Well, this blog is turning out to be much more of a project than I was anticipating. Seems I'm going to have to learn a bit about html. I spent the morning reading through other people's blogs and am a tad jealous of all the pictures and links and fancy stuff that everyone seems so utterly capable of producing on their sites. Will I ever learn this stuff? Seems that the main problem is my mac, which I love, but which lives in it's own world, far far away from that of pc users. Oh well. This is really about writing isn't it? And that I can do at least.

I live in Los Angeles. In Hollywood, to be specific. I moved here almost a year ago from Manhattan, where I had lived for four years. I didn't want to leave New York at all but had a couple of good reasons for coming out here. Mainly, my father who is 82 and has numerous health problems. I'm 25 and the youngest of his children (the other three are all in their mid-50's and too absorbed in their mid-life crises to move across the country to help out their Dad). Part of the reason that I was okay with dropping my whole life in New York for my Dad is that I lost my mom 6 years ago when I was eighteen and since then, it's been a stark reality that I'll likely be parentless by the time I'm 30. Hence, I don't mind moving out here so that I can have a few more years of close contact with my Dad.

The other reason I was okay with leaving my beloved East Village is my boyfriend, Mike, of six years. He's an actor and, after having studied enough in NYC, he feels ready to tackle Hollywood, which is what he's attempting as we speak. Mike and I are both from Atlanta, which is where we met, oh so long ago. We basically moved to NY together and spent four years living in a five floor walkup on the corner of Ave. B and 5th St. Now we live in an amazing old apartment on a charming little hill just below the Hollywood Hills. Our new place is three times the size of what we had in New York and I'm in love with it. My recurring anxiety dream since we moved here is that we'll have to move out. This apartment has begun to feel more like home than anywhere I've ever lived. The building was built in the 1920's by Douglas Fairbanks. He used it as a guest house. It's so fucking elegant that I immediately bought a long nightgown so that I could traipse around in front of the french windows, holding a martini glass and feeling like I really am worthy of such extravagance.

Anyway, since we moved here I've had a few odd jobs. I graduated a year ago from The New School for Social Research with a creative writing degree. In New York I worked at Time Out New York as an intern. I ended up reviewing restaurants for them which was really fun. (I have a pretty extensive background in food.) That was one of the hardest things about leaving NY - I definitely could have stayed on at Time Out had I stayed. In any case, because everyone at Time Out is so fucking cool I ended up with some great connections for the West Coast and I got a job at Vanity Fair working as the editorial assistant to the west coast editor, Krista Smith. Well, Krista turned out to be the most loathsome woman I have ever encountered and after only two months, I bid farewell to Conde Nast Publications and set out to do things my own way.

I got a job working part-time as a research assistant to a writer who's got a contract to write a culinary history type of book and I basically spend a lot of time at the library digging up old articles and poring through ancient issues of Gourmet. I love this job because I love the subject matter. Aside from that I review restaurants and spas on occasion for Citysearch and I also work as an assistant editor at a small student travel magazine.
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