L.A. Pictures

.......aaaaand then life happened. But if you've ever had vertigo then you'll believe I had a good excuse for not getting these up before now. Anyway, here they are, the snaps from L.A. Nothing terribly thrilling, but proof that I was really there:

- The gluten free, dairy free bakery!


- The Hollywood sign as seen from my friend's neighborhood. (It's in there, I swear - on the hillside.)


- At a stoplight on Rodeo Drive (I couldn't resist).


- Much to my mother's chagrin, this was the only photographic evidence I produced that I myself was actually in L.A. Sorry, Mom.

La la land, part two

Well, I thought I was beginning to recover but then I must've caught the cold my mother is just getting over. So much for my plan of writing the trip up once I felt better. But here it is - the riveting conclusion of my 48-hours-in-Los-Angeles saga!

Saturday morning found me a mighty unhappy camper, partly from time zone-induced confusion but mostly from being some unidentified variety of ill and the lack of sleep resulting therefrom. There, alas, went my glorious plan of stopping on the way to the reading to get a *gluten free dairy free* breakfast burrito. (Yes, Virginia, there is a GFDF breakfast burrito, but apparently only in L.A., and apparently not for me. *sigh*) Instead I stopped at a Trader Joe's that I happened to drive past on Santa Monica Boulevard and that turned out to be perhaps the only TJ's in existence with neither gluten free pretzels nor gluten free bread. Alas again! Rice cakes for me.

I managed to find my way to Beverly Hills High School - oh yes, 90210 - and bumbled my way to the auditorium. People began to convene, chairs and music stands were arranged, a group of 60th-reunion BHHS alums stopped by to say hello... we were definitely underway.

Here's the important bit: Everyone was super nice, everyone worked really hard, and all in all the day was great. It was so exciting to hear the music played by fantastic musicians and sung by a bunch of talented singers! I managed to not cry the first time the chorus came out with "It's fooouuur A.M. agaaaaiiiinnnn" in harmony, but it was close. I've always been that way when I first hear something I wrote realized by people aside from myself. It's like "ohmygod, that sounds so good!" and "wait, I had something to do with making that happen?" and "YES! THAT'S IT!" all wrapped up together with a load of je ne sais quois. In rehearsals, in the studio... I will never cease to love that moment.

As if that wasn't awesome enough, everyone said really nice things about the songs. I write songs that I want to hear, but my hope and my goal is that other people will want to hear them too. And if my songs excite them or move them or make them feel anything at all - JACKPOT! The feedback from both the singers and our small audience made me feel great about the songs I've written. Of course I've got my work cut out for me going forward. There will be lots of rewriting and new writing to do. I'm excited to do it. ...once I get over this cold.

The rest of the trip involved Vietnamese food at a restaurant called - wait for it - 9021Pho, another quiet evening at my friend's apartment, and a lot of flying eastward. I was in L.A. for almost exactly 48 hours - just enough time to feel the heat, see the palm trees, take hardly any photos, not sightsee at all, and read through one (1) brand new musical. I wonder when I'll get back there. I wonder what I'll do when I do. I don't think I've really formed an opinion of L.A. yet, though I can see why people feel so strongly about it in either direction.

Now, I was going to post photos here but apparently my camera doesn't want to play nice with Ubuntu, so it'll be another day or two while I get that figured out. Sorry. Since my father is a master of all things computer, it shouldn't take too long to sort it out.

La la land, part one

(written Friday, September 24)

And here I am in L.A. The flights were mercifully uneventful, except for the fact that I almost froze to death from Newark to Charlotte. I remedied this by putting my pajama pants on under my jeans for the remainder of the trip, and I succeeded in arriving in California sans hypothermia.

The first thing I did upon leaving the airport - after the ridiculously long rental car process - was to visit a gluten free AND dairy free bakery. I actually considered buying a whole pile of stuff and fed-exing it back to New Jersey, but that seemed excessive. So I contented myself with buying some bialys (to heat and eat here, once I'm in a place with heating capabilities) and a bread mix (to make at home). My friend who lives here should hope that I don't like either one, because she is in danger of being asked to become my supplier. (The shop ships but only in the Southern California region. DAMMIT!)

After acquiring my goodies I discovered that I had left my camera in the shop, having taken it out of my bag to snap a photo (coming in the next post). Mild panic ensued, but since this was all of about three minutes after I'd left the place I pulled a U-turn and found the camera sitting exactly where I'd set it on the counter. Travel disaster averted.

The rest thus far has been a LOT of traffic (really annoying, but not actually stressful to drive in because no one is aggressive or in a hurry like they are on the East Coast), too-hot sunshine, and some tasty iced coffee while I kill some time and try to recover from trans-continental travel. And heat. Didn't L.A. get the memo about that equinox thing?

Tonight will be fun, and then tomorrow will be mostly business... sandwiched between fun. Well, sandwiched between a GF-DF breakfast burrito (hell yeah!) on one side and fun on the other.

Ode to EWR

Ah, the joys of Newark Airport. It's funny to me how much I fail to hate this place (except when it's the weekend after Thanksgiving and the weather has canceled almost all flights, including mine, and there are so many people everywhere that I'm on the verge of developing claustrophobia, but that's another story).

The part of travel I really hate the most is the luggage, and on this trip I've neatly circumvented that problem by traveling from where I'm half living now back to the place I'm about to move out of but (and this is key) haven't yet (so 95% of my stuff is still there). Good trick, right? I'm not even bringing a toothbrush. Sadly this does not mean I'm traveling with a single small handbag containing nothing more than a book to read and an official ID to get me on the plane in the first place. But for me one backpack and one shoulder bag weighing less than 20 pounds (estimated) in total is a major triumph. Please remember, people, that whereas most women walk around with lipstick and cell phone in a small purse, I've been known to carry a liter of water, a snack, a 400 page novel and a first aid kit as a matter of course.

So on this trip I'm doing quite well on the luggage front. Which brings me to my next least favorite part of travel: sitting around the airport/train station/bus depot doing nothing. Waiting.

Patience? What?

(Let's note, now, that this is actually the legitimate reason for half the stuff I carry with me on a regular basis: to amuse myself when my infinitesimal patience runs out.)

This all brings us to the crux of this post: my ode to Newark Airport, written to pass the time while waiting for a flight to Nashville, via Charlotte (gods willing the weather cooperates).


Oh Newark Airport, under smoggy skies
You sprawl so hugely, as an airport should.
With seeming endless in- and outbound flights
To take a traveler anywhere she would,
You serve Northern New Jersey like a charm.
No need to drive to far-off JFK:
You're only twenty minutes in the car!
(Depending on traffic on 78.)
As planes alight over the Turnpike lanes
EWR over the airways reigns.

May you live in uneventful times.

Back in Nashville just in time to catch the tail end of the cold snap. It's been even colder here than in Jersey the last week or two, which I guess means I picked a good time to be out of town. Today the temp was about the same in both places... but somehow the cold in Nashville doesn't feel quite as cold.

Fortunately it's due to warm up in both places this week, and of course a bit more here than there. As much as I love my down coat, I'll be very happy to leave it hanging in the closet.

Meanwhile, the highs in San Francisco are nearly 60 all week...

The best thing I can say about the traveling I've been doing the last year and a half is that TRAVEL has finally stopped seeming like a BIG DEAL. You just get on a plane. Well, you stand around the airport for a good long while, and let people invade your privacy pretty thoroughly, and then sit around a while longer, and THEN you get on a plane. But still. Not that big a deal. All it takes is money. ("All." Ha!) And so (as I try to find some magic money tree seeds) the list of places to travel to continues to grow.

As for today's travel, the best thing I can say about it is that - except for the unexpected extra hour of sitting in Newark airport surrounded by college students who apparently all think leggings are the same thing as pants (THEY'RE NOT) - it was uneventful. That's my favorite kind of travel: uneventful.

In fact the whole day has been monumentally uneventful, and right now that seems about perfect. Kroger was uneventful. Whole Foods was uneventful. My Netflix DVD and frozen (gluten free!) dinner were entirely uneventful. And now I'm going to get into my uneventful bed and have some (hopefully) uneventful sleep so I can be ready for what I can only pray (to any god who might be listening) will be an uneventful week.

Elbow Room

I first realized it when I flew home for my cousin's wedding in October: I'd never before been so happy to find myself at Newark Airport. Then it happened again as my plane landed at Logan and I walked out into the terminal. For four days I've re-entered a world of car horns and obscenities, and I've never had such a distinct feeling of coming home.

As I stood on the T this morning simultaneously cursing the group of shouting teenagers in my car and feeling immensely grateful for their existence, I began to wonder about these stereotypes of Southerners as being nicer and Northeasterners as being not necessarily mean but unconcerned with the welfare of their fellow humans. Now that I live in the South I’m seeing how much truth there is to those supposed differences, but as a born and raised Northerner I always feel compelled to defend the detachment: that’s what feels right to me, and I’d like to think that doesn’t make me inherently less nice.

What occurred to me on the T is that there’s just a lot more physical space for people to spread out in the South, and in my favorite cities (New York and Boston) there are so many more people crammed into the available space. In Nashville my apartment isn’t flanked on all sides by neighbors, and it’s more than spitting distance from the building next door. When I go to the far side of town (which is much farther away than the far side of Boston), I get in my own car and have however many cubic feet of space (and sound and attempt at thermal regulation) all to myself. In Boston you’re constantly surrounded by people – roommates, upstairs and downstairs neighbors through thin ceilings and floors, next door apartments with windows so close you could reach in from your room, jam-packed subway cars and buses, sidewalks full of pedestrians – so in order to maintain any sense of personal space you have to manufacture it for yourself.

Northeasterners are “mean” simply out of self-preservation.

It’s not that someone from Boston necessarily cares any less about other humans, but if you let concern for others surface even half the time you’re in close proximity to other people you’ll be completely overwhelmed by caring for a vast sea of humanity. In Tennessee it’s much easier to attempt connection with a large percentage of the people you encounter because on any given day there are so many fewer people who will come close enough to your personal space for interaction.

Obviously not everyone responds to these situations according to the stereotypes, but I think that if you grow up in the Northeast then you are much more likely to develop the apparently prickly exterior necessary to preserve some semblance of personal space, just as if you grow up with a lot of siblings you tend to be aggressive about staking your claim on things you want (lest someone else get there first). Yes, some people find themselves better suited to the environment opposite that of their own childhood, and some people feel equally comfortable in both sorts of places.

I think I’m a true Northeasterner in this sense, which is why I feel so at home when I’m surrounded by people who will honk and swear and cut you off without thinking twice. To me that’s just how you stake out your space in the world. My subconscious definition of "home" seems to include dense population and the attendant survival techniques. But defining "home" is another story for another day.....

The Move

The following episodes chronicle my move from Boston to Nashville in the middle of August, 2008. They were written at various stages, not in chronological order, so please forgive the tenses.

Episode 1 - Packing and Preparing

I've known for about four months that I'd be moving to Nashville this August. Early in the summer I started packing up clothes to take to Goodwill and posting crap on Craigslist that I knew I wouldn't want to take with me. I actually managed to do a really good job of starting early and planning ahead, for most things, and by the time I went out of town a week before moving day I had things pretty well under control.

I did, in fact, take a three day vacation less than a week before I was slated to move halfway across the country.... and I recommend it to anyone who's thinking of moving. Before I left I had gotten most of my stuff packed, and then I was able to walk away and not think about any of it for three glorious days in the Adirondacks. (The lake was beautiful, the mountains were beautiful, the company was perfect, the cupcakes were delicious. What more could you ask for?)

So I returned from my vacation with four full days to prepare, and on Friday I was to drive away with everything I still owned (i.e. that I hadn't sold over the internet) in the tiniest trailer rentable from U-Haul and the back of my glorious 1996 station wagon. Good plan, right?

The week was, of course, jam-packed with pre-leaving friend time. Perhaps I should've slept a little more, or spent a little longer on the moving part of things and less on the "OMG I won't see you for, like, three whole months!!" part of things, but "should" is a funny word, when you think about it. And if things had gone according to plan it all would've worked out just fine.

The plan began to run off its rails on Tuesday, I think it was, when my aforementioned glorious 1996 station wagon began acting funny. And by "acting funny" I mean "accelerating by itself, without me stepping on the gas." It felt sort of like a jet getting ready for takeoff. And then it stopped, so by the time I took it to my trusty (read "amazingly awesome and wonderful") mechanic there was no problem for him to diagnose. Right.

I retrieved the car from the mechanic and decided I'd just really really hope that nothing would go wrong again until I was in Tennessee. Alas, the jet engine started preparing for liftoff again as I was on my way to U-Haul to collect my little trailer. By the time I got home with the trailer it had gotten bad enough to incite rather a lot of screaming and swearing, and a phone call to my parents to say "HELP!! WHAT DO I DO?!?!??"

Long story short (there was a lot of unhappiness and NOT PANICKING and frantic phoning) - I ended up calling a lovely moving company who were able to schedule me on only 24 hours' notice. They picked up my stuff Friday morning, and I was left with just myself and a handful of things to truck home in my death-mobile, I mean station wagon.

And, of course, through those last three days were the goodbyes. Not really goodbyes, I guess: more like "talk to you online"s and "see you at Thanksgiving"s. They still weren't fun, not even a little bit. But since I couldn't pack all of my friends into the car and take them with me...beers were drunk, dinners were eaten, and leave was taken. I was, it seemed, on my way.

Episode 2 - Seven Hours from Boston

The drive from Boston to northern New Jersey normally takes about four and a half hours. Now that I was sans trailer, that was about the time I expected to take for phase one of the actual moving part of this whole escapade. I should, however, have anticipated Friday-afternoon-in-August traffic. I couldn't really anticipate the monsoons.

The good news is that having the entire contents of Lake Champlain dumped over my car seemed to keep it from acting up for most of the trip. It got a bit cranky about taking three hours to get to I84 at the Connecticut border (which normally takes an hour), and was threatening to take out the sedans in front of me in the last bit of that interminable crawling - leaping ahead every time I took my foot off the brake. But as I crossed into state two of my nine state (total) trip, the rain apparently cooled off the grumpy bits enough that they were willing to behave. (The rain also chased me off the road and into a rest area until it slowed down enough that I no longer felt that I really ought to have been in an ark.)

The Camry and I did successfully make it to NJ, and I even managed to not fall over upon exiting the house. My parents seemed slightly concerned about my well being, but after feeding me they decided I had revived sufficiently and could be put to bed. After sleeping, well, almost not at all and then taking 75% longer than normal for the trip, being put to bed was like a gift. It was a brief respite before the next episode was to begin.

Episode 3 - Maybe This Drive is Longer Than I Though

According to Google Maps, the drive from NJ to TN is approximately 12 hours. Of course, Google Maps doesn't have to stop and pee. Or get a sandwich from Subway and clean the windshield. And so, eleven hours in, my father and I are stopped at a Super 8 just outside Knoxville.

We thought that stopping before Knoxville would be good because 1. it's already been a long day, and 2. starting about 90 miles back there have been all sorts of signs about I40 being closed downtown. We figured this way we could plan our alternate route and not have to default to the detour that may or may not be terrible and/or backed up with horrible traffic.

So here we are with Ladysmith Black Mambazo on the television.... and I think I'd like to go home now, please.

Episode 4 - Welcome to the Central Time Zone

There's a sign along I-40 between Knoxville and Nashville informing travelers that they've crossed into the next time zone. I'm not sure exactly what it says because I was too busy telling my mother, over the phone, that my father and I were crossing the time zone line. I was pretty excited.

The whole last day of driving was a bit of a roller coaster both literally and figuratively. We were past the proper mountains, but it turns out that Tennessee is all rolling hills, and of course as we approached our destination there came ever more frequent interjections from my side of the car, along the lines of "OMG I live in Tennessee now" and "what have I done??"

The scenery was quite pretty, and if I managed to adequately capture any of it with my random shots through the car windows I'll post them here.

Eventually we started to see signs of greater population density, and then we got a glimpse of the buildings of downtown Nashville before the beltway swept us off around the city to our final destination. My new home. In Tennessee. Where I live now.

Exactly where I live now happens to be an awesome one bedroom apartment in the upstairs of an adorable house. (My two new friends even, upon pulling into the driveway, began exclaiming how totally cute it is. They happen to be very male friends who wouldn't normally go on about the cuteness of something such as a house.) I am slowly collecting furniture and trying to make it feel like home, but mostly I'm waiting for the movers to arrive with my stuff. (I'm also waiting for the coolest company in Nashville to bring me things from far-off Ikea.)

Downstairs from my awesome apartment are two even awesomer ladies, Priscilla and Lila. I love Priscilla and Lila. From the first time I talked to Priscilla I knew I liked her, and she's even cooler in person. Lila is Priscilla's mother, and you know what they say about the apple and the tree. I totally lucked out with this apartment and these landladies/neighbors/friends. I think once my stuff gets here I'll have to bake them some cookies as a small token of my gratitude for the welcome they've given me. (Though I bet they can bake circles around me.)

I will definitely post a few photos of The Apartment once I get them uploaded to the computer and figure out which ones I want to show the world. I'm hoping to post lots of photos in the coming weeks and months so y'all can see for yourselves what this Nashville business is all about.

Of course, the best way to see it is in person, and by the time you get here my air mattress might finally be inflated......

An Open Letter (2)

To the drivers on I287 approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge this evening around 7:00 (and really to all drivers in the Northeast, and possibly everywhere),

Perhaps no one ever explained to you one of the general concepts behind driving a car, so let me try: You are intended to progress in a forward direction. Occasionally you go backwards, or even stay still, but when you are on I287 approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge you should, indeed, be moving forwards.

I do understand that sometimes you need to change the radio station, or eat a sandwich, or put on mascara, but these things should be handled in such a way as to not impede your forward progress. Because, you see, when you stop moving forward, I stop moving forward.

When I'm on I287 at around 7pm on a Sunday night, I really would rather continue moving forward, and I'm pretty sure the other drivers around would too. So please, even if you're going up a hill, even if there's a car carefully merging onto the road, even if you suddenly realize that you forgot to turn off the oven before you left town for two weeks - please continue to move in a forward direction. We will all appreciate it, including you when I don't decide to drive my beat up old car directly into the back of your cute, brand new car, with as much force as I can muster from a standstill with one car's length run-up.

Thank you, and happy driving.

Pickup Truck of Death

The last time I was on a bicycle was several years ago (much to my roommate's chagrin). My friend was last on a bicycle at least ten years ago. That is, until yesterday, when we decided to ride twenty miles - ten out, ten back - on bikes we dug out of the basement, one of which ostensibly fit her and one that was blatantly too small for me. We crammed the bikes in the back of the car, drove to the parking lot, donned our dusty helmets, and congratulated ourselves heartily on making it from the car all the way to the beginning of the path.

We considered riding the whole trail - 22 miles each direction - but once we found ourselves stopping every mile or two we changed our minds. It turns out that resting all of your bodyweight on, essentially, the top of a narrow pole is extremely uncomfortable. As in, I'm very much still sore in very inconvenient places, and probably will be for several days.

Fortunately we managed to avoid meeting motorized death at any of the road crossings, and were mostly able to ride side by side so as to hear each other's snarky comments and jokes along the way.

The weather was beautiful, the picnic lunch by the hard-to-find lake was chilly but nice... and I won't be getting back on a bike for at least another five years.

But a weekend out of town, with sunshine and fresh air and really good (completely uncomplicated) company is the best cure for almost any ill...or for many ills at once. It doesn't actually solve the problems, it just makes them seem a lot less problematic. Or, at the very least, it gives you a respite from thinking about them, worrying about them, being sad about them, trying to solve them.

Find a friend to visit or put a tent in your trunk and go. Now. Go.

That's Just Like a Vacation, Right?

Apologies for being MIA for more than a whole week! A dreadful sin in the blogosphere, I know. My excuse is that I was out of town, and too busy taking in a new city to sit back and reflect on much of anything. Now that I'm home I can share a few thoughts about (or inspired by) the trip:

• Southwest Airlines is lovely, but the way to "like where you sit" is NOT to "sit where you like." Give your sloganeers a pat on the back, and then find some other way of boarding people quickly without screwing us over. Thanks.
• Any city that has a coffee shop that serves a spicy vegan chocolate chocolate chip cookie (and a really good cup of coffee) is okay by me.
• Trees are nice. Grass is nice, too.
• A lake can be almost like an ocean, if you don't swallow any of it, and if you ignore the fact that you can see the other side.
• Long Island is REALLY big.
• I like nice people.
• I want a tiny house with its very own vegetation, within walking distance of civilization.
• Major corporations are the devil, but small-ish chains that make a strange city feel more like home might not be quite so bad.
• Motels are the most miserable places on earth. The free wireless access is necessary so the guests don't all drown themselves in the indefinably sketchy swimming pool.
  Time should be allowed, in life, for both varieties of vacations: the kind where you go somewhere new and run around like crazy trying to Maximize Your Time, and the kind where you go somewhere - probably somewhere familiar - and just become as much like a piece of furniture as possible for some amount of time. People call the first a vacation, but after trying to See And Do an entire city in 2.5 days, I'm really not sure it should count.

* photo(s) to be posted very soon *