open for bizness
Welcome to the temporary (I hope...) home of the squibix blog, brought to you by the kindness of evula.net. There's nothing here yet, and I haven't had a chance to make the page here look any interesting, but all that will come in time. Not now though, cause I'm hungry and plan to go out for breakfast as soon as Leah gets off the phone with my mother.
And California here? It's hot.
no css zen mastery here
I've been playing with the css for this page some, and let me tell you, the folks who designed the styles and markup for this Moveable Type business weren't up to the highest standard. Some things that you'd expect to be styled using a single 'class' have different ones, while the things in the menu bar don't have distinct IDs where you'd expect them to. At least, not where I expect them to. Also the names of the classes aren't entirely obvious, and the default style has font names and sizes for like every different class. But, I'm making some sense of it all, and we should have something at least a little better for tomorrow.
Also, Leah wants to write a post but I don't know how to make her an author yet (or even if such a thing can be done). If she posts maybe she'll write about what we did today.
prettier in pink
I've put up a quick half-stylesheet, just so we're not stuck with the default here. It's pink. It isn't much--no images--but it's a start.
I am now dying of tiredness. I'm not sure if it's the jet-lag or the not sleeping last night. Me and Leah are both a bit sick; you should have seen us moping around all afternoon. Especially her. But we got all kinds of excercise in this morning, so that's alright.
New Englanders take note: January in LA feels like late April or even May does in a more civilized land. It gets chilly at night though: into the 40s, some nights!!
Leah's first blog entry EVER
Yesterday it seemed that poor Danny had come all the way to California just to see his silly girlfriend lie in bed wearing about seventy sweatshirts saying "i'm cold i'm cold don't we have anymore blankets in this house?"
But today, after we both recovered from our respective fevers, everything is much better. And even last night we were doing a bit better, although we couldn't get up the energy to cook a real big dinner. But i did manage to steam some broccoli and put garlic powder on it for me and dan. and he thought it was pretty good too, so this is proof in my favor if he ever tries to say that i've never cooked for him.
Then dan wanted to watch sports, and i wanted to watch a movie about ballet dancing, but Kimberly was home as well and ready to watch TV, so the girl vote won. And an important note about the film last evening: apparently 75% of the women who watch the Oprah Oxygen network are morbidly obease, because no less than 75% of the commercials are for radical weight-loss plans and or drugs.
And i've decided that four people living in a house is much more even than anouther couple and just me living in a house. Now i've got someone to back me up in fights.... like, about, why are the pennies covered in chocolate left in the sink? ("but where should they go, if not in the sink?" "But why on earth are they covered in chocolate?")
- Leah
the movie boycott starts now
I pray it's not too late to pass on this vital message: don't watch Master and Commander. Please. We saw it this afternoon; or rather, we saw some of it, cause we walked out about halfway through. It was that bad. What was wrong with it, you ask? Well, asides from the utter lack of plot, characterization and interesting things happening, it was also very noisy. On the plus side, it had one or two pretty scenes. But there are no more pluses. It's a shame cause the book (or books, really: besides the two that make up the title, there was material in the movie from at least two more O'Brian novels) is quite good. So if you already saw the movie and my warning comes too late to save you (poor soul), don't let it put you off the books, which are truly wonderful. And if you liked the movie... well, um... good for you! I guess.
And remember, this was supposed to be one of the good movies out there. I shudder to think what must be going on in theaters showing, say, The Butterfly Effect. My disgust at all things movie-related was only increased by a ad they showed before the film, hectoring the world for downloading movies off the internet. Their tag line was something like 'movies: they're worth it,' but after this experience I have to say... that is incorrect.
On an unrelated note (since Leah didn't say anything about it) you'll note that we now have a header image. Yay. It has its flaws, sure, but it's something; and I'll be improving it in the nearish future. Also, I'm trying to find out if we can add Leah as an author to this here blog, and me too, so I can have my posts signed as Danny and she as Leah. But Eric is busy and lazy in equal measures, so for now we'll have to be content with doing it like
- Danny
rural santa monica
So we live in the middle of the city here, as you can tell by our address: 17th Street, eh. But when I look out the window from where I'm sitting now, it could be out in the country for all I can tell; that is, if I ignore the little bits of apartments peeking up over the trees on the other side of the highway there. And from our bed, which is very low (more in the nature of a matress, really), things look even more rural: all we can see is a very country-lookin telephone pole, a few palm tree tops, and the peak of a tile roof.
Even when you actually look around, our neighborhood seems a little more rural then you'd expect; I think it's because of how deserty it is in LA. The plants are not, I don't think, what I expect in a city. And there are also little traces of the old resort town Santa Monica used to be, in the little detached bungalos with their cute little lawns and gardens and chain link fences. I wouldn't go so far as to say they look out of place, crammed in between a car dealership and an auto-body shop, but no more would they look out of place on the end of a lonely dirt road.
All in all, it's an interesting effect.
- Dan
Yummy Eatings
So, in case you're wondering, my boyfriend Dan is the most wonderful boyfriend in the whole entire world. But i bet you want Evidence. So here goes:
today while i was working the most annoying eight hour shift ever (10:30-7, so there's no room neither in the morning nor in the evening to do much but sleep or go "blah, that shift really sucked") dan came into town and brought me lunch he made for me (a delicious peanut butter and banana sandwhich) and then went home and spent hours slaving over the most yummy dinner in the history of dinners i've ever had cooked for me by any boyfriends. (heehee. if you'd ever met any of my former and utterly useless boyfriends, you'd see how much of a joke that last statement was.) But seriously, the dinner was really good. we had yummy rice and tofu seasoned with green onions and garlic, and then a cold salad of carrots and broccoli with lime sauce. i won't give away the recipe, mostly cuz i don't know it, but you can look in the moosewood cookbook if you're curious.
and that dinner was the best news of the day, because other than that i mostly folded pants.
that's all for today, except to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKE, who is my little brother who turns 19 today, and therefore isn't so little anymores, at least not in his mind.
And my boyfriend is the best guy in the whole entire world. did i say that already? oh. sorry.
-Leah
smells like girls...
The problem with living with Leah, so far, is that I've yet to buy my own soap and things; since I got here I've been using hers. That's all well and good--she's happy to help me out--but it means that when I get out of the shower I smell like a fruit salad composed of cucumbers, watermelons, cantelopes, apples, lemons and sugar cane. Yes, I'm aware that some of those items aren't quite fruits, but I am not lying when I tell you that they are all flavors featured in the various cleansing products I find myself using. Now, I'm sure that these things do as good a job as cleaning me as regular soap would, if not better--Leah swears by them--but somehow it doesn't seem right. If I smear watermelon or sugar cane over my body, I certainly won't be getting any cleaner. And all this stuff looks, and smells, like liquid candy. Soap cleans you because it's soap, and that's what it does. This stuff? I don't know. I'm just glad I live in LA, otherwise I might be worried about attracting hungry bears.
Yeah. So this morning we went down to the beach and biked (me) and rollerbladed (Leah) along the bikepath to Venice, which was very nice. The path is really well-maintained, and towards Venice it has some great curves in it, that swoop around little grassy knolls and make you feel like you're on a race course. Sadly, Leah had to work at 10:30 so we didn't have much time, but we'll definitely be back there before too long. Looking out for bears the whole time, I'm sure.
I've gone native
I just walked down to the store to pick up some ginger, and--I'm sorry to have to confess--I wore my sweatshirt. They're right: it does get kinda chilly in the evenings! Especially if you think that, um, 58 degrees is chilly. Which I'm obliged to report that I now do. It's not cold, mind you, but chilly... yes. How quickly we adapt.
And speaking of walking to the store: I always thought that it was impossible to do anything in California (LA, anyways) without a car. And it's true that there sure are alot of cars around; but really, around here anyways things are notable for their non-car-requiring convenience. The hippy co-op grocery is just around the corner, about ten minutes' walk, and the real human grocery store is around the other corner, scarcely any farther away. I biked there this afternoon in about three minutes, and while the biking along Olympic Ave wasn't anything my mother would have been happy with, it was still wonderfully easy and convenient. I guess that's the advantage of city life. (Yes, I could walk to Trader Joes in Lexington, and bike to the Stop and Shop if I really wanted to, but there's one key aspect of biking in Lexington that I don't have to cope with here: hills.)
- Danny
urban planning like we've all done it
LA reminds me of Sim City--Sim City 2000 that is, the last game if that noble line that I played, or even ever saw. On the flat, everything is laid out in a regular grid pattern; and in fact, the planners went even farther and adopted the most efficient form of urban development known to man and Sim: the long block. I can't say for sure that the long blocks in Santa Monica are exactly six property squares wide, but they're close. The RL blocks also have alleys down the middle of them; while there weren't alleys actually represented in Sim City 2000, we can imagine that they were there. And indeed, that answers the ever-pressing question of how did folks in the single-family houses in the middle of the blocks get to work? I could say more about the uncanny resemblances between life and game, but I'll leave them for perhaps another day.
Leah is at work today for a million hours, and I'm sitting at home waiting for UPS to bring my real computer, which I miss like an absent lover. Sammy the laptop is nice and all, but it's just not the same. The five packages, weighing in at over a hundred pounds ($282.20, boxed and insured), are marked as 'out for delivery' on the UPS tracking page, so I have high hopes of seeing them today. Expectations, too: I'm hosting a pop-pop tournament tomorrow (my first as a host!) and playing on the laptop would be less than ideal. Specially since I don't have a working mouse or a registered copy of the game. Er... here's hoping.
Leah didn't post yesterday so she didn't mention my ever delicious dinner offerings, but last night I made Carribean black beans and mango salsa. It was all even better this afternoon for lunch, in burrito form. I confess I didn't quite know what a mango was before I went to buy them, but by pure luck I picked the right fruit. Sadly though, the two I got were far less than ripe, so the salsa was a little more cruchy than I could have wished. Still tasted good though, and I'll save the other mango to make another batch a bit later.
yay!
I got my real computer back! And it still works, as is evidenced by the fact that I'm now typing this on it. You can't tell that, of course, but you can take my word for it. And ain't it nice. Only trouble is my external speakers seem not to be working, which is unfortunate, since listening to music was one of the things I was looking forward to most. Hopefully the problem is something I can sort out short of buying whole new speakers.
Some hours, or some amount of time anyways, have passed between the end of the last paragraph and the beginning of this one. That is the joy and beauty of having a computer that's not a pain to use!* I watched some petty fights on IRC, read some articles online, played some pop-pop... and before I knew it it was now! It's a good thing, I have to say, cause Leah had to stay late at work cause there was no one else there or something, so I would have been dead bored otherwise. I might have even been driven to watching tv!! As it is, I could waste time in a slightly more interactive fashion. Only problem is now I don't have any more excuses for not doing real work, so I'd better get right on that tomorrow. Look out for some beautiful paintings Leah did posted tomorrow.
[*er... except, the real computer here is a bit of a pain in the neck in the literal sense. I need to get something to put under the monitor to make it about six inches taller...]
bad grammar from working a million hours
So this is me getting back home at like a billion oclock, after having worked more than ten hours at the store. towards the end of it i was responsibly filling in for someone who ended up MIA, and helping to prepare for two major lululemon events tomorrow: a yoga class in the store at 8am, and then a big promotion sale for Bikram teacher trainers (note, they should actually be called "Bikram teacher trainees" because they're in training to become teachers, but oh well, they all call themselves trainers. but they also learn to say things repeatedly like "go back fall back way back more back" so the nuances of our english grammar are not necessarily their forte.) anyways, for most of the evening i helmed the store almost all by myself, so i'm proud for that. and nautical lingo isn't my forte, so bear with me if that whole helm reference is horribly incorrect. i'm learning slowly, by reading the book of "Master and Commander" except only a little bit every evening because our voices get tired. so i predict it may be a slow process. i hope dan can stand my silly girl stupidity. perhaps he will find it endearing.
speaking of endearing, i was much aided in my work day by my cutie bunny pie who made for me a delicious lunch of two burritos, which i thought was way too much food when i ate the first one at lunch time, but the second one came quite in handy at 7pm when it was dinner time. my boyfriend is the bestest in the world. and you know what that means. that means i win.
- Leah
well, there's some weather anyways
So so far, Southern California hasn't shown us a great deal in the way of weather. Sometimes the sun is shining, and sometimes... um... it's shining through some thin clouds. But last night and this morning we had a bit of a change: some wind. It was strong enough to wake us up last night, blowing boxes over and rattling things around on the roof, and it kind of looked like a hurricane out the window this morning. A hurricane with a sunny sky, that is. It's calmed down some now, though: we're back to normal.
So I said that I got my boxes yesterday, but I didn't provide the whole story. As it turns out, besides leaving two letters out of my last name the fine folks at the UPS store also neglected to put my appartment number on any of the packages. And of course my name wasn't on the buzzer, no one's is. So the poor delivery man would have given up, except that he didn't want to have to deal with my 150 pounds of boxes any more, so he made a little extra effort and walked around the place a couple times. Which I never would have known except I heard the dog barking downstairs, and since I was so desperate to get the stuff and had been waiting all day, I went to take a look; and there he was. So that was good.
Also: there was a pop-pop tournament this morning, and I hosted it. It went very well, except for the fact that I stunk the place up and finished next to last. But eight people played (and nine started) so it was one of the best-attended tournaments in a while. Also it only took an hour and a half, which must me some sort of a record; which was good, because the first and second place finishers had to leave right at that point. Hosting was fun, but all in all, I think I'd be glad to let someone else do it next time.
- Danny