I flew out of Houston, Texas on August 28th headed to L.A. to help my boyfriend pack up his apartment and move things into my storage unit (he’s letting me use his furniture.. free storage for him, great deal for me!). On the way, I had a layover at the Oakland Airport. I’m not really sure if I’ve had a layover there before, but I don’t think so. Despite never hearing anything particularly good about Oakland (California..), I really liked the airport! There are beautiful views from the airport windows of the bay and planes coming into land just over the bay and touching down on the runway just beyond the sand. I LOVED it!
Oakland Airport Windows
There are two other things I loved: first, free wifi! It is always a pleasant surprise to me when I find an airport with free wifi. I’ll admit it doesn’t actually affect me much anymore, because now with the iphone I can do pretty much anything I need to do without access to a wifi connection. But for those who are iPhoneless, and even for me when I have an hour to spare and the desire to finally update my blog, free wifi connections are amazing! (Of course, that blog I wrote ultimately got lost in technical error land… but had that not happened, I would have had a brilliant blog post up thanks to Oakland airport wifi!).
The other thing I loved: The name is suddenly escaping me, but there was a mexican restaurant in the airport, and I’m pretty sure the name started with an “A”. I got a delicious mesquite grilled chicken salad and a margarita. It was fantastic! Definitely the best airport food I’ve had! (Although, that is also because I’ve tended to be a cheapo and always look for the cheapest thing possible to eat during layovers in airports). I had a long few weeks, and I realized that it would be nice to sit down at an actual restaurant and get something yummy instead of something cheap. The salad was only $8 or $9 so really not any different than a regular restaurant. Anyway, it was delicious! Go there if you ever have a layover in Oakland! 🙂
It’s taking awhile for me to come to the realization that I can actually afford things now. I grew up poor and I’ve worked my way through college and law school, and so a lot of the time I’m still that penny pinching girl looking for the cheapest option available. And I have to tell myself, “Michelle… you have money now. You can afford a yummy salad. You don’t have to settle for a bagel at starbucks or a bag of pretzels from the newstand.” I’m still working on finding a balance between acting like I’m still poor vs. just blowing money.
Now on to the real point of this post: the salad above was the last time I had meat. I’ve been planning to give up meat for awhile, and have steered clear of red meat for a long time. I’ve been contemplating giving up chicken for awhile but I LOOOOOVE chicken. Well, I got to L.A. and Alexander had decided to go on a vegan diet for health reasons and I decided it was as good a time as ever to give up meat. I’m not as hardcore as him yet. I’m weening myself off dairy but it is really difficult adjusting to not eating meat or dairy when one of the two seems to be in about almost everything. I’m working on it 🙂 It is for the health reasons for me as well. It’s also really good for the environment to not eat meat. And, while I don’t think it’s wrong to eat meat, I do think that animals get horribly mistreated in most farming operations and that is wrong. So, not eating meat = health benefits, environmental benefits, and hopefully fewer animals being tortured. Sounds like a pretty good deal. And honestly, I’m two weeks in now and so far I don’t even crave meat at all. (And I’m finally starting to lose my 3L/Bar Studying weight, which is another awesome benefit!)
The Daily Chelle 