450!

So here it is, my 45oth post. Thank you for reading and writing to me.

Bio-pic

So it has been decided by my father that the bio-pic about my life will be called...

"The Girl With the Winne the Pooh Tattoo"

A very zen tide pool experience

Tide pool, tide pools,tide pools I am sure you are so sick of hearing about tide pools. If you will indulge me one last time I promise I won't talk about them for a while.

This trip I was still feeling like perhaps this would be one of the last times I would see the things about Los Angeles that I love. With a heavy heart I rode to Doheny State Beach, which is about an hour and a half south. Coincidentally the very first time I visited LA we headed down to Doheny to escape the city and it was there I almost drowned. So I thought that maybe things had come full circle.

I digress.

If you look at the website for the tide pools at Doheny you will get a list of what you can find there. What I keep finding after all of the tide pools I visit, even though some of them are only 10 miles from each other they are very different eco-systems, with very different marine life. Sometimes you do not have to look hard to see Sea Stars, muscles, etc, but other places, like at Doheny, you really have to stare hard into the water, relax, breathe and wait for movement. Sometimes this can be a very zen experience.

If you waited long enough you saw hermit crabs catch the racing shrimp-like mini crustaceans, the crabs battling snails for their shells, and other tiny cool things that if you were impatient and stressed you wouldn't have even noticed.

(this little tiny pink thing is a sea cucumber)

If you check my friends blog you will see me balance gracefully from rock to rock in a skirt and all of the scientific names of what we saw.



My new camera is great at catching things that my old camera couldn't, like this sea hare. Unfortunately for one of these creatures a family came across one and thought it would be cool to pick one up, throw it and watch its purplish blood spatter across the rocks.

The most fun at this tide pool is picking up large dry rocks and watching the crabs skitter away from you. What we saw can also be seen in the post in my friends blog.

So, no more tide pools for this blog, but next is the Monarch butterfly migration, which I hear is spectacular.

blurry stars

Although I do recommend going to the Griffith Park Observatory, I do not recommend going right after an exam where they dilate your eyes. Especially when this eye exam is at 9:30 and you did not know that they do not open until noon. And you are stuck up there in the sun, squeezing yourself in the tiny strips of shade around the building. Trying to enjoy the view without burning your retnas, or trying to point out areas of interest without being able to see.

I do not recommend that at all.

I do recommend going at other times. I recommend going for the view, the planetarium films and my favorite 150 foot timeline of the universe made completely from costume jewelery.



I also recommend seeing how much you weigh on different planets.

Who am I kidding, I don't like science.

The view is fantastic though.

before I forget-sightings

Before they become a distant memory I wanted to let you know that a few weeks back I saw...

Andy Richter- w/ his kids

and

Zelijko Ivanek If you don't recognize the name you sure will recognize the face. He is in everything.

He was my guests first and only celeb siting while they were here.

Save Ferris

I finally have a new roommate. It seriously came close to me leaving this apartment, this place, LA.

At a certain time when my friends were here from Minnesota I surrendered myself to the fact that I may be seeing some of these things for the very last time. Which is was heartbreaking because I think you can tell from this blog exactly how much I love it here.

So I did one thing I never thought I'd do in a million years. I rode the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel. It was always daunting to me. It is large, so large that you can see it from Malibu at night, me being afraid of heights, it being old and rickety and run by carnies w/ really small hands. (or actually kids who look like they are in high school. I am not sure what is worse.) I couldn't bring myself to do it. And it is not like I hadn't been asked or begged to go on it before, for some reason Ferris wheels are romantic. I see them as a spinning wheel of death.

So last Friday my visiting friends suggested we go on and I looked up at it and thought, this may be the last time you get this opportunity so I said "f-it, I am riding that Ferris wheel."

And I did. And I was so distracted by the view, the breeze that I didn't think about how high we were, how old it was, how warped the boards were on the boardwalk that was holding us up. We didn't get stuck at the top waiting for other riders to get on, so that was a plus.

I want to go on again.

Deep thought

..while getting a Thai massage yesterday.

It is much better to have someone literally walk all over you than have someone figuratively walk all over you. Although the former seems expensive at first the latter has more emotional cost.


I also learned that when someone cracks my back I giggle, which is awkward.

what do you do when it is 113

On the last Monday in September Los Angeles broke its own record for heat, which stood since 1877. It was 113 or rather the official thermometer broke when it read 113.

Anyone who complains on the day after labor day about summer being over, needs to just shut their mouths because if it can be 113+ so close to October how can summer be over. Sorry a pet peeve, I digress.

So what exactly do you do when it is that hot out? Since I am so grounded in nature, I went tide pooling with my mid-western friends. This was our first time at the tide pools at Point Dume, which is a bit north of Malibu. What we were supposed to see were new creatures, like nudibranch (here I will google that for you so you don't get something weird-click here ) and different sea stars, but what we saw was nothing. Which was fine because I had another opportunity to use my camera and feel an ocean breeze, so plus-plus.

Here are some photos:

(on top of Point Dume looking down)

(We came across this vast field of muscles and a bright orange sea star hiding in their midst, or probably more likely eating them)

(sunset bird feeding time on Point Dume Beach)

By the time this is posted, I will have visited the tide pools at Doheny Beach, so hopefully there will be more to share.

7 away

Can you believe that I am 7 posts away from my 450th post? or rather 6 now. This started for me just a silly thing for me to keep connected with family and prevent me from having to call all of you when I saw a celebrity and a way to keep myself busy and not feeling so lonely as I tried to adjust to life here.

Like all great shows I have had two spin offs. One that was canceled in its first season called "we are here" produced by the amazing mandu and another that is going strong by coey of minsk called S+N+B+F.

I am hoping that you are still enjoying this.

I am wondering what your favorite posts have been, maybe I can do a greatest hits.

You know my email, but if not please write me at eyemheer2@yahoo.com

I'd love to hear from you and am wondering if there are any other blog spinoffs I should be aware of.

Another CA first

I am still having a lot of firsts in Los Angeles, even after 4 + years. Upon a friends suggestion, because of all I have been going through in my search for a roommate and love here, I went to a psychic.

Psychics,like therapists, are everywhere in LA and the surrounding areas. I guess there are more people out here looking for answers. Like all things you should take what they say with a grain of salt and although she may very well have the gift, she was a good advice giver and when I kind of needed a direction to focus my energies.

When we sat down she asked if we could sit for a couple minutes so that she could get a feeling about me. So we sat, I was supposed to write questions I had, but I had them packed into my brain already, for two minutes.

Here is what she said:
I have a generous spirit-check
I am kind-check
sweet energy-check
I feel grounded in nature- umm yes, I love tide pooling but camping is not something I look forward to with any type of fondness
I have a tenderness toward animals-ummm, I like to eat them especially when they are tender-I guess a stretch

So at that point, I wasn't really sure what to think.

I won't go into what I asked her or whether or not I feel like it will come to fruition, but I just want to say that before I saw her, I was having panic attacks about my life and that after I felt like I had something to focus on. And whether or not it is true it is nice to hear that I won't die alone in a studio apartment, childless with 10 cats.

MILK

I both love and hate that I live so close to MILK . After feeding our savory sides at Shik Do Rak we headed straight for MILK for ice cream and whatever else we could find which is a lot if you look through their menu.

My favorite by far is the grasshopper/mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich, which is mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiched between two mint flavored macaroons with one side dipped in dark chocolate.

As we were ending out ladies night of gluttony I spied Anna Kendrick who you may know from Up in the Air and the Twilight series.

I actually see a lot of people at MILK, because hey, everyone likes ice cream.

I just realized that all of these last posts are all food related. I don't know why, says the girl who on Saturdays plops in front of the tv with a grilled cheese and watches food shows on public television all day.

I think I have a problem, but at least I hope I have made you hungry,

like a chimpmunk

I have friends in town from Minneapolis currently and I wrote a bunch of posts on Sunday just so you had something to read while I was away. I will write about these new adventures when I get back, but for now enjoy my past.

and on a continuation of the festival of nations

(which somehow both involved cabbage delicacies)

I finally after living in LA for almost 5 years and being so close to Koreatown tried Korean BBQ. I have wanted to try it for at least two years but was pretty much blinded by the overwhelming choice of BBQ joints in the area. Well over 50 restaurants in a 5 square mile radius with names like Sa Rit Gol, Soot Bull Jeep and Chosun Galbi; I really needed a tour guide for a place I could take a 5 minute bus ride to. (By the way another thing I love about being here is that you can be so close to a completely different culture. See Anthony Bordain's No Reservation show on Los Angeles)

My friend chose Shik Do Rak, on 1st and Western, for us and I don't think there could have been a better choice. New to the experience it was great to have someone explain how it works.

When you sit down little dishes of things are placed across the table, Kimchi of various types (also a first for me-and the cabbage reference in the first line of this post) vinegar pickled cucumbers, fish cake (so good) pickled radishes, spicy pepper and peanut sauces and plenty of rice paper. (See pictured)

You order meats which is always various and wonderful cuts of beef, although for the more daring and non-united states centric palates there are plenty of intestines, stomach and other bits to choose from. I didn't choose to go that way. We chose Galbi, which you can see pictured as frozen curls of frozen beef and deckle which is a brisket, skirt steak cut.

You cook the meat to your desired doneness on the grill in the middle of your table. Don't sit too close or you will burn your legs. When it is how you like it you wrap it in rice paper with whatever you want from the table and eat and cook some more until you are so full you can hardly see.

There was also plenty of soju and this great potato noodle dish that is now calling to me from the refrigerator.

I have been thinking about Korean BBQ since I had Korean BBQ so I will definitely be back and will probably be in my new tour repetoire if non-vegetarians come to visit.

Oktoberfest

One fateful Halloween last year my old roommate and I met up with this couple at my favorite local. We ended up at their house with the entire bar celebrating Halloween until 4:am, which was the night before, or rather the morning of the day that I moved into the apartment I am in now.

It seem that they had just finished a couple weeks previous, their 1st annual Oktoberfest celebration. Everyone there went on an on about how fantastic it was. It became evident that these people went all out. Homemade beer, a 24 hour blitzkreig of homemade pretzel, sauerkraut and brat making (yes homemade veal and pork goodness) It made my mouth water for about a year.

So as the second annual Oktoberfest approached I had to make sure I was on the guest list, especially since this year promised to out Oktober the last. I even bought a costume. See me pictured with my good friend T, in costume with polka band in background.


Part of the going out this year involved a make shift polka band of local friend musicians, called "Polka, I hardly now her" There were such polka favorites as "ya ya ya, nine nine nine" and the lalala song that you just sing la la la for a while and then bier at the end.

Although I debated hard about having a brat as pork seems to be another issue of mine, I did manage to talk myself into two, which were the best bratwurst I have ever tasted and when in doubt homemade sauerkraut will be on of the best choices you will ever make nevermind the vat festering in your kitchen because once you have tasted homemade, that jar you get at the grocery store that is slightly brown will repulse you.

That day I lost my struggle as being gluten free was an epic fail and glad I had Sunday to sleep and blog which is all I could do.

Until next year. Ein Prosit!

8, 9, 10

To finish my count down and move on to my most recent California adventures or misadventures here are items 8, 9 & 10

8. Yes, I made it and had a mint oreo blizzard, which is my favorite. I think the only DQ here is in Compton, I don't think I'll make it there.

9. No, no lake fish this time.

10. Yes, there was actually a liquor store in town that carried gluten free beer I was shocked, but very happy to float in circles in the pool with a red bridge an sunburn my troubles away

Next on I am Here....
Oktoberfest- Yavol!!
My first Korean BBQ experience
Star sighting of the twilight kind
What to do when in is 113
the grueling roommate search