Here I am!

I've quit one of my jobs. The idea here is that I'll have more time to focus on building my own business. This is the first week of not-triple-job having and I don't know what to do with myself. I spent two days doing a whole lot of Not Much, then I did some laundry, and today, finally, I began to work on the enormous backlog of photos that built up while I was working three jobs.
There's been some good stuff, too. Fun stuff and exciting stuff and dull stuff. I went with some girlfriends to Joshua Tree and we all became friends with a brilliant, famous photographer who was the nicest, most down-to-earth guy. And he bought me drinks, which makes him extra awesome. Tomorrow, or when I remember to, I will add a couple of photos that he's taken so that all of you can be impressed with my new best friend.
The third thing to mention is my engagement, and eventual wedding. It turns out that planning a wedding is CRAZY. I'm the first of my close friends to do this and lemmetellya, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I'll probably turn my currently defunct 30for30 blog into a wedding blog, should I feel the need to bloggify the ordeal.  So far, I've picked out six color schemes, eight venues, and forty-seven dresses.  Narrowing any of those down to just one breaks my brain.
So here's a picture of my dog, walking his dog!

Enough July to last a decade

July has been fairly eventful for me. Things that have happened this month include: Buying a moped, crashing a moped, glamor camping in Joshua Tree, breaking my latest laptop, taking pictures of a lady who was wearing only her fancy underthings, injuring my foot really badly (not moped-related), a trip to Boston, and kidnap by aliens. I made that last one up.

THE PART WHERE I ELABORATE
The moped is pretty sweet. It's a new Tomos ST, cherry red, only slightly dented and scratched from where it may have hit a wall that I may have driven it into (in my defense, I was run off the road. It didn't help that I had no idea what I was doing and ended up slamming into the wall because I had zero skillz and experience.) I was also slightly dented and scratched.

The glamor camping (glamping) was pretty great - air-conditioned, themed trailers, heated salt-water swimming pool, rooftop hottub, BB gun and archery range... We were really roughing it.

That's the trailer we rented, The Lux, so named for Lux Interior of The Cramps. It was all Cramps themed.

The BFF came up the second day and stayed in the spaceship themed trailer, a photo of which I have not yet uploaded to Flickr because, as always, I'm way behind on my editing/uploading of photos. Here, however, is a photo of the Hicksville Library and Teepee.

Pretty cool, right? If you ever feel the need to commune with nature and look at stars and be one with dirt or whatever, I highly recommend Hicksville. Best camping experience ever.

After a few days in the desert I came home and some of the letter keys on my keyboard stopped working. 'A', for example, stopped happening. That, right there, is two-thirds of my name. So, you know, I gave up on the brilliant novel I was going to write. By the time I got this external keyboard that I'm using, the inspiration and motivation for the novel, it was gone. My recently acquired dreams dashed. No more Great American Novel for me.

Let's see... Then there was the photoshoot and the next day, a flight to Boston but between those two events, there was attempted sabotage. The animals (one cat, two dogs) saw the packed luggage and conspired to Take Me Out. The cat came up with the plan and the dogs executed it perfectly - the small one crouched behind my ankles while the big one barreled into me from the front, knocking me over and injuring my foot so badly it swelled up bigger than my head.

ADVENTURES IN THE UNINSURED
The foot, it did not seem to be getting better and because I have no insurance, I went to a free clinic in Echo Park to have it looked at. Finding a clinic, by the way, was a nightmare. Every one I called (and there are not very many) said that they were not taking new patients or that they were no longer offering low-income rates. Not having insurance in this country really, really, REALLY sucks.
The clinic I finally found cost a little over a hundred dollars. I was asked a couple of questions there and never even unwrapped the bandage on my foot before I was sent to another location in Chinatown for the X-rays. A few hours later, thoroughly irradiated, I got a phone call at home from the doctor in the clinic telling me that there was no fracture but plenty of soft tissue damage and it could take up to six months to heal. That was it. I'm not sure, exactly, how I'm supposed to care for it or whether or not I can continue to work both jobs on it but hey - that's what I get for not being able to afford insurance.

I'M NOT BITTER.

And then I went to Boston, which is beautiful. Such a gorgeous, green, beautiful city and I loved it. I was only there for very short while and I can't wait to go back.

Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha's Vineyard was tiny, and gorgeous, and the place where I touched the Atlantic for the first time. I'd flown over it a few times, even played near it, but until last week, never actually set foot in it.

Note the extra-sexy Ace bandage on my foot. I'll be rocking that look for a while.

Again, I haven't got nearly any of the photos from that trip done but they will be, and on Flickr, soon(ish).

That's all for now. Tomorrow, the Guy, the Kid, the Kid's BFF, my BFF, my other BFF, my other BFF's parents, and me will be going to Disneyland. It will be fun. I will have a cane to help with the walking and possibly rent a wheelchair. This is awesome because we will be sent to the front of ALL THE LINES.
SUCK ON THAT, YOU INSURED, UNBROKEN PEOPLE.

Ways to Kill the Time

and not be doing the Things You're Actually Supposed to be Doing....

I'm editing photos right now. Right this very second, in fact. I am not typing, I am editing. I have not already examined every corner of the internets to see if there's anything I might have missed earlier and I am, in fact, being very productive and catching up on all those pointless photos I've taken.

There's no fooling you, is there? I'm totally not editing photos. What I am doing is staring at unedited photos and being bored, bored, bored. And repairing a co-worker's computer, which is actually a very Useful and Productive thing that I am doing but it's also boring because all I do is press a button every few hours while the machine furiously scans and whirs and repairs itself. Whenever I "fix" computers for people, I don't tell them that I barely did anything at all because it makes me look much smarter if I'm vague and mysterious and mutter things like "malware" and "boot scan". I certainly never tell them that I've figured most of it out by Googling it.


Unlike tonight's happenings, Sunday was pretty great. J treated his kid and I to a day on go-karts to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation. Go Karts, it turns out, are AWESOME!! While I didn't beat the other seven racers, I didn't come in last, either. There were three people left to straggle in behind me and those three were children and I BEAT THEM AT GO KARTS. I BEAT ALL OF THE CHILDREN. BECAUSE I WIN AT THINGS. I was the very last adult to cross the finish line but those kids, they were toast.

Look at that sweet loser face.

The other recent Very Exciting thing to happen was this:

What? You can't tell what that is? Let me tell you: Amber and I went to see a screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (themed cocktails! I had the Ramona Flowers and it was delicious. Free manicures!) last night at the W Hotel in Hollywood and after the movie, who should pop up but EDGAR FRICKIN' WRIGHT!!! The director and co-writer of such fantastic movies!!! His personal space was promptly invaded by yours truly, his hand was shaken and this photograph was taken. Then I learned a valuable lesson. Always, ALWAYS check your stupid camera settings before you hand your camera off to someone else because you might run into your favorite director and work up the courage to take a photo of him and the photo? It will suck and no one but you will ever know that you have a picture of yourself standing next to Edgar Wright (and he knows you're there and is willingly being photographed with you. This is key.)

And that was the last two days, presented to you with photographic illustration.

Just some travelin' stuff. You know....

I saw this photo
and got really excited (again) about the trip I'll be taking with this person

in September. I cannot wait to see Paris again and I've never been to Amsterdam - I hear Good Things.

Then I saw this photo

and added Malta to the list of places I really, really need to visit. How awesome is that wall o'windows? I have to see it with my own eyeballs.

Malta, I'm not sure why I've never paid you much attention before but I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you.

I'ma gonna be payin' you a visit.

Exciting News!!

I'm not sick anymore. Not the exciting news, just something I thought I'd mention because I know you were all extremely concerned.
Thank you.

EXCITING NEWS!!
I'm on my very first diet, ever!
This is not exciting, I know, but I thought if I could make it sound really awesome, I'd be less annoyed by the whole thing. Here's the thing: I'm terrible at it. Horrible. I'm only cutting three things out of my diet (alcohol, bread, and sugar) and I'm only doing it for a few weeks to see how it goes. In the last four days, I've already forgotten about it for at least three meals. Pathetic. See, I'm sort of genetically blessed and (until now) have never had to work out or diet to maintain a sort of blobby, not-skinny but not-so-fat figure that still wears the same clothes I had fifteen years ago. Not ideal, no, but lazy, which for me is PERFECT!! Now the blobbby that is me is starting to blob out in all kinds of places that weren't much of a problem before. Turns out that I am going to have to do something that requires actual effort and diligence on my part to keep from having to replace all of my beloved dresses. The horror!!
Hopefully it won't be too difficult. As much as I joke about it, I don't drink alcohol that often, I don't like soda, and I can live without my beloved dessert for a while - I'll eat berries and healthy junk. It's not as limiting as I was afraid it might be, mostly because I still eat dairy and everyone knows that everything's better with butter. And cheese. Fish, meat, veggies, fruits - lots of stuff on the menu that I enjoy. It's really a very lame diet and it will probably take a long time to get any results but it's quite possibly the only one I can stick to for longer than four hours.

It doesn't get more shallow than this, does it? I know that there are lots of things going on in the world for which, if I were a less shallow blogger, I would have all kinds of opinions and condemnations and approbations. I also have other, bigger problems that I could be moaning about but right now, this is it. In these fifteen minutes that I've been staring at the laptop, that's the big thing in my brain.

The lack of sleep is beginning to affect my brainthoughts.


Also, this happened

Really? Again?

Every time I get sick I end up writing a post about it. Well, NOT THIS TIME! I'm not going to waste your time and mine (any more than I already am, anyway) whining about how sick I feel, how I've got the plague, how I'm pretty sure I'm on my deathbed, and how utterly useless my pets are in this very drastic situation. I will also avoid mentioning how I ended up not going to my second job tonight because I thought maybe other people would be appalled and disgusted by the buckets of snot dripping out of my face. Instead of working, I'm woozy from Nyquil, watching Liam Neeson movies and getting ready to play video games (LA Noir - so far, it's kind of awesome). If I've got to be sick and suffering, this is an excellent way to go about it.
Since I didn't talk about how sick I am, this post has been about nothing. What a waste.

Home is hard to do

New Orleans was wonderful - great people, amazing food, gorgeous architecture, amazing food... Everything I ate was soaked in butter and then deep fried and I LOST four pounds. Want to know my diet secret? I'll tell ya: Walk all day every day for four days in sticky, humid, 90 degree weather and sweat your face off. You'll lose weight, guaranteed.
I'm not even going to charge you for that little nugget. Feel free to send me a check if you're really grateful.
Coming home and diving right back into my three jobs was a little depressing but now I've got thoughts of Paris in September to keep me going.

WORDS PEOPLE HAVE USED LATELY TO DESCRIBE ME:
Travel-addict
Defiant (AM NOT!!)
Elfin
I get stuff like 'stubborn' or 'talkative' on the regular. Those other three, those are new. Two of them aren't so complementary, either. And the third one doesn't even make any sense. Elfin? Really? I appreciate that it was an attempted compliment and compliments, attempted or otherwise, are always lovely but Elfin? Do you even know what you're talking about? NERD FAIL.

OTHER AWESOME STUFF
Yesterday a friend and I enjoyed a picnic at Griffith Park. We saw coyotes, Tai Chi, bad plastic surgery, good plastic surgery, tourists, and squirrels, all from the comfort of the picnic table. I wore four-inch heels, we ate fine cheeses and drank wine, and basically became one with nature. You know, really touched our roots. It was awesome.
OK, I'm kidding about the 'one with nature' thing. We looked like jerks but we had a great time and the cheese, it was magic.

(No cheese photos because as soon as it was served, it was attacked and I totally forgot I was taking pictures).


I AM AN ELF!!! Watch as I peer at you elfishly through leaves and such.