Snag

I've been sitting at my computer for a few hours now...
I've made popcorn.
I've filled up my water bottle.
I've ambled around the internet doing "research".
I finished my popcorn.
I finished the water.
I have yet to write a word.

It's just amazing how tremendous the fear in my own head can be.
If I can be irrationally confident that every word I'll write will be awful, why can't I be irrationally confident in the opposite way? Why can't I feel sure that every word I'll write will be brilliant?

Ok, ok, ok, here goes...

L.A. Snapshots - May 29

Memorial Day - yesterday, we went to lie on the grass and read in Griffith Park.

This is Griffith himself:


This is a man who looks like he's been working the Pony Rides for the last 50 years:


And here, families were barbequeing and picnicking on their Memorial Day weekend. (I suppose we should've planned to visit a memorial, but we didn't think about it.) I was very excited when the bass-man and the accordian man showed up, but they promptly disappeared, and I didn't hear any music:


Afterwards we went to Fred 62, a hipster diner in Los Feliz. Celebrity spotting: Katherine Heigl. Actually, all I saw was a pretty, well-dressed, nicely made-up tall blonde, but b/f identified her celebrity status.

Two of the views from our table:





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I know, I said I'd go write. And then I kept blogging. You weren't supposed to catch that. Well, that's all for now. Yes, going ...

Alone and Not Cleaning

B/f has gone out to get groceries, and I have been making a lame attempt to tidy the apartment. As you can see, I am now blogging, which means little tidying is getting done.

Finished reading Where is the Mango Princess? this morning. Highly recommended. It is beautiful, harrowing account of a family dealing with one member's traumatic brain injury (TBI). I read two-thirds of the book with my hand clasped over my mouth, 'cause so much of it was jaw-dropping.

I read that Psychology Today article I posted last time, and it doesn't do the book justice. The book reads like a fast education in TBI and recovery as well as a moving argument for universal health care. It is sad, infuriating, tragically comic, and most of all, a testament to the bonds between husband and wife, family and friends.

I want to check out Cathy Crimmin's other books now, especially, How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization.

Probaby going to do some writing now, and then go see The Proposition.

WIP - main document update: 32,503 words

Movie: Clean

Went to see Clean, starring Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte. I agree with most of the reviews on the page. I didn't 'lose myself' in the movie, but the emotion I felt by the end was quite deep.

Recommended with reservations.

(The above link is the Rotten Tomatoes one. This is the IMDb one.)

Small Steps

Pardon me if I do a little milestone victory boogie!

I've reached 30 000 words and 131 pages in my main document.

Hooray!

Now off to a movie, and then...
more...
work...

Music, Billboards, etc.

EDIT: I meant to post these photos in such a way that you could click on them to enlarge them, but I messed up. I'll try and repost them later. Sorry.
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Happy Birthday to my DAD! Why doesn't he get all the fun font colours that my sister got? 'Cause he doesn't read my blog!
I called him. I sent a card. It's all good.
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Bought the latest Neko Case album. It's incredible. Of course. Go look at it just to check out the cover art, if nothing else. Creepy and fascinating.

B/f took me to see The Eels yesterday night at The Roxy.

It was great. I don't usually go to concerts of bands I know practically nothing about, but I highly recommend it (especially when er, someone else buys the tickets). Some of their stuff was rockin' surfer-style, and some of it was beautiful acoustic-y ballads. A lot of fun. "Railroad Man" really stuck with me. You can listen to it on the "preview samplers" on their website. And the lyrics are here.

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Oh, and that rental car I had for a few weeks? I don't. I hit a parked car. Don't ask. Anyhow, had to return it. So... (rubbing hands with fake glee) - who wants to hear about the L.A. public transit system?!!!
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Went for a really late breakfast and excellent coffee at Kings Road Cafe. I had the whole wheat/granola pancakes. I brought one and a half pancakes home to eat tomorrow morning. Yum.

See, it's important to introduce people (like one's significant other) to good coffee, 'cause then they'll scout it out themselves in other cities. Now I can visit L.A., and he's already found the best coffee in town.
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Ok, now for some photos of billboards, and then I really have to get some writing done today. (And be kind, these photos were all taken out of a car window.)

Some billboards are all about faith.

Either to remind that the day of rest is on its way...


Or an open invite to join the faithful (at the Faithdome)...


And then there's this, where I wouldn't send my kid...


And then they get a bit wackier. You can imagine that a city full of people reaching for the stars would have a few psychics. But I didn't expect them to be so ubiquitous or so well off. This isn't a good pic, but the sign says that they're specialists in chakra balancing and aura cleansing. Do you really need both?!


I'm not sure why they have to specify European.


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Maybe it's translated from another language, but I keep seeing restaurants for various foods "on fire". Here's one example.


It's remarkable how much cleavage they managed to give Paris in this billboard. Notice, she also has a pie-on-fire.


Lastly, apologies for a blurry pic. An older woman pushing a tricycle down the road, with the words: "I'm going out in style!" If by "in style" you mean "crazy". 'Cause you're in the middle of the road and you're gonna get hit by a truck. It's an ad for funeral pre-planning. Makes me uncomfortable everytime we drive by it.


And that's that.
Now off to do the other writing. There's still a lot I want to blog about, but I'll save it for another day. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Work (or Late Night Geological Philosophy)

I have a rental car for a few weeks. Ah, the freedom to get lost in a city you barely know! Well, I had my cellphone and a Thomas Guide, so how lost could I get? Don't answer that!

Anyhow, I drove past some guys doing construction on a house, and I saw a young man psyche himself up behind a wheelbarrow/cart full of smashed bricks, and run and push the wheelbarrow up a steep ramp onto a truck, and dump the stones onto the truck. (Then he probably loaded up the cart and did it all again.)

I felt exhausted just seeing him briefly as I drove by. It's one of those things that you see and think, "how come we can develop nanotechnology, but guys still have to manually wheel broken bricks up steep ramps onto trucks? Am I being bourgeois, empathetic, or futuristic?

Mentally, though, my writing has been just like that. I keep having to take a deep breath, run... and PUSH the words onto the page. Even if I know they're gonna be awful. Even if the scene feels pointless. Even if it's not at all what I intended when I started typing. That's the hardest part.

I'm at 119 pages. Not too bad. You may have noticed that I've stopped reporting a total word count. It's not 'cause I don't want to, but because with all the editing I've done, it hasn't changed as dramatically as I would've hoped. It looks underwhelming to print. And my former word count was a total of three documents. Now I'm not sure how many of the other two I'll use, so I only count my main one (which, sadly, is still only at 27 000 words.)

Just remembered being at an amethyst mine - in Thunder Bay, I think - with my family. You could "pick your own" essentially. My mom and dad and I were just picking up any pretty purplish rocks, whereas my sister was combing carefully through. She walked and walked, keeping her keen eyes on the ground, till she found two stunning pieces of amethyst. One was an especially valuable deep purple in one solid crystal shape.

I feel like now I'm just shoving cartfuls of rocks onto a truck, and then later, when the truck is full, I'll have to dump all the rocks out onto a patch of grass and pick out all the best ones to polish.

There is the urge to edit as I go, but my main goal is to finish the book, so I have to suppress it. I worry that if when l finish the first draft and start "polishing", I'll find that I have only three salvageable pages.

Maybe that'll be my motivation - "finish the first draft, and then you can worry as much as you want!"

Yeah. Heck, with my attitude, maybe I'll get a job at Successories!

The Back of a Book

Wrote 1795 words today. I'm at 110 pages. Yay-ish. Still behind my overall quota (to finish by the end of June). Even if I do finish according to my outline, it looks like I may have to fill in a lot of description or backstory, or add another subplot. The novel is not quite hefty enough for where I am in the in the story.

I've also realized that my subplot reveals things about the main plot that I didn't really want the reader to know yet. B/f says Hitchcock (the director, not the orange cat previously featured here), always kept the audience a step ahead of his characters, but I don't know if that applies to my story. All I can do is keep writing and edit or restructure it later.

Why I Don't Read the Backs of Books

1) Much like a movie trailer, the back of a book is a synopses or a teaser that:

a) will likely misrepresent the book to sell it to a greater number of people
b) will likely spoil some element or surprise that I will wish I hadn't known about
c) is not necessarily written by the author
d) if written by the author, is probably written begrudgingly
e) asks you to judge a book by reading a hundred words or so

SO

If you're going to read fifty or a hundred words or so, why not just READ THE BOOK? Open it up - it's not illegal. Start at the beginning - or maybe a few pages in - and read. If the story hooks you or the style intrigues you or the font they chose pleases your eyes, great, buy it or borrow it or whatever and read it. If it doesn't, put it back on the shelf and leave it for another day.

I don't know why people find that so difficult to understand.

After I'd read "The God of Small Things", "The English Patient", and "Fall on Your Knees" I opened up "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. Within a paragraph, I knew that I could not read another dramatic saga that would make me weep. So I put it down. One day I will read "A Fine Balance". One day when I need a good cry.

Besides, if you check the backs of books that you've read, you'll see that none of them accurately describe the experience you had reading the book.

sigh
Now don't get me started on author's photos...

Happy Birthday to my Sister!

I wish I had some really exciting picture for you, but I don't. I'll try to find one soon.

She's 10 hours ahead of me, so her birthday is practically over in Jerusalem, but hey, it's still birthday over here!
Par-teeeee!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!HAPPY BIRTHDAY!HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

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A bit of Danny Kaye from the film, The Inspector General for my sister.

(I can't remember if this is the clip you were looking for or not.)


What does an inspector general do?
Inspect generals?

No.

An Inspector General
Generally inspects
That is,
They expect him to inspect
Generally
If they’re expecting an Inspector General

But,
An exceptionally generous Inspector General
Who made an exception and had no inspection
Would cause suspicion which in my condition
I couldn’t accept - Thank you

However,
If people unsuspecting
Now accept without detecting
An imposter who’s not posted as a pedigreed Inspector
Could this palpable imposter say a gypsy or a Koster*
Could he possibly get past them by his posture?

In two words:
Unlikely.


* - the director of the film was Henry Koster, and I suspect that this is what Kaye is actually saying. Initially, I couldn't figure out what a "costa" was in context, but I think it's an inside joke by Kaye or the writer.

Book: Where is the Mango Princess?

Went to Book Soup, a great little bookstore on the Sunset Strip. Maybe I've already blogged about it?

Bought Where is the Mango Princess?. I don't read the backs (synopses) of books, so all I know is what's on the front, which is that it's about recovering from brain injury. I'd seen it the last time I was in Book Soup, and I couldn't find the shelf it was on this time. When I asked the salesperson, she said, "oh yeah, it's one of my favourites", so I took that to be a good sign.
I'll let you know how it turns out.

Here is a review of the book from Psychology Today, which I haven't read.

I've been shopping way too much. I think spending money gives me a false sense of control. In reality, it's just the thrill of choosing to spend money when I could as easily CHOOSE books from the condo library.

So it goes. (<-- a saying I picked up in my Vonnegut phase.

Haven't done any writing today, so I guess that's next...

Reading

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks.

I remember avoiding this book initially when it came out, 'cause every time I picked it up, I was disappointed that it wasn't a real girls' guide to hunting and fishing.

However, it's an excellent book. A novel constructed from chronologically-linked short stories.

Clean elegant prose, with a gem of a metaphor or a startling turn of phrase on just about every page. Not the sort that makes you roll your eyes as the author tries too hard, but the sort that makes you pause, thinking, "that's exactly the right description (and I've never thought of it that way before)".

It's a quick read, emotionally satisfying and highly recommended.

Found it in the apartment complex' little library. It has a Book Crossing ID on it. It's an interesting idea - mark a book with an id number, register it online and release it 'into the wild' and track its progress.

A sticker on the inside cover reads: "I'm a traveling book and I'm making new friends..."

Banks has another book out called "The Wonder Spot". I might read that when I go home.

Cupcakes and Cat (for T.)

Yesterday I decided to accompany the housemate - we'll call her A. - to Beverly Hills. While she had an appointment, I perused a card store, called "The Card Factory". I bought a card made by Sesame Letterpress, based in New York, of course! (Check out their coasters - so pretty!) And I bought a card from sugar bean press too. (Check out their holiday cards!)

Then A. met me at the potentially pretentious, but (in reality) lovely Le Pain Quotidien, where I had an exquisite brioche. When I asked for jam, the waitress brought a trio of full-size jars of rhubarb jam, cherry jam, and a nutella-like spread made of pralined hazelnuts. Yum!

We then meandered over to K Chocolatier, where Diane Kron, the owner is quite generous with free samples!

Not quite satiated on sugar, we crossed the street to Sprinkles Cupcakes, where I bought a lemon-ginger cupcake and a chocolate-coconut cupcake. We haven't tried either yet - they're still in their pretty little box, looking too good to eat.

Later in the evening, we went to a short film fest where we caught a sweet funny little film by Iris Bahr, called The Unchosen Ones.

Then we came home and ate popcorn and made the Ginger Soda from the last issue of Martha Stewart Living. I'll link to the recipe when they put it online. It made the whole house smell like ginger. Aaaaaah.

Oh yeah, and I wrote a lot. In my main document, I've now reached ninety-nine pages. Hooray. I guess I should've waited to post the hundredth page, but 99 looks cool too.

All in all, a nice day in L.A.

Procrastination

My sister has a great post/link about the five lies procrastinators tell themselves.

If you're a procrastinator, go read it!

Er, now!

Happy Birthday to Clay!

A peony for Clay. (Cut from my parents' garden last summer.)

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And a few more photos I forgot to post last time. They're mostly from a walk I took.


A detail from a billboard for the movie "Over the Hedge". They go all out on the billboards here.


A closed shop window reflection.



A yellow rose from someone's lawn. I love yellow roses.



Interesting pharmacy sign.



An old and faded sign in the window of a donut shop that says "Fresh and Tasty". I lied. It says "Fresh Donuts Daily". Click the pic to see.

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Everyone drink a toast to Clay! A vos sante! Hip hip hooray! Carpe diem! Salute! L'chaim! Cheers!


(Re-editing apres posting again - trying to get the layout w/ pics right.)

Pondering Perfume Packaging

I've written 1500 words today, so I'm allowed to take a break.

Four major fashion/cosmetic companies have all come out with similar perfume bottles at the same time.

This serendipity (or outright stealing, who knows?) occurs all the time in art, design, fashion, television, and film. But I've never seen four perfume bottles all come out at around the same time so similar in feel.

Each bottle is either purple or purply-blue, essentially rectangular with some sort of a curve thrown in. I have yet to smell them all.

Hugo Boss - Pure Purple

Lancome - Hypnose

Elizabeth Arden - Provocative (and Provocative Interlude)

Giorgio Armani - Armani Code

Ok. Back to work.

- a little edit post-publishing - here's a better view of the Elizabeth Arden Provocative Woman bottle.

A few pics for now

A few pics from last weekend's trip to Dodger stadium, in no particular order.

This first one makes me think of the e. e. cummings poem "-in Just", with the "balloon man" who "whistles far and wee". I was taking pics from the car, but I never did see the man's head. Only his feet and the balloons and cotton candy.








I haven't posted pics till now, so I might change these around when I see how they turn out.

Book, Film, Martini, Parasite

It's been a week since I posted, so I'm trying to remember interesting things to talk about. Sorry it's such a long post!

I got a lot of writing done last week, but yesterday I only wrote 500 words, so I have a lot still to do today.

Books read:
In Her Shoes.
A book recommended to me as an example of good chick-lit. Since I am ridiculously sappy, it made me laugh a little, and cry a lot. Pretty good. The beginning was a slow and trite, but it picked up and the middle third was great. I haven't seen the movie, but from what I've heard they changed a lot in the adaptation.

Celebrity (almost) Sightings:
I saw photographers grouped outside a store trying to photograph Courtney Love. Did not see Courtney Love. (Did not make any effort to either.) I think I saw Goldie Hawn at the Sav-on (drugstore) at noon. I dunno.
Anywhere else, I might say, "I saw someone who looked a lot like Goldie Hawn at the drugstore", but in L.A., it's likely to be the real thing.

Outings:
So last week I went to a bar called Lola's in West Hollywood. It was packed to the gills, and it was a bit surreal. All week long, I was around a maximum of three people (b/f, housemate, housemate's b/f) and then we go to a bar packed with people. Young twenties, early forties, people playing pool, everybody out to have a good time. Some people recklessly cruising around. I wondered, where are all these people during the week? Where do they all come from to converge on a bar like Lola's on a Thursday evening? In L.A. you see so few pedestrians, that when you're suddenly confronted by a crowd in a bar, it's jarring.

I had the Ronnie's Kamikaze martini. I picked it in a hurry, 'cause the bartender was waiting, and it contained Cointreau. It was delicious, but I hadn't eaten much, and on the way home, I was the most inebriated I have ever been in my life. On one martini! Luckily, only my honey was around to see it and I was in a city where no one would recognize me!

Movie:
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

A meditation on humanity, modernity, bureaucracy, dignity.
I was warned that it was going to be "two and a half hours of an old man dying".
Which it was. Difficult to recommend, yet I'm grateful I saw it. If I hadn't been sitting in a theatre, I never would've sat through it all.
So, if you're going to see it, see it in a theatre, 'cause you might not have the patience to sit through it at home.

The first 45 minutes or so, I was thinking, "hmmm, I could be somewhere else", but about mid-way through I was hooked. In Romania, an old man whose sister doesn't want to talk to him, and whose daughter lives in Canada, feels ill and calls for an ambulance. He's poor, has a reputation for drinking, and no one takes him very seriously. Not the ambulance service, not his neighbors. The only person who shows real concern about his condition is the paramedic who finally shows up.

It bizarrely and sadly reminded me of the Canadian health care system. Don't misunderstand me, I'm for public health care. And yes, in Toronto, you get an ambulance right away if you phone for one, but the rest was chillingly familiar. The over-worked emergency staff, the potential for misdiagnosis, the shuffling around of patients from one hospital that has no beds to another that has no beds, etc.

And it was refreshingly realistic in portraying doctors as arrogant asses with little-to-no bedside manner and no respect for nurses. (Intelligent, pragmatic asses, to be fair.) Again, I emphasize that the medical attention I've received in T.O. has been mainly good/great, but doctors are people, not angels. And as my b/f said, we are so used to seeing them protrayed on television as altruistic heroes.

Also, the reality that old people with no family to accomany them get the least respect and the least attention from the medical community was heartbreakingly realistic. Medical staff seem to think that if there is no family around to make a scene, and if the patient has lived most of his/her natural life, then they are less accountable for the patient's health.

It was a very moving, very cynical, and unfortunately realistic film.

Other Stuff
I've got my pictures up, but I don't know how to post them yet. So once I figure that out, I'll post.

Also, from someone else's blog, I learned about this gross and fascinating little fish parasite.

And that's all the news that's fit to print today. More soon...

Take Me Out to the Ballgame...

So, today my b/f took me to my first baseball game ever.

He said, "It's three hours long, so you can bring a book if you want."
I said, "Pshaw!" or something like that, but I took a book just in case.
And hooray - I enjoyed myself tremendously and did not read the book!

Walking up to the stadium, I was so excited I was giggling.
I couldn't wait for the peanuts! And Crackerjacks!
And we were root-root-rooting for the other team ('cause my honey's a Brewers fan),
but that's ok. I don't mind rooting for the underdog.

It was also free hat day sponsored by "Farmer John". I didn't know who Farmer John was, but I appreciated the free hat. Even though I didn't wear it during the game, 'cause technically I'm now a Brewer's fan. (Well, I suppose that I truly am a Blue Jays fan, but seeing as I really was never into baseball, it's kind of meaningless.) So go Brewers!

It was a gorgeous hot sunny day contrary to what the Weather Network promised. So gorgeously hot and sunny that I got a dorky-looking burn on my arms and neck. Luckily I'd put sunscreen on my face.

I can see why the American public (and the Canadian and the Japanese) have embraced baseball. It's sporty and cerebral, date-friendly and family-friendly. We had good seats - "Field" - if that means anything to you.

It was so beautiful to see so many families - some with such teeny weeny babies too. Is there anything that inspires more hope than 50 000 people all enjoying the same thing out in the sunshine with no apparent meanness or hooliganism? I'm a bit of a sap, but hearing 50 000 people all sing the Star-Spangled Banner brought a tear to my Canadian eyes. We could maybe use a bit more of that in Canada. B/f said he couldn't remember if the concession stand folks stopped serving during the national anthem in T.O., but I hope they do.

The most frustrating thing I did not anticipate was that it was so difficult to see the ball! It was only just before anyone catches it, that you can see it. There was a foul in our section too, but I didn't see it - I just saw people reacting to it.

As for the peanuts and Crackerjacks, b/f had two beers (plastic bottles - who knew?), I had a sno-cone and water. We each had a "Dodger Dog" and we split the most expensive, most delicious salted roasted unshelled peanuts. Then he had a pretzel and I had an amazing discovery - a Carnation chocolate-malt! I will post a pic as soon as I buy that darn cord.

Full and slightly burned (both by sun and by the game), we headed home.

I still barely know anything about baseball - and nothing I learned in high school phys-ed seemed to apply, but it was lots of fun and I'd do it again. Are you kidding? There are still nachos and CrackerJacks and frozen lemonades to try! (I'm just teasing. I think I could get into this game. Although, now I kind of wanna check out a live hockey game too.)

Ok, off to write before we go to the Friend's House to watch TiVo'd Sopranos.
The Friend's House deserves it's own post too. I owe you loyal readers a few posts, but the work-in-progress calls.

Hola, Progress

Well, I wrote over 1000 words today, so that's good.
And the last couple of days I've been creating a new outline - working backwards from the chapters or scenes I've already written, and highlighting the chapters that I still need to write.

I've also been doing a lot of revising. I want to hold back on most of the revising till I'm done the first draft, but some of it is necessary - i.e. when I move half a chapter to later in the book.

Feeling positive yet anxious every time I open my files.

Counting all my "newer beginning in first person" plus "older middle section in third person" and "subplot", I now have 25,000 words.

Quite a lot still to write. Then I have to convert all the third person stuff to first person and make sure the subplots weave in properly.

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Tonight my b/f and I went to our first beginner Spanish class together. Before I got to L.A. he asked if I'd be into taking it and I said, sure. It's at the Language Door and it was fun. Good mental exercise. Our teacher makes an effort to speak only Spanish to us, and he's dynamic and positive - good qualities in a teacher. I hope I'll eventually understand a little more of the lyrics when I listen to Lhasa and Shakira in Spanish.
*

I'm off to get some tea and write some more.
Hope everyone (anyone?) reading this everywhere is doin' fine!

Hello, Los Angeles!

The first of May! "So," you ask, "what have you been up to?"
I shall tell you.
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Wednesday the 26th went like this:

Eat Country Griddle Cakes combo (no meat) at IHOP. (That's International House of Pancakes, for those not in the know.)
Go swimming in apartment complex pool. Aaaah.
Go to Eisley concert at the House of Blues. Sweet, quirky, lovely music. Very talented group. I would definitely buy their CD based on their concert, but I should probably add a whole different post about my musical tastes.
Go home and eat kale and white beans on corn tostadas that my honey has prepared.
Go to sleep.

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Thursday the 27th...

take our laptops and work at Cafe Marco (where I am now). Free wifi! Hooray!
Have dinner with cool friend of b/f at the swanky Pace.
I ate the homemade pappardelle with wild mushrooms and leeks and it was divine. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish it, but I wish I could have.
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Friday the 28th

Buy challa bread from a kosher bakery. Contend with crochety old lady/bakery owner.

Her (pointing):"This challa is $2.75 and this one is $3.00.
Me: "What's the difference?"
Her: "You taste it and then you tell me the difference."
Me: ???!!!

Go home. Have a yummy Shabbat dinner.
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Saturday, April 29th

Go to synagogue. Oh yeah! (Little victory dance).
Come home, have awesome shabbat lunch - smorgasborde style.
Take nap.
Read.
Havdalah service at home.
Go see The Room
The Room deserves it's own post. It's a cult hit gaining status as the new "interactive" film a la the "Rocky Horror Picture Show".
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Sunday, April 30th

Go to new free wifi bakery/cafe yesterday. Couldn't really focus and didn't get much writing done. I was a grump yesterday. I admit it.
Went to b/f's friend's house to watch DVD special features from "The Room". Watch TiVo'd Sopranos, eat Chinese take-out and chocolate bars, then write while the boys watch TiVo'd "24".

I suppose one could easily ingratiate oneself with people by simply installing TiVo or some other sort of digital recorder.

*

So, here I am at Cafe Marco again. Out of 11 people in this cafe, 9 are here with their laptops. That's the way it was the last time I was here too. My b/f is at home having a meeting.

So, now that I've blogged y'all up to date, I have to get some writing done. The weather here is lovely, of course. The mornings are hazy and cool till the sun burns through it, and then it's really warm. But the breeze never seems to go away. I'm starting undestand how this could incubate the "West Coast" attitude. Everyday feels like Sunday. Why wear a button-down shirt when a t-shirt would do? Still adjusting.

Although the foliage and the flowers and the fruit trees here are just stunning, I still miss the good old conifers and deciduous trees of home. Every plant here has a desert edge to it - a thickness or a glossiness that puts it just on the edge of "cactus". Also, everyone has a gardener and all the gardens - all the public space too - is meticulously pruned. I miss the unkempt edges. The link is to a photoset on Flickr.

I will post my own photos soon - I just have to buy a cord to connect the camera to the laptop.
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Your Daily Cattiness

Ooooh!
A perfect Los Angeles specimen just walked in!!!
Female? Transexual? Who knows? But the face is tightened and the dyed hair is full of mousse!
Giant breasts! Off-the-shoulder tight white tee. Midriff showing. Tight tight jeans tucked into white furry mukluk style boots.
I couldn't catch what she said to the guy behind the bar, but I could hear his answer:
"Sweet Sixteen? Aren't you supposed to have that when you're like, fifteen or something?"

Coffee: $2.00
Muffin: $1.50
Wifi: $0.00
Sitting here till Santa Monica v.4.0 walks in: priceless!

Eek - and then she turned around, and she was in fact, a he. And honestly, I don't care if they're real or fake - if you're going to wear a see-through t-shirt, wear a bra! Yikes.

*

Been editing and re-writing lately. Only about 500 new words down.
Hope to have a more substantial word count increase for you soon.