I'm pretty stoked on the next few weeks.

Wednesday Ally and I are headed to Palm Springs for some quality time in the scorching desert heat with her family. Hopefully we will re-visit the dinosaurs Lana and I saw there years ago:

Then my dear Beth comes back to LA on Friday to visit.
And we're going to love life and probably hit up the giant rave downtown and visit Catie B. before she leaves for Baltimore for a very long time :/

Sunday Ally and I are going to take our friends' engagement pictures. Pretty excited for that and renting some great lenses to try some new techniques for them.

AND THEN ... next Tuesday I fly to Seattle to see my aunt/cousin and then head down to Portland to visit my dear friends Jenny and Kara before they both leave Portland. Hood River, OR for Fourth of July and then head back up to Seattle to hopefully visit some friends (Jenn Lindsay, I'm looking at you).

Oh, and then, I'll just work on figuring out where the next year is going to take me. I'm starting to look at some time in Europe .... ahhh!

And I'm taking a class at SMC, Political Philosophy, so I'm excited to be learning and not a total waste to society.

Oh, and I just spilled coffee into my laptop's speakers. So there's that.

Mother, may I?

Mama Matthews will be visiting Los Angeles this weekend!

I'm pretty stoked, she's only been to LA twice in my five years here, and I've got some fun stuff planned for us this weekend - like look for the whale in the Marina, apparently a humpback snuck in there!

She is always the one to make sure I don't do something dumb, like fall into a Koi pond while attempting to take a picture of myself with said Koi.

Shoutout to my Pops

Have I mentioned my dad is an AUTHOR??


You should buy his book. It's dedicated to yours truly :)

Keep up with all his maverick boat building ways here: http://matthewsmodelmarine.wordpress.com/

A quiet Monday.

So today, I had some time on my hands (hm, odd, as I am unemployed) and in between apartment hunting and bouts of reading, I made my way to Sacred Heart Chapel to bask in some alone time. I figured, hey, why not go sit at the old Catholic church in silence and get some of the many, many questions that have been floating around my head down on paper, so I could start (attempting to) answer them. So I went there with the intention of writing, silently. Well, when I walked up to the doors, I heard loud organ music. Rats, I thought. There's probably a mass going on. But I poked my head in, and saw that the church was empty save for a woman practicing on the organ. Correction: BANGING IT OUT on the organ. It was awesome. I sat in the back and scribbled away and hoped no one noticed me.

Next stop: Tanners, where I read part of "The God of Small Things" and then headed to Borders where I sat and read Vonnegut's "A Man Without A Country." I'd been meaning to read it for a while, and since it was only 150 pages, I sat and read it there. I felt a little guilty about essentially stealing intellectual property from Borders. But I blame it on the economy.

Here's one of my favorite excerpts today from Vonnegut:

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake."

I hope the rest of your week is lovely,
xoxo Bern