Quick Film Grade: Jurassic World (A-)

I signed up with Atom Tickets to buy my ticket to Jurassic World this weekend. It's a great new app for film lovers to purchase their film ticket in advance and buy their concession treats as well. Just use the barcode via the Atom Tickets app on your phone when you go to the theater. First time users get $5 off their first ticket!

#JURASSICWORLD had that one scene that made me fight like mad to hold back tears. Kept thinking, it's a CGI dinosaur, don't cry! The Jurassic franchise came full circle with an excellent action packed emotional film that shows that dinosaurs are more human than humans. Grade: A- pic.twitter.com/cr3Uslhg8L

— Simone Cromer 🌊 (@TheatreofZen) June 25, 2018

Quick Film Grade: American Animals A

#AmericanAnimals was a fantastically tense, and funny heist thriller starring breakout Irish actor @BarryKeoghan and #EvanPeters as college students with ambitions of easy money on a crazy poorly planned robbery. Great merging of present/past to explain the insane saga. Grade: A pic.twitter.com/ugI9pXWvVe

— Simone Cromer 🌊 (@TheatreofZen) June 17, 2018

Quick Film Grade: Hereditary A-

@HereditaryMovie is a shockingly disturbing horror film that may go down in horror history in the Top 10. Gruesome imagery & death + witchcraft/supernatural elements, are the perfect ingredients necessary to completely turn upside down, an already dysfunctional family. Grade: A- pic.twitter.com/DkDLzgDa4M

— Simone Cromer 🌊 (@TheatreofZen) June 10, 2018

Blue Apron Meals at Home

I'm not one to follow many celebrities on Twitter, but I follow a few cool ones, and one of them is Chrissy Teigen. I find her to be funny, smart, and politically savvy. I bumped into her at the Avalon Hotel during the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January 2016, she's very pretty and sweet in real life. So today I was just reading my Twitter feed and I noticed that a Blue Apron subscriber tagged Chrissy in a post because she made a meal that Chrissy created as a recipe for Blue Apron as part of a six week meal preparation celebrity promotion. I loved the simple prep look, and the high delicious/nutritional value of the shrimp and broccoli meal so much that I immediately signed up for Blue Apron on a three week discount promotion. I subscribed to the 2 meals a week for 2 (they don't have a meal plan for us single folk so I can turn the two meal portions into two separate meals for me - making that four meals a week).

The timing of subscribing to Blue Apron comes when I'm already spending $30-40 a week on microwave meals and fruit and nuts, OK, and some cakes/cookies and salty crap, on top of the money I spend to go out and eat lunch maybe 2-3 times a week. My salt intake is much higher than normal and I'm noticing a difference in how it's affecting my health and that's not cool. When you sign up for Blue Apron, you get to select if you want vegetarian meals, fish/poultry, or red meat/pork. I don't eat the latter, so it's very convenient to order the type of meals tailored to your dietary preferences. My first box arrives on June 16th and every Saturday after that. I'll see how it goes, I may even add in a recommended bottle of wine to complement a meal. I need to train my palate to tolerate wine, especially red wine as I plan my trip to Italy next year.

By the way, after I treated a thanks to Chrissy for bringing Blue Apron to my attention, she liked my tweet! Huzzah! It's the little things.

I'm Going to Coachella 2019!

As an update regarding my recent visit to London, I had the most fun, it was such an awesome trip 'home' to London. I hung out with friends, did some carefree shopping, saw a great play, and, really enjoyed myself at the historical event of attending the royal wedding of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex! I was especially pleased with my flight with Virgin Atlantic and I can't wait to fly with them again. Due to my being so busy in London, the jet lag took a few more days longer than usual for me to recover as I had to go back to work the day after I came back home.

I don't have any other major plans for the rest of the year, so this will give me time to save up for Italy next year, and today, I was one of the lucky ones to buy a Weekend One pass for Coachella 2019! I can't believe I'm going! Just this past Wednesday, I read a tweet from @Coachella announcing that the 2019 pre-sale would start at 11am PST on Friday, June 1st. I have always enjoyed reading about the events and adventures of the Coachella shows and especially while I was living in Michigan, it was a dream that once I got settled in SoCal, to try to go to Coachella, if at least on a day pass. And with the 2019 Coachella being it's 20th anniversary, I think it's going to be an extra special music festival.

I had the past two days to plan my Coachella experience. I immediately knew I wanted to go to Weekend 1, which is April 12-14, so I booked a hotel in Palm Springs for those days. Hotels very close to the shuttle lot were already booked, so I was lucky to get a hotel just an 8 minute walk down the road from the drop off lot. The VIP pass was just too steep at $999 for a first timer like me, even with the 7 month payment plan, I just couldn't justify paying that money. So I opted for the General Admission pass with the shuttle at $499. I also wanted a poster which was $15, and I went back and forth in deciding if I wanted to splurge on Saturday night of the weekend to attend the Outstanding in the Field desert dining experience at $255. It's basically a gourmet 4 course meal served in the VIP Rose Garden (which I'll have access to all day Saturday). I figured, why the hell not? So my plan was to purchase these for my first Coachella experience.

Thank God my work load on Friday was medium and my immediate supervisor was out of the office. I anticipated that it would be crazy getting tickets, but I did not think that I would wait in the queue for 1 hour 57 minutes and 28 seconds to buy my package. To my amazement, once it was my turn, it was a breeze to make my selection and I checked out in less than 3 minutes! I was so thrilled, I tweeted about it immediately and I had to go take a walk to calm down and release the anxiety of the process. It appears that Weekend One sold out just minutes after I placed my order because people were tweeting just seconds after me that they waited for 2 hours only to have Weekend 1 be sold out, and they were livid. Whew! I'm glad that whatever karma I had stored up, it covered me today. As I write this update, tickets for Weekend 2 are still available. Update: Weekend 2 is now sold out.

I have said this before, but there was many a time while living in Michigan where I was simply not able to enjoy the most basic form of entertainment, besides going to see a matinee on a Sunday morning. So to be living in Southern California, the epicenter of the entertainment world, I'll be damned if I deny myself the pleasure of at least experiencing a festival event of this scale. I'm making up for lost time and I don't feel guilty at all! I deserve this.

Lastly, this evening, I pulled the plug on a message board forum that I created in early 2017 in support of Meghan Markle as she transitioned from little known actress to HRH Duchess of Sussex. It has been a thrill following her through all that time, but the community was stale and was losing interest, and I did not make friends there. So I closed it down today and I have taken a pledge to not create another fan community forum again. I will happily just be a member of an established community and give my POV when I feel like it.