Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Let’s Play Catch-up

First and foremost, Happy Belated Birthday to jillapalooza.com!! It turned 3 on Feb. 28.

Second, for those of you wondering, yes I have seen New Moon. I know I didn’t go all crazy blogging about it this time around. Let me give you a summary:

Twilight8 & New Moon1: TwiSarah had a fantastic New Moon party on Nov. 19. There were 8 of us in attendance (including Katie, Marissa and Team Dog (btw, I listed them in alphabetical order because I’m anal, not because I like Katie the best or because I’m hating on Emily (a.k.a. Team Dog))). We watched the 9:00 pm showing of Twilight, followed by the 12:01 am showing of New Moon. It was totes awesome.

New Moon2: Emily and I spent the night at Sarah’s because we were up fangirling all night. What better way to spend a Friday off of work than watching New Moon again at 12:45 in the afternoon? I can’t think of anything. If you can, you’re wrong.

New Moon3: On Saturday Nov. 21 I made the traditional trip to Cloud to see New Moon at 9:00 pm with Blog Reader Kristen and Curtis. Oh, and Susan. We had to fill her in on the Twilight though because she hadn’t seen it. We ate at Red Lobster for dinner beforehand. It was yummy. Did you know if you go to redlobster.com you hear delicious sizzling noises?

New Moon4: On Tuesday Nov. 24 TwiSarah and I needed another fix, so we went to the 8:30 pm showing.

New Moon5: After filling up our bellies with Turkey on Thanksgiving, I saw NM again with my cousin Trish and her daughter Ashley.

New Moon6: On Saturday Dec. 5 I brought Sarah Taylor to the movie for her birthday. Carlos, who was in town for work, came with us as well.

New Moon7: Sometime in February TwiSarah, Team Dog and I watched NM again. It had been 2 months. Too long. Way too long.

New Moon8: After months of planning to go to the movie with my sister Lani, we finally got around to it on Feb. 18.

New Moon9: On Feb. 28 (and I blame me missing my site’s 3 year anniversary on this) I saw NM for the final time in theaters with my good buddy Laura. I guess I shouldn’t say the final time. Even though the DVD comes out in 9 days, it’s still playing at the discount theater, so…

I saw New Moon more than Twilight, which I said I would. Mission accomplished.

TwiSarah and I considered being Eclipse virgins, but I think we decided on just the tip (see post at Twitarded). We haven’t watched the 10 second teaser or the 90 second trailer that came out this week. We are holding out until tomorrow to see the trailer on the big screen before Remember Me. For the record, I’ve only seen the first trailer for RM a couple of times and viewed a couple of stills. I have absolutely no idea what the movie is about and I’ve been very careful to avoid the spoiler for the “twist” ending, which is quite difficult because it’s all over teh interwebs. I even fast forwarded through the RM clips on all the talk shows RPattz appeared on. *Pats self on back*

Although I admit I did consider looking at the spoilers because some of the scenes might kill me dead (see below) and then I’ll never know how it ends.

Twilight7

On February 13th I saw Twilight in theaters for the 7th time. By no choice of my own, mind you. I was practically forced by four of my friends: Sarah and Kristy who had just read the book, Michelle who was in the process of reading and Tara who was reading Breaking Dawn. For the record, it is just as good the 7th time around and Robert Pattinson is just as swoon worthy.

Fortunately the movie was only $3 this time since it had moved to the discount theater. Woo-hoo!! Of course the popcorn is just as expensive. Bastards. The five of us enjoyed the movie and then went to dinner afterward. We wanted to go to Champps but they were charging a cover (WTF?) so we opted for Houlihan’s instead. I enjoyed some delicious meatloaf. It was nice to have some fresh minds to discuss the book and movie with. In retrospect I should have driven with Tara alone so we could have discussed the other books. Instead we had to bite our tongues and be hush hush as not to ruin it for the slackers others who hadn’t read the series. But they will, just like Renee will eventually read Twilight. :o

Twilight comes out on DVD in three weeks and I’ve preordered the Border’s special edition copy. Nice.
twilightexclusive
Read More →

My journey into Twilight

Alternate titles:
• Jilly loves the vamps
• Longest blog post ever
• My four favorite books of all time

Nope, I was not immune to the Twilight phenomenon. Here is my story.

It all started back in August. I was listing to one of my favorite podcasts, Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. This was the advertisement at the end of the podcast (no I didn’t type it, I copied it from the transcript):

Before you go, Twilight was the caller and coincidentally Twilight is also the book I’m reading this week. Are you surprised? It’s not Pride and Prejudice, but I believe it’s important to stay current with pop culture and the four books in the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer are some of the hottest things on the market right now. They know I’m Grammar Girl at the local bookstore here in Reno and they actually gave me a little grief for buying this book, so maybe the best thing about it being one the free options you can get when you sign up at Audible is that you can buy it online–privately! Audible has over 40,000 audiobooks and they have all four audiobooks in the saga from the first, Twilight, to the most recent, Breaking Dawn; so whether you’re just jumping onto the Stephanie Meyer bandwagon or you’re a devoted fan, they’ve got the right book for you. Visit audiblepodcast.com/gg to sign up for an account and get your free audiobook today. That’s audiblepodcast.com/gg.

Conveniently I subscribe to Audible.com and at the time had an abundance of credits that I wasn’t sure what to use on. Hmmm… Grammar Girl got teased, buy online privately, sounded like a guilty pleasure to me, and I’m all about guilty pleasures. I forgot I bought Twilight pretty much immediately after the download process was complete and went about the remainder of my summer in a non-audiobook/book sort of fashion.

Read More →

Grand Cayman – Sat 12/6 – Mon 12/8

On Saturday I dove with Nick and Curtis and headed straight to the beach afterward. After laying out a bit I listened to either New Moon or Eclipse on audiobook and took a long walk down the beach. A very long walk. We went to dinner at Lone Star. Kristen and I started toward Antica Gelateria for dessert, but the boys went back because they didn’t want to walk all the way there. We started our journey but decided our time would be better spent watching Twilight at the Marquee Cinema. Big mistake. Here’s an excerpt from my future Journey into Twilight post: (only on jillapalooza do you get to read posts from the future)

Kristen and I headed to the one cinema on Grand Cayman. It was Saturday night, and apparently the only thing for underage kids to do on the island is see a movie. The theater was about a quarter full when the movie started and then the people started pouring in. Talking loud and being otherwise obnoxious. There was literally a constant murmur throughout the movie, it was the most irritatingly horrible movie experience I’ve ever had. I would rather have people who talk at the screen because at least they would be paying attention. There were also a ton of videos before the movie, circa 1982, about being quiet, throwing away garbage, etc. I kid not, we probably saw at least six and they were so loud it was painful. But apparently none of the kids got the memo because they were all ten minutes late anyway. If I hadn’t already seen it three times I would have been even more irritated at the parts I missed. And if Robert Pattinson didn’t make such a dreamy Edward, I don’t think Kristen and I could have sat through the entire thing. Worst. Movie. Experience. Ever.

After the movie we took a long walk home, in awe of what we had just experienced. To add to the surreal experience, there were cop cars everywhere. It looked as though they were busting some bar as people were flowing out disappointed that the party was over.

On Sunday I slept in until 10. There would be no diving what with the flight home right around the corner. I lubed up for the last day on the beach. Nick decided to go to Eats for lunch but was denied. He ended up going somewhere else and bringing food back for us all. Ahh, lunch on the beach. After I felt thoroughly toasted by sun I went for my final long beach walk. I’m pretty sure by this time I was listening to Eclipse. The history of Jasper chapter to be precise.

For dinner we ate at Calypso Grill. It was delicious. No gelato afterward. :(

And on Monday we went home. :(

Grand Cayman – Fri 12/5

I woke up in the morning and didn’t feel like diving. Besides, Kristen and Cindy were going to head to Georgetown for some shopping and I didn’t want to miss out on the festivities.

We decided to take the bus. Sounds fancy, and you’re probably picturing a bus, but it was more like a minivan that operated taxi style, cramming as many people in as possible. Very interesting. Cheap though, only C/$2.

Fortunately there were no cruise ships scheduled to come in, so we didn’t have to deal with any unnecessary crowds. The shopping was lackluster. The only places to shop at were crappy souvenir shops and high end jewelry stores (which apparently are filled to the brim on busy ship days). There was only one store that I really found tolerable. They had many girly type GC shirts (I was tiring of the abundance of cheap manly tees everywhere) and even some italian charms. I picked one with their flag to keep with my current bracelet theme and got a cute shirt as well. I have to say I was really surprised at the lack of interesting souvenirs on the island. Not only that, but there were never any little handmade jewelry stores or street vendors anywhere. Only prepackaged stuff that was probably made in China.

We exhausted our shopping efforts and were back at the condo by 11:30. The boys were already home from diving. To my disappointment, I found out they did a wreck dive. Damn it. I wanted to do a wreck dive. Not only that, but they were the only ones on the boat (aka no dumbheads) and it dropped them off at the beach in front of the condo after the dive. No fair.

We hung out at the beach for the rest of the day. I decided to take a long beach walk since it had been a week and I hadn’t done that yet. I brought my iPod along for company to read a book, either New Moon or Eclipse at the time.

For dinner we decided to eat at Edoardo’s. It is spelled funny, but there was no messing around with the tasty Italian food there. Or the wine rack that we sat in front of. I don’t remember if we ate dessert there or at Antica Gelateria, but wherever we went I’m sure it was delicious.

Home     About     Contact     Disclaimer