12 of 12: September

12 of 12! Welcome. Credit and thanks to Chad Darnell for a) inventing and b) hosting! Onward.

7:11 - So so SO much more awake than I would like to be.

8:10 - Sherlock surveys the scene and keeps the stuffed mice under control. It's good to have him around. (For safety reasons, you know.)

 1:05 - Baby shower leftovers: fancy mac-and-cheese and chicken-apple pigs in blankets. Lunch of champions, obviously.

 1:06 - There are a lot of weird off-brand chihuahuas in the world, but Coco here is not one of them. She's awesome and adorable, even when she's trying to charm me out of my pigs in blankets.

 1:35 - Scenic 3rd St., Dogpatch, lunchtime.

 6:20 - Driving into the sun, headed to the Mission...

 6:23 - ...where I drive UP Dolores St....

 6:24 - ...and back DOWN Dolores St.

 6:25 - The actual mission. It's super pretty.

 9:45 - Home from (sadly unphotographed) dinner, and deciding I need to refresh my Neko Case collection. As one does.

 10:02 - Sherlock helps.

 10:20 - So, you know how everybody says this show is great? They are not lying. IT IS GREAT.  You should watch it.

Happy September, everybody.

12 of 12: July

12 of 12! July. Chad Darnell. Yup.

6:51 - Up.

7:43 - Everybody loves a girl with her own tire gauge and needlenose pliers...right?

9:03 - Welcome to San Francisco! Happy July! Here are your mittens.

10:40 - The Standard Deviants production office: where the magic happens.

11:17 - Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW, one of a number of things I brought back with me from LA.

12:30 - Picking up lunch at kitchenette. Yup...that's a garage. Where I got my lunch.

12:34 - That's "no relish," as in green olives, because they are the fru-its of the de-vil, as are all brined vegetables.

12:42 - Grilled eggplant and heirloom tomato sandwich with feta on green-onion slab bread, with a side of Vietnamese-style caramel corn (caramel, peanuts, fish sauce, chiles, lime). Not cheap, but not bad.

6:23 - Traffic meltdown in the East Bay. Quick! Shorter and red, or longer and yellowish?

6:37 - Aaaand longer and yellowish wins it.

7:30 - At least dinner's waiting for me when I get home. ...I am Don Draper.

8:40 - A walk in the wind, minus headphones, because one can really only listen to so much NPR before things get a little crazy. Obviously.

12 of 12: June

12 of 12! Welcome! Kudos to Chad Darnell, originator and keeper of the flame.

8:31 - Up, and not too early. As it should be.

9:00 - Cereal stew: Special K with Red Berries + Kashi GoLean Crunch chaser.

9:16 - The way things should be.

10:40 - I moved last Saturday and started a new job on Monday, so this is pretty much how things are right now. Stuff'll get put away...someday?

11:00 - Basket of cat.

12:24 - The Old Navy dressing room, where I try on half the store and buy exactly nothing that I can wear to work.

1:20 - This is probably only funny if you know my dad and his twin passions for Rubio's and building stuff.

1:37 - Al Zampa Bridge, southbound. (It only goes southbound.)

2:50 -Visiting for a friends-and-family screening of Cars 2, thanks to my pal (and Pixar rendering guru) Susan.

5:07 - Eeee! A picture with the Pixar lamp and ball is like Disneyland for grownups.

5:48 - Continuing my quest to assemble a proper work wardrobe, with mixed results. (I didn't buy the dress; I did buy fancy new jeans.)

9:40 - Strawberry rhubarb pie from Ikeda's, which would have been worth the trip to Reno even without, like, graduations and family events and details like that.

Going places

I just bought a plane ticket to Reno.

Let me tell you a little about this trip: I will fly out of LAX at 8:05. IN THE MORNING. Do you know how early I will have to be at the airport for this to happen? And do you know how far before that time  rush hour traffic begins? Then I will fly to Reno. Reno! Which is as cheesy as, and yet not as exciting as, Las Vegas! Then I will attend my youngest cousin's high school graduation. Now: I am very fond of my youngest cousin, and I am more than happy to attend any events in her honor, but a three-hour list of strangers' children, read aloud, is--I'm sorry to say--quality knitting time, at best (except, of course, for the part where we stand up and whoop and holler, because we are a classy bunch).


Still: I am so excited.  I get to go somewhere! It's been awhile: since driving west from DC eighteen months ago, I have made many trips between Los Angeles and San Francisco, plus exactly one weekend road trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix. That's it. I haven't been on a plane since August. And I owe so many visits: by rights, Glenna should be dragging me all over Toronto by now, and let's not even talk about how many times I'll have to go to Seattle to make up for my college roommate's willingness to come to me in my hour of poverty. And the East Coast! It's been entirely too long since my last back-porch Sunday lunch with my aunt and uncle. I haven't had ciders at Deacon Brodie's and dinner at Gazala Place with Lauren, or a sleepover with Sarah, or been furniture shopping with my brother, in just a million years. And I'm a little mad at Broadway for having so much stuff I want to see (The Normal Heart with Jim Parsons and Lee Pace! Company with Neil Patrick Harris and Katie Finneran and Stephen Colbert and everybody else in the world!) when they know I can't make it. Rude, right?

But Reno. RE-NO! It's beautiful to me, like a corny, smooshy song from the 70s. It's going to be a million degrees, and I'm all, Excellent for strapless dresses! I will be sharing a hotel room with my parents, which in my mind just means Extra bonding time! It's all an exotic getaway, with suitcases and hotel continental breakfasts (maybe with those make-your-own waffle bars!) and my very own TSA scanner/pat-down dilemma! The excitement of it all: be still my heart!

So, see you all in Nevada. I'll be the one cheering for everything.

12 of 12: April

Heyyyy, 12 of 12! Credit to Chad Darnell, guru and gracious host.

Anyway:

7:34 - Up, suspiciously early for a sleep-in day. 

8:10 - Out for a run. Looking  a little hippy, there, shadow! What gives?

8:16 - Running down Triunfo Canyon Road, which I always call TRIUNFO! Canyon Road, emphasis on the TRIUNFO!

9:13 - There is nothing quite like the realization that you are shaving your legs with the equivalent of a bladeless twig, and that Target sells a six-month supply for like $7.

10:11 - If there was ever a question, this grocery list in progress is further proof that I am my father's daughter.

11:47 - Cramming my eighteen pounds of groceries into a single basket, as you do, because using a cart is so much lamer than hunchbacking it around the store with an overloaded basket. Obviously.

12:15 - Throwing together some Sweet Pea and Tuna Salad for a few days' worth of lunches, and listening to everything on my iTunes with a listened-to rate of exactly one. Recommendations: Find some hidden treasures, and follow up with a mint or twelve.

12:50 - Yesterday, I used the last of my Christmas gift cards to buy Tina Fey's new book. (Thanks, Brydon!) The problem, here, is that I have things to do, and now I don't want to do any of them. I just want to read hilarious and embarrassing, yet oddly uplifting, stories about growing up and becoming a TV writer.

1:25 - Speaking of things to do: Have I mentioned that I write book reports for work? Why did nobody tell me this was an option? Here, my thoughts on a surprisingly well-written zombie book.

6:13 - This is how Starbucks gets you: Just the right armchair, just the right afternoon light, just the right level of white noise, just the right kind of music to drown out via Frightened Rabbit on headphones, just the right kind of milk and sugar without ever having to buy more. If I ever get any writing done, it was probably there.

7:33 - It is, in my opinion, one of the great secrets of home cooking that roasted asparagus tastes an awful lot like potato chips. (Plus fish. And potatoes, which also taste like chips with the proper application of olive oil and salt.)

8:40 - Yes, this is our freezer. Yes, it is full of Drumsticks. No, it is not always like this. Yes, I had an intense conversation with myself about the importance of one Drumstick per day. Not two. ONE.

Happy twelfth, everybody!

Zen and the Art of Air Bed Maintenance

These days, I spend a surprising amount of time and mental energy on my bed. I don't mean while on my bed—I mean the bed itself requires a certain degree of involvement. When I moved to LA, I folded the seats of my VW Golf down and packed up the entire contents of my bedroom-to-be, including the brand-new queen-sized double-tall air mattress my parents had recently bought as extra sleeping space for their cabin. Nearly six months later, the air bed and I are hanging in there, still experimenting with degrees of firmness, concepts of object attachment, and the ideal conditions for avoiding puncture wounds (or not). I think I've learned a few things about air bed life:


- Inflatable things need, or at least cause, constant monitoring. Air bed ownership (borrowership) is a constant fact-finding mission. Is the bed losing air? Is the bed sitting on top of any cords? Is the bed too close to the wall, and rubbing against it? Is the air bed anywhere within the vicinity of pins, needles, or anything else that might cause it grief? Is the bed too firm or too soft, causing neck pain?  With the air bed, change is bad.

- Inflatable things get holes. It's hard to express the irrational sense of doom that came over me the first time my bed sprang a leak. It's not like I had no other place to sleep; there are no fewer than four full-sized couches, one love seat, and one totally unloved gigantic armchair in my house. But because air beds aren't made for activities other than being perfectly horizontal (more on that in a moment), the odds of detecting a leak before it's four a.m. and your head is resting on the ground are slim—and somehow, that particular exchange with gravity is, at that time of the night, the very worst thing imaginable. These days, the occasional hole isn't such a big psychological event (so far they've all been located on the sleeping surface, and easy to find—and I pray daily that the side seams never give out); outdoor stores sell air bed repair kits, but I've had plenty of success with a Sharpie to mark the hole, a glob of Super Glue to close it up, and a triangle of hot pink duct tape to keep everything in place and looking classy. Because I'm nothing if not the paragon of good breeding and high standards: my bed is, after all, a double-tall. 

- Inflatable things are not immune to mildew. When combined with a foam egg crate, mattress pad, flannel sheets, down comforter, two pillows, and a human being with functioning endocrine system. Ask me how I know!

- Inflatable things are not for sitting. This is perhaps the worst thing about having an inflatable bed: real mattresses don't "crush" around the edges, making them ideal for sitting on, say with a laptop. Like, to write. Or watch TV. Or read without putting one arm to sleep. Not so with the air beds, which will leave a person V-ed against the wall without a second thought, and then possibly spring a leak just for the sake of revenge. (Enter the ugly fold-up camp chair I also appropriated from my parents, which stands in for my beloved antique armchair but is simply not the same.) It's distressing.

- Inflatable things need love, too. Let me clarify something: I have a bed. A real one, a queen-size with a modern sleigh-bed frame and the world's most comfortable mattress. With springs and everything! I adore that bed, and I live daily with the bright and shining hope that we will be together again some day. In the mean time, let me also assure you that it is quite possible to get attached to an air mattress. With the right sheets and the proper level of exhaustion, that blissful moment of flopping (or, in my case, crawling gingerly, taking care not to stress the structure of the mattress; see above) down with a great sigh of "MY BED!" is absolutely possible. Never mind that it's a glorified pool toy. In that moment, it's the most glorious pool toy.
Some day, I imagine I'll be reunited with my beloved, sittable, non-mildewing, non-hole-prone bed, and I will be a grateful and slightly more happy-go-lucky girl on that day. However, I've developed a strange affection for the air bed. It's served me well. And in case of emergency, well, you probably won't see anybody else bringing their beds along.

12 of 12: February

Heyyyy, it's 12 of 12, back in action after a month where I took the pictures and then was too busy to upload them. Soooo, yay for not having a life? All credit to Chad Darnell, creator and keeper of the 12 of 12 flame; for more, check out his site.

7:45 - Up.

11:27 - Proctoring a practice SAT, and let me tell you: there's nothing more exciting than watching high school students take a test for four hours on a Saturday morning. (Good book, though.)

1:34 - High school students, naked plaster ladies frolicking...must be Saturday?

1:55 - Gas is SO EXPENSIVE right now. Why is nobody else freaking out about this?

2:02 - My beloved salsa bar at my beloved Sea Casa, neighborhood health-conscious taqueria extraordinaire. Because sometimes a girl just needs some grilled fish with her pureed roasted tomatoes.

4:05 - Malibu Canyon, which is so cool that I'm always a little surprised it's a valid way to get where I want to go.

5:34 - Awesome.

5:58 - Did you know that there are grown-up monkey bars/rings/climbing ropes on the beach at Santa Monica? This is my friend, showing off an upper-body-strength-to-body-weight ratio that I cannot even hope to emulate.

6:05 - ....Winter? Okay.

6:10 - Cool! I feel like there's a geometry word problem waiting to happen here, but maybe that's just me.

8:03 - My feet. Not my fire.

8:10 - Any evening spent around a fire at the beach with friends, blankets, wine, and burgers can't be all bad. Or ANY bad, actually.

Happy Valentine's Day, all!