Here is the list of books I've read in 2008.  My goal is to finish 52 books (the equivalent of a book a week).

Total Pages Read: 5,249
Shortest book: 96 pages
Longest book: 928 pages
Fiction: 9
Non-Fiction: 6

Last book read:
15.  Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.  National Book Award winner for 2007.  A story of the Vietnam war, the CIA, and the mental tolls of war.  672 pages.  (Finished 30 June 08).

Full list below the cut:

From the 17 - 24th I had a friend visiting from out of town.  So basically we spent the week playing tourist in LA.

After picking my friend up at the airport, we headed straight to the beach (Manhattan Beach).  Spent a little time there and then headed back to my neighborhood.  My friend was craving mexican food, so we walked over to the taqueria that is near my house.  After that we just kind of chilled out for the rest of the evening.

The next day we did some more exploring around the neighborhood.  We walked down Melrose, to about halfway between Fairfax and La Cienega.  The plan was to check out some of the stores (even though neither of us had money to spend).  However, we left a little early in the morning, and a majority of the stores weren't open.  In the end, we got some coffee and did about 7 miles of urban hiking getting there and back.  Needless to say, after that much walking in pretty warm sun, we didn't do much else the rest of the day.

Thursday, we got day passes for the Metro and did some exploring public transit style.  We had an early lunch in Little Ethiopia, went to the La Brea tar pits, and in the evening went a saw a sneak preview of the movie Finding Amanda in Beverly Hills.

Friday, we got up early and headed downtown to check out the LA Flower District.  They claim its the largest flower market in the world.  It's basically 2 big warehouses full of venders selling flowers (and other accessories).  It's mainly geared towards the wholesale market, but they have public hours each day as well (though some of the vendors shut down by then).  After that we went up to Griffith Park and walked around the Observatory for a bit. I'm pretty sure we went to the beach at some point as well.

Saturday, my friend wanted to visit another friend in San Diego.  So we headed down south to do that.  I dropped my friend off at her friends and headed over to one of my friends place to hang out with her and her husband.  They decided to take me to Coranado Beach to check out that area.  We first went to Mr. P's Irish Pub for lunch.  Mr. P's is a big Navy hangout (my friend's husband is in the Navy.  I had a pretty good corned beef sandwhich.  Then we walked over to the beach and hung out there for a few hours.  My friends husband and I spent a significant amount of time body surfing.  It was pretty much a great time (and I managed not to get sunburned).  Later I met back up with my visiting friend and her friend for some dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  After dinner, we started our journey back to Los Angeles.  But on the way, stopped at Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido.  We got two beers to split between the two of us, a 2006 Double Bastard and a Cali-Belgique IPA.  Both were good, the cali-belgique was a really interesting hybrid beer.

Sunday, we went to church and then to the beach all afternoon.  I think we got there a little before noon and didn't leave until after 6pm.  It was great (and again...no sunburn).

Monday we got up late, had some breakfast and had a somewhat lazy day.  We went and saw the new Incredible Hulk movie at the Arclight.

Tuesday, we went to Doughboy's for breakfast and then it was time to drop my friend back off at the airport.

It was a great week...and fun being a tourist in my own town.

I just heard from my little sister about her dog Hallie's head xray (mentioned in this entry.

There was nothing abnormal on the xrays, and the blood tests came back negative.  So they don't really know why her eyes rolled back and why she was lethargic.  My dad says she seems to be doing better the past week though.

So good news for sure.

Posting early this week, because I have a friend visiting for a week starting tomorrow.

It's been a pretty slow week event wise.  Mainly I've just been job searching.

I did ride my bike to Pasadena last week, which was a significant ride for my out of shape self.  I did cheat and take the Metro train home.  Baby steps with the getting into shape.

I'm slowly starting to get in the swing of cooking again.  Tonight, I'm going to make my first attempt at homemade pasta.  We'll see how things turn out...but it'll be fun just to try.  I'm liking getting back into cooking...and who knows...maybe I'll even start blogging about it soon like my friend Nicole at Pinch My Salt.

For those of you reading this in a feed reader...I tweaked my design a little bit over the weekend.  There are more tweaks to come, so check out the actual site every once in awhile and let me know what you think.

I forgot to mention in my last sketch...

Went and caught Doc Martin at sublevel (His monthly underground party) last Saturday night/Sunday Morning.  Had a great time dancing until almost 4am with my friends Charlie and DJ Drue.

Here's a little taste from the March 29th party at 6:30am (I didn't make it to that one):

I don't have much to talk about this week, which is why I'm late posting my weekly update.

I'm still looking for a new job.  I got laid-off at the coffee shop, because we just weren't busy enough.  It will be a long tough summer I imagine for Rich.  I hope he survives because it is the best cup of coffee near USC.

I've been sending off resumes every day, still haven't had much of anything biting though.  I'm starting to get a little concerned.

My little sister, who lives in NYC and works as nanny, is going to Dubai with the family she works for on Sunday.  They are staying at the Burj Al Arab for three nights. Rooms there start at $1,500 a night.  It is a whole different world my sister lives in.

I had a great weekend.

Friday night, I went out with my housemate and a few of her friends to The Mint to see Mama's Cookin'.  The band is friends with one of Kathryn's (the housemate) friends.  It was nice to get out and see some live music.  If only the second band would have been any good (they needed a bit of practice).  We got there a little before Mama's Cookin' was set to go on...so we also caught a bit of Janeane Garofalo's stand up act.  She had some funny bits...but seemed to be phoning it in a bit.

Saturday was my friend Frank's 30th Birthday.  The festivities started off with a BBQ at the park in front of their apartment.  After a few hours at the park, the party moved to an art gallery on La Brea.  This part was a surprise for Frank.  There we had wine, champagne and a little dance party.  We only had the art gallery space until 11pm, so once that rolled around we tried to figure out somewhere else to go.  We ended up at a place on Melrose, but they were booked with private parties...so we couldn't get into the section where the dancing was going on.  Some of the folks were hungry, so I suggested we check out Kitchen 24, a new 24-hour diner on Caheunga in Hollywood.  It's on the same block as quite a few of the trendy clubs in Hollywood.  Kitchen 24 had only been open for a few days at this point...so they are still working out some issues (about half of their menu was unavailable), but the food we did have was pretty cool.  The best part was the place has a DJ booth and when the DJ came on around 2am, our group started an impromptu dance party.  We eventially got about half of the folks in the diner dancing with us.  I think we may have been the first group to jump up and start dancing...cuz the staff was taking pictures with their iPhones, etc.

On Sunday, one of my friends and I headed over to Manhattan Beach.  We just hung out on the beach and talked for about four hours.  It was nice and relaxing, though I didn't quite get enough coverage on the sunscreen, and am now paying for it with a quite red back.  Oh well.

You will be missed...but your music will live on...

Things are going pretty well these days.  I'm really happy with my job at the coffee shop.  I'm really happy with my new apartment and roommate.  Mainly, I'm just pretty happy at the moment.

Last Friday I saw the new Indiana Jones movie.  I won't say much about the movie, but its Indy and cheesy...but fun.  I met up with a bunch of people I didn't know to see the movie.  My connection was the friend of one of my old middle/high school friends.  We met at a restaurant called the Hungry Cat, which is right around the corner from the Arclight.  I only had a cocktail, which was good, but also $12.  Welcome to Hollywood.

Saturday was a pretty lazy day.  I did some reading, watched a movie at home, and pretty much nothing else.  Sunday was more of the same, except for church and buying groceries.  I've been going to this new service at church.  It's cool, its an alternative eucharist, that looks nothing like the service from the prayer book.  I like the service itself, and the people leading it, but...I think I realized whats been missing for me at Beverly Hills.  I just don't feel connected to the church community.  I'm sure some of that is my own fault (and how busy I was during the school year), but still its just not working for me at the moment.  I'm thinking that I'm going to check out Pasadena sometime soon.  Since I already have some friends going there, maybe I'll be able to connect easier.

Monday was a pretty full day.  I walked over to Sunset and Vine to have a late brunch with a friend.  It took about a half hour, a doable walk, but probably better as a bike ride.  We went to The Waffle, a newish upscale diner.  I wasn't really that impressed.  The staff/management wasn't prepared for a busy day (it was Memorial Day), so they were all a little frazzled.  The waffles weren't that exciting and the portions were pretty small for being over $10.  If they had been in the $5-7 range, it would have been ok.  After, brunch I went to the beach for a little bit to read.  I didn't end up staying terribly long, because it was pretty windy and the tempature started dropping after 5pm.  Later on, a friend came over to see the new apartment.  We hung out and watched movies and drank wine.  It was nice and relaxing.

Yesterday I was pretty excited to be able to work.  I know...crazy...I was excited to work.  While I was at work, my roommate texted and let me know she was having some folks over for dinner and asked if I wanted to join.  So our first dinner party happened pretty impromtu like.  It was great.  Good food, good conversations, good time (and yes more wine).  One of the guys who stopped by was a professional hula hooper.  Now that is a niche job.

Did I mention that I'm happy?

It's been a busy week.  Thursday was my last official day at Canterbury USC (Granted I pretty much hadn't worked since the end of April other than a few days).  I also moved to my new apartment on Thursday.  I can't say enough how excited I am about the new place.  I really like my new roommate.  The place is much quieter than my old place.  Anyway, I've mostly unpacked and organized the room.  The only thing really to do is unpack the books.  I'm considering painting the room, but I haven't gotten around to going to look at colors.

Work at the coffee shop is going well.  It's can be kind of slow, but its summer (at least temp wise), and the later hours are still new.  All in all, I like it a bunch.  I'm still looking for a second job.  At the moment still being a little picky, because I can at least through the end of May.  I think I'd prefer to get a job at a beer bar, or even a grocery store that sold good beer.

Sunday, partially in order to escape the heat for awhile, I went and saw Iron Man at the Cinerama Dome.  It was my first time seeing a movie in the Dome.  The screen is huge, but slightly curved, so text on the sides of the screen can look out of place.  But you adjust pretty quickly (at least I did).  I thought the movie was fun.  Definitely one of the top movies made from comic books.  It kind of amazed me that the guy who made Swingers could do such a good job on an action film.  Though maybe that shouldn't have surprised me.

I've been slowly packing up my room this week.  It's always a little jarring to put all your stuff in boxes to prepare for a move.  I've been trying to go through stuff and get rid of some of the excess, however the past couple days have just been putting things in boxes.  I'll try to cull more stuff as I'm unpacking.  This morning I took apart my bed.  I'll just sleep on the mattress on the floor the next couple days.  Yes, the packing is wrapping up.

Last night was my first night on my own at the coffee shop.  It was pretty slow, but also the first day of the extended hours of the shop.  So I was able to do a bit of reading and get all the closing work done pretty quickly.  I'm looking forward to things getting busier though.

I cooked my last dinner for Canterbury on Sunday.  I made a burrito bar (because the Lutheran Pastor had requested Mexican food) and had purchased a chocolate cake from Costco.  I am going to miss cooking Sunday dinners as it was the one area of my job that I did well (at least as a whole).

Tis a short sketch this week, back to packing. :)

Wow,  I am for the most part done with my time at Canterbury.  Officially, I'm on the payroll until May 15th, and I've got a couple of things to wrap up before then, but for all intents and purposes I am done.  It has been an interesting experience, these past nine months.  I am definitely not where I thought I'd be going into it.  However, I have no regrets about coming to LA for this opportunity.  I've learned a lot about who I am, and what is important to me right now.  I will miss hanging out with the students though.  They are amazing in what they do and manage.

I'm still a little scared about what the next few months are going to look like.  I have thankfully at least got a part-time job already.  It's 20 hours a week, working at a coffee shop.  It may not be glamorous or anything, but I think I'm going to enjoy it.  Now, I just need to find another part time job for the mornings. (I'll be working 3.30 - 7:30 at the coffee shop.)

I move into my new apartment next Thursday.  So the packing has begun.  My books are all in boxes.  I've got the other stuff in some sort of order.  I just need to get a few more boxes...and I should probably cull some of the stuff from the closet.  I'm really excited for the new apartment though.  Since we aren't planning on having a TV, we are going to have a big table in the Living Room, in order to host soon to be legendary dinner parties.

Not much else going on though, trying to spend as little money as possible until I figure out that second job.  I did get to go over to a friends house last Friday and play Mario Kart on the Wii all afternoon.  That brought back lots of good memories of Mario Kart on the N64 at the ECM House at the UofO.  And thankfully, when my friends 11 yr old daughter got home from school, I had enough practice in that I didn't get powned.

Things are beginning to fall into place for my time after Canterbury.  I've found a new apt.  I'll be living with a cool girl who is my age and teaches yoga.  I'm excited (and the main reason I went to see the place) because we won't have a tv.  The majority of ads I saw on craigslist all featured their tv's and semi-large cable bills.  I'll be paying double rent for the second half of May, but it'll totally be worth it.  She seems really cool (at least from the one time we talked when I saw the place).  So I'll be moving in on May 15th.  Time to start packing.

I also started training at Cafe Corsa as a barista last Friday.  Its only part time, and I definitely need a second job quickly, but it is something.  So far I'm enjoying it, I'll be training through the end of next week and then I'm on my own.  I'll be working in the afternoon/evenings a few nights a week and Saturdays initially.