night out on the town

Tom called me at work today to let me know that he had acquired some free tickets to see the LA Philharmonic at the Disney Concert Hall from someone at the firm. After work Tom picked me up and then we hurried downtown where we had some pretty decent Italian food (we ate at this really weird restaurant that was full of old people and looked like a retirement home, but the food was pretty good) and then went to the concert hall where we saw Shadow of Stalin - Music Behind the Iron Curtain which was really fantastic. Here are a few pictures from the evening . . . sorry, they were taken with our camera phones.

Memorial Day Weekend

Well, Tom and I are exhausted. My mom and stepdad were here visiting from Utah and they wore us out :) We dropped them off at the airport a couple hours ago and I'm missing them already. But we did have some fun. And we ate some great food. We enjoyed some time at the Beverly Center, Santa Monica 3rd street promenade, and wonderful Westwood. We also ate a few of our favorite places, and one new place called La Serenata which had some wonderful Mexican seafood. We did a lot of walking and I think my mom has now been assured that we live in a pretty nice, safe area. Here are a couple pictures from this weekend (the rest can be seen on flickr once I upload them):
Everything else is going well. My leg is healing pretty well and Tom is almost recovered from his illness. By the way, here's a picture of Tom in front of his office building. The hotel my parents stayed in is across the street from his building so we took a little photo of him.
And better late than never . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY KELLY. Saturday was my youngest sister's 12th birthday. Here's a picture of her (looking very unexcited) that I took when we were in Utah for Christmas.

ewww

Today I am sitting at home with my leg elevated instead of going to work. I had (what the doctor thinks was) a congenital nevus removed from the back of my left calf yesterday. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought and I hadn't planned on staying home today, but now it is pretty ugly and every time I walk it oozes with a bloody liquid. Yuck. You may want to look away at this point, because here is a picture:
In other news, Tom is still sick though he appears to be recovering. He went to the student health center on Monday thinking that he had strep and that he would feel better once he got some antibiotics, but his strep test was negative so now he's waiting out what is probably a virus. The doctor said it could be mono or some other virus, so we're just hoping for some other virus. I had mono a couple years ago and I did not enjoy the experience. Despite the fact that he's not feeling well, Tom has been going to work every day and I am really proud of him.

Actually, he just called me to tell me that he went to lunch at The Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel and he saw Jake Gyllenhall and Maria Shriver. Every day so far he has been going to lunch with one or two attorneys from the firm so he has gotten to eat all kinds of interesting things. He even has his own office :) I'll try to convince him to make a post about his experiences at the firm.

our amazing vacation

Tom and I returned from San Diego this evening. Our plans were somewhat altered since Tom has been sick since Monday and he began to feel progressively worse throughout the week. We stayed at the cheapest hotel we could find; I was a little skeptical, but the place ended up to be pretty nice. Plus they had a decent continental breakfast. I am going to post a few pictures, but the rest of the pictures can be seen here. I'm going to upload a few pictures tonight, but the rest of them will probably get uploaded tomorrow or later this week.

Day One

On Wednesday we drove down to the Wild Animal Park. The weather was amazing (mid-60s and overcast) and the zoo was relatively empty (other than several dozen mothers pushing strollers). Tom was a trooper (considering that he was sick) and we spent several hours wandering around. Later that afternoon we went to La Jolla and walked around near the beach and enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Day Two

We ate breakfast on Thursday morning at a wonderful place in downtown San Diego. I had pumpkin waffles and Tom had eggs benedict which were both amazing. We spent our second day at the San Diego Zoo. This was a very different atmosphere than the Wild Animal Park, mainly because there were several different elementary schools visiting the zoo. It was LOUD. But we still enjoyed ourselves. The zoo had more of a jungle-feel compared to the safari-feel at the Wild Animal Park. After the zoo we went to Old Town and had some delicious Mexican Food. We then went to San Ysidro (this is on the US/Mexico border) to shop at a very large outlet shopping center. We got Tom some nice slacks for his new job and I got a couple shirts for work.

Day Three

On Friday we spent some time resting (since Tom wasn't feeling very well) and then headed over to Ocean Beach. This is actually where we went/wandered around/ate lunch when we visited San Diego in Dec 2005 so it was fun to visit again. This time we enjoyed some spectacular fish tacos. Afterwards we went to Mission Beach where we walked along the shore, watched some surfers, and split a delicious ice cream cone. We had my favorite meal on Friday night. We had done some restaurant research before we left, and one of the places that kept popping up was across the street from our hotel. It was a great Korean BBQ place, much like the restaurant that Tom worked at in high school. Delicious.

Day Four

Tom really wasn't feeling very good when he woke up this morning (his lymph nodes were visibly swollen) and I wasn't feeling that great either so we nixed our plans to go to Tijuana and decided to go to a movie theater near the San Diego temple (we had intended to visit the temple earlier in the week but had decided not to since Tom wasn't feeling well). We have only seen three movies since we moved to LA and since we both love movies, we took advantage of the opportunity to catch a couple of matinées. We saw Shrek 3 and Spiderman 3 and then enjoyed some Chipotle before heading back to LA. I was more impressed with the Chipotle (yum) than with either movie, but Shrek 3 was definitely the better of the two.

Now we are home and getting some much needed rest. Tom starts his job at Irell and Manella on Monday so we are hoping that he will recover before then. I will head back to work on Monday, but I am not too disappointed to be heading back since my mom and step-dad are visiting next weekend and I am really looking forward to seeing them :)

We're on Vacation

Tom and I are currently in San Diego on vacation. I will post a more extensive blog later, but here are a couple pictures for now. We will be back on Saturday night :)

Happy Mother's Day

Tom and I have had a fun weekend (despite the fact that he still has one more final). We spent a very enjoyable day in Bakersfield yesterday where we were able to spend some time with Tom's parents. We've been feeling a little claustrophobic in our apartment so it was nice to get away. We used some of our tax return this year to buy a new digital camera so Tom enjoyed taking a few photos of his mother's beautiful garden.
They have a few little kittens that have made their home in their backyard.
And are a couple of Tom's parents in front of the garden.
We ended the day by going to the movies for the first time in a VERY long time. We must be getting really old because afterward we both commented that we thought the movie was WAY too loud. We saw Hot Fuzz which we had wanted to see for quite a while. It was hilarious, but definitely not for the easily offended. I had been really looking forward to this movie because the movie Shaun of the Dead (which was made by the same people) is one of my favorite movies. Hot Fuzz was AT LEAST as good as Shaun of the Dead. Hilarious.

Happy Mother's Day to our mothers, grandmothers, and everyone else. Here's a picture of me with my mother and my mother's mother who are both amazing, incredible people and I miss them very much.

googling myself

I was . . . a little bored at work today and I decided to google myself. I really didn't think I'd find myself, but after I did a little browsing around I was a little disappointed that I only found myself three times. I started with my married name and then realized that since I have only been married for a year, I should also check under my maiden name. This is what I found:

the "Erica Jackman" search
http://kenison.net/calendar/index.php?p=calsubmit&curDay=1&curMonth=3&curYear=2007
Ok, I don't think that this really counts, but it did show up in google. Tom's uncle maintains a website which has a family calendar and our anniversary is on it.

the "Erica Taylor" search
http://kennedy.byu.edu/student/InterculturalOutreach/edintern_team.php
You have to click on the "Fall 2005" link to see me. This is the semester Tom and I met :)
http://mormonlit.lib.byu.edu/lit_author.php?a_id=6838&orderby=sort_genre&PHPSESSID
I was really surprised to see this link show up. Especially since the poem isn't actually there when you click on the link. . .

The "Erica Taylor" search was pretty difficult because there are lots of them out there. There is a basketball player, a musician, someone missing after hurricane Katrina. It took me awhile to sift through all of those pages. I actually went to high school with another "Erica Taylor." It was very confusing and the school got our stuff mixed up all of the time. Especially since her name was "Erica Jane Taylor" and mine was "Erica Jean Taylor" and we share the same birthday (except she's a year younger). Also, she was a triplet and one of the triplets was named Kara and I also have a sister named Kara. Weird. I was actually surprised at how many "Erica Jackman"s there were. I guess I'm not the only one :)

30 Rock is Amazing

It is Thursday evening and I am sitting here (watching The Office) wishing that 30 Rock hadn't wrapped up season one last week. 30 Rock is our favorite show. It seems like every favorite show I have ever had has been canceled prematurely. 30 Rock hasn't been canceled, in fact I think that they have guaranteed a second season, but I have heard this before. The ratings are pretty low and I keep hearing rumors that it is going to be canceled. It even took a brief hiatus in the middle of the season.

My first favorite show was My S0-Called Life. In middle school I was obsessed with My So-Called Life. I was in love with Jordan Catalano and I wanted to be Angela Chase. For some reason, I'm still not exactly sure why, my mom did not want me to watch this show. I think it was because it was on MTV, so I would watch it whenever she was gone and since MTV plays every episode of every show over and over again so I eventually saw them all (I now have them on DVD). Then it was Freaks and Geeks. This show was phenomenal. I was/am definitely a of a geek. And I was/am a bit of a freak. This show was great because the main character (Lindsay, who is now on ER) went from being a freak to hanging out with the cool people. It was an inspiration. . . . until it got canceled. What was next. . . oh yes, the best show of them all, Arrested Development. The ending of this show was absolutely tragic. The great (and the terrible) thing about this show was that each episode built on the previous episode so the show got progressively more and more funny. So if you missed an episode or you tried to start watching halfway through the season, you missed all of the inside jokes. At this point I think I've seen all three seasons three times (I know, it's pretty pathetic, but each time it got funnier and funnier).

The really tragic thing is that some of the best episodes were at the end when the show made fun of itself for getting canceled. Oh, I miss it. And now we have 30 Rock. It's a little like Arrested Development, a little SNL, and it has got to be the funniest show on television right now.

Anyway, there's not much going on with us right now. Tom took his first final yesterday. He thinks that it went pretty well but since the class is on a curve, we won't know for a few weeks. . . .