The Gurly Life

LAKERS!

Tonight I went to my first live Lakers game ever. Even though I'm not a sports nut, I always do enjoy live sporting events. And I must admit, the Lakers are awesome. This was an outing with the Brown Club of So Cal, and we had a blast with wonderful and fun people. It was pouring with rain, so I didn't even bring a purse, nevermind a half-way decent camera. Here are some terrible pics from the evening. I did edit them a tiny bit, but there wasn't much to work with. At least I removed the demonic red-eye.

Here I am in my seat holding my ticket. Like if I don't do this, it's not real, right?

My new friends, Tiffany and Troy. They live downtown. They walked to Staples.

My cell phone camera just couldn't figure out what I was trying to take a picture of. Light? People? What?? But only someone actually at the Lakers game would take and post such a terrible picture. Because it's a memento of the fun we had. And the screaming. Did we ever scream.

A miraculous brunch

It happened. It's amazing, but it happened. The long awaited, long planned, many times rescheduled brunch finally happened. Mom and I, Taylor and Ramy, and Dee, all converged on Calabasas (Calabas-ASS, according to my GPS), in the cool weather and shocking sunshine at almost exactly the same time (who says you can never be on time in LA? Well, maybe not LA, but you can be on time in Calabas-ASS).

As prognosticated (see link above), there was much happiness, group hugs, laughter, idiocy, more hugs, and photos. I had warned everyone because some people don't like to be photographed without the appropriate accoutrements (make up, hair etc.). Dee says I made her, FORCED HER, to do her hair. But it was lovely, so it was worth it.

We discussed politics, and solved many of the country's ills in one lunch. I mean, seriously, what's taking the lawmakers so long? There was discussion about how men like to take pictures of their penis and texting said pictures to their paramours -- it's true, don't lie about it, we all know.

This came up because we were talking about football, and Green Bay in particular, whose mortal enemies are apparently the Vikings for whom Brett Favre now plays even though he was with Green Bay forever - WHORE! selling himself like that, it's like if Derek Jeter absconded to the Red Sox, I think it would cause a rupture in the space time continuum - and then talk naturally went to how he was having an affair with a reporter while his wife is undergoing cancer treatment and he was caught because - wait for it - he sent her a text of his penis. Yep. TO A REPORTER!! I mean, come on! Love is love, but heck, you're a reporter and you just got a text of Favre's penis on your phone. Smartphone: $300. Sexy lingerie: $80. Burning in hell for the seedy scoop of the month? Priceless. And totally worth it.

We also talked about Prop 19, Obama, the Tea Party (as we continue to ask ourselves which parts of the government, exactly, they would like to get rid of? cos it sure sounds like mostly anything they disagree with), immigration, the stupid way the TARP money was handled vis-a-vis the banks, pork roast, cupcakes, and the role of hypnosis in the curing of imaginary ills.

By imaginary ills I mean things like when I don't drink enough water, I get UTI symptoms, even though there is no UTI. It's probably because I've had so many, and I stave them off by drinking a lot of water, so my brain warns me when I need to drink more by making my body feel like there's a UTI coming on when there is not. Like that.

The consensus at the table was that hypnosis could be a useful tool to ungroove the brain of such an imaginary ill. And worst case scenario, nothing happens except for a few months every time someone says the words "pickled herrings" you start clucking like a chicken. Thankfully, pickled herrings are not a commong topic of conversation. Cluck, cluck.

Pictorial Representations to follow.

Mom, Dee, Taylor, Ramy, random lady with a purse.

Dee, Taylor

Me, mom, Dee, Taylor

Ramy yucks it up

Dee

Backlit mom

The all-American pastime

This afternoon my baseball buddy Brooke and I went to Dodger Stadium to watch the Dodgers trounce the Washington Nationals 9-3.

It was a hot sunny summer day, with a nice cool breeze blowing through and keeping things very pleasant. Water and lemonade didn't hurt. For once I didn't have to be anywhere else, and comfortably stayed through the entire game, including the ninth inning, which is usually when all the crazy shit happens if it's going to happen.

The game was great. As much as I appreciate perfect games, I much prefer it when there are lots of runs, and this game got off to a great start with the Dodgers scoring 4 runs in the first inning, followed soon thereafter by 2 homeruns by the Nationals. And the action continued.

At one point late in the game, they played Journey's Don't Stop Believin' and some guy in the stands totally ran with it. We were lucky because he was in the aisle right next to us, so we got to watch the spectacle up close and personal, while everyone else watched it on the jumbotron. Here's a snippet. Way to go, guy!

I took a bunch of pics, of course, and being so close I got some good ones. You can see the entire Dodgers vs. Nationals set on Flickr, but here are a couple of my faves.

Golf

To be honest, I do not really get the whole golf thing. I do get being outdoors and doing something physical (though I think that the carts are cheating - not that I wouldn't use one, I would cheat, hell yeah, I'm just sayin'), and especially in a place like this:

This is the Hacienda Golf Course, in La Habra Heights, a small city but with lots of beautiful houses nestles in the hills above La Habra.

These flowers are what you look at when you park your car. And they also have lots of lovely trees. I was quite taken by this one:

Why chatting is a useful skill

If chatting were an Olympic sport, I would be a multiple gold medalist. And I'd be one of the oldest participating athletes, I'd be winning gold medals well into my 90's.

I chat with my co-workers, I chat with my friends (well, I have long conversations with them if allowed, otherwise chatting will do), I chat with people in court, at the grocery store, in the elevator, in line at the bank, in the doctor's waiting room, to all and sunder on the phone, and so on.

One of the people I chatted with recently is an intern with the OC Flyers, of minor league fame, who very kindly got our group tickets together, and even though I got busy and blew him off a half a dozen times, he very politely and persistently continued to follow up with me.

It turns out that said intern then got a paying job with the Clippers, of NBA fame, and now he can hook me up with good basketball tickets! I've never been to a live NBA game, so this is exciting. The Clippers are no Lakers, but hey, we're moving up in the world. My new friend is young and has a bright future ahead of him, I believe this is just the beginning.

Dodgers!

Last night I went to a Dodgers game with my baseball buddy, Brooke, who you recently saw in the pictures at the OC Flyers minor league game. She is also a fellow Brown alumna, and on the board of the Brown Club, our alumni association, by the way.

It was a great game, I won't bore you with all the details, but if you'd like to see the pictures, including some baseball player butts on display, cute blondes, hot cops, a ballpark proposal accepted, and the 7th inning stretch, then go gorge yourself on the pictures.

Minor league ball games are the bomb!

[With Brooke]

Today I went to my first minor league baseball game ever. Incredibly, even though I've lived in the US almost 20 years, I'd never gone to one. I've gone to lots of major league ball games, in fact I went to one the day I got my US citizenship, but never a minor league game. Mostly because LA proper does not have a minor league team. There's one in Long Beach, and probably several more scattered around LA, but they are not conveniently located, and certainly going to minor league ball games is not in the forefront of most Angelenos' minds.

We went to Fullerton, to watch the Orange County Flyers play the Long Beach Armada. Minor league is different in that the stadium is much smaller, maybe 2000 seats (though the field is the same size), there's all kinds of ads announced over the PA system between innings, sound effects such as howls, lines from movies, bells, horns, and if you yell something at the players, they can probably hear you.

Here are Kim and Bob, and you can see behind them how small the stadium is:

And here's the view out onto the field from our seats (we were about 10 rows back, and there were only another 10 rows behind us, maybe less.

 

The teams had cheerleaders and mascots. The Flyers' cheerleaders are called the victory girls. However, the highlight of the victory girls' dances was when one of the players got up there and joined them. I, of course, whipped out my Flip and took this little video of it.

There were also a couple of local beauty queens, wearing their crowns

The players come up to the net and chat with their friends and family, or just the fans

 

and the mascots are available for photo ops

as well as to kiss your bald head.

 

Our tickets, by the way, were $6 each, and parking was free. It cost less for 12 of us to go to the game than it would have cost one of us to go to Dodger Stadium.

Today I ran again

It's almost 4 months since my surgery, and my physio wants me to start running again. Very slowly. Very little. Gently. To see how I do.

I've been spinning, doing leg presses and squats, and all my PT exercises to strengthen my hip. Today I was on the treadmill and I ran for 3 minutes. Actually, I ran 1 minute, walked 4, and repeated the cycle 2 more times. Now I wait to see how I do this week. If there is no pain, I'll do it again next weekend.

I'm going to ease into it very very slowly, I'm not going to screw things up by increasing my run too quickly. I will also continue to cross train, even after I start to run. Frankly I don't think I have a long running shelf life, but I might have a few more years in me.

In any event, I'll see how I do. If it hurts, I'll shelve it for another 2-3 weeks, and then try again. If it turns out that it no longer works for me to run, then I won't. At this point I'm at peace with the idea of not running. It would suck big time, but there are some other things I'd like to do, like yoga, aikido and tango lessons, so if I can't run I won't be completely heartbroken.

New shoes

New shoes, originally uploaded by The Gerli Life.

Today I bought new running shoes. And because gym work wrecks running shoes, I also got some cross-trainers. The running shoes are on the right, with the orange trim. The cross-trainers actually look like space booties when they're on.

I went to a place called The Starting Line, in Marina Del Rey. If you're interested in not injuring yourself when you run, this is the place to go for your shoes. I have a number of friends who do triathlons or ironman races, and they will only buy shoes at this place. They put you on a treadmill to watch you walk and run and fit you with the right shoes. Last spring or summer (can't remember which) I bought shoes there and started wearing those instead of heels or work shoes. I was still running a little bit, though less and less, but just switching shoes really contributed to my hip pain improving.

So this morning Pixie and I left at 9am to get there at opening time, 10am. I got there a little early, got myself a decaf low fat latte at a local cafe (The Cow), eschewing Starsucks, and hovered by the door nonchalantly, when what I wanted to do was claw at the door to let me in.

I think the guy who sold me these liked me, and not because he spent an hour with me getting the shoes just right, that's simply good customer service. I prattled on about my hip surgery, this that and the other, chatted with a woman named George who's friends with Billy Crystal, loudly proclaimed to anyone who would listen that I do not recommend hip surgery if you can avoid it, and really didn't worry too much about scaring him off because, well, I was just buying shoes, who cares what the guy thinks, right? I'm a customer, I get to be all crazy and prattly if I want to.

He told me he lives in LA, near West Hollywood (almost my side of town, for the out-of-towners), and often runs errands in Hollywood so if I need shoes I can call him and he can bring them to me. This is where I started to think he was interested, because, come on! Excellent customer service is one thing, but bringing a bunch of shoes across town so a customer doesn't have to drive to you is, I think, above and beyond. He told me all about the trails going up to the observatory and where it's good to run and good to hike, gave me all kinds of excellent advice, took me outside to watch me run in 2 different kinds of shoes on the pavement rather than the treadmill, and so on.

As an aside, it felt AWESOME to run, even if it was only half a block.

He also told me that on Wednesday afternoons at 5:30 there's a group of people, including lawyers, who go for a run along the beach (the store is in Marina Del Rey, about a block from the beach), and that on Thursdays at 6pm there's a group that gathers at the shoe store and goes for a run. Then he told me how far it is to run from the beach there to Santa Monica pier, or to the pier south of there. He got as far as he could without actually saying please come out for a run with us.

Seeing as I'm not a complete idiot, it occurred to me that there really wasn't much more that he could do, so I helped him out a bit. I told him if he's ever going for a run or hike in Griffith Park (up the street from me) or thereabouts, he should give me a call. Obviously I gave him my number. It's a perfectly legitimate thing to offer, I think, after all that information he gave me.

He walked me out and as he's handing me my little bag with the shoes and a running magazine, he said he'd give me a call and we'd go for a hike in Griffith Park. I of course smiled and said that would be great.

He seems nice, not unattractive, and a calm individual who knows a lot about something I love: running. I think going on a hike would be fun. If he ever does call, I'll let you know, of course -- after all, when do I keep anything to myself?

I almost fell off my bike today

I decided a good way to begin the day was to take a spinning class. This will be my second for the week. Don't get me wrong, I am not a fan of the spinning class. I know, I know. But the truth is that it's a great workout. And each instructor is very different, so you might be ok with one, and then another one kills you. The one today almost killed me. I think we sat down for a total of 5 minutes out of the whole hour. The only thing that kept me from falling off the bike like an overripe pear is that it would have been embarassing.