I just had my first really crap day in Los Angeles. And when I say crap, what I really mean is HELL!

My room mate who I car pool to work with decided to stay home today. (Not normally a problem but you will see why later). So, I drove to work this morning. The car was acting up a tiny bit, but that's pretty normal for his car. It's always cranky in some way. I left for work 20 minutes early and got there 20 minutes early. I had a pretty no brainer day, busy but not bad. I finished everything I had to do so I left work at 4:30 instead of 5.

This is where the SUCK begins.

I pull out of the drive way and the car's oil light comes on. This is what proceeded the car leaking oil the last time. I pull over and check the trunk for oil....None to be had. I pull over at the next gas station, they don't take checks - which is all I have.

(Have I told you how hard it is to use a check book for anything but rent here? another story)

I spend 20 minutes on the phone, and on the web browser on my phone, trying to figure out where the closest Wells Fargo is to my current location. The bank is just a few miles away. I follow the directions given by the poor teller I end up talking to at that branch. I make it to the appropriate exit, I turn the wrong way and the car dies. I get directions from the people at the business I end up stalling out in front of and go back to trying to find my bank. I get 2 blocks before the engine clacking makes me nervous and I stop at another gas station. I play distressed maiden, which is not hard to do at this point - I'm worried that my room mate will hate me forever because I killed his car. I beg the guy to take a check and he reluctantly does. I apparently lucked into to talking to the owner of the Phillips76 franchise pit stop.

I start the car after dumping THREE, count them, THREE quarts of oil into it. The oil light goes off and immediately comes back on. I think "well maybe it will just take a minute for it get back to normal." I take off again in search of the bank. No luck after looking for 10 minutes. The car is not sounding any better.

I call the SO. He says either put one more quart of oil in the car or suck it up and come home. Not wanting to spend another hour on the side of the road trying to get a check cashed - I sucked it up and started to head home. I get on the 405 freeway headed toward downtown. I don't get more than a mile because the car won't go over 55 no matter how hard I punch it. I get desperate and roll over to the shoulder just before the Normandie/Gardena exit.

The car is smoking. It will not start.

I call the boy again, wailing at the top of my lungs. I killed the car what do I do? Crying and crying and crying. I am a car weenie. I need help.

Luckily, LA has these handy highway patrol TOW TRUCKS. The tow truck driver was the only bright spot in a totally suckie day. He was courteous and explained to me the ins and outs of abandoning a car in LA, ie: the best place to leave it with the least possible repercussions for my room mate. We ended up leaving it at an Office Depot in Torrance. (Yes, the Normandie/Gardena exit was for the roads not the slums.) This guy was super cool, half Hawaiian, half German - he had a German face and fat guy physique, but was tan and dark haired like a Hawaiian. He had a German accent, he had just moved here 5 years ago to work at Boeing as an aerospace engineer. He got laid off 2 years ago and has been driving a tow truck ever since.

I took a cab home from the Office Depot and my day of suck continued. The cab ride was 60 dollars, not too bad considering I was driven ACROSS the ENTIRE city.

I get home, and bawl some more and eventually laugh as my room mate shrugs off the whole car issue.

I try to go to the bathroom before I walk the dogs and suck episode number 2 rears it's ugly head.

The dog has taken a dump all over my bedroom.

The SO says he'll clean it up, just go ahead and take them for a walk. I take my dog first, since he's gone poo and a very naughty boy who obviously still needs to go. When I get back, The SO annouces that the dog has soiled his old camera bag that I use for carrying stuff when we go exploring in LA. I ask him to rinse it off, so I can at least salvage the REALLY cool Max Headroom patch he attached to it. He throws it in the tub and I go to walk the room mate's dog.

And we pitch head long into suck episode #3 for the day.

I am done walking the second dog, I take this one to the dog park because he gets along well with other dogs and my dog does not. I am gone for about 20 minutes. My dog is barking his head off, I mean barking like he's insane. I let him out of my bedroom to give him dinner (we keep the dogs separated). I go back into my room to go to the bathroom, finally. The bedroom is warm and humid. I'm thinking, "damn, it got hot today this is funky." And I step right into a flooded bathroom. The water flows right up over the top edge of my flip flops and I scream at The SO. At the same time, there is a knock on the front door. It's our downstairs neighbor. Their bathroom is flooded too, and she's spoiling for a fight expecting us to have an S.O.L. attitude about the water pouring from her ceiling. She starts giving The SO hard time and doesn't even notice that he says it's "okay, we'll help clean up - be down in a minute. Let us get some of it mopped up up here so it ill at least slow down in your bathroom." The neighbor has to back up in her little speech and gets a puzzled doggie look on her face.

It took us 2 hours to clean up the mess.

At least it's only one suckie day... and the first one in a long time. The SO says that we used up all our good karma points getting to LA with so little trouble. Anything that was going to wrong was going to be really wrong. Have to build up our good karma again. ^_^

Los Angeles is so lush. That's the only way to describe it. Austin is beautiful, but in a the way a tree covered plain is pretty. Austin isn't really a forest covered, it's overgrown scrub. The trees are pleasant to look at but, they don't contribute much but pecans and allergies.

LA is lush in the tropical sense of the word. There are flowers and fruit everywhere. Flowers bloom on every corner and trees pop out of the most bizarre places. The little gravel covered lot a block away from my apartment at Yucca and Las Palmas has passion fruit vines growing on the fence. Passion fruit on a fence, an you believe it? The little hotel right next to the lot has a rose garden and vegetable garden. Our building is surrounded by flowering bushes and orange trees. Everyone I know who owns a house has some sort of fruit tree in their yard, lemons, avacados, oranges. It amazes me.

And the palm trees.....every street has them it seems. LA is an oasis, an oasis created by man rather than by nature. This area was desert waste until us humans decided it would be cool place to live. The weather gods still think it's a desert. It almost never rains any substantial amount. The first week I was here, it rained the most it had rained all year. It rained two times in one week, like a monsoon on both occasions. Remember the national gegraphic specials about the desert in Africa (not the Sahara) that floods into a huge lake every year during the rainy season - which is like a whole day? That's how the weather is here.

I live in an apartment building at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills, a few blocks from the Hollywood Bowl. Our neighbor across the hall, who we're sort becoming friends with, threw a party that lasted all day. When the sun went down, we all headed up to the roof of the building to check out the displays. We could see the fireworks from all the surrounding little cities on the way down to the coast. It was amazing! It was like a show across southern Cali just for us. The Hollywood bowl had a fireworks display, and it was neat to get to watch it closely, but it didn't last for very long.

I ca't tell you how special I thought it was to see s many people celebrating our country at the same time. There were literally millions of people staring at the sky at the same, and I was able to see most of what everyone else saw. It was beauiful!!!!!!!!

Oh, and my job is awesome. I work at a vitamin company in Carson s a marketing assistant in Packaging development.

My boss loves me. We get along so well, that it's kinda weird. She had 3 assistant before me, two of which couldn't handle her "take no shit" attitude. The guy before me just flat out quit because he "couldn't take it anymore." I find that funny, because she's actually one of the best bosses I've ever had. She has more confidence in me than I do myself.

My boss is going on vacation at the end of the month and won't be back until almost the end of July. I'm so glad she trusts me with all the responsibility. We have 12 accounts redesigning their packaging. I'm nervous, but I know I can handle it. I moved all the way across country with nothing but hope, I'm sure this won't be as hard as the move.

I just got a raise too!!!!!!!! That's how good a job she thinks I'm doing. I was going to ask for a raise after she came back from vacation, but now I don't have to. She really wants to make sure that I stay with the company and don't run off for a better paying job. She had such a hard time finding me she doesn't want to look again!

I hate to admit it, but I'm fucking off this afternoon. She left to get her son ready for his prom.

I LOVE MY HAIRCUT!!! NEED HIGHLIGHTS NOW!

Well, it's been along time since I wrote anything, so here goes.

Californian girls just have a totally different way of looking at style than I'm used to. Girls here don't show their ears and it seems to be a requirement that at least a portion of your forehead be covered. If the clothes cover more than a bikini than they are okay to wear anywhere. I have to admit that miniskirts are giving me kind of a fright. I have a couple but they seem SOOOO short compared to what I've been wearing. I guess I'm just acting like an old lady.

The only place, it seems, that ponytails are okay is at the gym. My scrunchies have been seized by the SO except for use at the gym. Going to the gym is hard to get used to, as well. People there are not interested in looking at other people - they are staring at themselves to make sure that they do their exercises correctly. I never knew that until I had my free session with a personal trainer at the gym. I just assumed they were all asking for other people to pay attention and were narcissistic freaks. I'm trying to be serious about getting in shape. I have to admit that it feels good to see muscles popping up where there were none before, but DAMN I'm sore all the time.

I have a great job right now, but I just had 2, count 'em - 2, different companies soliciting my resume. One for a job at DISNEY!!!! yippee - praying I get an interview and the job.

I'm getting my hair cut on Saturday. Some salon needed hair models for training and I volunteered. I've been growing my hair out for almost a year - I was not looking forward to the salon bill to get it done. Who can turn down a free hair cut? Not Me!! Now I just need to get it highlighted after that. I am a complete hair 'tard so the stylist is going to love me!

God I love this state!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are purple trees blooming along all the street. And when I day purple, I mean purple. They have all these flowers all over them so they look like giant purple flowers instead of like a tree. The ground underneath them is covered in flowers as well, so you feel like you walked into some girlie anime scene. I love it !! They make me smile everytime I see one.

I need to find a cheap place to shop. I need new clothes. I need new make up and I need t figure out what to do with my eyebrows - they are way too big for LA. Anyone know a personal style consultant who needs practice and wants to try me?

smooches

I have always been one of those people who is always cold. Don't know why...

In Texas Air Conditioning was practically the bane of my existence. It didn't seem to matter what the temperature outside was, the air conditioning was always too cold. Here in California, it's exact the opposite. I would swear that people here don't believe in using the AC at all. I understand that it's not as hot, but it still gets over 80 - which is my high temp tolerance.

Still no AC.

I started working this last week at a company in Carson. They have AC, but it doesn't really get cooler inside than it does outside. In Texas, people would keep their air conditioning running at 75 degrees, which in the summer could be as much as 35 degrees below what the outside temperature was. That's what I'm accustom to. Here, some buildings seem to be lucky to have AC.

I feel like my internal thermostat is broken.

Some people are really shitty. I just have to say that, sorry.

When we got into LA, our room mate called some people who lived here that we all knew from Austin. All of whom said that they would help us out when we got here. No one did. We spent our first week in that hotel in Torrance, running to interviews, looking for an apartment, and chilling out as much as we could while we watched our money dribble away on the room.

I think that 3 people and 2 huge dogs were too much for people to handle. Still, they should not have offered if they didn't intend to help. One couple did offer us a couch for a night, BUT that night they were having a party for a bunch of swingers. (If you are not familiar with this, it's exchanging sex partners temporarily) . My SO and I are not into that so we were left to sleep in the car for a night before we got our apartment. Our roomie had a place to sleep, since the couple are really his friends and didn't mind getting groped by strangers.

The apartment locater we found was the most helpful person in finding a place to live. I know, "duh." However, the way apartment locators work in California is totally different than in Texas. In Texas, the locater gets a kick back from the apartment complex, so it's all free. The locater drives you around, asks all the hard questions you forget to ask, tells you which apartments are most likely to rent to you. Here in California, however, the apartment locators charge you for providing access to their database, then you do all the driving and calling. I LOVE the locater we found. Imagine Harvey Firestone as your locater - it was worth the $150 just to be entertained by him. He asked us what we were looking for, what we had that might disqualify us for any apartments, and what the price range was. He told us EXACTLY what to say to the apartment managers that would make us sound like more desirable tenants, how to talk about our dogs in a way that would make the apartment managers more comfortable, and told us what neighborhoods were safe for us to live in. He literally told us he was searching for apartments in areas "where a pretty girl could walk around buck naked at 2 AM and not have to worry."

We went to one service that we paid them their money and they sat us in front of a computer and said "there you go." Crappy service, if I ever saw it. The only listing they had were in not so nice neighborhoods. The listings weren't in Compton or Watts, but still not safe at all.

Oh, and by the way..ignore all the super PC laws here in Cali. Everyone smokes!!! Don't let the "no smoking" in a restaurant/bar/club law fool you. Like I said Everyone smokes!

Here is my first mind bender about California:

What is up with the "pay" toilets? Literally locked public restrooms that you have to pay to get into!!! This is such a bizarre concept to me. Why do businesses to this? I understand the "for customers only" idea, but PAY TOILETS????????? Hello! I'm leaving your store if I'm shopping and can't go if I need to.

The journey across the country was amazing and mind bending. I drove part of the way to California. I had never been in a car for that long or driven that far before.

We left at 4 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday and drove until we thought we were going to pass out. We stopped at a trucker hotel on I-10, about 2 hours out on the big highway. I'm glad we did I wanted to be awake when left Texas. I stared out the window at the state I had always lived in and said goodbye to the scenery for hours as we drove. I fell in love with the windmill farms on the way out of the state. They were so strange, like giant alien plants taking root in my backyard. The sun was setting as we drove past them all and framed the windmills in a purple glow. How was I to know one the most beautiful and alien things I had seen would be on the way out? I need to find some here in my new state so I can go stare at them for hours and contemplate how very, very small I am and how magnificent us humans are for making something so grand.

I cried silently to myself when we finally arrived in el Paso. I knew it was the turning point. I knew that if I made it out of Texas and didn't turn back, that I could make the rest of the trip. I should have done this years ago. I feel so brave after just a 2 day car trip.

I'm sad I missed most of Arizona. I drove almost all the way through, but mostly at night. The SO couldn't drive through the state because he has a VERY old ticket there and a failure to appear warrant. He got the ticket on his last trip driving through almost 10 years ago and none of us wanted to take the chance of him being hauled off the jail.

The worst part of the entire trip was actually coming into California. We stopped in a tiny town in Arizona, right near the border, to let the dogs walk and switch drivers. The city was Quartzville and it was weird....An entire town of mobile homes. As we started climbing the hills and head into California, it started to rain. This was the worst rain shower so far this year. It poured on us all the way to Los Angeles. The SO always visits the ocean when coming to California, before doing anything else. So, we drove down Santa Monica to PHC (in a tiny Mazda and a 26 foot UHaul) and found all the beach entrances closed. All of us were disappointed, so we decided to go find a place to stop and sleep. We went all the way to Torrance before we found a hotel that had a parking lot we could park the truck in.

I moved to Los Angeles not quite a month ago. This is how it happened.

As trite as it sounds......It all began when we went to look for a new place to live.

The apartment locator, who 5 years before was friendly and very helpful, was insulting today. We gave them the amount we wanted to spend and what we wanted in a place to live. They scoffed at what we wanted to spend, almost laughed when we told them we had, not only one dog but, two. The options they gave us were in a REALLY shitty and not so safe part of town.

That was the last straw....My Significant Other (SO for short) suggested to myself and our room-mate that we pack our crap, rent a U-Haul, and move to LA. The Roomie LITERALLY fliped a coin. Heads we moved, tails we stayed. It was heads.

It's something that the SO and I have wanted to do for years, but we never had the money before but managed to swing it. We borrowed, sold stuff, and what not to get the money to go. We're here - we have a beautiful apartment in Hollywood that doesn't care what kind of pet we have and our rent is cheaper.

smooches!