2011 in review

I didn’t think I was going to write one of these, but then I finally looked back to see what I wrote last year, and thought I’d do it again. I kind of like having a little summary all in one place. Here’s 2010 if you’re interested.

This year Taylor and I :

Moved into a new apartment, and survived.
Celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary.

Visited

• New Orleans (March)
• New York (May)

And I:

Completed a 2nd Warrior Dash, without barfing

Celebrated

• New Year’s Day in New York City
• My 30th birthday

Cooked – Not as much as I would have liked. Learned how to cook risotto.

Visited

• Italy (July)
• Austin (October)

Read

• Room

Harry Potter Series

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow

Started but couldn’t finish

• The Pioneer Woman, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels
• Chelsea Handler, Chelsea, Chelsea Bang Bang

Watched

• True Blood (Seasons 3)
• Lots of How I Met Your Mother &  Big Bang Theory
• Tosh.0
• The New Girl
• Lots of Intervention, Addicted and Obsessed

Listened to/Discovered Music – Again, not all new stuff, but I love all the same.

• Matt & Kim – Cameras
• Eric Hutchinson – Sounds Like This
• Freelance Whales – Weathervanes
• Discovery – Discovery LP
• Ke$ha – Animal
• Grouplove – Never Trust a Happy Song
• Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
• O.A.R. – King

And talking about 2011 wouldn’t be complete with a special new category.

Developed Friendships

• I became closer to friends I already had while planning our trip and traveling to Italy together.
• I also met new friends at the Blathering. Some of them I think will be friends for a very long time.

Can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store!

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2010 in review

I’m a few days late posting because I had a hard time making myself finish up this wrap up. I kept thinking of more things I wanted to add. This past year was great, and I can’t really complain. I’m sure I’ll miss something with this year in review, but I’ll do my best.

This year Taylor and I :

Paid off my car and his student loan (if only we could pay off mine!)
Waited (not so patiently) to find out if I would still have a job (yes I would!)
Celebrated our first wedding anniversary

And I:

Ran a 5k
Completed the Warrior Dash

Celebrated

• New Year’s Day in New York City
• My 29th birthday

Cooked – Plenty of tasty recipes including Pioneer Woman Mac & Cheese; Pico de Gallo; Tequila Shrimp; Goat Cheese and Carmelized Onion Pizza. There are even more that I somehow didn’t get around to posting about.

Visited

• Los Angeles and Long Beach (February)
• Austin (February and November)
• San Francisco for the 2nd time (April)
• Chicago for the 4th (5th?) time (May)
• Washington, DC/Arlington, VA (July)
• Albuquerque and Santa Fe, NM (November)

Read – Don’t judge. Even though I’m like 10 years behind the times on some of these, they were all very good, and easy reads.

The Twilight Series

• Twilight
• Eclipse
• New Moon
• Breaking Dawn

The Sookie Stackhouse Series

• Dead Until Dark
• Living Dead in Dallas
• Club Dead
• Dead to the World
• Dead as a Doornail
• Definitely Dead
• All Together Dad
• From Dead to Worse
• Dead and Gone

Harry Potter Series

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

 Watched

• True Blood (Seasons 1 & 2)
• The Tudors (Seasons 1 & 2)
• Lie to Me (Season 1 and part of season 2)
• Dexter (Seasons 1-4)
• And plenty of miscellaneous episodes of Family Guy, South Park and Top Gear on streaming Netflix

Listened to/Discovered Music – A few of these albums aren’t new, but I loved them this year anyway. Also saw Two Door Cinema Club and GroupLove live at the Warehouse Live in Houston in October.

• Two Door Cinema Club – Tourist History
• We are Scientists – Brain Thrust Mastery; Barbara
• Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
• GroupLove – GroupLove EP
• The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You
• MGMT – Oracular Spectacular; Congratulations
• Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
• The Black Keys – Brothers
• Arcade Fire – Neon Bible; The Suburbs
• Broken Bells – Broken Bells
• Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga; Transference



What were some of the highlights from your 2010 year?

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What are you looking for?

I know I have my regulars here at AndreaUnplugged, and I appreciate you greatly for sticking with me. But, do you wanna know what the top search engine request (behind Andrea Unplugged) that brings people here is?

I’ll give you a little time to make a guess. (Hint: Actually, “Andrea Unplugged” is the #1 search engine request and it currently only has 5 more views than #2.)

Got your guess? Can’t come up with anything?

Ok, I’ll tell you.

It’s Monokini.  

You’re thinking the same thing as I am. SERIOUSLY!? MONOKINI???? 

You may remember this post about my search for a swimsuit. Who’d have known it would have become a top traffic earner for my blog. (Please feel free to go check it out, just come back, I promise it’ll be worth your while.)

A kind anonymous reader left me a the following comment on that post:

I think all those swimsuits are awesome. You clearly have no taste, and are just some fat jealous loser who wishes they were hot enough to wear any of those sexy numbers. Get back on the treadmill you skank and stop your pathetic attempts to critique fashion.

You can see why I never approved the comment, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity and save it to share with you at the right time.  (Since I am clearly all the things the commenter mentioned…fat, jealous, loser, skank.)

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed the laugh. Have a wonderful week and I hope the 2010 is treating you well.

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They do things they don’t do on Broadway…

As you already know I was in Chicago for a work related training over the Memorial Day weekend. I arrived on Thursday (a day earlier than my training) and left on Monday (the day after the training) so I would have plenty of time for hanging out and sightseeing. My visit was close to the end of Tulip Days on the Magnificent Mile but I was able to see plenty of vibrant tulips in bloom.

On my first day in the city, I decided to splurge on a 4th row ticket to see Wicked at the Oriental Theater. I LOVE live shows, with the amazing stage setups, costumes, live music and fabulous old theaters.

I wish I could show you pictures from inside the Oriental lobby, but none came out very good. And inside the actual theater there was a picture nazi/usher forbidding the theater-goers from taking any pictures. Anyhow, the show was awesome and afterward, I found a nice lady to take a picture of me to commemorate the experience.

Come back tomorrow, when I’ll share more from my Chicago trip!

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Bet your bottom dollar…

…you’ll lose the blues in Chicagooooo! 

No pictures yet, but I figured I’d update you anyhow.  Been up and going since 3:45am and now it’s 11:07pm (do you know where your kids are?…sorry random, delirious flashback.)  Rode on what feels like the world’s tiniest plane from BMT to Houston, yet somehow really enjoyed the fact that the desk clerk is also the same person who is loading the luggage on the plane, ANNNDDDD waving the orange lights to tell the pilot he’s good turning around. And the security guard/sheriff’s officer shuts and locks the white french doors to gate number 1 (the only gate!) when the last passenger goes through.   That disturbs some people.  And there was also a girl who was the flight attendant who went to my high school and recognized me. What are the chances. (BTW, on a flight that is only 20 mins in duration, there is only one flight attendant, and the pilot calls him/her by name when telling them to sit down and prepare for takeoff/departure.)

Once I got here, I took the requisite 45ish minute train ride into town.  Dropped stuff at the hotel then walked around the fabulous magnificant mile (and many other miles) for about 3 hours.  I am a shopping dummy and didn’t actually buy anything at H&M, Marshalls, OR Filene’s Basement-all places a bargain hunters paradise.  Maybe I’ll go back tomorrow. 

I finally decided that I was going to splurge on the tickets to see Wicked…I was on the 4th row in the Orchestra section. More on that later…but just to tell you it was great!!! 

Anyhow, tomorrow I’ve got plenty planned, including actually checking in for the work related reason I’m in Chicago.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t play until then!   

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Art Car Parade – Photomania!

I know I hyped this up so much, that you probably figured that I forgot about it. NO WAY! I certainly made sure to attend the Houston Art Car Parade this weekend while I was in Houston, and I had so much fun. Not that walking a mile from where we parked to get to the actual parade or standing in the hot sun with little shade was fun but there were so many interesting cars and people. When we first got there, my sister and I (Burt’s Bees addicts!) made sure that we found the Burt’s Bees Experience tent.

We thought we were going to get awesome goodies…we got seeds and baby wash.

The Starbucks booth was giving out free samples of iced coffee so I got some, for the ice!

The parade had officially started, but we decided to let it make it’s way back to our side of the street before we really started paying attention. While waiting, we saw this avid art car fan.

My mom said her bra size was probably “44 Long”. Poor thing.

I seriously took pictures of almost every car (there were 200+ cars)…even some that were sucky, because I didn’t want the people to see me taking pictures of other cooler cars, but not their car. Or sometimes I’d take a picture of cars with kids in them to make the kids feel special. I know, I’M SPECIAL! Anyhow, here are some highlights of the actual parade.

This big thing is “Our Lady of Transportation” and it was AWESOME…that’s why they won the top two highest awards in the parade.

Shattered Vanity, little mirrors neatly arranged all over the whole car.

Billy Basses and some lobsters that sang and danced in unison.

The Rocket was a political statement, complete with Satan, Dubya, and many other people complete with mini “rockets” protruding out of their “lower front waist areas.” The other pictures I have of the Rocket aren’t suitable for children’s eyes. Moving on.

The peacock’s feathers fanned up and down.

At some point, we saw this guy, with a spinner hubcap around his neck. It actually spun.

My dad LOVED the Land Yacht!

The chicken was pretty cool.

I do think it takes talent (in some cases A LOT of talent) and imagination. But to build an art car, I think you’ve also got to have commitment. From what I’ve read, some people get sponsorships to build their art cars, so I realize it could be a pretty big monetary commitment. However, you’ve also got to have the actual commitment to building or decorating and actual automobile with whatever you think is artistic.

Unfortunately, slapping a piece of plastic with some spray paint squiggles over your car does not constitute commitment since you can stop after the parade, ball up the plastic, and throw it away (or re-use it next year for those of you who are “going green”). I’m not impressed by your art car wannabe. Sorry guy!

Check out some of the other 2008 Art Car Parade entries at http://www.orangeshow.org/v2008/ and tell me… which ones do you like??

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