Packing Up LA

I accepted my SLC job on January 6 and asked for 3 weeks to transition, plus flexible time to be back and forth for a bit. Roommate Haleigh was getting married in April, so we decided to end our least at the end of March.

It was such a relief to have some time and flexibility, but I still had to get going on wrapping up my LA life.

I'd miss these sunsets and temperatures, and even living in Utah, I will never live this close to a temple.

I started looking for winter clothing. After seven years in AZ and southern CA, I don't do winter anymore.

I started listing things for sale on Craigslist. Kinda wish I'd kept my bike, but I'll just have to get one here next summer. I got a call from a cute-sounding nun who wanted to buy my bike. She came over with a handyman from her convent to check it out. One happy nun customer!

UCLA students bought other stuff of mine, and one kid continued to text me for awhile to see how my move was going. Cute.

I crammed in a visit to Disneyland with Rebecca. It was a non-crowded evening and when she heard that I'd never been on California Screamin, she practically dragged me into line. I'd never been on a roller coaster with a loop in it, and for my birthday last year I decided I'd just say yes to things, so I sorta had to say yes to this. The line was short so I didn't have time to change my mind. Somehow she snapped picture during the ride! I will say I tolerated it, but I didn't relax enough to scream and enjoy. Not really my thing. But I did it!

Dill pickle popcorn and a delicious grape drink in Carsland.

I had a semi-going away dinner with some of my favorites. Cher and Mike and Kimball, Carolyn, and Dallin. We had that awesome chicken at Versailles in Culver City.

We decided to grab dessert at Sprinkles, and since Cher has a minivan, we all piled in! Guys, minivans are really fun.

Not the most flattering for everyone, but we sat in the window and ate our really expensive ice cream cupcake mashups. It's good, but not my favorite.

Georgetown Cupcake is more like it.

There was that one last night dancing at a club in Silverlake. Where the lines to get in were hours long, and someone opened a side door and my company rushed in and I didn't. There was a big fight that night and a bad taste in my mouth, and a guy in a tiger suit followed me around all night and tried to cheer me up. Sums up my LA experience.

I'd debated where and when I would see Volcano Choir, but Cher and I grabbed tickets for LA and walked down to the Fonda. It was marvelous.

I went through boxes and cleaned and threw things away, but found this gem of a memory from the college days when I worked at the volunteer center, coordinating huge passenger vans for students to drive around the city for service projects. It was a hilarious time. Van J was a huge 15-passenger that ended up with a lot of dings. Who can easily drive something that big?

Missionary letters. Ha. I had the mailing address to the MTC memorized.

Rob may love me, but he married Tashina a couple weeks ago, and they're cute.

Twice is awesome if you want to make some money when you clean out your closet. 

Christmas 1983?

We had a final documentary night and watched Blackfish.  Appropriately we ate salmon bites and some goldfish.

I'll miss having this gang over, but I've just started the tradition again in Utah. It's next week! I hope people show up.

In honor of my departure, JWelch brought us some Boston Coolers. I miss this guy.

Trevor and I had a last meal at Pono. It's so good. We took a lot of photos, but I don't ever feel photogenic.

Later that night we found a pretty good electronic music scene in a stripmall in Burbank. Good DJ, good crowd, and I rallied to stay up late. I'll miss this part of LA, I think. 

Happy Halloween!

I almost feel silly writing about Halloween costumes when people are struggling to get through Hurricane Sandy right now, but I feel a small sense of triumph this year.

(Seriously though, East Coast friends, I am thinking about you and concerned for you!  I would be a little terrified).

Halloween is my least favorite holiday (except for the candy part), and I get all sorts of stressed out about finding a costume, first thinking, eh, I don't like to dress up/think of a costume/have anything around to work into a costume, so I won't dress up.  Then as parties creep up, I feel the pressure of finding something, but I don't want it to suck, so I stress out finding the perfect thing at the last minute and it's just always a mess.

Well, I went through all that this year, but it all turned out well.  I was in Phoenix for work this week, but got back in time to do the costume shuffle (I think I went to ten stores on Saturday, thrift/Goodwill and regular stores and finally found all the props I needed).

Hello, Suzy Bishop and Sam Shakusky!   Some people got it, quite a few had to ask.

 

Oh, look!  Double trouble!

 I'm going to watch Moonrise Kingdom again, as soon as I finish writing this post.  

Amy had a binder full of women.

Tim proclaimed himself the scariest costume at the party.  I might actually agree a little.  

Food - not quite as good as James Nickerson's dead fingers from a couple years ago, but points for trying.

And this was just sick.  Sick!  No way I could eat out of that.

Colin's 'black hare' was pretty creepy.  Those teeth!

All in all, a decent party.  Let's see what next year brings, though I'm in no hurry to get there.