10 Things You Might Not Know About Me

Recently I've been looking up different ideas of things to blog about (here & here), and I thought one that I could do easily would be things about me that perhaps not a lot of people know. I find that I like reading other people's blogs when they talk about themselves so I thought that this might be stuff that other people enjoy too, so here we go!

Mittens I knit for my best Italian friend Maila as a Christmas gift.  1. I first learned how to knit when I was about 15 from my grandmother. Now this may not be interesting but the thing is, my grandmother doesn't even knit! She had to remember how to do it then taught me what she could remember and I went from there. To this date I've knit sweaters, scarves, beanies, mittens, gloves, socks, and blankets. Also, I cannot seem to grasp how to crochet, even though many people say crocheting is much easier than knitting, I've always been a knitter who can't understand crocheting!

2. I have done a volunteer work twice, once in high school at an old folks home's voting ballots and once last year at the LA Times Festival of Books where I met Patti Smith at the end of my shift where I got her totally amazing book "Just Kids" signed. I was so so so happy and would love to volunteer at the Festival again, but since I've moved I don't know if I will have time. I'm currently doing training for READ/San Diego and am very happy to start work with that soon. I think more people should volunteer if they have the time/ability to. It's a very rewarding experience to do things for others without expecting something in return.

Me and Dee Dee in the Hollywood Forever Cemetary in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.

3. I really enjoy going to graveyards. This may seem strange to some, which I realized when asking friends to accompany me on graveyard trips, but I think it's wonderful. There's something strangely relaxing about graveyards and I love finding graves of famous people, which when I was living in Los Angeles wasn't a very difficult thing to attempt!

My gelato that I had in Chiavari, Italy, right next to the Ligurian Sea!

4. I prefer gelato to ice cream. Having the true gelato of Italy will make you forever hate ice cream and become a slave to the magic of true delicious fresh gelato! Also, if you are ever in Firenze, Italia (Florence, Italy) you MUST take a trip to GROM, the best and most reasonably priced for how amazing it is. It is one block down from the Duomo in Florence, it's super easy to find, and always has line of people, which guarantees that it's got good gelato! (But luckily, you can find GROMs elsewhere in the world besides italia!) My favorite kind of gelato has to be any sort of mint or coffee flavors.

5. When I was growing up my grandmother put a lot of emphasis on getting me to get involved in classes and activities. I've taken a million art classes (many with LAUSD's Gifted and Talented Student Program), acting classes (horrible, only did that once), and tennis lessons which I took for 7 years and became moderately good at. I joined the tennis team in high school but quit after a month or so because I was basically too lazy to attend practice. I wish I had stuck with it and hope to pick up a new racket soon!

One of the picture's I took while in Chiavari, Italy.

6. I am half English and half Italian. My grandmother on my father's side was born in England and moved to America because of the beginning of WWII and my great grandfather on my mother's side was born in Chiavari, Italy (which I visited during my study abroad to track down surviving relatives, which I did, and was turned down! Huge disappointment!).

7. I have been vegetarian now for 4 years, every time I think about going back to having meat every once in a while, I think of all the knowledge I've gained about the cruelty that animals experience in slaughterhouses I cannot bring myself to eat meat. One of the best quotes I've heard about vegetarianism is by Paul McCartney - "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian."

Picture I took inside of the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa. This is close up of one of the very damaged frescos that are currently being restored, the fresco is titled "Trionfo della Morte" ("Triumph of Death") attributed to Buonamico Buffalmacco.

8. I would love to do another study abroad program where I could work hands on with fine arts in Italy. While on that subject, I would love to live in Italy at some point on a more permanent basis. Living there for 3 months just wasn't enough.

Some of my hair dyes throughout the years.

9. When I was in high school and still up to current times I have dyed my hair almost every color of the rainbow. I'm sure along the way I've damaged my hair permanently.

One of the many postcards that my friend Maila has sent me from Italy. 

10. I have a modest collection of post cards I collected while studying abroad and from friends who have traveled/friend I made while in Italy. I've started a photo album of all the postcards I've been collecting, and hope to collect many MANY more in the future.

Now I'd like to hear from you! If you'd like, leave a comment so I can get to know all of you out there!

• Tell me something interesting about you!
• Do you collect anything?
• Where have been your favorite places to travel/live?
• What's your favorite flavor of gelato?
• Have you ever volunteered? If so, where and why?

Los Angeles Highlights Part 3 - Brite Spot

• Los Angeles Highlights Part 1 - Venice Beach Boardwalk
• Los Angeles Highlights Part 2 - Wacko's Soap Plant / La Luz De Jesus Gallery 

Yesterday I met up with my grandparents for a little lunch at this place in Echo Park. I told them to meet me there without them have ever eaten there and they both said they really enjoyed the food, so it got me thinking, I really enjoy the food there as well and if even my grandparents (who are normally very picky about food), like it, then I think others will as well. So I want to show you some great images I found and suggest to my readers out there, that the next time you are in the L.A. area and are a bit hungry, you should definitely check this place out. 

PART THREE - BRITE SPOT

"20090607175843" by Googiesque

 Brite Spot

1918 W. Sunset Blvd

Los Angeles, CA

90026

(213) 484-9800

Now, after doing some research online about Brite Spot I've read some good reviews and some bad. I've had friends in the past say that they don't like this place and I've had friends who I go with every so often because they like the place, so I would say this place is really up for grabs when it comes to opinions. I can easily say that every time I've gone there, the people have been nice and the food has been good. I particularly like this place because they offer vegetarian friendly foods as well as a meat lovers paradise (my grandfather can vouch for how good he thinks their hamburgers are). Their diner style (plus lots more) menu is broad and chances are you can find something that sounds yummy to you when there.

Another thing about this restaurant that I like is that they have always played good music when I was there and the decoration inside the place is very interesting and fun to look at. They have chalk boards along the walls that always have great chalk art with special menus incorporated into the art. 

At the end of the day it's your own experience with the place and it's food that determines if you like it or not, but I suggest you give Brite Spot a try. 

"Brite Spot" by Angelica Robles

"Full Moon" by Castro142

"chilaquiles" by 7-how-7

"Brite Spot - breakfast quesadilla" by bionicdog

"Brite Spot - burger" by bionicdog

"Red Velvet Cupcake" by Ms Holloway

"brite spot stop" by neptuneyear

"hot sauce" by '|'||'| '|'{}||{

"Brite Spot - Echo Park by Ms Holloway

"breakfast" by poppely

"britespot2" by dealinhoz

"Andy J. Scott" by laurenlemon

 More pictures of Brite Spot on Flickr can be found here.

Not a totally happy camper

MONDAY (night):

After 6 years my trusty Brother sewing machine decided to royally piss me off by birdnesting a million times, so when Aaron came home to a very distraught me, he decided it was time for us to purchase a new one, but the ever hesitant money spender that is me, persuaded him to take my machine apart and see if we could fix it manually. 

So after he cleaned and did whatever you can do in such a big electrical mess, it still was not working. So I abandoned the tries and relaxed for the rest of the day. 

TUESDAY:

At 10 AM I left our apartment in San Diego and started my long drive up to Los Angeles. After 2 1/2 hours hours I made it to my college, magically was able to arrange an appointment to see a counselor and at 2 was able to meet with her (she was amazing and relieved me of so many worries). 

The whole reason I wanted to meet with a counselor was because since my move I have missed two semesters of classes and really want to get back into school, I feel somewhat lost without studying, so I was able to figure out what my options are for online classes with my old school and what school I think I'll be leaning towards down here in San Diego. Tomorrow afternoon when Aaron gets off work early we're going to take a drive down to the campus to check it out and see what kind of feeling I get. I'm hoping it'll be a good fit because going to one in San Diego will be so much easier than trying to only take online classes (which aren't many) with my old school, even though I'm so sad about leaving it. The life of a college student is STRESSFUL! 

But on the other hand I got to see my kittens, like Kirby (the ever elusive) here:

And the delicious dish my mother made with home grown zucchini:

WEDNESDAY (yesterday):

I had a very important dentist appointment at 10 AM and found out some horrible news. After so many years of braces and teeth surgeries I now have to have a whole different procedure to have a tooth totally replaced, a whole procedure that will take in total around 6-9 months most likely. I am absolutely dreading the whole experience, but as everyone keeps telling me, it NEEDS to get done, and that is what I'm going to do. Kicking and screaming the whole way. NOT A HAPPY CAMPER.

I left to drive back down to San Diego at 1, made it in town around 3, pretty good timing I do think. Aaron and I relaxed at home and went out for dinner and then headed over to one of our favorite places, the World Market and picked up a bunch of random stuff (blueberry scone mix that I'll probably make later on today, yum!) but while there I saw one of my favorite Italian chocolates (not to eat, just because of the funny looking boy), the bambino that is most likely old as all hell by now hahaha.

THURSDAY (today): 

Well it's still early, but I plan on trying to get my grandma's old Singer sewing machine up and running until I pick a good new (and hopefully cheap) replacement for my now dead Brother sewing machine. 

Ciao miei cari 

What I did over the weekend

Overall the weekend (plus some of Thursday) was somewhat uneventful, but had it's precious little moments for sure. 

Some of THURSDAY:

I spent the day drawing, watching Hellboy (new to me, never wanted to see it because frankly it looked uninteresting to me, but finally gave in and realized it was a decent watch, I need to stop judging movies before I see them), eating some delicious Morning Star chicken patties, which, being a vegetarian, is my favorite veggie meat maker ever. Aaron and I buy Morning Star food all the time, it's pretty much all we eat (we are both vegetarians).

Also put some of those apple soda cubes into some apple juice and it was delicious by the way, I suggest you try it. 

Later on that day I was delivered some packages from Amazon, my favorite place to buy things because they get shipped to me usually by the next day (so much faster than some of the sellers on half.com, although I will still use half.com for it's amazing prices on books). 

Reminds me, I finished Catching Fire (the second book from The Hunger Games series and  now I'm halfway through the last one, such a good read, I'll write more about them in other posts.

Also, Thursday night brought the blackout in San Diego. Aaron and I did not have a very fun night trying to read with one small candle and one small flashlight. Thank goodness the lights came back on at 3AM and we weren't stuck all weekend without electricity like all the reports online predicted. Yikes!

FRIDAY:

Spent the morning doing nothing and was surprised when Aaron came home early from work :) So we went off to a local art store and I was able to pick up some new art supplies to work on my new pillow designs. I figured since it's getting closer to Halloween and I'm a huge fan of calaveras/sugar skulls/Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead art I thought I'd come up with my own designs and make pillows out of them. 

Those pillows always seem to get a lot of attention and I love making them so I've been working on new designs with my new art supplies. Here is one of them.

Adorable little skeleton cat. I've got lots of regular skulls in the works too and hope to get one of them started sewing today once I'm done writing this up. 

After the stop at the art store Aaron and I headed to El Indio to grab some delicious Mexican food and headed home for a nice relaxing rest of the day. 

SATURDAY:

While most of this day was spent doing nothing, in the afternoon I shook Aaron up and we went and got some smoothies at Jamba Juice and headed to Coronado and the beach. 

The beach we go to is never too crowded and always beautiful. While sitting on the beach I did a sand version of Aaron. 

We both had a good laugh at how realistic it looked and how soulless his empty eyes were. Hahaha. 

After our trip to the beach we went out looking for some books. Aaron got House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski which is apparently supposed to be an amazingly scary book. I'll probably attempt reading it after Aaron has a go at it, but we also were able to score two awesome Star Wars Mad Libs books which we spent the rest of the night laughing at, making disgusting libs. For good wholesome fun I suggest you pick yourself up a copy, here. 

Anyway, that's it for today, off to get some sewing done! 

Caio miei cari