Thursday, October 25, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Out and about
I still don't know what people who don't sleep in do with their mornings on the weekend, but I was forced to actually contemplate it this morning: I woke up at 9:30 am, of my own volition, and didn't go back to sleep. (And yesterday I woke up at 7:15, all on my own, a full 20 minutes before my alarm went off. What is the world coming to??)
Fortunately my roommate is an early riser and was able to help me in my time of need. Kind of. Her suggestion was for us to go do The Stairs in Santa Monica. Hating stairs as I do (seriously, I can't even count the number of times I've fallen down stairs), I didn't think this was too awesome a suggestion, but since it's a beautiful day out and seriously what do people who get up in the morning do because I have no idea I couldn't come up with a reason not to go, so I went. And I'm glad I did, because the scenery really is very pretty, and the people there are a really eclectic group. There are hardcore athletes, people there with their trainers, moms who look like they wanted to mix it up and do stairs instead of yoga this time, college kids, and people just there with their friends. People are doing a loop up and down one set of stairs (they kind of look like lemmings), stretching on the grass, doing pushups on the street. My favorite sighting was a group of 5 women all walking along carrying what looked like yoga mats, all different colors but clearly made by the same manufacturer.
After my seven minutes of exercise (one trip up and down each set of stairs), three minutes of situps and fifteen minutes of lying on the ground and staring up at the palm trees, I was starving. And because I am somehow still not tired of Baja Fresh, I hit it up at 11 in the morning to get a bean and cheese burrito. Still in workout clothes. And was gratified to see three other people exactly like me, in workout gear, ordering food at Baja Fresh.
And on my way home, I passed three girls in USC gear, clearly heading to a friend's house to watch the game, all carrying the exact same cup from Starbucks.
This place is so LA. I'm learning to embrace it. Particularly when I just see sunsets like this in passing on the 10 and 405 interchange:
Fortunately my roommate is an early riser and was able to help me in my time of need. Kind of. Her suggestion was for us to go do The Stairs in Santa Monica. Hating stairs as I do (seriously, I can't even count the number of times I've fallen down stairs), I didn't think this was too awesome a suggestion, but since it's a beautiful day out and seriously what do people who get up in the morning do because I have no idea I couldn't come up with a reason not to go, so I went. And I'm glad I did, because the scenery really is very pretty, and the people there are a really eclectic group. There are hardcore athletes, people there with their trainers, moms who look like they wanted to mix it up and do stairs instead of yoga this time, college kids, and people just there with their friends. People are doing a loop up and down one set of stairs (they kind of look like lemmings), stretching on the grass, doing pushups on the street. My favorite sighting was a group of 5 women all walking along carrying what looked like yoga mats, all different colors but clearly made by the same manufacturer.
After my seven minutes of exercise (one trip up and down each set of stairs), three minutes of situps and fifteen minutes of lying on the ground and staring up at the palm trees, I was starving. And because I am somehow still not tired of Baja Fresh, I hit it up at 11 in the morning to get a bean and cheese burrito. Still in workout clothes. And was gratified to see three other people exactly like me, in workout gear, ordering food at Baja Fresh.
And on my way home, I passed three girls in USC gear, clearly heading to a friend's house to watch the game, all carrying the exact same cup from Starbucks.
This place is so LA. I'm learning to embrace it. Particularly when I just see sunsets like this in passing on the 10 and 405 interchange:
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
I heart LA part deux
Last night: dinner out at World Cafe on Main Street in Santa Monica, outside on the patio.
Tonight: dinner out at Napa Valley Grille in Westwood, followed by George Gershwin Alone at the Geffen Playhouse.
Both meals were absolutely delicious, and George Gershwin Alone was fantastic. The music was wonderful, and the venue so small and the acoustics so good that you could actually hear people wanting to sing along to 'Someone to Watch Over Me'... and restraining themselves. Like a collective bated breath. And then at the end we all did get to sing along--the performer took requests for favorite Gershwin songs and played them all, recruiting soloists from the audience and prompting us with the words and when to sing, and the music just swelled all around, with so much energy.
Definitely nights to remember.
Tonight: dinner out at Napa Valley Grille in Westwood, followed by George Gershwin Alone at the Geffen Playhouse.
Both meals were absolutely delicious, and George Gershwin Alone was fantastic. The music was wonderful, and the venue so small and the acoustics so good that you could actually hear people wanting to sing along to 'Someone to Watch Over Me'... and restraining themselves. Like a collective bated breath. And then at the end we all did get to sing along--the performer took requests for favorite Gershwin songs and played them all, recruiting soloists from the audience and prompting us with the words and when to sing, and the music just swelled all around, with so much energy.
Definitely nights to remember.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
I heart LA
Every so often I have one of those days in LA that make me really love living here. I spent a gorgeous Sunday afternoon last December visiting the Getty Villa for the first time, seeing a fantastic Magritte exhibit at LACMA, and going to my first Laker game (awesome seats courtesy of my job, for Christmas). There have been other great experiences this summer, too: a night at the Hollywood Bowl, listening to John Williams conduct some of his best-known film scores (and watching a whole troupe of lightsabers wag along to anything from Star Wars); a pub crawl in Hermosa Beach; a bike ride along the beach to Marina Del Rey. Great experiences that I couldn't have had, had I lived anywhere else.
This weekend was one of those weekends, too. Saturday I biked the 20 blocks to the beach and met a coworker and his family there--I'd forgotten how much fun the beach could be. Grownups just have the wrong idea. Left to myself I lie as still as possible, listening to music on my iPod, and every so often I decide I've gotten hot enough that I need a dip in the ocean to cool off. So I tiptoe into the water, eventually get myself completely submerged, spend another minute or two out there (cuz it takes a lot of work to get in past your knees and not feel cold anymore), and come right back to my towel, where I lie down on my other side. Repeat.
But with kids, the ocean is an experience: not a single wave escapes your notice, because to people that are only two and a half feet tall, even the ones that barely hit my knees are a triumph for them to withstand. We go into the water, then back out, then back in again, and back out again. Finally we persuade them to come back to the towels, where everyone rests for maybe five minutes before someone has to go to the bathroom, which means a hike back across the sand to the bathrooms (ew) and, thankfully, the showers (yay!). Then back to the towels, where it's time to, obviously, build mountains out of piles of sand, name them, and then destroy them all. And then back into the water. I'd spent four hours at the beach, and my friends five, by the time we finally decided to head back up the cliffs to El Cholo for some mexican and margaritas (mmm, cheese enchiladas...). I can't remember the last time I was that tired, or had had such a satisfactory time getting that way. I tried to follow the day up with a trip to Hollywood Forever for a screening of His Girl Friday that night, but by the time I got there, they'd closed the parking lot and I had to just head back home. Probably just as well--I doubt I'd have been able to stay awake through the movie. I came home, watched Philadelphia Story (which I first saw at Hollywood Forever last summer), and was asleep by midnight.
Jump to today at 11:30 (yes, after eleven and a half glorious hours of sleep), when I realize that I'm too sunburnt to make good on the beach plans I'd made with another friend of mine and decided to cast around for other ideas of stuff we can do together. And hit upon the idea of going to the newly-reopened Griffith Observatory. I was able to get us reservations for today, so we drove over around 5 (I spent most of my afternoon doing stuff for work, trying to redeem it by accomplishing it on my laptop on the outdoor patio at Coffee Bean) and caught the shuttle up at 6. It was a great day for going up: not a cloud to be seen, warm, breezy. And the view up there is one of the most amazing in all of LA. We were too far inland and it was too hazy to see the ocean, but we had an unsurpassed view of the Hollywood sign and the hills around it, and all the way to downtown in the other direction. We wandered around the observatory and into one of the new exhibits, where we saw a film on the history of the observatory and learned that it was named after one Griffith J. Griffith (which my friend and I found to be unaccountably funny) and got more facts on its renovation, which was actually pretty impressive: all the underground exhition space is new and had to be dug out from under the existing structure, which necessitated them putting the entire foundation on hydraulic lifts and raising it so they could dig under. To look now, you can't tell such a thing ever even took place.
We came out of the history film to find the sun was in the middle of setting, which made waiting in line for the planetarium show a lot more enjoyable, as everyone was outside on the west side of the building. The planetarium show was really good as well, if a bit cheesy (there was a woman narrating it live who seemed to have an appreciation for the melodramatic). By the time we got out of that, it was dark, and the moon was rising--full moon, too. Our last stop there was the big telescope, where anyone can go in free of charge and have a look, which is pretty cool. It was trained on Jupiter and its moons, and one of the astronomers there was lecturing on the climates of the different moons, and space missions, and other related facts, and taking questions from the people waiting in line. Altogether a really cool experience--I recommend a trip up there to anyone.
And the icing on the cake: our night ended with burgers from In-N-Out.
I heart LA.
This weekend was one of those weekends, too. Saturday I biked the 20 blocks to the beach and met a coworker and his family there--I'd forgotten how much fun the beach could be. Grownups just have the wrong idea. Left to myself I lie as still as possible, listening to music on my iPod, and every so often I decide I've gotten hot enough that I need a dip in the ocean to cool off. So I tiptoe into the water, eventually get myself completely submerged, spend another minute or two out there (cuz it takes a lot of work to get in past your knees and not feel cold anymore), and come right back to my towel, where I lie down on my other side. Repeat.
But with kids, the ocean is an experience: not a single wave escapes your notice, because to people that are only two and a half feet tall, even the ones that barely hit my knees are a triumph for them to withstand. We go into the water, then back out, then back in again, and back out again. Finally we persuade them to come back to the towels, where everyone rests for maybe five minutes before someone has to go to the bathroom, which means a hike back across the sand to the bathrooms (ew) and, thankfully, the showers (yay!). Then back to the towels, where it's time to, obviously, build mountains out of piles of sand, name them, and then destroy them all. And then back into the water. I'd spent four hours at the beach, and my friends five, by the time we finally decided to head back up the cliffs to El Cholo for some mexican and margaritas (mmm, cheese enchiladas...). I can't remember the last time I was that tired, or had had such a satisfactory time getting that way. I tried to follow the day up with a trip to Hollywood Forever for a screening of His Girl Friday that night, but by the time I got there, they'd closed the parking lot and I had to just head back home. Probably just as well--I doubt I'd have been able to stay awake through the movie. I came home, watched Philadelphia Story (which I first saw at Hollywood Forever last summer), and was asleep by midnight.
Jump to today at 11:30 (yes, after eleven and a half glorious hours of sleep), when I realize that I'm too sunburnt to make good on the beach plans I'd made with another friend of mine and decided to cast around for other ideas of stuff we can do together. And hit upon the idea of going to the newly-reopened Griffith Observatory. I was able to get us reservations for today, so we drove over around 5 (I spent most of my afternoon doing stuff for work, trying to redeem it by accomplishing it on my laptop on the outdoor patio at Coffee Bean) and caught the shuttle up at 6. It was a great day for going up: not a cloud to be seen, warm, breezy. And the view up there is one of the most amazing in all of LA. We were too far inland and it was too hazy to see the ocean, but we had an unsurpassed view of the Hollywood sign and the hills around it, and all the way to downtown in the other direction. We wandered around the observatory and into one of the new exhibits, where we saw a film on the history of the observatory and learned that it was named after one Griffith J. Griffith (which my friend and I found to be unaccountably funny) and got more facts on its renovation, which was actually pretty impressive: all the underground exhition space is new and had to be dug out from under the existing structure, which necessitated them putting the entire foundation on hydraulic lifts and raising it so they could dig under. To look now, you can't tell such a thing ever even took place.
We came out of the history film to find the sun was in the middle of setting, which made waiting in line for the planetarium show a lot more enjoyable, as everyone was outside on the west side of the building. The planetarium show was really good as well, if a bit cheesy (there was a woman narrating it live who seemed to have an appreciation for the melodramatic). By the time we got out of that, it was dark, and the moon was rising--full moon, too. Our last stop there was the big telescope, where anyone can go in free of charge and have a look, which is pretty cool. It was trained on Jupiter and its moons, and one of the astronomers there was lecturing on the climates of the different moons, and space missions, and other related facts, and taking questions from the people waiting in line. Altogether a really cool experience--I recommend a trip up there to anyone.
And the icing on the cake: our night ended with burgers from In-N-Out.
I heart LA.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
In the land of China
I recently went to China for a few weeks with my family. Have been meaning to post about it but thought I should talk about everything we did, where we went, etc. Well it turns out I'm too lazy to do that, and since I've been back for a few weeks now, it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. However, I have put up all my pictures (taken with my fantastic new digital camera), which pretty well outline where we went and what we did, and a picture being worth a thousand words and all that, they probably give a better idea of what the experience was like anyway. At least the highlights. Y'all are probably better off not knowing about, say, the experience of even being near an eastern toilet, let alone having to use one. So put that out of your head and check out my favorite pictures from the 1,902 that I took (did I mention that digital cameras are awesome?) of Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guilin, Xi'an, Chongqing, and the Yangtze River. (Link to all my online pictures here.)
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
What are you typing into Google?
We recently started a keyword push at work, which means we tap all our available sources of keywords to find what people could possibly be typing in to get to our site and the products we sell, and then go buy those keywords on the different search engines. Among these is what people have typed into Google before they clicked on one of our ads. Looks as though that broadmatch algorithm is a teensy bit broader than we might have liked; here are a few keywords that didn't make the cut:
the people who know what they want:
the honest
the people who know what they want:
the honest
- a bathing ape
- a folding stroller for adults
- a glass of milk
- a happy new year
- a man a can and a plan
- a real lightsaber to buy
- a real pirate ship for sale
- a trap
- a very small monkey
- a woman s brest
- adamsunderwear
- beeping golf balls for sight impaired golfers
- big brests and big pences and viginas
- girls that start there consert and end with no clothes on vidios
- ladies bube
the dishonest
- a paper on citizenship
- answers to earthworm worksheet
wtf
- guy buffet
- hamster thongs
- a chinese mathamatic tool with beads on a wire
- a chocolate sweet with a u in he second letter
- a diary of a kid in a life of a kid in tunisia
- need to buy or see some cricket bats ball and other stuff
- place to buy things
- this oven frys food like a deep fryer but looks like a microwave
- a pangolin is a type of reptile
- babies are angels sent from above
- bags of water really repel flies
- boys get wedgies
- a girl giving a guy a head
- baby cars eats
- plague remover
- are any more captian underpants books coming out
- are hoverboards real
- are leather pants in style for 2006
- are pantyhose with closed shoes out of style
- are penguins birds
- are plants living or non living
- are there some major waters in france
- are unicorns real
- are vampires scared of crosses
- is bb king alive
- is cheerleading a real sport
- is dancing a sport
- is godzilla real
- is kelp an animal
- is matt retarded
- is my phone tapped
- is there a bat called demarini explosion
- is there famous painting in itly
- is there really a santa claus
- is there such a word as rheam
- is tweety bird a boy or girl
- is water organic or inorganic
- what material are fingernails made of
- what's what
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Where the hell is Matt
This is quite possibly my new favorite site (well, after Twitter, and The Onion): WhereTheHellisMatt.com.
I didn't even find out about him on YouTube. I found out about him after reading a story about how a bunch of other people found out about him on YouTube. His video of him going around and just dancing in a bunch of different places is great, mostly because so many of these places are so cool: Norway, Bolivia, Namibia, Antarctica... I watch it and just think "no fair!!" Because when you're a mature 25 year-old, that's how you react to stuff.
Anyway, I'm interested in all things travel-related, and Matt has some interesting stuff. He's documenting his travels through Africa right now, pictures and all, and doing a great job of it.
I didn't even find out about him on YouTube. I found out about him after reading a story about how a bunch of other people found out about him on YouTube. His video of him going around and just dancing in a bunch of different places is great, mostly because so many of these places are so cool: Norway, Bolivia, Namibia, Antarctica... I watch it and just think "no fair!!" Because when you're a mature 25 year-old, that's how you react to stuff.
Anyway, I'm interested in all things travel-related, and Matt has some interesting stuff. He's documenting his travels through Africa right now, pictures and all, and doing a great job of it.
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