Margaret and Helen

This woman is wise beyond her years...and that's saying a lot...cuz she's 82.

http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/if-you-are-undecided-youre-not-paying-attention/

Please take the time to read. I agree with everything she says. In my short lifetime I have cultivated a healthy distrust of politicians and the U.S. government, but in the last 20 months I, myself, have  been moved to tears at the idea of a new America....one that is centered around intelligence, listening, unity, hope....and change.

5 more days.

Such a good daddy...

On Saturday afternoon Chris and I were getting ready to head out for a nice long walk with Indy. We'd saddled him up with his backpack full of water (to tire that little sucker out) and had arms full of bags of recycling to take downstairs. Since Chris was holding the Indy dog's leash I was carrying the heavier bags full of glass bottles. We got down to the dumpster room and realized the recycle bins were blocked off by trash dumpsters and as Chris stood inside the trash room and I stood in the doorway a single solitary Corona bottle slid off the top of my overly stuffed paper grocery bag and crashed to the ground shattering in thousands of little pieces. We just chucked the recycling in the dumpsters and assessed the damage. There was glass everywhere blocking the exit...There was a tiny little possible path for Indy and Chris to make their way out, but instead of trying to lead Indy through it Chris bent down and picked up our 90lb dog with a backpack full of water and carried him over the broken glass. It was quite possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen...

My boys...at the AIDS Walk

The Zen of House Hunting

Well....after spending a significant chunk of our Saturday in the car we successfully eliminated 16 of the 24 houses we drove by. We started off in Burbank and realized that really really please can we live in Burbank it's really totally cute!!! The neighborhoods are great...but like we already knew, the houses are smaller. The idea of only having 2 bedrooms doesn't exactly appeal to us, but at the same time we may just be willing to sacrifice for the kind of neighborhood that people conspire to commit murder to get into. We went and saw the castle house that I posted about and yes it is awesome. It's a pre-forclosure and is a screamin deal so the likelihood of us getting into it for below the asking price is slim to none. The neighborhood though is something out a dream. It's even near IKEA!!! for easy access to poorly built still overpriced oddly named home furnishings.

We now have 8 houses to go see with our realtor. I'm waffling between the feeling of competition to get to a house before anyone else and to just go with the flow...when "our" house is ready to be found...we will find it.....I must go to my happy place. Ommmmmmmm.......

Indy was entirely unimpressed by our adventures since every time we slowed down in front of a house he thought it was time to wrestle with dogs and eat grass. He was, however, rewarded for his good behavior with a pit stop at his old dog park. Where he promptly ran around like a chicken on cocaine, drank too much water and threw up his breakfast....awesome.

Shhh...we're hunting wabbits...err...houses.

Over the past few weeks I have been adding systematically to a document I've created entitled "houses". Any time I saw a listing online that I liked I would add it. We now have 16+ houses on this list including one 1930's French Tudor style house in what we think is a cute part of Burbank. It's a pre-forclosure that hasn't been on the market for very long so I'm sure it'll get snatched up before we even get to it...but we'll go check it out. Look cute, right! Needs some TLC but has tons of character.


Back in March when we were going out regularly with our realtor we realized that 3/4 of the houses we liked online were immediately out of the running when we drove by and saw the neighborhood. So this time we'll drive by all of them first and then go with our realtor to only the ones we think are promising. I have just finished using the google maps to plot out our 1 hour and 46 minute course of house hunting for today. We'll throw Indy in the car with us and head out to do some house hunting....wish us luck!!

I'm easily annoyed by...

being forced to endure the sounds of other people's mucous. Snorting, hacking and coughing. I think I'm overly sensitive to it, but it DRIVES. ME. CRAZY.

Was thinking about it and....

I actually really like the end pieces of the bread.

Let them eat avocados...

Sunday morning we headed to the farmer's market to pick up our week's worth of organic produce...ok, I really go for the free samples. Better than Costco. mmmmmm

As we headed into the tent with the avocados I began my inspection of the goods. I gave a few of the avocados a little squeeze to test for ripeness. We had planned on eating one of them that day and I wanted it at its peak. As I'm going about my business...thoroughly enjoying the vibe at the market...a guy maybe in his early 30's next to me picks up three avocados and mumbles, "after you've squeezed them all..." Thinking he meant the comment in a joking "oh you've touched all the produce!" kind of way I simply gave him a sideways glance and a confused half smile. I proceeded with my inspection of the produce. Finding all of the avocados to be rock hard I was getting a little bummed and then this same guy mumbles under his breath very passive aggressively that I was ruining all the avocados. I responded with "i don't want a rock hard avocado". He responded, getting obviously worked up "people set those out on their countertops where you put your finger and.....[trailing off]. I just said, "you don't know how hard I'm squeezing them and I'm not ruining them." As he started to walk off I looked at Chris and loud enough for this guy to hear said "What an asshole!". The guy turned around and mumbled something about not being an asshole, probably said something rude and then wandered off. 

The entire exchange left me with ruffled feathers and a bad taste in my mouth. It also had me second guessing myself and my knowledge of how to select produce. I've gently pressed every single avocado I've ever purchased, have never ruined one and have always picked perfectly ripe avocados. We ultimately just grabbed a bag of six and went on our way...I noted that all of them in the bag were hard. 

Later that day we went about making sandwiches. Mine was going to be a pita sandwich with hummus, cucumber, carrot and avocado all from the farmer's market. As I went to cut open that avocado....guess what? Rock hard, completely unripe and entirely unedible. I was understandably irritated and felt a strong desire to find this passive aggressive asshole with a lack of understanding of produce and make my point one more time.

And for those curious...I found this online.

"A ripe avocado is relatively firm, but will yield to gentle pressure when held in the palm of the hand and squeezed. Color cannot always be trusted to determine whether or not an avocado is ripe. Indeed, the squeeze test is the most accurate.
If you plan to use avocados immediately, buy ripe ones. But if you want to buy them a few days before you plan to use them, you can buy them when they are hard and do not yield to squeezing. Then just set them out in a cool place and wait for them to get ripe."

Five years down...

I probably should have mentioned this back in June...but as of June 2008 I have lived in Los Angeles for five years. FIVE WHOLE YEARS!!! That's 19.23% of my life!! I did the math!! It wasn't hard...basic algebra...

My Los Angeles five year anniversary came and went and I'm pretty sure I didn't even notice. When I moved to LA I was 21 and my plan was to try LA out for 1 year and see where that landed me. I would like to be able to tell you what I planned to do after that first year but the truth is I never had any idea. All I knew is that I couldn't live my entire life in one area of the country. I couldn't go to elementary school in Sunnyvale, high school in San Jose and college in Santa Clara, settle down, never live anywhere else and still be happy. Even now I still think I'd be missing out if I never lived outside of California. 

I can very vividly remember the day my parents, my brother and Linus helped me move in...I took one look around my apartment and at the downtown skyline from my balcony and thought, "I'm going to be here a lot longer than a year".  Even as I had that thought I never considered I'd still be here five years down the road and even crazier that my life would be what it is now. 

I've learned a lot in those five years. The most important thing is that everything I say won't happen or that I say I would NEVER do seems to happen. I'm not talking about when I said "I would never do heroin", I'm talking about when I said in college "I'll never move to LA" or "I'm not dating Chris".  I now hesitate to say absolutes out loud and I fully expect the unexpected (wait...does that make it expected then?). The truth of the matter is that I tried to leave LA but couldn't pull the trigger. I almost moved to San Francisco and enrolled in culinary school (the baking and pastry program thank you very much). I had filled out the application, visited the school, spoken with the admissions rep... I just couldn't I can't even begin to wrap my brain around what my life would be like if I had made that decision. I'm not sure exactly what it is that has kept me here so long, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with a certain fella....and all the possibilities of what could happen here if I just gave it time. I can happily say that five years later I have some of the most amazing friends who I wouldn't trade for the world, have found a steady job working in the entertainment industry and have a really cute dog who, fingers crossed, will eventually calm the F down.