2009 So Far - Good Times Scrapbook

I just want to take a few minutes to recap some of the really good times that have already passed this year - because there have been quite a lot. This is a taste.

2009 got off to a great start, with a couple of nice hikes in Del Mar, and lots of food at my in-laws yearly Southern style feast starring corn bread and black-eyed peas . Here are scenes of G and Dan taking pics from Torrey Pines State Park.

G's niece, Maria, was married at the end of January in Santa Rosa. Isn't she gorgeous?

We spent the weekend with G's sister's family. Even with all of the wedding craziness, Hilary and Rich let us stay with them and were absolutely amazing hosts, making all kind of delicious homemade meals for us with many ingredients coming straight from Rich's garden in their backyard. Perhaps even better, they poured us all kinds of wine. This is one of the best parts of being half of the youngest couple in the line of G's siblings. We're the fledgling wine lovers in the group, but since Dave (G's brother) and Rich have more experience, far more expansive wine collections, the access to great wine that come with living in the Bay area, and they are always excited to share their finds with us. We are completely happy to accept the tastings. Here is a snippet of the line-up Rich poured us while we were in town.

Every now and again, we manage to mix a little culture into our schedules. In January, we took a LA Conservancy tour of Art Deco Architecture in Downtown LA with the Anderson JV group. (That's the crazy name of the school's club for couples.) The tour was really illuminating and definitely add to my appreciation of Los Angeles - which isn't exactly known for it's architecture. Unfortunately, it also made me sad for all of the amazing buildings that were torn down and replaced by horrid buildings in the 70's style. *sigh*

My friend Jenny and I kicked off February by running the Surf City Half Marathon in Huntington Beach. I actually forgot to take pictures at this race, my 4th half Marathon so far, so I'm cheating by posting this pic from the City of Angels Half Marathon I ran in Dec. I feel bad we didn't get pics of Jenny running her first half, but don't feel too bad b/c she totally kicked my ass.

Our friend Matt had a Mad Max themed roller skating 30th birthday celebration - really, there was no way we could pass up that invitation. In addition to it being an awesome idea, he had a photographer friend capture everyone's costumes in all their glory. So now I have the great pleasure of having professional quality portraits of us in post-apocalyptic garb -- which is awesome, because there is nothing I love more than pretending I'm a bad ass!

Jon and Megan (featured in the third picture), who introduced us to Matt, are also responsible for another awesome 2009 memory. For Jon's birthday, Megan rented a Party Bus to take a big group of friends to Point Break Live! Yes, that right - everything you love about Point Break, except better because it's live. Point Break is acted out with a new Johnny Utah chosen from the audience every show. The audience also get the added joy of being splattered with a palate of various gunks and gooes. I'm incredibly sad that I don't have any pictures documenting the show, but Jon was an amazing FBI Agent!

Earlier this same day, my sister-in-law, Suzanne, and her mom, Karen, invited me to join them for a day of Pre-Oscar festivities. Karen's movie group in SD came up on a tour bus to catch the Symposiums on Make-up Artistry and Foreign Films. It was really interesting to hear the nominees discuss their craft.

G and I spent an amazing weekend in Santa Barbara to celebrate our first Valentineaversay (our Anniversary is Feb 16th - hence the silly contraction). We took a jeep tour of some area wineries and had a very Romantic dinner at Stella Mare. I hope to put up some video clips and a longer write up of the weekend sometime - we'll see if it actually happens.

Also in February, My friend Kerry got a group together for Drag Queen Bingo at Hamburger Mary's. Kim cam with me. I won a round! . . . However, the queens gave a lot of flack for my hat and for running the wrong way during my victory lap around the bar.

St. Patrick's Day was a blast. A bunch of my co-workers got together and headed to Little Bar, after enjoying Guiness and corned beef and cabbage prepped by friend Heather at her office cubicle. Props to you, girl! We capped off the evening with a traditional St. Patty's Day sushi feast at Sake House. As you can see, by the end of the evening, we were a very happy crew.

In March, G, Marc, Amy, and I went camping - this is probably one of my favorite experiences of the year so far. We went ALL the way out to Malibu State Park. Before we headed into the park we had a picnic at Malibu Family Wines. We REALLY roughed-it.

In April, SB and I got away for girl's foodie weekend to none other than, the French Laundry. This will get it's own write up on Cooking Off Book, but seeing as how we saved up for ages to take this mini-vacay and then had to try for another enternity to actually get a reservation, I figured the trip deserved an extra mention. Also, want to give a shout out to my darling Brady and his bf Jonathan for hosting us while we were there. After the huge nine-course meal we had at FL, we arrived at their place to have Jonathan roll out his own endless multi-course menu throughout the evening.

Don't feel too bad for G for being left home all alone. He had his own romantic weekend in wine country just the week before I went up. He and a friend from B-school went up for Cakebread University - a program designed for Business School students consisting pretty much 4 days of drinking wine and learning about the wine industry. Not too shabby.

In May, I got the chance to go back in time a decade and go to Prom with my Husband -- sort of. Ok, so really, it was AnderProm, through his school, but it was a good time and I'll take it.

Up to this point, 2009 has been pretty awesome - and really this is just the stuff I had pictures of. There was also many a birthday celebration, bowling parties, and BBQ's at friend's houses. Visits from out of town family and friends, including 2 from Dina (liking the trend of actually getting to see you girl!) Book festivals, design markets with wares from local urban artisans, a wine club member pick up party at MFW (G and I have been trying to go for years. Actually made it in this year, still didn't get there in time to eat, but we did get to see the menagerie including the zebra, sheep, llama, and emu.) I've even made it to a couple of plays -- sadly, I haven't been to the theatre much in the last couple of year-- hopefully, that's changing. I had the chance to help out on an acquaintance on pilot she was shooting, and had a really great time. There was Kim's annual Pot Love - attending this year meant having the privilege of getting to celebrate the engagement of her friends Matt and Phillip. Tea Parties, Book Club, and Supper Club meetings galore, and a month long DineLA Restaurant "Week" that contributed to several extra pounds on my bum. There was even a Haircut Party one weekend -- that's right, even getting a haircut can turn into a party.

Yeah, 2009 has pretty much rocked so far.

Living Fabulously: 2 weekends in LA

Living Fabulously is the phrase my friends Marc, Amy, and I have for living the good life. Whenever we happen to notice that life is good at a given moment, we have a toast ‘to Living Fabulously!’

I have to say, there has been a lot of Living Fabulously the past couple of weekends. I had been working long hours on a film for the last couple of months; but with the workload winding down, it was time to start taking back my neglected social life.

Culver City Artwalk was going down two Sat’s ago. Seeing as how this was happening pretty much at my doorstep, I was able to motivate myself to go. I was also able to persuade Marc to come all the way down to Culver City to roam the Artwalk with me. This translated to us pretty much snacking our way through downtown Culver City. The day began, as so many good weekend days do, with brunch. G was once again caught in the midst of finals, thus he pretty much has to spend the day studying; however he was able to start the day off right -- accompanying us to eat at Tender Greens. Now full of good, healthy food, we moved on to get lattes at Starbucks, and these were to be shortly followed-up with green tea lattes at Royal/T, along with a red velvet cupcake with Marc -- which I picked at of course. Another snacking incident was narrowly avoided at Surfas, but it was a close one.

In between the lattes, we did actually manage to see some art. Some of it was good, but there was plenty of bad too. I think I was most amused by these cool structures displayed at this gallery in the downtown area.
They’re like sophisticated, popsicle stick dollhouses! They just made me a little sad that I was too big to go inside. (Although, they do create people sized structures, they can't really fit many full scale structures in the gallery. Sad for me.) They also had a rocket-ship go-cart in an alley behind the gallery, complete with helmet. It took all my restraint to keep from trying to crawl inside!

After a long day of artwalking, Marc accompanied me to meet some co-workers at Birds for celebratory end-of-film drinks. From here the night wandered from drinks to the apartment of one of the crewmembers for more drinks and stories of old Hollywood and the creepiness of Scientology. From there everyone tagged along with said crewmember to a stranger’s party in Hollywood – complete with a minor celebrity sighting. Living in LA provides many of these. With so many actors living here, I’m constantly seeing people that look familiar in a way that takes a while to sort out whether I’ve actually met the person or just saw them in a commercial or TV show at some point. All in all, a highly satisfactory Saturday in Los Angeles. Good Times.

Sunday was a little more chill. June 1st was the anniversary of our wedding #2 (we had 2 weddings– one in Colombia and one here). Since G was going to be all wrapped up in finals, we just made a mini-date out of Chipotle Burritos and a 3D screening of Disney Pixar’s Up! Adorable, by the way. Only Pixar can make a story about an Old guy and his chubby boyscout sidekick rescuing a giant bird from the clutches of another old guy and his talking dogs while flying a house via balloon to South America actually work and effectively strike all the right emotional cords. I’m just wondering how that pitch meeting went down.

Last weekend was pretty a carnival. I kicked the weekend off treasure hunting at sample sale with my friend Jesse. YAY treasures at tiny prices! Then it was time to celebrate the end of G’s first year of B-school with him and all of his B-school buddies. I met up with them at Q’s, where the celebration had already been underway for several hours and continued until late in the evening. Very Impressive, future MBA’s! Cheers to you!

But why should the celebration end there? The dionysian revelries got an early start on Saturday with an Excursion to one of our favorite spots– Malibu Family Wines. This is one of the few wineries in the LA area and they have a beautiful tasting area in the Malibu Hills. The tasting room is really a cute little shack in a park-like area with tables. My co-workers, the dynamic duo known as JP and Kate, decided to host a picnic at the winery. They had to do a lot of arm twisting to get us to go – I really love a picnic. Pretty much say the word and I’m there. We arrived at 2 and snacked and drank straight through to about 5:30/6.

From there, we made a brief stop at home, and moved onto a birthday party at the Culver Hotel (a fun bit of trivia I repeat constantly – the Munchkins from the Wizard of OZ staid here during the filming of the movie and crazy orgies).

The birthday girl is a friend of G’s from school, and just when we thought we’d had enough imbibing for one evening, she and her husband invited everyone over for homemade limoncello. Lovely People! Really, now how could we pass up that kind of hospitality? Luckily, they 2 blocks from our apartment, so we could just walk home.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, I knew the first couple of hours of my day were going to be painful. Believe it or not, I never crossed the line passed buzzed on Saturday. Still, my body isn’t really used to a 12-hour slow and steady stream of wine, cocktails, and liqueur. I woke up surprisingly early, but actually moving or doing anything at all was difficult for a while. When G and I finally got ourselves up, cleaned and dressed, we headed out in search of sustenance. Greasy Spoons were invented for mornings like these and we headed straight to the closest one – the S&W Diner.

Of course, about 5 seconds after ordering I realized that I had completely miscalculated the time and I was never going to make it in time to meet Marc for our previously schedule appointment. Never fear! Take the food to go. Now I don’t know why, but meatloaf with two eggs, fried tomatoes and biscuit tasted amazing as I stuffed my face and wolfed it down on our walk home! Admittedly, this was very risky business. The wind was blowing kind of hard and I was wearing white. But . . . .mmmmmm . . . hangover food!

And I did actually make it to meet Marc in time (mostly) for the screening we were going to at LACMA- Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman. I know you’re probably thinking, 'Wow, that’s an interesting choice of film to see with a hangover.' Yeah, I’m not all that impressive. I won’t pretend I knew anything about photographer Julius Shulman prior to the screening. Marc and his love of architecture and urban design picked this one. I’ll also admit it was rough going for me at the start of the film, as I waited for the Advil to take effect. But it turned out to be a great little doc, Mr. Shulman was a delightful subject, and now I know that he was the go-to photographer for all of the major modernist architects. (I'm actually still mulling over purchasing the book of his work. It would actually serve as a great guide to Los Angeles architecture) Afterward, we wandered around the museum for a while, so I managed to offset the indulgences of the previous day with a little culture.

I opted for a more low-key finale to the weekend. I went off wandering around my neighborhood on a photowalk. I took G’s fancy camera, but turned out it was out of batteries, so I had to use my Iphone instead.

I think I packed a lot into one little weekend. Somehow, I even managed to do a cursory clean-up of our apartment, laundry, and a good workout – and honestly, I really can’t feel good about a weekend unless I’ve crossed some of this mundane tasks off my to-do list.

Even better, the good times rolled right on through the week. Monday, G and I caught The Hangover (appropriate) with some good friends we hadn’t seen in far to long. Afterward we all went out for a bit and friends of our friends shared pictures with us of recent trip to New Zealand that made the pics at the end of the film look tame. I think I’ve learned that I probably can’t hang with the Kiwis – if those pics are any indicator, they are some crazy partiers. Good times!

Me, Now

My life is mostly fabulous. I try to pack a lot into my time and I think could my stories into a comic book alter ego – International Chica Fabulosa. Sometimes I do in my head.

But do I focus on all the wacky and wonderful adventures I have? Of course not! My thoughts are generally mundanely swirling around what I can next cross off my to-do list. I harp on why my weight, finances, apartment, insert concern X here, are not where I’d like them to be. If you spied on me at random, you’d probably see a clumsy spaz knocking things over or frantically trying to find a set of keys I JUST had or a pair of sunglasses that are sitting on my head.

Additionally, as a late-twenty-something who has been highly educated, but is perhaps still searching for the best way to apply her talents, I'm regularly plagued by angst, ennui, and almost quarterly existential crises. What am I doing? Where am I going? Why the hell am I not there yet?

But the truth is, most of the time, my life really is AWESOME. When I break it down, I really do love it. I've seen and done some really cool things and gone to some amazing places. I have a wonderful, supportive husband who helps calm me down when I'm in crazy-land. Both of our families rock. They’re all crazy, but they rock. And really I wouldn’t have in any other way. I have quirky, interesting friends and acquaintances that keep life busy and exciting. And definitely not to take it for granted, I have my health.

Really, my career is the elusive piece in my personal puzzle. It's not to say that I'm a slacker. Not at all. I really like working hard. I've been working in the film biz for quite a while now - pretty much from the moment I left the haven of my ivy covered Alma Matter. I never had any delusions that it would be easy; nevertheless, I have to admit, I thought I'd be a little farther down my road by now.

Maybe I've been thrown some curve balls (who hasn't been walloped a couple) and maybe things haven't gone exactly how I'd planned (when do they ever), but I suspect that one of the bigger factors standing in my path is that I'm not all that certain which way I want to go in this business. Do I want to continue down the producer road I started out to pursue. If so, which route to get there? Do I perhaps want to dabble in directing? The only genre I'm currently interested in directing would be documentaries. Art department looks fun too. Working the film fest circuit could be interesting. I also kind of miss the theatre . . .

Most of the time, I do think that this is the business I want to be in; however, I'll admit that my mind regularly cycles through a repertoire of alternative fantasy careers, most equally difficult to navigate: chef, food critic, nutritionist, travel writer. Or maybe I'd like to return to my road not taken - NGO's and non-profits. Should I go back to school? I do miss the structured path being in school provides. But what in? Seems pointless unless I really know what I want to do. Film school seems obvious, but again what route? Latin American Studies is a new comer to the list. But, um, what do you do with that? Law school has always taken regular spins around my brain. I could take up human rights or environmental law and actually help people. I also have the sense that a law degree protects you a little from that feeling of impotence you get when the world/people/life try to screw you. And maybe what I'd really love to be is a yoga instructor. That seems like a very pleasant life. Or, if Anthony Bourdain ever wants to give up No Reservations or just wants to take on a sidekick – I’d snap up that gig in a second. No matter what, the only thing that seems certain is that I'll never make much money. (Sorry, Honey - the burden rests on your shoulders if we're ever to be rich.)

So maybe I haven't figured out the whole career thing out yet. So what. You never know when life is going to come along and trample through the painstakingly crafted picture you’ve managed to put together, but one piece missing from the jigsaw puzzle at the quarter life mark ain't too shabby. (Actually, I'm closer to the third-of-the way marker, but whatever.) There has to be something to keep ya going, guessing, reaching, searching, I suppose.

That said, I coming up on the precipice on a big life upheaval. In a couple of months, G is going to be doing a study-abroad program in Sydney for four months through his B-school, and I’m going with him. (Ok, maybe I lobbied for it . . . just a little bit . . . heavily) Despite the clearly questionable logic of leaving a steady job in the middle of a recession (a factor I’m very aware of), it seems like an opportunity for us to have a major adventure together that might not come around again for a very long while. Additionally, it seems like a good time to take a step back and consider what’s next.

I’ve been considering that perhaps the best way to figure out that whole mess, is to not focus on that missing piece at all, with all of it’s daunting angst-causing questions. Maybe the thing to do is to focus on that other ¾ of my life for a change - that bigger part in all of its AWESOMENESS, and actually take note of how amazing and fun it actually is. (A somewhat cheesy revelation, I know, but I figure I’ll give this whole positivity thing a try anyways. Put good vibes into the world, breed good karma, and all that jazz. I’m not crossing into he realm of the Secret here – but you get it, yada, yada, yada) And maybe by doing that, the mess will sort itself out, or maybe at least I’ll get some kind of clue. Now seems like a good time to start and it seems like a good way to take note of it all, would be to record it – writing about it, sharing the occasional random musing, throw pics up, maybe video clips, whatever.

At the end of the day, the only thing I know I want to be is to be a collector of experiences -- of all kinds. I’ve already amassed a respectable collection. I’m hoping to make this my scrapbook from here on out. It is my attempt to reclaim all the cool stuff that gets nothing-muched away while I try to get a handle on everything else.

Now, enough with the cheese and on to the fun stuff.