Quotable: Driving and the Open Road

October 19, 2012October 19, 2012Leave a comment

The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond.
Edward McDonagh

[Roadtrippin’] It’s a California State of Mind

October 19, 2012January 13, 2014Leave a comment

For the past few weeks I’ve had little angel on my shoulder, coercing me to get the fuck out of my overheated Los Angeles bubble and venture up north for an extended weekend of good food, great meals and family time. But, whenever I was close to jumping in my car and cruising back home, the devil on the other side would start with the litany of excuses: I hate driving on the 5 – That’s too long to leave my cats alone for– gas prices are cray cray – etc, etc. The fact of the matter is those are all very valid reasons for not wanting to hit the road – but at the end of the

day, they all start to sound like the same excuse, ‘I don’t want to.‘ It’s been a long past few months and there was a lot of apprehension about being isolated, and in the middle of nowhere, for an extended amount of time – but I’ve also come to terms with the fact that I over-saturate my life with connections. My phone may as well be tethered to my side as a Siamese twin because I swear I’m always on it – Tweeting, texting, Instagram-ing and Facebooking; may as well just call me a walking, talking social media slut – I’ll take it.

I also, finally, took some my own advice: get out of my head and into my heart.

Being a creature of logic and reason is fine and dandy; but, emotions can’t be quantified, feelings can’t be measured and you can’t organize anxieties.

With this freshly pressed game plan in mind, I turned to packing up my troubles, both literally and physically. Piling clothes, jewelry, hair products and my work laptop in an over-sized duffel bag, I synced my iPod and kissed my cats goodbye. The drive can last anywhere from 6 and 9 hours, so I had a lot of music to load in to get me through it. For the first time, I wasn’t planning outfits or huge escapades – I was going to be comfortable and at home with the people I love. Yes, the 5 is awful and gas prices aren’t going down – but the idea that the people I love are only a tank of gas away is so comforting.

When I hit the road, I double checked my route and turned my phone off for a while; I was on auto-pilot, my car was on cruise control and it was just the two of us and the highway. I’ve had my new car since April and the furthest we’ve gone together is Ojai – this was our first big adventure and I had way too much fun. There’s a feeling that I get from being in the open road, windows down and music up; my mind opens up, my stream of consciousness is deep and introspective and I almost get this runners high. Maybe it’s a drivers high. Either way, that drive cleared out my mental cobwebs and reset my system. Around 10 pm I cruised into the city and it was bustling with lights and noise, roaring with personality as it always does.

San Francisco at Night

5 Roadtrip Essentials:

Map I know I’m captain obvious but you should probably know where you’re going – just in case your phone dies, your partner in crime slash navigator passes out or you’re just horrible with directions.
Music Make sure your playlist is twice as long as your total drive – if you’re like me, you probably have musical ADD and change a song halfway through…which means your playlist doesn’t last as long as you think it does. Plan ahead and your head will thank you later; besides, how many times can you really listen to Levels*?
Good Vibes If you’re no fun, your drive isn’t going to be fun! Besides, if you can’t have fun by yourself rocking out with an air guitar and singing lead vocals at the tippity top of your lungs – why would anyone else want to?
Comfort Grub There’s nothing worse than hitting the road, getting super hungry and not being able to find a damn thing you want to eat or drink – well, save yourself the problem and do a little store run before you head out or save some money and make sandwiches at home. Make sure you have something delish to wash it all down, and a few extra bottles of water – and you’ll have a happy heart, and stomach, the entire drive.
Car Charger Phone navigation applications, especially Verizon’s – and I speak from experience, do a pretty good job of draining your phones battery. Being lost in the middle of nowhere with no phone is kind of horrible, so do yourself a favor and make sure you have a working phone charger.

Wednesday Watercooler

October 17, 2012August 14, 2013Leave a comment

Not all Americans can agree on Global Warming, but I bet you anything at 97 degrees in mid-October 100% of the people of Los Angeles are firm believers. Typically, I work from home for the majority of the week but over the last few days I’ve been trekking it from Hollywood to Burbank to get my work on; working from home is so great because I can be in whatever clothes I want – gym clothes, PJs, a sundress – and as long as I’m comfortable, I’m golden. But coming into the office has been a little brutal! The AC is cranked to about 65, so when we come inside we’re inspired to bundle up because it’s a tad chilly – but take one step outside and you’ve already sweat all over yourself. Cute, real cute. Anyhow, I digress – let’s see what the hell else is going on in the world besides our collective temperatures rising…

Presidential Election 2012:

After the first Town Hall meeting just a few weeks ago, I was a little nervous for round two; Obama didn’t look like much of a fighter, especially compared to Mittens who happened to come out swinging. Well, thank goodness that finally changed last night at the Hofstra Debate. Personally, I enjoyed the format of last night’s debate more than the first one – the moderator was on top of her game and I appreciated the questions and feedback from the audience. The debate was so rapid fire, and the candidates were so sassy, that discerning truth from fiction was a little difficult, thankfully there’s always fact checking; and for those who want to take it a step further, you can find a full video and transcript here.

Ultra Music Festival

If one weekend of raging in the sun with your best friends, good music and great weather is fabulous, two is obviously a whole lot better – right? Following in the footsteps of other music festivals, like the hipster fueled Coachella and Insomniac’s fabulously neon Electric Daisy Carnival, Ultra is spreading their Miami Music Week wings. Instead of being limited to one weekend, UMF will now take over Miami for two consecutive weekends in attempts to wrangle both a larger audience and a hefty chunk of change.

Red Bull Stratos

The Red Bull Stratos project, rescheduled for this past Sunday because of winds, put Austrian born daredevil and BASE jumper Felix Baugmgarter successfully 120,000 in the air at the edge of space. He proceeded to amaze and defy all logic by jumping back to Earth; setting a new record for the highest base jump and traveling at the speed of sound. I still have no words to explain what I saw expect: HOLY SH*T.

Golden Globes

Anyone that knows anything about me can tell you this: I’m not much of an award show girl. The Oscars put me to sleep, I never see the categories I want on the Grammy’s, and maybe if you put on the ESPY’s I’ll pay attention, maybe. But come January 13 that is all about to change – women, dogs, children, everybody – they’re going to be SO excited because Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have agreed to host the Golden Globes together!

Quotable: Happiness

October 17, 2012August 14, 2013Leave a comment

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
Walt Whitman

Tech Tuesday: Add, Detect and Delete

October 16, 2012August 14, 2013Leave a comment

One of my favorite things about having a Droid is, rooted or not, how highly customizable the phone is; from the layout, to the font face and down to the type of smiley face used in a text message – almost everything on an Android phone can be manipulated with ease. You can go to the Google Play store and perform unique searches for each element you’d like to change. Or, if you’re feeling super efficient use an application like Zedge, a nice and breezy tool for personalizing your phone, which come with a lovely conglomeration of live wallpapers, ringtones, notifications and games.

Unfortunately, having a highly customizable phone is a double edged sword. On one hand, there are so many nifty apps that you can essentially make your phone look like anything you’d like. On the other hand – because there are so many different applications and links downloaded to your phone, you increase the chance of downloading malware, spyware, and adware by roughly 1000% (don’t worry, I’m a statistics major).

A few weeks I decided I wanted a new live wallpaper or two on my phone; instead of going straight to the Google Play store, I went through Zedge. I was stoked, too – I had one of those Matrix looking scrolling wallpapers and felt uber high tech. It wasn’t til about a week later that I noticed my phone behaving strangely. I would wake up with new applications downloaded to my home screen and wonder if I was “sleep downloading” or if there was a ghost in the machine. I’d scratch my head in confusion, but wouldn’t get anywhere. Truly bizarre! Then came the coup de grâce – instead of receiving normal notifications, I was getting banner ads; ads on my freaking phone. After a few deep breaths, a beer and some web browsing – I found the culprit: some of the applications I downloaded in hopes of beautifying my GUI were actually feeding me ‘push ads‘ and hindering it’s performance.

One would think there would be a simpler way to ‘opt out‘ of receiving these ads, but it’s deceptively difficult. First, when the notifications pop-up there’s a hyperlink that comes with it – only the hyperlink is cutoff typically halfway through, making it harder than necessary to stay calm and carry on. Secondly, if you’re lucky enough to actually pull it together – you could be asked to enter your IMEI / MEID number and (a) I don’t know what the hell this is, (b) I don’t know where I’d find it and finally (c) why would I give private phone information to a company that is spamming my phone with ads. Instead, I downloaded a few fabulous and highly recommended applications to keep my phone in pristine condition: AirPush Detector, Lookout Ad Detector, and TrustGo Ad Detector.

It’s as simple as pressing ‘start scan and the Ad Detector goes to work; analyzing the applications on your phone for suspicious activity and kicking back the results in a clean, straightforward format. As it turns out, two of my new live wallpapers – Cheetah Print Live Wallpaper and Zebra Live Wallpaper, were responsalble for the banner ads I was receiving in my notification window while another, Brightest Flashlight Free, was downloading applications without my permission straight to my home screen. So far, I’ve used the Ad Detector from Lookout Labs – and with a few click throughs, you’re able to go straight to the offending application so you can hit ‘uninstall‘ immediately; amazing!

Almost all applications that are amazing on the Droid you can purchase or download from the Google Play store; but here and there, you’ll find something that you think is so rad that you don’t mind it comes from a third party. The problem is: you should because third party applications are some of the biggest culprits of mobile ads and spyware. So, to ensure you don’t accidentally download one of them – take this precautionary measure. In your Android menu, go to Settings > Security and you’ll notice you can toggle the menu for “Installation of non-Market apps”; if you ever choose to allow a third party application, you’ll get the following warning – just remember, it’s there for a reason!

Happy Caturday!

October 13, 2012October 13, 2012Leave a comment

My Favorite Things: Falling for Autumn

October 11, 2012August 14, 2013Leave a comment

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for a little over four years now, and for those of you that have yet to experience our (lack of) seasons – there are really only two to be concerned with. We have “Summer“, which lasts from about March to the beginning of October, and we have “Not Summer” from mid-October through the end of February. My friends and I have also come to the conclusion that the weather in Los Angeles is taking some heavy meds – in the past, we would go for half the summer with awkward drizzle and clouds, then while the rest of the country was undergoing their Fall transformation – leaves changing color, air becoming brisk – we got a heavy dose of 100+ sunshine. It’s like the weather was making up for lost time; and we, the people, are forced to endure it’s bipolar tendencies.

On the other hand, if you look at one 24 hour period in Los Angeles – we actually manage to go through all of the seasons in one day! In the mornings lately, it’s been a tad Winter-ey: brisk, cold, overcast and drizzly but by mid morning the clouds in the sky are few and far between, birds are chirping and it feels like Spring. Over the next few hours, the delightful warmth turns into blistering Summer heat – reaching well into the 90s, and by dinnertime while the sun is setting over the Pacific, the temperature drops and a pleasant breeze flutters by carrying the few turned leaves, and it actually feels like Fall.

Autumn, Fall – whatever you want to call it, it simply makes me happy. Back in the Bay Area where I was raised, it was an actual season instead of a hypothetical situation. It would get blistery cold and a tad rainy; my remedy was to drink lots of peppermint tea and sit firmly on top of the furnace vent with a blanket to trap in the warm air. In LA, there typically isn’t a noticeable shift from Summer to Fall; Summer wanes and Winter promptly takes its place; this year though – there’s a crispness about the air that’s just enthralling, the cloud porn is fantastic and sunsets burn so beautifully. Now, don’t get me wrong – I loved those summer nights; it was warm until 2am and I could wear a tank top, shorts and flip flops day in and day out. But now that Fall has fallen we get to bundle up, curl up and wrap ourselves in warmth, comfort and cute boots. I couldn’t be more excited!