Tag Archives: college

Another LA Anniversary (or Almost Half My Life Here)

Posted on August 21, 2018 | Comments Off on Another LA Anniversary (or Almost Half My Life Here)

17 years ago, I moved to LA. It’s so crazy to think that I’ve been in LA that long! It doesn’t feel like I just moved here, but it also doesn’t feel like 17 years have passed since I started college. Then again, I also don’t feel like I’m really 35 yet. When I’m trying to remember how long ago something was, my default thing is to think something was 10 years ago when it was really 20 years ago.

I was lucky with my move to LA. I have a bunch of friends who moved here after college and they seemed to have a bit of a shock when they got here. Between the traffic, high rent costs, and the energy of the city they were overwhelmed. But I moved here at 18 and spent my first 3.5 years here in college so I had a nice transition between growing up in the Bay Area and living in LA.

Even though it’s been 17 years, I do remember a lot about my move down here. My parents drove in their car and my best friend Kate joined me and was the passenger in my car.

Yes I had leopard print seatbelt covers. I also had a leopard print steering wheel cover at one point but I don’t think I used that for longer than a week or so before it felt weird. But leopard print car accessories were all the rage when I was in high school so of course I had to have some too.

We really needed 2 cars because I might have had a bit too much stuff when I moved here. My mom’s car was packed full with clothes, books for school, bedding, and a dorm refrigerator that we bought before moving down to LA!

The drive is about 6 hours long and I remember it going pretty easy. We had a stop for gas and I don’t remember any crazy traffic moments. The only weird thing I remember is that we had walkie-talkies to talk between the 2 cars. But we also had cell phones so I really don’t know why we thought the walkie-talkies were thought to be a better idea. I do remember that Kate and I were having fun with them, but it’s still a weird things that we did. I also remember the exact exit and roads we took off the freeway to go to the hotel we stayed in the night before I moved into the dorm, and I now know that we actually took the longer way to get there from the freeway. That still makes me laugh a bit when I drive around that area again and realize that we didn’t know better since it was our first time in that area.

Moving into my dorm room was quick and easy because I moved in about a week before most people did because I was doing a program for new students to have fun in LA before school started. I remember moving in the dorms for my sophomore year and it was so much more hectic because everyone was trying to move in at the same time. I’m glad my first dorm move-in was when it was calm and we didn’t have to feel like there were so many people around also trying to get all their things into their room. And when my parents and Kate left, they called me to make sure I wasn’t too sad to be left in LA. Even though it was weird to think I was living away from my family, I was so excited to be in college and in LA!

In my 17 years in LA, I haven’t lived that many places. I had 2 dorm rooms (and I sublet an apartment my first summer in LA), I had an apartment on my own for a year, I had a 2 bedroom apartment with a rotating cast of roommates for just under 6 years, and I’ve lived in my house for about 8 1/2 years. I’m not big on moving and I’m happy staying where I am right now.

It’s been fun thinking for the past few weeks about how my LA anniversary was coming up again, but then I also realized something very crazy to me. Next year when I celebrate 18 years in LA, I will have lived half my life in the Bay Area and then half my life in LA. And right after that anniversary, I will be able to say that I’ve lived a majority of my life in LA!

That idea seems so odd to me. It still seems like I lived in the Bay Area significantly longer than I have lived in LA. But as of right now, it’s only a year difference. I’m sure that this happens for other people as well, but the only other people I have heard say things like this have lived in multiple cities as an adult. Then it makes a bit more sense to me since you are comparing living in one place to adding up the time you lived in multiple places. But right now I lived 18 years in one place and 17 years in another.

Maybe I need to do some more reflection about what I did in those 17 years in LA so far. I am sure that I am skipping over important things in my head that help to make my time in LA seem more significant and longer. But even if it never feels that way, it’s not a big deal. I don’t care if it feels like so much more of my life was in the Bay Area even if it’s not really accurate. I guess it’s just a weird way of how time goes by so quickly as you get older.

I guess for now I should enjoy the last year I have where I can say a majority of my life was in the Bay Area before that changing to a majority of my life has been in LA in a year!

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15 Years Later (or Reflections On LA)

Posted on August 24, 2016 | 1 comment

About 15 years ago, I moved to LA. My move was actually pretty easy as I was coming to LA to go to college at LMU. It was a pretty traditional move to college, I just didn’t know then that it would be pretty much my forever move from Northern CA to Southern CA.

I still remember moving down here with some really fun memories. My parents drove their car and my best friend Kate and I were in my car. My parents car was pretty much filled with everything that I was moving down with me. I’m sure I had way too much stuff (and honestly I don’t think anything is still with me that I moved down here 15 years ago), but at the time I thought I needed it all.

Packed Car

Since we were in separate cars, we needed a way to make sure we didn’t get too far apart from each other during the drive. Even though we all had cell phones at the time, we decided that we needed to have walkie-talkies in the cars. Kate and I had a lot of fun with those, but I still wonder why we had them.

When I moved to LMU, it was a pretty easy transition. I didn’t know anyone but I made a bunch of friends in my dorm and in my classes as everyone was pretty much in the same boat as me. I lived on campus during my freshman and sophomore year and I had a sublet in an apartment during the summer between (my winter break trip home was the longest I’ve been home since I moved here 15 years ago).

I had my own apartment my junior year and shared an apartment with my friend Marcus during my senior semester (because of summer school classes I took, I only had 1 semester of a senior year). I was in that senior year apartment for almost 6 years until I moved into the house that I’m in now. I’ve pretty much lived in a 5 mile radius since I got here, so there are places that I discovered when I was 18 that I still go to now.

I think as soon as I came back after my winter break freshman year, I knew I was meant to stay in LA. It felt like home right away to me and I’ve never regretted the decision. It’s so crazy to think that in 3 years, I will have lived in LA as long as I lived in my parents’ house in Northern CA.

In that car ride down here 15 years ago, I knew that awesome things were in store for me in LA. But there was no way for me to know then that I was finding what would become my home and I would have so many amazing opportunities and adventures here. But that excitement of moving down here has stuck with me throughout the years.

I still have “pinch me” moments where I have to wonder how I get to be so lucky. I have times where I joke that if I had known in high school that these things would happen to me in my 30’s that I wouldn’t have cared so much about all the silly things that bothered me in high school. I don’t live a perfect life (it’s pretty far from perfect), but it’s still so awesome to me and I have so many things every day that I’m grateful for.

I know that not everybody lives in the same place as long as I have. Lots of people went away for college and either moved back to where they were from or to another city after college. I’m lucky that my college move happened to be my move to my dream city. It made my transition from my hometown to LA so much easier and I think that is part of the reason why I love it here so much.

Here’s to my first 15 years in LA and here’s to whatever incredible adventures will come in the next 15 years! I could never imagined this life 15 years ago, so I’m not even going to try to guess where I could be in another 15 years!

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Awake for 40 Hours (or I Guess All-Nighters Aren’t Just For College)

Posted on September 16, 2014 | Comments Off on Awake for 40 Hours (or I Guess All-Nighters Aren’t Just For College)

So here’s the story behind my exhaustion on Sunday when I wrote my last blog post.

The graveyard shift coding job has pretty much moved to daytimes only. I’ve worked a couple of projects, but I’m only averages maybe 2 or 3 hours a week with daytime work from home. That should become more hours in the future, but to supplement that (and my income), I’m making myself available for graveyard shifts on the weekends.

I can’t do the weekdays because I’m working my new box office job, but if I’m available on Saturday or Sunday I let the company know that if they need someone to work, I can help out.

I found out that I was going to work an evening shift this past Saturday. That was fine with me.

I woke up that morning at 7am (my box office job starts at 8am on Saturdays) and worked my first job. Then I did some errands before heading into the coding job at 7pm.

Since the start time was 7pm (instead of 11pm like it usually is) I figured I wouldn’t be there too late. Even some of my co-workers agreed that we should be able to get the work done pretty quickly.

And the first part did move quickly. As a team, we finished it in about 2 hours. That’s not bad at all. Then our bosses had been told that there were a couple of other surveys that we could tack on to the end of our shift to get done and help out the other employees.

I guess there was some miscommunication between some higher-ups and my bosses because these extra surveys we worked on were not something to just “tack on” to our day (or evening as it was). There were well over 1000 surveys (usually we have about 300 or 400) and there were multiple parts to each one that needed to be worked on.

Even though as a team we worked as quickly as possible, these surveys never seemed to end! At 2am I was starting to get exhausted and tried to take mini-breaks to keep myself from going crazy. At 4am I started to feel nauseous. Probably because my last meal was at 6pm and I had a light dinner (I thought I would make it to a friend’s party that evening and wanted to save my calories). Finally at 6am after 11 hours of working, I was told that my part of the work was done. The sun was coming up as I was driving home.

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I was so tired from being up for almost 24 hours straight. And as much as I wanted to go home and go sleep for a long time, that wasn’t my reality. I had to be up at 8am Sunday morning for some things and appointments that I had scheduled before knowing I was working graveyard the night before (and I did cancel since I figured I wouldn’t be working too late).

So I had the option on getting an hour or two of sleep or not sleeping at all. I chose to not sleep at all because I was scared of not hearing my alarm to get up at 8am. So I just hung out and read until it was time for me to start my day.

Then Sunday evening, before I had time to write my post for Monday, my job emailed me and let me know that they needed me to work from home during the evening. I had plans to go to bed as early as possible, but I needed to take the job. So I worked as quickly as possible, wrote my blog post, and started to get ready for bed.

Then my boss contacted me again to ask me to work more. I was so tired that I could barely see straight. So I finally had to tell them that I had been up for almost 40 hours straight and I just needed to go to bed. They totally understood. Most people who work those graveyard shifts sleep in the next day until 2 or 3pm. That’s just not an option for me.

I’m still shocked that I made it 40 hours without sleeping. The last time I pulled an all-nighter was in college when I was preparing for my art history final (I didn’t do that well because I was too tired). I’m not planning on pulling all-nighters on a regular basis. If I go in for graveyard shift work and I know I have an early morning the next day, I’m going to let my bosses know at the beginning of the shift that I have to leave by a certain time (you can only do that at the beginning of the shift, not the middle). I need to look out for me, even though all the overtime pay is going to be really nice on my next paycheck.

But I made it through, and now I’m going to spend my week catching up on the sleep I missed!

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Mini College Reunion And Restricted Activity (or My Week In Workouts)

Posted on September 8, 2014 | Comments Off on Mini College Reunion And Restricted Activity (or My Week In Workouts)

This week my workouts had some really awesome moments and some pretty annoying ones.

Let’s start with the bad so I can end on a positive note. Due to being sick this past week, my workouts became very tough to do. Not only was I feeling off, I had to restrict my activities to make sure that I was safe and not preventing myself from getting better.

First of all, the fluid in my ear was causing some dizziness. So I had to be super careful on the treadmill because I didn’t want to fall off. I reduced the speed I was walking and made sure to hold on to the handrails extra tight. Monday wasn’t too bad (because that’s when I was starting to have problems), but Wednesday and Friday were very tough. There were plenty of times I had to stop on the treadmill because the room was spinning around me and I was terrified I’d fall over. I had some issues during the strength portion as well, but it wasn’t as bad as the treadmill. For the strength, I only had issues when we transitioned from standing to sitting (or laying down) exercises.

I took it easy and I’m finally starting to feel better. Hopefully this week I will have much less dizziness.

The second problem was due to my throat. The ulcer/canker sore was extremely painful. And breathing heavily made it feel much worse (probably because my throat was getting dry). Trying to drink water felt like I was being stabbed in my throat, so I had to be careful with drinking water as well. So that prevented me from working out as hard as I could.

Even with these issues, I still averaged about 500 calories burned in each class, so that’s good. Going there and doing reduced activity is still way better than not going at all.

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Now for the fun thing that happened in my workout. On Monday, I went to a morning workout. This was due to the holiday (so there were no afternoon workouts that day). And in that workout, I ran into someone I went to college with and hadn’t seen in at least 10 years!

I thought I had seen her before, but not in the same class as me. I saw her name on the heart rate monitor screen (and she has a unique name so I was pretty sure it was her) but I didn’t see her when I was looking into the workout room.

So on Monday, when she walked in to the workout room, I stopped her to ask her if she had gone to LMU with me. And I’m shocked that she remembered me!

She was a couple of years ahead of me, but I met her in the first few months of college. I was in a student film I think in September or October of my freshman year, and she was in that film as well. We knew each other a bit through college since we were both in the theater world.

So it was so awesome to see her and get to catch up for a minute after class after not seeing each other for so many years! I’m not really in touch with a lot of people I went to college with so it’s nice to see people again randomly like that!

Overall, this week in workouts had its highs and lows. But like I keep telling myself, the most important thing is that I had a week of workouts!

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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My LA Anniversary! (or 13 Years Have Gone By Quickly)

Posted on August 21, 2014 | 2 comments

It’s my LA anniversary! I’m not exactly sure if it’s today or if it was yesterday, but since I can’t remember the exact day I moved into the dorms at LMU, I’ve always celebrated it on the 21st.

13 years ago my parents helped me pack up my car (and theirs) and we made the 6 hour drive down from the Bay Area to LA.

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My parents car held most of my things since at that time I drove a small car.

My friend Kate didn’t start college as early as I did, so she decided to come along for the adventure! So Kate came with me in my car for the drive and my parents drove together in their car.

I remember a lot about that drive for some reason (which makes me shocked that I don’t remember the date). I remember us goofing off and talking about how amazing college was going to be for both of us. I remember the exact route we took to get to the hotel we were staying in the night before I could move into the dorms. I remember the freeway exit, and for years after that, whenever I took that exit I remembered my excitement to move to LA.

Being in LA had been my dream for as long as I can remember, and I was so happy that my dream was coming true. I knew that I was very lucky that I could say that.

The next day, we all drove to LMU to get me moved into my dorm room. I was there before my roommate, so I got first choice in which bed I wanted. My freshman dorm was pretty awesome and I had a very nice view out of my window.

Once we got everything moved in, my parents and Kate had to make the drive back up so I said goodbye to everyone.

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In my 13 years in LA, I’ve gone to and graduated early from college, had about a million different jobs in tons of different industries, had some really horrible roommates and some incredible roommates, pursued my acting career, and pretty much just lived the same dream that I had when I moved down here 13 years ago.

It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve never regretted my decision to live here. It feels more like home to me than going back to the Bay Area. And in 6 years, I will have lived in LA longer than I ever did in the Bay Area.

Next month is the LMU Alumni BBQ. As I have for the past few years, I will be going this year. I like to go back and see where my LA life started. I always walk by my freshman dorm room and look up at my window and remember how crazy things were for me that first year and how I wondered how I would ever find my place in LA.

I’m so glad that not only have I found my place here, I have filled it with amazing friends who make my life amazing.

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Remembering To Have Fun (or Celebrating With Smores)

Posted on May 29, 2013 | Comments Off on Remembering To Have Fun (or Celebrating With Smores)

I love when my friends have things happening in their life that I can celebrate! I love going to weddings, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, or celebrating a birthday.

My friend David just graduated from college. Now, I know that a lot of people have graduated from college recently, but David’s story is different. He took his time, taking a classes when he could. I believe he said that he ended up taking classes at 5 different universities (sorry David if I’m wrong about this). So for him to graduate, he had a ton of patience and willpower!

Of course when he asked me to come to his graduation party I said yes! The party was held at Barney’s Beanery in Burbank (try saying that 3 times fast!). I have been to Barney’s a bunch in the past, but normally I’m just eating something quickly there before going off to another event.

This time, I actually got to relax and have some fun. I didn’t know anybody else besides David at the dinner, but by the end of the evening, I had a ton of new friends! And it was just a fun, low-key dinner out. I haven’t had an evening like that in a while.

Normally when I schedule something fun to do, it’s a scheduled event. And those are totally fun. But I had almost forgotten how nice it was to have a slow-paced evening with good people when there isn’t a schedule you have to worry about.

I didn’t take a ton of pictures of my food. I had an avocado melt sandwich for dinner which was delicious.

But where all of us at the table went crazy was dessert. Barney’s Beanery has smores on the menu! So with 8 of us at the table, we let our waiter decide how many orders of smores to bring out to us.

He brought out 3 orders. And they had run out of chocolate bars, so he drizzled chocolate sauce over the graham crackers.

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The blue thing on the plate was some sort of flammable gel, but I couldn’t seem to get the flame on my pictures. I did get the flame to show up when it was on the marshmallows.

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As much as I love smores, having chocolate sauce on the graham crackers just doesn’t work. It made them so drippy and messy. So after we all attempted to eat one with the graham crackers, it seemed like we all just roasted the marshmallows and ate them off the sticks.

Before we knew it, it was pretty late and time to head home. I congratulated David again on his college graduation, and was on the road for the drive home. I’m so glad that I was able to celebrate another friend’s accomplishments. It really is one of the best ways to spend an evening.

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