Nocturnal Amiss....

Ok, so we'll add another anecdote to the "only in LA" category. Last night I'm lying in bed reading a novel (about a ghost that helps her niece solve mysteries--quite cute and very British!) when I hear this gigantic BOOM. My first thought--somebody had a ginormous accident on the 101 (which is about, oh, 50 yards from my bedroom window). I listened for sirens but didn't hear any and the traffic seemed to keep flowing. So not an accident. Oh, I know!! It was gunshots. Oh my god, someone got shot near my house. Two minutes of panic and still no sirens. At this point, Tristan comes to bed and says "hey, did you hear that thunder?" Yep folks, apparently I've been living in the big city too long because I no longer recognize the sound of THUNDER. Or maybe it's because it doesn't rain here during the summer and I was subconsciously aware of that fact--thus my brain thought it couldn't be thunder.

I've been experiencing a lot of things that go bump in the night lately. Most of it has to do with the construction on Cahuenga. Ok, so they can't start their jackhammers until a civilized 7:30AM (whatever, that is still WAY too early) but they can drive their HUGE dumptrunks and earthmovers and other digging machiny-things made by Caterpillar (shout out to PA) past my house at 5:30 AM. I hear their air brakes as they stop at the stop sign and their backing up alarm noises as they realize they cut the corner too short and can not possibly make the turn onto the next street. I want to write to the city and complain. For a week and a half I've been awakened a full hour and a half before I have to get up (on work days) and about 4 hours before I have to get up on non-work days. That's precious sleep that this busy girl can't afford to lose, people!

As if the trucks weren't bad enough, we've got some nightingales living in the tree outside our bedroom. Well, they might be finches or some other bird creature, I don't know my birds. All I do know is that they are night owls--hee-hee--who chirp incessantly like it is dawn at 2AM. They call out to other birds, they chat it up and they sing--which I'm sure to themselves is a beautiful noise and if I were hearing it at 3PM instead of 3AM, I might just agree. But how do you shut birds up? I thought maybe we could shine a huge search light directly into the tree, thus mimicking the sun which should send those bird-brains straight to bed, right? The problem, that tree is directly between our house and the building nextdoor which might not be so thrilled to have a searchlight shining in their window. But then again, maybe they are bothered by the birds too....

Lastly, all the scantily-clad, drunken club goers park on our street to avoid having to pay for parking or to tip the valets. But they don't just go to their cars and leave, no they mosey down the street to their cars, usually treating us to an off-key rendition of some ridiculous club song that's most likely made with computers and was never intended to be mimicked by the human voice. When they do get to their cars, they have a nice little chat, about thirty decibals louder than normal speech because they just blew their eardrums out dancing in front of the club's speakers. I do get to live vicariously through them as I get to hear "I can't believe she did it with that ass, whatever, she's got no standards..." yadda, yadda. On tuesday I actually heard someone say "foshizzle." I kid you not. I thought the only person who said that was Snoop Doggy Dog--or maybe it was him, the lighting is a bit dim down there....

Oh well, I'm off to PA tomorrow for my sister's wedding so maybe I'll get some sleep there. Or maybe not. I'm hoping to get some knitting done, though. Hmm, maybe I'll knit myself a eye mask and some cotton earmuffs before I return home....sweet dreams, ya'll, I'm taking a nap.....

Completely Unforgiveable...

So yeah, it's been, um, AWHILE since I've posted. Funny right since I'm finally done with school. Oh wait, no I'm not. I'm in my second week of summer semester. Woohoo. I'm also planning my fall class schedule. I'm hoping to graduate next spring so that I can FINALLY have a summer free from studying. See, I've been going to school during the summer since the summer of 1998. Three years of summer classes in college, three years of year-round law school, studying and taking the Massachusetts bar exam in 2004. After I passed that exam I thought, that's it, I'm done with school and studying. I figured I'd just go get myself an attorney job and that would be the end of it. Until months of job searching failed to turn up anything--anything at all. I wasn't being picky, my only requirement was that it not be insurance defense because I really don't need a one-way ticket to Hell. Not that I believe in Hell but if anything was going to send you straight to burning brimstone (do not pass go, do not collect $200) it'd be doing insurance defense work.

So then we moved out West, like true pioneers (I our U-haul truck and thankfully no wheels got mired in mud and we never had to form a circle with other moving vans for protection in the Holiday Inn parking lot) to seek our fortunes, or at least enough to live on. But what to do once we were here? Well, sticking with what I knew, I decided to study for and take yet another bar exam. Yep, I decided to take the July 2005 Cal bar exam. So yet another summer spent sweating over an open book instead of working on my tan (er-freckling actually since I use SPF 45 and I DON'T TAN). Then I started working on my library science degree and here I am again, taking classes during the hottest months of the year. It seems that from September to May I forget how hard it is to concentrate when you brain is melting. Seriously, it is that hot. Yesterday while waiting for the bus in the Valley, my plastic sandals (vintage 60's? or 70's? They were my grandmas) actually melted onto my foot. Yeah really, it sounded like velcro when I tried to pull them off after I got home---ew!!!

So I've been working and going to school now and I promise to try to write more. In between everything else I'm doing since in July I'll sort of be working 2 jobs for the same museum while I continue to go to school. Well, I hate to be bored. Although I suppose this post is sort of boring but after like 45 days of silence, this is sort of the chit-chat leading up to the meat of the conversation, if you will. I've also got to remember to bring my camera with me when I go places. Like to PA or just downtown to the Fashion District with Darcy (we went on Tuesday to buy ribbon and stuff for my sister's wedding--Thanks Darcy for trudging through the heat with me in search of variegated pink fading ribbon in pale, petal and fuschia!)

In crafting news...I've been working on a project that I can't talk about because it is a present and it is not knitted, it's some other crafty thing I do. More details to follow ...see how I got you to come back? Other than that, I have about 8 inches of a brown skirt knit in a pattern from the free patterns section of Elann.com

Ok, back to that schoolwork--gotta be at work early tomorrow!