“I’m totally watching New Moon this weekend. I also drink Starbucks and listen to Beyonce, and eat McDonalds, so suck it.” - Me on Facebook the other day.
A received a phone message from my best friend the following day who read my posting back to me and then asked me if I was about to get my period. Yes. Yes, I am.
1 day agoFile under: Shit I don’t care to about.
(Sorry tumblr team, beyond those things keep up the good work)
Funny. I have to say, coming home after a long day and watching that proposal video created by people I neither know nor care about, was really weird and annoying. Good looking people with nice lives that are about to embark on a lifelong journey of marriage, children and all the riches doesn’t make my heart soar. But what made up for it was the extremely snarky remarks posted on reblogs by the beloved folks I follow. I literally laughed at loud several times that night. Thanks guys.
1 day agoVodka, vodka, vodka, Highland Park friend’s porch, card game, couch, coffee, porch, shower, lomo saltado, ceviche, wine, shower, friend’s backyard, vodka, Whitest Kids You Know, home.
5 days agoYou know, I don’t never get no “likes” or reblogs on my posts, for the most part. I’ve seen posts by more popular Tumblrs that say nothing more than the word Poop, and I’m not even kidding, that get at least 20 “likes”. But this post, yeah, I’m beginning to understand how it works. Fuck I’m hungry.
(via lickystickypickyme)
1 week ago
I work in this place about 1-3 times a week and yes, because of abject poverty, on behalf of both inmates and obviously their families, they may not have cell phones that work(cheap shit or burners)/ran out of minutes/never had a cell phone when they got arrested/jail staff lost their property while they were incarcerated. Inmates typically use overpriced phone cards while in jail to offset the cost of collect calls to their families, but it’s ridiculously expensive on both ends. Ever made a phone call where the first minute cost you $3.50 for the first minute and 10 cents after, but the service is so bad that you keep getting cut off and have to call back again and again, sometimes doubling, tripling or quadrupling that $3.50 initial minute charge? Yeah me neither. Also, these folks are released during all times of the day and night. And most of the time you won’t know what time of day they’ll release you, and so nor will your family or loved ones. Either they wait all day and night for your ass to get out or you call them to pick you up, that is, if you have anyone that wants to pick you up, or if you even have a place to go. And if you don’t have a cell phone, which you most likely won’t because valuables don’t usually make it through property holds and good luck trying to get your shit back, well you got pay phones, because even if you did have a cell phone going in, and you got it back when you got out, it sure as hell won’t be charged when you get it. Trust. And I also want to add, most felons aren’t in county, in fact, about three fourths of the people in Men’s Central haven’t even been convicted of a crime because they are pre trial detainees. They’re simply too poor to make bail. Jail is for people serving a year or less for misdemeanors/petty crimes, serving a few months for parole violation, or have a case that is taking a really fucking long time to be adjudicated, tried, sentenced etcetera. You have to be convicted of a felony to be a felon, and if you were, your time in county won’t be too long because your ass is headed to prison. Jail and prison are two very different things. Ahh I feel better.
1 week agoThe only place on earth where you’d see this many payphones all in one place is Los Angeles’ Mens County Jail, where I’m standing right now. Felons don’t use cellphones I guess.
Where I work downtown, in a department that, at any given day, is filled with anywhere from 5-8 people, I am the minority, in that I don’t speak Spanish. And it’s not just because we serve a primarily Spanish speaking community, because we do, but most speak English. It’s just that 95% of people I work with, and especially on my volunteer days, all speak Spanish fluently. Even the white people. It’s only when an older Spanish speaking woman, who speaks English perfectly, comes in, that all of a sudden everyone is talking in Spanish, because she speaks it to them and they reply accordingly. It sucked for me because I only know a little. I simply asked that if there was a joke everyone was laughing about, that I would be let in on it. Only fair. It’s been quite a while and this week, I’ve started to understand about 65% of what’s being said, if not more. I can understand what’s being said but then I reply in English. I hate the way my voice sounds, speaking a foreign language in my valley girl accent. I don’t exactly know what happened. Perhaps I’ve been paying more attention. But I’ve got to say it’s been pretty cool being able to understand what’s going on and to be able to respond. I don’t blame anyone for being left out. I’ve had way too many experiences in my life being the only non Spanish speaker around. And I’ve got to admit, Spanish is the only language I’ve been the most comfortable speaking, the only language I’ve ever really tried to speak, if only because you really have to use it here and there when you live in LA. That’s just the way it is growing up and working in California. It’s just been a while, that’s all.
Last minute edit: I should clarify that it’s not like everyone around me is talking in Spanish and I get left out. I often am spoken to in Spanish and am free to respond to others conversations that take place entirely in Spanish. I have a feeling this is some sort of immersion education for me since I am usually the only fucking person that doesn’t know Spanish. So apparently it’s working!
1 week agoThe Amateur Gourmet goes to Manhattan’s most authentic Thai restaurant (the good stuff is in Queens), Rhong Tiam, and eats their famous spicy dish, Pork on Fire.
“…Pork on Fire. It’s not so much a dish as a session: an hour spent suspended exquisitely between pleasure and pain, craving and fear. Lemon grass, ginger, kaffir lime leaves and whole basil are fried into a powerfully fragrant carpet of crisp, aromatic leaves over bits of ginger, garlic and pork. Lashings of seared green chilies give it heat. But there are also floral, herbal and sweet flavors.” - The New York Times
He announced that he was going to do it earlier this week on twitter, and I responded as best I could in 140 characters. But I’ll tell you this here. I tried Pork and Fire and it was everything described above. Delicious and spicy as hell. I was crying and my mouth ached, but through the pain was everything the NYTimes describes. The last time I ate something this spicy was in Berkeley, at a Thai restaurant named after the owner’s daughter. I had a curry that they warned me was spicy and I ate it, crying, with tears falling down my face. And it was so good. But this Pork on Fire dish, well, it was spicy alright, but the flavors really came through. My friend and I had gelato nearby in the West Village afterwards to cool down our tongues.
But the next day I had the worst, THE WORST diarrhea ever. My colleagues and I had come back from an all day conference and our office was having some kind of staff celebration, and thank God, because I couldn’t work under these conditions. I was moaning in pain at my desk and fucking up the bathroom every five minutes. I actually left work early, which is something you just don’t do, but there was a shindig going on so, yeah. But man, that pork was delicious!
1 week agoToday was sort of a good day. I say that because good days are hard to come by. But I woke up super depressed and was thinking non stop about Friday’s interview. What went right, and a lot did, and what went wrong. I fumbled one question, but in all, I thought I had a lot of good things to say. Thing is, I’ve been turned down for jobs I was perfectly qualified for in the past, and you never know what the competition is like. Fierce, I’m sure, since employers can be way more picky about who they select for a position since the market is flooded with the jobless. It’ll be a few weeks before I hear anything, but like I mentioned before, I told them about my blog, not this one, and am hopeful that they’ll be checking it out from time to time as they make their decision. Obviously I have to prove my mettle. I got in on my two writing samples, a stellar cover letter and resume, but it doesn’t hurt to keep reminding them how awesome you are.
I really had to get out of my slump and hit up a Starbucks so I could be around people in the daylight. Plus I always enjoy their friendly staff. I really needed to catch up on depression reducing vitamin D so was outside the whole entire time staring off into the street and watching passerby. I got an idea and started outlining it in my head and headed home to type it out. So now I feel a little better. I had boat noodles at Sapp Coffee Shop for the first time. They were good but I should have asked for more lime and cilantro.
This is actually how I spend most of my time. So much of the day belongs to me except when I’m volunteering downtown, which is mostly an all business environment, though I work with such cool people. I was thinking the other day about how all my really close friends don’t live near me at all. One lives in Vermont and the other travels for work all the time, and is only back in Los Angeles for days at a time where she mostly tends to her girlfriend. I have three really great friends in New York still. One of whom is my former boss and my go to person when I want to have intellectually stimulating conversations about our field of work. I miss cooking dinner with her and her husband. When you’re young and single it’s always awesome to go out on the prowl but I absolutely loved hanging out at their house all the time for drinks and cooking experiments. I have another friend that I’ve known since grade school who lives in New York now, arriving a year after me, and we’ve become a lot closer because of it. I miss her too. And another friend that I went to school with was a journalist before and works in the healthcare industry now, she edits my stuff and doesn’t hold back, with her opinion about my writing or my decisions about boys. She’s one of those fierce friends, the ones you want around when the shit gets really bad.
Well thanks to skype and the phone and email it isn’t too bad. And I still feel connected to the folks that still check in on me from time to time. I always tell them how much I appreciate it and it makes me so happy that they haven’t forgotten about me. It’s weird and it sucks how some people drop out of your life when everything goes bad. It’s definitely one of those life experiences I never went through. Even if I grew apart from someone there were never any hurt feelings involved in the split. I really do hope that when things pick up, and hopefully soon, I won’t be thinking about these things, but rather, appreciating what I do have, and move on.
1 week ago