Skirt, the Issue

Today I am wearing a skirt that cannot be denied. I am wearing a skirt that flows in a swirly pattern, in shades of bright orange and fuchsia, from slightly above the waistline clear to street level. It's from H&M's Marimekko tribute collection, and it's basically the loudest skirt in America.

I'm wearing this skirt because A), it's pretty hot outside, maybe almost 90 today. And B), it's sort of a statement that says, "Everything is super! Would I be wearing this skirt if everything weren't super?" This approach is similar in concept to the email I received last week from a friend (in regard to a certain sub-optimal first date she'd had), which she punctuated with an exclamation mark and the note: "I'm not really feeling the exclamation point, but if I type it, maybe it will manifest in reality."

This skirt gets attention. Everyone at work remarked on it this morning, as they always do, which brings the garment's CPC (cost per compliment) down to pennies. As I was walking down Sunset just now to grab a bite for lunch, the hostess at Cravings stopped me to ogle my skirt. CPC ever dropping.

Half a block later, in the crosswalk across from Chin Chin, the collagen-filled passenger in an Escalade-genre vehicle (indefensible, BTW) rolled down the window to go on and on about ohmygod ohmygod your skirt, I love it. Where did you get it? H&M. Recently? No, about two months ago. Shoot!

This tickled me, because I often feel like filling one's face with collagen and shopping at notoriously affordable H&M have a dependably inverse relationship. But not this time. It's the power of this skirt. It's universal.

I Want

I'm on a shopping bender. But I'm OK with it; I deserve stuff this summer. I'm sorry, but.

My head almost exploded at the Marc Jacobs in the Forum Shops last week in Vegas when I had to choose between the three color combinations in which the most perfect snakeskin clutch on earth has been made. I picked the one with the blues and greens and browns, although I liked the '80s-inspired neon one too, of course, and I would have bought the one that the store clerk described as "Afrocentric," but she seemed so self-loathingly disparaging when she said it. Actually, first she said I should buy all three, but I was like, "Look lady, it's 3 in the afternoon. I know this is Vegas, but how drunk do you think I am?"

Yesterday I bought new bedding—a sheet set and a duvet set—as well as a new gold necklace (I need a chain worthy of my California pendant, hello), and a tablecloth. A tablecloth? Random, maybe, but I'm in spend mode.

What else can I buy now? Gimme.

Update: It's a 70-percent-off bonanza at BCBG. I picked out a slouchy, comfy little lavender-ish dress (deal sealer: "machine wash cold") and was telling the clerk, "Yeah, I thought it would be great into autumn with some leggings..." And he said, "Did you know we have leggings at 70 percent off?" So I got those too.

Update part deux: Today I am wearing the little Marc Jacobs cotton romper that I bought on Saturday, which is an extra small, but 80 percent off is 80 percent off. I can be an extra small for 80 percent off. I also scooped up some royal purple MJ shorts with gold hardware, even though it's late in the season, but they were 65 percent off, and I got an extra discount because of my birthday month, even though it isn't event technically my birthday month anymore. Then there's the matter of a new army green swimsuit. And that's it for a while, I think.

Memorial Day Weekend: By the Numbers

1.5 loads of laundry done (goal: 2)

2 out of 5 total Planet Earth DVDs watched on a 46-inch HD TV (obsessed), along with at least

5 episodes of the Deadliest Catch marathon

1 kick-butt 90-minute massage session

1 Lakers loss

70 degrees, or maybe not even, for a high temperature (boo)

$150 spent on a new blue polka-dot dress at Intuition (marked down from $310)

2 fancy cocktails consumed at Seven Grand downtown

1 new in-joke, at least (involving the "Pita-Pizza Connection")

45 minutes spent at the new Americana at Brand complex, competing for elbow room with about...

20 billion other shoppers

3 workouts since Friday evening, including 2 solid Hard Body Meltdown classes for a total of...

1,250 calories burned, which hardly neutralizes approximately...

50,000 calories consumed at...

3 barbecues, including

1 that was totally saturated with meats and meat paraphernalia, where I ate mostly desserts, and

1 that was almost fully vegetarian and included

1 recipe that I want to steal (portabella burgers with feta, pearl onions, garlic, dash of cayenne), plus

3 rounds of insanely concentrated fresh veggie juices that included stuff like kale. Overall, there were at least

5 instances when I felt like I would rather get my stomach pumped than endure the over-full feeling for another moment, but that's just

1 of the hazards of another great

3-day weekend among pals.

Habit Forming

It's no secret that I love settling into a good routine, and here's my routine du jour, or, more specifically, my routine du Saturday. The blue-eyed boy and I each like to work out at 9:30 on Saturdays, at our respective gyms in Santa Monica, so we've figured out that carpooling is the best (eco-friendliest + most mutually motivating) way.

I take Hard Body Meltdown class, which totally rules and is generally butt kicking. (I'm currently trying to decide which is the hardest workout of the week: boxing on Wednesdays, or this one on Saturdays. And I think Saturday's class edges boxing by a nose, which is really saying a lot. Both tend to make my trusty Polar heart-rate monitor beep and flash frantically.) Nothing makes me feel better than starting out the weekend with a fine Hard Body Meltdown performance on a Saturday morning, which generally encourages me to drink less and get to bed earlier on Friday nights, which is probably a good thing. I feel very much in control of my life when I am sweating like a gavone doing repeaters with weights off a step supported by four risers and managing to survive. Perhaps, even, with decent form and a half-smile on my face.

The blue-eyed boy starts out with yoga, and then likes to work out for an additional 90 minutes at his gym, which brings us up to noon, and leaves me with an hour and a half to spend alone, fresh and pumped full of endorphins after my class. That's when I leave my gym, and walk out onto the Third Street Promenade for:

1) a walk through the farmer's market. I'm not a hippie-dippie-needs-organic-all-the-time type, but I do love the feeling of scooping up some blueberries that have been picked that very morning, which I will probably use later that day in our patented yogurt sundae (the best imaginable secret recipe, conceived by the blue-eyed boy in a moment of culinary genius, now a daily staple). I usually snag some fresh veggies too, and often some cut gerbera daisies, to deliver to my mom or a friend whose home or birthday party I am visiting later. Then I carry around my bright flowers wrapped in brown paper, peeking out of the top of my gym bag.

and some combination of the following:

2) a stop for coffee or iced coffee, which I always order as "medium in a large cup," even if it's at Starbucks, and they're supposed to require you to use that grande/venti jargon (but I can never remember which size corresponds to which). And this is not because I am cheap; I use the extra room for skim milk and I don't fill it up to the top, because I am prone to spillage rather more than is the average person.

3) a recon mission at Forever 21. I don't have to tell all the ladies out there about why this store rules from top to bottom, particularly in the summertime, when everything is colorful or shiny or woven or besequinned and is typically $9.80 or under. This particular Forever 21 is the brand-new Taj Mahal of Forever 21s, and has three floors, each with multiple areas grouped by...something, I'm not sure. Usually I get excited about all the dozens of things I'm going to buy, and then panic in the face of all the choices (all the available jams, you might say), and then I flee with nothing.

4) a phone call with AE. I tell her about my workout (she's one of the few, along with maybe only the blue-eyed boy, come to think of it, who seems to have limitless interest in hashing out the full-on details of any fitness experience) and we make some plans for the weekend, because we almost invariably see each other, and also invariably need to have our ancillary discussions that correspond to any group date. It's multidimensional, all-angles socializing, and anyway we seem to have inexhaustible things to say about most topics.

Then it's noon and I meet the blue-eyed boy back in front of my gym again. He is carrying his yoga mat, and I'm carrying my gerberas, and it's such a Los Angeles scene, that it might nauseate the average L.A.-disparaging person, although I never understand why there seem to be so many of those out there. Jealousy maybe? What's so wrong with us? It seems like we might just know how to live.

Have You Seen Me?

Several months ago, I made a gross error in judgment. I saw a great pair of sandals on sale at Bloomingdale's— and I let them go. They were marked down from $410 to $142, and I thought I was being a disciplined, liberated woman by telling myself, "That's $142 more than you need to spend on shoes right now. Just walk away, and after you do, you will not think about those shoes again." Nope, wrong.

I called the department store the next day, but the sandals had been sold. I've searched up and down (the Internet, the mall, the outlets) since then, but have only found the equivalent pair in army green—I'd wanted the nude—and even then at twice the price.

Marc by Marc Jacobs. Style name: Goat. Any shoe purveyors out there recognize this fine pair? They're the ones that got away.

Road Trip!

The blue-eyed guy is taking me on a surprise mini-break this weekend! My best guesses so far are the Queen Mary or the outlets in Cabazon (what else could it be if the packing instructions are, "Bring both warm and cool clothes, because we'll be going between outside and inside. And bring trainers because we'll be doing a lot of walking. And you only need casual clothes." Plus, if anyone loves bargain shopping more than I do, it's my man.) Or maybe it's bowling? No, wait, probably not, but we are into bowling these days. (And the first time I played Nintendo Wii, I "bowled" a 212.) Anyway, I like saying "mini-break" because it reminds me of reading Bridget Jones on the 21 Hayes bus in San Francisco, and those were the days. At any rate, this surprise mini-break business: fun game! Stay tuned.

Keep Your Crummy 200 Square Feet While I Spread Out all my Fab Shoes in 1,600, Suckas

Writing consistently smart stuff like Megan does is hard and daunting. But it kind of takes the pressure off now that there's like no possibility that anyone's actually reading this anymore since I haven't posted in a month. Ahem. I got pretty busy and went to New York once and Vegas twice—lost on the first trip, won on the second—spent a lot of time delayed in airports, watched a lot of Cal football (and bet on Cal football, which accounted for some of the losses on the first Vegas trip), worked a lot (and complained a lot about the volume of work expected of me), hired a new assistant editor to help, worked out as much as I could, test drove some cars (current front runner: Toyota Matrix), skirted jury duty, drank a considerable amount of red wine (and white wine and sake, ouch, note to self), and spent a lot of time admiring a certain pair of outrageously blue eyes.

And mercifully, on November 30, the lease in my New York apartment expired. So my subletter cleaned up the joint and moved out. I needed to submit by fax my forwarding information to which I'm convinced my security deposit will never actually be sent since my building management company operates like the worst kind of slumlords, never providing enough heat or hot water or electricity, and regularly hanging up on tenants who call their offices to register such complaints. Or other complaints, like mysterious liquids that pour out of their ceilings for days, leaving their laptop to drown in a foul puddle on their desk when they come home from a holiday weekend. And may I add that this is a company that forces tenants to sign a lease that states a rent $500+ higher than they told the perspective renters the apartment was going for—and then awards an "on-time credit" in the amount of the difference when the tenants pay their rents on time each month—in order that they can raise the rent every year by the highest legal percentage based on the fictitious higher rent? Sickos. Pervs, I tell you.

Anyhow, so I was online searching for the management company's fax number, and I came across a Citysearch link to the business. Now, from what I can tell, readers usually write online reviews of restaurants and bars on the likes of Citysearch, but not of businesses like building management companies. But apparently this company so angered enough people that the following reviews turned up:

WORST PEOPLE TO DEAL WITH!!!!
I have never every written a review before, but then again I normally don't get hung up on. [Managemtnt company] is the WORST people to work with, how they are still in buinsess I am not sure. I signed a lease in July for a August move-in and after they raised the rent $2,000 they pushed back the move-in date from August 1st to the 15th then to Septemeber 1st saying that the constrcution was not done. Now, a day before 9/1 they say that it won't be ready until the 15th. The worst part about it is they are NOT helpful and NOT nice. DO NOT WORK WITH THEM!!!!!

Horrible Customer Service
The girl who answers the phones can never answer your questions, so she always transfers the call to Ambi, who is rarely there. I was told to call between 9 and 9:10 to reach her! When she is there, she's rude and has no ability to deal with people. She has hung up on me more times than I can count, simply because she has no solutions for a problem she was hired to fix. She loves the phrase 'they're out of the country right now' and seems to think it is an excuse for her incompetence. Cons: Ignorance, Poor Service. Not Recommended

Dishonest Management - 100% will lie to your face
[Management company] is possibly the worst in the city. Their main person "Ambi" will lie to your face and change rental terms at her discretion. She is also extremely rude, will ignore tenant calls and will not for the life of her return a phone call. Do not rent from this company! There isn't a single good thing I can say about this company - if you MUST deal with them insist that you will not deal with Ambi. Pros: none. Cons: dishonest, poor customer service

Dishonest management NEVER calls back
Called 60 days before rent was due and never ever get called back. Continued to call for days in a row. Get a lot of push-back. They love the phrase 'it's in the mail'. They had guaranteed on Monday that I would receive a letter that very Monday or Tuesday. I called Wed after checking mail for three days and still had no letter. She then said I'd have to wait two weeks for the letter. This renewal lease would be for the first week of the last month of my previous lease AND then she said I had to give 60 days notice before leaving. How can I give 60 days notice if I only receive THEIR paperwork 21 days before the end of my lease? Stay away from this management.

Terrible Customer Service
The person who picks up the phone is just terrible when it comes to customer service. She treats you like you are not worth her time and gives so much attitude. I have not received my security deposit and moved out 2 months ago. They are very unorganized. Don't use them if you can avoid it. Pros: Nothing. Just a terrible experience. Cons: Terrible Customer Service

To sum up: I never expect to get my security deposit back. (Which is a shame, because I spent a good chunk of its value on Marc by Marc Jacobs dresses at the Desert Premium Outlets in Cabazon on Sunday.) The security deposit that grew every year that I renewed my lease and they required from me an additional check for an additional deposit based on the higher annual rent (which was further inflated by the fictitious higher rent stated on the lease).

Moreover, that particular kind of tyrant slumlord garbage really only flies in Manhattan. Another reason I'm glad to call pretty L.A. home.

Up and Away

Sometimes you have those days when you just bum around and do nothing.


Then sometimes you have a day when you look at the clock and shoot! It’s 6:01 and you were supposed to be in the lobby at 6AM for your drive to the hot air ballooning launch site, so you’re late but you make it anyway, and then you go up on the balloon and it’s lovely down there and the morning mist is drifting over the farmland, and then when you land you have mimosas and you get pushed on the swing on a nearby jungle gym so you sail very high and then get your sandals all muddy when you try to stop yourself with your feet to slow down, and then you get in a Jeep and drive through the country to a cattle round up where you see calves being immunized and cows being branded, smoke coming off their seared skin and hair. Then you tour a citrus processing plant, and wander around the orchards, and then it’s only 9 AM and you’re kind of ready for bed, but then it’s back in the car to tour another hotel, the restaurant at which supplies you with a skim latte and that helps a little bit. Then you’ve got 45 minutes to shower and check out of the hotel before lunch, where you eat so much because you’re so hungry that the effect is very soporific, and you didn’t really need that since it’s only 2 PM and you already feel like you’ve been up for a month, and plus you didn’t get any sleep the night before on account of one delayed flight, one overactive brain, one bedmate who snores, and the knowledge you had to wake up at 5:30 for the balloon flight, which you didn’t manage to do quite. So then after lunch you view a lovely craftsman-style hotel room with a Tempurpedic bed and a rocking chair and an ocean view that makes you never want to leave, but you have to keep moving, and you go to a museum with a cowboy exhibit, and then you wander around a nearby street fair, and a tangle of local antique shops and then you’re so tired the whole thing is extra surreal, and on the walk back to the car you stop and stare at the pier and the majesty of the Pacific Ocean as the waves roll in along the coast.

Finally somehow you drag yourself to the car and you’re not seven miles into the drive home when you decide to stop at the Wagon Wheel bowling alley you’d spotted on the way into town and it just looks so folksy that it draws you in and makes you want to bowl a game for the first time in maybe eight years, when you bowled at Albany Bowl in the East Bay, where they served Bud in pin-shaped bottles in the Spare Room. (You bowl a 79, which you think is OK for your first try in ages; your partner gets a turkey in the second through fourth frames, and you’re impressed.) Now you’re really tired, so it’s back in the car, but it’s only a few more miles before you see the outlet mall and its Barneys, Betsey, and Restoration call to you from the highway, so you have to stop and you try on a Marc Jacobs coat, which you can’t justify since you live in Los Angeles now, so you let it go, and get back in a car to listen to Cal versus UCLA on AM 570. You pick up some tofu and get home in time to watch the last 10 minutes on TV, and your team is victorious, and that’s great, and then since it’s only 8 PM you make jokes about changing clothes and going to a rave in Hollywood, but instead you sit down to watch a movie and are fast asleep within seconds, and then you turn off the movie and try to watch CSI: Miami instead, but the only scene you see is the investigator popping a bloated corpse so it doesn’t blow up on its own in the van when it’s being transmitted to the morgue, and that’s really gross, and then you finally force yourself to go upstairs to bed and you sleep like a log and wonder how many days in a girl’s life she’ll ever spend like that.