When In Rome

In When In Rome, Beth is unlucky in love.  On a quick trip to Rome for her little sister's wedding, she steals coins from the local fountain of love.  Back in New York, her suitors aggressively pursue her, including Nick, the best man from her sister's wedding. By stealing the coins, she has taken the coin's owner's wish for love into her own hands and now has too much to handle!  Of the five very unique suitors, Beth finds herself starting to fall for Nick.  She discovers that one of the coins is a poker chip that matches Nick's set.  She resolves to return the coins to the men and rid herself of these men, including the one man that she may actually love more than her job.

This was a better movie than I was expecting it to be.  It was incredibly funny and, judging from the unanimous bursts of laughter, everyone in the theater enjoyed it.  Kristen Bell is a really good comedic actress.  I was worried going into it that it may be more of the disgusting shock-value humor of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it had none of the same jokes.  I think it is in her facial expressions and sense of timing.  But those same facial expressions made you hurt for her later in the movie.  She did a great job.

The on-screen chemistry between her and Josh Duhamel worked really well.  The only disturbing thing was the serious gap in their heights.  Either she's freakishly short, or he's freakishly tall, because even with her in heels there was more than a foot difference.  

The supporting cast was really good as well:   Angelica Houston, Danny Devito, Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Will Arnett, to name a few.  I didn't particularly care for Dax Shepard's character.  Jon Heder did a fantastic job, as he always did.  Brittany and I had to do a fist-pound when he showed up on screen.  Danny Devito was super cute.

I was kind of annoyed that Angelica Houston's character was another overbearing "dragon lady" type of business woman.  I am beginning to become disgusted with that stereotype.

I really liked the song during the opening credits: "Kickin' With You" by Jason Mraz, who I think is a fantastic musician and lyricist.  The rest of the soundtrack is pretty good.  I've downloaded about half of it already.  "Ave Maria" was one that I skipped.  It is one of the cliche wedding songs that makes my eyes roll every time I hear it in a wedding scene.

Overall, a great girl's night movie, spent with some of my favorite girls. And one I'll probably add to my collection when it goes to DVD.

Cowboy Breakfast

The San Antonio Rodeo is kicking off this week, beginning with the 32nd Annual Cowboy Breakfast.  The event holds the Guinness World Records for Largest Free Breakfast and Largest Coffee Event.  Only in San Antonio will thousands of people brave cold and rain for free tacos.

St. Phillip's College Culinary Arts program receives a $20,000 scholarship from the event.  In return, our Chef-Professors encourage volunteering to help prepare the food.  Since my day job doesn't involve wearing a hairnet, I took the opportunity to get more experience in food service.

Long post guys, courtesy of lots of pictures from my iPhone, mySA, and WOAI.  

My day at the Cowboy Breakfast started at 2am at one of the grills used to warm up some of the 150,000 tortillas. I worked with a family of a father, three daughters (Mariah, Erica, and Mandy, left to right), and one boyfriend (Jeremy) there.  The girls were really cute and had a great relationship with each other.  They reminded me of me and my sisters, which started my day off on a really good note.


We received logo bandanas for volunteering and Jeremy took the opportunity to transform to "The Tortilla Bandido."

Unfortunately, about two hours into it, Erica got really bad burns on her hands after a stack of tortillas fell on her.  This job is dangerous, folks! So they all left to take her to the hospital.  I love the way they all banded together to see to her safety and I know I would have done the same thing. I don't know how she's doing, but I hope for the best.

When the family left, the grill was taken over by culinary students.  On my half of the grill was Genado, who was awesome to work with.  Really efficient and had a good humor.  The other half was very disorganzied and had a bunch of people who obviously didn't care about being there and it showed in their work ethic.  I'm glad none of them are in my classes right now.

Intermittently, the sky would open up and we would have a downpour for a little while. There was a leak in the tent in a place perfect to drip on my shoulder.  It didn't take much to start a river underneath our feet.  When we happened to drop a tortilla, it almost immediately floated away to somewhere else in the tent. 

One of the guys at that end of the grill was interviewed by a couple different reporters and I might have ended up on WOAI this morning.   I'm the face in the very top left corner in this WOAI picture.  Does this count towards my two seconds of fame? 

After that, my Chef pulled me off tortillas to work the filling for the chorizo and egg tacos.  There were a few other guys at that grill that were hilarious.  One was making up his own theme song.  They were really fun to work with.  But, I am ashamed to say, the old cowboys working the grill next to us showed us up.  They worked like they had been doing this for thirty years.  Who knows, they probably have.

There were a couple guys there that were very interesting characters.  The first was Herb who sported an eye patch handsomely.  He was kind of our supervisor at the tortilla station.  He reminded me a lot of some of my uncles.  Then there was Dickie who was responsible for keeping the fire going and providing all the grills with hot coals.  I love this picture of him from mySA.com.  The best part is the reflection of the bonfire in his glasses.  Both he and Herb had the weathered leather-looking skin that comes from years of long days working outside. They were perfect caricatures of a classic cowboy, but still uniquely themselves.

I had a blast. I a lot of expectations and hopes for the event, but I wasn't disappointed.  I haven't done much volunteer work like this since college, and I'm really glad I did.  A lot of the guys took breaks to chow down tacos, but I kept going.  Even after being there for five hours on my feet I was pumped.  It might have something to do with the two Red Bulls I had, but I think the adrenaline of it all was the real reason.  Even now, reliving it, I feel like jumping around or dancing.  Or doing it all over again.

I love being in my chef's coat.  Similar to putting on a uniform or costume, it changes my persona.  I love how easily I can direct people and how most people respond positively to my direction.  Even a week into my kitchen class, the other students look to me for instruction, and I'm a newbie just like them!  It's a leadership style works better in this format than it does at my day job.  My classes and experiences like this are great outlets for me, and I gain so much from them.

This was a great way to start the day.

January Race Report

Race: Judson High School ROTC Resolution Run
Distance: 5K
Goal Time: 40-42 minutes
Actual Time: 37:50

This past weekend I squeezed in a 5k in the midst of an already very hectic weekend.  I'm really glad I did.

The race itself was atypical of the ones I normally do.  It was a fundraiser for the Judson High School ROTC put on by their boosters. This probably was one of the first times that this group had ever done a 5k.  I'm not sure the people running it had ever been to or participated in a 5k before.  They had few enough people preregistered that they were calling out names to pick up numbers.  That was awkward. They had no chip timing, which wasn't a big deal since the event was promoted as a fun run.  There were no refreshments other than water, which is fine for a 5k course, but I was really glad I thought to pack some before I left home that morning.

Included in this event was supposed to be a guidon challenge for the JROTC groups. Except I didn't see any flags, or groups who were running in sync.  There definitely were a greater percentage of high school kids there than I am normally used to.  I didn't stay to hear the results, so I don't know who won that.  I just know I didn't win. Anything.  But that's not unusual.

When they were giving race instructions, the guy on the mic said that this was the "flattest, fastest course in the world!"  I think the only reason that's the case because I live in one of the flattest cities in the world.

There were two very cool seniors (as in senior citizens) that I chatted with at the beginning.  One was a old black man whose pace was barely more than a shuffle, but he was really good spirited and friendly.  He fell to the back of the pack almost immediately after the start.  I waved to him at a switchback in the course and he was still smiling.  The other was a grandmother with a super cute outfit (in the fluorescent green) .  We chatted for a little bit at the before the race started.  She left me in the dust at the start line.

I wish I got a picture of it, but a little girl and boy had homemade "Go Mom Go!" posters.  They were super cute.  What wasn't super cute was different mom telling her two kids that they couldn't be passed as I came up behind them.  We leap-frogged for a little bit, but then I won.  Take that!

I felt really good during the race. I was worried with all the warm weather that it would be gross, but it cooled down overnight and there was a nice cool breeze that morning.  I did a pretty good job pacing myself and ended up with a pretty even effort throughout with enough left to pass one more person before the finish.  And I didn't have to peel myself off the pavement afterwards!

I'm really happy with my time.  I blew through what I was expecting, and that makes me look forward to the next few weeks of training. It means I'm in a better position than I thought I was and that the year-end goal of a full marathon isn't going to be as hard as I had imagined.  It's still going to be really freaking hard, especially since I usually do better on 5Ks than I do on longer races.  I used the time on this race to predict my full marathon finish time, and it comes in well under what I'm shooting for, so at least that's a good sign.

Don't know what February's run is going to be at this point, but I'm looking forward to it!

Official Race Results

San Antonio Symphony Presents John Williams

Since I've graduated college, I have changed my involvement in the arts to one of being a patron, since that is something those particular industries need. I made another resolution for 2010 to remedy this: to do one artsy-fartsy thing each month.  For January, it happily coincided with my decision to take Mom to a San Antonio Symphony Pops presentation of John Williams music for her birthday.

I was reminded of how much I enjoy the symphony.

The concert was preceded by dinner at Rosario's, which was the first time Mom has been there.  It's in the King William district and on the main route for the First Friday art exhibits. I had the Pollo con Mole though I opted for the sauce on the side.  It comes "smothered" by default, but the smaller amount was very enjoyable. 

The venue was different than the previous concerts I attended, this time at the Municipal Auditorium. It was a beautiful facility in an art deco style and one of San Antonio's historic sites.  It appeared to seat more people than the Majestic Theater where I've been before.  Most of the floor seats were occupied.  There were a lot of school age kids there, which is a definite difference from the what I perceived to be the normal crowd.  Added bonus: more knee room than the cheap seats at the Majestic.

The concert was very good.  I knew almost every one of the tunes, which made the concert fly by.  I think my boyfriend was embarrased by Mom and me bobbing our heads in time with the music.  They played a lot of the memorable themes from Star Wars, Jaws, E.T., Superman and Harry Potter.  Everybody knows those, right? They also played the theme from NBC news, which was much more beautiful in its full form than the sound bytes that you normally get.

Two songs from my high school band career stand out in my mind as incredibly fun to play.  They were both John Williams tunes and they both made the program: Cowboys and 1941.  Both of these were written before Star Wars and his catapult into legend.  I remembered how much it physically hurt to play those tunes during rehearsal and I felt bad for the horns and trumpets who had to play a whole two hours of similarly ranged music. 

There were two solo pieces.  The first on the program was "Viktor's Theme" from The Terminal which featured a clarinet solo.  It was an amazing piece.  The principal clarinet did a fantastic job with it.  It makes me want to watch the film again so I can listen for the theme applied in context.  The second was the theme from Schindler's List.  The piece is both moving and haunting, but I did not love the concertmaster's performance. There's something about fast vibrato that irritates me whenever I hear it and I especially don't think it worked for this piece.

This was my first Pops concert, so I wasn't expecting their "special effects."  They had characters in costume acting onstage intermittently throughout the concert.  It seemed really hokey and detracted from the experience.  But they weren't for me.  They were for the little kid sitting next to us who pretended to be the conductor and then totally geeked out when Darth Vader took over the podium for the Imperial March from Star Wars.  And for him, it rocked. 

Again, I was inspired by a symphony concert.  Listening to classical music always fills me with all the best hopes for myself and my future, with my shooting star dreams.  And best of all, it gives me a whiff of courage to continue towards those things, no matter where I've made it on my journey thus far. 

I highly encourage anyone to attend an arts event in their city if they haven't in a while.  Our cities are filled with creative and talented people who need an audience.  I know I'm going to go back for more as soon as I can.

Leap Year

Anna comes up with a plan to propose to her long time boyfriend on Leap Day as prescribed by an old Irish tradition. On her way to meed up with the boyfriend in Dublin weather forces her to take a detour through the Irish countryside.  She enlists the help of an innkeeper in order get to Dublin in time.  But the trip makes her question if that is what she really wants.

So I called in a lot of what the boyfriend refers to as DKP when I forced him to take me to see Leap Year. Basically all my deposits for doing nice girlfriend things have been withdrawn. 

If you watch the trailer, you know what is coming.  It's your typical chick flick.  Very predictable plot, very typical characters, and very pretty people to carry it.  The Irish accent from Matthew Goode wasn't great, but considering he's British, it's not bad.  He's very easy on the eyes, so it's not hard to forgive him. The very cute Amy Adams helped the boyfriend make it through the movie.  I'm totally jealous of her wardrobe, but I definitely would have chunked the heels after just one day of travel.

There are a lot of vista shots of the Irish countryside, which were very great.  I don't think I appreciated them enough while watching.  I was distracted by a feeling of deja vu.  In Chasing Liberty, Matthew Goode follows Mandy Moore on random country roads, and he's doing the same in this movie. 

Overall, it's not the best movie I've ever seen, but it was a decent night out. And I liked Chasing Liberty better.

Congrats to Meryl Streep for winning the Best Actress Golden Globe for Julie and Julia. Absolutely loved the movie and she was fantastic in it.  Her performance made me want to read a biography of Julia Child.  Very much deserved!