Hollywood!

Well the past week was just as exciting, if not more, than I was expecting it to be. First off, I got the job I interviewed for last Monday! I didn't expect to start until this week, but he had me start on the spot! This is actually really great because it made it so I'll have money coming in sooner, which is necessary now that Zach and I have signed a lease and moved into an apartment in.. you guessed it.. HOLLYWOOD!



So, first things first.. job. I am a legal assistant in a law office in Beverly Hills. The location is even cooler than I expected. I am on Beverly Drive, about a mile from the main part of Rodeo that you see in the movies and such. There is also a really famous pizza place in Beverly Hills that is a short walk from my office. There are a lot of great little shops and things at a reasonable walks distance as well. It is just a small law office, and most of the lawyers work independently or with only 1 or 2 other associates. They basically just share this office space. The lawyer I work for is pretty awesome. He is about as laid back as lawyers can get. I have heard he can be demanding, but that's exactly what I expect out of this job so I am looking forward to it. If all goes as planned I'll be staying here for at least a year. If I like it after this first year I will probably just stay, or if I find a similar job offering a lot of money maybe I'll move towards that. If I decide to go to law school I know he has written recommendation letters for previous assistants, one of which went to USC, where he went, and got a great job afterward. I am still in a place where I'm not 100% sure law will be my path, so this job will certainly help flesh that out. I got am email from Mason the other day saying that a new USC masters program is recruiting history grads from GMU for their program. I think it would be pretty cool to be a professor so I may look into that just to see what else is out there. The masters program didn't necessarily put you on path to be a professor, but maybe a path for other jobs I would be interested in as well. Time will tell.

I got to leave work early on Tuesday, so I used that time to go see an apartment with Zach over in Hollywood. The commute from Tarzana to Beverly Hills isn't remotely fun, so I immediately liked the place when I realized how close to my office it was. Plus I mainly drive through West Hollywood to get there, which is such a cool little area, so that's much better than the 405 or 101. We loved it when we walked in, so we signed a lease the next morning. It is much bigger than we expected, which is nice since we now have 3 pets and hopefully will be getting some visitors (hint hint!) one of these days. It has nice hardwood floors and I liked the layout a lot. It certainly isn't cheap, but we're very happy with how much space we have for the price because we were expecting to have to have something ugly or a studio if we found something at this price. When we first started searching for apartments we were really looking for a place with a lot of amenities, but we quickly realized we didn't really care. Mitch and Donna have a pool and a country club if we really need something along those lines, and Zach knew all along that he would get a gym membership or work in one even if we had a gym. I rather be in a cool area with a big apartment than have amenities we'd hardly use. I'm not saying its the perfect place, or that we will stay there for years to come - but so far we're pretty darn happy with it. And we're certainly happy that its just the two of us and we aren't sharing it with anyone.. yet. It looks like one of his friends may need a couch to sleep on for a while in the near future, but once again.. we shall see.

As exciting as this week was I still had moments where I wished home was much much closer. My parents and Connor got a puppy, and I really wished I had been there for that. I told my mom that they have to move out here soon and we'll get a bunch of land near Santa Barbara or something so we're all together, but still have privacy, and can own a ton of animals. Guess I should start playing the lottery to make that one come true.. But in the end I really love being out here. There is so much to do and so many cool areas to hang out. Every time I drive through a different part of LA I see a street I want to walk on and visit the shops. There are also so many nice paths, canyons and beaches I want to visit.. not to mention day trips I really want to take. I just wish the people at home (certain people..) could pick up and move out here and enjoy all of the great things out here with us. Fortunately we still see Mitchell and Donna a lot, even though we've moved, so that really helps.

Which reminds me! three things..
M&D took us to this great bar/restaurant on Friday night to celebrate us finding a place and give us a little tour of the places they loved while they lived in Hollywood. One of the neat parts of us living in Hollywood is that my main memories of visiting them when I was younger were when they lived in their house in the hills here. We went to the oldest bar in Hollywood or something, and it was SO cool. It was like stepping back into the 1920's. Donna said her mom used to come here with her dad when he was working on movie deals when she was just a little kid, and would get so bored after a few hours that she would go help out in the kitchen. The place hasn't changed since then - in fact when the next generation in the family took over a few years ago they wanted to change the wallpaper and people made such an uproar that they didn't. The servers all wear old-fashioned jackets and it has old cash registers.. just perfect. (It got me excited for Boardwalk Empire which in the end completely disappointed me..)



Also, moving day was the MOST exhausting day of my life. I have never been to the point where I didn't think my body could support my weight anymore, let alone box or furniture weight, and I was at that point for the last couple hours of our move. Stairs are not your friend, just to let you know. Also, the FIRST thing we moved was Zach's massive dresser, and I got to be the one walking backwards up the ramp onto the moving truck with it. You should also know that there is a littleeee step at the top of a moving ramp, which you probably wont see when you're walking backwards. Yea, that little guy got me, I fell straight backwards, 6 foot dresser fell on me, and then almost off the truck until my super awesome moves caught it. I was stuck under it at first, it was awful. 3 days later I'm sitting at work in these pants that are kind of like leggings and I can see my swollen knee through them. I'm so freaking cool.

Lastly - I met one of the associates at work yesterday that I hadn't met before and it was the weirdest thing ever. We were just talking about NPR or something, which brought up my commute last week, so she asked where I was coming from.. I said Tarzana. She says how thats where she grew up, so I ask where. She says the street off the main road, I say yeaaaa I take the same one and tell her which neighborhood it is. She is shocked because she grew up in the same neighborhood, and tells me which street she lived on. I'm now shocked too, so I tell her Mitch and Donna's house address to see if she knew which house they were in.... she grew up in the house Mitch and Donna live in! They bought it from her parents! They had owned it for the 30 years prior. I think we both nearly had a heart attack. She asked where we were sleeping, it was her brother's room, etc. Crazy. She called her mom who remembers my aunt and uncle and she can't believe it either. It was SO awesome. And as she kept saying.. "Not like LA is a big city or anything..."

Bielski and Zuma

What a weekend it has been, and what an exciting week ahead!

Things have been so great lately, especially this past weekend. Isabella visited the weekend before this and we had a lot of fun. We got sushi, korean bbq, dim sum.. the food was great. We even went to a little lunch on Rodeo Blvd with her friend Dave. They are dating now so it was so cute to see them having fun together while they were here. We did smores one night and another Zach and I just stayed in and relaxed for possibly the first time since we've been here while they went out. It was a very nice weekend.

We had a week where no one was here visiting or anything so life was pretty normal then. Some days were just very nice and quiet and others we were working a little. Donna and I went to look at some cats at the local shelter because we had been looking at so many online and found a local kill shelter. We loved so many there, and it turns out it can be really hard to adopt certain cats because there is such a high demand. They show off the cats before they are available sometimes, so people come back the day they are available at 7am when the place opens and they get auctioned off. Its so great to see that a lot of these cats get rescued, but it was still a really sad place. There were also a lot of dogs there so I wanted more pupsters, especially some of these incredibly sad looking pitbulls. Pitbulls were obviously the most common breed there and it was really hard to walk away from them - but our rental situation is already hard enough as it is... more on that later ;)

Then Kristen flew in!!! I was sooo exciting. Having her here was so great, it was probably the couple of days I've had since I've been here. Some of our plans didn't go accordingly because of communication problems with her boyfriend and stuff, but we had a blast anyways. We got to go to the beach, we toured downtown.. and we also got a lot of quality relaxation time in. Last night, her last night here, she had planned on going to the bars with her boyfriend and his friends, but Zach got a call asking him to come babysit last minute, so she decided to come with the us to babysit. It was essentially just hanging out at the house because the girl went to sleep within 45 minutes of us being there. We knew the pool was heated, so we felt the water by the stairs and it was SO warm so we got in. Big mistake - by the time we got up to our chests we realized the rest of the water was freezing. So we rushed across the pool and jumped into the beautiful hot tub that seemed to be calling our names with all of the steam coming off it it. Wrong again, it was cold. We're really smart so we stayed in the hot tub jumping up and down hoping Zach would see us from inside and come help us. It worked, after about 45 minutes. :/ He comes out and tries to figure out how to make it warmer and bring our towels closer to us because it was like 50 degrees last night, and after another 45 minutes the hot tub is finally getting warmer, but since it was already 1:30 and we'd been in there so long we decided to get out. It was torture getting out. Actually the whole thing was kind of torturous, but also hilarious. We were laughing at ourselves the whole time for how much pain we were in, despite the fact that the water was a minimum of 94 degrees the whole time. The ladies we were babysitting for got back soon after we got out because the party they were at (some TMZ party) was apparently very boring. Perfect timing.

This morning we woke up bright and early to take Kristen to the airport. Not only did it suck having to take her home, but I was sooo exhausted. Usually I can't fall back asleep in the morning, especially after being awake and doing stuff for an hour or so, but I came back home and completely passed out. It was amazing. I planned on not doing anything all day, until Mitchell asked me if I wanted to go to the shelter with him again. While we were being tourists downtown yesterday they all went to the shelter and adopted 2 cats. The shelter puts microchips in the cats and fixes them before they let you bring them home, unless they're sick because then they have to do it once they're healthy, so they hadn't brought them home yet. Mitch had seen a cat that he fell in love with so he wanted to go back and check it out, so Zach and I went with him. Wellll, we got two kittens for ourselves!! Here's the whole story, because I think its a cute story. When Donna and I went the other day there were so many incredibly cute kittens. It was one of those situations where you want to bring home every cat in the place. It would have been impossible for me to pick out a cat - especially because there was one cage of 5 little kittens that were so cute, 3 of which were siamese. ughhhh cute. However, there was this one black and white kitten that started meowing and got my attention. When I pet him through the cage he was leaning up against the wire and was going crazy. When I walked away to pet other kittens he started meowing wondering why the heck I was paying attention to someone else. Basically, I fell in love. When Mitchell and Donna went back yesterday they didn't see him and thought he got adopted. I had been content with the fact that I hadn't gotten a cat because of the rental situation (even though I DID look into buying instead of renting so I could adopt - but I'm not sure that would work out right now with a couple of the loan requirements). Once I heard he was gone I was so sad, though. I realized I had realllllly wanted that cat. When I went back with Mitchell and Zach today we were looking at Mitch's little kitty and WHAT DO I SEE but my guy!!! That was it, I was getting a cat. Part of me considered waiting until Mitchell's cat was available, because it's a 2 for the price of 1 deal there, but we looked around to see if I liked any others because I was afraid the cat would get taken before we came back. He was sick with an upper respiratory thing, which in kittens can be dangerous, so I thought I might be safe that no one would take him, but who knew. We walk around, I cuddled with a few kitties until I found this super cute and playful black kitten with bright green eyes. She was so playful that I almost just gave up on her, figuring she wasn't a cuddler. Then, when I walked away from her she got upset that I walked away! Apparently I can't handle that because I was pretty sure I needed this cat after that. I held her and she was so cuddly. We went back to get the information for the first cat and this chick was looking at him and was like "oh and this is the cat my boyfriend is getting" to one of the ladies. I was like uhhhh that's the cat I'M getting. She wasn't thrilled, but she was nice, and I got my two kittens!!!!!! The all black girl is Zuma, the black and white boy is Bielski. Zuma is a beach here that I absolutely love and have always been obsessed with. Bielski is the last name of the brothers that started a village in the woods in the Holocaust to save themselves and eventually 1200 other Jews. They even fought back against the Nazis. The movie Defiance was based off of their story and they were the inspiration for and a major part of my senior thesis on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. My Bielski still has his cold, but hes very happy in his new home. Not so used to Kaos yet, but it could be worse. It will be a process. Zuma comes home tomorrow, as do Mitch and Donna's new kitties - Maui and Paris (two of their favorite places they've vacationed with their girls).

The kitten homecoming is only one of several exciting things happening this week. Tomorrow I have an interview that I'm super excited for. I don't want to get my hopes up because it seems like a great law firm so I'm sure they are interviewing several people, but I already know I really want this job. The guy I'm interviewing with talked to me on the phone for about 30 minutes the other day before asking me to come in, so I think I've already passed phase 1. It is a firm in Beverly Hills that does a wide array of cases, which would be perfect for me because I'd be exposed to a lot different sides of law. Plus it is right in a great part of Beverly Hills and is a small firm so I'd have more interaction with the partners. Awesome. Also, the guy I interviewed with seems to be the top guy and he is really into photography and hiking, so we have that in common.

After the interview I am bringing Zuma home and Bielski in to get some new medication for his "cold." Zach and I will then be a family of 5 psychopaths. Perfect. At this point we're just going to take any apartment that will take us - don't really care about how nice the kitchen is or anything anymore since we have 3 pets. Also, I am still looking into FHA loans because I would love to buy a place. Even if I can't now it is another reason for me to rent something lower end so I could put more money in the bank for when I buy OR go to Europe ;) I'm also very excited for all of the new TV starting this week! All of my favorite shows, really. Survivor.. Always Sunny.. plenty of others that aren't nearly as important as those two. Also, the girls start school tomorrow so that should be very fun and a new experience for me. They're very excited and got great teachers. That's all for now!