June 10, 2010….

…Is the day I got a new family member.

Random people out there in the blog world, meet my adopted little girl, Ellie:

A coworker found her running in the street about a week ago.  Wednesday she was trying to find the dog a new home and heard through the grapevine that I was planning on getting a dog.  Longish story short, Ellie and I are now together 🙂

(She had no chip, no tags, no calls in response to found dog reports at local shelters or found dog signs in the neighborhood.. It’s only been a week but I’m thinking if her parents haven’t called by now they’re not going to…).

She is adorable and sweet and I’m already totally in love with her, but I also am totally exhausted.  Not quite sure how I am going to balance dog parenthood and work and life, etc.  We’ll see how this goes.

Luckily, she LOVES to sleep which makes the working part a little easier:

Sleeping between my back and the couch back.

She likes to hide her face while sleeping...

Stay tuned for a story about this morning that left me feeling like an exhausted working mom and likely solidifying my lack of desire to have my own children 😉

Another Ten on Another Tuesday.

1. What does your car say about you? If you don’t have a car, what kind of car would be your daily driver?
I have a Ford Edge.   After telling myself I’d never buy a new car (and thinking I would never buy a Ford), I took one test drive of an Edge with my dad (major Ford lover), and I had to have it.  I have no idea what it says about me, but I like it and I get compliments on it a lot?

2. To this point, what has been your purpose on this planet?
This is a funny question to ask, because I am trying to refigure that out these days.  For the last two decades, I’ve been a student.  I suppose my purpose has been to do the best I can in school and get the education I need to do what I am meant to do later in life (this includes both traditional education in school, and education through other means such as church and life experiences).   Here I am, at “later in life.”  I feel like I’m back at 15 years old, with so many possibilities and not sure exactly what I want to/should do.

3. If you could trade places with any person for any amount of time, who would it be?
Sometimes I would really like to trade places with a celebrity.. maybe just for a week.  Not for the money and fame.  I’m just really, really curious to know how they really feel.  It’s easy for those of us who are “less fortunate” to think it would be ideal to have kajillions of dollars and not know the feeling of “want” (at least for material things).  But I’m curious what actually runs through their minds on a regular basis.  I guess I would need to trade places with their mind too, not just their daily activities.  Is that possible??

Otherwise, I would like to trade places with Pioneer Woman for just a little portion of her whirlwind romance.

(Sidenote:  I had heard a lot of random friends/blog friends mention this “Pioneer Woman” and the references were all in connection with cooking so I didn’t bother to go look because lets just be honest: I’m a busy single girl who lives alone.  Not really in need of to-die-for recipes at this time in my life.   My dinner is usually something along the lines of a PB&J with a glass of cheap wine ;-).   Anyway, so for some reason on Sunday I decided to bite the bullet and go check out Pioneer Woman.  And OMG.  I started reading her (4o-part!!) love story about how she met her current husband and was transformed from city girl to rancher’s wife, and all of a sudden my Sunday was GONE.  I have now jumped on the bandwagon of people obsessed with this woman!)

4. What is your favorite kind of cake? If you don’t like cake, what is it about it that you don’t like?
This is EASY.  I love CHOCOLATE cake.  If it’s not chocolate, I’d rather not waste my time.  Chocolate with chocolate frosting please.   And don’t you DARE put any pollutants in the cake such as raspberry filling or swirl anything fruity around on the plate.  Bleh.  Chocolate only please.  Chocolate chocolate chocolate.  I could eat it for every meal.  I HAVE eaten it for every meal.

5. Would you have wanted to live in your parents’, grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation or only your own?
I might be interested in visiting, time traveler style.  But I’d prefer to stay in my own generation please.  What would I do without google and wikipedia??

6. Do you have any home remedies for illnesses, cleaning or otherwise?
Um, sleep it off?  This works for the urge to clean too 😉

7. What is your ideal weather situation?
Mid to upper 70s, sunny with a slight breeze (aka Malibu’s weather most of the year)

8. What is your best attribute (physical or personal)?
Tallness of course!

9. Do you text or surf while driving?
Not while driving but I tend to do both while stuck in traffic or at stop lights.  “stuck in traffic” in L.A. is equivelant to being stuck at a reaaaallly long stop light in a regular city 😉

10. How long have you known your best friend?

I have 3 girls who I consider my best friends. 

Me & Melissa (Christmas 2007)

Melissa I’ve known since I was 10 or 11.  We met at church, and had our first great bonding experience at a winter junior high camp when she had a very embarrassing moment.  The running joke is “Let the river flow.”  You can make your own judgements about what that means. 

Me & Joni (Spring 2008ish?)

I met Joni in college, but also through church, not school.  Apparently I was the source for information on our non-existent college group at the time.  So she was new and came over and asked me about it.  We ended up slowly becoming friends and then turned practically into sisters.  People actually ask us if we’re sisters too.. even though she’s like 5’3″.   We really do look quite a bit alike.  

Me & Krissi (Hollywood, Spring 2008?)

And lastly, Krissi.  She was the spouse of a fellow law student who was on the same scholarship as me.  We became instant friends at a retreat before law school even started, and she was my instant best friend in California.

Now… these friends are all over the country.  Joni in Vancouver, WA.  Melissa in Phoenix, AZ.  And Krissi in Houston, TX 😦

Oh Celebrity Bloggers….

Sometimes I think about how much it would ROCK to be a so-called “celebrity blogger.”  Mainly for two reasons:  (1) I LOVE to write; and (2) my happiest place is in sweatpants sitting at my desk in my loft, or in a cozy corner of a coffee shop, reading and working away on something.  However, this will likely never happen… especially given that lately it takes everything in me to work up the motivation to post in here once a week, if not once a month.   To be fair though, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately that isn’t public blog material, not to mention that my daily life as a business litigator is a bit of a buzz-kill for public blogging activity.   If I ever were to be a serious blogger, I can pretty much guarantee I would not be writing to you about business, the law, or politics.  I like travel.  I like food.  I like photography.  I like fun.  I like putting a silly spin on crazy, maddening things that happen in my life.  😉 

I want to be able to work from home in sweatpants… and celebrity blogging is like winning the lottery…. so what can I do instead?  Hmmmmm……

Bromantic Weekends in L.A.

This is a way delayed post, but we did some really fun things around L.A. and so I wanted to make a post about it.

Awhile back (I can’t even remember now…), my older brother, Will, came out to L.A. to spend a Friday and Saturday with me.  Whenever he comes to visit, we tend to go out and do things that would be very fun to do on a date, which is why I refer to it here as a “bromantic” weekend.  We always have a super fun time, even though we’re only siblings and I’m currently as single as can be.   Despite the activities being well suited for dating, it doesn’t make me wish I had a boyfriend again, but it does make me wish I saw my bro more often 🙂

Friday, we drove out to Malibu and decided to have lunch at one of the restaurants on the pier.  There is the Beachcomber Cafe which looked like a nice, classy place and a little too expensive for what we had in mind.  (I can’t remember now, but at the time we wanted salads with chicken and it was something like $6 to add chicken to a salad there).  So we kept walking on down to the end of the pier to check out Ruby’s.  There, you could get a salad with chicken for $8.95.   Sold!   We decided to eat there on their roof top deck.  The view and the weather were fantastic!  My resulting sunburn… Not so fantastic. 

Will at Ruby's on the Malibu Pier

Will & I after lunch. Cute couple, right?! 😉

From there, we took a little stroll on the beach and then headed to Malibu Yogurt & Ice Cream (aka Buyo).  Back when I lived in Malibu, my mom and brother would come out to visit me for a weekend here and there, and we would always go here on the last day while waiting for pictures of the weekend’s adventures to be printed at CVS.  So it has a little bit of a sad feeling attached when my brother and I go there together, but it’s still delicious.  And they have revamped the place.  It used to be a hole-in-the-wall type place.  But they have painted the walls and added some furniture and accessories/art in there so it actually looks like a place that charges crazy amounts of money for ice cream now 😉 

From there, we headed to Santa Monica to do a little shopping on Third Street while we waited to meet up with a few friends for dinner.  Third Street is always a fun place to go in L.A. when I want to do something but I’m not sure what to do.  There are plenty of fun stores just to look in, plenty of stores I can actually afford to buy things in, lots of places to eat, drink, or just sit and relax and people watch.  Our stint on Third Street turned a little crazy because I had something come up via phone/email and my iPhone died midway through it all.  I ended up going to the Apple store to buy a charger but they were expensive and I didn’t even know where I’d plug it in so I left.  Then after much pacing I went back and tried to find a clever place in the store to plug my phone into one of their chargers just to get enough battery life to finish my emailing.   Thank you Apple store for saving the day… but if you could make the next iPhone not die so fast, that would be great.  You hear that Steve?

Saturday morning we got up and walked down to Starbucks for breakfast, and then we walked over to the L.A. Live area to see what time Iron Man 2 was playing.  It just so happened a show was starting pretty soon after we got there, so we bought tickets.  The movie was amazing!  I still haven’t seen Iron Man 1, but I loved the second movie.  Like a true girl, when I came out of the movie the thing that was most on my mind was Scarlet Johansson’s red hair in the movie.  I desperately wanted red hair again.   Will and I decided to walk back to my apartment (a little over a mile) and get Subway on the way.  That was a good and bad idea.  We both kind of felt like we were going to die in the final blocks.  Word to wise: a bagel will not hold you over for 2.4 miles total of walking + sitting through a 2+ hour movie.

Back at my place, we ate our Subway sandwiches and watched TV to relax for a little while before deciding to head out to do some shopping at the Beverly Center.  Will left with some much needed new shorts, and I left with two amazing pairs of shoes, which were on clearance for $17 each + tax.  I’ve worn one of the pairs almost every day since then.  They are grey and I am obsessed with the color grey right now.  

From there, we headed back to my apartment and ended up watching an amazing Lakers game while eating a dinner “cooked” by me (technically prepared by the folks at Trader Joes but I heat it up and put it into bowls, ok?).  Earlier in the weekend, I had mentioned the possibility of going up to the Griffith Observatory.  Will asked if we could still do that (it was 8:30ish by this point).   A quick look online revealed that it closed at 10pm.  It’s a 20 minute drive from my place so we decided to hurry out the door and go.  I’m so glad we did!  Nearly 4 years in L.A. and I’d never been to the Griffith Observatory at night before.   It was a beautiful, clear night.  The city lights were amazing, the views were amazing.  They have lots of telescopes set up so you can look at planets and clusters of stars.   If you live in the L.A. area and have not been here yet, you need to go.  Day or night, there are amazing views and plenty to do, and the best part, almost all of it is FREE.   During the day, you can check out the indoor exhibits, hike, picnic, or just take in the amazing views.  At night, you can still check out the exhibits, stargaze, check out planets from the various telescopes they have set up (but warning.. they close those down about 9:30 and lines form so get there early!), or just check out the amazing views of city lights.   It’s a very romantic place to go at night.  Pretty much everyone else there were couples.  We didn’t feel awkward and out of place though (just be aware that the place will make you very aware of your singleness if you go at night!).   

After our Griffith Observatory adventure, it was time for Will to head back home and thus the end of this installment of “Bromantic Weekends in L.A.”