You're Gonna Make It After All

Finally, I have a home near my place of employment.

Meaning, while I have a great house in Jersey City, I now have a studio apartment in Hollywood, just over the mountain from Burbank. That's where my office moved to back in April, though I showed up late, in early June. It's where I go every Monday to Friday for more than eight hours a day.

I've been hemorrhaging money on short-term housing since June 2. You know that's much pricier than simply renting, though it includes utilities and Internet. But what an experience! I was able to taste-test multiple neighborhoods. "May I try a spoon of the Los Feliz? How about the Hollywood Hills? Is the Toluca Lake fresh? Can I sample the Downtown?" 

I don't regret a second of it, as much as my bank account suffered. But I had to stop. I was getting tired of the moving (though we know from experience I can go for years on that front), and I wanted to unpack my hard drives and monitor, and I need to go through my stuff in storage in JC and see what has to come out here to brighten up my "bachelorette pad," as a friend puts it. I feel like Marlo Thomas or Mary Tyler Moore when he says that. Can I turn the world on with my smile? 

Probably not, but I can at least enjoy the adventure of going down twenty thousand roads, even though we all know exactly where they eventually end up. I know where home is. Most narratives are like this, with the ending being a foregone conclusion, but the fun is in how we get there.

The fun for now is in staying just under Whitley Heights, right over the Times Square of Los Angeles. Ack. Spare me the Hollywood Boulevard Elmos! On Friday, I ran over Spider-Man's toe with my luggage. Did he glare at me? How would I know? But he did say "Watch it," to which I managed to not respond "Dude, you're supposed to be faster. You can do whatever a spider can, you know."

My Aerobed and I moved into my bachelorette pad on the 15th. I made two trips in my rental car, one from my temp housing in the Hollywood Hills and another from my storage unit, then returned the car to LAX. Getting back was a total drag, because I had to wait for the Dollar shuttle, then wait for the Flyaway bus to Hollywood, but I slept soundly on my own sheets, with the beautiful quilt Michael Kraiger's mother made for me a few years ago.

Yesterday afternoon, I headed up to Burbank to look at some mid-century furniture stores. There's some nice stuff out there, but I couldn't justify the cost, so I shifted gears and headed to IKEA. I talked to the home delivery desk and learned I could order a bunch of stuff and it would be delivered to me within 24 hours for a flat fee of $59.

I bought a dining room table and two chairs, a desk and office chair, and a mattress, paid the delivery fee, and then headed home. Burbank had a festival going on which made getting out of there super-annoying, but the delivery part couldn't have been easier. I was just settling down to eat breakfast on my windowsill when my phone rang at 9 a.m., and my IKEA boxes were in my apartment by 9:30.

Now I get to put it all together.

West

Same view, but night.

Lovely.

Home for the Weekend

I'm in New York for a comic book convention, so work put me up in a hotel. I'm right across the street from the office I had with my previous job, so it's nice to know my way around.

But best--nice view.

Los Angeles Victorians

There is a small neighborhood of beautiful Victorians down off Sunset, toward Downtown. I'd been meaning to go over and take a look at Angelino Heights, but I hadn't gotten around to it.

Then, I spotted a walking tour with LA Conservancy.

Sign me up.

The whole walk would only take 20 minutes without a guide, but with a guide, it took a few hours. We even got to go into a few houses. I was jealous of the houses, of course, wishing my own house was a lot farther along, and remembering how nice my last condo was when Turbo finished it.

Here are photos of the whole walking tour. It made me wish I'd gotten the leaky oil-tank house up on Beacon Avenue, the one with the intricately carved fireplaces.

As Language Evolves and Spelling Disintegrates...

Today's helpful hint. And while we're at it, "he" is a pronoun. "Hee" is a giggle or part of a donkey's call. "Heh" is somewhere between a giggle and a laugh. "Hehe" only exists in the imaginations of those too lazy to type extra vowels. 

Kitchen Upgrade

We all know I like planning, and the more impossible the task, the more fun I have figuring out ways around it. So give me a mission like renovating an old kitchen in Jersey City and I'm stupidly happy, even more pleased when I find out the new IKEA line doesn't have all the sizes I need.

Hallelujah! Something aggravating and impossible! 

My contractor might be less delighted, I know, but I think at least he finds me a little funny. Though I'm not sure how long the tolerance will last. I find he usually lets me waffle a while then finally interrupts with "Just let me do it," and off he goes whether I'm done thinking or not. (This is a good quality in a contractor. I am not complaining.) 

One thing I learned from Turbo the Aussie (the ex who approached every problem from learning to make my morning coffee at a campsite to building a house on a mountain with the same curiosity and can-do attitude) is to study the problem first. Go to Home Depot. Study the solutions. Go back to the problem and study it some more. Google. Eventually, you get there. That's how I've already screwed up twice in theory and had to get a new plan. Best to screw up on paper.

Initially, I thought I'd just leave the kitchen alone for a while. I certainly am spending enough money on heating, laundry, windows, painting, locks, and the bathtub. But then I realized I was avoiding using the kitchen on my trips home, because it's disgusting.

That's when I realized new cabinets would be a good thing.

They look fine in the photo below, aside from the garish gold knobs. It's when you open the base cabinets to find the warped particleboard that it's really a drag.

So I'm getting all new lower cabinets, new appliances, and new doors for the top cabinets. Or maybe entirely new top cabinets, depending on the condition of the existing ones. I visited a custom IKEA door shop yesterday, which is such a great idea, but the shipping costs had me taking a closer look at Grimslov.

The only thing I haven't worked out yet is what to do about the ugly wall tile. Any ideas? I'd like white subway tile, but I'm not sure I like all the dust that comes with removing the tile currently on the wall.

Union Station Walking Tour

It's so hard for me to sit still on weekends, though I have a ton of stuff to do.

Like choose a refrigerator for my house in Jersey City. Read an outline for work. Find an apartment here in LA/Burbank.

But like most people, I'm excessively curious. I have to walk around and investigate my surroundings.

Yesterday, I went on a walking tour of Union Station with the LA Conservancy. It was great! Look, it's not Grand Central with its secret FDR car and dizziness-inducing glass catwalks, but it's still a great look at a snapshot in time, with its Mission/Art Deco architectural style and it being the end of the line of a grand journey across the country.

I did that journey myself in 2001, from Penn Station to Chicago, then switching to the Southwest Chief for the cross-country Amtrak trip. I loved it. I'd do it again in a second if I had the time.

Here are some photos from yesterday's trip.

Helping Yourself Feel Less Helpless

I bought four tickets today to send Syrian refugees from Budapest to Austria. It was really easy, especially since my laptop had stored my username and password from when I was in Budapest a year-and-a-half ago.

The tickets are only $11 each.

There are other direct ways to help, detailed here. Give it a try.

My friend Zora was just on the Greek island of Mytilene (Lesbos), and she reports back from there on ways to help refugees traversing this area.

You not only help refugees, you help yourself feel like useless in the face of a humanitarian crisis. 

House Progress

My house is really coming along, thanks to the efforts of Michael Kraiger (who is painting and coordinating), Jim (who does carpentry, kitchens, and rabid-animal soothing), and a great master plumber named Chris at Royal Heating and Cooling.

I think I've convinced Jim to let me hire him to do the kitchen. That probably sounds kooky, but I had to come up with a way that didn't cost me an arm and a leg or he would stop me. No problem--I have experience in cheap kitchens. Hopefully this time I won't get drenched in gray water. Last time, Al H (my friend from college who is a contractor in Brooklyn and Manhattan) was doing something to one end of a pipe we were moving while my job was to hold the other end and get covered in skanky water. That was fun.

I'm in love with my little house. But I laugh at myself too. I'm so stuck on old and slightly broken things. I guess that's a good thing as everyone I know is aging.

Home Is Swallowing Me Up

I'm home in JC for the long weekend, and it's spectacular. The cafe owner wanted to know what I think of the West Coast (I didn't even tell him I went there--word travels fast). My contractor friend is willing to put up with me a bit longer to do my kitchen. The little room at the top of my house (it's small but comes with a distant view of Manhattan) is almost done and I can make it all my own. My storage unit is surprisingly organized and things make sense in it (shocking), and my car is running smoothly. I've seen some friends—not all of them, of course—and am off to see my hair colorist today. 

On Thursday night, Denise and I went to dinner at GP's, where we sat outside on Hamilton Park on a perfect summer night. She walked me over to my car, where I promptly fell in this hole. With my good foot. 

Ridiculous. 

Once we determined that nothing was broken aside from my pedicure, we laughed and laughed. I really need to start paying more attention to my feet.