so...tomorrow is the big day!

big packing day, that is. and thursday is the big moving day! because the place is still being worked on, no pics of the interior yet. i will take pics during the move & again once we get it set up. it's nothing spectacular, but it will be a place we'll be proud to live in, much more private, safer, greener, and much prettier than where we've been.

53 days from now...

Eric & i will be in the MidWest! we're SOOOO excited about the birth of Christa & Derek's baby (about 30 days from now) that we went ahead & booked our tickets to come for a visit. we'll be flying into Chicago on Wednesday 8/18 & spending one day there with May & Ryan. The 4 of us will drive to MN together on 8/19 & Eric & I will be there until the following Tuesday morning 8/24. We can't wait to see you all: our parents, Diana, Will & Penelope, Kate & Jon, Caden & Elli, May & Ryan, & especially Christa as the new mama, Derek as the proud father, & their by-then almost-one-month-old babe! LOVE you guys & can't wait to see you!

yay!

pics!

the new place

here are the first few pics of our new place! we signed our lease this morning & will move in on july 1st. we were able to customize the paint colors, choose to have them install a small air conditioner for us & design some shelving or the kitchen above the sink. our living room will be a grey/olive & the rest of the house will be a pale yellow called cornsilk & a rich cream called swiss coffee. they are planting lemon trees in the front & there is a mature fig tree in the back, all for our use. within the next 2 months they will create a garden space for me to use, and do a couple other details like replace a window. we also found out today that the house is equipped with an alarm system, so if we chose to turn on that service & pay a $30 subscription we easily can. we also need to purchase a used/energy efficient, stackable washer dryer to install in the laundry room. it looks like there are plenty of those on craigslist, so it should be fairly easy to score a good deal. next week we will rent a uhaul & move our fridge, furniture & boxes (hopefully we'll have a bunch of strong friends to help us with the heavy lifting). we'll also have the tv wall mounted above the fireplace once we bring everything over to the new spot. overall, we couldnt be more excited, our new landlord is extrememly easy to work with & the neighborhood couldnt be better, it's exactly what we had been looking for. please come visit us this year, we would love to host!

silver lake!

tomorrow we will meet with our new landlord to sign the lease for our new house! i will take some photos of the outside when we get there. the inside is still being renovated so it might be a week until i can take & post those pics.
we're really excited about being 0.3 miles from intelligentsia coffee bar, a super popular neighborhood place that sells the finest, direct-trade coffees from all over the world & serves it up with expertise & style.
another GREAT thing to be living nearby is griffith park. here's a little info about it: With over 4,210 acres of both natural chapparal-covered terrain and landscaped parkland and picnic areas, Griffith Park is the largest municipal park with urban wilderness area in the United States. Situated in the eastern Santa Monica Mountain range, the Park’s elevations range from 384 to 1,625 feet above see level. With an arid climate, the Park’s plant communities vary from coastal sage scrub, oak and walnut woodlands to riparian vegetation with trees in the Park’s deep canyons.
Over the years recreational attractions have been developed throughout the Park, however an amazingly large portion of the Park remains virtually unchanged from the days Native American villages occupied the area's lower slopes. Today's Griffith Park offers numerous family attractions, an assortment of educational and cultural institutions, and miles of hiking and horseback riding trails, and provides visitors an ideal environment for enjoyable recreation activities.

monday

i served a little business meeting that included randy jackson this afternoon. he drank a lime/cranberry/sparkling water & had some tuna tartar. my impression of him was that he was a little flashy & a little rude.

in other news: we decided on an apartment. it's a little house in silverlake & we're REALLY really excited about it! photos to come! we'll be moving in next week, so things are about to get hectic, but it will be worth it as we'll be in a MUCH more desirable area, as well as on a very safe, pretty, private street. the things i am most excited about are the garden in back, choosing our paint colors, & having our own non-coin-operated washer & dryer-yay!

eric's work & an update on the move

i'm about to head out to a little rooftop party at the hotel where eric works, but first i thought i would write a little update on our moving situation.

well...we saw the 2 bedroom in los feliz today & it was a "no go", too small, too much traffic noise, etc. so that one is out of the running. we will need to sit down with the owners of the silverlake house on monday to discuss how much they'll lower the rent now that we know they will not be able to provide any off-street parking. i'm also a little apprehensive about how small the house is, it will definitely require a lot of purging, so we'll see. right now we're leaning slightly towards staying on our current block, a little disappointing, but maybe all for the best.

encounters w/the rich & famous...

saw britney yesterday. i'm posting this picture because this is just the outfit she was wearing yesterday: white tube dress with snake purse. she looks MUCH prettier in person than she does in the paparazzi photos. she's still dating her former agent, who works just upstairs from where i work. before she comes in her boyfriend (& sometimes also her bodyguard) come to scope the place out & make sure it isn't too crowded & that there aren't any photog's lurking outside. after she arrives they order quickly & eat REALLY quickly & then rush out the backdoor together, he seems really protective of her, she seems shy.

saw ryan phillippe today, also as he was meeting with his agent. he was wearing an RVCA hat & t-shirt that showed his arm tattoos & carrying a big black motorcycle helmet. they ordered coffees & talked about an upcoming movie he may be working on. he seemed really energetic & was talking about his kids a little & joking around. very nice guy, very polite, i liked him a lot. i guess he works out at my gym too :)

getting ready to move!

after SO much searching on craigslist, emailing, calling & driving all over the city, it seems we will indeed be moving at the end of june, as planned. the question remains: where to? there are still 3 possibilities:

-an adorable little 20's house in the silverlake neighborhood of LA that has hardwood floors, washer/dryer hook-ups inside & a little plot outside the back bedroom window for me to plant a vegetable garden. there's also a mystery fruit tree out back that has huge unripe somethings growing on it...i'm intrigued! we met the owners & get along great with them. the downside of this house is that there is no off-street parking & is on the small side (the kitchen has only 4 cabinets, we would have to seriously downsize on dishes.)

-a 2 bedroom apartment near griffith park (a MASSIVE cluster of mountains, grassy areas, caves, & general natural beauty for hiking, walking, climbing, picnic'ing, etc.) this apartment also has hardwood floors & 2 bedrooms, so one could be used as an office. the view from the front is of the hills of los feliz. it also has at least one off-street parking spot, so that's another plus. best of all, this apartment is offering a rent july & get august for free special. i'm going to check this one out tomorrow afternoon.

-our fall-back option is to move into the building exactly next door to where we live now. it seems silly, but i think it would be worth it. we would be moving from our tiny, dark, 1st floor apartment into a huge loft on the top floor that gets a lot of direct sun. it has a sliding glass door that opens up to the rooftop of the building, where there are tables & a spa. the other plus's of doing this mean we would transfer the deposit we have down now right over there, we would know our manager & several of our neighbors already, we would have 2 secure underground parking spaces & we would have zero additional commitment, in terms of a lease (it would be a month to month agreement). the issue with this one is that it's not vacant yet, much less cleaned/repainted & it's not even available for me to pop over to check it out until sometime next week.

SO...that's the update! we will know a lot more by tomorrow & probably have reached a final decision by monday. it's tough finding a safe, quality, homey place to live in LA, but i think we're about to find one. 5th times a charm, right? i've bounced from brentwood to west LA to north hollywood to hollywood & now will be either staying in hollywood, moving to silverlake or moving to los feliz! wish us luck as we make the final decision!!

can't wait to get this move done & start looking forward to one week in the midwest later this summer-yay!!!