The Gurly Life

You cannot beat this

Monday, July 11, is my birthday.

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.

Oh yeah. Another videoblog.

This is for my friend Ms. Ranty Pants aka TravelVixen.

Rollerblading with Adam Danger

Today Adam put on his new rollerblades for the first time, and off we went. Willow was in rollerblades, also, but I was on my bike. I rollerbladed for years, but every time I fell (and I fell quite a bit), I would somehow end up smashing down on one or the other of my hips. Now, after an injury in my left hip that resulted in almost 3 years of pain, and my recent right hip scare, I have decided that I am willing to forego the pleasures of rollerblading.

We started by putting Adam's shoes in a safe place...

Originally, we put them at the foot of the tree. But in my opinion, they ran the risk of being peed on by a pup. So up they went.

Adam did disappointingly well. I mean, it's good that he took to rollerblading like a fish to water, but of course it makes for less than interesting blogging. I know, I know, it's better this way. Here's his first minute:

And here is when he learned to brake, very shortly thereafter.

And here he is after rollerblading for about an hour. It's harder work than it looks.

We tooled around the neighborhood, and I went to take a photo of a bright red fire hydrant I had spotted weeks ago, right next to a gushing fountain. But I discovered to my dismay that they had painted it yellow. Sooo boring! If you absolutely want to see it, it's on Flickr.

There was a butterfly...

And a spider living in an onion flower...

We went shopping at Sprouts, where I bought two bags' worth of gluten-free goodies.

I helped with the vegetable kebobs - I assembled them. But the mise en scene and marinade credit goes to Willow, and the barbequeing credit goes to Adam Danger.

Adam very generously attached a basket to my bike. Willow had picked it up for me months ago, but this was the first time we had a chance to bike together since then. I'm glad he set up the basket for me. It was detailed, time-consuming work and I would never have bothered, and eventually the basket would have become some sort of office accessory. Ok, not eventually -- immediately.

The funnest and most ridiculous part of the evening involved preparing a surprise for someone, so until he/she has had a chance to enjoy his/her suprise, it shall not be revealed here. But it will be. Very soon. There is a video. Oh is there a video. All I'm going to say is this: pirate sword and pink feather boa. Stay tuned.

Another day, another art project, another videoblog

Eh-hem. Testing, testing... Is this thing on? Ok, great, hi everybody, nice to see you.

One thing I forgot to point out is that I also had to include my love, which basically encompasses the entire piece of paper. You can see the giant heart at the top of the page, and the narrow end at the bottom - because really there's enough love to go around, it's not like I'm ever going to run out of it, right?

The purpose of the project was to uncover what parts of me are completely hidden or that I'm uncomfortable revealing. [Insert loud laughter here.] No, no, all kidding aside, and though I realize that there is not much I hide, I do admit that I'm not always willing to show upset or anger. But I don't think there's anything I completely hide.

So perhaps not the most helpful exercise, but each one adds a little something to the puzzle, and it was fun to do.

Boop!

Cute pens courtesy of Willow!

Videoblog 7/23/2010

In which I share about my vision board. I realized after I uploaded it that I had the window open and the camera right by it, so it picked up traffic noise. It's a little longer than 60 seconds, it's about 2.5 minutes, but I am talking about something I have not otherwise blogged about. And I did some minor editing. I hope you like it. And I hope the quality is not all weird. Good grief. Stills are easier.

Videoblog! -- or -- Yikes!

I am trying a new feature, a weekly video blog, which I will aim to keep to less than 60 seconds, because, really, who the hell needs to watch me ramble on about some shit I've probably already written about anyway.

This is the first attempt. The framing is wrong, the angle is wrong, the lighting is wrong, and my nose is shiny (and enormous! Woot!), and editing is like voodoo magic as far as I'm concerned, so it is what it is. The good thing is that the camera takes HD video. The bad thing is that the camera takes HD video, so no hope of looking like anything but exactly how I look. Perhaps next time I'll spend an hour in hair and make up before I shoot it. If it's not popular (with all 6 of you!), then it'll die a quick, squeaky death.

Anyway, enough blabbering already, here's the video.