Postcard from Los Angeles

A little over a year ago I experienced my first ever palm reading. While the overall experience proved to be quite traumatic and anxiety inducing, I did however take one positive away from it all. My psychic predicted that I would travel to California. Prior to this moment I had never once considered venturing off to the West Coast. I'm a culture seeker, adventure traveler, with little interest in the U.S. apart from New York. But I was curious. What could possibly await me in California that triggered this psychic to envision me there? I took a cue from the life of Elizabeth Gilbert and decided to act on the prophecy. As 2010 drew to a close I resolved to book a trip to Los Angeles in the New Year in order to unveil my destiny there.

Let this be a testimony to the 'intuition' of my fortune telling friend that nothing particularly groundbreaking awaited me in California. I did however reconnect with two wonderful friends and discover my love for all, yes ALL, of L.A. On April 16th, 2011 I took off to LAX and was greeted by my incredibly gracious friend and host Patrick, whom I had met two years prior on my travels through Turkey. We spent our first day exploring Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and coasting through Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway. We began at the Getty Center, ate lunch at In-N-Out, walked the Venice Beach Boardwalk, shopped the Third Street Promenade, ate dinner at Pink Taco, and finished the night with drinks on the beautiful Standard Hotel rooftop.

Our second day was no less jam-packed than the first. Let me take this opportunity to once again thank Patrick for his patience and enthusiasm during our marathon tourist mission. We kicked-off the morning with a drive up the Hollywood Hills to get, what felt like, within arms-reach of the Hollywood sign. Later we visited my girlfriend Casey, former FIT illustration student and now full-time fabulous tattoo artist, at her job on Hollywood Blvd. We waited 45 mintues to eat the famous Pink's hotdogs, checked out Melrose, Rodeo Drive, The Beverly Hills Hotel, Sunset Strip, Kodak Theatre, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and finished off the evening eating sushi at Geisha House and dancing at Playhouse Hollywood.

Three days in and I was feeling seriously jet-lagged. Still we managed to cover all of Universal Studios including the horrific Simpson's simulated disaster, ate the most incredible persian food at Raffi's Place in Glendale, headed up to the Griffith Observatory to catch the most breathtaking views of L.A., and grabbed desert at chic Bottega Louie. My last day there I spent on my own which meant braving the Los Angeles metro system. I managed my way to the historic Spanish-Mexican district known as El Pueblo, explored Chinatown, and arrived at the MOCA only to discover it was closed. In the end, I might not have had quite an Eat Pray Love enlightening journey, but I did fall in love with a new city, and discovered my inner Cali girl.

Life is far too short for regrets. Sometimes you just have to shake yourself up, be scared, reminded that everyday there are new possibilities to reinvent yourself and grow. Enjoy!!

Lots of love,

Meag xx

Yes, It's A Review

This weekend I am heading to the Bay Area for (hopefully) Snack-a-palooza TAKE II. (You can see Snackapalooza I here) I am very excited. More to come on that later. Happy Memorial Day to all!

But now, I give you...a book review.

Tarantula Woman by Donald O'Donovan

This is a story about an American man living in Juarez, Mexico. He has a job translating and writing letters in English for his clients in Juarez, who are mainly whores. Aside from them being his clients, he is also frequently theirs.

It seems the author does have a personal experience with Juarez, or at least Mexico. He details the city and the characters well. However, other than that, he does not really seem to have a very intriguing story line. The book goes on and on about the main characters exploits with different whores. Other than that, the main character never seems to have any money, but always seems to have plenty of drink and women.

I did find it fascinating to imagine this life that I have no idea about, this life in Juarez, one of the more dangerous cities, and it’s seduction to Americans who can easily go over the border and enjoy what it has to offer. The author makes Juarez seem like a fun and exciting place to be, whereas I always pictured it as a mixture of gangs, violence and drugs.

I was also interested when he spoke a little about the Mexicans trying to marry an American in order to get a green card. In one passage a girl he liked at the time wanted to marry him but he wasn’t ready so she tried to sneak over the border through a culvert. It rained really hard and she and several others got washed from the culvert and caught by the authorities. Again, the struggle intrigues me. I like to be able to feel what others feel and by reading this section of the book, I had an idea of how hard it must be.

I think this author is trying too hard to be a modern day Hemingway. Just like Hemingway, the focus of the book is on booze and women. The only thing he is missing is fishing or bullfighting or some other manly sport. However, as fun as booze and women can seem, I think it is missing an actual story.  You can’t have an entire plot based on getting drunk and getting laid.

In conclusion, I would have to give this book 2 out of 5 stars. Although the characters had the potential to be very interesting and several of the scenes were eye-opening to me, it did not have a very developed story line.

Note: I received this book free from LibraryThing. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.  

Xerostomia

xerostomia 1: abnormal dryness of the mouth resulting from decreased secretion of saliva [syn: {dry mouth}](source)

Okay, I know you are wondering why the weird word? Well, I started the A-Z blogfest and was supposed to be done by April 30, but I didn't do it in time, but I am determined to finish anyway! So...I needed an X word, so I looked it up. What I found was that most X words have to do with medicinal terms or scientific terms.  And they are pretty weird. For example, the above, also linked in family with anything else starting in xero- means "dry". Basically. But that is not what I am writing about today. Today, I am going to talk about....WORK. If you looked at my pictures I put up earlier (HERE) you will already know that my work days have not been DRY.

There is always work to do, even when you don’t have a job. If you are me, you not only have family and friends who need help with things, but you also keep an overly full to-do list of things that you probably won’t get to in years, but always have on your list anyway. And you make work for yourself by adding to this list daily. Organize photos. Clean out storage area. Put all old VCR tapes on DVD. Bake cookies. Eat cookies. Bake more cookies. The list goes on. And usually these things, even if you do them once, still need to be done again by the time you get back around to completing things on the list. So you just leave them on the list all the time.

I have about a million things on my list. As I mentioned before, I wanted to have a little fun before starting on my chores. After visiting with some friends and going fishing with my brother, I had a really great time at the Giants game with my old buddy Jack, who I used to work with in San Francisco. 

Jack and I at ATT Park. Go Giants!

Then my grandma and I drove to my parent’s house, which is about a 4 hour drive (for me – I think it took her about 6). Of course we had to stop at the Roach Coach and get a “real” (read: California. The one with the cheese and sour cream) burrito on the way. 

Gma + Roach Coach

Man, I really missed these!!!

Then we had a wee small birthday party for moi, where I received gifts wrapped in duct tape (classy!) and got to visit with my oldest friend and her son. We've been friends since we were born, basically. 

The gang's all here! (birthday fun)

Starting him off early

After that, real life took hold again and the work began.

Since then, I have been scraping, priming, caulking and painting. I have used every kind of power tool in the 5 tool set. I helped replace windows. I used a rope to climb up on a roof in order to scrape paint from the fascia. I taped so many squares of newspaper over so many window panes. It’s been a busy week. A very busy week. 

work clothes

primed and ready

What I have realized is this: Carpenters are my heroes. It is hard work! Plumbers are even more heroic. I mean, who wants to dig around under someone’s house looking for a leak in a pipe? Or fix things having to do with sewage? Yuck. Don’t even get me started.  Even painting, at least the scraping part, is a pain in the butt. Inhaling paint chips all day is not fun. So, hats off to all those laborers out there.

The second thing I learned? I am out of shape! Just scrubbing a wire brush back and forth has made my back sore. Standing on a ladder looking up has made my legs and my neck sore. Bending over to scrape has made my knees sore. It’s not like a kick butt boot camp sore, just a little bit every day, but still…wow, I am out of shape.

So. After I finish this round of home repair stuff, I need to find myself a carpenter boyfriend and start running again.

Just kidding! I already have a carpenter boyfriend. Now, about that running thing…