So You Think You Can Dance 4

A little background on me? In case you didn't know, I'm a dancer. I've danced since I was three; that makes nearly three decades of dance. I've done ballet, I've done jazz and despite messed up knees and feet, I even competed in ballroom. It's the thing I love dearly, and dancing definitely gives me a release from "real life." Sadly, I'm too much of an old lady to be on So You Think You Can Dance and despite being three months too old to audition this past January, it doesn't stop me from rooting for my friends!

Last night, Gev, a fantastic guy who danced with the company I dance with gave a stellar performance for the Salt Lake City round of auditions. He auditioned a couple of years ago, but didn't make the cut, and since then I've seen him progress and work his ass off taking other styles of dance to round out his breaking. I knew he'd do a great job, but more importantly he's just a genuine guy. He never walks into a rehearsal without stopping to tell everyone hello and give them a hug. Last month at a rehearsal, he told me I was skinny...

He's got my vote!

Check out the clip:

Back up and running!

I have had some serious router/internet issues here at home for over a week now and have not been able to get online with my DSL. Looks like things are all fixed and happy and I promise, lambs, I'll resume blogging very very soon.

I'm Famous.

Nevermind that I've been on radio and television in the Salt Lake area for quite some time now. My name has actually appeared in my friend's divorce papers, and it's hysterical.

(All names have been withheld to protect my own ass)

"For Christmas 2007, xxx put a bag from Victoria's Secret full of sexy panties under the tree and told me that a girl she works with 'Holly Braithwaite' gave them to her because xxx told Holly that I wouldn't buy her any new panties."

It's true. I bought "sexy panties" for a girl friend of mine for Christmas 2007. I like the quotes around my name like I allegedly call myself that. I also think that if I have a band one day I'm going to call it "Holly Braithwaite" and the Sexy Panties. We will play German polka music.

Random Images

Here are some random pictures taken from my phone while in the Long Beach airport, aka, "Satan's Butthole:"


This is the entire airport.


In case a flight breaks down, one of these available birds will take you and your luggage to the appropriate destination.


Right when you walk out the doors, your flight is waiting for you.


My toes look cute as I'm waiting.


This is a highly unfortunate bathing suit Urban Princess and I saw while at Old Navy this afternoon. This is not on an actual human. This is a print of an orchid-like flower that wraps around from back to front, however, I will refrain from expressing what we really called it.

Stuck in Hell

Today, I've been extremely happy for my whole flight from Boston to Long Beach, trying to end up somewhere near home in Salt Lake City. When I booked my flight, I thought that Long Beach wasn't that far from Salt Lake, but what I didn't take into account was the fact I'd be on my way here from the East Coast, which is about the farthest possible flight I could take without continuing onto Japan.

The Long Beach airport is a sad little place, there aren't any gates, rather, they sort of just wheel stairs up to the side of the plane while it's sitting out on the runway. When inside the single room, you find a bunch of sad people sort of wandering around, wondering if they're in the right place because none of the "gates" are labeled.

I saw a bird walking around on the carpet in front of me.

It's like the Long Beach airport has zapped all the fond memories of my trip this past weekend, that lasted right up until I walked through the doors of Logan International earlier this morning.

This little friend I rode at my almost sister-in-law's bachelorette party was certainly an interesting experience, yet definitely not the highlight of the trip:



There were many other good times this weekend, leaving me with thoughts of, "what now?"

The tooth saga continues. Still. Again.

While my tooth saga continues right up to my leaving for the east coast tomorrow evening, I have to admit there are some good people in the world. I finally decided to get a second opinion on why I was getting the dental run around since March. (Which, incidentally, is the last time I had a good night's sleep. Wednesday March 26, to be specific.) I decided to get a second opinion at Sugarhouse Dental Spa because if I was going to have to pay, I wanted a massage and a latte out of the deal. Not only are the folks who work there fantastic, but they immediately whisk you into a massage chair while you fill out your paperwork, and offer you a coffee.

Dr. Graham there confirmed everything my dentist had said about the debacle that has turned out to be my whole mouth, but he explained it in a way that made everything seem all better, and while he didn't fix anything today, I felt okay about the whole thing. As soon as I get all squared away, I'll return in six months for my cleaning.

And another latte.

And a paraffin dip on my hands.

So I leave on a jet plane tomorrow night, and when I return, I'll get that pesky root canal and maybe finally a full night of rest. While I'm excited to head to Boston, I am continually amazed about the cool stuff we have right here in Salt Lake. Namely, Larry Miller's Motorsports Park. Having always liked cars (my mom says I got the name Holly after her favorite movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's. My dad says I got the name Holly after his 1966 Corvette which had a Holley carburetor. I guess everyone won.) I found this particularly interesting.

The other night I met the host of the following video who had been out at Larry's raceway all day doing donuts in Mustangs and drooling over Shelbys. Rough job, for sure. And when I get back from Baahston next week, I'll have to play tourist in my own backyard and check out this great car museum we seemingly overlook here.



You can check out more at Garage419. It doesn't suck.

Stimulate my Economics... please

The government started giving back a little love today, in the form of some random money that should mysteriously show up in our bank accounts and mailboxes— sometime. I'm guessing that since I filed my 2007 taxes online, it should show up in my bank account sometime in the next two weeks. But do I save it or spend it?

According to a news story tonight, "The White House hopes Americans will spend the money and boost the economy." I'm all for spending money, and am quite good at it, but what if I just tucked it away and forgot about it? What if I actually, perish the thought, saved? Still, I did see this dress the other night that, literally, whispered out my name. I'll never wear this dress, mind you, but I must own it. Save Schmave.

For those as clueless as I feel about all this stuff lately, here's a schedule of when you can count on your minor ducats gracing your presence:

Direct Deposit: Depending on the last two numbers of your Social Security Number, your rebate should be deposited by:
00-20: May 2
21-75: May 9
76-99: May 16

By Mail: Depending on the last two numbers of your Social Security Number, your rebate check should be mailed by:
00-09: May 16
10-18: May 23
19-25: May 30
26-38: June 6
39-51: June 13
52-63: June 20
64-75: June 27
76-87: July 4
88-99: July 11

For the next two weeks, I'll anxiously check my online banking on an hourly basis. It's like Christmas, except better because there's no extended family and it's not cold. While I'm not sure exactly how much I'll get back, and if I count on the maximum of $600, my luck lately says I should get roughly $3. With that, I could buy a Diet Dr. Pepper and a bag of Red Vines.

What are you gonna' get?

Greetings from…

While driving back to Salt Lake from St. George today, I started paying attention to, remembering and pondering those crazy little slogans that are on signs whenever you drive past a small town. I don't quite know why these signs are necessary. It's not like I'm going to be driving somewhere and think, "Woah! There's a city that boasts the world's largest chunk of cheese! Better pull over!"

To my knowledge, we don't have a sign like that when driving into Salt Lake City. Unless you count the sign just past the airport that reads, "Welcome to Salt Lake City, home of the 2002 Winter Olympics." I don't think that's the same thing, that's just holding onto the past.

With that, I bring to you some of my favorite city signs while driving the stretch of I-15 from Salt Lake City to St. George, Utah:

My very favorite: "Iron County— Saluting the Triple Deuce!" A single deuce deserves acknowledgement. A double deuce merits applause. You salute the triple deuce.

1.) "Welcome to Cedar City! 'Festival City, U.S.A.'" If I were seeking out a festival, I wouldn't think of Cedar City. Sure, the Shakespearean Festival is extremely big and important for the economy there, they even won a Tony Award. Sure, that was years ago. And it was a regional Tony Award. So it's not really a Tony Award. Move on and cut the cord, Cedar City, it's not like you hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics.

2.) "Beaver City— Mountains of fun! Best drinking water in the U.S.A." I always snicker a bit when I travel through Beaver, and now that I know it's "Mountains of Fun," that snicker is more a snort. Not as much as a snort as when Beaver's sign slogan was "Live a little!" Because well... I don't want to be living at all in Beaver. Guys I've driven with believe differently. It's this whole drinking water thing that gets me, I just read Forbes "Best Drinking Water in the U.S." list that came out earlier this month, and Beaver was no where to be found on that list. The list mentions San Diego, Calif., Jackson, Miss., and Mobile, Ala., have the lowest levels of lead, Tucson, Ariz., and Billings, Mont., have the lowest levels of turbidity (because I hate it whenever I'm feeling turbid) and Beaver, Utah doesn't rear its head, err, tail. Turns out that in 2006 the National Rural Water Association awarded Beaver the title of "Best Drinking Water in the Nation." That's no Forbes Magazine! That's rural Skeeter taking gulps from the pond! And what's the water like now? Perhaps now, two years later, Beaver water is leaded and turbid, but still "Mountains of fun!"

3.) "You're in Sandy City— The 34th Safest City in America." Okay, come on Sandy City, 34th? What kind of a number is 34? If you were one of the top 10, maybe, certainly one of the top 5 then I could understand the benefits of that. But 34? Now you're stretching. For some reason this reminded me of this scene in Clerks:
Dante: This is different, this is important. How many? Well?
Veronica: Something like… 36.
Dante: What? Something like 36?
Veronica: Lower your voice.
Dante: Wait a minute, what is that anyway? Something like 36? Does that include me?
Veronica: Uh, 37.
Dante: I'm 37?

4.) "Parowan City— Where good things happen." I've been to Parowan twice in my life. Neither time did "good things happen." Ever. I've had "good things happen" in Plano, Texas, I've even had "good things happen" in Wilmington, Delaware. When I think of "good things happening," they're not happening in Parowan. Weird things happen in Parowan, I am convinced, as I passed another billboard emblazoned with an exploding mushroom cloud with the headline reading, "What do you do when disaster strikes?" Underneath it was a URL for Parowan Prophet which turns out is some creepy freak sitting in his Parowan basement conversing with the religious cosmos as a self-proclaimed, modern day Nostradamus. Next, he'll start in the movie Conspiracy Theory 2: Where good things happen.

I'm creating a sign tonight and hanging it in my window: "My house. Where I drink wine straight from the bottle and Guinness flows free." Has a nice ring.

Separated at Birth?

The statue of Albert Einstein on the campus of Southern Utah University…

And Ronald McDonald.

Peaceful Warrior

This is the type of vehicle that people drive in Fillmore, Utah. I'm guessing it's pretty standard for many small Utah towns: Panguitch, Delta, what have you... the bumper reads, "Peaceful Warrior," which I find extremely ironic. Note that I also took the picture from inside my car because I was afraid for my life.

"Blow on them"

I was sitting poolside, rocking green toenails. Like on The Big Lebowski. It was awesome.

For other picts I've taken in St. George this weekend, click here. There aren't many, as it's too sunny and warm to stay inside typing right now.

St. George trip

This is me in Southern Utah, wondering what I should eat.

I had to head to my old stomping ground, St. George this weekend for work-related purposes, and just pulled into town. I want food, but all of my old places are either 1) gone or 2) cheap and gross because that's all I could afford when I was here in college or 3) filled with tourists.

I took my time driving down here because of the high winds, but also stopped to take some photos along the way. I'll post those later provided I can find nourishment beyond that made with hops. (Though, it's not a bad idea.)

Ode to Fuzz E. Cat

I don't understand how people have so much time on their hands that they actually sit down to create a Myspace profile for their dog or cat. I barely have time to regularly check one social networking profile (no, I don't have a Myspace anymore. Deleted it over a year ago and have been fine without it) much less check and maintain a fake pet page. I'm not downplaying the love for a girl and her cat-- three years ago my twenty-year-old orange kitty Fuzz met the giant Fancy Feast can in the sky-- but why must people put the virtual world through another pointless waste of bytes?

Is it really necessary to anthropromorphize these supposed best friends and companions with some wholly lameass, bogus rap sheet? Have they been sniffing too much litter box? "Hey guys, my name is Buttons and if you're looking for a good friend to hang with, shoot me an add! I love digging holes after a long day of licking things because I can. My favorite weekend activity is curling up with Salinger, and some day want to meet a hip cat who will Whiska me away."

Maybe I'm missing something, maybe there are thousands of pets out there in the world hooking up on Myspace during the day while we're not supervising our computers at home. But without supervision, would we then have to suddenly be concerned with additional cases of "pet"ophilia?

Just wondering.

I'm also currently on Loritab.

Oh thank heaven... part deux

I joke fairly often about leaving flaming bags of poop on people's porches, ringing the bell and running away. I've never done this, but for some reason I always crack myself up at a visual of a flaming bag of poop. What's funnier than a fart? Poop, because it's like a fart, but solid. What's funnier than poop? Poop on fire. Maybe I have the same sense of humor as a seven-year-old boy, but sometimes it's the little things.

That said, I was a bit disheartened to watch the news and find out that Sandy, Utah police are looking for three men who allegedly put their poop in a 7-11 microwave oven and cooked it. This was the same convenience store location to where I rode my bike with friends on hot summer days for a frosty Slurpee treat. It's not like it was a bad part of town either, it was an extremely well-off community, and now the police are looking for men who bake their dookie there. At my old 7-11. The 7-11 of my youth.

I have to wonder, however, why this store said the microwave suffered $3,500 in damages. I lived at that 7-11 for a long time, buying Garbage Pail Kids, stockpiling Lik-M-Aid like it was going out of style (which I think it has at this point), but never once did the sum total of all the equipment there look like it was worth over three thousand dollars. Maybe it was the money lost when the store had to close for a long period of time to air out?

I guess this goes to show you can put a price on everything. It's $3,500 for a dirty 7-11 microwave. But what is the price for tarnishing fond childhood memories? Now that the summers of my youth at that 7-11 are gone, so also is the pure innocence of the flaming bag of poop.

"Strange things are afoot at the Circle K."
--"Ted" Theodore Logan, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

For another random 7-11 experience I had a few months ago, click here.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Yeah. We're going to go from snow today to 70 degrees on Sunday?

Forgive me if I'm a skeptic.

The sockets continue...

I've been horrible at updates lately, it's the whole teeth thing. But I do have a profound thought: they remove wisdom teeth when people are 18-years-old because they bounce back faster. When you're 32, you don't heal like you used to. Now I'm in pain. And old.

As low high-maintenance as I am, I'm a pretty tough girl. I've danced in performances while dealing with 103-degree fevers. I even once performed three shows with a shattered foot before I could go to the emergency room. I duct-taped it and coped until I could get it fixed, running on adrenaline and will.

Just when I thought things with my mouth were getting better (before getting a root canal tomorrow), I got 30 minutes into kickboxing tonight and the gaping holes in my mouth started aching so badly I threw up. Having thrown up at the gym several times in my life (there was this one time when I thought that drinking a 32-ounce chai before running on the treadmill was a good idea. There was also that one fake bacon incident...), I didn't think anything of it, until I passed out at the grocery store.

In the soda aisle.

Onto the floor.

Thank god nobody saw me. Tonight, I puked and I passed out in public. So, I paid for my Diet Dr. Pepper and toilet paper and came home to crawl into bed with Captain Loritab.

Live blogging Rock of Love

7:55- Bret is going to reveal his true feeling. Wow, um, notsodeep.

7:56- AND THE LOSER IS... Destiney!!! Bret realizes she hasn't had the time to fall in love with him. Though he had plenty of time to fall in love with her luscious breasts, and rub up against them while he's hugging her.

7:57- Destiney? Buh-bye. Bret wants to go officially on the record, "I'm not a cryer." He's down to two girls that he cares about deeply, and now they're heading to Cancun.

7:57- And for the last hug, Daisy's breasts nearly spring forth from her dress that I thought was actually lingerie.

7:58- Sooo, guess that's it for this one. Not so thrilled with this episode. Glad this crap ends next week. I should've done my laundry. Don't forget to download your Crazy Daisy wallpaper here.

Live blogging Rock of Love

7:48- Just get to the freaking elimination.

7:48- Destiney is looking less slammy without all the bad makeup she's been rocking.

7:49- The suspense is killing me. Even Bret says he doesn't know who he's going to choose.

7:50- Bret just said he loves the way Daisy sings. Now, I thought she was tone deaf, but maybe that's just me.

7:51- OOOOH SNAP! Daisy has another "secret." But really she's just going to throw Destiney under the bus!! Maybe sitting through this whole crap episode has been worth this mini-cat spat. This round: Daisy and Ambre vs. Destiney.

7:52- Daisy just waved her hands like Mr. Mac again. Suddenly, I want to buy a suit.

COMMERCIAL! ANOTHER COMMERCIAL?!? Just when this was getting good? More melty cheese. No thank you.

Live blogging Rock of Love

During commercial break- I have no desire to fall in love with melty cheese. Why do fast food places insist on making commercials that show people with food hanging out of their mouths?

7:37- In Ambre's mind she said she did not lie to Bret. She says she has nothing to hide. She lied about her age. Ambre says she has to "stay young" because of her career. I wonder what she does for a living... candy striper? Manager at the Gap? I'm wondering what kind of a job she has that she needs to be a big, dumb liar.

7:39- Meanwhile back at the house... Bret is just so sincere in thanking everyone for coming. In this moment of sincerity, Destiney's breasts are dangerously close to springing forth from her tank top.

7:42- I'm so over this.

7:42- Oh, so NOW Ambre decides to be honest and spill everything she's thinking to Destiney and Daisy. Destiney just admitted she's not in love with Bret. Ambre professes her undying love for Bret, as does Daisy.

7:43- Daisy is ponderous and questions Destiney's motives. HA! She asks Destiney, "Would you still be here if it was Jon Bon Jovi? Would you still be here if it was John Stamos?" JOHN STAMOS? From what messed up recess did Daisy pull THAT?

Live blogging Rock of Love

7:31- Nice start, Bret's getting Ambre's dad liquored up and teaching him how to use chopsticks. Her dad's going to puke.

7:32- OOOOH SNAP! Bret tells Ambre that she's been so brutally honest, and then calls her on lying on her age. She for some reason can't believe that she lied to Bret. That's it? That's the whole thing? We're cutting to commercial, after all that buildup?

7:33- Commercial break #4 or #3? I don't know, I can't remember. I'm extremely disappointed in this episode. Maybe because I'm paying too much attention to what's going on to blog about it. Maybe it's just the Loritab talking.