Saturday, October 30, 2010

I'm Contributing! Oh ya, and it's Halloween

It's late and I should probably be in bed, but this week has been a busy one but I'm glad to report that I feel more and more at ease in my job. I am learning and doing more for the office and I feel like I can do about 75% of the things I need to without once asking for someone to check my work. At this point there are just the odd things that come up that no one would ever think to warn or tell me about because it happens so infrequently that making it part of organized training would be silly. Tomorrow in fact I actually get to work alone for a few hours. This is partly because I'm at that point now, and partly so I can pick up some extra hours to make up for the time I was at home unexpectedly.

A word on Halloween. When I was young I definitely enjoyed Halloween time, who didn't. When I was in high school I could understand the desire to dress up and maybe have a party or something. I can even understand college kids wanting to break up the weekly routine of partying by partying in costume. But enough is enough. At this point in my life Halloween seems to be an excuse for my generation to dress up like idiots/whores and for some reason that's ok. And I'm the one who's crazy because I just don't understand the need to spend a month preparing a costume I'm gonna only wear once. Case in point; tomorrow I'm going over to a friends for a birthday party since he turned 23 on Tuesday. But of course the party gets moved to the weekend and now I need to create a costume? After I was home for a week and an hour after I get out of work? Ya no. I'm gonna go on down to Culver City, give him his gift (Rex Goliath wine!) and hang out for a bit. If someone asks me what my costume is I'll say, "an Adult".

I love most holidays, but it's probably time to grow up a bit.

-Jeff

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Busy past week

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay, I've had a busy couple of weeks.

As I mentioned earlier my store that I work out of has been in an ongoing renovation for the past couple weeks and was just finished Tuesday, which means I have been doing some moving and minor construction. The great thing is that now I'm not working in spitting distance of a bathroom people seem more apt to come in and at least say hello, so I think business should pick up. I learned today that October is actually the slowest month of the year for travel bookings, which is a bit confusing to me since I would be booking flights to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas by now if I were in college. But then again I'm 23 and don't have to worry about tests or papers so the average college student is a bit more distracted than I am.

Also keeping me busy, last week I went home to deal with some family matters. While unexpected it was certainly nice to go home during my favorite season and watch the leafs change. I even saw some snowflakes! While the reason for going home was less than optimal, I am glad I had the chance to go so I could see some family that I sorely missed, and since I wasn't planning on being home until 2011 at least, it was an unexpected but halfway welcome surprise.

Anyway, life in LA isn't all that exciting. I had to drop my improv class for the moment as the journey home meant I would be missing way too many class sessions. That's ok, but I would really like to be performing or doing something creative. I shall have to start keeping a journal written from the viewpoint of a survivor of a zombie apocalypse.

Anyway, I am off to buy a friend a drink for her birthday and then back to work in the morning. No exciting plans for the weekend, but they say there may be snow high in the mountains, I shall keep my eyes peeled.

Let's go Giants!

Monday, October 11, 2010

This took too long...

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay, I've had my mom come to visit and a friend came to town so I've been a bit pre-occupied but now that I've got a few minutes I can check in for a short update.

As I said, my mom came to visit me last weekend for my birthday and it was awesome. It meant a lot that she took a vacation so she could come and visit me for my birthday. Now when she booked the ticket there was a possibility that she would be driving me back East and thankfully I got to drop her off at the airport and stay in sunny LA. Of course, I don't think my mom minded just having a sunny California getaway; she got to stay with her friend Gena on the beach all week. Now living on the beach doesn't quite qualify to me as really experiencing LA, but given my Mom's professed love of Florida, I don't think she minded. She still hung out with me a bunch and we went to Malibu and saw an improv show and it was a really great weekend. I was sad to see her go, but there's a chance I may see my Dad and brother in Denver in a bit when they go out for a college tour. Even though it's not home, I still consider myself lucky that I have parents that will put their own jobs on hold for their kids. It makes me feel a bit better that I'll be missing Thanksgiving and Christmas. All that remains will be a trip down South to visit my brother in Savannah.

Yesterday my good friend Cosette flew in for her month (or longer?) stint working at the Marriot in Marina Del Ray, which is right by the ocean. As if I needed an excuse. She's been one of my best friends since the first day of college (literally she was the first person I met on the bus into Freshman Camp). She's a bit jet-lagged for now, but I'm sure I will find plenty of excuses to hang out with her and make her feel a little less lonely on the West Coast. I'm also happy to see a friend from NH out here, which has been one of the harder things to cope with.

Other than that I am still enjoying my job, getting to know the lingo and helping out some customers. I finally feel like I'm starting to contribute and I'm getting my confidence up, which really is 75% of the battle. I still laugh at how lucky I am to have found such a great job for me. At the moment we are in the middle of a store remodel so I work in a glorified storage closet, but really it just adds to the allure.

Anyway, that's all for now. Tonight I am heading back to the Improv X-ecution to help vote for my friend Van Gogh and hang out afterward. Tomorrow? Who knows. Big city living!

Happy Trails!

Oh, and you need to check out my friend Richard's blob/vlog http://dickfloundge.com, he's one of the nicest people you've every met and a good friend.