The Gurly Life

Caturday

Saturday began lazily, as Saturdays usually do for me. No matter what else I have planned for the weekend, I reserve the few hours before yoga, which begins at 11:30, to just being lazy. I usually wake up early-ish, have breakfast in bed, and either read or watch a movie on DVD. Yes, I still have DVD, I have not made the move to Blu Ray yet. And I have resolved not to buy any more movies ever because I'm sure that as soon as I decide to buy even one movie on Blu Ray, they will come out with some new technology, and Blu Ray will be phased out. Screw that, I'm done. Until the next Kevin James movie. What? I love him.

Yoga was awesome, as usual. Sometimes I'll do a yoga class and I will be sore in places I find surprising. Yesterday I was sore in my shoulder blades. I guess I finally worked those bad boys. Maybe one day I can try a level 2-3 class.

After yoga I drove to Whittier to hang out with my friend Blythe. Blythe and I have been friends since we met in federal district court. During my 3L, I spent one semester externing for a federal district court judge, the Honorable Ronald S.W. Lew, and Blythe was one of his law clerks. The other law clerk was Melanie, and Joe was the second extern. We had a great time working together, and laughed a lot. We are all still friends, even though Melanie and Joe have moved away. The Judge does a law clerk/extern reunion dinner every year, and this year will also be his 70th birthday. A video is being edited together, and Blythe and I couldn't make it to the official taping, so we did a little video together to send in to the videographer, who will no doubt cry from the lameness and maybe use 5-10 seconds of what we send in.

We made several attempts, 3 of which we're sending in and 1 of which we're not. Blythe and I are not exactly movie star materials, and we entertained ourselves by our own lameness. Here's some of the lameness.

In the evening I went to my friend Francesca's 40th birthday gathering. I joined her and a few other great people at La Cachette in Santa Monica. Proceeds from a small silent auction and from bar sales went to the Talbert Family Foundation. This nonprofit's mission is to assist families with children who have cancer and other serious illnesses. Please consider making a donation to this worthy cause. And yes, I donate to about 17 different charities, not including all the friends and co-workers miscellaneous foundations.  And yes, I am asking you to donate to this one, too.

We all got dressed up for this one, and looked lovely. I took pictures with my new iPhone 4. They're not nearly the quality I like, but the phone fit in my tiny purse so that's what worked. Here are some of the pics.

Francesca, the birthday girl, and me.

Dave, Francesca's husband, toasting Francesca's birthday.

With Natalie.

With Fatima.

Meaghan and Adam. You can see part of the baby carriage behind them. They showed up with their 5 week old daughter, who slept through the whole thing.

My good friend Ian.

Francesca and Meaghan.

I drove home after 11pm, SO LATE!, so I turned up the music. At one point I noticed that I had Lady Gaga going so loud that my car was doing the bass vibration thing - an incredibly nerdy thing, as I drive a Prius. But then, I was out till practically dawn, so I thought the hell with it, I'm going to be an obnoxious Prius driver. Until, of course, I got to my neighborhood, when I turned down the music because disturbing people at night is rude, thus fizzling out my bad girl streak.

Sunday morning safari

The plan for this morning was pretty much to chill out. Watch a movie on tv, drink lots of tea, relax my poor, lame calf muscles (lame!) and then drag my ass out of bed around noon to have lunch with Kirke (a belated birthday lunch). Well, the chilling out part of the plan went to shit: I woke up early and flung myself out of bed, threw my bike into the back of my car, grabbed my camera, and off I went. No chilling out for this chick.

I had to inflate my bicycle tires, and stopped at the gas station up the street. A nice man had just pulled up near the air and water pumps, and while he used the water, I used the air. We immediately started talking about blogs and photos. His name is Scott, he is a photographer who recently started a photo blog, and he was off to Huntington Beach on a photo adventure. I myself was, in fact, going on a photo adventure. Though I suspect mine was less adventurous than his, as I planned to be back by 11am. Here is Scott's photo blog. It's a pretty new blog, so please check it out, it's always good to have support on new projects like this.

So, after having a quick chat with my fellow blogger and after successfully inflating my bike's tires (and by successfully, I mean I didn't blow them up), off I went.

Keep in mind that the reason(s) I was planning to chill today was that (a) my left calf was sore, and I got a bit of Achilles tendinitis going on in the right ankle (old injury, flared up because I was compensating for the left calf - sigh...), (b) yesterday I did 3 hours of yoga (count 'em -- three!), because I took a hip opener workshop. Given the recent hip uncertainties (god, I'm falling apart), I thought it would be good to just ... rest this morning.

Hah.

Instead of resting, I spent 2 hours biking on the beach, taking photos of a few of the recently painted lifeguard stations all along the coast. This is a huge public arts project that will be up from May to October, and spans 30 miles of beach across LA County. The project is called Summer of Color. All my photos were taken from the bike path, and you can see lots more photos at the official project website, and you can get more info about Projects of Hope here. I don't know about you, but I totally dig public art projects.

However, if you want to see my pictures, you can go to my Flickr set, Summer of Color 2010. Below are just a couple.
 



The lifeguards in LA County are not just teenagers who have summer jobs: the lifeguards are a division of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, not to be confused with the Los Angeles Fire Department, which serves the City of Los Angeles.

If you're worried about the health of my calves, well, don't be, I was biking very slowly. That, of course, is because I had to keep my eyes open for good photo ops, not because I'm useless. I mean, I am a bit useless, but I was cruising at a snail's pace today, even slower than usual. It is worth noting that at one point I was biking happily away, and noticed that there was a guy running past me. Ok, fine, he was jogging past me. I thought that was a bit much, so I sped up to keep up with him for a few hundred feet. Then I decided I should lie in the sun for a bit, and let him "speed" on ahead. 

I won't be doing an ironman any time soon, but I hope you like the pics.

Fight For Air Climb 2010

Yup, it's done. We did it. The Great Gaspers (me, Willow and Tish) climbed 63 stories to the top of the second tallest building in downtown Los Angeles (I guess the tallest was not available?) to raise money for the American Lung Association. And by the way, if you meant to make a donation, and it somehow slipped your mind, you can still do so by contributing online or sending in a check to the American Lung Association.

This is the building, which pretty much disappeared into the clouds this morning.

So, yes, the building is quite tall. 

We got our numbers and our shoe tags (they actually time you, so at some point I will tell you long it took, but it was in the 30 minutes range. Here we are, ready for action. And by the way, it was gray and cold(ish).

From left to right: Willow, Tish, me. And I'd like to point out that in this photo you can clearly see that Willow and I have rather nice asses.

Adam came along to show us support (well, really, to show Willow support, but we got the benefit too), and also because Adam and Willow left right after lunch to go spend a romantic weekend together.

We started our climb at around 10:15, and the stairs for the first few floors are very tight and every 5 or 6 steps turn 90 degrees, so you're almost circling up. After about 2 floors I was already starting to feel sick. You see, my worst nightmare is the teacups at Disneyland. Actually, it's more like your worst nightmare, because the vomit will get all over you due to the centrifugal force of the teacups going around and around and around. But I digress. 

We took a few quick breaks along the way, mostly so we could document our progress and drink a few sips of water. We made it to Bad Luck Station without incident (and by incident I mean falling up the stairs and smacking knees or shins into the hard concrete steps, or somehow losing our balance and rolling back down the stairs).

The next stop was on floor 30. While there I sent Adam a text to let him know we were still alive and climbing. Willow wanted to stop at 29 but by the time she reminded me I was half way up to 30 and there was no way I was going back down, even for one flight of stairs.

I am still smiling, sort of, though something weird has happened to my eyebrows and my hair is looking slightly ruffled. But then, my hair almost always looks ruffled. Pretty good poker face, otherwise, I think. But I wasn't really sweating yet, which is pretty good. A bunch of people passed us, some of which we passed later, and there were lots of folks who looked they were about to faint, and had basically flopped to the side of the stairs to catch their breath. We kept running into one guy who very kindly took our picture several times along the way. We gave him an excuse to take a little break.

The next stop for us was at the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Somewhere in the 50's, the level of excitement began to build. At that point, we knew we were going to make it, and Willow had not needed to use her inhaler even once.

I made it to the top first, by only a couple of minutes, and was able to get a shot of Tish and Willow's march of triumph.

Clearly, there is a tendency to ham it up in the group. At last, at the top of the building, above the clouds, The Great Gaspers celebrate their achievement by squinting into the sun, and clutching their ionized water bottles.

And that, as they say, is that. Considering that we didn't train and just showed up and up we went, I would say we did exceptionally well.

After the great climb of 2010, we went to LA Live, that new hotel/restaurant/entertainment area in downtown LA, and had lunch at Rosa Mexicana, which I highly recommend - they make guacamole right there at the table for you, and it is the most delicious guac you've ever had. The food is excellent, and I was rather shocked at the amount that I managed to eat.

Thank you to all of you who have contributed to this worthy cause, and here's to finding solutions for lung ailments, which are unfortunately becoming more common, even among people who have never smoked.

If you would like to see all the pictures, including drab birds' eye view shots of downtown LA (drab because there was a lot of mist), please visit my Fight For Air Climb 2010 Flickr set.

Peace out.

Just when you thought it was safe... - REupdated!

AS OF APRIL 22, I HAVE RAISED $615!! OMG, you people are insane! I love you madly. [Scroll down for new posts, please, this will stay at the top of the blog until Saturday.]

I give you...

THE GREAT GASPERS!

You know how every few months, I start asking everyone for money for some charity or other, or for cancer research and so on? Well, here we are again. This time, in light of a good friend who has asthma, another friend who has COPD, and a third friend's little girl who regularly lands in the hospital with severe asthma, I'm raising money for the American Lung Association.

I have two teammates, Leticia and Willow, and together we are going to climb a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles on April 24 to help raise money for research and awareness of all lung-related conditions.

You should know, by the way, that these conditions have escalated in number and severity in the last 10 years or so, according to a friend who should know. So your donation, even in the smallest amount (seriously, you can't spare $3?) will be appreciated greatly.

And if I poop out and die an ignominious death half way up the sky scraper and then my sweaty, flabby corpse's photo is uploaded to this blog, well, bonus!

Go here to donate!

UPDATE: Yes! I am still climbing to the top of this building (again, stairs, not suction cups up the side of the building). And yes, your donations are still requested. I have raised $380, and my fund raising goal is $500. Totally doable. So please click on the link above, and if you would like to make a donation for less than $20 (VERY welcome), please go here and make your donation to my email address supergerli@gmail.com. In any amount. Seriously.

ANOTHER UPDATE! As of today, 4/16/10, I have reached my goal of $500. Woo hoo!

REUPDATE as of 4/19/10: I have now raised $585. And I might be able to scrape together a few more buckaroos. If you're thinking that this is a good cause, and by gosh, you'd like to donate, please do so. I have donations as low as $5 and I LOVE THEM!!! There is a form you can print out and mail in a check in any amount.

Oh, here's a mock up of our team t-shirt.

 

The year of giving

I don't know how your year has been, but for many people it's been a tough one. For many people, 2010 will also be tough.

I am lucky. I did not get much of a raise, not even a cost of living raise, but I got one. And I have a fabulous job. 

This year, I donated more money to charity than any other year. And for Christmas, I got a gift from my boss. And by gift, I mean some money. I'm donating most of it. There are lots of folks who need it more than I do.

On being "arrested"

The last couple of weeks, I have been fundraising for the MDA, the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The deal was that a group of us from the office would get "arrested" by firefighters and get taken to "jail." Jail being The Old Spaghetti Factory, and "arrested" meaning a cute young firefighter 

 

who politely asked the receptionist to let us know he was there to pick us up. In a convertible Cadillac, no less - some paddy wagon! Look at me, I'm so jazzed to be next to that strapping young man, it's almost obscene. This young man is from one of our city fire departments, so how weird would it be if I had to sue myself for sexual harassment? Weird.

We rode in the comfortable luxury car to the restaurant, which serves gluten free pasta, by the way, otherwise there would have been bitching. The ladies hosting the event were very sweet, and they took this picture of us.

  

How you know that this is not a real jail is because of the big red hearts. Otherwise, it's TOTALLY realistic. Totally.

We sat at our table, and tried to look serious. This is the result.

 
 

We are terrible actresses. I need to remember than letting my boobs sag does not make me look serious, it just makes me look old.

One of the nice ladies came over to tell Ivy that her contribution paid for a day of camp for a kid with MDA (or something) and one minute of research. The she turned to me and said "Oh and you did great, too!" Eh-hem. Yeeeaaah. Ivy got a plaque because she raised lots of money. Way to go, Ivy!

After lunch, we go to meet Holly, MDA's goodwill ambassador, who told us all about summer camp. They ride horses (one person on each side and one person leads the horse), they swim, they throw goo at the camp counselors, and do all sorts of other fun stuff. But they need lots of assistance and helpers, and all that costs money.

  

Holly is in 6th grade, and what a pretty girl she is. Her eyes sparkle, and her little face is so full of life I felt so privileged to talk to her and hear what this organization funds. We were very glad we did this. I think next year I'll do it again, and will certainly continue to contribute to this wonderful organization.

Thanks to all of you who contributed to this event, it was fun and really sweet, and a great, great cause.