Holiday's and 09'

I ended up spending the holidays in Chicago to visit Audrey before she headed off to Nante. It was quite nice and very restful. Had deep dish pizza of course, I can never get enough of that stuff. Saw two rather good movies, Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Torino. Both very good with the former being a bit more uplifting and the later dealing more with race and mortality. I feel like the films that Clint Eastwood directs are typically about death and mortality, also preparation or trying to understand death. He continues to surprise and amaze me and has since Mystic River. I need to really see the few that I've missed that he directed. Sadly though considering his age I feel almost like it makes sense for him to really deal with death since likely his time is coming to a close, however I doubt that he will stop generating new work til he does die. A note on my own mortality at a later date. Saw some amazing work at the MCA specifically Jenny Holzer. The work with her LED ticker tape like installations were the ones that seemed to be directed straight at my sensibilities. Multiple streams of information, text, ticker, strobing, perception of information/vision. I was totally loving it trying to take in this bright strobing information stream that was massive in scale. Also, very nice to see Audrey's family and eat lots of food with them as well, recurrent theme. Also, of course had my dose of White Castle, cause it's what I crave.

Flew back on New Year's Eve to LA. Oddly both flights going and leaving were completely on time, quite a feat especially with my airline luck. Got back to LA and ended up spending the eve with Matt and his family. It was nice and relaxed. Lots of jokes, music and new inventions like PowerFade. One thing though that I had not expected but was rather how do I put it, I guess honored? I was told by Matt's dad that he was very happy that I was Matt's friend and that I've been there for him. He also told me that don't worry about anythings that maybe bothering me in a very non-specific way that felt all too specific internally. But, it put me at ease for whatever reason. I needed it and needed to have that told to me that things would work out alright in the end.

The last few days of vacation just left me running errands and sorting out stuff that needed to be dealt with upon leaving. Got to go have some ramen with some of my x-country buddies from high school which was nice. Hadn't seen them in like a year. Need to see the rest of em. Also, picked me up some new shoes. Two words, adonized blue.



Last evening of vacation I came down with a cold of course and it has been plaguing me since. I miss vacation already because of course I'd much rather get paid and not work and be able to do what I want to do for all 24 hours of the day. Oh well. My business cards came in so I guess I'm all official like that.



To end off for the night as promised in the last post some pictures of the apartment in it's current state. Next time maybe some talk about my new past time, terrorizing the greater Liberty City area in Grand Theft Auto IV.