santa cruz arguments

A few years ago, Josh went to Santa Cruz during a Pacific Coast road trip and spent the night there. A week ago, he and I drove down to visit it, and he repeated to me multiple times that from what he'd experienced a few years ago, Santa Cruz is the most ghetto city ever. Sure, there are some ghetto parts of Santa Cruz, but these statements made me so frustrated and mad, because I knew that in general it isn't a ghetto place, and there are really cool things and nice areas in Santa Cruz.

A sort-of fight ensued, where I got defensive of a city in which I'd never actually lived or spent a whole lot of time—the only claim I had to it was that I had family living near it. But I just had to convince Josh of the error of his opinion. So we walked downtown along Pacific Avenue, window-shopped and ate lunch. We visited my aunt where she worked in a research lab, we drove along West Cliff Road, passing huge, ocean-side houses and people on beach cruisers, we walked down near the water, and we ate ice cream at Marianne's. On the way out of town Josh said, "I guess Santa Cruz really isn't a ghetto place after all."

depth of speed ft. mark arcenal of fatlace

Here is Josh's latest short documentary—this time filmed just outside San Francisco. It features Mark Arcenal, owner of Fatlace, which has the sub-brands of Illest, Hellaflush, Ladylike, and Slammed Society. Josh and I weren't sure what to expect when driving up to the Fatlace headquarters dubbed "The Paddock", but Mark was really awesome and so was everyone else working there.

When Josh was editing, I heard the line, "The funny thing about Fatlace is..." so many times that we started singing a remix of it: "The funny thing—the funny thing—the funny thing about Fatlace," and so on. OK, now that just sounds weird, but I promise it was a good time.

san francisco neighborhood lingo

I was so excited for Josh and I to meet up with Ashlee and Amy one of the nights we were there. They picked a delicious and deliciously-hip place in the San Francisco Marina neighborhood (did I say that lingo correctly?) for dinner. Amy recommended the tacos with carnitas, and I now pass that high recommendation on to the blog world. Afterward, we stopped at SusieCakes, because I needed to try it. Carrot cake = worth it. I got a large slice under the assumption that I would share it with Josh, but I can't lie—I ate 89% of it.

After Ashlee and Amy gave us a tour of their cute Cole Valley apartment with some cool bedroom doors, lots of counter space, and even a shared backyard, I decided that I could, in fact, live in San Francisco some day. We then went to Twin Peaks for some pretty views. The views were quite pretty, but it was too windy and cold to stay longer than three minutes, so we hightailed it down the hill.

monterey bay aquarium

I couldn't believe I hadn't been back to this place since I was three years old. It was amazing. When Josh and I entered the jellyfish section I had to stand in front of each pane of glass for five minutes with my mouth open (not unlike the first time I heard NPR's The Splendid Table).

I'll bet that my three-year-old self loved the sea otters like my 26-year-old self loved the jellyfish.

mexican food times five

We got back to Salt Lake tonight, and now Josh is editing away to get his video, which was filmed in San Francisco (actually, San Mateo) last weekend, ready to post on Hypebeast tomorrow. I think it's going to be a late night (for him). I, on the other hand, watched SYTYCD, went through some photos from our trip, blogged, and realized that I didn't send out a Relief Society email on Monday like I was supposed to.

Josh and I stopped in Cedar City for a 3:30 p.m. lunch at La Casa Don Miguel, which was delicious. When driving away with our stomachs full of delicious Mexican food, we started counting how many times we'd eaten Mexican food during the trip.

In order of occurrence from Thursday to Wednesday: (1) Dinner in a little town in Nevada. I know not the name of the town or the restaurant except that it was before we passed Battle Mountain (tamales = subpar, burrito = excellent); (2) Tacolicious in San Francisco with Ashlee and Amy, who I will link even though her blog is in hibernation; (3) breakfast at La Azteca in Redwood City. I out-ordered Josh for once with my delicious breakfast burrito; (4) lunch on the way to LA at Snapper Jack's Taco Shack in Ventura, after I forced Josh to drive to the house my family inhabited until I was eight, my childhood best friend's house, and my elementary school. My house is now brown instead of blue, it no longer has geraniums or a covered porch, but my school was exactly as I remembered it; and (5) La Casa Don Miguel on the way home in Cedar City, UT. This place had the best refried beans I've tasted in a looong time.

I am obsessed, I guess.

You thought I meant obsessed with Mexican food? Yeah, that too.

san francisco bay area road trip

I'm a tad upset that it was windy for this photo; San Francisco and bangs don't mix well.

Josh and I drove to San Francisco for the weekend to do some filming and funning around. We stayed up in the Santa Cruz Mountains at my aunt and uncle's house, and I fell in love with the evergreens, misty mornings, and winding roads. This morning, we drove down to Los Angeles for an unexpected trip extension, and we're heading home to Salt Lake City tomorrow. It's been a lot of driving, but it's also been a lot of fun. More details and photos to come, I'm sure. 

should i text him? how to play things right.

I may be married now, but previous to my espousal I had my fair share of playing the game, of texting a guy and then cringing, because I wished I could take it back, of over-texting a guy, of over-analyzing, and of assuming too much or too little.

I started working on this a while ago, because I thought it would be fun to make a flowchart, and it was.

(click on the image to enlarge)

Also posted to my website

bmw 2002

I like this quote I heard in church yesterday, and I like this boy too. 

Josh owns a BMW 2002, but it needed (still needs) a paint job, so he borrowed the one above for our engagement photos by Yan Photography. Last week he filmed the car and the car's owner, Sky Lund, in another short documentary in his Depth of Speed series that posted on Hypebeast TV. The shot at 3:31 is stunning.

Check it out. 

4th

eating Salt City Burger and watching Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest

picnic with friends

JDM Legends Restored

So far, this is my favorite episode of Josh's Depth of Speed series on Hypebeast. During Josh's editing process of the films in this series, I often hear music and lines from them over and over from across the room, so often that I can quote them, but I don't usually see the episodes in their entirety until Hypebeast posts them each Thursday. Josh gave me an early screening on this one though, and I was captivated. I love the shot of the helicopter flying in the background and the way he filmed projected transparencies onto the side of the car and the open hood.

HBTV / Depth of Speed: JDM Legends Restored from HBTV on Vimeo.

See it posted on hypebeast.com.

Josh has previously filmed a video featuring JDM Legends, which he first posted online about six months ago. Check it out here. There are six more to go in this summer series, and I can't wait to see the rest!

designers.mx

If you want to listen to (in Becca's opinion) a good music mix, you should click on this link to hear a playlist created by William Hay. These songs are all I've listened to yesterday and today.

I've been loving the Designers.MX site lately, which features playlists that graphic designers compile and for which they create unique cover designs. It's pretty cool to see what music inspires other designers, especially when it's music that I like too. I'd like to design and compile a mix for this website.

These are some of my favorite cover designs (not necessarily playlists) I've seen so far:

You can find the playlists that go along with these covers here, here, here, and here.

bad wife marks

I spent most of the weekend at Bear Lake with my family and my brother-in-law's family. We went on a fabulous mountain biking trail, in the middle of which ran a mini-creek a lot of the way due to the spring runoff. All of us had wet shoes and feet from having to ride across the creek several times. We turned it into a contest of who could ride their bike the entire way across the creek without getting stuck (I didn't ever win). By the end, our backs and legs were covered in mud splatters. I loved it anyway, and one of those reasons was because it was much more fun than mountain biking on slickrock.

The trail was so awesome, in fact, that Josh and my brother-in-law decided to go again. I drove to the market about an hour after we'd dropped them off at the top, and I saw Josh and Jake on the road. They were smiling at me and almost back to our place, so I just waved and didn't stop. As I passed them I noticed that Josh had a hold of Jake's Camelbak and seemed to be pulling him. Later, I found out that halfway down the mountain Jake's derailer broke and somehow got caught in his wheel. Josh had to break Jake's chain with a rock so they could free the derailer. Jake was able to ride on the remaining downhill sections, but on any flat parts Josh had to pull Jake and his chainless bike along.

Result: Becca gives herself bad wife marks for not retrieving her husband in distress.

Other highlights (and lowlights, actually—but not in a negative way, in an I-want-to-remember-this way.):
• Buying raspberry shakes from Le Beau's Too. I planned on eating four over the weekend but unfortunately only ate one.
• Josh accruing an approximated 85 mosquito bites from mountain biking. I told him they must like him a lot more now because of his cute haircut.
• Driving the circumference of the lake before church with Josh. We decided that lakes in Utah are not very pretty, because they don't have the appropriate amount of trees along the waterline.
• Screaming and not being able to breathe from the cold when I jumped off the boat to put on the wakeboard. Regardless of what everyone on the boat thought, I wasn't even trying to be dramatic.
• Wearing my little brother's wetsuit the second time I went out wakeboarding which made me much more peaceful in the coma-inducing cold water. No screaming was involved.
• Josh managing to avoid getting on the boat the whole weekend.
• Playing volleyball, which was fun until I re-broke my thumb from my intramural flag football days (jammed or sprained might be more appropriate words here).
• Watching lots of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and making a cringe-face to Josh each time they said mentioned details of a sexual assault that I knew my mom, in the kitchen behind us, wouldn't like to hear. I knew she wanted to say, "What are you watching?! Change the channel," like she did when I was 17 and lived with her.