YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO ENTER! ________

i guess in some ways i'm glad the summer is over. it was just so much PRESSURE to always be out there doing fun things JUST BECAUSE it was summer. but then again, DAMNIT, i want a summer re-do. but i don't. i mean, there was a lot of stressful things that happened, and a lot of worrying and a lot of sleepless nights, sure. BUT. now. cosette is kicking ass and taking names, and aaron's back in the land of the living after a brief stint in VicodinVille, so all is well. I can't REGRET that my summer was not as fun-filled and fancy free as I could have hoped, but hey, WELCOME TO THE RIDE OF LIFE, RUBY. that's just how it flows, yo.



the other night over a couple of cocktails, liana told me that she heard that in the state of california, people UNDER 5 FEET TALL qualify as handicapped, and, as such, i should try to score myself a sweet parking pass and take full advantage of my disability. but then later, someone else at the party said they recently changed that law, and actually, naw, that is not the case anymore. and i was like DAMN. why does The Man have to keep Shorty down? i mean seriously.



so i have just over a week left of my body-for-life challenge and i'm happy to report i weighed in this morning at NEGATIVE 5 pounds from my original weight. however! i'm totally over this eating 6x per day thing, as i cannot for the life of me figure out how to balance my meals and eat the correct portion sizes. and frankly? i would just rather eff the carbohydrates and power up on protein, because when i do that, i feel like i can rule the universe. The Carbs (much like The Man) just conspire to keep Shorty down. and i'm done with you, The Carbs, soooo done.



however, working out 6x per week is the shizz. i do feel proud of doing that much. because when i say it's the shizz, i mean, OMG ITS HARDER THAN A BASTARD TO WORKOUT THAT MANY TIMES A WEEK! OK!?



on a parallel path, aaron is in the midst of dropping a significant amount of pounds for an upcoming test shoot of his big feature film project that he's doing with eddie. to be exact, i do believe aaron is attempting to drop 20 lbs by 9/29/09. which means 1 lb+ per day. i mean, KAZOINKS! right? but the "good" news is - the less he eats, the less i eat. everyone wins.



ESPECIALLY, my pants.



this past weekend was a rather lovely end to the "summer" even though, who are we kidding, i live in LA. seasons? what? and actually, if we are splitting any hairs, autumn officially begins on 9/22 .. which means... we still have some summertime partying left to do my friends. at any rate, aaron and i got massages on saturday and hi, WTF, where have you been all my summer, Massage? so grrroooood. then sunday was just like, chilling. i don't think we did much more than watch 800 episodes of curb your enthusiasm? maybe i had some wine? who knows. then monday we hung out on the rooftop with a fun downtown crew and made new friends and drank too much wine for sure, beacause i had a hangover at 10pm.

but! when i rose for work the next day @ 630am - BAM! back in it to win it.


on the horizon: jamie's bacherlorette party(...), VIKINGS FOOTBALL, jamie & johnny's wedding, various visitors and birthday parties and eassssing myself into "fall".



word!

another early morning for me, another solid workout. what the nuts is going on? i guess falling asleep at like, 947p while watching the new version of top chef probably enabled me to have enough energy to wake up at 630a again. but hi, i'm lame. aaron was like, reallllly? it's not even 10p, lady! ahhhh welllll. zzzzzzzzzz.



so cosette's new nickname is franken-leg, a la frankenstein. when they said they were going to remove "wide margins" of skin around the area where her little tumor was, they were not kidding. no joke. so her little leg is completely shaven, and there's a super long incision that's all bruised and gnarly with stitches. she looks half naked. poor little nunkin!! now her two front legs have little shave marks from all the IVs they've stuck in her, and now one whole leg + haunches is nakey. cosette is like, um, hi. can i please have some pants here? i feel naked. or maybe that is me talking. either way. DOG PANTS! i need them.



now... it's just a bit of a waiting game until we know our next move. hopefully we will hear good news tomorrow.



speaking of naked, there was this super awesome article in marie claire this past month about naked ladies in the gym locker room. i felt like it could have been written by ME because it was so exactly how i feel. how can we stop naked ladies from being completely disgusting in the locker room? how do we start this movement to eradicate ridiculous displays of gratuitous naked grooming?? i' being serious about this. i'm completely over the ladies who feel like its ok to treat a PUBLIC PLACE as a place to do things that you should ONLY DO IN PRIVATE. what the eff is wrong with these people? someone who grooms naked in public - I WANT YOUR SIDE OF THE STORY. WHAT THE NUTS ARE YOU THINKING?!?



oh look, i found the link: put your goddamn undies on for the love of sweet baby jesus





i think i'm going to take a half day tomorrow. i have one summer half day left to use before labor day weekend and hey, why not. then i can wake up super early again, pound out another 5-miler, go to work, sit in on a lunch meeting, and then go home and sleep until happy hour, go to happy hour, see 500 DAYS OF SUMMER already since it takes place IN MY HOOD. i can't believe i haven't seen it yet! and then who knows where the night will lead me. oh i know. i will fall alsleep around 10:59 ( later, since it's the weekend) whilst petting cosette's sad little frankenleg. i like sleep.





speaking of crazy people, what's the deal with people bringing fully loaded automatic weapons to obama's town halls to "exercise their right to bear arms?!" honestly, this makes no sense to me - the discussion is about HEALTH CARE AND INSURANCE REFORM. i can't imagine there is any sort of sane, reasonable logic going on inside the heads of those people. shit is scary, yo.





on that note, happy thursday party people.

not so bad.

so i think we are temporarily out of the woods. after coming home on friday, cosette did well for a whole day before she started having issues again. so after a sleepless night, we brought her back in on sunday. they decided to give her a steroid shot to help her breathing, but wanted to observe her for a few hours just to make sure it was OK. so we headed to the gym and when we were done, we called to see if we could come get her. but apparently she had an episode where she turned blue and scared the shit out of them, so they decided to keep her overnight. and then she stayed ANOTHER day after that and i was basically like, OMG is this it. but the next day they said she had an amazing night and was ready to go, so aaron picked her up on Tuesday and since then she's been on the road to recovery with little incident. she has to be sedated a little, to keep her calm and comfortable, but she's doing so much better. we still have to bring her in to have the cancer removed, but we have to wait until she's got the green light on recovering from what ails her now. FINGERS CROSSED.



to complicate things a bit, we have a trip planned to MN a week from today. if all goes well over the next few days, we will be leaving her & the Mu with aaron's brother and then doing the surgery when we get back on the 6th or 7th. ::sigh::

so the good news is: i'm on a 10-day vaca/staycation in ONE WEEK. holy god, i need a break. the plan now is MN from the 30th-5th, and then a downtown la-based staycation from the 6th-9th. i really really really can't wait.



so far our minnesota agenda is action-packed with weddings, birthday parties, shenanigans etc. i'm really looking forward to it. there is a SLIGHT possibility that we will have to reschedule if anything pops up with our little c-monster in the next few days, but OPTIMIZM, I HAZ IT.



tonight is a farewell party for three temporary employees that i had the pleasure to manage over the past 5 months. they are doing a program where they rotate all around our company, learning and absorbing, and then they graduate and basically pick a place in the company to land. one of them is most likely going to come back to us in january, which is awesome. but as of next week, they are off to chicago and my group goes from 5 to 2. i cry.



saturday night is a hot celebrity-studded rooftop poolside party, and sunday is detox yoga in the same exact location.



aaron and i have basically given up wine ever since last monday, which means i think i've only had one night with alcohol in the past 10 days. as a result? LOOSER PANTS. hallelujah.



also? Body for Life is going well.. i've worked out 6 days per week for the past 4 weeks. and, I think, almost 4 weeks into it, that i've finally figured out how to balance my multiple mini meals. i'm hoping i'm bikini ready by the time i leave for MN. yeah suckas.





anyway.



as you were.

ohh, you know

it was an exhausting week. monday night at 11p cosette started having one of her breathing epsiodes. usually they are triggered by allergies, which make her congested, which makes it hard for her to breathe, which makes her panic, which just is bad news bears. usually, we can calm her down after awhile and she sleeps through the night. however, i was never able to calm her down and by 6am after being awake with her all.night.long, i finally decided to bring her into the emergency vet.



when she got there they immediately put her on oxygen and sedated her a bit. her oxygen levels were around 90, and i was told it's best to be at 92 or above, so it was not good but it wasn't SO bad. but they recommened we do surgery on her nose and throat to correct the breathing problems that have plagued her her whole entire 8+ years of life.



i was terrified to do surgery - it's a known fact that french bulldogs and sijmilar breeds often have trouble going under anesthesia. but this was the place to go (animal specialty group) if we were going to go anywhere, we just needed to prepare to pay anywhere between 2200 and 3700. right? what a range.



we brought her home and at 130a she started having another episode so we were back in the car and on our way to the ER once again. once we got there, the vet was lovely enough to tell us she was fine and she didn't recommend oxygen or any other measures at that time, she also waived her fee and sent us home. seriously, so nice of her. this is a place that does NOT skimp on fees, but they're also some of the best specialty vets around, so they need to get paid.



anyway, the next day aaron begged and pleaded to get her surgery appointment moved up, and they gave us thursday @ noon, which was awesome. we made it through wednesday night without incident and brought her pitiful little butt in on thursday.



surgery happened at 5 or 6p, and then they called us once she was awake to let us know it had been a success. THANK GOD. however, they broke the news that a lump on her hind leg that we asked them to check was actually a cancerous mast celll tumor. they recommend removing it right away, but not until the swelling in her throat from this surgery goes down. AHHHH.



oh! and they only charged us 2200 (only!) which was the low end. thank GAWD.



now she's home and recovering rather well. i'm actually shocked at how well she's doing. and! she CAN BREATHE. her nose looks totally different and she still has some swelling in her throat, but it was a success and i'm so relieved. we'll deal with the next thing once we *can* but for now, it's just spoiling the dickens out of her and keeping her comfy.



anyway.



as you were.

 

on days like today, my eyelids are heavy.   my eyeballs are dry and a little red.   i have a tendency to get late afternoon headaches and find myself nursing half cups of cold coffee to make through the rest of the day.   but, i must say, days like these i love.  it was a trainer day.



but not just any trainer day, today was my last trainer day.   unless i buy another package, which i won't be able to do for a minute.   but hopefully soon. 



i woke up before the alarm went off, a 5:52am.   i padded my tired bones into the bathroom and and crawled into my workout clothes i had laid out the night before.   i padded down the stairs and only turned on enough lights to make out shapes in the darkness. i measured 1.5 scoops of creamy vanilla protein powder and dropped it  into a glass and added cold water.  i stirred the living daylights out of the mixture and then chugged it down.   i grabbed an orange and peeled the mutha effing skin off that b*tch and savored every little tiny slice as orange juice dripped down my digits.   i pecked at my keyboard and probably answered some emails.  i dont remember.   then i heard the THUMP, clickity clack coming from upstairs indicating that  camus was awake and realized i was not in bed.   he clickety clacked down the stairs and scurrried over to me to get a hug.   i squatted down and he jumped up and put his little chubby arms around my neck and gave me some kisses.   and then, i said, farewell mu.   and i shuffled out the door and into the blinding white light of the day, off to get my butt kicked my a short Persian named Lara.



as much as i hate anticipating these days, i love it when i realize, now at 4:28pm, that I get to go home and do sweet nothing without an ounce of guilt because my workout is done for the day.     SWEET BABY JESUS, HALLELUJAH.



i started the Body For Life challenge on 6/27.   that was approximately 13 days ago.  since then, i have worked out every day except (1).  because it was a free day.   !!!     right  ??   !!!!   i've also consumed 6 meals per day, almost every day, even free days.   because i like to eat.  it's not secret and i'm not ashamed.  plus, it's the program.   SIX MEALS A DAY.  perfectly balanced with 40% carbs, 40% protein and 20% fat.   bring on the fat.



anyway, it's going good.    it's hard in some ways, not so much in other ways, but i like it.   maybe more on that later.  maybe not.  i might be losing weight, but i might be gaining muscle.  who knows.   my pants is still tight.   damnitall.  oh well.   71 DAYS TO GO.



recently life has been a lot of downtown exploration.  i made this list so i could remember all of it:

JUNE

26^th rooftop birthday party @ liana & tal’s

27^th birthday party @ must bar & broadway bar   

28^th lunch with tenna @ panini cafe, rooftop poolside yoga, rooftop BBQ / Jacuzzi @ evo

JULY

2^nd – poolside beverage @ hote fig; sangria happy hour at must bar ; sushi, sushi and more sushi @ wokcano

3^rd – rivera cocktail party

4^th – hung out at Juliet’s rooftop pool @ evo;

5^th – local appreciation day @ corkbar  - Juliet, Niles, Joy, Aaron

6th  - late night nosh & beverages @ yard house

7th -  Michael Jackson memorial craziness, test kitchen tuesday @ corkbar



whew.



 so that's that.     lots of eating working out drinking eating working out eating and drinking.



that's my life and i loves it.



oh, but also?   i'm broke.    no thanks to must bar; broadway bar;   panini cafe; hote fig; wokcano; rivera ; corkbar ; yard house



oh well.





laters.

 

starting with the me in the mirror

i'm starting the body for life challenge tomorrow!

omg. i already took my fat "before" pics and i'm so excited to see if i can actually stick to this long enough to see visible results.

wish me luck, and LUCK.

~~

in other news..

went to breadbar last night to sample "ludo bites." my friend jen is good friends with ludo's wife so I met her there and a few of her friends. sadly, aaron couldn't join us, but i brought him a little treat home and he died a thousand duck fat deaths over it.


anyway, i can't even do it justice in words, it was so much yum. ludo was on top chef masters a few nights ago (crazy french guy) and after watching i was super excited to check it out. and, well, anyway, yum.


ludo bites menu


so.. we tried the following:

heirloom tomato salad red onions feta mousse oregano
king red salmon cubes watermelon mint orange confit seasme oil
shrimp sweet and sour emulsion rosemary*
pork belly pea wasabi passion fruits soy sauce
creamy polenta cantal cheese and oxtail beef
fried chicken in duck fat herns de provence*
marinated grilled hanger steak kobe style yuzu radish white asparagus
cod spiced butter fresh porcini fresh almonds tonnato style
chocolate mousse ganache chantilly*



*the shrimp, fried chicken and chocolate mousse were amazing. everything was great, but those were AMAZING. breadbar doesn't have a liqour license so it was bring your own wine and we indulged in some trader's joes sauv blancs just to balance out the decadence of the french french french food. so so good.

anyway, i think he's there until august so if you have the chance, check it out!!

~~

this weekend is shaping up to be another awesome downtown weekend, complete with rooftop jacuzzi and pool parties and bar hopping adventures. woot.

~~

in reflection of all of the michael jackson madness, i am experiencing extreme nostalgia for a person who USED to bring me so much happiness. i vividly remember purchasing the thriller album and bringing it with me to show & tell and being so obsessed with MJ. i loved making up dances to billie jean and beat it, just like everyone.

over the years i still had mad love, but as his skin colored changed and his actions became more and more bizzarre, i lost respect and came to see him as a shallow, frail shell of himself. and, frankly, for many years, he horrified and disgusted me. but there was always a shroud of mystery, and there was always hope that someday he would get better. i never really wanted to believe he did what they said he did. but he made it nearly impossible not to.

i had the opportunity to visit neverland ranch when he opened it to the public to raise money years ago, and i was stunned by the numerous statues of naked children, and was equally amused and horrified by the alluring nature of all of the whimsical attractions that existed to titillate the desires of young children. ice cream stands, candy dispensers, rides, animals, train that toured the ground. but then there was sad, haunting music coming from the speakers that echoed through the vast empty estate. it was surreal. and it made my heart hurt. for him, for anyone who had been traumtized by his behaviors. the night ended with a weird onstage birthday cake fight between michael jackson, mike tyson and aaron and nick carter. i'll never forget the fans that were CRYING a thousand tears when he threw cake into the crowd and THEY CAUGHT IT. it was like jesus himself had just tossed them wine he had just created from water. truly a sight to behold.



and now as i look back, i feel so sorry for him. the michael jackson that I loved died so long ago. but it's true, the memories i have of how his music affected me growing up will never change. i hope he's resting, finally, in peace.

spicy spicy sweet sweet

before we get started here, let's just put it out there that i ate some REALLY FREAKING HOT SPICY GREEN CURRY just a bit ago and for some moments while i was shoveling it into my piehole, my nose was super, super runny and my throat sort of almost totally closed up a bit due to the XTREME nature of the spicy spice and it was ONLY THEN, that i took pause and thought about the chances that someone could DIE from curry asphyxiation.



what do you think, possible? not possible?



and after i paused, i continued shoveling. because that's just how i do. that's what happens when you subsist on PURE ADRENALINE that you acquired to due the successful nature of your early morning client meeting (wherein your stomach was purring, nay, GROWLING) and then when you get back into the office, you realize that you will be jumping on a conference call RIGHT WHEN rainbow gourmet* shows up in the lobby, and since you didn't plan ahead, you will hear the hunger growls getting louder and then you will be using up all your remaining brain power to formulate intelligent-sounding strings of words that include such words as "preclude" and "amortize" and "metrics" and so on and so forth and you will chuckle to yourself because you will think, hey! is that ME talking? i almost sound SMART. and then the call will end and you will stare at the computer screen. blankly.



but then you will pull it together and order some food and then it will arrive and then you will shovel it and then you will die.





in other news, i am having an internal debate with myself about what i should do tonight: explore the artwalk or watch the lakers game. so far, i think it's going to end up being a hybrid. but i think the night MAY end up at loftseven which is a rooftop with some art and most importantly, a hosted bar and that party rocks well past the regular artwalk hours until midnight o'clock. everything else shuts down at 9ish, which is probably when the lakers game will end. see? it's a dilemma, kinda. because i could just go meet some friends and brave some of the streets by my lonesome, or i could wait for aaron. because that man is a LAKERS WHORE.



anyway.



i have tomorrow off and we are thinking about going to california adventure and using the flip side of our twofer tickets. see, we went to disneyland one day, and we can go to calif adventure another, but it expires next weekend!! zoinks! so we might just zip on over, take a twirl on the TOWER OF TERROR and then zip on back, lickety split.



oh ! before i forget. coolest thing- the wine bar on the corner has implemented a "test kitchen tuesday" wherein they sell potential menu items for $2 to brave testers. this week it was crab cakes and it was the best $2 i ever spent. plus, then, the bartender served us up a bunch of free samples of wines she was going to dump. it was pretty much: SWEET.



this weekend we have the following items on the docket:



- 60-minute massages

- rooftop / poolside yoga

- rooftop / poolside bbq

- exploration of little tokyo

- sushi?

- run

- swim

- california adventure

- hangover: the movie

- hangover: the ruby

- sleep

- sweet sleep







cheers!~







* rainbow gourmet is like, the dude who shows up in our lobby every day with an assortment of breakfast and lunch meals and snacks for sale. rainbow gourmet makes a chinese chicken salad with a dressing that has STRAIGHT UP CRACK in it because i am like a FIEND, a FIEND I SAY and i die when i can't have it because i'm addicted to crack.



which reminds me! i used to have a friend name janine (in junior high, mindya) and we called her JANINE, JANINE THE DICK FIEND. haha. nice friends we were.