Nothing new to write about. I've TA'd three Hipcooks classes so far: one difficult (Road to Nirvana - Indian food), one moderate (Healthy, Fresh and Zingy 2 - highlights of which were scallops and walnut cake) and one super easy (A Cocktail Party - Yay, mojitos and martinis). I find that it is definitely a nice way to keep busy. And everyone I've worked for has been super nice. The cocktails class was taught by the owner, Monika, so I was super nervous and intimidated the whole time. She drives a pretty sick, candied-apple red Ferrari, which she unapologetically parked across two lanes in the alley behind the store and has a sister who makes weird mod-patterns-meet-psychedelic-color-palette jewelry... mostly glass pendants that she makes herself. Awesome.
I kept up with recreating the dishes for my family, and now I have some lovely and easy dishes tucked away in the neat little corners of my budding amateur chef mind to pull out and impress if the occasion presents itself.
Anyway, the reason I'm writing is because I took a three-block walk to Blockbusters to return a couple of movies I'd rented (Be Kind, Rewind - yay - and The Bucket List - eh) and, wow. Let me just say again: Wow. I had never seen the place so full! It made me think that maybe people are trying to save money by spending a fraction of what it costs to go out on renting a movie and staying in for the night. It made me think about things I have given up or will soon have to give up. I think I'm sort of in denial. Yes, it costs $50 to fill up my fairly fuel-efficient vehicle, so it's not like I have the worst of it. Yes, I am living at home while I figure out the situation with my not-so-generously-paying job and my blood-sucking student loan (I should have consolidated when I had the chance. I'm an idiot. I know it.) and car payments. Somehow, the latter is not really saving me any money because it seems that I am way more cavalier about spending money on frivolities when I don't have to save money for rent. At least I have some cute clothes. I'll be the best-dressed homeless person in L.A. (That might not be true. Depends how long Boho chic manages to stick around, I guess. Damn that Mary Kate Olsen.) But even though I don't have as many immediate worries as other people (you know, ones with mortgages and kids), I should think I might be a teeny bit worried. For gee's sake, I've been looking up airfare and have seriously considered flying first class (It's a short distance, so not an astronomical price... plus, I want to see how it feels! And I sure as hell won't flirt my way in. Or can't flirt my way in. Whatever.) So I haven't really felt the pressure of the economic squeeze that is surely there... working like a slow-moving boa constrictor. Wow, none of this has been remotely following a cohesive thread. At least, not the one of my original intent, I think. It's like a blog version of a Jackson Pollock. Basically, I'm spending too much money. That's all.
The only thing I think I've sacrificed because of this "downturn" or "recession" or "suckfest" might be my misery. I am no longer afforded the luxury of hating my job so much that I seriously entertain the idea of quitting. At least I have a job, right? And what am I qualified to do, anyway? What do you do with a B.A. in English, indeed! Blarg.
Things I want to do: *Read a book worth reading *Bungee jump off a bridge *Go a whole family gathering without someone asking about my relationship status *Save money (HA!) *Stop buying DVDs (I have roughly 120... most of them bad)
I feel like a bundle of repressed creative energy. Makes me want to explode or self-medicate with Ritalin or something else equally unappealing. Maybe I'll take a creative writing class at UCLA Extension... After all those quarters of wanting to be done with it, I want to go back? I don't even know who I am anymore.
Work satisfaction remains a foreign concept to me. I can't decide if the cause of it could be traced back to my relentlessly negative disposition (which I readily admit to harboring) or the stifling corporate atmosphere... Or the handful of super-undesirables that work in my office. Or the unforgivingly dull nature of my job. The truly sad part of all this? I've even entertained the idea of applying for an editorial assistant position at Tiger Beat magazine to pull myself out of this current hole of work-hate. The shame! But as embarrassing as that would be, I think a majority of the four people reading this knows that I am only too fit (or at least was, once upon a not-too-long-ago time) to feed on and dish out fodder for teenybopper mags. But enough of this crap.
I have not been completely deprived of good things. I did what approximately 5 million other women in this country did last weekend: Have a girls' night out watching Sex and the City. While I have heard two accounts of dissatisfaction (both perfectly valid), the movie was everything I expected it to be. Maybe I had lower standards. I also saw a girl who was on The OC (Lindsay, Caleb's lovechild, second season) at the Americana that weekend. Yay, first pseudo-celeb sighting in Glendale. The city's movin' on up.
Next Monday, I'm taking a class at the West Hollywood location of HipCooks. I'd told Cathy about wanting to take a one-time cooking class, and it turns out that she and her cousin had been wanting to do the same. They wanted to try the A Romantic Dinner for Two class, and I wanted to try the Healthy, Fresh, Zingy 2 class, so Cathy signed us up for the former and we decided to go for it and I signed us up for the latter (which is going to be on the 17th). Yay! Expensive, but hopefully a good experience. And they have some sort of deal, where you can earn credits for free classes by volunteering to be an assistant during other classes! (Make no mistake, I'm looking into it.)
In conclusion, does anyone know of any job openings? Anywhere? (Please?)
As time passes, I find it increasingly difficult to care about anything enough that I want to write about it. And, you know, I really only go online when I'm at work, which means if I have things to do (sadly, it's a lot of the time since the beginning of this year... with a better title comes great responsibility, I suppose) I don't get to dick around and write blogs. Boo. So I'll just keep this window open and type it out when I have a few minutes. Or when I feel like I need a distraction before I decide to use the letter opener as an instrument of death--my own, of course. Candice does not do homicide.
My stimulus rebate check proved not so much fun as useful, since I put 5/6 of it towards paying off my credit card and the remaining amount in my savings account (I know... totally not the point of the stimulus check).
Speaking of paying off credit cards... I'm still shocked that I have never abused my lovely - and dangerous - plastic. I guess I'm more afraid of spending money I don't have than I originally assumed I was. Credit card debt seems like total crap. Student loans are hard enough. I think I pay anywhere between $650 and $825 in bills every month. It's awesome. I should just not eat lunch and buy lottery tickets with that money instead. Even if I don't win, it's like I AM winning because I'm losing weight! This is so not a psychologically healthy place for me.
Lately, I haven't been up to much. Stephanie got me into making jewelry, which many of you know, so I mostly sit at home and tinker around with wires, chains and the few beads that I have. I guess some good has come of it, since our jewelry-making sessions (we make a day of it sometimes... it's nice to have someone to geek out with) have made me better at mimicking jewelry that I want but do not want to pay more than $10 for. And I don't think I'm being any more in the wrong for ...borrowing (ahem)... people's designs than they are for charging outrageous prices for them. Besides, I don't sell the darn things, so get off your high horse already. Yes, I realize that this is my guilt rambling.
Last night was May's birthday celebration (Happy birthday - again - May!) and we went to this random, out-of-the-way restaurant called the Medusa Lounge for dinner and then went to a karaoke place in Koreatown. It made me miss Sylvia because she would have appreciated the 80s music I was trying to get all crazy with and would have felt just as foreign as I did in a place designated "Koreatown". I sort of miss not being the least-Korean Korean person in a room. Ha. But everyone brought it with the karaoke skills and the night turned out to be, at the very least, quite entertaining. Scary faces carved into the restaurant walls, three ice cream cakes (oops!), cute server, happy hour, karaoke... not a bad Sunday night.
And to back it up a little, Stephanie and I were foolish enough to go hiking on Saturday morning. The sun was already pretty unforgiving and we started our hike at 9a! I think it took a little less than two hours. We went to Arroyo Seco, which is in/close to La Canada. It was a pretty well-shaded trail, but still hot. Also, we saw a teeny snake (Still! It's a snake!) and passed a bee tree (lots of buzzing)... both of which caused me to freeze in terror but try to play it off like it was nothing. I think I might stick to Runyan Canyon and its hundreds of people. It's the Disneyland of hiking trails or something.
Has anyone seen Prince Caspian? I profess my cougar tendencies, as I found both of the brothers have grown into extreme hotness. Especially the one that plays Edmond... Young, yummy English boys in armor. Nice. I'm disgusting.
A couple of weeks ago, I learned about a benefit that the casts of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice were to hold on Feb. 29 (yesterday... wait. Is it March already!? Yuck.) and I had to--yes, HAD to--go. Hello? Almost the whole cast was going to be there. (Kate Walsh and Patrick Dempsey submitted cute videos that they played) The tickets weren't quite as expensive as I thought they would be, so I bought a couple of orchestra seats.
They held it at Royce Hall (on the UCLA campus), and it's not a huge venue so there really wasn't a bad seat in the house. The whole night had me floating on clouds. I (mostly) love Grey's Anatomy and I love musical revues and a couple of the Private Practice guys were funny and fairly attractive. So aside from the people who sat behind us and talked throughout the entire first act, which ultimately led to me and Cathy sitting in the front row of the mezzanine section (okay, fine, the balcony), everything was great. The view was actually just as good as (if not better than) the view from the seats we had previously occupied, so with the chatty duo no longer distracting us from the night's repertoire, we got to fully enjoy the rest of the concert.
The thing that irks me about the two who were sitting behind us is that they weren't even whispering. They were out-and-out having a loud conversation while people were talking or singing on stage. During one of the performances I actually had to turn around and hiss, "Excuse me," then immediately turn myself back around before anything less civilized decided to pop out of my mouth, after which I might have become a distraction from the performance. Of course, as I turned around, I caught the look of "Well, I never!" clearly etched into every pore of the girl's face (it was a father and his daughter). As if I was being unreasonable for wanting to enjoy the performance I paid to watch without having to listen to them squawking away behind me. I think that the dad was a crew member for Grey's (which Cathy gleaned from a snippet of their pre-show warm-up conversation), and I don't know if that made him think it was just peaches for him to carry on like that and disturb everyone around him, but I'd think he should be grateful enough not to hinder everyone around him from enjoying the concert, considering the benefit was for crew members who were out of work because of the writer's strike.
If I could write a letter and request that no part of my modest contribution not be bequeathed to the portly (or morbidly obese) father-daughter duo who talked throughout the entire (well, I'm not sure about the second half, but I'm sure they were excited that the only person who tried to hush them didn't come back after the intermission) night and know that the request would be honored, I might consider it. Another thing: That daughter had a Chanel purse, so I don't see why they would need so much help if she's going to be stepping out with a $2000 purse. Okay, that's out of my system now.
Anyway, the best part of the night was definitely Sara Ramirez (Callie Torres on Grey's and Tony award winner for her role in Spamalot), who had the opening and closing numbers. The first song she sang was "Meadowlark" from The Baker's Wife, after which she much deservedly received an enthusiastic (if not rabid) standing ovation. She also got a standing O for the last performance, which I recorded on my iPod. My tear ducts threatened to overflow during both performances. They were really moving. And she looked amazing!
TR Knight did a fun little number (I guess he has been in plays on Broadway), and I was pleasantly surprised. I could totally see him doing The Producers or Avenue Q. And he was so cute, before he started, he said, "I just have to say two things. One, I haven't done this in, like, 13 years (lies!). And two... I have to follow Sara Ramirez."
Chandra Wilson (Bailey on Grey's) sang "God Bless The Child" (she sang it during one of the ending montages in an episode of season three, if I remember correctly). Audra McDonald sang two numbers and there was one performance each from the Chief's wife, Loretta Divine, as well as James Pickens, Jr. (who plays the Chief)'s real wife, Gina Taylor-Pickens, a blues singer who blew me away (yay, homonyms!). James Pickens, Jr. came out in a James Brown wig and shiny cape outfit and lip-synched and danced for a little bit before introducing Gina Taylor-Pickens. He's just precious.
Eric Dane came out three times to present and every time was a minute of heaven. One of those times was to read fan mail insisting that Dr. Sloan should have his clothes off more ("If you're just going to have him in the OR, fully clothed and hiding his face behind a surgeon's mask, you might as well have gotten someone ugly for the role"). Taye Diggs who came out to present Loretta Divine, was also beyond on the hotness scale. Katherine Heigl wore an amazing red dress (she really works that color) and had some awesome moments on the stage. All of the presenters' banter and introductions were more cleverly written and arranged than any awards ceremony I've seen in a long time. There was even a part where Justin Chambers, TR, Katherine, Sara and Sandra Oh read some fan fiction, one involving werewolves and the other set in the medieval times.
I know I've recounted more than anyone is interested in and you were so bored three paragraphs ago, but I'm actually writing this all out for myself so that I don't forget it. It was all sort of amazing and I'm glad I got to experience it. Also, Cathy and I got Red Mango after the show and a night ending with Red Mango is a pretty great night on its own.
The Set List: * Sara Ramirez - Meadowlark * TR Knight - Losing My Mind/You Could Drive a Person Crazy * Chandra Wilson - God Bless The Child * Paul Adelstein (also played guitar) - Slip Slidin' Away * Audra McDonald - Can't Stop Talkin' About Him (so fun!) * Loretta Divine - I Believe In You And Me * Tim Daly, Paul Adelstein, Chris Lowell (sang and played harmonica!!), Amy Brenneman - California Stars * Gina Taylor-Pickens with Joe Byrd - Dr. Feelgood * Special Musical Guest (Patty Griffin) - Up To The Mountain * Sara Ramirez - Grateful (embedded below--I can't believe I figured out how to do it, but yay!)
If I see another person write, "She/he/I wasn't phased by it/him/her/that" or "It/he/she didn't phase me/him/her" or any variation thereof when the person actually means to use the word FAZE, I will unleash a scream unlike any that has ever before escaped my body.
Maybe I need to take a Midol. But seriously, people. Get it together.
