Encounters of the Eccentric Kind

Three short snippets of random people I met and hopefully the accumulation of two new Karma points:

1) I was at Ralphs (grocery store in LA) waiting in line to pay for my two bottles of wine, and the candy bar I threw in because, g-ddamnit, the buy one get one free sign and having the enticing, yummy goodness staring at me, or any patrons for that matter, works as a viable marketing strategy, when the woman behind me says, "looks like your house is the place to be tonight."

I looked back at her, a early 30's housewife out shopping for ice cream, and replied, "Yep, I supply the wine and she supplies the food."

Hum, my brain went into thinking mode, something it clearly wasn't doing before the words left my mouth, I realized that my innocent statement pertaining to "my friend and I meeting up for dinner" could have easily been mistaken for "I pick up the wine while my girlfriend gets the food". I have to hand it to the lady behind me, she didn't so much as blink, no detouring from her chatting with me. Not that it should matter, but I'm glad she didn't care; kind of shows that California is an ok place to live and there are people out there that are open minded. But then again, she could have thought nothing of the statement and my mind was getting carried away with ridiculous nonsense.

The conversation continued with the lady saying, "You probably got the better end of the bargain unless the food isn't cooked well." "Nope, she's picking up sushi," I replied. Again I left it open ended, but I now thought it was funny because my friend and I have already said that if we weren't both women we would surely be dating by this point. It's nice to have a friend that you can rely on and that doesn't mind occasionally staying in, watching a movie, and drinking a bottle of wine.

This then lead to a whole debate on how I thought sushi was awesome, but my new friend disagreed, saying she was from the Midwest, not a whole lot of fish out there, or fish that you would want to eat. I ended up leaving the Ralphs happy and the woman went on to talk to the cashier until she was finished paying. The random thing was that I wasn't carded for the wine, something that almost never happens to me because I look about 19, or 14 with straight hair. I even got asked for my ID when I went to buy spray paint for work the other day. You have to be 18 to purchase spray paint.

2.) My friend, Bobe, was casually talking one day about her friend's pizzeria, Ball Park Pizza, in Laguna Negel and the awesome food they serves, so I suggested that we should drive down there sometime and indulge. Bobe thought for about a second and goes, "You want to go this weekend?" Me being an awesome friend that is up for all adventures, especially the ones involving food, immediately agreed.

Since we couldn't show up at the pizzeria until the evening, we made a day of it and headed to the art galleries of Laguna Beach for the morning. But first, we went straight to the beach to soak up a little sun (as I'm starting to look like a vampire and I really don't want to ever resemble an Twilight character, except maybe Alice), and to admire the glistening ocean. For it being January, a mostly sunny 72 degrees is amazing. Gotta love Southern California sometimes (sorry all you snow blanketed cities). Once the sun descended low into the sky and I was no longer feeling its warmth, we wandered through the art galleries in town.

Laguna Beach is a beautiful town that houses some 40 or so art galleries, as well as the Pageant of the Masters, a live rendition of famous works of art portrayed by actors. Bobe and I were admiring the paint colors on a couple paintings, similar to Thomas Kincaid's, where his canvases change color with the brightening or dimming of lights - i.e. bright day or dusk for a house scene depending on the light shining across the picture, when we took notice of the conversation of the two women next to us. The artist, Ruth Mayer, turned out to be in the gallery at the time we were visiting and we quickly picked up from her conversation with the woman next to us, that we were in Mayer's gallery and all the paintings were hers. We joined in on the talk and watched as Mayer showed us more of how she designed her paintings to interact with the light surrounding them - a painting of mixed colors turned into John Lennon from the side or a bright, cloudy day turned into a darkening storm with the dimming of the lights.

"A Touch of Heaven" - Ruth Mayer

Of course I took it upon myself to start chatting, as I love art and talking to people. Mayer was explaining how her paintings are in 7 museums and she has been commissioned by all kinds of people including Pope John and her current admirer, The Princess of Thailand. This got me talking about how I lived in Thailand (back in 2003 for a semester abroad) and all the things that Mayer should see or do when in Thailand. I love trying to help people if I know about a subject that they don't. Since neither Mayer nor I had the time to sit down and discuss all the places she should visit and helpful Thai phrases she should know, I offered to email her a list.

"Angel Light" - Ruth Mayer

True to my word, I emailed her a semi-lengthy list of local Thai sayings; vocab for the important words like food, numbers, and mai pen rey (No worries/whatever - the most common Thai phrase); and some places to visit accompanied by certain Thai customs most foreigners don't know about. Mayer emailed me back with her gratitude and signed, "your artist friend". I just wanted to be friendly and help a fellow traveler, but having a notable artist friend, whether for a while or just this moment in history gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

3.) It was my last day of working on a TV pilot two weeks ago and I was tasked with returning clothes to Walmart. Now usually I regret going to any Walmarts in the Los Angeles area because every time I do something weird with police active happens - a robbery, a police chase, police cars suspiciously driving in circles around the lots, cops tailing me, etc. It's not the shopping experience I particularly want. There's also the rule of "Look both ways before crossing the aisle" in case of hectic shopping cart drivers or run away carts. Needless to say, cheap clothes doesn't always equates to a grand ole shopping experience.

But, as the clothes we had purchased for the show needed to be returned from wince they came, Walmart was my final destination. Luckily the Walmart in Canoga Park is somewhat civilized, as far as police activity and shopper courteousness goes, so I didn't really expect much of a problem returning the clothes. Instead, as I was walking to the entrance, a late 20's young man saddles up to my side and asks, "Do you think you could buy me something to eat?" Now, I've always been a person who tries to help people less fortunate than me, whenever I can, and I'm a sucker for people asking for food instead of money - you never know if they'll buy food with the money you give them or drugs and alcohol (which I've had people actually ask for both instead of cash), so I thought for a bit, Well, I was gonna buy coffee anyhow and since my life isn't actually going the way I want it, why not make someones day."Sure." The kid looks at me as if I have two heads, "I've been asking for the last hours and everyone's ignored me." "Well my life's not much better than yours, so I might as well feed you. Maybe I can gain extra Karma points." The kid shadows me into the store.

We head to the counter of the Walmart located McDonald's and the guy asks if he can have two orders of Cinnamon something-or-other rolls. "I have no idea what those are, but sure. Do you also want real food?" The guys eyes widen a little larger as the cashier is thinking, Does she even know this guy?"Really?" "Yea, sure. Why not," I shrug. It's my last day of work, I'm feeling sad, so why not bring a smile to an unexpected face? In retrospect, helping the kid actually made me feel better. The cashier gives me my coffee with my receipt. I turn to my new found admirer, "Enjoy, hopefully things will look up for you." He smiles and thanks me. I resume my original purpose of coming to Walmart while he waits for his food.

Muzzling Debbie, Accepting Susie

Another year, a new decade, a whole expanse of time to change circumstances, reconnect or reaffirm relationships, see new wonders, and reinvent oneself. Apparently this new year has given me back my writing muse. Sorry for the long delay, but apparently politics/voting zaps my creativity and my writing turns into a puddle of useless words, merging into nonsense. Yes, I've had some ideas on what to tell all my lovely and loyal readers, but none of it was very helpful or particularly nice. You know how there are those people that constantly irk your angry side, yea, I've had a few run ins with annoying people and I really wanted to voice my opinions in writing, but then I thought, "once it's on the Internet, there are no take backs." As I've notice from my new reader, Fire Panda, people actually google their names, therefore my would-have-been rant of hatred for certain people could have possibly been read by said people and although Blogger is a form of "free speech", I don't particularly want to get into a Libel war with anyone who has more money than me (which essentially is everyone).

Ok, on to bigger and better, or less oppressive topics. I think my goal for this year is to try and be more positive. I know it might seem odd to the people that actually know me, but I can change. I used to be so much worse at voicing my dislike for everything until all my friends started to called me Debbie, as in Downer. Over time, whether I managed to control my ugly feelings or interesting opinions is unclear, but the fact that I didn't voice them aloud as often as I could have, is what matters (considering I'm one of the bluntest people most people will ever meet, but it's more because I'm oblivious to social etiquette than general rudeness). But now it seems that little Debbie is crawling her way back up my throat and jumping out of my mouth at the worse possible times. Bad Debbie, bad.

So my resolution this year is that Debbie gets a muzzle and I try and find happiness in all the crap that is thrown at me. The good thing is, if someone around me is negative, my brain goes in reverse and I become Susie Sunshine. It's a little frightening, but I guess I subconsciously want to me the opposite of the people around me. I wonder what Freud would say to that, but then again, he was a freak of a man who had not so nice theories on women in general. Maybe I don't really want his opinion afterall.

Anyhow, what are some of your New Years resolutions?

I'll also leave you guys with this lovely cooking adventure I had this morning. You might as well read a small tale of mishap after re-stumbling across my cobwebbed blog. For some reason I woke up and decided I wanted pancakes. Not sure why considering I don't really like them, but I followed my stomach's craving and Googled a homemade recipe. Simple: sugar, flour, egg, and water - mix, and pour into a hot, buttered fry pan. What could possibly go wrong? Um...me cooking. The batter was too thick because the recipe was sucky, my roommate added a ton of butter to the pan to cook the blobs of thick dough in, and it took about 10 burnt-on-one-side/half-raw-in-the-middle pancake impersonators before I managed a few golden brown amoebas that tasted like semi chewy biscuits. Yep, I'm pretty sure having a mother that taught 3-6 year-olds how to cook didn't help to improve my sub-sub-par "cooking" skills. Next time I'm just gonna suck it up and go to a diner. Who knew even the simplest of things needs a little talent, talent which eludes me.