I Like the Lichen

I guess looking at lichen is really a solitary pasttime anyways, and here in the Pacific Northwest there is even more of it to look at. I dunno if these qualify as lichen or moss or both. But they're pretty!

And be glad that you're there

I had only been in Seattle for around 5 days when I had my first "You're On Your Own" type grown-up day. It started out badly when the clothing rod in the hall closet which sort of functions as my wardrobe collapsed as I was getting dressed to meet Andy and his writing partner for lunch in South Downtown. The whole crash knocked me backwards and the rod fell on my thumb as I was pulling off my jacket, leaving me with a bruised thumb and a huge pile of crap. The photo makes it seem much less catastrophic than it felt when I was falling backwards into the closet door. Mostly I was pissed because I had just finished unpacking my clothes that morning.


Rushing down to SoDo I was happy to see some sunlight. I wondered what all the fuss about Seattle rain was about. Andy and Andre met me in the parking lot across the street from their work. The parking lot is attached to some weird little diner/smokehouse. I can't quite decide what's so weird about it, but apparently someone on Yelp is in agreement. Andy and Andre are pretty convinced it's a front for drug ring, kind of like that suspicious gas station on the corner of Prairie and Redondo Beach in Torrance where the gas costs like $8 per gallon.


We went to a little SoDo BBQ joint called the Pig Iron and I immediately felt better once I had ordered some jalapeño spinach casserole and creamed corn and taken a look around at the vintage Hatch Show posters on the walls. I especially enjoyed their collection of pig-themed decor.



Hanging out with Andy and Andre is always a good time, and it was nice to get to know them better over some yum BBQ. We talked about harnessing the power of advertising to Save the World, and how Tivo is actually contributing to the downfall of society, etc etc. The food was pretty tasty, and they had a good sweet tea which supposedly gets implemented in a delicious sweet tea mojito.





I dropped the A team off at work and sort of felt sad and lonely. Everything still did/does feel raw and reminds me of the people I love and have left behind. A delicious BBQ lunch served to remind of Jana and her passion for pork, and I felt that Cyndi would have appreciated the side orders. I felt bummed and full of self-pity diluted by sweet tea.

I decided to try to cheer myself up by visiting the Goodwill store near their agency. I had good luck there a few days before with a $10 dresser, perhaps today I might find a clothing storage system that wouldn't let me or my tunic dresses down. The downtown location is huge and endless with aisles and aisles of used sewing machines and discarded VCRs and an entire section dedicated to old joysticks. The furniture area is constantly in flux, but that day I was not as lucky. I glared enviously at the smug woman hugging an upholstered footstool to her chest as she flipped through used records. She obviously found what she was looking for. I couldn't take her superior air, so I slunk back to my car and calculated the distance to the U-District Buffalo Exchange. If all my clothes were going to reside on the closet floor, what difference would a few more tunic dresses make.


But it was not to be. I twisted the key forward and nothing happened. The pedals moved fine and the radio lights would blink on and then off, but nothin else. No quiet whir of the engine and no response except for the little red engine light and the little red check fluids light. And I freaked out.

I had let my AAA membership lapse in January of 07, but I had my oil changed every 3 months (mostly). It had just been changed and my tires rotated before driving up to Seattle though. Normally in such a situation I am ashamed to say that my first response would be to call my Dad. For as long as I can remember, emails and phone calls from my Dad are signed off with things like "Please take care of your insurance" or "Did you get your oil changed yet?" and to me that is how I know I am loved. It's not that I can't take care of my car on my own. It's that having my father help me with such matters brings me a sense of connection and security.

But now I'm 2 states away, and a phone call to my father would do more harm than good. There was no point in worrying him, and nothing to do but sit quietly and figure out for myself the best thing to do. First of all, call my boyfriend and whine and freak out. Check. Next, confirm that my AAA membership truly is expired and useless. Check. Next, jiggle key uselessly in ignition and read a few meaningless chapters of car owner manual, looking for magical enlightenment. Check. Next, get out with owner's manual in hand and poke around front of car looking for way to open hood, tripping through parking lot planter and groaning. Check. Next, call back boyfriend and continue previously truncated whining. Check. Next, cry.

I'm not proud of myself for all that. I was not the picture of grace. I was ashamed to ask for help, and mad at myself for not renewing my AAA card. I knew my Dad would have been disappointed in me. Andy left work early to come join me so that I could use his AAA card (unethical? yes or no?) and while sitting and waiting for him and fumed at myself for being so careless. In preparing to move there were so many things I was careful to attend to, and yet here was something completely preventable that I had neglected. I questioned whether I was truly ready to enter the adult world.

Andy came and we sat in my powerless car in the cold for about 45 minutes waiting for the tow truck. I fretted about the possibility of replacing an alternator and Andy maintained that it was probably my battery. I watched the sun set in the rear view mirror and missed my friends and family and felt sorry for myself. Andy was graciously silent and gentle. He showed me the oil change stick again and reassured me that the fluids looked fine.

Eventually the tow truck came and we found out that it was merely the battery, not something I could have done anything to prevent. We paid for a replacement battery and drove home in dusk.


In the days since then I have certainly had harder times emotionally, but that was a day for obstacles of the physical world. In retrospect, the moral of that story was that things are not as bad as they sometimes seem and they can certainly be worse. When we got home Andy drilled the closet rod back in place while I renewed my AAA card online, and a few days later we bought a clothing rack and purse hooks that hang behind the door for my million purse, and everything was fine.



But if the way that I understood love from my Dad was always looking out for me, then the way that I understand love from Andy is always being there for me. It's hard for me to accept help because I don't want to seem helpless, so it's important that I don't feel like the help is being given with a feeling indebtedness. But I do need help because clearly there are a lot of things I have yet to learn and challenges I will have have to overcome on this new adventure, and even great heroes have partners and sidekicks and soul animal demons and elven gifts to give them special powers. There's no shame in admitting that I can't do it alone. And I'll get better as time goes by.



Now you can feel all the knots in your stomach they start to untie
And suddenly it's not so hard to say you're alright

Oh, love is real it is not just in poetry and stories
It is truth and it will follow you everywhere you go from now on
So if you just cast all off your doubts then your lips would answer for you
Oh, my darling when you smile it is like a song
And I can hear it now

Los Angeles Adventure

This post ins't really about Seattle at all, but how can I talk about where I am if I don't spend some time remembering where I've been?

Before departing LA for my new life in Seattle, I spent the month of December and early January seeing good friends and doing my favorite Los Angeles things, squirreling away fond memories of things and people I love like. During my last week there, my geek hero and punning role model Ben proposed a Los Angeles Adventure in downtown.

Ben is the nerdiest person I know other than myself. I am so glad we became friends because he makes me a better nerd. He is always up to dork-out, and he even lets me cuddle his cat.

So a plan was hatched to ride the metro and visit some classic LA spots: Olvera Street, Chinatown, Cliftons & the Observatory. Another famous nerd pal Cyndi came with us and together we set out to enjoy the multitude of quirky charms that downtown Los Angeles has to offer.

Some shark cigarette posters to start things off. I think the ride from Union Station to Chinatown, which is actually walking distance, completed the Metro portion of our adventure, sadly enough. Even when purposely using public transportation we couldn't manage it.

Lanterns in Chinatown. The Chinatown metro station also has a The feng shui compass which I failed to photograph. It had no informational plaque so we had no idea what it was, but when I stood on it the needle moved. I guess I'm magnetic.

The Chinatownland sign, which was apparently created in 2002 as an art installation.

Cyndi is attempting to act as the arms for this angel statue outside a boba place.

Moving to Olvera Street, which was eerily quiet, we grabbed a quick bite at the stall serving what's widely considered to be the best taquitos in LA.

Union Station at dusk from Olvera Street.

On to Clifton's. I had never been, so I took a lot of photos. One of my partners in ad school had written a series of headlines about Clifton's which really piqued my interest, so I was glad to finally see it in person.

Given the cafeteria-food menu, the colorful variety of desserts was the most appetizing looking area.

I ended up choosing the chicken and dumpling fricasee and strawberry dulce de leche cake.

With the silk flora, animatronic fauna and high dining perch, one can hardly help drawing a connection between Clifton's and Club 33. Similar and yet so opposite.

Gravy makes us giddy.

A transfat free zone.

The view from the street

Now only a blur

After Cliftons we had some mexican hot chocolate at Weeneez which was attached to the Red Dot gallery. Then we walked down the block and saw some amazing sculptures in a downtown hotel window.

After dropping Cyndi off at the Metro station, we headed over to Griffith Park for the final portion of the Adventure. I hadn't been to the Observatory since they remodeled it, and I was excited to see it before leaving.

The Foucault pendulum in the lobby is such a great opening exhibit. When the little peg fell down, it gave me such a sense of awe for the planet and the world. People applauded. Gravity took a bow. You might call it a latitude adjustment.

Ben and I made our way to the telescope on the roof, where we got an amazing view of the moon. But nothing could top Leonard Nimoy's narration in the introductory film for the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater.

My beloved home city. A perfect end for a great adventure.

The road goes ever on and on...

...down from the door where it began

I think moving from Los Angeles to Seattle was the most emotionally draining and logistically daunting thing I've ever had to do in my life thus far. And although I say Los Angeles, most people know I actually mean Torrance, California, city of my childhood, playground of my youth, and the house that I grew up in.

I prepared for a full year, even so much that I went through and quit my old job and got a new job in order to make more money and gain experience that would allow me to start my career in a better place in the new city. I put everyone through what Emily termed "the Longest Goodbye Ever" and exploited my imminent departure as a way to get anything from free meals, to wild adventures in the city, to my choice of songs in Rock Band. And I almost got a lap dance.

But with all that preparation, I still found myself overwhelmed when the time came. The actual physical move went better than I had anticipated and cost less than I had budgeted. But I was not emotionally braced for the reality of leaving everyone and everything I know behind and running off into the great unknown. It was a strange thing to hug my family and friends goodbye and then get onto a freeway that I had driven on every day, and somehow end up in a different life. It was very Lord of the Rings-ie:

[Bilbo] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

So yeah. The first night in the hotel in Redding I cried at the sight of the marshmallow roses my mom had given us, at the snowglobe Jean made me, at every little thing. A lot of the time I wondered to myself if I was making a huge mistake. Most of the time I just tried to allow my mind to float in space and not feel, because feeling was painful. And it was easy to do this because the landscape was beautiful: snowcapped mountains, silvery lakes, and a lot of roadside adult stores in Oregon for some reason. It was a nice drive, but it hurt like hell. Even at this moment it's just easier for me not to think about it. Talking through it a few days later with Andy, it seemed like a dream, and I think for a long time, the journey between point A & B, or rather CA & WA, will remain a numb blur.

I do remember we had a lot of coffee and beef jerky.

And now I am here, in Seattle! It is an exciting new place, and I think if I had to choose a city to start a grand new adventure I could not have found a better place than Seattle. Or a better navigator/tent buddy/Samwise than Andyroo. He's the cheese to my macaroni, as the saying goes. I miss my friends and my family, but in that I am fortunate also, for they have all been enthusiastic and supportive and they all know that I will still be there for them, just a phone call or text message away.


Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.

At goodbye dinner, Jana shows us her Jana Face

Marshmallow flowers from Mom

Empty closet

We are attempting a sad "Hey!" Mine is very over the top but Jean's sadness is achieved through one or two fewer twinkles in her eyes than normal.

One last hug goodbye

Where it began

Andy and his Double Double

I'll miss you!

The littlest things keep me grounded

Cologne dispenser in a truck stop restroom

This photo is like time traveling: seeing the past & the future

Mt Shasta doesn't wanna come out and play

Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can