I’ve been asking people for advice about where I should live in LA.  I know I’m going to be working in Beverly Hills, and need to try to live somewhere that will let me get to work without taking a freeway.  But I know nothing about LA’s neighborhoods, and while multiple E3’s in Los Angles have resulted in me knowing my way around the city fairly well for someone who’s never lived there, I still can get very lost (I swear, J, Hollywood Boulevard kept moving, it wasn’t that we couldn’t find it).

I think I’ve had enough with the advice. Everyone means well, sort of, the real estate agents have their own agendas, but the intent is still to help me find a place. The advice is all over the map (literally!), and I need to narrow everything down if I’m going to find an apartment this week. So, I’m going to look in the one place that multiple people I trust have recommended (my friends). After all, I’m only going to sign a lease for a year, and I think I can handle a year just about anywhere.

Other funny advice I’ve heard recently - I watch the Today show, but I watch it in bits and pieces…I often have no idea what the segment I’m watching is about, or what the point is. The other day, a woman was on talking about how to (I think?) stop compulsive shopping. One of the recommendations was to not have friends who support your shopping habit. I have no doubt my friends enable my shopping habit (I really wasn’t planning on going to Tiffany today!) but I love it. I have fun shopping, end up with pretty new things, and get to convince my friends to do the same. Not to mention, doesn’t it only make sense to have friends who actually like to do the same things as you?

One last piece of dumbass advice to share, overheard at the salon today. An older woman was told that fire-engine red hair would make her look younger. This is the second time I’ve seen the same colorist turn a 60+ year old woman into a nasty redhead. The last time, the woman had really beautiful naturally blonde hair…at least this time she was covering up salt and pepper, but still - most people outgrow the Manic Panic look. Buy a fancy car for a midlife crisis - don’t dye your head to match your teenage grandkid.

With three stupid ideas, a good one to share - I was told, I dunno, ages ago to try bare minerals. I hate foundation (and don’t really need it), but I do like using powder. The problem is, of course, powder’s off your face within minutes of putting it on. This stuff stays on all day - overnight even - and really is just powder. It’s way overpriced, but, well, it goes back to that ‘girlfriends supporting your shopping habit’ again. They all like it and fully support me spending far too much money on it.

Enough rambling for tonight. You’d think that if I wasn’t working I’d be spending my life watching TV, but somehow I’ve fallen very far behind. Go fig, I’ve been keeping rather busy. So tonight I’ll be the lazy self I had intended to be earlier this week. PJ’s, fuzzy slippers, tivo, and the couch. A very nice Saturday night.

I’ve moved so many times in the past few years that I suppose I’ve become something of an expert at it. I know what needs to be done when, what should be dealt with before the movers come, what needs to wait until after, how to get my stuff ready, and so on. I’ve also tried to find the fun in moving, as much as I can, anyway, I HATE moving.

So, I’ve spent the last day or two starting the process of going through my things and put them into one of three categories - worth taking, throwing out, or use up before I go. Since I’ve started in on the stuff that’s fun to go through, I’m really enjoying the “using up before I go” category. At this point, it tends to include things like old bottles of perfume, clothes that really only are worth one last wear, half-used scented candles, half-used bubble bath, fun stuff.

Tomorrow I need to start in on the serious stuff - bookcases, boxes I haven’t touched since my last move, closets. But for now, I do have to through the fun stuff, and finding things I need to use before moving gives me a fabulous excuse for lots of personal pampering.

Give me another day of this, and I will be a very calm, relaxed me. Or at the very least, I’ll smell wonderfully and have bright shiny skin.

Ok, so maybe I didn’t have to be quite as afraid as I was about going to the dentist. It had been over two years - what can I say, when you’re already pretty sick, you’re not really inspired to go somewhere that will inflict even MORE pain. Going to the dentist doesn’t really feel like an urgent thing that has to be done, ya know?

I went last night, and was pretty terrified. The last time I’d seen a dentist back in California I was warned that I was *this* close to needing two root canals. So that was what I was expecting to hear. Two root canals, and probably a buttload of cavities (I was cavity-free until I had braces for years - after that, it’s been at least one per visit). I was also prepared to be in a good deal of pain after (since my teeth are so sensitive at the moment), and ready for an overall terrible experience.

But, much to my surprise, no root canal, and no cavities, even!! I think the doctor was a little confused why I was so happy that “all I needed was a root cleaning” (since that will be painful as hell), but to me…it’s better than what I expected. Plus, I’ve had a root cleaning before, and yeah…it hurts, but it’s no root canal. I have two spots where my gumline is down to my root (ick), so that’s why my teeth hurt, but the dentist thinks that after a hard cleaning they’ll go back up again. No need to do anything else.

Phew. I guess the lesson for me to learn is that I don’t need to be so terrified, and if I’d gone last year, I wouldn’t be facing two appointments for icky deep cleaning now.

So, kiddies, don’t be afraid of the dentist. They have loud nasty scary drills and stuff, but if you go see them often enough, you won’t need the drill. I am very thankful that I don’t.

It’s awards season again! Not those awards that everyone freaks out over - but Broadway award season. The Tony’s are in a little over a month, and nominees for the Critics Circle awards came out yesterday.

I’ve been pretty excited to see the Tony’s ever since I saw Mary Poppins in London last year. I knew then that the Broadway production would certainly be nominated for best musical, and therefore would perform at the show. I’m dying to see Supercalifragilistic… (holy cow I can’t spell that) again - it was truly one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen. I also use the Tony’s as one long advertisement for what’s playing on Broadway - if I like what I see, I’ll definitely want to see the show. Great example of that - Jersey Boys absolutely blew me away at last year’s Tony’s. Of course, it then won best musical and has been impossible to get tickets for ever since. I WILL see it soon, though, I swear.

I also wish I could remember if best revival nominees perform - I would absolutely love to see A Chorus Line. I’ve gone on and on enough about my love for that in here, but, suffice to say, even if they perform one number on the show, I will cry.

Every time I go to NYC, I always go to a show, and this past weekend was no exception. J and I went to the box office for Legally Blonde on Saturday afternoon, and scored house seats for that night (you can buy unused house seats the day of the show directly from the box office). After we settled in our fabulous middle orchestra seats, the man next to me started asking me questions about the show, what was good on Broadway, what musicals, plays, etc. Ten minutes later it became clear that we were sitting in the middle of a group of either major theater patrons, or theater critics, and wasn’t I so thankful that I’d actually given him intelligent answers to his questions. They all loved the show as much as we did, so I suppose I’ll see next week if they were reviewers - if the show nails the reviews, then it was them.

I am wondering if Legally Blonde is opening too late for Tony consideration, though. The show is only in previews right now, truly “opening” next week. They obviously already missed the Critics Circle awards, or at least, I’m guessing they did, the show should have at least made SOME showing in the awards. There’s always kinda slim pickings for the musical categories anyway, due to the lack of new shows every year, and I’d expect that they could have at least found a best actress/actor in the bunch, even if the show itself didn’t qualify for best musical. Then again, I’ve only seen Mary Poppins (and the British version at that, it is different here in the US) out of all of the nominated musicals, so who knows - all the shows could be fabulous.

Anyway, the Tony’s are June 10th, and while I may not know where I will be living at that time, I DO know I will be plopped on some couch somewhere watching them from beginning to end. The Tony’s are the one time of year I don’t feel like the only Broadway geek on earth, and I love it.

I like wine, that shouldn’t be any shock to anyone who knows me. I collect it, I like to go to wineries, I read blogs about it…the whole bit. I was up in NYC for the weekend, and Friday night we went to dinner at Compass, on the upper west side. After my father spent no less than 15 minutes lost in the oversized wine list, I picked a wine - a 1993 Pinot Noir from a winery in the Russian River Valley region of California. The sommelier brought over our wine, opened the bottle, poured a little bit for me, then looked at me funny, telling me not to drink it yet. He smelled the wine, then apologized - the wine was corked. He ran off with the bottle, came back with another, opened it…another corked bottle.

At this point he was getting a little flustered. When he returned with the third bottle, he explained that this wine was one of his favorites, and he had just bought the last ten cases in all of Manhattan - the winery had stopped making it. The third bottle was fine, and he was right, it was great wine.

After we’d successfully tasted what the wine was supposed to be, the somelier brought us a little bit of the corked wine for a lesson in how to tell a bottle has gone bad. And I am so greatful! We learned how to tell wine is bad by the smell, and I will never drink a corked bottle again. Really neat, to finally learn that, I’ve learned a lot about wine from various tastings and winery trips, but it makes sense that places trying to sell wine wouldn’t go so far as to have a corked bottle for a hands on lesson.

I do wonder, though, if he hadn’t told us the wine was corked, would I have been able to tell? The one time I know I had a bottle of corked wine it was a bottle of my absolute favorite wine, so I already knew what it was supposed to taste like. Would I have known if it was unfamiliar wine? How many bottles of corked wine have I actually had to drink in my life? I suspect I’ve had more than a few. Never again, though.

I brought everything home yesterday…including my glasses. My computer is very, very fuzzy, and my head hurts.

Oops.

Tomorrow’s my last day at work. I’m all booked for an apartment hunting trip out to LA, and the movers have been scheduled. The rest is waiting until I have an actual address, which I hope to have soon.

This is all very, very real now…I’m moving to LA. I’m starting to get more excited over the idea of living there. At least I’m remotely familiar with the area already, which already puts me ahead of where I was when I moved to Northern Cali or here. And the more I talk to people about what it’s actually like, the more I think once I get out there and dig down into the neighborhoods and stuff I’ll be ok. I’m looking more and more at living in Marina del Rey - living by the beach would be sweet, and it’s more affordable than anywhere else. I just need to drive around, see what my commute time would be, that kind of stuff.

On another note - the pet food recall’s been expanded. Again. I really don’t think Henry’s food had anything to do with what happened, but I think I am always going to find the timing a bit suspect (she went into acute renal failure right as the recall was announced) and won’t be at all surprised if her food ends up on the list eventually. Everyone with a pet needs to be really careful about what food they chose, you can’t be too safe.

I had a good weekend - I was pretty lazy on Saturday, then yesterday joined a friend at the mall for some retail therapy. I’m going to LA, I needed fancy schmancy designer sunglasses, right? Now, if only the sun would come out so I could WEAR them…

For some reason, I felt like doing a lot of reading this weekend, including finally reading the first two issues of “Buffy Season Eight.” It’s a new comic book series that Joss Whedon is writing - the “official” season eight of the TV show.

I haven’t read any of the Buffy (or angel) stuff out there, the books, fanfic, comics, so this was the first time I’d ever really read Buffy in print. And it was pretty neat! I think a lot of that comes from the fact that this is actually written by Joss - Buffy is talking in Buffy-speak, and you can totally hear Andrew and Xander speaking their lines. They’re written exactly the way the characters speak.

The story is…interesting. I have no real clue what’s going on, which is kind of annoying. I think, given the title “season eight,” I’d been expecting television style pacing, with each issue being another episode. It’s not at all like that, it’s written more like a typical comic book. That makes sense - embrace the medium and all - but I like collected trade paperbacks for a reason. I’m not one for suspense without a payoff, and the series clearly is going to have a lot of that.

But all in all, I’ll take the characters however I can get them, and I’m just enjoying having them back.

Henry passed away on Wednesday morning. She lived with renal failure for four years - much longer than she ever was supposed to - so I did know this was going to happen at some point “soon.”

Tuesday night she stopped moving, and I just knew it was almost over. I had the entire night to say goodbye, and by morning, was ready to put her down if I had to. But I really, really didn’t want to, and it was like she knew that.

Wednesday morning, we went to the vet. We spent about 1/2 hr waiting to go into the exam room, during which every single person who worked there came over to pet Henry. She’s pretty memorable, the tiny black cat with the one kidney, and they all knew her well. Finally, I got into the exam room, took her out of her carrier, and sat down to wait for the doctor, just holding her. When the doctor walked in five minutes later, she was gone. I will miss her terribly, and am still coming to grips with this, but overall, I’m doing ok. Everything went about as perfectly as it could have, and I love Henry for that…she made things a lot easier on me. I got time to say goodbye, and didn’t have to put her down. Perfect.

I will update her website and catster profile at some point - right now it’s hard enough to put this in print here.

The other big news in my life is that I’m leaving AOL. Once again, I had one of those ‘offer I can’t refuse’ moments where I had a huge decision to make - move across the country (AGAIN!), take a new job with another company, or stay here where I’m comfortable. And once again, I couldn’t say no. It’s a great opportunity, and as much as I’m going to miss everyone here, I really do have to do this. If I didn’t, I’d spend my whole life wondering what could have happened, and I so can’t deal with that.

Since I’ve made the decision to take the other position and move to LA, things have fallen into place really well. It’s almost like this is fate, everything that ties me to this area has slowly gone away. For example:

- My boyfriend annoyed me enough that I didn’t want him to ever touch me again. After I jumped a foot in the air when he tried to hold my hand, we broke up.

- I bought a condo back in September that was going to be ready this September. One of my major stress points had been ‘how do I get out of the condo contract and get my money back.’ Well, the builder decided that it wasn’t economically viable to build an apartment complex at this time, and canceled the project. I will get every penny back, plus interest.

- My job. I personally hate when people quit and leave a mess behind them. But, I’m at a point where I think that I can leave all of my teams in pretty good shape, with work to do for the next month or two (at least). Enough to keep them going until I’m replaced. I really will miss everyone terribly, and don’t want to leave anything hanging.

- Cash flow (breaking a lease means potential for double rent, plus housing prices in LA are astronomical, I’m gonna need deposit money, and a move is expensive, even with the company moving me and everything). For the first time in my life I was able to deduct medical expenses (call it the “upside” of getting extremely sick in a year…I may have spent a small fortune on doctors and physical therapy, but it does come back to me) so I’m getting a nice refund. And speaking of taxes - no need to give Virginia their quarterly payment. I’m leaving, baby.

- As sad as it is…Henry. I was really, really worried about how I was going to manage taking her to California. We’ve been through this twice already, but in the state she was in, trying to go 10 hours without water could have been fatal. That’s assuming the vet would have even signed off on it to begin with - you need a vet’s note clearing your pet before you can take them on a plane.

It is pretty remarkable to me how easily everything just solved itself. My only major thing I have yet to do is find an apartment. So, I’m going to LA in two weeks (I’m looking in the Santa Monica/West Hollywood/Marina del Ray area - any apt recommendations are totally appreciated), and I’m sure I’ll feel much better once I find a place.

I am very stressed, although I’m getting better, Henry was a huge part of that stress. I’d been waiting for this to happen for weeks now (I had a very strong feeling that Henry wouldn’t be making the LA trip with me), and being on deathwatch is just awful. Nobody should spend every night waking up every hour to make sure their pet is still alive. I slept REALLY well Wednesday night, then not at all last night, but I think I’m getting better, or at least, I may be at the point where sleeping pills will work again.

And that’s about it. I hate I hate I hate moving, but I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to (once again) clean out my apartment, throw out old furniture, blah blah. I’m also finally moving somewhere where I actually know people, so that’s a nice change.

Now that I’m not scared to write in here, I’m sure I’ll be updating more. I just didn’t want to write anything for a while there…I was afraid I would either going to jinx the job thing, or didn’t want to put what was going on with Henry in print. Much better now.