I woke up VERY early this morning. I had washed my hair last night, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it all wet when I went to bed. So I wrapped it in a towel and went to sleep like that.

I think I may need to wash my hair more often down here..The air is muckier…I have been feeling like my hair is dirty, and I don’t usually feel that way. Or, I didn’t in sunnyvale. I washed before it felt that way.

Anyway, I woke up, and it had dried very pretty. I dindn’t have to do ANYTHING to it.

It is free and curly and pretty. How nice! Espcially on a day when I don’t feel so good, having to be up at

4:30

!!!!!

But it is nice to feel pretty, even though I am tired.

Before I woke up and discovered my hair, I lay in bed in a little bit of a stupor. I was listening to some guy talk about…something…Knowing yourself? He was saying something about making sure to live your life the way you know you need to…in the middle of a list of other things he said “…and make sure to have quality time with…” friends and family, right? NO.
“..our companion pets..”

That was not was i was expecting to hear. Is that shallow? In LA, they don’t tell you to reach out to your fellow humans, they tell you to spend time with your lapdog.

*smirk*

However, it made me feel guilty about not spending quality time with my companion pet.

Poor Skellig.

As I was about to leave, I was saying goodbye to him, like I always do. He was looking at me, lying in the middle of the living room. I felt bad, so I went up and petted him for a little bit.

He was lying next to a blue mouse. As soon as I petting him, he started chirping, purring and loving on the mouse.

Good kitty!

He really liked it that I petted him. Perhaps I should work it into my morning routine, to pet him for 5 minutes. That shouldn’t be too hard. He was very nice.

chirp
chirp

Ah yes. Early morning Wednesday. More about that later.

On Monday night, I went to a book club. I had signed up online, and I was very excited to be part of a book club here in LA.

Remember all those warning about the shallow people here?
Maybe shallow people don’t read books. Maybe moving here means that I will never be able to discuss what I read (because I am always reading) with anyone.

How sad!

But there was a book club, and I joined it.

Let’s see…Philip, Mike, Justin, Michael, Amy, Gneb, and…oh..what was that last girl’s name? I can’t remember. We were reading Othello.
It was fabulous. A lovely INDEPENDENT coffee shop, sitting around and discussing Iago’s motives. Then we got to know each other a little bit. Everyone was friendly and intelligent. Everyone had something to say and add.

At the end, I asked everyone what they did for a living. They were fascinating. Everyone back in the bay area would say, “IT” or “Networking” or “Programming” or “databases”. They are different, it’s true, but there is a homogeneity. Back when those fields were not sinking, it was kind of fun that everybody all worked in the same field. But at the same time, it meant that you ended up talking Tech all the time.

and NOT talking about Othello. For example.

So, at this table, we had ME. Video conferencing administrator. Kind of a glamorous career.

Not compared to these people. There was a guy who was a commercial artist, an illustrator. Then the guy who wrote descriptions of action in movies for people who can’t see the movies…Kind of like closed captioning (he said it was his firm that does that), but it’s said out loud. If you can’t see what’s happening on TV, you might not be able to pick it all up from just the dialogue. So this guy writes the stuff like “Sheila enters the dining room”, or “John furrows his brow”
I think that is also tremendously cool.

Then there was the former Jazz trombone player, whose lips were wearing out, so he was an insurance guy, making sure cars get fixed right. HE says he loves cars too, so it’s not a complete departure from his passions. He’s still composing.

Then the girl who is working on a reality TV pilot, but wants to keep her integrity, so think she would like to write children’s books.

Then the guy who is an Economics professor at a state university. He was actually asked a lot of questions. We all wanted to know things about what it was like to be a professor, or what economics was really about.

Then the girl who worked for the Chamber of Commerce at Hollywood. I guess she helps with the walk of the stars…Whatever that’s called. And other things. She got asked a lot of questions about the idea ( I had never heard about this before) that some part of Hollywood, or San Fernando valley or somewhere wants to secede from the city of Los Angeles. A whole discussion of local politics ensued.

I was, I must confess, enraptured. It was hard to leave. I was there almost 4 hours.

We all had to come up with suggestions for the next book to read and discuss. We filled up a whole page of ideas. NONE of them were science fiction or fantasy-those geek staples were left entirely out.