Perfect London Day

Samuel Johnson said that when you tire of London, you tire of life. And I agree. I had a completely perfect London day today - did just about everything I'd want to do if I only had one day here.

The morning started out perfectly - sunlight streaming through the windows, and the sounds of Sandor puttering around in the kitchen, and then when he left, a bath and ClassicFM. A side note - I love listening to ClassicFM at home online, but it's annoying with the time difference - in the morning when I want perky and peppy music, they're doing the stress-free-evening-commute music. Nice to have it at the right time of day.

Then some time spent wandering around Covent Garden, exploring alleyways, and eating at nando's chicken. Which is ridiculously hip, but not so much so that I was afraid of it. Then we moseyed back to the National Gallery and took in some art. Original Da Vinci's, Titian, etc. But first, a visit to the crypt of St. Martin's in the Field, because J was so weirded out about a restaurant in a crypt.

We played around in Soho, shopping - J bought trendy shoes and a camera, I bought a new cell phone from Orange and some products from Boots - I always load up on Boots products to take home - it makes me feel exotic to use products from England. We walked up and down Oxford Street, and up to Bedford Square for a peaceful walk. Then I got asked for directions by some tourists. They wanted to go to the British Museum, and it reminded me that the British Museum is really quite nice, so we went and checked out some ancient sculptures.

Then a bus back to Oxford Circus where we met up with my ex-violin-teacher Mark, and got dinner at Wagamama's. I also love Wagamama's. I'm so predictable. For the past ten years I've been going to Wagamamas and getting the number 43. I really should expand my horizons, but I haven't yet. Sandor arrived in Soho and we met up where he was eating dinner with the lovely Anna-Louisa, who is one of my new favorite people. Fortified with hot chocolate, we headed to the arcade to play Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero.

So my day had everything a perfect day in London should have. Good friends, good food, culture, history, good walks, shopping, waiting for busses, and the random rain shower.

A journey of a thousand miles...

To be filed under "This blows my mind": It took me, door to door, 15 hours to get from my house to Sandor's bathtub. How freaking crazy is that? Planes continually blow my mind.

So we're in the UK. It's my celebratory "I finished the Introduction Leader's Program" trip. I'm now an official Introduction Leader for Landmark Education, so if anybody wants to know more about the Landmark Forum, I'm the girl to ask. I reached the final milestone on Thursday night, and am honored to be part of such an amazing body of people. Introduction Leaders are some of the most awesome people I've ever met, and I'm so proud to be joining the ranks. I never thought this would be possible - I never thought that I would be able to do what was required of me to reach this - to break myself up and go through what I had to go through - and now that I've been able to achieve it, I know that the world is my oyster.

I had given up playing the Introduction Leader's game last saturday. I told everyone I wasn't interested in it any longer, and then I had an insight into how I'm always so confused about everything, and how that's the story of my life, but that there's also a big payoff there in that I never need to take responsibility for my actions and decisions. So I made a commitment and put myself out there, and said I'd be an IL by Friday night. And I did what I had to do, even in the face of no agreement, and made it happen. If I could make that happen in six days, I can make anything happen.

So I'm now in my own Renaissance. I am creating myself with my word. I am giving my word to things, making promises that call me to be bigger than I know myself, and going after things with gumption.

Random activities for the day: I watched Up in the Air, and The Informant on the plane, and still slept for about three hours. If you watched The Informant, and didn't listen to the This American Life that inspired it, you should do so now. Truth is stranger than fiction. When we got back to Sandor's, I immediately took a bath, and then slept for 2 hours. Then we met up with Sandor's friend John, and got sushi at Ukai. On tomorrow's agenda: a non-boozy night out in Soho.

I'm happy and content and life is good.

Renaissance Schmenaissance

New episode of the Ren Eng Hist Podcast. Yay for podcasts!

The calm after the storm

I'm having an incredibly peaceful end to an also-pretty-peaceful week. Hubby is gone for the weekend, so I'm having girls time. Just me and the kitties. We're rocking out to Owl City, and, when feeling schmaltzy, Peter Cetera. We're making popcorn and watching chick movies and playing video games. Seriously, it's heaven. To add to the fun, it's snowing, and I've got a fire going. Seriously, what else do I need?

I was up in san mateo at the office sunday night through wednesday. I got super lucky and rented a car that had a sunroof. Part of me really wants to buy a new car with a sunroof now. Monday I was in an all day focus group in san jose for a vendor. That evening I wanted to do something fun, so I took myself out on a date. I plan good dates. Especially when I'm the only person I have to think about.

To start with I drove myself - with the roof open and Lady Gaga blaring - to the Albany Sauna. It's a spa type of place that rents hot tubs - and it's super cheap - like $22/hour. And the best part is that, while you get a private room with your hot tub, there's no roof, so you get to feel the breeze while you're in the tub. It's awesome. I have a little bit of a history with that place. 14 years ago I took a road trip to California and met up with this guy I'd been talking to online. He wasn't really a boyfriend in that we didn't date. But we kind of messed around, the way you do in college, and he took me to the Albany Sauna. I remember thinking it was super-cool, but even with as much time as I spend in the bay area, I haven't been back. So I took myself there and got a hot tub and had a blissful time.

After that I went into the city to City Lights bookstore. That's another place I've been meaning to go for, like, ever, and just got lazy. I'm saying a giant FU to laziness these days. It's nice. So I went to bask in a literary landmark. I bought a book of poetry - I'm not a big poetry reader - I don't like pausing long enough to read and absorb a poem. It's good practice for me to slow down.

I've decided to take myself out on more dates.

There's a skunk outside eating the food I put out for the feral cats, but I'm not shooing him away because it's snowing, and if he's brave/hungry enough to come out scavenging for food in this weather, he deserves whatever's out there.

So next I'm going to work on my nanowrimo book, and then my podcast. Must do my podcast this weekend for sure.

And I'm going to england in 2 weeks. Life is good.

Sometimes you just need to hide behind the refrigerator

So things have been pretty crazy for us the last few weeks. My leadership program at Landmark is wrapping up, and there are still some things that I need to do to complete it in the next three weeks. J and I have both been running around like headless chickens, which hasn't made for lots of bonding. On Friday everything came bubbling over in a giant volcano explosion of sadness, loneliness, and miscommunications. After the explosion, we cleaned up the rubble and started putting everything back together, and things calmed down.

But then, Friday night, something happened with the cats. I still don't know what started it, or even what the exact circumstances were, but the cats went crazy. Somebody's foot got stuck in a bag or something, and it was just complete madness for about two minutes. We went back to sleep, but then the next day we realized that one of the cats had been stuck behind the refrigerator all night. Today we realized another one hadn't been around in a while, and he turned out to be hiding behind the bathtub. He came out for a little bit, but decided to go back to the safety of the back of the tub. I understood. Sometimes we just need a time out.

I'm going to take my own time out this weekend. I'm on a work trip right now, which I have to get through - one day at a time - but this weekend is going to be a complete Girly Weekend. Me and the cats are going to rebond. I'm going to read all the library books that I've kept out late, and are now overdue (but I won't return them without reading them first, otherwise what is the point of the fines?). We're going to paint our toenails (well, I am anyway) and watch girl-movies and eat a lot of popcorn. And we'll sleep. We'll all pile on the bed, me and the cats, and we will sleep for hours. It will be sublime.

It's Tuesday and I'm having a good, productive day. I need to start every morning with yoga. Seriously. 15 minutes of calm breathing and stretching and meditating has such an awesome effect on my day. Note to self: start every day with yoga.

Fun Event for the Day: got to see my old neighbor from downtown LA. Last week we had a really bad lightening strike, and our modem got fried. Which sucked. It was even plugged into a surge protector. From now on, at the first sign of lightening, I'm turning off the power of everything. Anyway, Verizon sent us a new modem, but we hadn't updated our address since buying our house 2 years ago. So the modem went to the old place on Marview. Nate and Lucia were kind enough to grab it and let us know, and I got to go to Caltech to meet up with Nate this afternoon and get said modem. I've never been on the caltech campus before. Standing outside the department of astrophysics, I was a little intimidated. The brain power in that building is pretty awesome.

The Downside - I got stuck in killer traffic on the 210 from Pasadena at 5pm. That sucked. But I had just downloaded a bunch of Lady Gaga songs, so I pretended the car was a club, and I rocked out. Then I called J and gave him precise instructions on how to make the tilapia, salad, and my brown rice (white for him - he's too skinny to care about carbs) so I came home to a healthy yummy dinner. I need to place orders for dinner more often.

I'm pretty tired and wanted to just take a bath and go to bed, but I forced myself to do the elliptical, and now I'm working on my book for half an hour. THEN bath and Anne Lamott.

Ahhh...I love good productive days like this. Must remember to start tomorrow with yoga too.

The Ones Who Got Away

It's Valentine's Weekend, and I'm so lucky and blessed to have a wonderful hubby, who even gave up watching the Daytona 500 live yesterday so as to go to The Vagina Monologues in North Hollywood with me. He's the best match for me that I could ever imagine, and I'm so lucky that I found him when I did.

But in the spirit of excavations, I'm thinking about The Ones Who Got Away. Chances are pretty good that I'm probably not going to fall in romantic love again. And part of me misses the exhilaration of meeting someone new, wondering whether they like you, whether they'll call, dishing about them with girlfriends, and all of that. On the plus side, I'm still a horrendous flirt. I flirt with walls, cats, computers and plants. Everything. But it's not the same when you know there's no chance that you'll get asked out after flirting.

Anyway, there are a couple of people who should be granted Honorable Mentions for Almost Getting Me. Obviously there was the inestimable G, who dominated my first blog and my life from 2000-2004 or 5. I lose track of when I actually officially got over him. As recently as October when I was in Soho having fun with Sandor and Mark Pollard, I thought how weird it was that I first came to London because I was chasing a guy, and I felt a little hollow for a second. And the book I'm writing now deals with a girl who can't get over the ghosts of past loves.

But the thing about G, when it comes right down to it, wasn't so much him. In a lot of ways he was a charming as*hole. Nah, that's too harsh. With hindsight I can see that he was a decent average guy, but there was nothing really about him deserving of the kind of devotion I gave him. It was really the idea of him that I was so in love with. And that idea was worthy of my heart. I just couldn't separate out the man from the ideal.

And besides, he didn't love me back, which really kind of settled the whole thing.

There was somebody else in London. We ate Indian food and drank pints of carling, and he told me I was irresistible. I'd never been told I was irresistible before. That's a seriously good word to use on a 24 year old. But he was taken, and I was in my Anais Nin phase and I thought it was romantic to think of him as my Henry Miller.

Stone-man T was 2004. His dog had more personality than he did. That's mean. I don't really mean that. Well. Maybe I do. That dog was seriously personable. And she didn't bark! Ever! And that was the year I got my cat Wrigley, and Wrigley thought the dog was her mom, and they snuggled together a lot, and man, it was cute. T liked to take the dog for walks. And we both liked travel centers. Man, I love a good Flying J or TA or Pilot. I can spend hours in those places. So our relationship was based on mutual admiration of his dog, and a shared love of truck stops. And that about sums that up.

Another Honorable Mention should go to M, who was my College Boyfriend. He was a good guy and I wish him well, but man, was I happy when I became single again after dating him until I was 23. He helped me move into my apartment in Koreatown, which was just about my favorite apartment I had. That was 1999. I was broke, but it was such a great little studio with a fold-in-the-wall bed. I loved that place. And, more importantly, I loved who I was in it.

So that's my Ode to Those Who Got Away. And man, am I happy I have a great husband. Just thinking about all these jokers again has made me rethink the Missing Dating concept!