It has been... approximately 3 months and 26 days since I first arrived in Los Angeles. Battered and torn from my university days, I was welcomed into the uncomfortably hot arms of this mostly unforgiving city. Given that I have been to L.A. many many times since my youth, I had an idea of what to expect from living here. And truth be told, I wasn't expecting much.

You see, I come from a city of culture. Los Angeles has it's own, strange culture... but it doesn't really embrace other cultures. Not the way San Francisco does. And I MISS that. I thought, "why is there never anything to do here? What did I USED to do?" And I realized that L.A. is missing two big parts of San Francisco culture/nightlife: cafes with amazing live music ANY night of the week, and pubs. I mean REAL pubs. Not an "Irish pub" which is really just a sports bar covered in green lights. And it's a damn shame!

Michael and I were driving around the other day, marveling at how ugly Los Angeles is... and we had to think about why it's so ugly. I mean really. Why is it so ugly? And we came up with three big reasons. One is the architecture... there is a lot of cheap, decaying apartment or strip mall buildings that are just fugly. Seriously. The second is all the ads. There are signs and billboards and ads all over the place. They even have these ads on wheels that they put on the side of the road everywhere. The third and final reason we came up with was the lack of trees and green stuff in general. Los Angeles is like that nasty girl you see in public without any regard for what she looks like. Lipstick smeared, mascara running, hair tangled, and her thong hanging out of her sweat pants with the word "princess" stamped across her big, misshapen ass.

But people visit, and they think L.A. is nice. So why is that? It's because people go to the nice parts of L.A... Beverly Hills, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, maybe Orange County. Universal City. They don't realize that a good 80% of the city is not a pleasant place to live or even briefly visit.

Lucky for us, Michael and I live in a nicer neighborhood. We pay more for this privilege, and unfortunately it still means that we're surrounded by shitty neighborhoods (Van Nuys and North Hollywood, namely).

It hasn't rained since we moved in mid-June. Most days, it was well above 85 degrees F. The past week, finally, it has been considerably cooler. Maybe in the high 60s to low 70s. Thank Christ. We're all hoping it stays this way. Occasionally, the temperature would cool, and we would mistakenly assume that the weather was changing... only to wake up to another 80 degree morning. But I have a good feeling about this one. So, since the weather has improved, it means Darwin gets longer, more frequent walks. Yesterday, I decided to take my camera with me when I walked Darwin, just to see if I'd find anything photo-worthy on the way.

Dog is photo-worthy.


Dog is still photo-worthy.

Aside from the weather turning, this is really
the only evidence of autumn that I have seen down here.


I love magnolia trees. Mostly because they're beautiful,
but partly because I live off Magnolia Street.

And after such beauty, I came across this little
strange display. I think Darwin found it just as
peculiar as I did. Why is it broken? More importantly,
why is it outside on the front lawn?

As if that wasn't weird enough, I soon found
this. As amused as I was... really, though.
It's not nice to steal someone's scarecrow.

So this is my street, which isn't usually that
exciting. However...

The sky was really vibrant that day.