Monthly Archives: October 2004

In order to make up for dressing like the devil on Friday, I’m going to church today.

Why do I get the impression that statement is probably causing more distress among my friends reading it right now than the photo of Friday’s slutty outfit?

Actually, my cube-mate and adopted brother, SuperChu, has asked me to go because he’s playing guitar there today.

me and my cube mate

I have five unheard messages on my voicemail this morning. I played them back while scraping the congealed eyeliner off my eyes with cotton pads and remover. The first three were from last night, friends I’ve talked to since. The fourth was a friend, D’s roomate K, wanting to make sure that my carpool was on its way home to West L.A., after we left the club at 2am last night. The last was a possible date. Of course, it took me a minute and some identifying information to figure out which one. I’ve been Social Blitzing L.A. lately.

a photo of what i was wearing last night

I woke up this morning to sunshine pouring into the windows. Sunshine in November. Sunshine, to the girl from the Northwest, is still a kind of miracle in itself. Colours are a blessing, anything but the constant greys and greens and browns of home. I woke up to blue and gold today, rather than the dirty lavendar and bedraggled ivory of the usual Northwest skies.

I could see the Hollywood sign from the top of the Mar Vista hill today, while driving to get bread and milk for breakfast. Weeks of intermittent rain has washed Los Angeles clean. The air is free of the dust and the smog of the eight million people and six million cars that make up this megalopolis. I could see the Santa Monica Mountains running into the Hollywood Hills just as clearly as I could see the foothills just beyond West Vancouver. And I had never noticed that I could see that damn sign, and all its symbolism, from my little corner of L.A.

It’s too warm out right now for the light sweatshirt I’m wearing – it’s at least 70F out there. And sunny, and colourful. The trees here are still green, and are only occasionally dappled with gold. The palm trees never lose their leaves. I could see the forever blue of the Pacific past the dozens of palm trees that line the streets of Venice, just to the west. Seeing the ocean from the hill, looking across this sleepy corner of L.A., with no tall buildings in sight, makes the view look more like one of the small towns along the California coast. I love feeling like I live someplace smaller than Los Angeles, yet I can go into the city in half an hour.

I love waking up on a Saturday in Los Angeles.

Jillian apologizes in advance for the sloppy writing in tonight’s entries, which are back to back as one is protected and one is not. Both, however, are poorly created because I’m too tired to write better, but won’t get the thoughts down if I don’t write them now.

I went downtown tonight to see a friend’s new loft in a converted factory building, south of downtown, close to the artists quadrant. On the way there, coming from where I’d been in West Hollywood, I took the 101/5 past the east side of downtown and through what used to be Boyle Heights. I suppose it still is, but the freeway destroyed the old neighborhood. And Boyle Heights was where my grandmother and grandfather first lived, with my then two year old mother, when they first came here from Brooklyn.
it’s been a while since i really thought about how I live in L.A. – and still love it here

E-mail from Mom. Dad is better. Much better. He was reading the arch-conservative Victoria paper today. Which means he’s cognizant enough to read. And he remembered that my sister and I have both left home, and was able to tell Mom which cities we were in. He’s eating solid food for the first time in months – the blood thinners killed his appetite after he was put on them in August. I’m much more cheerful as a result.

At least Dad never got to the point where he lapsed into his native dialect. Dad’s original language was the Yorkshire dialect. It’s kind of a hybrid of Old English and Scottish, with some Scandinavian thrown in from when the Vikings owned northwest England. It’s also absolutely unintelligible in pure form.

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Article on CNN today about how Americans are getting “taller and wider”. The average female is now 5’4, up from 5’3 forty years ago. The average male is 5’9 1/2, up from 5’9 forty years ago. Let me emphasize, I stand five-foot-ten-and-change in sock feet. That doesn’t include the heels on many of my favorite shoes. And this is why I scare people. Yet the strange thing is, I’m approached more by guys who are my height – or an inch or two shorter – in Los Angeles. Maybe I’ve become more approachable lately, or maybe guys here are taking a cue from the Tom-and-Nicole model. Either way, it’s an interesting development.

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I’m reading the new Anne Rice book, Blood Canticle. It just reminds me of how much I miss New Orleans. Fortunately, only three more months to go until the January trip. I might start counting days soon. I’m almost homesick for the Garden District.

I’m back in BC on November 5th-7th. Because Dad went downhill so rapidly last week, I want to get back to the Island in case he takes another sudden slide. I want to get home while he can still recognize me as an adult.

Yesterday, Dad asked Mom where the “wee bairns” were (Scottish for “the kids”) and she informed him. And he looked a little puzzled, like he didn’t remember that we’d left home. He’s better, overall, but his memory is just shot.

So I’m passing through YVR, enroute to the Island, on Friday the 5th. And I’m going directly from YVR to Tsawassen, too. And then I fly home on the 7th on a 4:30pm plane.

I fly in again on the 23rd, too, but I’ll also be going straight home then, although I plan to spend the 26th-27th (Fri/Sat) in Vancouver visiting my friends. It’s more visits to the Island in one month than I’ve done since leaving home. And yes, it’s that much of a crisis.

On impulse today, I bought Wet’n’Wild green liquid eyeliner. I wore it out tonight, layered over black eyeliner, with a lot of eyeshadow, and red lipstick. This was for the local punk band night at the Derby, of course. Apparently, turquoise eyeliner is hotter than I thought. Who knew?

a sid and nancy photo op

Right. So I got home around 11pm, and I’m still up listing items I bought in the Fashion District on eBay, posting announcements about THE PRESSFIRE show tomorrow at the Derby and e-mailing the gang about Miss Kitty’s on Friday.

Five minutes of Photoshop yielded this:

And all of you in the greater L.A. area should come check it out. It’ll be fun times. Especially on a Tuesday.
notes on friendship & social life

So my roomate and I went shopping in the Fashion District today. I LOVE the Fashion District of Los Angeles: sixteen square blocks jammed with everything I could ever want, from underwear to shoes, purses to athletic wear, fabric to jewelry.

a line by line description of what we found in the District