Holiday party

Ok, I know you were waiting for it and HERE IT IS!

The 2010 Genoptix, Inc Holiday Party!

The attire: Cocktail

The location: The Hilton Downtown on the Bayfront

Cocktails open bar from 6-9

Dinner served at 7: Three course meal: Riddichio salad with balsamic viniagrette, 4 oz salmon AND 4 oz filet mignon with garlic potatoes, and chocolate raspberry cheesecake or pecan tart....yum! Here is what the table setting looked like...

The band...oh my gosh the band.  We walk in and there's a 30 person band singing and dancing the top 100 chart.

And another... The woman in the middle was the leader of the band.

And some more: This picture was taken after the company was invited to come up on stage and get their groove on.  I'm somewhere on the left side.

Here is my good friend Anita (in blue) and her daughter.  Anita works in accessioning where they log in the patient samples.  Anita and I went out for New Year's just the two of us to an awesome French restaurant for a 3 course meal...yum and then a delectable dessert at an Italian restaurant and a bottle of champagne next to the French place!  HAPPY NEW YEAR TO US!  Isn't she adorable!

Another one of the band:

Above is my supervisor Claudia holding one of the bands many props they gave to the audience during the different songs (I believe this was a Lady GaGa song) and her husband.  They are from Argentina.

I had a little crush on the singer below on the left side of the stage with the goatee.  He was a really smoother singer/dancer.

Here is my good friend and co-worker Taylor.  We've been hiking together alot lately and she introduced me to Isagenix, an all natural nutritional cleansing program....so far I've dropped 11 pounds since Jan 1 (so in 6 weeks or so).  I had a red rose in my hair that night with a side bun...I was going for the "Tango" look.  It was alot of fun!

As we were walking in...

Here is the CEO of the company Tina Nova, on the left.  I'm not sure who's on the right.  But I just thought it was so cool that she's little miss trendy.  I went up to her at the end of the night and said thank you for such an amazing party.  "She said you know, I don't know much, but I DO know how to throw a party!"  Awesome!

Another of the amazing band:

And one more of Tina getting her groove on:

So that was my Dec 12th, 2010 evening.  I spent the night at the hotel and woke up to a beautifully warm (79 degrees) and sunny day looking out over the San Diego Bay.  Holy Cow,  this is my city!
I'm so blessed to have been able to move here to skip this winter!  I called mom that day and she said it was a snowy white and freezing in Cincinnati.  So mom, when are you moving here?

SD Air and Space Museum

San Diego has an area downtown called Balboa Park.  It's kind of like the museum row in Washington, DC, but a with a more relaxed feeling.  There are about 28 museums in Balboa Park and some really awesome architecture houses some of the museums.  It's my goal to visit them all at least once, but since I'm here for the long haul, I'm not in any hurry.  If you come visit, we will definitely hit up Balboa Park! 

So the Air and Space Museum.  When I was staying at the hotel for the first week here, one of the guys that workd at the front desk was giving me some great recommendations of things to see and places to visit.  He first recommended the Museum of Making Music in North County.  I visited that within the first few days here and thought it was awesome.  It has all these different rooms each representing a decade in American jazz.  Well, he also recommended the Aliens exhibit at the Air and Space Museum.  I immediately thought about mom and how much she loves X Files and Taken and Fringe and how she would love to come along.  But, the exhibit was ending in January, so I went in December.  I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't very impressed.  I felt like they showed alot of how aliens are portrayed in the movies and other pop culture.  There was a little bit relating to UFOs in the papers and Roswell, but little more than that.  They did show animals underwater and above water that had interesting characteristics and then speculated what types of characteristics aliens would need to possess in order to live on another planet.  It also pointed out the communication barrier that exists between us and the aliens.  Ha, I was hoping for a little more umph, I suppose.  Oh well.  I walked through the rest of the museum which housed a lot of airplanes all over the place (on the walls, on the floor, suspended from the ceiling and life-sized too) especially from WWI and WWII.  Mike, if you're still in to that, I think you might like the museum.  I also went to a 4D little movie while at the museum.  The seats move, you watch it in 3D, and you get spit on (water) and blown on (fans) when blasting into outer space.  The movie is a digital/cartoon version of landing on the moon.  It was cute.  But the pictures below....they insist on taking your picture on a green screen before you enter the exhibit.  You view the pictures on the way out and then of course you can pay for them if you'd like.  Well, I got suckered in so I DID pay for mine.  But I thought it was the perfect souvenir. 

The day after the Christmas Party

So on Saturday Dec 11, Genoptix had the most amazing Christmas party ever!  I'll post pictures and details of that later.  For now, I have on hand views from my hotel room at the Bay Front Hilton.  I was on the 13th floor or something out of 35.  But the views were awesome.  I do believe I called mom this day and it was snowing in Cincy.  Sorry, but this is what December looks like in SD!

The anatomy of my desk...I know I'm a nerd!

I know we are past show and tell, but I figured someone was curious as to the work environment.  Of note, I can eat at my desk.  For my fellow lab mates, I think we know how cool this is! 

So on the right, I have a calendar (now I have a new calendar for 2011 thanks to my brother!) and my gym fitness class schedule.  I have my own phone and extension (woo, I'm definitely feeling the professionalism increase already!).  Aw, my box of tissues covers up some photos of uncles and one of mom and dad dancing and acting funny.  Sitting behind the phone and on some textbooks are pics of me and sister Katie.  For the clean freaks out there, that is a chlorox bleach wipes box back there for moments of inspiration to clean the entire desk.  For my fellow *BLING* lovers, my pens are sitting in a vase with pink pearls and clear diamond shaped marbles.  What what!  Then on the left side of that, I have some more family photos.  The WHOLE family and then the immediately fam.  Mike, you and I have the picture of us before canoeing that Eva took of us 2 summers ago.  And then, I have the daily sisters calendar that Katie gave to me before I left.

And that's it...that's my desk.  Now, I'm really only there about a 1/10th of the day, but at least I see your smiling faces watch me work!

Love you and miss you all!

2010 INBA Professional and Amateur Natural Bodybuilding Show

For those of you who know how much I love going to bodybuilding shows:  Well I went to one (by myself) at the beginning of November.  I couldn't find anyone to go with me, but I knew I wanted a dose of muscle to help get motivated in the gym, so I went!  I had so much fun! The drive up to LA was kind of long, but the competition was exciting.  Not as exciting as the NPC Northern KY, but exciting enough!  The picture below shows the overall male bodybuilder winner in the center.  My camera settings were really not set appropriately for the lighting, but whatever, veni, vidi, vici (well, at the least the competitors did, I just sat and watched!)

View from my balcony: Inland

I just wanted to share this view from my 3rd floor apartment balcony.  Some of you have seen this when skyp-ing with me.  But for those who didn't get a chance to see:

The hills here in North County are really beautiful.  From my balcony I can see 2 "layers" of hills.  The darker ones pictured above are closer to me like 1-2 miles away.  The more smoky looking hills are more like 8-10 miles away.  But it's really cool to be able to see them.   When you drive north on the 5 from San Diego to LA, you see ocean when you look left and beautiful mountains when you look right.  Really a fantastic sight!

Getting into the groove

Sorry I haven't posted anything new in a week or so.  The newest bit I have is that I am moved in to the apartment.  Last Friday, the 22nd the movers showed up at the apartment at 8am and unloaded.  My stuff barely fit into the apartment!  My room is so small, my dresser doesn't fit at all.  So, I had to go through and get rid of some clothes to make everything fit.  Wasn't my favorite thing to do, but it's done!  We have a little 5'x6' storage room off of the patio.  It's like an outside closet.  This is what is currently in there:  my desk and chair, my dresser, a bookshelf, a kitchen storage pantry (1.5'x6'), some books and boxes, decorations the roommates didn't like, and all the drawers of the dresser are filled with random stuff.  Definitely wasn't expecting that!  And my dining room table will soon be outside on the patio because my roommate's mom bought her a table and she wants that as the dining room table.  So, it TOTALLY makes sense to put my table outside!  I'm getting plastic covers for everything like from the 60's...I hope this helps protect it from the elements.  It's a covered patio and in a typical year, there shouldn't be that much rain.  We shall see.... There's no room for it in the storage locker, so I'm hoping against hope that this will turn out to be OK.

So, aside from the rant fest, I'm all moved in.  Pictures hung, everything in it's place (at least how it's going to be for a year), etc.

Moving in literally took me Friday 8am to 12am and Saturday 8am to 1am.  Sunday is when I hung stuff up and got ready for a week of work.  So I had a very tiring last weekend.

My second week of work was overall good.  I understand the assays I'm being trained on, I'm getting used to the work flow, getting into a groove essentially.  I'm busy from the moment I get there to the moment I leave minus a 30 minute lunch.  So, it makes the day go by fast, but I'm definitely worn by the end of it.

Friday, my company celebrated halloween!  They catered Mexican food, we had a talent show, and a costume contest.  My lab was dressed up as M&Ms.

 These are my work peeps:
orange-Shawn
green-Claudia (supervisor)
yellow tshirt-Amanda
purple-Luca
blue-Taylor
red-Michelle
yellow-Efren
missing: Christina (doing her thesis defense) and Diana (in the lab, not being festive)

Back to the story:
The groups that won was sales...they dressed up as KISS. 

We're talking all out, skin tight black spandex with cut out, silver spikes, face paint, and topped off with 5 inch platforms and 3 inch heels.  These guys looked awesome/ridiculous!  They won Amazon.com giftcards, along with the 30 people in cyto in second place, and the 10 people who won 3rd place!  We all won free lunch for participating....that's pretty cool!  Talent show was pretty crazy too.  The judges were the CEO who played Sharon Osbourne, CFO who played Howie Mandel, and COO who played Piers Morgan from American's Got Talent.  Pretty hilarious stuff! 

You know it's a down-to-earth company when the executives participate in Halloween!  All 48 of the pathologists dressed up too as people from different countries, I believe their native countries and they sang in the talent show to "We are the World" and "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing".  They changed the words to support Genoptix.  It was pretty cool!

When I got off work, I drove to the ocean and watched the sun set:

I apparently haven't learned how to take good night pictures.

Saturday, I woke up and went to the gym for some cardio, then a meditation class, then a yoga class.  I was there for a good 4 hours including shower!  But that felt great!  I meandered around for a while around the town.  It was absolutely beautiful out!  I took some pictures from my balcony.  Here is the view west, inland:

I love the view of the hills in the background! 

Here is the view to the west, the ocean!

Look really hard...above the roof, on the left side of the picture and next to the hill, there is a faint perfectly straight line....that is the ocean.  Most of the hill blocks our view, but it's there! So, yes, I can see the ocean from my apartment.

Today, Sunday, I plan to do those mundane things like cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking.  This upcoming week at work, I don't anticipate anything super fun.  It will probably be the typical sleep, eat, work, workout, repeat week.  I may have plans on Wednesday night to go down to SD with Eva, I'll keep you posted!

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

I hope Cincy is as sunny as here!

It's raining....

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days.  I'll catch you up.

On Saturday morning, I slept in.  I haven't done this in I don't know how long!  I could really only sleep in until about 9:30 or so.  I kind of lounged about for awhile and then headed to the Museum of Making Music.  It was really kind of cool.  They had rooms that spanned 20yrs of music starting in 1890 and ending in 1990.  Everything from bands in New Orleans to the original Blues to Swing to BeBop to Cool Jazz to Rock'n'Roll to Metal to Madonna. 

http://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/

OK, so I didn't take this picture.  I got it off the website.  The weather has been so crazy overcast and rainy, I feel ashamed to take pictures!  Everyone who has commented on the rain has said it is very strange weather for SD.  So for those of you who were going to be jealous of me living in sun 24/7, I'm just putting it out there that I haven't seen one sunny day since I've been out here!

I digress... After the museum, I went for  massage.  Oh boy, that felt great!  I haven't had a massage in a while and was WAY overdue for one.  I think I almost asked the therapist to marry me at some point! Ha! I'm sure he thought I was a nut anyway because I'm incredibly ticklish apparently...how annoying.  Trying to enjoy massage through tickles is difficult.

Then I took myself out to dinner and a movie.  I went to this so-so restaurant called Bellefleur.  I expected something wonderful, but got a non-cohesive dinner.  Oh well, live and learn.  Then I went to see the new movie RED.  It was awesome!  Love Bruce Willis!  But holy cow...movie tickets are $11.25 now.  What are they in cincy?


Sunday


Another lazy day of sleeping in and driving around to see the city.  I also did some shopping (I had coupons).  Then back to the hotel to prepare for the first day of work.  Pretty low key.

Monday

First day of work.  Orientation. Compliance training.  Need I say more? Lots and lots of paperwork.  I feel like I just completed all these trainings at Children's.  Too bad they don't actually count!  Worked out at the LA Fitness out here.  Was very disappointed.  They aren't as nice out here as in Cincy by any means.  Plus the nicest one from me is 25 minutes.  Looks like I'll be searching for a new gym.

Tuesday

Much better at work.  I have my game plan!  Now I'm pumped!  Other than work, I don't anticipate much over the next few days.  Friday, my stuff gets here! By Saturday I should be all settled, or at least mostly!

So that's all I really have.  Not very exciting.  Someone post updates for me!  How are you doing?

I promise more pictures are coming, but I'm too ashamed of the weather.  I'll have to wait a few more days to get some sun!

A Day of Art in LA

So today was a VERY full day.  I hope I remember it all.  Eva and I left for LA at about 8:15.  Got there at 11. 

Our first stop was an art gallery where her roommate had a piece of art on display.  But they didn't open the gallery until 12.  So, we had some time to kill.  As we parked, I noticed something funny about the meters....

It takes credit card.  Not even in NYC did I see this.  Pretty awesome!  Oh yeah, 1 hour was $3.  I guess they think that's ok because I'm charging it...  Visa...it really is EVERYWHERE you want to be (including a parking meter)!

So to kill time, we start walking around.  Around the corner from the gallery, there's this really cool market place.  It has a roof, but is otherwise open...like an old warehouse that cut off the front and back.  It was full of all sorts of food.  Produce, meats, peppers, dried goods, and all sorts of cooked foods.  Lots of Asian cuisine, but mostly fast food.  After our 3 hour drive (with traffic) we look for a restroom in this place.  We find one and it was "guarded" by this security person who says it's gonna cost a quarter to go in the bathroom.  I'm thinking 'this guy's funny and why would he only charge a quarter if a quarter doesn't go far (not even an hour for parking)'.  Oh no, but he wasn't kidding.  There was a coin taker on the door for quarters ONLY!  Can you believe it?  Only in America do you pay a quarter to pee!

 Bathroom shenanigans aside, we continue to walk around.  We stumble upon an ad for the LA Philharmonic orchestra with the conductor Gustavo Dudamel.  Eva says she's heard great things.  So we buy tickets for the evening's show at the box office.  (More to come on this.)

We head back to the gallery which is now open.  It's fairly small.  The exhibit is on the Mexican Revolution and has about 15 or so pieces ranging from sculpture to video art to sound/video art to canvas.  The most striking piece of art to me was a yellow dress in the middle of the room.  Each piece had a description by it.  This dress was made of Kevlar!  It was supposed to represent the typical dress a woman in the Mexican army would wear while fighting.  Yes they wore dresses in the army.  The Mexican revolution was around 1910 but Kevlar wasn't invented until 1965.  So very interesting twist on history meets art.

I'm sure it was a no no to take a picture...but I like to live on the wild side.  Who would believe me that I saw a yellow dress made of Kevlar?

So next, we have a quick bite at a sushi place.  We share the best spider roll I've ever had and a roll with Kobe beef on it.  Steak plus sushi...YUM!

So the next stop is Santa Monica.  There were a series of art galleries there in what looked like were OLD industrial buildings/warehouses converted into little galleries (probably around 60 or so).

We only visited a few.  The first was of this guy named Vik Muniz.  Some of his pieces are made of arranging junk.  Like the one below.

Ok, I know nudes..right all art is nude.  When you get close to look at the materials used to make this, you find that it is literally JUNK!  The artist had a warehouse of space and all this junk.  He just arranges it into forms and such and then takes a picture of it.  That's so cool!  Like the little dots on the people's legs are actually nails and screws and such.  There's a shopping cart in here somewhere.  As you get associated with the items in the picture, you get a concept of how big this must have been originally!

Ok, so one of the next galleries was JEWELRY.  Those who really know me know I LOVE jewelry! There was this stone called moonstone.  It caught my eye.  There was this beautiful necklace with moonstone on it, but it was running about $3000 with the little diamonds incorporated into it.  A LITTLE out of the price range!  But simply beautiful.  A girl can dream, right?

SuzanneFelsen.com
Gorgeous!

We went to a few other galleries.  Not too noteworthy.  Although, there was one other gallery that had 4 pieces of art in a series that I'm not sure I will soon forget.  They were a bit sexually explicit and made a HUGE statement.  They were vases with JESUS written huge across the top and all this catholic symbolism including priests in full robes giving sermons on them.  Then on the other side of the vase were images of sex scenes involving catholic priests relating to the whole catholic priests and little boys.  The author had a note that it was a neutral position on the subject, but was just using irony in an artform.  Very "interesting"!  Well, I guess it IS california.  It appears quite a bit goes!  Sorry, no pics of this art.

Next stop was an early dinner at "The Yard".  This is a restaurant opened by Bravo's Top Chef CJ Chris Jacobson.  It was a bar like atmosphere that had American style tappas.   Eva and I shared a duck confit and skirt steak.  Awesome!

Sorry my camera doesn't do well in dimly lit rooms, but this was the one-room Yard restaurant.

Next we head back to downtown LA to go see the LA Philharmonic Orchestra.  It took us 1.5 hours to go about 10 miles!  I've never seen so much traffic on a Friday night at 6:30!

We finally make it to the show just in time for the 8 o'clock start.  First, I don't think there was a bad seat in the house.  Not like the Aronoff where nose bleed seats are REALLY bad.  You can see just fine from the highest balcony.  We were on the side.

Awww, this pic did not turn out the way I wanted.  On the right there is this HUGE organ with the pipes surrounded by wood and going in all different directions.  Also, there is seating behind the orchestra to maximize good seating.  Actually, a good idea!  This was an interesting performance.  It was the most dissonant sounding set of music I have ever heard.  It only harmonized at the end of SOME of the movements and the finale.  The Symphony was called Turangalila.  It featured an instrument I have never heard of ...the "ondes martenot".  So here's a video on youtube that displays some of the sounds:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDrypZfUM7c&feature=related.  The director, Gustavo, had this crazy curly black hair that would move all over the place as he was directing.  He was VERY enthusiastic!  I have another youtube video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3nI6iXEjNs&feature=related.  It shows him in a rehearsal but his hair flops all over the place and he moves like he has ants in his pants or something.  He must be very fun to work with.  His reviews are awesome.  I just wanted you to get a feel for this enthusiasm that Eva and I experienced at the show.

That was my day in LA.  I'm hoping to have more LA trips that include other things like shopping and a visit to Hollywood.

On the way home, which took 2 hours, I noticed a few distinct differences between Cincy and LA/SD:  first for all 2hours of driving, there were 4-5 lanes on the highway for the whole way with a carpool lane the entire way, sometimes 2 in some places!  Can you imagine driving with traffic for 2 hours...Cincy to Columbus?  Strange.  Got home at about 11:30pm...a full day!

I hope you enjoy the post.  Leave a comment or 2!

First Day in SD

Had a good flight.  I sat in between 2 girls around my age who had great things to say about 1. moving away and 2. moving to SD.  I had a "what-am-I-doing" moment as we landed...not gonna lie!  But it passed...got the rental car (it's a mazda6 for those who enjoy cars with me)....got to the hotel at about 11pm local time (2am Cincy time--whew!) and unpacked.  Got up at 7 this morning had a little work out then got ready and headed to the ocean just to stare at it!  I took a picture along the way to show you what the scenery is like around here.

 I hope to have more of those.  The views are really cool.  North SD county is hilly and the way things are landscaped shows off the hills.  There are houses everywhere.  There are hills in the background as you head east inland and they all look kind of hazy like in the picture above.  It's kinda cool.

It was sunny inland, but as I got to the coast in still kind of overcast.  Normally, the fog and such burns off by noon and is replaced by sunlight.  But they've had some cloudy days lately.  It's still bright enough to wear the shades but doesn't fit the sunny Cali stereotypical day.  Pulled up along Carlsbad Blvd which is oceanside and got out of the car and shot these 3 photos.

View to the left:

 View to the middle:

View to the right:

The breeze was chilly....I think the temp was about 67 this morning but the ocean breeze was a cool 55 or so.  The breeze feels like your standing in front of a box fan on high.  And the waves are about as loud as being close to the box fan on high.  So what I'm getting at is that if you put your face in front of a box fan on high...it'll feel like SD! ...or not....The waves are awesome!  They were quite loud as they hit the beach.  You'd have to practically yell to the person next to you if you're trying to carry on a conversation!

Met the roomies.  They seem cool.  The apartment is on the 3rd floor.  The bad: the apartment is on the third floor (did I mention no elevators?) the good: the view is sweet from the patio. I'll be sure to post those when I get some nice shots!  Other than that running errands and cooking.  Yes, I'm cooking in the hotel room.  Oh, I guess I should take some pics of this room...it's pretty sweet!  Maybe I could live here...hmmm.

It may not be sunny...but I'm in Cali, baby!

Going to LA tomorrow with Eva.  Hope to have some fun stuff to share!