Take 2

Dear theoretical readers,

So I started a website, and kind of abandoned it. It wasn't very good, and I'm kind of in a funk. I've kind of been in a funk for a while now. I'm working on it, okay?!

I'm not so good at this weblogging thing these last few years, am I? I guess life's got me a little tongue-tied.

I started reading old blog posts of people I miss dearly. I thought, "blogging used to help me feel less lonely," so maybe I'll give it a shot again. Adult life has got me a little robotic, and I hate that. Maybe blogging will help me find my voice again.

I'll be back. Soon. I promise. Or at least I'll try. Really.

~*~

I have lots of Iron Chef Blogger Challenges I have made and photographed, which I may get around to posting at some point. The idea was for them to go on the food page of my website, but we all know how diligent I was with that project.

Let's start with a summary of the high points in life since we last spoke...

Right around the time of my last post, my Mom had a heart+lung transplant...pretty much for Valentine's Day, which I found fitting. It was really intense. I guess I was spending a lot of time with her and my family in the weeks following that. It was a huge success, with pristine donor organs, and she recovered very quickly. My Aunt Elaine came to be her 24/7 caregiver for 3 months, and she moved into a temporary apartment with my parents just about a mile from my apartment, so I visited often. Her progress was so spectacular that they let her move back home after only 1 month, since it was still within 1 hour of Stanford in case anything went wrong. I am still amazed at how strong my Mommy really is:

My Mom with her Stanford heart pillow, 2 weeks after the transplant.
So strong and brave that you can't even tell, can you?

However, much to the dismay of my Mom, I'm trying really hard to get a job in LA right now. It's for many reasons. But mainly it's for a boy. Am I that girl? Apparently I am.

It's funny how much I hated LA when I first moved there, and then when it was time to leave, I was just starting to call it home. Home is where the heart is, right? Well what if your heart is scattered lots of places? A big chunk of it is still in LA. Hopefully, once I can get a job there, moving back will be the defibrillator I need to revive my Sara~ness from this funk I've slunk into since moving away.

So a lot of what I've been up to is applying for jobs. And the endless cycle of work and apartment, windowless office and dull chores. Most weekends I visit or am visited by Kevin -- my boyfriend and bestest friend. Every other trip to LA, I also visit other friends there that I miss so very much. Once I even met up with my old roommate (the best one! miss her so!), Patti. Before going out drinking with a few other friends, we exchanged gifts. She gave me a cute little sake set, which Kevin and I did sake bombs with the following weekend on the floor of my Mountain View apartment:


We also went paintballing that weekend. A few weeks ago we followed up with airsoft for his birthday. Then his graduation. Then last weekend I helped him move into his new studio, of which I am so jealous -- and I hope someday soon we can get a place together.

Okay so I've been up to a lot these last few months. I could have blogged. I could have done a lot of things. I'm a terrible friend, I'm sorry!

I've written down what I call my LA Pledge. It's a list of promises I've made to myself for if/when I get a job and get to move down to LA to be closer to many friends, and of course my Kevin. I won't share what's on that list (maybe I will when it's time to hold up my end of the bargain -- you can help keep me honest!), but I will say this: they're all geared towards me being a better person, and living a better life for myself. Because this funk just won't do! And you deserve better.

Sincerely,
Me.

~*~

Big Girls Don't Cry

So it's been a while. Almost 3 months?? Well I'd like to say I've been too busy to blog, but that's probably not true. Too many other things I'd rather be doing? Probably more likely.

I relaxed a lot this summer, seeing friends disappear one by one as the inevitable fate of growing up and leaving college approached. Dating Kevin delayed it slightly, because he was still taking summer school (with 2 semesters left to go), and we both still worked at ITS, my campus job for 2 years. I only slightly wish we *did* more stuff while I was in LA, but only because I don't have time (or energy) to anymore; I really, really enjoyed the relaxing summer with him, in my favorite apartment (to which it was so hard to say goodbye!)

Kevin and I went to Europe for 2 weeks in August.

While it broke my bank account and made my feet fall off, from going toooo many places in only 2 weeks, it was amazing, and I miss that trip a lot. It was kind of a last hurrah of my carefree youth, between USC and my big-girl job at AST. I'll post some (backlogged) pictures soon.

At the end of August, I moved to Mountain View.

My high school best friend Cheryl's older brother, Will, needed 1 more roommate. It just so happened that his apartment was 2 miles from my up-and-coming job, so I dove in. So now I'm living with Will, his girlfriend Carmen, and his co-worker Mike. Toby and Keiko -- my gypsy cats -- came with, and for the first time in 12-years, Cisco moved away from my parents' house in Almaden. It was a terrible idea, and it was really hard on him, but my mom has been getting sicker and needed me to start take care of him.

He's the big gray cat posed in these pictures of my room:




In September, I started working at my adult job.

Despite having a CECS degree and being assigned to the Software Department, my job title is "Engineer" (as opposed to "Software Engineer"). I'm working on the largest software project I have ever seen. C++ pointers and MySQL database errors make me want to shoot myself sometimes (especially because my assignment was to take over someone else's stuff, finish, test, fix, and optimize his code), but finally solving a bug and seeing your chunk of code work flawlessly is strangely satisfying.

I've struggled with deciding on dress code. What few girls I've seen seem to dress much nicer than the men (who wear a lot of jeans with collared shirts and tennis shoes). I feel under-dressed wearing jeans beside my pointy-heel wearing office-mate. The other girl on my team is pregnant (well, actually, she went into labor last night, so pregnant she is no more), so the rules are an exception to her.


I'm definitely struggling with "adult life" for so many reasons.

I had a hard time adjusting to USC, and right when I started to call LA home, I was uprooted again. And just when my heart was getting attached to someone new. So the 360-mile move by itself was difficult. I struggled very badly for the first few weeks, but routine (and exhaustion) are stamping that out.

Working 5-day weeks is an exhausting change not only from an entire summer of me choosing my own carefree schedule -- if and when and how long I wanted to work -- but from an entire senior year of 4-day weeks/3-day weekends. On top of that, 9-hour days are tough!

What makes them tougher is staying in one place all day. At my busiest, USC days were much longer than 9 days, but they were chunks of time scheduled at scattered places doing many different things. My short attention span could handle 2-hour blocks much better than these 4-hour ones.

What's more, I have had trouble gripping the idea that this phase of life has no foreseeable end. Up until now, there was a schedule. My entire four years at USC were pretty much planned out which classes I'd be taking, all broken up into semesters. There were finish lines -- due dates, exams, semesterbeginnings and endings -- so I knew what to expect. I didn't even have my first deadline put in front of me until last week, 1 month into the job. But it goes bigger than assignments. At USC, I had 1-year leases, knowing how long I'd be in once place, whether the specific apartment or the city I lived in. I have no idea how long I will be at this job, or living where I am now. Either one of those things could change drastically in any unknown amount of time. And it sounds exciting, I guess, having a palette of life in front of me, but it's also scary. I've come to realize how much I like stability. I like new things, but only if the big things are stable.

But it's not all bad.

Visiting Kevin/Kevin visiting me most weekends has given me stars to put on my calendar, things to look forward to. Mostly we just recover from the workweek and relax together, with the occasional outing for food or a movie (and one weekend we made hummus + pita bread, and raspberry sorbet! Damn, I really should have taken pictures...), but I really couldn't care less. Simply reuniting with him warms my happy heart.

This job comes with some financial stability. True, I have to pay my own rent and insurance now, but I was still able to pay off my Europe debt, and finally build myself a new computer!


So there's one more thing that passes my time as I burrow into my nest, missing Kevin and trying to distract myself from all of life's hovering questions.

I'll try to post again soon.
Because this started off as a photoblog, I feel obligated to have a picture to post. So I'll try to start taking more pictures.

~*~

Mulholland Drive

Today, Justin and I took the scenic route.

There was one popular outlook along Mulholland just above the Hollywood Bowl that had good views of Los Angeles.

[1/500 sec, F9.0, ISO 400, 28mm]

[1/500 sec, F9.0, ISO 400, 90mm]

Downtown Los Angeles & CA-101

[1/400 sec, F13, ISO 400, 83mm]
Downtown Los Angeles & Private Plane

[1/640 sec, F11, ISO 400, 105mm]
The Observatory

[1/125 sec, F14, ISO 400, 105mm]
The Hollywood Sign

On the way back to the car, I was inspired by the local flora:

[1/2000 sec, F4.0, ISO 400, 50mm]

[1/30 sec, F22, ISO 400, 28mm]

The original plan was to then drive to the beach to take pictures at sunset, but we were inspired by a scenic overlook (one of the many which we were frequently cautioned about by periodic road signs almost more common than the "DO NOT SMOKE" signs).

[1/8 sec, F20, ISO 400, 28mm]

Oh what I would give to live in this house...

[1/10 sec, F20, ISO 400, 65mm]

I get far too distracted by silhouette sunset pictures...

[1/160 sec, F16, ISO 400, 50mm]

[1/160 sec, F16, ISO 400, 83mm]

[1/320 sec, F16, ISO 400, 83mm]

[1/125 sec, F22, ISO 400, 43mm]

And I was all too enraptured by the sky...

[1/15 sec, F20, ISO 200, 55mm]

[1/10 sec, F20, ISO 200, 40mm]

[1 sec, F20, ISO 200, 50mm]

But I took far too many pictures, and at some point, it was time to go home...

[1/50 sec, F3.5, ISO 400, 28mm]

~*~

Unseasonable

It was such an unseasonably warm day (mid- to high-80s) for a January day. Supposedly it was cold in LA while I was back home for 1 month for Christmas break, but it was warm when I left and warm when I returned. Skirt weather, if I've ever seen it.

Curse school and work -- how will I ever find the motivation to do well my last semester!
For such a beautiful day, it was a shame I had to spend most of it inside looking out...

[0.8 sec, F22, ISO 400, 48mm]

[1/4 sec, F22, ISO 400, 28mm]

Of course, I let the cats out to enjoy the warm day, and Toby simply could not pass up the opportunity to get stuck on the roof...

[0.3 sec, F22, ISO 400, 48mm]

When I got back to my apartment, the willowy eucalyptus outside had finally goldened as though autumn had finally arrived. Despite the gardeners coming to clean up the leaves yesterday, there remains a sea of yellow...

[1/5 sec, F10, ISO 400, 63mm]

At least I got to enjoy an hour of warmth outside between class and lab =)

~*~

Beginnings & Introductions

For Christmas, my parents got me a Canon Digital Rebel XSi:


And as a motivation to make time to take more pictures (and also because Sarah Michelle urged me to), I decided a photoblog was in order.

Now, I don't know what the typical definition of a photoblog is, but since I tend to be atypical, I'm defining my own terms here. My goal is to post one or more pictures taken on my new camera (yet to be named), and write a blog about it (with the exception of this post). In the future, this will mean a travel blog. For now, it will probably mean whatever I have time for in between school, work, friends, and my last semester of college and (possibly) LA. Hopefully that last one will also serve as a motivation to create blogging material.

All pictures I post will be taken in fully manual mode and unedited unless otherwise noted. I started manual photography on an ancient film SLR -- a Minolta that was once my grandfather's when he was alive -- and so I'm a purist when it comes to digital editing.

On another note, I'm saving up for a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens:

So I guess this means I will have to go with the cheap/free SoCal excursions for a while...

~*~

I forgot to introduce myself:

[01.12.2009 - Los Angeles, CA]
[1/60, F4.0, ISO 800, 53mm, +0.6]

Hi, I'm Sara. I am from San Jose, California, and hope to return to the South Bay after college. At the time of this post, I'm an undergraduate senior studying computer engineering at the University of Southern California in downtown Los Angeles, CA.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my 2 cats, Toby and Keiko. I quickly realized after adopting them sophomore year that they will be with me for the next 10-20 years of my life. They are my loyal companions (Toby was my first model and Keiko followed me on my first photo shoots in my parents' backyard as well as the nearby creek), the beginnings of my own atomic family.

Toby aka "Toberman" is a cuddle whore. We call him the fat cat because he used to be very round, but he's lost most of it and now is just a very large cat with a lot of furry excess skin. He has a problem with biting fingers and licking faces. His favorite past time at our current residence is to get stuck on the gazibo outside and cry until I get him down; I wish he were smart enough to either learn how to get himself down (like Keiko), or simply not go up there anymore. He's a cowardly feline who prefers housecat life:

[12.26.2008 - San Jose, CA]

[1/400, F3.5, ISO 400, 28mm]

Keiko aka "Keekerman" is a secret sweetheart. When I have people over, he is shy and slow to warm, but he has a whole secret life of friends once he leaves the house. While more brave, he is the smaller of the two and so Toby is dominant. He loves being outside, even if only stationed on my front porch guarding the house, and he will follow me around outside (which makes him a terrible model most of the time because he will always trot over to me before I'm done composing my original shot -- unless I'm lucky enough to catch him distracted):

[01.072009 - San Jose, CA]

[1/125, F3.5, ISO 200, 28mm]

This is my boyfriend, Adrian:

[12.31.2008 - San Jose, CA]

[1/125, F4.0, ISO 400, 38mm]
(Not the best picture of him, but it's the only one I have on my new camera. I'll post a better one soon!)

He and I have been on-again/off-again for about 4.5 years now. He's my closest thing to family when I'm away from my parents, and I feel lucky that we've managed to stick together despite the crap we've put each other through on our quests to find ourselves.

~*~