If you've ever said you'd like to live at the mall...

That's where I was on Thursday morning and afternoon: Santa Monica Pier.  And this is where I was Thursday evening:

That's the Americana in Glendale.  It's a shopping mall.  No, really, I promise.  There are stores there; look!

I told you there are stores...few as they may be.  They're on the bottom level there, among all the beautiful fountains and greenery.  What's that, you say it looks like apartment buildings?  Well that's because they are!  For the amazing price of $1900+/mo. you could live right there!  The apartments anyway, I'm not sure the pricing of the condos there.  And among all this ridiculousness, you know the part I find to be one of the most ridiculous?  Right across the street - literally, across the street - is The Galleria at Glendale.  ANOTHER mall (which you hear many a reference to if you watch The Big Bang Theory!).  A full fledged, frankly much more satisfactory mall.  Which was there first, might I add.

LA is very strange to me, most days.

To be fair though, I really like the Americana.  Not for shopping of course, but the general atmosphere.  It is a rather beautiful place.  It's like The Grove (the most famous of LA malls, I believe), only less people.  Granted, I was there on a Thursday afternoon when people would (theoretically) be at work, but you know.  And give me a Barnes & Noble any day and I'll like wherever I'm at.

Anyhow.  The point of all this is to say that's where I was.  I'd have posted the pictures we took, but they're on my mom's camera and I'm too lazy right now to go through the whole file transfer.  Thursday we were at the taping for America's Funniest Home Videos in Manhattan Beach...it was a surprisingly good time!  Except they advised us to bring coats because the studio is kept cold, but my family was picked to be at the "special" cocktail-like tables on the set, and they made us give up our coats!  Since it looks better on camera for us to be casual and whatnot.  But still, if you're going to advise us to bring coats, please do one of the following: let us keep them during the taping, OR don't keep the damn studio at arctic temperatures!  Aside from that, it was pretty fun.  The episode airs on February 28, so if by chance you run across it...know some cold, freezing pathetic soul is in that crowd whose blog you read :)

As I mentioned here and on my twitter, Friday and Saturday were meant to be spent in Pasadena, visiting Mischa and meeting with an old adviser.  WELL...that unfortunately did not happen. Starting Thursday just after Santa Monica, I started to feel a bit...unbalanced.  I mean literally; I kept feeling like the world was tilting under my feet.  Like seasickness, basically.  It was pretty mild, but enough to bother me.  When I woke up Friday, I felt fine, and even managed the drive up to Irvine to have lunch with another best friend.  The minute I dropped her off at her office, though, I looked out my windshield and the world took a tip to the left.  Then a tip to the right.  Then a bit of a wobble.  And stopped.  It was really weird, but frightening enough that I called Mischa and talked it out with her.  We decided I shouldn't be driving up in Friday LA traffic, and I should be at home in case this got worse.  And yes, I drove home like that, but I was lucky in that the world seemed only to tilt when I wasn't focused on something else.  Turning the radio up on blast managed to keep me distracted enough not to think about my equilibrium being off, but still able to drive well (ok, drive as I usually do.  Which I'm told is a bit fast, a bit harrowing, but HEY...I get where I'm to go and no one has died in my car. *knock on wood*).

I'm ok now.  The past two days I've had maybe two wobbles of the world.  We were thinking I had some inner ear infection since that messes with equilibrium, but I have no idea.  It's a good thing I didn't feel the earthquake that happened this morning (a 4.4, so I'm told), else I'd probably have felt like I was tumbling around.

Happy February 1, everyone!  Can you believe it's already one month deep into the new decade?  I have no idea what happened to January.  I know it was there, I was sick for all of it, but it just...gone.  In the spirit of it being two weeks until that fateful day of Valentine's Day, I have decided to join the masses and do a bit of a theme every day up until that worthless holiday passes.  I swear it will be more positive than my attitude (relatively, anyway), mostly because I'm going to try and get past the usual gooey mush of love that enshrouds this time of year.  Valentine's Day could be about so much more than giving heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and red roses to your boyfriend/girlfriend, and I intend to discuss that for the next 13 days.

image credits: Santa Monica Pier, Americana 1, Americana 2-4