Happiest of New Years!!

I hope you all have a safe and happy night tonight and may 2011 be your best year yet!

I will be unpacking and working on posts today, with pictures of course. All this in between shopping for tonight's communal dinner with friends for New Year's eve.

Happy birthday coey!!

and the 5th season is...

RAIN!!!!

It has been gray and rainy for over a week, and will continue to rain a half a week more. I wouldn't mind but today is the first lunar eclipse on winter solstice since 1630 a.d. California is one of the best places to see it if it weren't for these pesky clouds and raindrops hitting you square in the eyeball.

Oh well there is the next half a millennia.

it only happens once every 4 years

I have been complaining since I got here that the one thing I don't like about Los Angeles is that I miss the seasons. It turns out that there are in fact seasons. Not your typical seasons that follow months or a calendar, as I write it is December 12th and it is 84 degrees, but something that is a bit more subtle.

Season one: Yucca Blooms
Season two: Spring
Season three: Jacaranda drop their flowers
Season four: about 40-50 degrees

But I have gathered that something else happens every four years and that is Fall.




The color in LA has been amazing and worth the four year wait.

Saving face

Whilst I was at my conference lounging in my hotel room my facebook account got phished. What the heck does that mean? Well someone was able to get into my account, impersonate me and send people a link to an IQ test. Kind of embarrassing, especially because that person insinuated that I was stupid and could only get a 106.

So I decided that maybe it was best to delete my account. I find that I don't really miss it. Before I left, I saved this picture of me from 1992 that was added by a friend in Arts High days.

in summary

So this is what I have been up to besides writing on this here blog....

I planned and executed an international conference on art history and hosted people from Rome, Turin, Mantua, Padua, Marburg, Zurich, Frankfurt, New York, Washington, DC and greater California and learned a lot more about stucco than I had ever imagined possible. (That sounds kind of sarcastic, but in all actuality very, very interesting.)

I threw a going away party for yet another of our interns going off to greener pastures or plains, because the rain in Spain falls mainly on it. (Wish I were going)

Celebrated a friends year + long search for a job by eating dollar tacos. (Who knew deep fried mash potatoes could be so good.

Saw art and tried Polish food.

On a related note, I started back to the gym.

(in preparation for mom's "surprises" and "of deaths" that are coming my way in two weeks.)