Lianhua.nu

Milestone

This is my 302nd post, according to my WordPress dashboard. That’s a lot of posts, since I first started using WordPress on Hello Toby way back when.

But there’s an even bigger milestone coming up very soon.

Saturday, December 27th, 2008 marks the official one year anniversary of my move to Los Angeles from New York.

On December 27, 2007, at 10:00am PST, I touched down at Los Angeles International Airport and started a new life, completely different from the one I’d been living — and entirely different from the one I have now. I walked out of LAX thinking I was here to live with the guy I wanted to spend my life with, I was here to finish my Bachelor’s degree while learning a language I was desperate to speak, I was here to take care of his younger sister in his mother’s home and permanently implant myself into this family, further securing a future I desperately wanted at the time.

And now, almost a year later, I lay in a bed in an apartment I’d never dreamed of, in a town I’d never been to (and certainly didn’t want to live in), trying to fall asleep so that I can be awake tomorrow for a job I never thought I could possibly get, next to a boyfriend I’d never expected to have who gives me the kind of love I never thought I’d receive — or deserve.

And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself: self, how did I get here?

(That’s from the Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime, p.s.)

So how did I get here? I guess the long answer has something to do with the breakup with Sean, which basically got the ball rolling on a lot of this, and with the “growing up” that I did as a direct result of it, and with meeting Derek, who helped the ball rolling on just about everything else I have going on in my life. But the short answer is… I’m still myself trying to figure out how the hell I got here.

And I guess that’s okay. As long as it’s working, I don’t have to know how I got here, right? I’m still going to look back and wonder how it all fell into this particular place, but I’m definitely not complaining or anything, because right now I couldn’t be happier with the place I’ve fallen into.

Happy First Birthday, Los Angeles Jess. Now get some sleep; AT&T Interactive needs your bright and shining face in the morning.

A meme for musics!

As you’ve probably realized, I don’t really post memes on Lianhua. This one, however, is a little different, as it was created by the wonderful Chrissy (and I’d bet Mike had a little bit of a part in helping on it), and so it has gained its place as one of the few exceptions.

Whatcha Do:

1. List five of your favorite bands/artists.
2. Choose three songs from each band/artist.
3. If you can find a link to listen to the song at Last.fm or YouTube, post it!
4. Tag five people.

So here we go. Not sure if these are official videos or anything, but you can just listen to the music. :P

Arcade Fire

• No Cars Go (link) Between the click of the light and the start of the dream…
• Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) (link) You change all the lead sleeping in my head to gold.
• Neighborhood #2 (Laika) (link) Our mother shoulda just named you Laika, it’s for your own good.

Pixies

• Gigantic (link) Gigantic, gigantic, a big, big love…
• Bone Machine (link) You’re so pretty when you’re unfaithful to me.
• Where is my Mind? (link) Your head will collapse, and there’s nothing in it, and you’ll ask yourself, where is my mind?

MGMT

• Electric Feel (link) This is what the world is for: making electricity.
• The Youth (link) This is a call of arms to live and love and sleep together.
• Time to Pretend (link) I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.

The Cure

• It’s Friday I’m in Love (link) Monday you can hold your head, Tuesday Wednesday stay in bed, Or Thursday watch the walls instead, It’s Friday I’m in love
• The Only One (link) Oh I love, oh I love, oh I love what you do to my head, when you pull me upstairs and you push me to bed…
• Just Like Heaven (link) Show me how you do it, and I promise you, I promise that I’ll run away with you, I’ll run away with you…

Ingrid Michaelson

• The Way I Am (link) ‘Cause I love the way you call me ‘baby,’ and you take me the way I am.
• Overboard (link) I watch the ships go sailing by I be your girl will you be my guy.
  And I never thought I’d be the type to fall, to fall…
• The Hat (link) So it’s Christmas time, it’s been three years, and someone else is knitting things for your ears…

Enjoy! :B
I tag… Caitlin, Katy, Kelly, Sara and Terri!

Infected

I should’ve known that the past few weeks would finally catch up to me, and finally hit me — hard. Disneyland with Derek, Kelly and Steve, Six Flags Magic Mountain with just Derek, an “unsponsored” holiday happy hour with some coworkers followed by dinner at a Korean tofu house where I lost the ball on my lip piercing, our friend Kelly’s party at The Edison, a holiday party at the home of our friends Joe and Catherine, dinner with old family friends… all these amazingly wonderful times, all keeping me and my mind occupied, but gradually wearing me down until my body just couldn’t take it anymore.

In other words, I partied hard for the past couple of weeks, and now I’m sick.

Last night I went out to the mall with Kelly, where we had dinner, a big shopping spree at Sephora and lots of girly bonding, then came home and within a few hours started feeling that familiar ache in my right ear. I know that ache well — I’ve known it since I was really little, when my mom would take me to the doctor and they’d prescribe that awful tasting pink liquid amoxicillin antibiotic. Ear infection.

I didn’t have them for years — probably from the time I was 5 or 6 until my senior year of high school, when I took a lifeguarding class and would have to leave school with dripping wet hair in below-freezing temperatures. And I didn’t expect to ever really have them in LA, because of the lack of humidity and, yknow, cold weather. But sure enough, every year I would come to LA during my winter breaks from college, I’d get some kind of infection in my ear and/or sinuses. Once it was so bad that it lasted from the time I got back to New York until I went back to LA for Spring Break, and I had to see an otorhinolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat specialist… I just use the real word because it’s one of my favorite words; see also: sesquipedalian) to get it all taken care of.

And this year, especially, it’s pretty bad. It’s been raining pretty much every other day or so for the past week (which is really strange to me — LA looks so weird in the rain, it’s like seeing a celebrity without makeup on or something). So it’s no wonder that I’ve got this nasty thing going on right now, I guess. But it still sucks.

I feel like I’m rambling. All the icky goo in my head makes thinking coherently a little difficult. Everything’s kind of fuzzy. I have a really good idea for a blog entry, though, which is very relevant to the holiday season, so look for that later on today/tomorrow.

Right now, I’m going to go make some tea, put on a movie and melt into the couch for a little while.