Home Sweet This Place
Long Beach. I’m moving back to Long Beach. I haven’t lived there since I was 20, and I was brokey broke all the time, emo, and working and going to school, and terrible at managing my resources. I never got to enjoy Long Beach, and it’s such a quaint, artsy little city. No not little; big. And long. It’s also improved in the past 15 years. I’m looking at studio apartments near Christyne. I prefer a studio over a one bedroom, because I like the idea of having my bedroom in my living room, and I’m not planning on designing my apartment around company. It’ll just be designed around me, and cooking. I will also have the pleasure of being able to blast in on Christyne any old time I please. If she’s walking distance, then I’ll probably show up whenever I have a full cup of coffee, or whenever she has a pot brewing. That be after I get past my ear problems. She, on the other hand, is a full-on Virgo, and has a large two bedroom apartment. I think she’d gladly spread out into a four-bedroom apartment if she could. She has each room meticulously painted and decorated exactly to her liking, and thinks the place is a mess. Granted she’s not done unpacking, her place still screams Virgo Interior Designer. Her kitchen will occasionally scream CORRINA after I’ve been living there a while.
Also? There’s kayaking down there. Her neighborhood is right next to the beach and it’s a great area for rollerblading, kayaking, and some other water sports but I can’t remember which ones. It’s great for shopping, and has a nice proximity to work and the family in OC.
My kitchen is going to have copper everywhere.
Photoshop
My friend Tim found a Photoshop action called “Urban Acid” -I don’t know where but I’m sure you can Google it. It’s full of options as it’s applying itself, and I’ve been playing with it like crazy. Here is a pic from my last tea party with Janae and Christyne, where I kept knocking out Christyne’s painting in the background and pasting the girls in:
This one of Janae is from an action by Charles DeGuzman called “airbrushed sepia”:
And the previous pic of Christyne with a different version of airbrushed sepia, that makes me miss having red hair:
Omigaud
It’s sometimes said that forty is the new thirty, and now more than ever I am hoping that is true, because by the time I turn forty, I will have spent two decades being in my twenties. I rolled into this with my personal goals kept very simple: Don’t run out of toilet paper, stop forgetting to shave, that’s what the shower is for. As I rolled into my thirties, my personal goals stayed just as simple: don’t fall apart crying when my car breaks down, take better care of my hair, maybe they’re not kidding about skin cancer, listen to the other side of the conversation… The bigger goals, like school and finances have been approached with extreme patience with myself, because I had no other choice; it was either that or be mad at myself all the time.
It occurred to me today though that I will be turning 36 soon, and maybe it might be time to, I don’t know, stop talking like a teenager? Something to that effect. Maybe that could be the goal this year. Because what if I am still talking like Brenda from Beverly Hills 90210 when I’m 50? It’s not as easy as it sounds, either, because that’s usually how I talk in my own head. Occasionally I will ease off on sounding, like, affected, and my friends will keep saying, “What?” “What did you just say?” and then I’ll say it like I normally would, and then they’ll understand me. Have you ever noticed that about friends? I mean, it’s how they bond. It’s the special way of talking reserved just for each other. Whatever age I met my friends, I sometimes talk at that age level when I’m with them. I’m not kidding, I should write a transcript in here sometime. Some gems you could look forward to:
“Omigaud so this guy, I was talking to him, and I was all, WTF dude, you are so stupid”.
“Ummmmmm, like, d’you know whatImean?”
“NOwayyyy!”
Would talking like an adult be the biggest obstacle I’ve ever overcome? Would I simply replace “like” with the single word “sortof” like they do in the film industry? Or would I go back to “Ummmm”? Have you ever counted how many times a woman my age can say “Like” in one conversation? And some, no, many women my age and younger than me never got into the bad habit of talking like a valley girl in the first place.
I’m going to my dear friend Christyne’s house, and we are going to have cocktail night at her house, just the two of us, so I doubt tonight’s the night my brain will grow up. But then again, there’s still time. isn’t there?
Griffith Observatory
A few days before Christmas, my parents came into L.A. and met up with me, my niece, my sister and her boyfriend at the Griffith Observatory.
Even though I’ve been living up here for a couple of years now, this was my first trip up there and the view was incredible. I SO want to go up there at sunset. There was a straight shot view of Western Ave as it goes all the way to the south side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. I tried putting one side of my polarized sunglasses in front of the camera to get a better shot, and all it did was take out some of the detail and saturate the photo in yellow. So while I’m still going to say it was a genius idea in theory, I can’t recommend it in actual use.
It was a beautiful day up there.
We also watched Laser Loggins inside of the observatory. It wasn’t really Laser Loggins since there was no laser show and no Loggins either, but there was a nice show about the history of astronomy with an almost perfect rendition of the night sky on huge spherical ceiling.
From there we went to the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax. It’s been there since 1934!! They have a store in there that’s devoted entirely to hot sauce. I finally got to choose from hundreds of scorching hot hot sauces, instead of just the handful of scorching hot, ulcer inducing hot sauces you find at the grocery store.
It was the crepes, however, that made me put that on my list of places to go back to. It’s also walking distance from the L.A. County Art Museum. I’m really glad they took me there because I would have continued to drive by it and think that it was just another Farmer’s Market.
Holiday surveillance
And this is Asia and her former roommate, Missy, doing their gift exchange and being spied on by a girl with a zoom lens.
Asia made a blanket for her boyfriend, Brandon, who drums in a heavy metal band. I think this is my favorite quilt, ever.
And of course, there was the Christmas game of Jenga. This is usually played by Ian, Chad and Samantha, but Asia and I took up the slack this year. It starts to not feel like Christmas without it, as there’s been a game every Christmas for like ten years.
This Christmas was the first one that we went almost entirely without a gift exchange. The exchanging we did was very casual, and there was no tree. Since there were no kids with us on Christmas day (Sam’s 18 now!) we had a very lazy, relaxing day of eating and hanging out. It’s really cold out here, but still sunny and pretty out. I took charge of preparing the food for in-between meals, and hopefully prepared myself so that I’m not as traumatized when I have to cook for a large group on Christmas or T-day. That chore has somehow evaded my entire adult life, and I’m sure my luck will run out. I plan to be prepared so that I don’t end up in the backyard crying and talking to myself from all the stress.
Nah, that’ll never happen. Having to cook for everybody, I mean.
gfvvvvvvvvb
I went to write the title and then the cat stepped onto my keyboard, so I left it. When will that synchronicity ever happen again?
I finally got to see the Ear Nose and Throat Specialist today, a very nice Indian guy whose name has 5 or so syllables. I have a deviated septum, which makes my nasal passage narrow on one side. I said, “doesn’t everybody have a deviated septum?” And he said, “Yes!”. But mine’s special. This is the excuse everybody uses to get a nose job, and I immediately pictured myself with two black eyes and a bandaged nose, which in combination with being blond and skinny would be a sight that has nose job, vain female, written all over it. And hi, I am a vain female. If I wasn’t vain then I could save a lot of money on hair care. However, deviated septums don’t always have to be undeviated. It’s just that this could be contributing to the cause of my problem in my ear, since I have a chronically congested Eustachian tube. If that is the case, then it’s been a problem that was bound to come up after spending a lot of time in the water. Between last year’s twice weekly swim sessions with Steph, plus all that snorkeling I do, I would definitely say I’ve been in the water a lot. They are going to do some audio tests next Thurs, and in the meantime, I can keep on taking Sudafed if I want to. He has me taking a nasal spray, too (sexy), to see if that has any effect. My condition is not aggravated by caffeine, either, as I’d suspected. So after I left, I bounced into Starbucks and celebrated that news with a big fat Peppermint Mocha Latte. I’m going to go ahead and insist that that is the right thing to do, under those circumstances.
Things sped up after that. In other news, I made pate from a recipe in my new raw foods cookbook. I LOVE it. It has a nut base, and is flavored with lemon juice, onions, parsley, and celery. It’s going into the spring rolls I’m making, which will make it a nice appetizer that’s made from all raw ingredients. Christmas will by no means have a raw food menu, but I love the idea of at least having a few things be healthy, considering how dense holiday food can be.
It was calling me, and I was like, hey, okay. You don’t gotta twist my arm.
Last night I was curled up in bed watching ‘House’ and listening to the rain coming down, feeling cozy and warm, when I was overcome with the urge to go stand outside in the rain. The only thing that got in the way of that was that when I got out there, it wasn’t raining anymore, which made it kind of boring, just standing out there in the middle of the street wearing a Jaegermeister t-shirt and my yoga pants. The night, however, was sublime. The sky was lit up so light, I guess from the L.A. lights bouncing off of the overcast sky, and then everything was wet and shiny and light. Since there’s Christmas lights all over the street, the entire outdoors all along my street was glowing and sparkling.
That’s as winter as it’s gonna get here.
Not living in a van, not down by the river
The house I live in was sold, so I have to move at the end of January. I started to stress out on it, and then I thought, well, there are a lot more stressful things in life than this. I mean, what if I was a soldier fighting in Vietnam? THAT would be stressful. This is nothing. What if I didn’t have legs? What if I had a boyfriend who insisted on wearing Speedos to the beach? What if I had amnesia?
It made you feel famous
I brought Steph and her husband as my dates at the Holiday Party for my work. Our department is full of photographers, so there were flashes going off the entire time.
From left to right: Steph, me, Hue, Tong and James.
Holiday ups and downs
My friend and I arranged to meet up at this cookie decorating party at her friend’s house, smack dab in the middle of downtown L.A. -He lives in an artist loft with his boyfriend. We both decided to take side streets all the way from our houses to the party, because of A.) the novelty of it, and B.) sometimes getting from the freeway to anywhere downtown can be more confusing than it’s worth. Let’s not talk about the part where I screwed up the plan entirely by leaving my cell phone at work. Let’s not talk about it at all. Okay let’s talk about it. It took the simplicity out of the plan entirely, and while I was driving in huge circles on the one-way streets that surround his building, she was upstairs having a Mojito because she really didn’t have any way of knowing where I was or when I was coming. I started out my evening in a pretty good mindset, but ended up crying and being comforted by Hector, the parking lot attendant a block from where I was supposed to be. It took me another ten minutes and another assist from yet another parking lot attendant before I finally made it to my destination, where I sat there bewildered and eating fudge. It turned out to be a really easy place to calm down at. I’ve been there before for a tupperware party hosted by a very entertaining drag queen, and their place is so fun to visit. They have art everywhere, and they had a metallic pink Christmas tree with the coolest decorations ever. I’m so glad her friend ended up in an environment like that, where his entertaining and highly unusual personality(in a good way) is able to totally flourish. I laughed so hard that night, and the funny comments that people were making to each other were still ringing in my head two days later and making me laugh when I was by myself. When Stephanie and I are over there we like to look at the place and imagine how we’d decorate it. I was imagining a loft bed with an office underneath it, and the main, open space would be used for painting or some kind of sculpture. I love how it has high ceilings and exposed plumbing. I want an artist loft. I could get used to having to go to Hector for directions all the time, and spending all of my spare time hauling things back from the garment district to design my place with.
Anyway, my creative juices got all stirred up while I was there, and now I need a project.
