How to Deal - Wednesday 5/6/2009

Yeah, so our office is on work-share again for a couple of months. The writer's strike of last year is still reverberating through the industry in that small companies like ours with about a dozen employees in that financial reserves were depleted. Then there was the lovely threatened actor's strike led by SAG, which meant that a lot of productions put off starting, so we're not getting the usual boost from increased movie production this year.

Anywhooo.... All this is to say that I have today off. Next week I'll work three days and will receive unemployment for the other two.

My advice if you're in this boat is to figure out the cheapest things that you enjoy doing and make sure you continue to do them. For me, investing a couple of bucks in a cup of coffee is well worth it. I get to sit at Barnes & Noble Cafe and look at a stack of books...and decide which ones to request from the library.


Mmm. Double espresso goodness.

Other good things to do : keep moving (hiking's cheap!), read, connect with friends, listen to music, get outside.


Grow stuff. I've started cucumbers and herbs. The big sprouts are cucumbers...they weren't even out of the soil in the morning!

Return to Unurban - Sunday 12/28/2008

I think every time I visit the Unurban Cafe, which is on the easternmost border of Santa Monica, on Pico Boulevard, I have raved about it afterward. Hydra wanted to go check out guitars down the street at McCabe's, so I hung out and wrote a bit and listened to the music.

This place has a very homey feel. So homey that it resurrects those wild ideas that sometimes grab me and make me think I could be happy spending hours and hours owning and operating a coffee house.

Sigh.

Lookin' a Lot Like Christmas - Wednesday 12/10/2008

They've decorated the little pot plants-- er, potted plants at the coffee house downstairs from my office. All around town, there are signs of the season.

I like all the lights and extra doo-dads. I like the Christmas music on the radio at Andrew's. I like planning surprises for my friends and family.

Ooh, and today I met with Los Angelista for lunch and she gave me the printer I won on her blog! Remember to go there and enter to win the Wii Fit she's giving away! And then read her blog. She's doing cool things and she writes about them well.

Men in Shirt Sleeves, with Guns

A big black Lincoln Towncar parked on the far side of the Starbuck's lot and three men got out. Men with well-maintained haircuts and unconcealed weapons, chatting amiably as they crossed the asphalt.

The guns were attached to their bodies via various bits of leather. The biggest gun was in a classic black hip holster. There was one on a belt clip, reminiscent of a cell phone case--but the wrong shape. The third guy used a criss-crossed rig that allowed a firearm to dangle underneath each armpit.

Probably FBI.

Yikes, it's weird to have people strolling around with any kind of obvious firepower.

Nothing happened, of course.

They ordered their coffee and were gone like the scent of freshly ground beans out the side door.

Are you kidding? You expected a photo of the men with guns? It was spooky enough just to have my little pocket Canon out in the same room with them! (This ain't no Mervyn's lingerie department, after all.)

To Bike or Not to Bike - Saturday 6/14/2008

You might also be amused at the amount of attention this motorcycle garnered outside of Starbucks on Saturday morning.

Like me, everyone's thinking that these babies get some impressive gas mileage. And maybe we could just talk ourselves (and let's be honest, our spouses) into getting one.

I tell myself I'd never split lanes.

For those of you living in sane states, "splitting lanes" is the completely legal practice of driving a motorcycle between lanes of moving traffic. You aren't supposed to go more than 10 mph faster than the surrounding traffic. Really, they should warn you about this when you rent a car in California...it's not a nice surprise when you're figuring out he freeway system.

Be that as it may, I'd just use the carpool lane like a regular citizen. Even if the 5 was backed up for the entire seven miles between the 170 and the 14.

I'd get over to Sierra Highway as soon as I could. I'd never accidentally hit a patch of fallen rock and gravel and spin uncontrollably across the pavement and into the ditch, minus some major skin acreage...

See? That's the way it always ends up going, for me.



Meanwhile, back inside Starbucks, I was impressed with how well this woman pulled off these shoes.

Sittin' at Sitton's - Tuesday 4/1/2008

Now, this is what I'm talking about. Comfortable little booth in the corner, cheery light, servers who bring you a coffee refill and a smile.

I was thinking this morning that this would be a bad place to have a bad drug trip. There are a lot of plaster statues of chefs wielding various cooking implements, and the walls are lined with the smiling black-and-white faces of a hundred or so stars of yesteryear. This could conspire to freak a person out.

I'll bet the cartoonists of the thirties would have found it a treasure trove of inspiration, though, come to think of it. Have you really paid attention to some of those hallucinatory creations?

In other news, I received a Sexy Blogger award from Los Angelista! "[For my] sexy pictures and for her sexy motivation around getting up so early to write every day." She's too too kind! (Blush-blush....post about it!)




I'm passing this award on to The Last Noel, who delivers his take on Literary Los Angeles with particular flair, and whose author pix are always downright (subtly) sexy.

And to Lexiconscious, also known here as the Elegant E because smart and elegant is sexy.

Fingers to the Bone gets it because her dedication and talent is sexy.

I'd also bounce it back to Los Angelista. Having the courage of one's convictions is sexy, too!

More Style, Less Comfort - Monday 3/31/2008

Since I read Starbucked a couple of months ago, I've been even more interested in the Starbucks mystique and how it's evolving. Or devolving.

A large part of its success has been based on providing a "third place" for people to gather--the first and second being home and work. They even had a philosophy about using round tables because apparently you look and feel less alone at a round table than at a square one.

I look at the decor in the newer stores, like this one near the Riverside Boulevard exit off the 170 and I can't see that they're being very inviting anymore.



Yeah, this is a cool looking piece of furniture, but do you see yourself curling up with a book or a journal on this? Or even having a conversation that lasts longer than the time it takes for your back to start aching?



These tables could do some serious damage to the early-morning under-caffeinated visitor.

Where are the lovely deep purple overstuffed chairs? Where are the rounded tables? Where's my Red Eye and where am I going to sit and drink it?

I sat at a square table and wrote for about 45 minutes, but it didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Sigh.

The New Hearth - Tuesday 3/18/2008

Almost everyone stops by on their way out of the coffee house. Niceties are exchanged.

I like seeing people straggle in before light. They have more time to talk to the baristas at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at this hour.

They have really excellent loose leaf teas here. I'm particularly enamored of the Chai.

I mix 2 teaspoons of CB&TL Chai with 1 teaspoon of English Breakfast in my three-cup pot on weekends.

If you like green tea, try the Gen Mai Cha...green tea with puffed toasted rice. It's a great afternoon pick-me-up instead of a snack.

Back to the UnUrban Cafe - Friday 2/15/2008

Hydra had another guitar lesson, so I tagged along and he dropped me at the UnUrban Cafe again. Wow, do I like this place. It had a different attitude on what I take to be a slower than usual Friday afternoon.

I sat at a cool old kitchen table and wrote for about an hour. I thought I took lots of photos of the interior, but I screwed up and had something set wrong in my camera and didn't check the shots and...well.

Discovered my folly when I was standing across the street making it easier for Hydra to pick me up in the horrible traffic.


Another lady in waiting. Her bus in shining armor arrived shortly.


I'm just posting this one because even though it's kind of random, it has a better point of view than the others.

And can you see my shadow? Apparently, around 5pm at this time of the year I am quite leggy and slender!

If you're in the area of the UnUrban Coffee House and you like the funky coffee house, do check it out at 3301 Pico, Santa Monica (near the corner of 34th.) If this were closer to home, it would be my other living room. Oh, and the iced coffee is wonderful. It actually has hints of chocolate in the first sip, even though it's straight coffee.

Another recommendation: Tlapazola Grill at Gateway and Barrington. I'm posting reviews to TripAdvisor, which I'll link to later.

Unurban Cafe - Sunday 2/10/2008

Hydra is taking a couple of classes from the amazing Fred Sokolow at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, so I went online and found this near-by coffee house, the Unurban Cafe.

What a fun place. Funky in that oh-so-urban way of the traditional coffee house. You know what I'm talking about. A collection of odd tables (mine was an old sewing machine table) and unique seating options ranging from mismatched chairs to old theater seats to padded benches lining the walls.

There was live music in the front room the whole time I was there, from about 3-5pm. Piano, drums and a really fabulous clarinet player who sat in on the jazzy 1920s style tunes led by the pianist, who also sang. When I left, there was an energetic woman singer on stage maybe in her early 40s, and a couple in their seventies sat poised, ready for their turn, she with a fiddle on her lap. (Or maybe that's a violin in this part of town.)

I sipped my iced coffee in the back room and reworked a handwritten scene for my novel as I typed it into my laptop. I wasn't sure if the place would be laptop-friendly, but boy was it. Outlets were all over the room and although they looked like they might surge at any moment, they were in high demand. In fact, everyone in the back room had a laptop. Even a couple came in and opened up sleek matching Apples back to back as if setting up a game of Battleships.

I just have to tell you about the guy with shoulder length gray hair who carried his ultra-slim laptop inside an old leather suitcase that he'd covered with carpet. He wore dark blue pants and sweater with a rainbow striped shirt underneath and a 4x6 paper sign hung on a string around his neck. It said, "MORE LOVE" in blue block letters.

This is the kind of person I should have the courage to approach, ask for a photograph and understand a little better.

But this is also the kind of person who scares me just a little. So I didn't.




Random shadow shot of my approach to the cafe, laptop in tow. I probably like this one more than I should.



"Why?" you ask. Because out in the boonies we don't have these new-fangled digital billboards. I hadn't seen these before and by the time we encountered our third one I was ready with my camera.

Ad #2.


Ad #3. We also saw three others during our sojourn at one stop light.

Rainy Wednesday - 1/23/2008

Today was my workday, so I drove down early of course. Went to Starbucks and wrote a little and took the time to read the L.A. Times.


Crows in a tree on Evergreen Street.



Do you see why I'm laughing?

I park in front of or behind this car most workdays. The license plate frame proudly states that this Nissan Altima is "Superior -- Believe It."

Ah, if faith only made it so.

My Echo doesn't have any blue tape around the windows to keep out the rain...is all I'm sayin'.

No Animals Were Hurt During the Destruction of this Bowl - Monday 1/14/2008

No humans, either.

Dang it! I use this bowl almost every day to heat up our pampered birds' dinner.



I blame Barnes & Noble Cafe and their fine, fine handling of Starbuck's coffees, which led me to imagine that the bittersweet cup from which I drank was merely a taste treat and not an invitation to Lost Weekendesque jitters.

This is what the B&N Cafe looks like, by the way, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday in January. Quiet. Except for the distant sound of scratching brought on by the dry winter air.


Is this Espresso Number 1, Espresso Number 2, or Espresso Number 3?

I defy even the lovely Carol Merrill to tell the difference after three of these babies.

The Photo Idea Index resting on the table here turned out to be a really cool browse. When the strike's over maybe I'll come back and purchase it.

Cool Thing
Thanks to Braveheart for forwarding this link to a funny, funny blog entry over at List of the Day.

Artbucks - Friday 1/11/2008

Today I decided to read the so-called first draft of the novel I am working on. After a few hours I became very antsy and fled to a Starbucks in Palmdale, where I made this attempt at an artsy sunset shot. (What's going on up there lately?)

I spent another hour and a half letting my coffee go cold (dang, should have brought that tea light with me) and my blood cooled right along with it.

If you write, you have had this day. The one when you can't see for the life of you how you could have spent all this time working on this project that suddenly looks absolutely hollow.

I have a plot, I swear I do. It's in there somewhere, and there's more in my outline--what did I do with that? But it's also a lot of scenery and conversations.

Oh my god, it's like I've turned Death Valley (the setting of the novel) into one gigantic coffee house!

Roadside Memorial, Southbound Sierra Highway - Thursday1/3/2008

This memorial has been up for quite some time. I think it was there in some form before the fire that blackened the inside of this tree.


The arch is of some sort of masonry.



A favorite CD.




Messages from friends and family.

I was on my way down to It's A Grind coffee house in Canyon Country when I finally stopped to photograph this. Usually I pass it in the dark or going the other way.

O Frabjous Day! - Wednesday 12/26/2007

Callooh! Callay! She chortled in her joy.

One of the happy outcomes of my gallbladder surgery earlier this year is that I can now drink coffee again whenever I want!

I will never throw over my beloved teas, but it's wonderful to be able to say "yes!" when Hydra asks if I'd like a cuppa joe, java, mud, devil's brew.

I mean, coffee houses have been an important part of my life since I first found The Blue Mountain Coffee Company in Fort Wayne, IN during my first year of college. Hydra and I started sharing a table and the rest is history. I even worked there for four years. Coffee houses and diners are my second home, anywhere in the world.

As perfect as a pot of tea is as a writing companion, it's just wrong to sink a Hershey's Mint Truffle Kiss into an estate grown Assam or a winey Keemun.

But it is damn fine in Starbuck's Christmas Blend.

It's Surreal Inside - Monday 9/10/2007

I had a late start on Monday, so things were feeling a little surreal when I dropped into Priscilla's for a coffee and croissant around 6am instead of Bob's around 5:15. Knowing that you can often get little gems in short amounts of time, I wrote for about 25 minutes and left feeling like I'd made an effort and learned a little something about my characters.

But it only seems reasonable to have used the "cartoonize" effect on this photo.

One of the guys I routinely say hello to as I pass by the coffee house actually did a double take to see me sitting at the table by the window.

I used to hang out down here at lunches quite a lot. It's a great place, and hardly ever this empty.

Morning Shadows - Friday 7/20/2007

Yeah, I know. Most people's idea of going camping doesn't include Starbucks. But at home, it's a longer drive to get to one so Hydra usually goes to the one in Fillmore at least one morning. I went with him.

Most of the people we're camping with won't arrive until this evening, so there's not much of a crowd around the coffee urn at the campground on Fridays.


Life doesn't get much better. Except maybe later in the weekend when we'll sit outside our camper for hours with the birds in their cages on the picnic table, reading, writing and talking to friends who stop by to chat.


An old church in Fillmore. I think it may be used as a home now.

The Scene on Moorpark - Tuesday 7/17/2007

This is the way it was outside The Coffee Fix on Moorpark in Studio City around 6pm yesterday.

A good spot for a refreshing iced caffeinated beverage.




Inside, some interesting artwork. I really like this piece The Firestarter by Yuki Miyazaki.

Looking Through Glass

Sunset as reflected off a Starbucks window in the San Fernando Valley. I sat here and drank iced tea and wrote a little. I usually have 3 1/2 hours between work and my writing group meeting, so I go somewhere to sit and read or write. I pick up food to contribute to the potluckish meal we put together. I pick up and drop off books at the library. It's a nice little routine, although I try to go to different coffee houses and groceries or delis.

See more progress on: Take one picture a day as a way to document my life