Happy 2006 and All That Jazz
What’s up folks? I’d like to start by wishing you all a healthy and happy 2006. I don’t know about you guys but I’m looking forward to the year. I mean one might think that after 2005, when I graduated from Cal, moved to Seattle, started my new job, and caused all sorts of mayhem in Italy, that it would be hard to top last year. And yet, here I am trying.
Yeah so that little nugget in the last paragraph is true; I went to Italy around Thanksgiving to visit my brother who was studying there for the semester and to… well… see Italy duh! I saw Rome, Venice, and Florence while I was there. I also saw a bunch of ancient and Renaissance art and architecture and ate some awesome and not so awesome food. I’ll fill in more details as soon as I get around to touching up and sorting through all the photos I took over there. Man, these digital photos are seriously piling up and they take a not insignificant amount of time to sort through and fix up.
For the holidays I was able to head back to LA for the first time since I moved up here in July. I spent about ten days in LA, catching up with my family and friends. A few days before I headed down there I checked the forecast and it said LA would be in the mid to high 70’s and would even feature “brilliant sun”. I had never seen a forecast like that but you can bet that it wet my chops reading that sitting here in the perpetually Rainy City. As my luck would have it, the forecast was BS as usual and LA was in the 60’s and sorta cloudy, with a couple days of rain. To top it off, I caught a cold.
However, the forces of the Three Fates combined still could not prevent me from absolutely cherishing the time I spent there. Activities included an Armenian wedding (the best kind), dressing up as Santa for my little cousins on Christmas Eve, hanging out and laughing my ass off with my friends, catching up with a bunch of family and cousins, go-kart racing, lots of bowling, a massage in some weird water machine thing at the yoga store at Citywalk (sorry, no pics!), and a full-fledged Italian dinner and partying New Year’s Eve. Pictures from some of these events are up here. I was smart enough not to take pictures of myself with my own camera New Year’s Eve so I’m waiting for others to come to my rescue with some.
I recently read a few blog posts by a couple of Armenian girls in the LA area (here’s one of them) about spending the holidays with family. Both of these girls were complaining about their relatives, about how needy they were or how tired they were of the constant visits to the numerous aunts and uncle’s houses. I couldn’t feel more differently than these ladies. Of course nobody is perfect, especially not just because they are related to you. But to me, spending time with family during the holidays was special. It was special because it was time spent with people I care about and it reminded me of all the other holidays spent together. I think maybe the girls would feel differently if they spent 6 months to a year in a different city and didn’t set eyes on any of those cousins, aunts, and uncles. Or is it just me? Sound off below if you feel like it. I’ve been thinking a lot about family, and especially older relatives. But more on them later…
There’s lots more where this came from. Stay tuned. Oh and The Shield season 5 preimier airs tomorrow night on FX. Watch it!