Sunday, September 30, 2007

First week in LA

I have "officially" been a Californian for one week now. I am slowly but surely starting to feel at home. The week has been busy, with working, getting settled and basically figuring things out here.

I got here last Saturday, DJ picked me up at the airport and we went out for some FANTASTIC sushi at Tsujino Hana. The sushi was damn tasty.


After that we headed to Target in Culver City to load up on the random crap you need to buy when you move. Honestly, I can't recall what we purchased. After the Target excursion, we headed home and immediately crashed. I wasn't yet used to Pacific Time yet and it was after my bedtime at home.

Sunday was the great excursion to Ikea. We honestly were there for about 2-3 hours. Too much Ikea for this girl in one day. We did load up on the following:

A new dining room table and chairs for our tiny living room:

A new bookshelf to hold all the random books and stuff DJ and I have;

I put this together on my day off (Monday). It honestly took me about 4 hours. Not a big fan of Ikea furniture assembly. But hey, it's cheap and we needed it.

We also got various odds and ends for Kitchen Storage and bathroom storage. We need it in the small living space.




Too much time and money later we headed home.

Headed out grocery shopping Sunday night to Ralphs in Santa Monica. One of the things I know I am going to miss from MN is Lunds and Byerlys. I know I am a total grocery store snob. I have been spoiled.

The first week of working from home went well. I had Monday off, Tuesday and Wed I had to work from Coffee shops in our neighborhood since we weren't due to get our cable and high speed Internet installed until Wed afternoon. The coffee shops in our neighborhood are pretty cool and they featured free Internet, so it worked fine.

This is Venice Grind, right off Venice and Centinela, which is where we live. A short walking distance to a nifty little coffee shop.

Wed evening DJ and I headed out for a drive into Santa Monica. We were going to head up the PCH for a bit, but traffic was BAD, so we turned off and headed off to have a pint at the Cock and Bull Pub. Great beer and cool authentic atmosphere.

Thursday eve the lovely Jenna took me to WeHo Stitch and Bitch at the Farmer's Market. The group was fun and I really look forward to meeting some new folks there. DJ and I had dinner at Loteria. It got great reviews from what I could see, but DJ and I found it overpriced and not all that fantastic.

On a somewhat related topic, I needed something to knit, so I HAD to go yarn shopping before SnB. I headed to A Mano Yarn, which is right around the corner from where we live. Cool, funky little shop and the people there were nice. I bought some Lana Grossa Babykid and am going to make this.


It should be a nice, easy mindless project to get me rolling with knitting again.

I swear, I have made a new resolution. I buy yarn for a project, knit that project and them move on. The yarn I had overwhelmed me before. Behold the yarn I got rid of:

Granted, it's not much of a stash, and a lot of people have a LOT more than this, but the whole idea when I moved was to get rid of stuff. Once I did it it felt really good, so no yarn until the yarn I have is knitted.

I digress.....anyway

The remainder of the week entailed us waiting for my stuff to arrive. It finally did on Thursday and we rented a truck on Friday. Saturday and Sunday I unpacked and got a bit settled (which involved another *expensive* trip to Target, but that's how it goes).

I think I'll dig my new home. I'll post more as life happens here in sunny LA.