D111

so a brief LA update. everything is just buzzing out here. just living. don't know how to explain it. school is fun, respectively, compared to typical boring class. it's boring sometimes, but it's for a greater purpose and it's in an office building with movie posters everywhere. let's see; the good:
<-------Vaugniston/Vaughnnifer/Jennivaughn/Vinceifer/Jennifer Aniston + Vince Vaughn @ Dragonfly, Spazmatics playing.
-D111 is THE place to be. we seem to host the UTLA parties; (see Facebook for proof). The kids out here from Austin are cool as hell, and we all seem to enjoy each others' company.
-Bret...two weeks...mmmmmm
-melrose, view from mulholland, seeing sarah bareilles sing live, being around steph, saint monica's church, racker (rachel+acker), layering, andrea cutting people, allison rapping, food, kombucha, EDGE, music video shoots...many more visceral things. oh, and fred segal sweatshirts.
the bad:
-BATS on the ground
-traffic/parking
-cost of living
-blake mcgrath not calling me back.
-being broke.
-waiting for two weeks.
the ugly:
my housecleaning skills. the air. my camry. prices of clothes. the third right lane.

i miss everybody, but this is where i need to be. even though i can't back it up with a plan whatsoever?

there's a mountain outside my door

and i'm here. odd. the drive was so nice from angelfire, or maybe i was just ready to leave b/c i got my ass kicked. *thanks bret and everyone. i know you liked seeing me fall every three feet in the snow* yeah so skiing was fun and completely foreign to me but i had great teachers.

we stayed overnight in flagstaff, AZ, which was pretty much just like a tinier austin with choo-choo trains everywhere. it's a city of motels, and we had some soup and wine and leftover sandwiches for dinner. so visit flagstaff if you ever plan on hitch-hiking, which you should. it's funny how in austin, people wear north face and columbia gear--frat-tastic!!--but then in reality, people wear jackets because they're actually in sub-freezing weather.

the drive from flagstaff to LA was a great big morph from one topography to another: mountainlakedesertmountain. but really humbling to feel so small.

settling in was really no big deal whatsoever--we drove past sunset blvd, melrose, through and over hollywood, but i flipped my sh** when i saw the columbia records building. misinterpreted significance of popular iconography, but whatever. the apt is smaller than what i'm so used to, but that was to be expected. the roomate situation is great, and hopefully we can fumble around this town together. my first drive, in fact, is today taking bret to LAX. absolutely scary but will be so helpful in the long run. so now i'm just sitting here with coffee (NOT my own so i'm a little disappointed) and kicking back after my encounter with what can only be awarded the title of "pedestrian aerobics hallway" rather than "fitness center." i mean i guess you could get fit there, due to the kinesiological struggles with the rusty decades-old elliptical machine--and by machine i mean singular! you KNOW how i needs my elliptical fix. but WHAT am i COMPLAINING about??? i'm here.

pictures to come. i miss you.

stabbing westward

here we are, done with leg I of the trip (ATX-SAT) and ready to move on to legs II, III, and IV (SAT-LBK, LBK to Angelfire, NM; and NM-LA, respectively). can't say i didn't cry a little from Austin to home, but it's weird--i'm getting better at holding back every time. not sure if that's good.

said goodbye to my dad already, after he all but drowned me in maps, flares, emergency kits, and money and there ain't NOTHIN wrong with that. i am so lucky! i love that man and the family he watches over. unbelieveably lucky.

getting ready to say bye to adare and mom, probably will be the hardest cause adare's been telling me that she isn't thinking or talking about it. then it's off to palapas--so perfect--for breakfast with Kat and then heading west to Lubbock. gonna catch the game (i've been wearing nonstop orange!) and chillax for a while, then we caravan to NM.

random--a guy from lancaster, england, came across my thesis site and asked me for paper references! neat-o and small-world and so forth. i hope i can be halfway useful to someone other than myself, and that is TRULY the understated sentiment of the hour, despite any obvious contradictions. hope to talk to anyone and everyone soon as i'm near a computer! ciao my loves.

ahhhness and blahness

ahhh. sitting here at starbucks [the devil's playground, Big Brother, whatever] with my actual coffee--not latte or sprinkles or whipped cream--and a pumpkin scone because i live for pumpkin. anywho just wanted to give a happy update to things. christmas and birthday were wonderful because they were with people i love and who love me. baton rouge was not the same; the city's three times what it used to be in population and like my dad said, you can sense the frustration from evacuees and residents alike. and (festivity of festivities!) after missing my first two flights to dallas to connect to BR, i spent most of my time--a collective 24hrs--in town in a retirement community, the mall, and the hospital. so it was good to come home to a little of something more comfortable.

**i'll be here for a bit; i'm ripping all of adare's CD's so i can be cool like her and have broken social scene, her space holiday, the academy is..., and others. i wanna be just like her when i grow up. love you little but bigger sister! i just mean you're more of a badass.**

speaking of social scenes, mine here in san antonio is so simple and so catastrophic at the same time. daytime--target or bret's house or la cantera. nighttime--somewhere on bitters, either oasis (a.k.a. my torrid past), the falls (wes, we're old and the little kids don't want to play with us), and sometimes bitter end (blowwwwwing trees. thank god for high school friends in bands! did i mention seeing dominic rip up the bass was the best thing ever?). wait wait there's always broadway bar, getting the award for "makes my clothes smell the most repulsive." no matter where, i run into ex boyfriends and make my own little dramas, even if i'm neither here nor there on caring about old sh**. not gonna lie; i have issues with all of them except for jared (who actually goes by jump-off j. brown, if we wanna be accurate. i wonder what my name would be if i was a rapper...

i fizinally got a camera. i like to use it/run for your life.

well, folks, today i'm off to austin to pack up the old place before i do a little of this and a little of that during my last week around. then it's off into the sunset, in a really literal sense.

lo how a rose e'er blooming

for some reason i'm really emotional and there are some tears. happy ones, though. tears because i am lucky; i have all these little families across the country that never really intersect but i'd like to think about how they really might, after all. tears because i feel taken care of as much as people are willing to. tears because of uncertainty; i'm scared of T-minus-a month. i don't know why and i don't know why my mind insists on putting so much at stake as for what the future holds. tears because there are things people don't know--that no one knows--about me. why is that realization so powerful?

it was a really really good day. not a fancy one, not a wild one, not a popularity contest, but my birthday was special--you know who you are if you made it that way. [usually, i'm neither here nor there on the question of love and its paradox: if the people we love are so wonderful, why do they need love to fill a void? meaning if a person seems perfect, and you love them, they really aren't perfect because they are lacking your love. so then those we love are lacking, just are we are lacking as well--or else we wouldn't seek it out....blah blah that can go on forever, but today i am convinced that the love i felt all weekend--from several sources--is love nonetheless and that i don't CARE how it got there; to question it is to disrespect its limitlessness.]

fantastic facts of the day: 40,000 people visited the Trail of Lights tonight. i am surrounded by flowers. i finally had a fire in my fireplace [way to go, unintentional metaphor! jesus.] i love smells and sounds more than sights...but maybe not more than touch. i have more alcohol over here than i can finish, so drop by, sing me a carol or two, and i'll get you properly sloshed.

or we could always sing together...