I love LA

Interestingly, if I try to do a non-emoji heart symbol in the title, it reads it as broken code. Good to know.

I adore Los Angeles, think of it very much as "home," and after a year of living in Chicago still say I'm from California. I wasn't excited to go, though, which might be in part because I travel so much that it sort of takes that kind of edge off. It wasn't until I got on the plane and buckled my seat belt that I thought, "I'm going back."

This post is about two months late, and I won't be getting into a ton of detail because most of what I did was hanging out with friends and catching up, and there are some things that don't get shared. But there are the things that can:

-I nearly killed the car as soon as I got it. It was driving weird, and I barely thought they were going to let me out of the Avis lot with it, the way I was stopping and starting while figuring out the brakes, and managed to figure out how to shift gears so I could actually drive on the freeway. It wasn't until I had gotten out of the car and gotten back in later that I realized I had put it in first when I could have just put it in drive. Oops.

-Went to In N Out first thing. I'm a vegetarian, but their grilled cheese is basically the hamburger without the burger, and it's incredible. I need one transported to the Midwest.

-Found vegan Chinese food.

-Had a quiet moment at Long Beach, which I think was my favorite moment of the whole trip. Just a girl and her filty, filthy beach.

-Got Mexican coffee from my favorite place, Portfolio on Junipero and 4th.

-Buzzed past my old apartment in Long Beach. It's pistachio green now, I swear to god.

-Went to Disneyland! Did a bunch of Star Wars stuff, then realized the lines weren't bad so we kept putting off lunch until we felt blood sugar crashes coming on. Then we went to Trader Sam's to drink for three hours before coming back. I came away with a Han Solo lunchbox and a light up Millennium Falcon ice cube. A+ trip.

-Met a friend from Canada to go to the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Aside from some sets and the prop house, we saw the DC and Harry Potter museum, and a warehouse full of Batmobiles. Also there were four adorable teenage-ish sisters who were so happy whenever we got to something Pretty Little Liars-related.

-Got my picture taken at Central Perk.

-Also did some Harry Potter greenscreen work.

-Found myself a horchata latte. If you can ever get one of these, do it. If you can get things like Mexican coffee, drinks, or food, get it, it is actually authentic there.

-Spent most of my time stuck in traffic on the 710, now my least favorite freeway.

-Met up with said Canadian friend to go to Universal Studios, where I went on maybe three things, but I got to hang out at Hogwarts and have butterbeer and that's all I really needed from life.

-Left Universal at 3, and got coffee at the Starbucks there, which was a grave mistake. Got coffee at 3:30. Drove over to Avis at LAX in traffic to drop off my rental car and was told I could catch a bus from LAX to Union Station. Leave Avis around 4:30 on the shuttle to LAX, find the right place for the shuttle, then wait. Realize at 5:30 I should see when the bus is coming, realize I have about a half hour to wait. Bus gets there at 6. Bus gets stuck in rush hour traffic. Bus gets to Union Station at 7:23, at which point several people have missed their trains and I'm about to. The guy checking people's tickets is extremely rude and keeps making people who're about to miss their trains wait for him because "that's not the way to be." I get on my train at 7:25 after sprinting through the train station with my luggage, basically have a mild asthma attack, pick the only empty seat on that car next to a poor guy who after ten minutes of me coughing and wheezing and being a general mess, asked to get off at the first stop to get away from me. :(

-Then threw an aspirin into my bra.

So, LA was a ton of fun, and there's still plenty I want to do. I still haven't gotten to the Last Bookstore, and I want to go back to Hollywood Forever for a movie, and I want to drive up to Hearst Castle, and go to the Broad, and I'll have to go back to see Star Wars Land when it's finished, and and and. I also think I did things in the right order, too; I'm not sure I could have left LA without my heart breaking unless I was going to San Diego next. And then by the time I left San Diego I was so tired I just wanted to get to my bed, I didn't care what state I was in.

I'm picking a better way to get to San Diego, though. That method did not work.

Doesn't count when you're on vacation

The other day I was talking to some coworkers about a family vacation one of them took, and the conversation went something like this:

"My husband yelled at me because he said we spent almost a thousand dollars on food for the week. I said it was better than eating out all the time where it'd be more."
"Well, you're on vacation. You're not supposed to care about that kind of thing on vacation."
"Exactly! Calories and prices don't count when you're on vacation."

Oh, for this to be true. Because dude, I am paying now for not paying better attention then.

I'm kind of grounded at the moment because I spent more in LA than I meant to and then got hit with car issues all at once, so I couldn't bounce back from vacation as fast as I wanted to financially, and I still owe people money. (Also I swear an LA post is coming.) On top of that, after a summer of hating the way I looked in 90% of the photos taken of me, I stepped on the scale and realized I also put on more weight than I'd thought, because I got too busy and broke and it was hard to keep up with a workout and health routine, which also explains why I've been so tired the last few weeks. After a summer in the sun even my skin is rebelling against me and I'm spending a lot of time hydrating and applying lotion because it's actively not fun to deal with. I had an awesome summer, but I overdid it in every way possible. So now I'm in this mode of trying to repair the damage I did, in the gym, at the bank, and in the kitchen.

I'm never going to tell anyone they have to go on vacation and stick to a strict budget and count every calorie. That's zero fun at all. But at the same time, your life is more than just the week or so here and there when you're on a vacation. While you're trying to keep it memorable and try new things, the trick is to not make yourself regret it later, and not to make the parts of your life you don't spend on vacation harder. Make sure you've saved up enough to handle splurges, and don't splurge on everything. Do better than I did. Learn from my mistakes.

Especially on the sunscreen. Dear god, remember sunscreen.

Sunday night party

I used to have a goal, that I would go to at least one new place every year. The last couple years I've blown this out of the water- this year alone I've added West Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee as new states I've been to. So my 2017 goal is to get out of the country, because not counting Tijuana (and I don't), I've never been. And in truth, the Alaska trip means I'll be spending a couple days in Vancouver, but... if I'm being really honest, Mexico and Canada just seem easy as an American. I can just walk over the border using a passport card, though you can see the above linked Tijuana post to see why I'm not in a hurry to do that again.

So, I'd like to do something in addition to Vancouver. A while back I told a friend that once I'm done with Disney we should look up Groupon deals and whatever's cheapest, we should go. So tonight I got bored and started looking up Groupon Getaway deals, just to see what's out there. Mainly what I'm finding is that you can do all-inclusive trips for pretty cheap if you're okay with someone else making your itinerary. I don't know that I know anyone who's done a tour group through something like this, but I also feel like if it wasn't reputable I'd have heard about it on the news by now, you know? Also aside from European tours that are slightly out of my price range right now, it looks like we'll be a little limited to Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Which is fine with me. I have no problem hanging out on a beach as long as I also get out to see the area beyond the hotel/resort.

Also, thanks to Groupon, I want to go to the Galapagos.

Alaska is a go!

Today, eight months after we first started discussing it, Nick, our mom and I booked our cruise to Alaska. I've spent the last few weeks researching and trying to come up with the absolute best deal, and we ended up deciding on going on Norwegian. Most of the cruise lines tend to go to the same places and you can get the same excursions, so it basically comes down to what kind of boat you want to go on, and for our price point Norwegian was the best deal. I went into some pretty exhaustive detail, too, creating a spreadsheet with each potential trip listed and filtered by its start and end points, stops, dates, days of the week, and prices. We factored in holidays for vacation time. We considered the flight prices to Vancouver versus Seattle, and didn't consider Seward at all because that would include more time and money to get there from Anchorage than I was willing to spend. I learned that May and September are cheaper even though July and August are the best times to go, and decided that oceanview rooms are kind of pointless because for $150 more all they offer you is a porthole. I checked out the best decks if you get seasick (not an issue with us, but just in case) and took the advice to stay away from kid friendly decks if we wanted something quieter. I considered ports, and how much time we had in them.

There is a lot of information out there, if you search it out and/or a crazy person like me.

Most of the total is paid, with a little less to pay up for before February. We don't go until May, and excursions are not close to being bookable yet, but now I'm doing my research on those. The excursions through the ship seem to be pricey, so I'm doing a bit of a deep dive to try and find deals and see if it's worth it to take a van up to the Yukon instead of a train ride to save $70 per person, etc.

So if you have any tips on things to do in Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan, feel free to drop a comment! Particularly if you know the best place to see a moose.

The downside

I am in awe of people who travel all the time. I'm not sure I could do it constantly, much as I'd want to (if I had the opportunity). Maybe it's because my trips tend to be pretty action-packed with not a lot of downtime, but my first reaction when a friend announced she was spending a year traveling the world was "That would be EXHAUSTING."

I've learned that personally, I need breaks. A few years back I worked a full week, took a late flight to Portland for a wedding, flew back on Sunday, worked half a week, took a redeye to Chicago for another wedding. I handled it fine, because it gave me a little normalcy where I could sleep in my own bed and do laundry and make something for myself instead of eating out. And maybe it was truer in LA. One of the reasons I left was because I wasn't taking advantage of being there and wasn't doing enough, and here I'm constantly busy. Since getting back from California I've had friends out here and gone to Chicago and have a podcast taping to go to and a party and a baby shower in Wisconsin in my vey near future. I haven't been able to have a down period to recover. It's absolutely normal to get the blahs after vacation, but at some point they should be able to go away. Plus I admittedly tripped up in financial post-vacation recovery, so I get stressed out when I think of Disney in 57 days even when I should be just fine. I won't get a chance to recover mentally, emotionally and financially from my July vacation until mid-September.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Untitled as all get out, but my life's doing pretty good at the moment. I would just also appreciate a nap, and a million dollars.

What I'm saying is, full-time travelers, I salute you.

Touristing Chicago

I feel like it's harder to talk about live in/near it. A couple years ago I could have written pages upon pages of stuff to do in Chicago because I visited it a lot, but now that I'm here it didn't really occur to me. Except that I have friends from other states coming into town this week, and coming up with things was incredibly easy, so I thought I'd write something up for it.

First off, getting around Chicago is very easy. I'm not great at public transportation, or directions, but I find it pretty easy to get around here. And unless I'm supposed to be somewhere at a set time, if I get a little turned around, it still tends to be fun. Also, I hate driving in the city and refuse to do it if I don't have to. It's a lot of one-way streets, a lot of buses, a lot of pedestrians who step out into the street (full disclosure: I do this too), and once I get turned around in a car and then end up searching for a one way street I can actually turn down I've become a raging Hulk monster. So, I prefer to take the train down to Union Station and head out from there. Most of the city is on a grid, and if you need to know which direction to go, if you look in any one direction and don't see buildings in the distance, that way's east to the lake. Easy.

So, things I recommend:

-Millennium Park- Once upon a time I thought this was a stupid idea, but I really love this place. There are gardens and sculptures that are changed out often so you can see something different each time. There's a giant fountain with faces on it that spits water at you in the summer, and in the winter there's outdoor ice skating. There's also the bandshell, where you can catch many, many concertas and events, and which if you look at it a certain way, is absolutely phallic.

Also, there's The Bean/Cloud Gate. Let's be real, it's why you wanted to come in the first place.

You can also use the giant winding metal bridge (which bunnies used to travel overnight and rip up the gardens, fyi) and get over to Grant Park. Again, a lot of concerts here, and it's where the Taste of Chicago is held every summer, and it's the home of Buckingham Fountain, which I'm told is amazing at sunset though I've never managed to witness it myself.

-Next to Millennium Park you'll find the Art Institute. If you're into art at all, I highly recommend this. It's very easy to spend hours here.

-The whole of the Museum Campus is great. The Field Museum is good, with Sue the Dinosaur, and it was my favorite as a kid because it has mummies. As an adult, I realize they don't change a lot of stuff out often, so unless they have a special exhibit it's soemthing I can get through in a couple hours. >The Museum of Science and Industry I am way into. It's more hands on, with exhibits on the human body and cole mines and you can go into a German submarine. It's a great place for kids, and as I've been looking at the website for this I'm thinking I need to go back myself sometime soon.

There's also the Shedd Aquarium, which is one of the better aquariums I've been to as they've been updating it in recent years. My favorite part is the giant tank as soon as you walk in, which will also be the source of a nervous breakdown one day when I hear a parent tell their kid "Look, it's a hammerhead!" when it's CLEARLY A BONNETHEAD SHARK and the information is LITERALLY ON A SIGN RIGHT IN FR ONT OF YOU, DON'T MISINFORM YOUR CHILDREN BECAUSE YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE READING.

Ahem.

I wish I could say I have great love of the Adler Planetarium, but aside from a decent star show on the ceiling, every memory I have of this place is looking at pictures on a wall. However, if you go outside to the back of the planetarium, you'll get the best skyline views in the city.

-If you still want great views, the Sears Tower (Willis Tower, whatever, sigh) is okay. It's tall, but it's also a little too tall. A few Christmases ago Nick and I took Mom here and were told that it was open, but it was too foggy and you wouldn't see anything. So we went over to the Hancock Building, which has the 360 Observatory. The whole place is open to look out, and when I was there I got some great views of Lake Michigan frozen over, because it was really that damn cold.

-I have spent entire days just exploring the Magnificent Mile. It's all stores, so you can go in and check things out, or window shop, or pop into FAO Schwartz and play with everything.

-A recent discovery: I got it in my head to go on an architecture cruise, so yesterday we went to Wendella Boat Tours. We chose the river and lake tour, so we got an in-depth tour of the nearby buildings, and then headed out onto Lake Michigan for skyline views. I had so much fun on this, and would absolutely do it again.

-Another discover is the Harold Washington Library, which is nine floors. We wandered around taking pictures and being jealous of the kids who get to use the amazing children's section, and rode the escalators up to the gardens, which instantly became one of my favorite interiors of all time. I'm not even going to post a picture. I want you to go and be as surprised as I was.

-Chicago is an amazing theater town. We get the good shows at theaters like the Chicago Theater and the Goodman, but there are plenty of them sprinkled around the city. And I will always recommend catching something at Second City.

-Wrigley Field. I'm a Sox fan, but this is a great venue.

-There are zoos! One is Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free but has pricey parking, and is pretty cool. If you want to get out of the city itself for a bit, you can also go to Brookfield Zoo, which you can easily get to by train. I'm very wary right now of how animals are treated in zoos and aquariums, and both of these were probably not the best when I was a kid, but they've stepped it up a lot and I like them both. Also Lincoln Park has some great city views around the back.

-And finally, just try the pizza. I don't care if you think it's "not real pizza" or you have some messed-up loyalty to New York's pizza, which for the record is just fine and not much to rave about BUT THAT IS NOT WHY WE'RE HERE. My personal favorite is Pequod's, but if you can't get there, it's all about Giordano's or Lou Malnati's, which you can find easily downtown. You can do Geno's East if you're getting desperate. Uno can suck it.

Happy Chicagoing!

The next big thing

Since I was a kid I've dreamed of going to Australia. For years I blamed it on being a kid who thought koalas were cute, and recently realized it was probably more that Robert Scorpio on General Hospital was Australian. I wish I was kidding about this reasoning but it's true. I've always been fascinated by it. I'm interested in the culture, the slang, the accents, the boys, the fact that people can live there at all when everything's designed to kill them, and I know people joke about that but there's something in that that genuinely speaks to me. I have all these things I want to see and do, and in a dream world I could spend a whole summer there, exploring everywhere I can get to. I have a friend there who's been encouraging me to go for years, and I would love to, but it's always been too expensive. Australia has been my holy grail of trips for my entire life.

Last weekend, my friends and I got together at one of our houses. I'd just gotten back from California, my ex-roommate had just gotten back from London, and most of the night was us talking about our trips. And then somewhere towards the end, the one I'm going to Disney with told us that she's going to Australia next month basically on a company's dime, and I have been seething with jealousy ever since.

I want this clear: I don't compete. I find inspiration in other people getting to travel, and I'd much rather celebrate someone else getting to do something cool rather than being upset about my own situation. But I was mad at life about this one. Sarah once got to go and invited me, and I couldn't come up with the money in time and it's always bothered me, and this was worse than that. Days later I was still sitting at work thinking, "Why am I not doing that?"

And then I thought, "Why am I not doing that?"

I'd told my Australian friend a couple weeks ago that my goal was to go there in 2018. So I'm going to make it happen in 2018. I'm not going to get a whole summer to travel. It'll probably be more like two weeks, and I'll have to choose which cities I want to hit. I'd always wanted to tack New Zealand and Bali on there, and I'm not sure that's feasible. I'm going to have to be judicious and find deals and make some sacrifices, but so far it's looking like I can actually pull this off if I'm careful over the next two years. I've been doing research, figuring out which cities are the best for what I want to do, and I'm making notes on prices so I have an idea of what I need to save.

I'm also figuring out how much it's going to cost to go diving with sharks. That is non-negotiable.