Gas station wedding.

It occurred to me the other day that formspring is a dying internet trend, and that despite that, I still have a lot of really great questions waiting to be answered in my inbox.
Also on this wave-length is the fact that I haven't been blogging nearly enough recently either. SO why not kill two birds with one stone? I'm going to start answering the leftover formspring questions at the end of my blog posts until I am out of questions. :)

Yesterday I worked a 9 hour shift at work (the worst) and even though I was working with my two favorite co-workers, it was still a really, long boring day.

In fact, there are only 2 good parts about the days I work these long shifts at work, and they are as follows:
1. When the phones aren't ringing, I have a lot of time to kill and the Internet in front of me, so this is when/where I answer a lot of email, organize stuff on Deviantart, and reply to facebook/youtube messages.
2. I get a lunch break during my shift, and there is a Chipotle five minutes away. Long shifts equal chipotle burrito. Every time.

Across the street from the theatre I work at is this old fashioned historical gas station. It's not in use or anything; the guy who owns it keeps all sorts of weird stuff inside (like a life-sized plastic Santa Claus) and when we have our summer Art Walks, bands play outside or whatever. There is literally no point to it aside from looking cool.

But it doesn't look THAT cool. Not cool enough to get your wedding photos taken in front of it. Which is what some people were doing yesterday.

It was just too bizarre for me to look out the widow and see a woman in a flowing white gown posing in front of an old yellow and red gas pump on dirty blacktop. I mean, okay, maybe you're into old things. Maybe you're into gas. Maybe you're into standing two feet from a busy street by cars that don't look like they're from the same time period as your beloved gas station. And this wouldn't be that weird if it only happened once, but this was the fourth or fifth time we in the box office have seen wedding photos being taken there. Weirdos.

I don't know about the rest of you, but there will be no petroleum in my wedding photos.


Q. Being from the PNW, how do you feel about Idaho?
A. I was about to say I have only ever driven through Idaho, but then I remembered that's where Silverwood is! Therefore, Idaho rules. :D

Q. What is your job besides youtube?
A. Since I reference it a lot on here... I work in the Box Office of a live theatre. We do 4 musicals and 1 straight play a year.

Q. What is Luke's opinion of your forehead?
A. Super turned on by it.

Q. I'm not kidding you, today someone commented on my youtube video telling me how much they like my forehead. Do you have any advice on how to deal with this.
A. Laugh with them. Seriously, that's all you can do. I know they were telling they like something about you and not making fun of you, but I've found if you're secure about yourself, it makes it a lot harder for people to tease.

Q. I love Sondre Lerche too! Have you seen Dan in Real Life? He composed the entire soundtrack.
A. Yes! I actually saw that movie in theatres for that very reason. :)

Q. Inspired by a different question: If you could go back in time to when you were 11 and get a Hogwarts letter, effectively wiping the past 11 (right? or almost?) years of your life and all of your experiences with life, love, and friends... would you?
A. Honestly? No. I have had an incredibly amazing life so far and wouldn't trade it for anything, not even magical powers.

Chipotle burritos: 3

My new (creeper) friend Sirak.

Okay. The funniest thing happened to me.


So in high school, I had this friend named Brady, and he and I shared a birthday. Every year on December 27th we'd send each other dorky text messages saying "It's our birthday!" and whatnot, and it was just a thing we did. But since I graduated, he and I haven't really kept in contact and therefor, the birthday texts stopped.

Except this year! This last December when I was down in LA, I was looking at my phone and I decided to send Brady a birthday text, even though it had been years since we'd even spoken. He responded kind of strangely, but I assumed he'd just lost my number and was surprised I was texting him.

Me: Happy birthday Brady! Hope you're doing something awesome!
Brady: who r u?
Me: It's Kristina! It's our birthday!
Brady: o. where r u?
Me: I'm in LA visiting my boyfriend.
Brady: have a nice birthday. how long u there?
Me: A week or so.
Brady: where do u live?
Me: I only moved to Seattle? Not too far from you.
Brady: o. we should hang out.
Me: Uh, maybe!

And then he just KEPT texting me. I had no idea why he suddenly wanted to hang out after not talking for three years, and I was pretty sure he knew where I lived since he works with Eia sometimes.. it was just weird. And then he texted me a few more times in the next two weeks, and I started to get so annoyed with him, that I just stopped replying. Until today.

Brady: I don't want u to hate me.
Me: I don't get it. Why would I hate you?
Brady: I have 2 tell u sumthin but I am afraid u'll be mad @ me.
Me: ??
Brady: I am not who u think I am. My name is Sirak & the first time u txt me, u wished me a happy birthday, & it was your birthday 2.
Brady: u were so nice, I didn't want 2 ruin ur birthday so I played along. i'm sorry.
Brady: Sorry, I feel so bad tellin u this, Kristy.



Needless to say, I didn't reply to him anymore at this point. But I am not really mad or creeped out - I think it's hilarious! Some guy didn't want to ruin my birthday so he pretended to be my friend for me. Hahahhaa. The fact that he kept pretending to be my friend for nearly a month afterwards is a little weirdtastic, but I can't really fault him for that either. I didn't reply very much, or tell him anything personal. And he came clean eventually. xD

So I dunno. Creepy, or kind of nice?
Probably just creepy. But still really, really funny. Oh Sirak. You probably don't have any friends. Poor guy, thought some girl who just magically appeared in his phone was going to be his new best friend or something.

Anyway, that was definitely among the most bizarre things that have ever happened to me. I got all those texts while I was with my family at Applebee's tonight for my brother's birthday, and I was reading them the messages as I was getting them. We were all cracking up.


That's my brother with all the Pokémon themed balloons I got him! I also got him a copy of Paper Towns (with the more boy-friendly cover) and this threadless shirt.

Now I am going to watch a movie with roomate!Justin because we're lame and spend many a Friday night on our living room couch.

Chipotle burritos: 2

Zombies, new phones and deviantart.

I don't know how I got into this habit of not blogging very often. It used to just be part of my routine to blog every day, and now over a week has gone by since my last entry. I have no excuses.

I have, however, been incredibly busy, regardless of whether or not that is a viable excuse. I have been really trying hard with school this quarter, working on ALL CAPS stuff with Luke for our upcoming album release, running the album art contest for that same release, working on a secret LOST project that I will be announcing next week, and preparing for my audition for Lena's Harry Potter musical.

So I got my new phone, the HTC Hero, about a week and a half ago, and I really dislike that transition time where you don't recognize your own phone noises. Today in my Journalism and Lit class, there was this super obnoxious beeping noise going on for about two or three minutes and everyone (including myself) was looking all around saying "What IS that?" Finally, finally I realized I had set an alarm on my phone for 9:30 and that the beeping noise was, in fact, coming from my bag. That was embarrassing.

In other annoying phone news, I haven't received a single text message, from anyone, in over two days. AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. I guess I have to take my phone into a Sprint store, but that's so obnoxious because I was just at one on Tuesday, when I asked them a million questions about the phone because I was really struggling with it.
Now it's legitimately broken. And that's annoying. So if you've texted me, friends, in the last day or two - I'm not ignoring you. I just haven't gotten your messages.

I'm having a ton of fun with this album art contest. I recently rediscovered my love of DeviantArt, and went on a rampage to FINALLY catch up with all the messages and notes I had received from people over the past few years (it had built up to about 2,000-3,000, which was ridiculous). But now the account is all cleaned out, and I have seen all the lovely things people have made with my stock, and I am loving seeing all the contest entries coming in!



A few minutes ago, the Director of Night Zero, the Zombie comic I help out with sometimes, stopped by my house to have me try on this white dress they're having me wear in the Vignette I am co-starring in in a few weeks. He told me it was an extra small and I started panicking a little, because I am definitely not an extra small. But low and behold, it fit me, so that was good news. I'm really excited about that shoot. I've never been in an actual story for the comic, just on the covers for Issues 1 and 2.

Stuff is still going well in my life. I like my classes, I'm not behind on my homework, work is okay, the album is going well, I still like Luke, Eia is alive, my house didn't burn down.. etc. Good things. :)


Chipotle burritos: 2

Kristina Finklestein.

So I got my new phone (The HTC Hero with Google), and I have been playing around with it a lot. It is sooooo, so much better than the Samsung Rant I had before. I met the girl who I was getting the phone from (Kaylee) and her boyfriend Andy up at the mall near my house and had a lot of fun with them! It's always nice to meet someone who watches my videos and to find out they're totally normal cool people. Not that I think any of you are weirdos, but I think you know what I mean. We had Chipotle, we chatted, and then we walked all around looking for a Sprint store, but all the mall had was a Sprint kiosk with a really weird guy working who thought he was super cool when he actually was kind of an idiot. We had a laugh over that.

Anyway, it's all set up, I love it for the most part, and the new phone led to some hilarious anecdotes with my mother (who says I don't mention her in my blog enough, so here Mom, this entry is for you!).

My Mom called me last night and informed me that since she still pays my phone bill (I am so grateful of this) it is REQUIRED that I call and text her frequently. We'd never really texted each other before in my life, so this was a whole new concept for me. Text messaging my mother. Weird.

I turned on my phone and went to send her a message, and realized I needed to probably tone down the internet-lingo a little (due to the time I used a ":D" on my mom's facebook profile and she sent back a message asking me what "colon D" meant. Haha).

So I sent her this message:

"Oh my god, it's a text message from your daughter!"

To which I got a reply a few minutes later that said:

"It's OMG, honey, but thank you. LOVE MOM."

I couldn't stop laughing so I decided to test her a littler further. I replied with:

"ROFL."

She passed, again! Her reply was:

"It's not that funny. And get off the floor."

And then she replied again:

"I'm OK at texting! I do it all the time with my BFFLS."

Oh man. I guess my mom's a tech wizard now, or something.

Yesterday at work it was a pretty slow Tuesday, and for the last few hours it was just my manager and I working. The phone literally didn't ring for about an hour, so she and I discussed "The End of Time" parts 1 + 2 extensively. Pretty hard to have any complaints about your job when you get paid to sit and talk about Doctor Who.

A few days ago at work I was running Will Call before the show, and one of the patrons had the last name "Finklestein". I told my manager that I thought it was the most fantastic name I'd ever heard. She looked at me skeptically and said "You say that, but would you really want to be Kristina Finklestein?"

I paused, thinking about it very seriously. Finally I said "yes".

I could totally rock "Kristina Finklestein"! I mean, is that really much worse than "Horner"? At least "Finklestein" is funny. "Horner" is just awkward and I've been working it for 22 years now.

Unfortunately, I was born with "Horner", and Luke probably wouldn't like it if I started calling all the male Finklesteins in the phone book, so I seem to have missed my opportunity with this. I guess I'll just have to name a character in one of my novels "_____ Finklestein". Maybe NaNoWriMo 2010.

In OTHER news, I have a lot of errands to run today, so I suppose this entry will end now.

Off to my human sexuality class!

Edit: I'm counting Chipotle burritos this year too! I need to know!


Chipotle burritos: 2

Cool things that happened to me this week.

School has started and I am back at work, so naturally, stress levels are a little bit high. However, I feel like life has already chosen to be kind to me in 2010. I feel like 2010 has opened it arms to me and said "Kristina, sometimes life can be kind of hard. So here are some pretty cool things that are going to happen to you in the first 2 weeks to make it all feel a little easier."

1. Magic textbook
I was kind of annoyed at the fact that on top of a $2400 tuition raise this year, my books seemed to be costing me loads more than usual. Perhaps it was just my class selections, but usually in a quarter I can get by spending only $100 or so for all of the books I need. This quarter, my bill was $400. *mouth drop*
However, due to some fancy planning and luck, I was able to bring that cost down to about $200. And the main reason being that one of the bigger textbooks I needed just APPEARED at my house. We have this shelf in our entryway where we put everyone's mail, and randomly, suddenly, my Human Sexuality textbook (albeit a very used copy, but I don't mind) was just sitting on the bottom shelf. And no one in my house knew who it belonged to. So I am now using it. Merry Christmas to me!

2. Book rebate
On top of being crafty about finding books, my Journalism and Lit teacher did something that was almost unheard of. So our main course book for his class is one that he himself wrote, and since it was published in the UK, the list price (with shipping) was ridiculous. He was upset at how much we were charged, so he told us if we brought in the new edition of his book, he would give each of us a $10 rebate. From his pocket. From the money he made off book royalties. Amazing?

3. Ice Cream at Work
I worked an insane weekend (because we were doing a kidstage production of High School Musical and they needed me all weekend for will call). However, there were some parts of the weekend that were very slow (in contrast with the crazy and hectic hour or so before the show began at 2 and 7:30). Instead of just sitting around the box office, my manager suggested ditching work for about a half hour. So we did. And got ice cream. Yum.

4. Being recognized at work
It's just fun. And it happened last night. It always makes me blush. Hello, if you read my blog! I hope you enjoyed the show!

5. Free phone
I got home from school on Friday and saw I had a package waiting for me on the aforementioned mail shelf. I wasn't expecting a package, so bewildered, I began to pry at the packing tape with one of my keys. My roommates watched as I opened the box, and out fell a Nexus One. Google's brand new phone that was only released on January 6th. Google said there were no strings attached and they were just thanking me for being a YouTube partner. With a phone! Um… you're freaking welcome?

6. (Different) Free phone
Turns out you pretty much have to have t-Mobile to use the Nexus One, which sucks because I really, really like it and would love for it to be my phone. But I already have a contract for the next year and a half with Sprint, so I just can't. So I decided to try and trade it for another Google phone, so I can do Google a solid and still test out one of their phones with the Google interface and Android operating system. So I asked on twitter if anyone knows anything about the HTC Hero with Google; Sprint's equivalent. I was NOT expecting someone from Seattle to not only want to buy my Nexus from me, but to have a Hero she was willing to trade me for. And teach me how to use it. So we're meeting at Chipotle today, and sorting that out. Could it have worked out any better?

So, things are pretty great in Kristina land. I have to read 150 pages of Foucault by later tonight and write a paper on it, and it's Monday so I have a video to make, but all things considered, I'm having a pretty great week.

Winter break in LA.

I got home from LA last night.

It's weird to think that I was standing on a beach in a short sleeved cardigan exactly twelve hours ago; now I am huddled in bed under my blanket dreading my walk to school in the rain. The good news is, however, that my Monday classes don't start until 1:30 PM.

We only had Internet for my stay in LA for the first three days before it got shut off for one reason or another, so I had a very Internet-free week. Which was actuality kind of nice, nevermind the massive amount of emails I now have in my inbox waiting to be replied to.

I got to Long Beach on the 26th, Luke picked me up, we ate some food and went back to his place. We got to hang with Alex for a few hours before we took him to the airport. Our trips only overlapped for those few hours, which was incredibly bogus, but at least I got to see him at all.

The next day was my birthday, and I don't know what it is about the number 22, but it feels incredibly weird. I had fun reading facebook and twitter messages all day, but for the most part it was a pretty low-key birthday. We checked out HD cameras at Best Buy (because I am thinking about getting one) and worked on a song and later we got some pizza. Not quite the Las Vegas trips I had for my birthday the last two years, but it was nice to be with Luke. I guess I'm like an adult now and stuff anyway. No more party hats.

The next day Sarah Snitch came over with the most epic birthday cake ever (she'd covered it in a million different types of candy and the inside was dyed different colors) and that saved my birthday for me. It was incredibly sweet of her. :)

I'm losing track of what we did each day now, but I'm pretty sure the next day was also the day we saw Avatar at the Arclight with Michael Aranda and his friends. Not only is the Arclight an amazing theatre, but Luke, Jason and I were completely blown away by Avatar. It was so much better than I was expecting. I mean, I didn't even really know what it was about going in, but we all walked out in complete awe.

The next day these two girls (Anna and Krystal) arrived that Jason had invited. They were really nice and fun and we spent pretty much the rest of the week hanging out with them. We played a lot of Rock Band (I can play drums on hard now!) so that was fun (and they played a lot of Mario Kart Wii, much to my chagrin) and I cant even remember now what we did on Wednesday. Oh, we saw Sherlock Holmes. I fell asleep in the theatre. Oops. xD

Thursday was New Year's Eve, and also the day I woke up feeling really sick. I was so disappointed, because we'd kind of saved the really fun stuff for the end of the week, and now that we were about to DO that fun stuff, I had gotten some sort of stomach virus. :( We tried to go to Disneyland for New Year's but the park was sold out, so we walked around Downtown Disney and I got increasingly worse-feeling. We made it back home in time for midnight, and I rung in the new year wrapped in a blanket after throwing up. Fun stuff.

The next day we went to Disneyland for real, getting there at about 10:30 in the morning to make sure we got in, in case it sold out again. It was Luke and Anna's first time at Disneyland so it was fun to show them our favorite rides and I liked being able to share Disney fun facts with people that I had learned in my Disney class last quarter.

I had a fun day, but my stomach ache relapsed about halfway through the day, and the Disney fried food and rides were not really helping. I'm impressed with myself; I made it about 12-13 hours before I literally just couldn't take it anymore. We stayed at the park for 14-15 hours, which is a pretty long day for anyone, even if you're not sick. But I would say the accomplishments of the day included playing Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters FIVE times, and getting a high score of 246,000. We wont talk about Jason getting somewhere in the 900,000's on one turn. xD

We also rode Space Mountain twice, and I hate to admit this, but I think the one in Disneyland Paris is actually better. The Haunted Mansion was all Nightmare Before Christmas themed which was fun, and we made sure to hit all the important rides as well as getting our faces put on the bodies of Star Wars characters (but then not buying them because they're overpriced, haha).

We saw the fireworks which is always fun and eventually started making our way home around midnight.

The next day we hung out on the Santa Monica Pier and randomly ran into Sarah down there, and I thought that was one of the most fun things we did. We walked all the way down to the end of the Pier and stared off into the ocean, feeling the breeze and seeing the twinkling lights from the beach miles and miles down the coast. It was nice. I love the ocean.

That night we watched Cube (a pretty cool low budget suspense movie from Canada) and the Italian Job (which I didn't think I was going to like and then ended up loving). Then I spent my last night in LA.

The last day Luke and I did a hilarious and slightly awkward photo shoot for our next album cover. We tried using a self-timer right away but finally we just got Jason to come out and take pictures for us, and that's when the shoot got really fun. I would say of the probably 100 pictures we took, maybe 15 are usable. xD

We worked on music a little bit, we went out to eat, and then they took me to the airport. As usual, I was a sap and had a very teary goodbye, went inside, and found out my flight was delayed by three hours. I frantically called them back, feeling a little bit terrible for making them turn around, but we ended up having a really nice time on the beach in the dark filming some parts for an Oceanic 6 music video. Even though getting home was a mess and I wasn't in my own bed until 2:30 AM on a school night, I'm glad my flight got delayed. Those last few hours on the beach were among my favorite parts of the trip.


I'm home now. School starts. I work this weekend. It's a weird adjustment to make so quickly. Especially when I know everyone else is still in LA, probably playing Mario Kart Wii in peace now since they don't have me there to roll my eyes at them. Haha. I just can't find a game where I spend most of my time falling off the edge very much fun. I gave it an honest effort, I really did.

I'm seeing Luke again in a month. It feels far away from here.

But the good news is, this morning I found my $40 clicker for class that I thought I was going to have to replace. So yay school. Or something.
Actually, I'm pretty excited for class today, now that I am home and actually thinking about it. I only have one class on MWF and it's Human Sexuality (T and Thu are a bit more intense). I'm sure I am going to learn all sorts of interesting things this quarter, if my childbirth and Disney classes were anything to go by. :)

So here's to another quarter, here's to 2010, here's to having boyfriends who live far away. Here's to the Disney annual pass I may or may not have purchased.