March 2012

Msot of March was pretty boring.  But the last 2 days of March were pretty dang exciting.  I took a trip to California to audition for "The Voice"

I had been waning to audition for American Idol a while, but I just never got the chance.  Then "The Voice" started and I had a great opportunity to try out in Los Angeles.  It couldn't have worked out more perfectly.  My friend, Ry'lee, from work went with me.  She had been a nanny in LA a few years ago and the family she worked for were incredible enough to let us stay at their house.  They were on a family vacation to Costa Rica, so we had their amazing house all to ourselves.  They live in the Brentwood area of LA, in the same neighborhood as Jim Carrey, Conan O'Brian, Alannis Morisette (their next-door neighbor) and Ben Affleck! swoon!  It was so nice to not have to pay for a hotel and feel safe in a nice area of the city.  

We had such a fun time just hanging out in LA for a day.  We went to some shops in Santa Monica and went to the beach for a few minutes.  It wasn't very warm, so we didn't swim or anything.

  Ry'lee and some of her friends got me to eat Thai food.  It was actually pretty good, especially the desert:  Sticky rice with mango.  Here's a recipe...I'm definitely going to have to make this one day.

The next day was audition day.  They had us come in 2 groups, one at 9 am and one at 2 pm, so that everyone wasn't showing up at the same time.  I was in the 2 pm group, so we took our time getting ready and went to Glendale and ate at Cheesecake Factory for lunch.  The auditions were at the Los Angeles Convention Center, right in downtown.  The venue is right next to the Staples Center and there was a Lakers game going on at the same time, so there were A LOT of people in downtown LA that day.  

Waiting in line

Here's how my audition process went:  we got in line at the convention center.  We weren't sure how long it was so Ry'lee walked to the front of the line.  Literally, 20 minutes later, she came back.  It took her 10 minutes to walk to the front and 10 to walk back.  The line went all the way around the building and then inside.  The line did move pretty quick though, we were in line for about 3 hours, and considering how long the line was and how many people were there, that was pretty good.  Ry'lee was nice enough to wait with me the whole time, but when I got the doors, she wasn't allowed to come in.  After I got inside, it was about another 30 minute wait.  They checked our registration papers then brought us into a room.  They explained a few of the rules and then they took us in groups of about 50 into another room.  Then they took us in groups of 10 into the hallway where we waited for a judging room to be available.  There were about 6 rooms, each with 1 judge and we went in in our groups of 10 and sat in some chairs facing eachother.  That made it a little awkward.  The judge called us up 1 at a time to sing a few bars, then sit down.  I sang "Wild One" by Faith Hill and I felt really good about my performance.  There were a lot of great singers in my group.  There wasn't one that was bad.  After everyone had sang, the judge said something along the lines of, "Thank you all for auditioning.  You were all great, but unfortunately we won't be taking any of you to the next round."  I honestly was not expecting to move on, so I wasn't that disappointed.  I was just more afraid of everyone else's expectations.  The hardest part was coming back and telling people that I didn't make it.  And even though I didn't, I'm so glad I got to have that experience and to be able to say that I tried.

 After the auditions we got back to the car and tried to type in the address of the house in the GPS, a.k.a "Jack", but he was feeling sick and didn't want to work, so we had to try and find our way out of town by ourselves.  In the process of driving around LA, we stumbled across the Kid's Choice Awards at USC.  There were a bunch of kids standing on the sidewalk and as we drove by.  We got stopped by a cop for a minute so that a car could pass us and while we were stopped, all of a sudden all the kids started screaming and freaking out!  We couldn't figure out what was going on, so I started looking around and about 30 feet away from my car was 

Taylor Swift! 

 I wanted to roll down the window and wave, but the cop made us keep moving.  So we parked the car and went back over there and stood with all the 10 year olds. haha.  We saw Jesse McCartney and a few people from Nickelodeon shows.... none of which I knew.  Ry'lee camera died at that point, so we started to leave, but then Will Smith came out, so we went back.  We didn't get a picture of him, but I promise I saw him!

It was a pretty cool experience.  After we left there, we went back to Brentwood and it was pretty late, so we decided to go take pictures in front of all the celebrities houses in the neighborhood.  I kinda felt like a stalker.  

Ben Affleck's house

The next morning we went to Hollywood for a little while.  I always imagined Hollywood as this glamorous area of LA, but it was actually pretty sketchy.  I got to see the Hollywood sign and find some of my favorite people's stars, then we headed back.  It was such a fun trip and I got to have a lot of great experiences!