Grinding

My first official week at work was kind of overwhelming.  The good thing is that I like my manager and we have daily meetings to go over things which helps.  It feels like I'm asking a question every 3 minutes.  

This weekend I mainly slept, caught up on some reading and cleaned the house.  I did some online investigating after finding a moving piece of fluff on the bedroom wall and discovered we had cloth moth worms (larvae?)  Ew.  Writing the word larvae sounds so much more gross than the word worm.  Whatever they were, they were making little cocoons out of the cat hair and bird feathers that were underneath my dresser.  I pulled all the furniture away from the walls and vacuumed and sprayed it clean. 

On Friday night after work my pals and I had food and drinks on the Delta King.  The last time I was there, with V, there was a huge kid about 10 years old sitting in the corner booth stuffing his face with spaghetti and rolls.  He was surrounded by his family who were talking really loudly.  I texted V on Friday to tell him what we were up to and he asked me, "What the little Lord there?"  

Grey or nay?

I have a couple of friends who have actually tried to pull out my gray hairs when I'm not looking.  I think they're barely noticeable but maybe I'm going partially blind in my gray old age.  It's funny that I used to dye my hair and now I'd rather just leave it alone.  Next up, tevas with socks.  What do you think about gray hair?  I think if I had insane gray roots I might be more inclined to dye but for now I just have strands of gray here and there so I'm not too concerned.

In other news, have you seen the Vogue September issue yet?  I haven't bought it in years but I was at the airport with a 2 hour delay last week and decided to LIVE A LITTLE.  It wasn't the wisest of plans to buy a 20 lb magazine to carry on to the plane but now I can use it as a paperweight.  There are a lot of nice, overpriced things in there but I've put myself on a self imposed semi-shopping ban which I estimate will last about another week.

Catching up

I could definitely live on the Southern California coast.  The beaches are warm, there are good places to eat and there are so many spots where you can just hang out and watch people.  Traffic wasn't too bad.  I didn't take very many photos, but this one of the skate park in Venice beach is one of my favourites.  We walked back to the beach after V and I had eaten too many appetizers at a little place up the street and watched the skaters do tricks.  One kid was about 10 or 11 years old and had been skating without a helmet for 15 minutes when his parents showed up and he put his helmet on super fast before they noticed.  You can see the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier in the distance at the top right of the photo.

Venice Beach!  I took this photo at a busy intersection and a man on the street asked me if I was a professional photographer.  Why yes, yes I am.

Here is one of my best selling professional photos (above).  Did you know muscle beach is a real place?  They wouldn't let V in because they were too intimidated.  So many glistening men in teeny tiny shorts.  It was over 100 degrees.  Who can work out in that heat?  Who can work out in any temperature?  Someone told me these dudes are paid to pump iron.  Fact or fiction?  Does anyone know?  I didn't give V a dime.

I have always wanted to go to the Camera Obscura next to the Cliff House in San Francisco but haven't yet.  The past few times I've been near it, it's closed.  When I saw this Camera Obscura sign in Santa Monica I wanted to figure out how I could get in.  I practically ran towards this building.

The Camera room is part of the Senior Center on the walkway towards the Santa Monica pier.  Everyone is so keen on checking out the pier that I bet they miss out on this not-so-hidden attraction.  It was free!  I gave a nice lady inside the senior center my drivers license and she gave us a key and pointed us towards some stairs that led to a door that opened into a dark room with a giant platform that you could turn to see anything that was 360 degrees in that area.

Poolside

Hey!  Guess what?  I'm away on business in a very exotic location that has palm trees, a pool and insanely hot weather. 

Today's highlight: canonball in the pool.
Today's lowlight: business lunch at Applebee's

Weekend adventures

This weekend was fun.  We saw Natalie's art show at Bows on Friday and ended the night at N&J's new place where we danced to Wham.  Pretty perfect.

Cheers!  It looked so great!

V and I tried to go to an out of the way breakfast place on Saturday but it was closed so we drove around South Land Park, got a bit lost and had pizza at Giovanni's.  They make a good pizza.  Their water tastes like mold.  We had a failed thrifting attempt at a place where one of the patrons was searching for her alleged Bulgari sunglasses.  She pronounced it wrong and enlisted most of the employees to help her search.  There's a lady working there who always seems to smell like booze.  V said it's a volunteer run place so I suppose that's ok (?)  Then we went to Scout Living.  That place is so dreamy and my kind of "thrift store".  I can hunt all day for a good find at Nordstrom Rack but serious thrift shopping is not my thing.  Scout Living finds all the good stuff and fixes it up.  I thought most of the prices were reasonable for a well curated shop although I probably wouldn't buy anything there.  We bought most of our furniture from craigslist.

Later in the day we tried to go to Chando's but the line was crazy as usual.  So, we did the next reasonable thing and went to Chevy's.  The one on Garden Highway is actually nice because you can watch the boats floating by and there's usually some good people watching to be had.  I ordered a vodka soda with no ice and got a glass of mostly vodka that was 3/4 of the way full.  I told the waiter and he said he didn't know how much soda I wanted so he just guessed.  Weird.

Chevy's is next door to where V and I had my wedding ring made using a family diamond.  I got super sad because it was completely boarded up.  There were skid marks in the parking lot in front of the store and photos of what looked like a serious robbery.  We couldn't tell exactly what happened but I looked it up online and saw that 2 weeks ago some people stole a forklift from a nearby school and drove it right into the store, stole the safe with all their stones and jewelry.  A FORKLIFT?!!!  The owner does a lot of work with vintage pieces where he will take a family ring, take the stone out and make something completely different.  Apparently a lot of people's personal pieces were stolen as well.  I can't even imagine.

The news report is here: 

I looked on yelp and found someone who wrote the only negative review the place has.  They were desperately trying to get a hold of the owner and said the business phone # didn't work.  I messaged them through yelp and told them there was a phone number written on the door of the business.  The yelp user had their 2 carat vintage ring stolen and they've had to hire a lawyer because the store didn't have insurance.  I feel so bad for everyone who lost a lot in this theft. 

Major Lazer

According to the employee handbook my work is very strict on personal internet usage and one of my big fears was that I would miss out on buying concert tickets  because I wouldn't be able to log on to sites like ticketmaster to order my tickets.  I worry about things like this.

The usual start time for pre-sales is Thursday mornings at 10 am.  Last night I downloaded the ticketmaster app to my phone and bought tickets to Major Lazer with no issues at all during my break.

It's a Friday night in Oakland and the presale password is murmur if you're interested!

The last time we saw them at some chi-chi-ish (shi shi?) place in San Francisco and it was reeeeeally fun.  One of the dudes who used to be in Major Lazer quit out of the group because he found the Lord and now makes awful music with a message.  When he was part of Major Lazer he had a move called daggering where he would jump from a ladder with his pants pulled down onto a girl who was lying on stage.  Classy.

Olympic nails

I haven't watched much of the Olympics since the American coverage is very country-specific and kind of frustrating to watch.  There are lengthy montages with slow piano music, sob-stories, interviews with family members and slow motion imagery...but of what I have seen,  I was very pleased to see that some of the ladies are showing off their countries and/or Olympic flair with fancy manicures.

Destinee Hooker's fancy volleyball nails.