Getting Adjusted

About a month and a half ago, we moved into our new place. We found our new apartment on a rental site (you have to pay a premium and you gain access to all their listings. Landlords have to post their rentals.) It's a lot easier to navigate than Craigslist and short of just driving around neighborhoods, it helps give an idea of what's in an area (and then you can check it out and potentially find a place not listed). For us, since we have le grande pooch, this was a fairly easy way of finding a rental that would allow Gamby, was in our price range, showed photos, and also in the area we were interested in. Granted, I still had to make several phone calls in which number two question after "Is X still available?" was "What is your pet policy?"

Our new place is only a handful of miles away from our old place (4ish miles according to Google Maps)--and is located in Koreatown. It's so much larger than our old place- so much larger. Unlike our old place, our new apartment is 1 bedroom in a small building (only 8 units total) and has gated entry and parking! It feels more like a 1 story 1 bedroom townhouse than an apartment; at least that's how Cameron and I have been describing it. It has a front and back entrance and is large enough, we think, to be described as such. For instance, we have a formal dining room AND a laundry room (so grown up!). It's in a much more residential area-- it's a heavily populated area, but it's mostly family homes and apartments (Cameron said he felt like he was in a sardine can). Talk about a change of pace from Hollywood! We only really grapple with local traffic (so much more preferable than tourist or movie premiere traffic). Cameron's commute is way better (13ish miles for him = 30 minute commute regardless of time etc) than mine (9ish miles = 30 minutes in the AM and an hour in the PM).

Now, onto the "getting adjusted" part of this post. So, in the weeks we've been in our new apartment, we've had maintenance come to apartment practically every week- sometimes twice! It's nothing alarming, but rather just getting the kinks worked out. My co-workers suggested I blog about our breaking in stage since I always seem to have a new story about what's going on with our apartment.

Week 1: Request for shower light replacement, shower drain clogged, bathtub drip, shower faucet repair
Week 2: AC replacement
Week 3: Plastic removed from back door glass (later that week) water leak at washer hook ups
Week 4: Bathroom sink leak (that weekend) bathroom sink water backed up
Week 5: (pending) replacement burner caps for stove

Part of the reason for the high amount of requests, especially plumbing is we can't use Dran-o or any type of liquid plumbing due to our pipes being old and of a certain type. Having to ask for so many repair requests has made me very appreciative of our management company as our apartment manager is friendly and easy to get a hold of as are the people they contract for work. I just feel bad being "those tenants" that have a bajillion requests and has only been there for a month. But the more we're here, the less and less we've needed to contact them (for obvious reasons).

Another trial we have been facing is getting packages delivered to us. It seems that only USPS has a key to get into the building and so FedEx and UPS can't enter our building unless we're home. And they usually deliver in late morning/early afternoon and we're never home at those times. We can go the warehouse and pick up the packages, no problem. It just takes a hour out of our evening as we battle downtown traffic.

HOWEVER. This one time, a certain delivery company just left it, and I quote, "by the driveway in the bushes." What. By the time I got home said package was gone because it was pretty much on the sidewalk in a busy Los Angeles neighborhood for over five hours, and last I checked, bushes don't exactly have security systems. The delivery company was absolutely no help because the package didn't require a signature so it was the driver's discretion to leave it where he/she may... Luckily, the company I ordered from was willing to resend the package with a signature request so we can at least get it from the warehouse. Needless to say, there's now a note by our doorbell asking for packages not to be left on the doorstep.

One day we'll be all settled in. One day.

And, of course, some obligatory (but awful sad looking) photos of Gambit. I think he was pretty bummed about not getting his PetBox (which was the aforementioned lost/stolen package).

So....news?

Howdy, everyone.

So, the point of this post is really to reassure you all that I haven't forgotten about this blog and I definitely want to share some photos once we're all unpacked... we're going on 3 weeks now. Moving is the worst!

Unfortunately, I don't really have any exciting news to share, other than a few weeks ago before we moved from Hollywood, we saw two movies at the TCL Chinese Theater and Disney's El Capitan theater. We did take some photos, but they all came out blurry... It was pretty neat to sit in an old school theater, especially the Chinese Theater where a TON of premieres have been held. Not gonna lie, not going to miss that premiere traffic at all.

Our 4th of July was relatively low-key. We spent the evening with some friends down in Santa Ana and watched fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in Los Angeles County, but not in other counties (Santa Ana is in Orange County). Man, do they take it a bit far. You, like anywhere else, can purchase illegal fireworks, and here they go all the way. Many houses in my friend's neighborhood were shooting off the type you see at ball games or Disneyland. So, cool for us not having to go anywhere and the drive back was neat seeing all the different shows across the city. Gambit, however, is NOT a fan of fireworks. He did ok, but he was definitely startled most of the night.

We are going to a Dodger's game tonight- it's a Hello Kitty giveaway game, so a few of my friends from my program and their significant others are coming along. Cameron is thrilled about the Hello Kitty giveaway- not. Haha, but he's a good sport and is willing to come along :] Hopefully, this won't be our last MLB game of the summer- though ticket prices are wayyyyyyy more than the Greensboro Grasshoppers. $10 for premium seats are so not an option here.

Gambit has acclimated well to the new place- it's so much bigger than our last and he has plenty of places to sleep. In fact, often when we come home we have to call him rather than him immediately greeting us at the door. We're also pretty sure he spends most of our time in our bedroom (more specifically sleeping on the bed) since it's the only room that has AC and the sheets are usually balled up in one corner by the time I come home.

We also need to find a new groomer in town that won't cost us an arm and a leg. We had been going to Petsmart, but we've had some not-so-great experiences the last few times and their prices have become comparable to other pet groomers. Also, I'm fairly certain he got his ear infection from his last grooming session so there's really no incentive to keep going back. Now, the trials of finding a new place to get our dog washed when he gets a little stinky. It's a good thing we only do this every 2-3 months! It's expensive when you have the dog the size of a pony.

Hopefully, we'll be doing something newsworthy in the next little bit, like finally unpacking, haha.

LA Wine Fest

Over the past few weeks, I've been struggling with what to post on the blog. Between Cameron starting his new job two(ish) months ago, and my finishing up my program (I passed my exams, woo hoo!), we honestly haven't been doing anything noteworthy. Seriously, not much has been going on. Well, I can recap a few mentionables before I get to the LA Wine Fest.

1. The weekend before Memorial Day Weekend, a few girls and I went to Las Vegas for a night. It was a pretty relaxed trip with my highlights being a quick trip to a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit at the Venetian, playing a Star Wars slots machine (first time at a slot machine!) and being in bed before 1am.

2. I dropped my phone down the elevator shaft at my apartment about three weeks ago. A super handy neighbor retrieved it for me. But talk about dumb luck, right?

That's really been about it in news from of our lives. However! This past weekend, Cameron and I went to the LA Wine Fest with a friend of mine from the cohort and her fiancee. It was fun to sample different wines and beers (and snacks) and enjoy some time out in the sun. The gentlemen wanted "optimum tasting time," so we stayed from about 2:45-6pm (the Wine Fest started at 2pm). There were food trucks (so I was very happy) and different craft booths as well. I snagged a bunch of photos a local artist took around LA. I've got a project in mind for them, but more on that later :]

In case you've forgotten what we look like, here's some recent shots!

Chef

One of the things I appreciate the most about Los Angeles is the sheer amount of opportunities it provides. Whether that's for food, music, shopping, travel, films, whatever, there are plenty of options to try and see/experience things that you can't anywhere else. With the film industry every where over this city, it has been neat to see the different films that roll through the theaters, especially ones that aren't "blockbusters" or deemed potentially successful enough to be distributed nationwide. Cameron and I saw one such film last night: Chef is Jon Favreau's new film written and directed by him and has an great cast that includes Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Vergara. Cameron had mentioned wanting to see it earlier this week or last, and we had attempted to see it earlier this week, but we both feel asleep after a breakfast-for-dinner meal Cameron made... We were able to finally see it last night at the Arclight Cienmas, and we both agreed that it was one of the best movies we had seen in a long time. We've seen a few movies since we've been in Los Angeles, but they've been the blockbusters you can see anywhere- 300: Rise of an Empire, Rio 2, Captain America: The Winter Solider, you get the gist.

Chef follows Carl, an award winning chef in a rut who is fired/quits after a difficult review is posted about his food. Jobless, he ends up starting his own food truck.

Now, I'll be the first one to tell you that dramas aren't really my thing. I do enjoy them every now and then, but they're usually not my go-to film genre. I would say without reservation that I would happily own this film and watch it again. It is so good. We really enjoyed the casting and the story line; it was just so well told (people clapped at the end of the film, so I'll take that as validation of my opinion). Cameron had a sense of nostalgia watching it for his time on the BellyBombz truck, and it was fun for me to identify many of the food trucks in Los Angeles that we had eaten ate or I've seen consistently. For me, it was feeling famous-by-association since we could now recognize places and things in the film. It also made us want to eat a lot of food afterwards, and we secretly wished it was a real food truck we could find :[

If it does become a nationwide distribution, I would highly suggest seeing the film- or waiting for it to come to DVD.

The Room at Hollywood

A few weekends ago, a few of my cohort and I celebrated the birthday of a cohort member, Jenny. We had dinner at El Nopal, a Oxaquena restaurant close to campus that is owned by the husband of another cohort member. Originally, I was planning on just going to the dinner and then coming home to spend some time with Cameron after he got done with work. Halfway through dinner, Cameron texted that he had gotten off work early so we decided to go to the bar/lounge they had planned to go to.

This is where living in Hollywood became extremely convenient: our apartment was a 15 minute walk to the lounge. No parking hassle for us! Although lounges aren't necessarily where Cameron and I like to hang out, it was a lot of fun with my cohort and we got a taste of Hollywood night life!

Ok, so many clubs do bottle service, but you can also order individual drinks. Talk about sticker shock for a bottle!