And the winner is...

Me. And everyone else who typed 50,000 words this past month. But what use is a blog if you can't have a "Hooray Me!" moment every now and again?

Game on, Gap. Game. On.

So it turns out that in addition to (1) putting that crazy striped sweater print on everything, (2) taking all sorts of cutesy couple photos of Amy Poehler and G.O.B. (can't you just hear him saying "I've made a terrible mistake" after putting on that pom-pom scarf?), and (3) hawking their overpriced yet adorable Vespa, Gap is also celebrating the holiday shopping season with GapTidings – i.e., 60-second video greeting cards you make and send to those who love you (and advertise Gap and Yahoo! in the process). But wait—if yours is one of the three best GapTidings uploaded by Dec. 12th, you will win your very own Gap Vespa!

For about five minutes this morning, I thought this was my big chance to redeem my now useless film degree—but then I remembered how I don't have anywhere to park the striped Vespa, and how I'm not financially eager to license and insure a third vehicle. Plus, sometimes ignorance really is bliss. I'm sure the winning entries will all be very simple and comical, whereas the noirish GapTiding I had in mind will take no less than three weeks to produce and a budget of about $2000. So I stopped storyboarding and decided to forget the whole GapTidings thing and go with Plan B: dropping by a Gap outlet around President's Day in hopes of locating a Vespa tucked away in the clearance rack. If I find one, it was meant to be…

That said, I know there are future scooter gang members out there with a good GapTiding in them. Let me know if you enter one, and I will vote for you.

One final thing—when did "the Gap" become just "Gap"? Does that mean Yahoo! will one day be Yahoo. (?) Just curious.

Stripes!

So, my month in NaNoWriMo exile is nearing a close, and despite the fact that I lost much time in the early part of November in Vegas and the later part of November in Scottsdale, I think I am going to make it! Hopefully once I submit my 50,000 word crapsterpiece on Friday they will provide me with a cool widget or the like that I can post on my dear neglected blog.

Speaking of the dear neglected blog, I’ve got a new game plan: shorter, sweeter, yet more frequent posts. And with that, I will shut down my natural tendency to make a wordy and tangent-filled intro and just say…

Breaking Vespa news in from the Roommate. Gap is pairing with Vespa for the holidays and you can get this:


Which just so happens to match this:

But if you wear the latter while riding the former, I might just have to kill you. That is, if you don't die first by suffocating on your own shame.

Incidentally, that lil’ Gap number is only an LX 50 and costs $6,000. Needless to say, a regular LX 50 costs about half that amount and my LX 150 was also significantly cheaper. In addition, when your ride is based on a sweater, you risk driving around next Christmas and having everyone look at you and snark, “That’s so last season.”

Still, the Gap Vespa is pretty dang cute and makes a great stocking stuffer. I certainly wouldn’t trade it for movie tickets at a White Elephant party. Who had my name in the family gift exchange again?

Good Intentions

Well, I have been back in Los Angeles for a week now and am only barely getting around to things like cleaning out my refrigerator and/or blogging. As promised, my heavily-backordered new helmet finally arrived in the mail while I was gone. I keep meaning to take pictures of it but, alas, have resorted to stealing the same from the Internet.
The one on the left is an approximation of what my old black helmet looks like; the one on the right is the very new and improved new helmet, courtesy of my sister-in-law as a thank-you for sewing her wedding dress.

I know it seems unbelievable, but I actually think the new helmet is bigger than my old Spaceballs-sized one. This matter was made painfully clear to me last Saturday morning, which began innocently enough when I went down to the parking garage in my apartment and proceeded to painstakingly dust away all the California wildfire ash that had settled on the Vespa during my prolonged absence. Since the Vespa had sat for over a month, I figured I would have to kick-start the thing for the first time and, like most new things in life, I viewed this with simultaneous excitement and trepidation. Alas, it started the normal way—pretty amazing since the thing is running off what appears to be a laptop battery. I was on the Vespa and headed out the garage door for a much-anticipated reunion ride when I remembered the complexities of something that only Angeleno apartment-dwellers can relate to:

Tandem parking.

That’s right—in order to conserve space, our apartment complex has given the Roommate and I one very long parking space to share and we have to park one behind the other. As a result, we are constantly doing the car-switching dance, which sounds similar to the “Neutron Dance,” I know, but is far less energizing. Bless her heart, the Roommate bears the tandem brunt far more than I do—although she either works from home or works late, she still manages a groggy smile at 7:15 every morning when I wake her up to move her car so I can go to work. Yet despite her unending car-switching charity, I was about to thoughtlessly drive off on the Vespa and leave her car parked in by the Jeep on a Saturday morning.

Did I mention how early it was for a Saturday? Sadly, I was still on “trial hours,” and therefore had undertaken the whole Vespa-dusting exercise at around 6:30 a.m., having run out of things to do in my apartment. Rather than wake the Roommate up to switch spots with me just in case she needed to go somewhere very early on a Saturday morning, I decided to just move the Jeep into a spot on the street.

And that’s right about the time when I tried to get into the Jeep while still wearing my new helmet. It didn’t fit.

The good news—the new helmet took a huge hit against the Jeep’s black door frame and walked away without a mark. The even better news—the new helmet apparently prevented the concussion I surely would have experienced had I hit my bare head against the car that hard; I think this bodes well for similar protection in the event that my head ever makes contact with another vehicle and/or asphalt. The best news of all—it was so crazy early on a Saturday morning that nobody was around to witness the sheer “America’s Funniest Home Videos” idiocy of it all.

So, despite the fact that my Vegas trial has put me behind, I am participating in NaNoWriMo 2007 through the end of November. I always intended to do a late-October post encouraging any interested writers out there to join me, but said post never came to fruition. Still, check it out and consider doing it next year. Once it’s over, I’ll rejoin the living and kindly post on all your blogs again, which I have been reading.

Out of the Office (Automated Reply)

For what it's worth, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a fortnight or so. Blogging just isn't the same when you're in the Caesar's Palace Business Center and you're worried the guy next to you is going to read your entry. It's funny how I'm willing to post online for all the world to see, yet I feel like my Business Center neighbor here is completely violating my privacy every time he turns his head. I keep wishing I had an old school Trapper Keeper to wrap around this monitor a la third grade test-taking so he couldn't read over my shoulder. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

So I've been in Vegas for the past week+, and will be for many weeks more, for the Trial of the Millenium. Alright, only a handful of people really care about this trial, but I happen to be one of them and let's just say it hasn't been a cake walk so far. The greuling sixteen-hour workdays and workweekends have been further complicated by a myriad of technical difficulties, including a general lack of internet and remote desktop access, but I'll spare you the boring details. Just forgive me if I haven't returned your last 20 emails or missed your daughter's birthday or if you live in Vegas but I don't get a chance to see or talk to you.

When I was little, I always wanted to live at Disneyland. More specifically, I wanted to rent a little studio apartment above one of the shops on Main Street, although New Orleans Square would have been acceptable as well. Main Street seemed like a nice neighborhood with lots of conveniences: good public transportation (via trolley or horse-drawn carriage), ample ice cream and candy supply, ability to watch nightly parades from one's own home, Space Mountain adjacent, etc.

I thought living in a Vegas hotel-casino for a month would sort of be like living at Disneyland. In a way, it is--both venues are evidence that mankind knows no bounds when it comes to building with Plaster of Paris. When you're working long days like I am, it's also nice to be in a place that refuses to recognize what the rest of the world knows as "time"--even if you get off work at 10:00 p.m. you can do a little shopping and people-watching. Even in the middle of the night there is quite the selection of overpriced food available. I'm not the gambling type, but if I were, I think I would never sleep.

But after a week of both witnessing and indulging in such excesses, I am ready to sue the Vegas Tourism Bureau for false advertising. I seriously doubt the 200 lbs. I have put on already are going to "stay in Vegas" when I leave. I'm afraid I'm also back on the Diet Coke wagon after some 415 days of caffeinated beverage sobriety. At the end of the day, the Strip is like Disneyland, but only one part: the Island of Lost Boys on the Pinnochio ride. I'm growing donkey ears already.

Vegas has also turned me into a bigger liar than usual. For instance, my boss, who is an accomplished and respectable older man, has never really come terms with the electronic age. One time, I heard him offer a file clerk at our office an "old computer" that he found. He said the clerk could have it because he bought a new one. Both the clerk and I were suspicious of this offer, as neither of us has known our boss to own or use a computer. Sure enough, the boss produced a classic '82 HP leather-bound calculator and gave it to the clerk, who had to feign great appreciation for the gifted "computer" before sneaking it into the trash.

Of late, I have been exploiting this generational gap, and I believe it's all Vegas's fault. Last night we finished work and the boss asked me and the paralegal to joint him for yet another gluttonous and lengthy sit-down dinner. The paralegal bowed out because her brother was going to be in town for one night only, which put me on the spot. I was tired and wasn't in the mood for another Mt. Everest heaping of crab legs. I wanted to have a simple food court meal where the "crab" is shelled and made of liquid cod parts poured into a mould. Suffice it to say, the rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: I'm sorry, I can't go. I have to go down to the Business Center and send this urgent email to So and So back at the office.

Boss: I can wait for you. How long does it take to send an email?

Me: Well, since it has to go clear to Los Angeles, it will probably take about an hour and a half.

Boss: In that case, I'll just go eat alone.

I'm not kidding. Vegas made me do it. That said, I don't want to offend any of my five-odd friends who live in Vegas. I realize the rest of the place is much different than the Strip.

So, the point of all of this was to say that I won't be posting for awhile. And I'm sad to say I won't be riding my Vespa either, which is (hopefully) parked back at my apartment in Los Angeles. But I did finally get word that my much anticipated yet heavily back-ordered new helmet will be waiting for me when I get back!

In my absence, I would suggest visiting one of the blogs linked on the right, or one of the following, which I keep meaning to add links to but haven't gotten around to it:

Simple Happy Home (Mary Ess's blog)
Steffarocks in Spain (SIL's blog)
Tammy Faye Fan Club
Glamma Fabulous
Flowerchain

And if you're still with me, I just want to apologize and say that the Caesar's Palace Business Center is not very conducive to blog editing, what with the NOSY neighbors and all. So apologies for all the randomness above.

The Elusive Fee Simple

Do you know who Andy Rooney is? If not, the only thing you really need to know is that he is cranky and opinionated—about everything, that is. Then again, he gets paid to express one cranky opinion per week, a job he has held since the middle ages. I guess if I were in Andy’s shoes, I, too, would have quickly run out of rants to rave about the big ticket items like taxes and world peace and would have had to move on to yelling about things like the state slogans on license plates.

That said, I am about to get all Andy Rooney on you about none other than the atrocity that is the Southern California real estate market. I know, I know—this topic is seriously lacking originality and chances are that half of you have already clicked over to that Rooney license plate article for more enlightening fare. It’s just that I’ve had some personal experience with this lately….

A few days ago, my sister, the notorious Mrs. Dub, posted on her blog about her desire for a house. This is a desire Mrs. Dub and I have had in common for some time—in fact, in the weeks prior to the HGTV Dream Home giveaway every April, nearly all of our telephone or email conversations with each other have to do with what we do and don’t like about that year’s Dream Home and which of the two of us is more likely to win it. (And then every year they give it to some Midwestern retiree who has already owned four homes in his life and swears he just entered the sweepstakes one day on a whim, but I digress).

Anyhow, Mrs. Dub’s post was timely as lately my house-lust has been out of control. You see, last Saturday afternoon I was at work when I realized that if I left right then, I would have time to drive up and tour the Martha Stewart designed KB Home models in Lancaster, California, which is locally known as St. Nowheresville. I must admit to being a bit of a Martha groupie (getting her to join my scooter gang would be a major coup, no?) and this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a LONG time. You know, just to see them.

Getting to St. Nowheresville from Los Angeles took a LOT longer than I thought. Google Maps estimated it as 60 miles one-way, but it was closer to 75. I was also surprised at how different things looked from the parts of California I’m familiar with. The terrain was eerily similar to those pictures taken by the Mars rovers, only with a few Joshua Trees and Super Walmarts photoshopped in. Yet the houses there are CHEAP as free for Southern California—as in the high $300Ks / low $400Ks, so I guess a lot of people are willing to live on Mars and commute to LA every day because it is the only option for non-Compton homeownership.

As I got closer to the Martha homes, I seriously began to question Lancaster’s non-ghetto reputation, as the Semiannual Antelope Valley Street Gang Convention appeared to be converging in a vacant lot only blocks from the Martha Models. Luckily, I’ve lived in LA long enough to know how to give a pretty convincing “I didn’t see anything, I swear,” look. Once, the Roommate and I were walking in West LA and had to whip out this look twice within thirty seconds—the first time when we inadvertently saw a drug deal go down, and the second time when the dealer crossed the street towards us and accidentally dropped a packet of crack on the ground, then fumbled around all bug-eyed as he tried to quickly pick it up. It was one of those treasured LA moments that is simultaneously comical and life-threatening, but again, I digress…

At this point I was expecting to be underwhelmed by the Martha models, which, quite frankly, would have been a good thing (Martha groupie bad pun intended). To my utter dismay, the houses were the perfect size and simply amazing. The drive alone was worth it to see all the cool little knick-knacks and decoration. It was like a Martha museum, and the price of admission is simply 20 minutes of your time listening to the sales person’s pitch.

In my particular instance, the sales person had me at “Martha.” She also told me that most of the people who come to see the models work in Los Angeles and plan to make the daily 150-mile commute. When I told her I worked downtown, she said, “Well that’s easy. You can take the Metrolink [train] to Union Station in downtown. Most people have to have a second car on the LA end to drive from the train station to work.”

I left the models with a folder of materials and a song in my heart. I stopped at a Super Walmart on my way home—a rare opportunity for any Angeleno, but the whole time I was shopping all I could think about was what kind of kitchen countertops I would get and how much work I would get done on the train every day. But then my bubble burst when I got home and did some old-fashioned internet research. The Metrolink ride from St. Nowheresville to downtown is 2 hours one-way!! Getting to the St. Nowheresville station would take about 15 minutes, as would the bus ride from Union Station to my office. So I was looking at over a five-hour daily commute. The last train leaves downtown at 7 p.m., but I’m not always off work by then. What’s more, I ran the numbers and I couldn’t afford even the smallest house anyway—at least not without living at the very edge of my means and going sans furniture for several years.

Suddenly, I was struck by the absurdity of the whole idea and, I’m warning you, this is the point at which I got very cranky. Just to provide some context to any non-Angelenos out there, I want to point out that right now I live in West LA about 3 blocks from the always-noisy 405 freeway. Across the street from my apartment, there is a building of newly-renovated condos for sale. This is common in West LA right now—they take old apartment buildings, slap a coat of paint on them, and convert them to condos. This particular building looks like a newly painted 1970s Motel 6 (i.e., not attractive). The condos have one bedroom, one parking space in a communal garage, and no in-unit laundry. They are under 1000 square feet and are priced in the $900Ks. The HOA fee is several hundred a month. Over by my old apartment there is a high-rise of luxury condos going up. Regardless of how luxurious they are, they are still condos. They have a sign advertising “From the $4,000,000s.” That’s right—apparently a luxury 1900 square foot condo for four million is considered a deal.

And I know these are not Manhattan prices, Honolulu prices, or San Francisco prices, but you have to admit—they’re still pretty bad. Indeed, my cranky mood was exacerbated by reading some of the comments on Mrs. Dub’s post, where areas such as Northern Virginia (median housing price = $450K) were touted as “expensive.” They seem like such a deal to me by comparison to SoCal. Homeownership is simply not an option in the greater LA area anymore for the first-time buyer who is not a member of the upper-class. It is why large cities with soaring real estate prices are losing their middle classes to the Phoenixes, Vegases, Portlands, Atlantas, and Houstons of the country (where, in turn, their influx and collective warped financial perspective are driving up real estate prices in those areas).

As for me, I have already started my campaign to get Mrs. Dub and the rest of the Ess clan to migrate to St. Nowheresville, Georgia, where the same Martha homes are going for over $100K less on larger lots with a much shorter commute to downtown Atlanta. So far, I have received a lot of complaints about the weather. I think those are strong words coming from people who brave blinding sunlight and 118-degree weather every summer. I can point to a couple of instances in Ess family history where I successfully wore everyone down, so I think I could still make it work.

With that, I’d like to invite all of you to join us. (Except, of course, for my surprising number of Singaporean readers, because Atlanta’s crime rate may be a bit of a shock to their systems. I think the Singaporeans only read this blog for the scooter stuff anyway, and they probably didn’t get this far on such a non-scooter post. I will make it up to you soon, Singapore.) We can form a commune full of Martha homes and scooter riders. It will be a veritable Utopia—at least in my book.

The Brightside

I have been known to complain a LOT about the many downsides of living in Los Angeles. I’m not going to apologize for this as there are MANY such downsides (i.e., overpopulation, housing prices, poor urban planning, contagious materialism, etc.). But I have to give credit where it is due and state that Los Angeles has near perfect weather.

What I look at ALL day: the view from my downtown office.

And if the general weather in LA is perfect then there are no words to describe the weather this past weekend, so I will have to settle for “better than perfect” or “Perfect+.” I took full advantage of it by Vespaing far more than usual. On Saturday I rode the Vespa to work, sans parking garage catastrophes this time around. On the way home it was quite windy (which causes some balance issues), but by the time I noticed this I was cutting through the Golden Triangle of Beverly Hills, where the streets were full of smiling Angelenos and tourists walking around and dining al fresco at the faux-euro eateries and otherwise enjoying the Perfect+ weather. I like to think that by buzzing past them mid-meal on my Vespa, I contributed to the faux-euro nature of their faux-euro lunch. That’s me—always thinking of others.

Note her clutched knees
On Sunday I rode the Vespa to church in a big accordion-pleated skirt and platform heels. As I was commenting to notmymomMary, these particular heels actually made the Vespa easier to ride by virtue of making my legs a whole four inches longer. I still had to work hard to keep the skirt anchored between my knees (as opposed to billowing about my head), but it’s the closest I’ve gotten to my Hepburnesque fantasy Vespa outfit to date.

On Sunday afternoon, I woke from my traditional Sunday afternoon nap a bit early and decided that the Perfect+ weather warranted yet another ride. When I was little (and a teenager… and a college student home for the summer), Dave of Dave and Mary fame would curb my cabin fever on Sundays by taking me on “drives” through the desert and around to the then far-reaching suburbs of Phoenix, like East Phoenix. It was great. Except for that one time he ran out of gas and didn’t bring his wallet, but I digress. Since I’m weird (and by “weird” I mean “religious”) and worry about things like “Sabbath-appropriate activities,” I decided that the Sunday drives of my youth meant a leisurely Vespa ride to the beach and back met the Sabbath-appropriate test—especially considering that the Vespa had sufficient gas for the trip and that I always carry my wallet with me in case of emergency.

And indeed, it proved to be a Perfect+ Sunday: