Tag: sketches

Sketch 32

Well its week 2 of the new job.  Things seem to be going well so far, though I’m still not sure exactly all I’ll be doing.  But that should get settled out over the next few weeks.

Other than working, not much else has gone on the past week.  It seems that most of my friends decided that last weekend was a good time to be out of town.  So the weekend was pretty low key.  I mainly just read and watched couple movies.

I think I’m going to Santa Barbara for a friends B-Day BBQ this weekend.  At least that’s the plan at the moment.

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Sketch 31

I started my new job on Monday.  So far its good, but I’m of course still just settling in.  Mainly its a big relief just to have something.  I’m looking foward to Friday’s paycheck from the two day temp assignment last week.

On Saturday, one of my friends invited me along to a wedding of one of her high school friends.  The wedding was pretty normal (well except for parts being in Korean) until the reception.  When the wedding party arrived, each couple was introduced along with music, which they danced their way into the hall to.  When no one was left except for the bride and groom, the video on the right is what happened.  It definitely made for a more interesting wedding reception.  Other highlights included the infomercial made by the groom selling “Jane’s Top Musical Hits,” including him (and friends) lip syncing along to songs from High School Musical, Dream Girls, Hairspray and maybe one or two others, I can’t remember.  The wedding was great fun, but I was sure exhausted by the time I got home a little after midnight.

Sunday I ventured up to Thousand Oaks to hang out with my friend who lives up there.  I took the Red and Orange lines to Woodland Hills to meet him part way.  With the trips on Saturday and Sunday, I’ve now ridden all but a small section of the Green and Gold lines in the Metro “Rail” system (the Orange line is a dedicated bus line).  My friend bbq’d some ribs and we watched Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.  The movie was funny, though not as funny as the first Harold & Kumar movie. It was a pretty laid back afternoon.

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Sketch 30

Well the job hunt drought continues.  I went into another branch of one of the temp agencies to see if maybe that would help.  My gut tells me that they don’t have much going on either.

Last night I went over to a friends place for a dinner & movie party.  This was a few of the folks from our regular dinner group…plus a few other friends of the hosts.  It was a great time of food, wine and conversation.  Something I really needed for sure.  We watched a documentary about struggle for the South Central Farm (official site here) here in LA.  The movie was called The Garden.  The film was good, though definitely biased towards the farmers.  It’s still crazy to see the aerial shots of the site when the farm was active compared to what it is now.  I actually remember passing by the site while on the light rail to Long Beach a few weeks ago, though I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. Now its just a fenced off plot of dirt, seems pretty silly.

The biggest excitement of the week had to be the 5.4 magnitude earthquake this morning.  It happened at 11:42am.  I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden the room started shaking.  It took a few seconds to comprehend that it was an earthquake and by then it was pretty much over.  Nothing fell over, not even the books i have stacked on the floor against one of the walls of my room.  It definitely got the blood pumping though, and was the talk of the news for the rest of the day.  They’ve been saying that this is a wake-up call for Southern California, which hadn’t experienced a earthquake of this size pretty much since the devastating Northridge quake in 94.  The “big-one” is still coming geologists stressed.

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Sketch 29

It was a pretty crappy week in the job search department.  I applied to a bunch of positions, but didn’t hear a peep from anyone.  Most disappointing was the wine store position that I applied for.  Oh well.

I tried to get into a free screening of The Dark Knight at USC on Thursday, however not much of the wait list made it in for that one.  So I ended up riding my bike over to the Arclight Hollywood and to see a show Friday afternoon.  The build-up to the movie was completely over the top, and therefore expectations were quite high.  The movie didn’t disappoint.  I think pretty much every one of the main actors did a fabulous job in their roles.  Sure, Heath Ledger is getting the bulk of the press in light of his passing, but he also did a pretty fabulous job reinventing a character played brilliantly by Jack Nicholson in the first Batman movie.  Both Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhardt were great as Batman and Harvey Dent as well.  One of my friends thought it might have been a little long, and I can see that position, but I didn’t mind the length either.

Sunday I went and saw the Independent Shakespeare Companies performance of Twelfth Night at the Barnsdall Arts Park in Hollywood.  Basically, its free Shakespeare in the park, Th-Su, during the months of July and August.  It was fun, and I think I’ll go again, though with a picnic dinner this time.

After spending the morning job searching on Monday, I decided to take a little diversion and do some more exploring of LA.  So I got a Metro Day Pass and hit the rails.  This time I took the train to Universal City and went up to Universal City Walk.  Basically its just a collection of stores and restaurants just outside of Universal Studios.  Touristy for sure.  After walking around the City Walk, I decided to head back into Hollywood to catch a movie.  I was initially thinking about seeing Wall-E at the El Capitan Theater (owned by Disney), however the movie had already started by the time I got there.  Luckily, Hell Boy II was playing across the street at the Chinese Theater.  Check one more touristy thing off the list…See a movie at the Chinese Theater.  Like the first Hell Boy, it was directed by Guillermo del Toro.  A great movie as well, and not as dark and sinister as The Dark Knight.

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Sketch 28

Despite not really having any money, I’ve had a decent enough week.

Tuesday through Thursday of last week, I had a short-term temp assignment at the corporate offices of the Metro YMCA.  It was a nice little break from the joblessness, and its especially nice to have some money coming in this week.

Saturday, I went for a short hike in Topanga State Park.  On the way back out of the park, I even hiked barefoot for awhile.  It was nice.  When I got home, I took the bus downtown to catch the evenings show at Grand Performances series at the California Plaza.  The artist was Rachid Taha a French-Algerian artist, most famous in the US for a Arabic version of The Clash’s Rock the Casbah.  There was a small dance area, packed to the brim, with many French and Arabic speakers around.  I had a blast dancing.

Sunday, I went on a hike with Progressive Christians Uniting in the San Gabriel Mountains.  We went up to a spot on the San Gabriel River, that is quite popular with the latino population of the San Gabriel Valley cities.  The sections alongside the road are a bit overused.  We hiked aways down a trail towards the wilderness area, and were eventually able to find some space without other people.  We even took a little dip in the river, which was really nice on a warm and relatively humid day.

I’m officially helping out with the 10:15 service at church now.  I’m still not that sure how I feel about church in general, but I do like this service…and its nice to be helping make it happen.  I’m in charge of making sure things are set-up before the service this coming Sunday.

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Sketch 27

Well its been a week of worrying about money again.  However, I did start a short 2-3 day temp assignment today.  Its nice at least having some money flowing in.

Besides job searching, I’ve watched a few movies, been to the beach a few times, and went to a pool party at a house in the valley that a friend is house sitting at (who’s owner has won an oscar).

Pretty low key week.

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Sketch 26

The end of my friends visit was punctuated by a little freaking out about my lack of job and money in my bank accounts.  I placed a call into the Diocesan’s insurance administrator to check the status of my unemployment benefits application, and was told that they only cut checks once a month and that is around the 15th of the month.  So it would mean that I wouldn’t get a check until mid-July.  Thankfully on Thursday (the 26th), a check arrived with my first payment (which was backdated to include everything from my last day of work (May 15th).  That took a big weight off my shoulders for sure.

I signed up at a temp agency downtown.  They have mentioned a few opportunities, but I haven’t been sent out on anything yet.  The person there did give me some resume tips…so I’ve made some updates and plan on bringing them in Monday after the long holiday weekend.

I saw the movie Wanted, on Friday.  It is directed by the same director as the Russian films Nightwatch and Daywatch.  It was pretty enjoyable, lots of action, a cool car chase, and fun with trains.  Its not going to win any major awards or anything…but it was fun and worth the $14 (gotta love weekend movie pricing in LA).  The car chase almost overtook my previous favorite car chase in a movie (Ronin Car Chase), but its more special effect created, while the Ronin chase was just driving. (Wanted Car Chase Part 1, Part 2)

Other than that, it was a pretty slow week.  Still trying to be frugal with the funds, trying to read, trying to spend time at the beach avoiding the heat.  I got to do the prayers of the people at church on Sunday.  That was cool, my first involvement in a church service since finishing at Canterbury.  I’m really liking the new 10:15 service.  Its keeping me at Beverly Hills right now.  I might be getting more involved with this service in the near future.

…and wow, the year is half over.

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Sketch 25

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.

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Sketch 24

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.

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Sketch 23

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 got some sad news from my youngest sister yesterday.  Her dog, Hallie, needs a head x-ray to check for a brain tumor.  Hallie got blood work done yesterday, and has the appointment for the x-ray next Wednesday.  Apparently her eyes have been rolling back in her head when she’s been walking and she’s slowed down in general a lot in the last few weeks.  I hope it isn’t as bad as it sounds it might be.  Hallie is such a wonderful dog, so loving.  If it is serious, it will be a big loss for both my sister and parents.  Here is a picture of her from a few years ago:

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