A JVC Southwest Thanksgiving

I know Thanksgiving was a while ago, and I know people quickly moved on to Christmas. However, this was my first Thanksgiving away from family (not away from home, though, since we celebrated in Scotland one year), and I think it bears recounting on the blog since it was a great weekend! Thanksgiving with 35 JVs in Phoenix isn't quite the same as Thanksgiving with the fam, but if there's a group of people I'd want to spend this Thanksgiving away from home with, it'd be these fools.

Two 21-pound stuffed turkeys, 25 lbs. of mashed potatoes, 18 lbs. of sweet potatoes, 12 pies, and a whole lotta love.

   

 And, as JVs do, we went on a hike up Camelback Mountain.

   

Sunsets in Phoenix apparently always look this beautiful.

This torta was legitimately one of the top-five sandwiches I have ever eaten. Just amazing. And maybe this photo from an art exhibit we went to in L.A. a few months ago gives you an idea of how I feel about sandwiches.

We found a Christmas parade in Tempe, followed by a tree lighting. We were older than all the kids and younger than all the grandparents in attendance, but it was a fun way to mark the beginning of the Christmas (well, technically Advent) season.

Things that have happened

Sorry for neglecting you, blog readers. My only explanation for my absence is that I got hooked on the show Parks and Recreation (go watch it immediately), so every time I opened the internet to write a blog post I got sucked into the next episode...it's a wonder I didn't fail out of college. Here's a crash course on the mid-October to mid-November happenings of my life: 

We went to San Diego for Halloween weekend.

The seven casamates of CMC dressed up as loose interpretations of the seven days of the week. I was Wednesday (from the Adams Family).

San Diego was beautiful (especially Balboa Park, pictured below), and further convinced me that L.A. is ugly.

But then Los Angeles tried to make us think it was pretty with this sunset on our drive back.

On Halloween night, we walked down Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood with a couple thousand other Los Angelenos in costume.

Jackie and I "volunteered" at a gala benefitting a fellow L.A. JV's agency, which actually turned into us just being the youngest, least-wealthy guests at a ritzy country club in Pasadena.

My parents visited! In typical Arnold fashion, we spent the weekend eating good food and drinking good wine.

We visited a winery in Temecula.

And drove along the coast to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano.

My parents took the whole casa out to a Korean BBQ restaurant, where the waitress shot us disdainful looks all night long for being Korean BBQ beginners. But we didn't care because the meat was so. flavorful. 

We met with some of Casa Ita Ford for a hike near Pasadena.

Other news-in-brief: St. Joseph Center had a staff-wide retreat, where I was reminded of all the great things going on at our agency. We did a few 5K walks for local organizations, including the food bank I visit every week for Bread and Roses. We sent a new class of almost-graduates from the Culinary Training Program to their externships. And Bread and Roses is getting ready for a Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday!

Oh, and the Packers are still undefeated, which I will now enjoy from the Packers bar I found in West L.A.

A Voicemail Chronicle of 2011

I recently emptied my cell phone's voicemail, and found a pretty entertaining chronicle of the last year of my life (the oldest message was from Dec. 2010). A couple exciting job interviews and offers; my five-day spiritual director before I knew she'd be so fantastic; our contact person in Tupelo, Miss., for Habitat for Humanity showing hints of her insanity (which I didn't pick up on at the time); my bank informing me my account was overdrawn (oops); my current supervisor setting up my Bread and Roses interview in March; a tricky near-reveal of the NSO 2011 theme; a friend's happy birthday message; a couple MCAT well-wishers; and a few proud-dad congratulatory messages along the way.

I got sentimental for a minute and thought about how blessed I am to have had all these people and experiences in my life...and then I deleted them all. (Which means my voicemail is back open for business, folks!)

autumnal imagination

Fall is my favorite season. Sophomore year of high school, I had to defend fall as the best season in a three-minute impromptu speech, and I've never looked back. Spring in D.C. is pretty great (cherry blossoms!), but my springtime allergies keep it in second place.

Unfortunately, fall does not exist in L.A. Palm trees don't change colors, it's too warm to drink hot apple cider without sweating, and I've been told I won't be able to wear my fall clothing until December or January...sigh. So my fellow fall-loving casamates and I have taken it upon ourselves to create fall in Los Angeles...

- I don't pay attention to the weather and wear my fall wardrobe anyways.

- Jackie and I have kept our calendar on September instead of switching it to October because it has nice Georgetown foliage shots.

- I think the sadness about not having football in my life has been building up over the past four years (Georgetown won a total of maybe three football games during my undergraduate career). But I've been extremely excited (and potentially annoyingly enthusiastic) about the fall sports action. Packers are undefeated, Brewers are stumbling but still were in the NLCS, and I just enjoy the fact that Michigan beat Notre Dame even if they lost to State and probably don't deserve their current ranking.

- Emily and I make a point of searching out city blocks with foliage on our afternoon runs. This has been our most successful find thus far:

- We went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and watched Poltergeist with a couple hundred of our closest friends (and a BYOB picnic) to get in the Halloween spirit.

 


- And I look at pictures like this one from my mom to remind myself that somewhere out there leaves are changing and people are putting corn stalks by mailboxes...

On the other hand, if fall weather takes place during "winter" in L.A., this means the Advent/Christmas season will be even more fantastic. I love snow, but a week of it in Wisconsin will probably suffice.

'Cause This is Thriller

It was my turn to lead community night this week, and [not to toot my own horn but...] I would call it a pretty big success. I decided to teach my casamates the Thriller dance. It wasn't exactly like the music video (I only had about a half hour to prepare and learn it), but I do hope to one day master the actual dance. I blended the music video version with the version we've taught to our five-year-olds in Dance DC and came up with the newly minted CMC version. It's awesome.

If you're interested, the dancing in the official music video (below) begins at about 8:30.

the little things

This week a client (let's call him Bob) called me over to his table and asked me if I remembered a different client (made-up name of Greg) who used to eat with him all the time. I said yes, and that I missed Greg and was wondering how he was doing. Bob then informed me that Greg had gotten a job driving trucks, and that as he was driving from Omaha to Chicago, he called and asked Bob to say hi to me at Bread and Roses. Not only was this great news for Greg to have gotten a job, but I was touched that Greg wanted to say hello and that Bob cared enough to pass the message on. As much as I loved greeting Greg every morning (he would say his name to me, followed by "numero uno, number one!" every day), I hope I'll never see him walking into Bread and Roses for food again...

It's the little, wonderful things like this that will keep me smiling all year at Bread and Roses, even in the face of the dire outlook for homeless individuals in L.A.

Memorable Moments

I take myself too seriously sometimes...which is why I'm glad I have the oddities of daily interactions with homeless folks to remind me that you really just can't take yourself too seriously in the field of non-profit work. Some memorable moments include:

"Do you know the Bible?" "Yeah, sure." "Well you know, then, that you're going to Hell for using that computer, right?" Right.


Client to me, for no apparent reason: "This place gets worse and worse every day." Same client later that day asked me out on a lunch date.


In response to a Georgetown t-shirt I was wearing: "You went to Georgetown? I thought you were more normal than that." More normal than what?


Same day, same t-shirt, different client: "Georgetown? Wait, you are smart enough for that and now you're working here?" Yes.


Security guard, on me being a volunteer for a year: "So you don't want to go into the restaurant business? Why are you here, for the 'experience' or something? I don't get it."


Volunteer: "Yeah, despite whatever you say, I kind of just do what I want." Awesome.


Never a dull moment at B&R...there will, no doubt, be more to come. 

H O L L Y W O O D

This past weekend, we explored Hollywood on our way to a BBQ hosted by one of the other JV houses. Since we were avoiding museums with entrance fees, we just wandered up and down Hollywood Boulevard and admired the walk of fame and the handprints of stars outside the Chinese Theatre.

Some of my favorites:

  

I was back in West Hollywood on Monday at the House of Blues for an Obama fundraiser/rally. I wouldn't say I'm his biggest supporter of late, but when someone offers me a free pass to a $250 event that gets me 20-25 feet from the president of the United States, I accept. I volunteered to help staff the event after I met a classmate at a Georgetown Alumni Association event who is currently working full-time for the Obama re-election campaign of Southern California.

My job as a volunteer was to be a gatekeeper of a staircase for VIPs only, which happened to be only feet from the stage...

The event was emcee'd by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Mitchell on "Modern Family"), and there were performances by the Gay Men's Chorus of L.A. and the rapper B.o.B. (who actually has some songs you might recognize) to warm up the crowd. I'm really not sure what target demographic they were going for with this event, but it seemed to work.

So because my fellow stair-guarder and I spent a fair amount of time with Jeff the Secret Service guy (Is his name really Jeff? We'll never know...), we were allowed to sneak into the front section before President Obama came in. Not a bad vantage point:

  

  

The president spoke about the economy and the jobs bill he introduced, about his campaign for re-election, and about the 13 months until then. The overarching theme was that the vision he put forth in 2008 is the same vision he has for the country today. There were a few jabs at the GOP, but it was primarily a positive message directed at a lot of frustrated people. (Speaking of frustration, folks were paying $38,000 for the fundraising event that followed this one later in the evening; meanwhile, people are homeless and hungry down the street.)

The bad part was the commute, which was easy on the way there when streets were open, but quite an adventure on the way home when my phone was dead and I was wandering through West Hollywood...whoops. I knew where I was the entire time but just couldn't find any buses that were running, and in the end it only took me an hour and a half to get home. However, taking the bus did afford me the opportunity to do more sightseeing than I could while driving, and I can definitely understand why people who live in West Hollywood/Beverly Hills like L.A. It is a very different Los Angeles than the one I work in every day...

Mini-me?

We saw this girl at the beach, and my casamates tell me this is how they imagine me as a child...it took her about ten minutes to set up her coloring station, umbrella and hat before she could start coloring. Not sure when in life I developed my organizational skills, but I like the way this girl thinks.

long week

Last week was LONG. The long week after a short week is always a struggle, and work is starting to feel more like work...which is nice in the sense that I'm settling into a routine. There were a couple of later nights at work (read: 5 p.m., and I recognize that is "early") because of interviews for the next CTP class, and the week was also full of after-work activities. For community night on Tuesday, Megan took us to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) because it's free on the second Tuesday of each month. Then for Wednesday's spirituality night, Sarah took us to the beach for a peaceful meditation. And on Thursday night, there was a Georgetown alumni event to welcome the Class of 2011 to the neighborhood! Come Friday, I was exhausted.

Lights outside LACMA (of No Strings Attached fame).

The only piece that I loved in the contemporary art building...I was more into the European art building.

Since the week was packed, it was great to get out of town this weekend. We headed to Malibu to hike the Escandido Canyon and Waterfalls. After reading reviews that raved about the hike, and also warned of its dangers, we ventured past the gorgeous homes of Malibu to find Escandido falls! (Literally, the trailhead was at the end of a long residential drive where we were reminded how we'll never be able to afford such huge, expensive homes.)

The first waterfall was easy to reach...

The second required a bit more work but was quite beautiful.

  

The "third waterfall" was actually just a higher view of the second waterfall, and was significantly more difficult to reach. It was less of a "hike" and more of a "rock climb."

 

But the views at the top were gorgeous!

And finally, the triumphant group photo.