Check out this trailer for the film adaptation of, “We Need to Talk About Kevin“.
“We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, adapted into film, about a fictional school massacre. It is written from the perspective of the killer’s mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed. –Wiki
That might be the longest post title I’ve ever used.
There are few things in the world better than cupcakes and wine. I mean think about it. Excluding Life’s essentials, what’s better than delicious gourmet cupcakes and free wine? Nothing right? Not even cats in top hats!
Since Ryan was going to be working much of the time that I would be in California, I asked him to find a few things for me to do while I was out there. Ryan is incredibly good at this sort of stuff. He planned the epic spring break we had a few years that went from Kansas City to Buffalo New York to Niagara Falls Canada to Toronto to New York City to Washington DC and back to Kansas City. Quite possibly the best vacations of our lives.
Never to disappoint, Ryan managed to find three of my favorite things as events in the city. Cupcakes, wine tastings and a half-off coupon, in this case, all together. It’s the San Francisco Cake Moda Cupcake Wars at Crush Barrel Wine Market. I’m in and so were my friends Kevin and Dave.
We made the bus ride to San Francisco’s wharf to the Herbst Pavilion and readied our tickets, thanks Eventbrite and Yelp for the hookup. We were in for the gastronomic time of our lives. Right? There was lots of fun live music, great wines to try out and a coupon for $10 off any wine purchase. Win!
Alas, who knew it would be possible to go to an all-you-can-eat cupcake and wine tasting and not have a single cupcake? Also, who knew that not eating all day coupled with drinking lots of wine could be a bad idea?
Both lessons were learned on this voyage to Cupcake Desert, Wine Oasis. Apparently 1,000 other people had the same idea and the free cupcakes became $1-4 cupcakes and all you can eat became all you can afford and dare to wait in line for. We wandered around for a bit, enjoyed some wine, kevetched on the complete absence of free cupcakes, took some photos and eventually decided this wasn’t our scene.
Instead we opted for a cupcake from Ghiradelli Square and dinner with Ryan and Mark at Home.
The next morning I woke up extra early, picked up my rental car, a sweet Volkswagen Jetta and headed north to Healdsburg where a limousine, Kayla and a great time awaited me.
Oh how I can’t wait for school to be over, for good. Alas, we all know Justin will never be graduating from college… well a least not this year, which is incredibly annoying/depressing/etc. I’ve been in school for ages now, way longer than I should have been in school.
Of course, lots of great things have happened because of my extended college career. I made so many incredible friends, realized engineering wasn’t for me. Neither was psychology, pre-law, sociology, philosophy… you get the point.
I’ve “settled” on a sort of triple major. I get one degree with an emphasis on three topics. For me it’s Political Science, Gender Studies and Photography. I love all three of those and it opens a lot of doors for me, especially with the PoliSci and Photography portions.
But first I’ve gotta get out of school right?
This summer I have the options of summer school, internships or traveling. I want to do an internship in Europe but my parents moving to Saudi Arabia makes me want to see them a lot this summer, so maybe an internship in Houston… but then I’d like to get some classes out of the way so summer school?
Hate living like this!
Oh yeah, then there’s being away from Ryan. I really don’t want to spend the summer states, much less oceans, away from him. But I guess we can’t put our future together on the back burner so we can spend the present together. The sooner I graduate, the sooner we can move on with our life together.
Get out of school and then let’s move back to California where I can be with so many of my amazing friends… Sean, Kevin, Mark, David, Kayla, Matt…
Until then, here I am, one class at a time. I now live through another graduation season where I lose more of my friends. This year I’m going to miss most Chase and Corey, moving to Kansas City. Congratulations on them for moving on with their band, Scouts, which is awesome. But going to miss my boys.
And worse yet, Karen is moving to St. Louis. Major sadness over that, first Micheal and now Karen. Blurg. What’s this city going to?
Luckily Phoebe, Joshua, Laura and Eric Cox etc etc are still here. Ryan and I will stay sane for a bit longer.
Time for me to get on my plane back to the snowy, cold, miserable Columbia Missouri. I’m really going to miss San Francisco and could not be happier with how things worked out. I got to see good friends, Kevin, Sean, Mark and made some new friends!
It’s such an awesome time of the year, time for scary movies and haunted houses. FUN!
I went out the other night to do some long exposure (5+ minute) photos.
Before I went out to take the pics, I met up with Kevin, Libby, Travis, Crysta and David at Shakespeare’s Pizza.
I didn’t eat or drink anything which is totally unfortunate haha. It was sure good to see all my old friends who I had not seen in a while. Libby looked fabulous, love the hair girl! And Kevin is always fun to hang out with, one of those old friends that no matter how long you spend apart, you pick up right where you left off.
Dave and Crysta came along with me to take the pics. It is so much more fun to have people go with you, especially when they sing N’Sync and Blu Cantrel with you as you drive haha.
They spotted this house as we drove around, it sure is hallowing isn’t 😉
What do you think? This is just a start. Tonight Micheal is going to join me as I take a bunch more of these long exposure pictures.
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Image via WikipediaSo yesterday was the fourth of July. Or rather, it was the Fourth of July. The day we celebrate our independence, here in America. Last year I was in Washington DC for the Fourth of July with best friend Landon. We had a nearly missed the show, and in the capitol city, but it was a wonderful time. This year was different, being in Missouri and not anywhere all that exciting.
We celebrate this by cooking out with friends and family, grilling some burgers and brats, enjoying the outdoor weather, drinking and setting off fireworks followed by watching a professional fireworks show later in the evening.
I accidentally didn’t do any of those things. I had the intention of grilling out with Ryan at his work. I had this idea that I’d hang out with my friend Beau and his guests for a Bar-B-Que. I thought I’d pick up some sparklers for a photo I wanted to take. I thought later I would go to Jefferson City or to Faruot Field and watch the fireworks show.
What happened was totally different but still a lot of fun. I went to Harpo’s where I hung out with Colin, Kevin, Brittany, Ashley and a couple of other friendly people. We had the idea of being on a roof equaling a great view of the fireworks. Not so much. The trees around the building blocked any site of the show. But that was ok, we had our drinks and our conversation. I had not seen Kevin in about a year so it was wonderful catching up with him. Plus, we totally matched.
Later we went to the trainwreck of a gay bar out here called, Arches and Columns. I hear it used to be a real deal pub, and then it was a leather daddy bar and now it’s just a dive. But always fun.
Bumped into more people I hadn’t seen in quite some time, had a drink, had a good time. We hung out a bit more at Kevin’s before I went home and crashed.
I’ve been using Twitter for a good while now but have been such a slacker in actually using it. While in San Francisco I made a pledge to be more active on Twitter.
For those who don’t know what Twitter is, let me explain.
Twitter, in brief, is a social network based on instant messages to a public audience. You “twit” when you are going to a movie, when you’re stuck at the DMV (as I have been twice in the past week) or when you want company for dinner.
As people discover your tweets, they have the option to follow you. By following you, they will receive all of your updates to Twitter on their email, their phone, their IM or whatever other format they choose.
You can direct “tweets” at something by typing @ before the person’s name. If I wanted to ask Nick Starr out to dinner, I might say, “@NickStarr want to get dinner at Sapporo?” and he could reply “@justex07 yeah, how about 8?”.
I could also put an open invitation for people to join me at a movie by simply twittering, “going to see the 10 o’clock showing of Wanted if anyone wants to join me”. All of your followers will get the message and can reply to you if they plan on joining.
As you begin to acquire get a large number of followers, you essentially make it impossible to be lonely. During South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin last year, people were Twittering about the best Bar-B-Que and ending up with over 40 people joining them at places like Stub’s for dinner!
Strangers uniting in a Web 2.0 world. It’s something else. It’s something great.
With the iPhone 3G coming out and all of the Twitter Apps expected in the iPhone 2.0 App Store, twitting on the go will just get easier and easier.
I am going to be researching good Twitter plugins so I can have my tweets streaming through this blog on the sidebar. If you know of any good ones, please forward them to me through a comment on this post.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, my name is justex07 and you can find me on Twitter here.
