Happy Birthday...

To ME!! This is literally the last birthday I'll be celebrating because from here on out, it will all be downhill! Just kidding!

The months leading up to my birthday seemed to go by pretty fast. I had some good days, as well as some bad days that I don't wish to discuss. However, I will say this much...I'm so GRATEFUL for my good health, for having a roof over my head and for having a great family and a few good, close friends. :-)

I'm looking forward to counting down the next 365 days until my next birthday because the next one will be a memorable one!

Connections

Have you ever felt a close connection to someone you hardly know or don't even know at all? Well, recently I've had this happen to me with a few people.

A few years ago, I got introduced to Blogger by doing a Google search. I typed in a few key words and landed on a blog titled "Ramblings of a 30-Something Year Old." Every time this blogger would write about something that happened to her or was currently happening in her life, it was hitting so close to home because I had dealt with the same situation. I'd like to call this person my 'soul sister.' By the way, I'd like to give a big shout out to 'Carolina Girl'! :-)

However, my most recent connection is somewhat of an irony. I graduated high school with this person, but we never spoke to each other while we were in school. I knew of him and I'm certain he knew of me, but we never ran in the same circles. In fact, we attended all the same schools--from elementary to high school--but never had any classes together. Several years after high school, I always wondered what had happened to him (call me curious!). About 3 years ago, I joined a popular social networking site and decided to look him up. Low and behold he was on there and I found out that he was living near D.C. and doing well for himself. Anyway, he was never one to update his status nor add any new photos...until about a month ago when he did just the latter. It was great to see him having fun with his family (i.e. cousins, etc.), but then several weeks ago he deleted his account.

Suffice it to say that I felt he and I had a connection in more ways than one. However, he always seemed aloof just like when we were young. We did have one very brief conversation online several months ago, but that was it. Honestly, he used to intimidate me when we were in high school because I had a miniscule (as in extremely tiny) crush on him. Anyway, that's all in the past now. If I ever got the opportunity to speak to him face-to-face, I really don't know what I'd say to him. Well, I won't worry about it until next year, which is when our 'special' high school reunion will take place.

Lastly, Happy Veterans Day and Happy 11/11/11! Don't forget to make a wish at 11:11:11!

When One Door Closes...

Photo courtesy of jobhuntdaily.com

They say that 'when one door closes, another door opens.' Well, I'm beginning to think that the door that is going or supposed to open for me is somehow completely stuck & will NEVER open!

My frustration keeps growing with the rejection emails I've been receiving lately. I mean, I've seen a fair share of rejection in my life, but l just can't take it anymore!

I'm learning to become more patient in this phase of my life, but I sometimes feel like God is testing me. Some friends have told me that everything happens for a reason, which I believe is true. I have faith that things will get better for me...someday. I just wish I knew when that day was. In the meantime, I will continue on the path of staying positive and projecting this energy into possible and future opportunities.

Hey...Hey...I Met the Monkees!

It took me 35 years to accomplish this dream, but I'm happy to say that I can finally cross off 'meeting The Monkees' off my bucket list! :-)

In 2001, I attended a Monkees concert in San Francisco in which the 3 remaining members--Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork--were headlining (original member Michael "Mike" Nesmith no longer tours with the band). Then the following year, Davy and Micky returned to perform at the same venue. Needless to say that when I attended the second show, my new Monkees friend, a family friend and I were waiting in line for the show and noticed Davy and Micky had just finished rehearsals and walked out of the venue separately. Well, my new Monkees friend told me to go run down & get their autographs. Me being the shy person that I was really wanted to, but didn't. :-( To this day I could KICK myself for not catching up to Davy and Micky & asking them for an autograph or photo.

Fast forward to last night when my friend "M," her boyfriend "N" and I drove to Mountain Winery, in Saratoga, to see The Monkees perform, who are celebrating their 45th Anniversary this year. It was there that I was going to meet up with my friend "A" because she--just like I--are huge fans! "M," "N" & I arrived at about 5:30pm and while I waited for "A" to arrive, "M" and "N" entered into the venue while I stood in line for our VIP passes. While waiting, I could hear the band's soundcheck! I was getting so excited to see the show!

While still waiting for "A" to arrive, I finally made it inside the venue and met up with "M & N" at one of the restaurants at the winery. Compared to the dinner reservations you could make--which we opted not to because it was too expensive--the cafe we decided to have dinner at was a bit crowded and pricey, but we were hungry, so we stayed put. Shortly thereafter, "A" arrived about an hour before the show started.

After we finished eating, "A" & I parted ways with "M & N" so we could find our seats. When we found our them, I told "A," "Good job!" It turns out our seats were in the 3rd row...just a few feet away from the stage! YAY! Anyway, I remember reading that The Monkees weren't going to have an opening act. At 7:30 p.m. and much to our surprise, local personality & comedian Mark Pitta came out and did his schtick, which was really funny, for about 45 minutes. We were all waiting in anticipation for the show to start!

During the entire time that we waited for the show to start, we could hear excerpts of actual '60s radio shows where DJ's played original versions of some famous Monkees' tunes. At about 8:30, the lights got just a tad darker and we were prompted to look at the large TV screen on the stage. We instantly see images being displayed of the Monkees in different variations...from their TV show to TV specials, from magazines to their albums. As these images play on the screen, the band played different instrumental melodies of all the famous Monkees songs. About 4-5 minutes later, we look towards the right of the stage and see three familiar men walk out towards the front of the stage. It's The Monkees! :-) The audience cheered & got very loud!

Throughout the entire show, I literally sang the lyrics to every song--well, with the exception of two songs, which I hadn't heard in ages! I also fiddled around with my camera because we weren't supposed to use flash photography. The songs came one right after another and the guys were as animated as they were on their show! From singing "Saturday's Child," "The Girl I Knew Somewhere," "Sometime in the Morning" and "Words" (four of my favorites) to "Pleasant Valley Sunday," "Last Train to Clarksville," "Daydream Believer" and "I'm a Believer," they performed ALL their hits, including a few from their 1968 psychedelic film, "Head." And what was so cool about the show was that as the guys sang their songs, certain videos of the same exact song or other images projected on to the TV screen.

The concert lasted 2 1/2 hours and the guys returned & did an encore of three songs. Immediately after the show ended, "A" & I hurried towards the Vineyard Deck room, where the VIP was taking place. When we arrived, "A" & I were the 3rd and 4th people in line! YES!! I really thought there was going to be some kind of order in VIP (apparently there were 148 other VIPers in line with us), but there wasn't.

About fifteen minutes or so later, Micky walks in! Micky smiled and then asked "A" & I our names, and asked if we wanted anything autographed. I had a few things in my purse, but opted to pass on the autograph. I really wanted a pic with him! By this time I found myself feeling starstruck! Seriously?! When I met NKOTB, I psyched myself NOT to be nervous. Well, I didn't know what else to say other than, "Hi Micky!" However, Micky then quickly moved on to the next line of people and eventually made his way outside.

Then about 5-10 minutes later, Peter walks in! At this point, VIP was chaotic and Peter tried getting his assistant to place some order in to the VIP line. At that moment, Peter makes an announcement stating that he doesn't want to leave anyone out of receiving a pic or autograph, so he'd like for people to courteously wait until he comes to you. At that point, the chaos was still in effect, but we each asked Peter if we could take a photo with him & he obliged.

And finally, about 10 minutes later, Davy came out & someone who worked at the venue brought over a stool for him to sit on. I let "A" take a pic with him first & then it was my turn. "A" was holding onto a piece of a paper in the shape of The Monkees logo, which she had made many years ago, which she just had the guys autograph. As "A" was getting ready to take my photo with my camera, Davy noticed that the paper was sort of in the way of my camera's lense, so we both tell "A" to move the piece of paper down so it wouldn't block her view. Well, "A" ended up taking two photos of me with Davy and I was so happy! Ok, so we got our time with two of The Monkees and the only person we had left to take a photo with was with Micky. When "A" & I approached him (he was already outside with other fans by now), Micky happily obliged. After meeting each of The Monkees, I told them, "Thank you." About 35 minutes went by and we met up with "M & N," who were waiting outside the building we were in, and we walked together to the parking lot.

All in all, I had a great night and the concert was AWESOME! I'm crossing my fingers that The Monkees will return in 5 years to commemorate their 50th Anniversary and that Michael Nesmith will join them!

A High School Reunion...off schedule..once again

Who has an 11-year high school reunion? Or an even better question is who has a 21-year high school reunion? Well, both answers would be MY high school graduating class!

Recently, a former h.s. classmate of mine created a group reunion page so that other classmates could be up-to-speed on news about our impending reunion. The organizer posted that our reunion would be held next summer in correlation with c/o 1992's 20th reunion.

Several years back when I received word that our 10th reunion wasn't going to happen, the one thing that came to mind were the Senior Steps. These steps, which were located in the Senior Quad, were painted with our classmates names. However, these steps didn't get painted with all of our names on them until a few weeks to a month AFTER our Senior year began. Nevertheless, we ended up having an 11-year reunion with only about 65 people attending; there were approximately 270 graduates. So I guess you can say that our class was NEVER organized! Oh, and some things NEVER change!

And it looks like I volunteered to help two other classmates locate some of our classmates. Luckily, most of them are on Facebook and I have several already on my friends list. But for those few that aren't accounted for on FB (yes, it's hard to believe that in this day in age, NOT everyone has a FB account or even knows what a social networking site is), then we'll have to figure out a way to find those classmates. Luckily, I only know of 3 classmates who aren't on FB, but who I know how to contact otherwise. Hopefully the task of finding these people will be easy and quick!

And by looking at the recent posts that my classmates have been leaving on the reunion page, it looks like many of them want to help. :-) Hopefully we'll all be able to work together in making this a spectacular 3-day event! Of course I'll be blogging more about the progression of our plans as the months pass by.

**And in other news, I can't wait until tomorrow because I'm attending a very special event! In fact, I've been waiting about 35 years for it to happen! More details to come later. :-)

We Want to Know...

I copied this WWTK from Ramblings of a 30-Something Year Old Carolina Girl ...

1. Everyone seems to have a quirky family situation, what is something unique
about your family dynamic?

I have a plethora of cousins on both sides of my family; however, I’m closest to my mother’s side. Although we don’t get to see each other often (most of them live in So Cal), my immediate family and I try our very best to see everyone when we go down to the valley to visit. Some funny moments occurred during our April trip to San Diego for my niece’s wedding. Within a 2-day span, about 20 of us gathered in my aunt’s hotel room to chat. I hope the other hotel guests didn’t think we were being too loud, but we were having a great time!


2.What is the most stressful aspect to blogging?

Not knowing what to write about. Sometimes I don’t have a topic in mind, so I’ll just rant or rave about something that’s going on in my life.


3. We all end up on a blog at some point in our day, but name your top 3 favorite websites you flock to daily. (Non-blog)

Twitter
Facebook
Google
*Note: I'm slowly trying to wean myself off one or two of these websites, but it's difficult sometimes.


4. What's your sign? Believe in it or not does any of it ring true for you?

I’m on the cusp of Scorpio/Sagittarius. I don’t base my life around this, but I do believe I possess some traits that are associated with both signs.


5. Ice cream Ice cream, we all scream for ice cream!!! Name your
favorite flavor!

Häagen-Dazs Chocolate. Yeah, just call me a Plain Jane! ;-)

I Think About You In The Summertime...

No, the above title isn't in reference to the NKOTB song that was released in 2008. Actually, it's in reference to the fact that I am now officially on summer vacation! :-)

I took my last final exam two weeks ago and I feel so happy! I received two 'B's' in two courses and now I'm just waiting to find out what grade I received in my third course.

In other news, I think I've seriously lost my motivation. My intention was to do some spring cleaning during my break, but I think I've only accomplished two days worth of work. UGH!! And my writing is also at a standstill. I've seriously been thinking of creating another blog, which would focus more on my writing and the stories, and articles I've written & had published. However, the idea is on hold for a bit until I can do more research on what it would take to get this new blog more attention. Anyway, I need to get moving and start putting my plans into action!

Lastly, I can't believe summer begins in 20 days. Nonetheless, the last few days haven't felt anywhere close to summer. We've been experiencing rain showers & some cold temperatures. In fact, I think some call this earthquake weather. :-( Speaking of earthquakes, we had one earlier in the week, which registered 3.7 on the Richter scale. It shook me a little, but you would think I'd be used to them by now. Nonetheless, they are so far and few between. Oh, and on the same day we had the earthquake, I saw snowflake showers a few hours later. Go figure! Anyway, we've had some weird weather this year and I think it's all due to "La Niña."

Until next time!