chattervox's blog

Bike sadness!

The offending pedal

Earlier tonight, I was trying to have my nice bicycle ride to yoga.  Halfway there the left pedal on my bike started feeling kind of squishy.  When I got off to look, I saw that the screw of the pedal had worked its way diagonally out of the crank thingy, and because the screw was apparently made of cheapass plastic it was stripped and bent and couldn't be fixed.  I had to call and convince one of my housemates to pick me and the bicycle up and drive me to yoga.  Grrrr!

Bike

I bought this bike just last Friday on an imprudent impulse - imprudent because I don't have a job yet, and I promised myself I'd wait until I did to start any capitalist frenzies.  But I did not wait.  (In fact, historically the amount I spend is inversely proportional to my income, on account of spending money makes indigent life less boring, and ultimately this is responsible for my net worth being, still, in the red column.)  At any rate, I got the itch when I started checking out a critical-mass-type midnight ride that happens once a month or so in Los Angeles, and I came across a bunch of links to local bicycle advocacy and route mapping sites and the like.  I decided it was totally badass to have a bicycle in LA.  I'm a really contrary person - I could have biked around in outdoorsy Seattle, but I thought the drivers there were on average too much of asshats, and the traffic too gnarly.  Now that I'm in LA, where nobody expects you to possibly have a bike, and the traffic could not be gnarlier, I felt the overwhelming impulse to buy one and start biking around.  And then when I found myself in Santa Monica near a bike shop I'd read about, I impulse purchased the moderately-low-end hybrid I'd been reading up on.  Hooray for using credit unwisely!

I kind of expected that I'd make the inadvisable purchase and then compound it by letting the bike languish in the garage out of fear of traffic.  But I did awesome during the first week, considering I'm a bicycling n00b, biking out to hollywood once (about 8 miles each way) and once before today to yoga.  Hills and traffic do make me want to cry but eventually I'm determined to become fierce enough to bike commute to work on occasion, even if it's far away (maybe even in Santa Monica).

But tonight I'm grumpy about this bad luck - I've only ridden on it 2 1/2 times and I already have to trek to the bike shop to try and get some less craptastic (and less brokexored) pedals.  I just hope the bicycle gods do not remain against me or I may not survive.

Unemployed in Los Angeles

Master and Commander (Aubrey Maturin Series)

Oranges in the backyard

I spent much of today sitting on our back porch in the shade of an orange tree in our backyard, re-reading the first book in Patrick O'Brian's long naval adventure series (I have to start again at the beginning since I forget what had happened when I left the series, five books in and at least as many years ago) and eating oranges straight off of the tree.  I ate enough oranges that I feel a little sugar fever.  Soon I'm going to take a leisurely bike ride to a yoga class.

I'm supposed to hear back tomorrow from the job I applied for last week.  I am fervently hoping they will give me an offer, since I think working there would be awesome.  But I'm also going to serously miss unemployment if they do, it's a little bit lovely that every day is Sunday.

What I did in my summer vacation from the internets

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged anything in 3 months.  Although this is normal for me, this time I have an excuse.  Lots of excuses!

Not too long after my last blog entry in July, I started finishing things up for the end of my job at Microsoft.  I had worked there for a year before I decided to move to Los Angeles with my sweetie and announced that I was leaving.  There were a lot of things to finish and I went a little bit crazy.

On my last day of work, August 11, I left in the afternoon to go on a week-long cruise to Alaska with my mom.

Alaska is pretty cool.  We saw glaciers,

eagles and whales and other wildlife,

and a lot of picturesque scenery.

This just about balanced out the downsides; being on a cruise is like being confined to a nice but cramped and really surreal hotel for a week,

and every place we went was covered in tourist traps, overpriced gimmicky jewelry stores, and tacky souvenir shops for a good 10 miles in every direction of where the cruise ships dock.

In conclusion I would probably go on a cruise again, although only if, like this time, someone else were paying for it. But, next time I go to Alaska I think I'd rather see it properly, spend more time in actual Alaska and less on a boat, and maybe do some hardcore camping and hiking.

Then...

I stopped back home in Seattle for about 5 minutes after which we went to Orcas Island for our friends' wedding.

Wedding

We were staying on a farm.

Farm

Tonx took millions of pictures of the animals

and so did I.

Then...

back in Seattle for a few days and another wedding (you people and your marriaging) before we went to Burning Man.  Burning Man should have been a crazy experience--the two times I've gone before were both intense.  But this year I was physically and mentally worn out and nervous about moving to LA, and I could not muster any energy to do it up right.  Our camp made some completely transcendent waffles though one day, and t of course made delicious coffee.  I didn't take any pictures there, but, our friend took a pic I really love of the van that was our home that week.

Then...

two days after we got back from the desert, we drove down from Seattle to Los Angeles over the course of four days.  We stopped for coffee a lot.

I scheduled two job interviews during the one week I was subsequently in LA at the beginning of August.  That was kind of unwise--after all this, I was a nervous wreck.  I was completely incoherent for my talk at USC, and hadn't prepared my slides well at all.  I think the other interview may not have been as much of a debacle since they're having me back for another interview this Friday.  Knock on wood for me.

My one week in LA was followed by two weeks back in Seattle.  I flew back to Seattle to pack up all our belongings, load them into one of those moving cubes, and then party.  T was already on the job in L.A., but since I was unemployed by this point, and wanted to hang out in Seattle a while longer, I did not mind packing up our stuff myself. Here was the plan: pack like crazy for the first week, get it all done early, and spend the second week hanging out with friends and lounging around visiting my favorite Seattle haunts, and maybe having some kind of crazy goodbye party.

Here was the reality: spend the first week rearranging and reorganizing all our things in a completely useless but obsessive-compulsive fashion and also reading mystery stories.  Spend the second week panicking, staying up all night packing several times, and coming down with a horrific cold.   Because of this new strategy I invented, the enjoying Seattle and hanging out with friends parts of the moving experience did not really happen.  But, there was still time for a little drinking.

Laura with beer

Even though it was hellish, and I came down with the cough of doom, it was actually my best-planned move ever so far.

And now, here I am in Los Angeles.  What?  But as soon as I finish getting over my icky moving cold, then I shall have all kinds of adventures.  And blog about them!  For my summer vacation from the intarwebs is over!