Happy New Year!

I really couldn't believe it's been a year since I gave myself 10 monthly goals to follow through with.  My apologies for the late recap as I was stuck in a polar vortex.  Okay, the real reason is that I was on holiday break and I don't really like to blog on my off-time.  So this will be my last re-cap before I re-design the blog to feature some other year long idea.  So one final re-cap and I'm going to keep it short.

Goal #1: Exercise 15 12 times.  So I missed it by three.  What can I say, December was a short month and I was not about to go running in the freezing cold in New York City along the East River or the West Side Highway.  (.8/1)

Goal #2: Schedule an ultrasound appointment.  I just did it today!  The woman on the other line said "this order was put in on November."  Yup, I was that lazy that it took me two months to pick up the phone to make an appointment.

Goal #3: There's no new sofa.

Goal #4: I butched up and installed my locks, turns out the deadbolt from the previous lock was too small for the new lock.  I need a power drill, a drill bit, and a lesbian.  Half credit for at least install the bottom lock. (.5/1)

Goal #5: My walls are not painted.  Choosing a shade of any color is more overwhelming than I thought.  Well played Sherwin-Williams.

Goal #6: DVDs organized (1)

Goal #7: Gain 3 healthy pounds?  That's debatable that any weight gain between Thanksgiving and Christmas is really healthy.

Goal #8: I even took down my tree before the 10th of January! (1)

Goal #9: I tried donating clothes to one of those bins and it was full.  Just the sheer fact that I attempted, and attempted to do so on Christmas Eve should get me half credit (.5/1)

Goal #10: No one got a wine bra this year for Christmas :(

Okay, so December was a total fail for me.  I only accomplished 3.8 out of 10 goals!  And some of them were so easy!  The fact that I ran out of steam towards the end would really explain why I'm not an Olympian.  I just don't want to work that hard.  On the bright side, I the one important lesson I learned during this year was that once you start something it does really stick to you.  I gave up soda one month and now I don't drink it anymore.  I stop doing Sunday Fundays for a month and now I stopped as well, although some will argue that it's because I'm old now. 

Happy New Year!

All I Want for Christmas (Is You)

I'm not Christian, but boy do I love Christmas.  There's something in the air that's crazy and calming at the same time.  I mean, people kill other people to buy toys for people.  Insane right?  I also love "Love Actually" and I watch that every year.  I love everything about it, the turtlenecks, the cheesy love stories, the Joni Mitchell, Hugh Grant, their rendition of "All I want for Christmas (Is You)."  I love holiday music, love it, love it, love it. 

I put my tree up the other day and organized my DVDs based on the decade of the movie came out.  I have a lot of 80's romcoms.  I didn't really do it because I necessarily wanted to, but mostly because I had boxes still that needed to be unpacked and it seems like it would be much easier to do that than other boxes.  I unpacked the same fake tree from Target that I used last year and unpacked all my ornaments.  I can't believe how many I had.  I guess you just accumulate more as each holiday passes. 

I'm not even really sure how my love for Christmas began.  Growing up, we never had a tree, we didn't exactly do presents, and my favorite type of present was still cash.  I'm not even really sure I still care about the present aspect of it.  I find white elephant to be an awful torture method.  It's like who can choose the least worst gift.  I shot that down this year at my office.  I did not want to waste money on buying shit for people.  If anything, I would like to just bring all the crap I've chosen over the years and just give them away for free.  Just saying...

I love the food aspect of it though.  It's like the one time of the year where you are eating out multiple meals a week because someone is hosting a holiday party of some form.  Better them than me.  I could barely host a two person dinner without feeling overwhelmed and overworked. 

I also love the holiday movies on Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel.  They get me all the time.  In fact, I saw two in a row the other night when there was the first one with Ashanti (remember her) and Jordin Sparks followed by another one with a fat Nicole Eggert.  How do you get from Baywatch to that is just beyond me. 

Finally, I love going home for the holidays where you do get a Christmas feel.  It just never feels like Christmas in LA.  I don't care if people here think 59 degrees is cold! :p

Where did 2013 go?

It seemed like just yesterday when I decided to give myself 10 silly goals each month to accomplish...I've been doing this for a year now and this goal setting thing is probably the biggest accomplishment of 2013.  I guess if you really put your mind into something...

And the final 10 goals for the last month of this year are here!

Movember November

I chose not to partake in Movember this year.  Mostly because I did it in the past and I get self-conscious when a 16 year old boy grows a better moe than I do.

This month has been a whirlwind trying to complete goals.  I bought a house and quickly started caring about things that I never used to care about (basically anything that has to do with interior design and kitchen appliances), I also turned 21 (+10) and found out what a bitch that was when I woke up on the morning of my birthday to back pains, there was also Thanksgivingkkah.  My November began with me being sequestered at work for the program that I run for the first week and then an immediate trip to Scottsdale for work after.  I don't think I was home for the first 10 days of November.  Oh, then there was this move from my old apartment where I didn't think I had a lot of stuff until the move happened and I realized I was a hoarder...

Goal #1: I couldn't quite get to 15 unless you count moving as an exercise.  Some can say it is, at least I can because my move involved running up and down the stairs due to the moving truck not being able to clear the over pass.  Thank god I hired movers!  I exercised 11 times this month, which is pretty darn good considering.  Can I count the batting cage to make it 12?  I sure there are calories burned while batting, or at least some type of core work out... (.733)

Goal #2: For the life of me, I do not know how Andre doesn't know how to twerk.  You would think that someone of his size and stature coupled with his splits on the dance floor would be the queen of twerking.  I tried showing him in Palm Springs last month and then this month we tried again during my birthday party.  I even sent him the Andrew Christian twerk tutorial.  Oh, here's the full length.  The guy doesn't just make underwear.  He still couldn't do it and cost me a point!  #twerkfail

Goal #3: I'm pretty sure outside of the bank incident and having to explain why Asians don't trust bank and keep loads of cash under their mattresses, it was a pretty easy escrow process.  I'm still not sure I know what an escrow is.  (1)

Goal #4: I'm pretty sure snowboarding was a previous goal and again I have failed in this venture.

Goal #5: Done, see post on LACMA. (1)

Goal #6: I couldn't even use a gift card!  Then again, it's not really swim season, so I don't really need any slutty bathing suits until like maybe March.

Goal #7: I slipped a little bit during MMM week at work.  There was soda catered with every meal and I slipped for the week.  I had diet coke, diet pepsi, and coke zero.  It was so good considering I haven't had it in months.  Alas, I quickly stopped after when it wasn't free. (1)

Goal #8: Flying home on Christmas morning...Blah (1)

Goal #9: I noticed myself getting soft around the stomach area as of late.  So I made a commitment to tightening it up without surgery.  I just started doing more work outs that included a lot of sweating and well, I stopped eating...(1)

Goal #10: My birthday party was awesome.  It was cheap.  It wasn't $1,500, it was $188.  I didn't wake up drunk in Rome (literally).  Thank you Aventine! (1)

I couldn't even muster up the strength to achieve 7 goals this month.  I must get my act together and finish strong for 2013.

Ma! I'm coming home for the holidays...

This happens every year.  I know the holiday break is around the corner and yet I still never get my ticket until 2-4 weeks before I fly out.  I was determined to not let that happen this year.  I was determined to at least buy tickets 6 weeks in advance.  That I did!  The only thing is I'm flying home Christmas Day at 6AM.  Jesus Christ!  That's early...The thing with buying tickets so late is that I always end up paying an arm and a leg to fly home.  I send out disclaimers to my family that their gift me their oldest son coming home to visit them.  That's right, I'm the muthaeffing present. 

I love Christmas, I'm not religious and I don't really care for holidays in general, but I really love Christmas (probably because I was never stabbed on that day).  There's just something about snow and Mariah Carey.  There's something about seeing people's faces when they get unwrap presents (I don't really care for presents either).  It's just a wonderful time of the year.  I mean, even wash up actors and actresses, or starlettes who want to become actresses get to be in made-for-tv holiday movies  on the Hallmark Channel or Lifetime.  Where else are you going to find movies with Freddie Prinze Jr or Brian Austin Green?  Ashanti and Christina Milian has been known to make appearance in these also. 

Ticket prices were no exception this year.  I'm flying the morning of Christmas day and coming back on January 6th.  I spent my first NYE in LA last year and was not too amused, so decided that it would just make sense to extend my trip home.  Then there's that game you play with your PTO.  Flying back on the 1st is expensive because everyone needs to get back on the 2nd and then the 2nd is Thursday, so most people will probably extend holiday by taking the 2nd and the 3rd off and fly back Saturday or Sunday which is still expensive, so that left me with Monday.  I thought that taking 3 PTO days were worth the $300 savings as well as more time in NY.  In the end of the day, it's not really value wise in terms of the sticker price of a PTO day, but you can't put a price tag on family time. 

The one sad thing about flying in Christmas Day this year is I don't get to spend a Christmas Day tradition watching a movie and then heading to the Tick Tock Diner under the New Yorker Hotel after with my friend Angie.  We both don't really care for Christmas, so we along with every other non-Christian go to the movies and the diners together.  Last year we saw Les Mes.  Now that's a feel good movie everyone should go see!

I think the more important point here is that I'm spending two weeks at home.  I really need to figure out how I can make this work out.  That's a long long time...

I'm a homeowner!

So escrow finally closed on Wednesday, November 20th.  I also call it the day I officially went broke and will be poor for the rest of my life, but whatever, I have equity.  Equity is like a consolation now for liquid assets.  How do I go to the bank to collect on equity. 

The home buying process was the most stressful thing I've ever gone through in life.  At the same time though, it was relatively easy for me compared to some of the horror stories I heard from friends who have gone through the process.  It was only in August that I decided to find myself a real estate agent.  Once I met with Roxane and Amir form Rodeo Realty, the rest was history.  I started looking at condos right after my brother's wedding in September.  In total, I saw 11 condos.  I put my first offer down on the 8th condo back in October.  I got outbid and came in second and was crushed.  A week later, after a work trip to Seattle, I came back and saw the 11th condo and just went for it.  Boom!  Offer accepted!  My boss basically described the process like me buying a pair of shoes.  In fact I'm sure some women have take longer to invest in a pair of shoes than I did with this home search.  It was not that easy though, for the month that I was looking, I made it my life.

I won't bore you with the details of contracts, loans, and all the paperwork involved as I didn't go insane during the 30 day escrow period.  The only thing that got me to lose my mind a little bit was when I had to take money out of the bank to fund my escrow account.  During that time, I learned a couple things:
1. HSBC is full of morons in their front line who gives wrong information
2. HSBC does not allow you go complain over the phone to customer service, I actually need to go to a bank for that.
3. HSBC does not have your money.  I'm sorry, if a bank doesn't have a couple thousand sitting around in cash, that is not a good sign.
4. The USC Credit Union gives free cashier's checks.  
5. Wiring fees are EXPENSIVE...

On to Sherwin-Williams to look at color swatches!

My LACMA Cherry Pop

I came in like a wrecking ball...

So the blogging has been limited this month given that almost all the goals are end of month oriented.  I did however go to the LACMA for the first time ever.  I mean, I've been by the Urban Light exhibit, but I never went in. 

I don't really care to discuss art.  I worked at an art school (my first real job out of college) and I had to deal with artsy folks and artsy type pre-college teens who find meaning in everything.  I see a picture of people walking around at the mall and I take it for face value, the artist sees mass commercialization in a society where we overspend.  I see a fruit basket painting and the artist sees contrasts and two focus points.  Now that's not to say I cannot talk about art, I'm just not pretentious enough to see a paint splash on white canvas and care to talk about it for 15 minutes about what a trendsetter the painter was.  For all I know, he spilled paint on a canvas and it made spotchie splots. 

I spent four hours at the museum using words like "juxtaposition" and "contrast."  And then used phrases like "you can really see the hurt in her eyes, she's frighten by the sight of the post-modern word."  Most often than not, I'm like "OMG, titties..."  I really want to take someone to a museum one day and just run up to a piece and go "OMG, this is my FAVORITE piece EVER!"  Go into a tangent about why and then in reality, it's really a rock. 

The best part of the exhibit other than the wrecking ball (see picture) was when everyone started going into this dark room behind a curtain.  You look up and all you saw was a reflection of a light.  A REFLECTION OF A LIGHT!  People were starring and really thinking about probably what I was thinking about.  WTF are we doing here and what is this supposed to be?!?  Yup, that was pretty much the course of the evening at the LACMA.