement this town has seen in a while is a not even true. A source has a source that the legit (although injured) Giants catcher, Buster Posey is not living in the City of Good Living but in the East Bay. Again, Lady Di’s walking group gets burned with their claims (she even gave me the name of a street she was positive that they lived on and I may or may not have taken a special walking route to go scope it out). Sadly another source has confirmed that he's in the East Bay and it looks like there are no celebrities in the 94070.

Let's hope that Lady Di gets her gossip sources in check. And remember when all else fails, check People.com.

Summertime Lull

That seems almost like an oxymoron saying that im in a funk during my favorite season. It's mostly because I'm still undergoing wedding detox (man you'd think it were my own) but what do you expect when the topic of conversation for over a year has come and gone (besides rehashing every aspect of the day over and over again which is what we're doing). Sadly, these past two weeks, I just don't know what to do with myself! So in an attempt to kick the bleh out of the life—seeing as it is summertime and there should be no bleh—I’m trying to reinvent some aspects of life.

Starting with my workouts. I'm seeing a trend of just not wanting to go to the gym these days seeing as the wedding's over, so inspiration is slim. How to kick this habit? Get new clothes so I get the chance to wear them to the gym! Same goes for my actual work clothes. Sales are all over the place (thank you Nordies Anniversary Sale and GAP credit card benefits!) so looks like I've got some spending to do. Yeah that will kick drive my lull a bit.

Speaking of splurging, I have been getting a warning message on my Dell laptop (which has been kicking since my sophomore year at Santa Clara) telling me that the battery life is almost out. Rather than getting a new battery, I decided to dish out the cash for a MacBook Pro--my first Mac! And it's a beautiful thing too, name is still to be determined though, I don't want to rush that important process though and it's another way to focus my new energy/time--picking out the perfect name.

Even in the celebrity world, I feel like there's a lull. I know, I didn't think it would ever happen either, but they've been going through spurts of insane amounts of news. Prime example was last week, they were so quiet Monday-Thursday and then Friday came and BAM! JLo's getting divorced, Nick Lachey is finally married and yucky Bev Hills Housewife Taylor is also getting the big D. So I decided to embark on a new frontier, Twitter. This way I can really be all up in their business. I plan on only following celebrities but who knows if inspiration will strike maybe I'll tweet something. Maybe I'll get all carried away and even Yelp, but don't hold your breath.

Let's hope these quick fixes will get rid of this summertime funk. And hey a quick trip to San Clemente in 10 days will do the trick too! Yes please!

Kudos and Boos

Kudos to Kathy Griffin for putting on an awesome show last night at the Saratoga Mountain Winery! In our, "let's try something new" phase, Kate and I went to see the hilarious Kathy do a show in a place that's totally foreign to us...the South Bay (never mind the fact that I went to school down there). But after what I would consider our most successful drive down there and no wrong turns we were on top of the Saratoga Mountains overlooking rolling vineyard hills, overlooking the valley. Immediately, we decided that will be Kate's wedding location. Since we had some time to kill, we enjoyed some wine, chatted it up with Kate's parents and then made our way to our super awesome seats...4th row, so close that I didn't need to wear my glasses. She was on stage for a little under 2 hours and was so funny! She covered everything from Casey Anthony to Nancy Grace to Gaga to Lilo to JLo and was consistently funny all night long. It was so fun we decided every time she's around, we're going to see her!

Boos to the Women's World Cup results. Poor USA! Losing in a shoot-out to Japan the ladies will return home from Frankfurt without the win. Too bad ladies, but you sure gave them hell trying!

Kudos to the six bicyclists that were able to beat the JetBlue plane from Burbank to Long Beach yesterday during the "height" of Carmageddon. Always one to root for the underdog, I was hoping the bicyclists could beat the plane, but I didn't think it was going to happen. Maybe it was the lack of traffic in LA but six bicyclist managed to get to Long Beach before the jumbo-jet. And they managed to raise $7,000 for the Los Angeles County Bicyclist Coalition. Well done bicyclists!

Boos to the anti-climactic nature of Carmageddon. That's right the Northern Californian calls it anti-climactic. Not only was there no pandaemonium on the 405, but there was green traffic throughout the city (from what I saw from people's posts on the book) AND they opened ahead of schedule. While I guess that's all good for the LA folk, I was really looking forward to seeing how people were going to attempt to handle this. I suppose maybe I just expect so much drama from LA--hello it's the Lilo generation. Sadly I think it just really peaked at the awesome name.

Kudos to Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minillo! On Friday the cute couple tied the knot on some far-away Caribbean island. I could go on and on about how much I adore Nick (totally Team Nick although I did recently decide that JSimp has suffered enough and it's been like eight years so I forgive her) and how much I love Nick and Vanessa together but who has the time?But I'll look forward to seeing the wedding when it's televised on TLC on July 30! Check out the brand-spanking new trailer here

Boos to JLo and Marc Anthony! The tabloids didn't even warn us that there was trouble in paradise so this one came way out of left field. I wonder what went wrong? I just hope they don't do the whole "never in the same place at the same time" cop out. You're public figures by choice so we deserve to know what went wrong! But, no matter what so sad especially since they have three year old twins.

And on that note, dominate this week!

Carmageddon

Ahhh, Los Angeles, you never cease to surprise us with your traffic. I still don’t understand why there’s traffic every day of the week, but it’s one of your quirks so I’ll let it go. But, this weekend there will be pandemonium when the 405 is shut down through the weekend. Carmageddon—first of all props to the one who came up with that, I laughed out loud when I first heard it—is in full swing. I am not really sure what the purpose is or how much they can really expect to get done in just a weekend, but I guess, if you build it, he will come, so more power to them.

I am proud of the Los Angelians. Rather than this shut down getting the good people and companies down, they're banding together. JetBlue was offering flights from Burbank to Long Beach for 4 dollars each way on Saturday, actors are encouraging people to stay and shop local and then you have Maroon 5 frontman, Adam Levine tweeting about a tailgate party. Ahh the comradery. There's a friendly competition going down too! A group of bicyclists who are challenging JetBlue to a race to see who can get to Long Beach faster. That's pretty freaking awesome, and can you imagine if the bikers win? I would be pretty stoked to be part of that group, well maybe not to stoked on the actual race, but more so on the winnings (typical).

It will be interesting to hear what people do end up doing, do they attempt the freeways (the ones that are working that is)? Do people stay home and wait for the end? Do they throw ragers? I kind of wish I was in LA to witness this experience, or at least witness it from a helicopter. I asked my LA peeps what their plan is but they is shut down shouldn't really affect them on the other side but I'd be pretty surprised if the whole city isn't essentially shut down.

Good luck LA this weekend! I can already anticipate a movie being made.

Bucket Lists are so 2010

On my painfully slow commute to work this morning (yes painfully slow, seeing as I have been working from home the past two days and will again tomorrow), Sarah and Vinnie were chatting about how Oprah is spending her free time. Well, looks like she’s crossing things off her bucket list, which makes sense seeing as she’s retired, but rather than calling it a bucket list she's got a “Vision Board.” Of course she’s not settling for the lame bucket list, when you're Oprah, you market the hell out of something we've always known, but put your own crafty spin on it and create the next big thing.

But here’s my issue: first, are people really writing things down on this bucket list? See, I’ve always imagined people saying, “this is something I’ve always wanted to do and it's on my [imaginary] bucket list” rather than making an actual list of things to do before you die…that sounds a tad morbid to me. I have an imaginary bucket list so I would hope that I am following the trend, otherwise I should invest in some legit paper material (to survive the next 80 years--that's right 80).

Then there's the whole what does a vision board make? We need some specifics Lady O. How big does the board have to be, what material, do you need to include pictures or is it a board of lists that you eventually cross off? Do they have to be legit visions or can they be pipe dreams? Will you give us a starter pack? America needs answers so we can all get going on our back-to-school vision boards!

It would be pretty awesome to have a vision board all ready to go asap so I can be seen as a trend-setter for this gig. In fact that can be my first vision for my board, being on the beginning end of one of Oprah's trends--seeing as I was too young to join the book club and then when I could have joined, it was just too trendy for my taste. This has potential. I can definitely see it catching like wildfire just in time for the holiday season. Good timing Oprah, but really I would expect nothing less.

Kudos and Boos!

Since I was slacking like nobody’s business, here’s some kudos and boos extended version…

Kudos to Team Wedding. It really can’t be brought up enough because all of team wedding did such a great job, especially the key players, Gina and Gary and, of course, Sarah and Tom. As a proud member of Team Wedding, I think that the whole event was an absolute success. It was a beautiful day and everything turned out great, and of course everyone enjoyed themselves. And this weekend, after dissecting the whole event, the consensus from our family was that it was simply awesome (duh!) and definitely the event that we’ll be talking about for many years to come!

Boos to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for being in LA exactly one week after I left. And I was there for almost a week and they decided to go to Canada first? It’s almost as if it was planned on purpose like that. What does a girl have to do to see a celebrity/royal around here?

Kudos to Posh and Kate Hudson fastest pregnancies on the planet! In the past few months we have patiently awaiting the longest pregnancies ever, i.e. Pink and Mariah, but these two ladies were poppin’ out babies in no time. Hollywood should take a cue from these ladies and keep this up, don’t tell us 20 minutes after your pregnant, more like 6 months in. That way you make the world think that celebrities have shorter pregnancies than real people so it’s another incentive to break into the biz. It probably isn’t as painful either seeing as you have a posse.

Boos to Black Swan. When this came out last year, I wanted nothing to do with this because the previews freaked me out. But after all the hype and “Oscar buzz” went off like a rocket so I put it at the bottom of my Neflix queue. Well it slowly made it’s way to the top and in an effort to not throw off my Netflix schedule, I watched this yesterday. I spent 90 percent of the movie covering my eyes and when it was done, I thought it was definitely the most ridiculous movie I have ever seen. There’s no surprise that Natalie Portman won the awards, she did a great job playing a cracked out ballerina, but oh my gosh this movie was out of control.

Kudos to the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio. This was AWESOME. After opening a year or two ago or even longer, the Bonino’s finally made our way up and spent Saturday at the museum. The only complaint that I have is that they need a snack shack somewhere in the middle of the place because I got about ½ way through and was so freaking hungry. But once I got to the point of "I'm so hungry, I've beyond that line of passing out so I can actually begin to move on" (are other people familiar with that or is that just me?) we got to the best part, definitely the end when they talked about Disneyland. The whole room was set up almost like you were in line for Space Mountain. I definitely got a hankering for a trip to the happiest place on earth. Who’s with me?!

Boos to a brain fart. I can't think of something to give boos out to besides this horrible weather right now. So there ya have it.

If this post can leave you with one thing it's: Go to SF and hit up the Disney Family Museum! It's so great and definitely worth the trip (or two!)

Sarah and Tom Get Married!

Ahh July 2nd was a very good day and I wasn't even the one who got married! The silly lady from the church tried to tell us that we needed to be at OMGC by 1:30 for a 2:30 wedding but we didn't even have the limos coming to get us until 1:30 so we were "playing it by ear" to see if we got there ahead of time. But, here's our timetable for the day (or at least my best guess):

7:00 AM: After spending the night at the Biltmore Hotel (in a suite that reminded me of the room in Home Alone 2: Lost in NY) Team Wedding is all alive, awake, alert and WAY too enthusiastic for 7 am on a Saturday morning, but who am I kidding I was bouncing off the walls.
7:30 AM: Make our way to breakfast upstairs, making sure that Tom is tucked away in his room.
8:45 AM: Maggie dropped Lisa and I off to get our hair done up! Other ladies were "relaxing away"
10:00 AM: Maggie drops next group off to get hair done, and I had to put the smack down on the gal doing my hair, "No I don't think I can do with this massive fishtail on my hairline, I sorry" had a mini-heart attack that I threw off the schedule but Lisa and I booked it to get our makeup done back at the Biltmore Hotel where my new fave girl Nikki was waiting for me!
11:30 AM: Or sometime close to this time, all of Team Wedding is back in the hotel and getting pretty close to ready
12:30 PM: I finally get those rings over to the Best Man Chris. I sure as hell didn't want to be responsible for those things! In fact I woke up in the middle of the night the night before to make sure that they were still in the same place as I left them.
1:15 PM: the Bride is dressed and taking photos with the bomb photographer!
1:30 PM: We're "on time" and getting into the limo that was perhaps 100 degrees, we almost lost a couple of bridesmaids on the 20 minute drive to the church.
1:35 PM: Limo driver wants to take 101 rather than the 5 but we caught him right before the exit.
1:45 PM: Limo driver takes wrong exit, didn't catch him in time, so cruising down Glendale Blvd for a few minutes so we can flip a U--haven't seen a limo make a U-turn ever but looks like this vehicle turns on a dime...who knew!?
2:00 PM: Team Wedding arrives at the church and is pushed to the hottest room on the planet, don't they know our makeup could run?
2:40 PM: Music starts going and people are in their seats. Now I imagined that the church would be somewhat full but scattered (judging what I saw from the footage of Maria and Jeff's wedding back in the day) but when it was my turn and I finally surveyed the church, I'm sure the people in the back all say me mouth "Holy Crap" before I walked down the aisle.
3:45 PM: There's a new Mr and Mrs Tom Repetto in town and I can prove it since I signed the marriage license!
3:45 PM--6 or so, we were photo taking machines! This photographer was totally awesome, he was all over the place, but NEVER in your face. I can't even guess how many photos he took that day but I know that there will be plenty to choose from!

The reception was all a blur and I have no sense of time for that part because it was just too much fun. Here are some highlights though:
1. The non-stop dance party.
2. Carly catching the bouquet.
3. Team wedding dancing into the party to Gaga's Edge of Glory.
4. The parasol umbrellas. It really took each photo to the next level.
5. The Degas the bomb.com signature drink, pomegranate margarita. I really didn't get a chance to take full advantage of this drink seeing as I had to stay coherent for my toast but the sips that I did have was sinfully delish!
6. All the toasts! I couldn't just say my own, that would be a little selfish so I'll say all of them, blah blah blah.
7. The photo booth! We should have those all the time. In fact I don't know why we don't have them on a regular.
8. The dance circles. We were all about the dance circles.

Ahhh what a reception it was. So wonderful, so stress-free. It was as close to living in a musical as I could get. And in the words of Michael, "Forget the beach, let's just throw receptions" well said, Michael. Well said.

Wedding Week Extravaganza!

Dear Kate!

It's hard to believe that this time last week we were in the throws of preparations for the big day and now there's nothing as exciting going on! It was definitely a wonderful day and perhaps one of the most exciting weddings EVER, however I could be biased, but whatever.The whole week was such a whirlwind as soon as we pulled into the driveway on Commonwealth on Tuesday night that the whole week seems like such a blur.

We really wasted no time, especially on Wednesday when Sarah had me wrapping presents like nobody’s business. I was literally giving Santa’s elves a run for their money and wowing the crowd with my folding skills (the ta-da box, anyone?) But the craziness didn't end there, we ran errands, sent out emails like we were a corporation and got shit together for the big day. But of course we were able to sneak in a trip to Jimmy Kimmel where we saw Kevin Nealon and the same animal trainer that was a guest star the last time I was there! But don't ask me any particulars because as soon as we both had a glass of wine in our hands (or two but who's counting), we paid little to no attention and just chatted away for 90 percent of the show. Oopsies.

Thursday was a little more relaxed: we were pampered. The kind of MOH duties I can really get behind! We had our nails done and got lunch with some bomb drinks that really calmed our nerves (Tipsy Lemonade from Granville Café, if I were a Yelper, I would totally Yelp about it). We continued to slowly cross church seating arrangements, processional orders, and of course more wrapping presents off the list. We really and handed over the goodies to the wedding planner. Before we knew it we were pushing people out the door so that we could get some shut eye.

Friday was actually really calm for being the rehearsal dinner day--well my duties that day were pretty well relaxed during the day but what the hell do I know. Sarah and I ran an errand downtown and then we left her to finish up some stuff and finish packing but before we knew it we were making our way to the church for the rehearsal! That's where things got a little foggy for me. The woman running the rehearsal was not exactly brief with the info and gave us a lot of details that weren't really a necessity so naturally I wasn't giving that part my 100% attention but I was also hungry so can you blame me?

But we made it through and finally headed over to Louise's for a lovely dinner thanks to Tom's mom Marilyn! Us bridesmaids camped out at our "you can only sit here if you're wearing a shade of blue or coral" Team Wedding is pretty exclusive like that I guess. It was such a fun night, definitely a foreshadowing of the excitement that was to come the next day!

Saturday breakdown coming NEXT!