Should you really look before you leap?

Chapter 1: The search is on

Our new flatmate (and I just realized what a huge missed opportunity I had with an "our family just got bigger" post - if only this happened closer to April Fools!) recently wanted to get herself some wheels to get around.  A car or bike would not do for her; a skateboard was going to take her wherever she needed to go. The only problem - she doesn't know how to ride one. I guess that's one of two problems because first she didn't know which kind to get.

The second problem was solved after an evening on the search of a skate shop. Before we decided on needing to buy a skateboard we had to go to the semi-famous fabric store Mood (famous if you're into Project Runway or are really into fabric) which was in an area I'm not overly familiar. Luckily we had some handy dandy "smart" phones ("smart" because I doubt their intelligence from time to time) we could bust out and find a shop close by that April could browse.

We were informed there was an Alva shop close by which I thought could be cool for April so she could either get a cool board if they carried a variety of brands/styles/etc. or at the very least an awesome Alva board. Anywho, we wandered the streets of Los Angeles and walked right past the shop and ended walking through Little Ethiopia, not the prime spot for skateboard shopping.

After we circled back and found the shop and realized we missed it the first time because the windows were covered with Metallica posters because of an art show they were hosting which made the place look abandoned. At this point it was much too late for any real store to stay open, so we went to the one place we could rely on to stay open late - the mall.

The mall we went to is a fabulously ghetto mall but happens to contain within its walls the closest Target to our little abode, so we find ourselves there more often than not. Luckily there were not one but TWO skateboard shops right next to each other. The first shop, which I had never heard of before, was pretty big and pretty pricey. After a little help from the staff we went next door to Vans, which is a big deal as far as skate shoes go if you weren't aware, and to my surprise had much better prices on boards.  They were still a little more than April was thinking on dropping that particular evening so I suggested we head over to Target and see if they have any $20 kid's boards.

Bless Target's little soul, they not only kid's boards, they had one on clearance for SIX DOLLARS!!! It sure was someone's lucky day!

Chapter 2: Time to rock and roll

With board in hand we finally got out of the house today around 3 so April could have her first lessons on how to ride a skate board. Needless to say, her proclivity to prove Newton's law of gravity was strong.  To her credit, it didn't take her that long to get comfortable enough that she could make it part way down the street without falling off and hurting herself. I was so proud of our little semi-adopted kid! But it didn't come quick or easy.

It took us a while to travel along the sidewalk due to little boards inherent desire to remain stationary and resist rolling anywhere. Slowly but surely we ventured onward and we found a quite little sidewalk where Andrea and I could watch her try to go back and forth in front of us without falling down.

As with any skill perseverance is key and even though it was getting to be a frigid 50° she rode and rode like a little trooper!  After a while, however, we were getting hungry and April had to wrap up her first session.

Chapter 3: Pick your teachers wisely

With so many sources of information out there it's good to put a little time and effort into knowing where your information is coming from. A great example comes from a book I recently checked out from the library.  After I read "Much of the descriptive material is taken from Wikipedia." I stopped reading. I was a little embarrassed for the author, but then I thought about how much people rely on Wikipedia and how it's used as a source by college students and how this guy got paid for this book and had to start watching something on Netflix to get my mind off the whole matter.

Anyway, I definitely wouldn't consider myself anywhere near a competent skateboarder and wouldn't have minded if my brother could have been the teacher, but there is one thing that I've done that I suppose would allow me the right to teach another. I have ridden a skateboard off a roof a few times in high school, once while the board was en fuego (on fire for those that haven't been to a Mexican restaurant). Why was it on fire? Because that made it more... wait for it... AWESOME!

You may think this is a bit ridiculous, but these "stunts" were for school videos. I don't think I need to explain how much better these videos were than the other students' videos. I didn't realize the repercussions of the "off the roof on a flaming skateboard trick" at first, but without going into details it turned out to become a bit of an urban legend.

The moral of this whole story is if you don't want to be afraid to do something that isn't a very smart thing to do - act before you think.  If I actually thought about what I was doing, I might not have done it. This is who April has to teach her how to ride a skateboard. I hope she survives.

Friday the 13th (Jan 2012 edition)

We're not superstitious.  A little stitious maybe but only because I'm convinced no matter which lane I get into on the freeway becomes THE slow/stopped lane.  Other than that, though, we're not overly concerned about black cats, opening umbrellas in the house, or the dreaded Friday the 13^th.

Rather than fearing this most dreaded of all dates we celebrate it, and for good reason.  Lots of great things have happened on Friday the 13s:

• we got married
• I'm sure something else
• and a third thing, too

But besides all those things, I wrote up and published this very post all in a single day!  That usually doesn't happen. Normally I have an idea about a post, jot down an idea, spend time looking for pictures and getting way too many and need to whittle down the list, link a bunch of random words and finally publish. I'd say this usually takes around two or three days, but I still have drafts from months ago. So you see, great things happen when the 13th day of the month happens to fall on a Friday.

how we roll (in the new year)

While others seem content burning LA to the ground, Andrea and I partied like rock stars.  Well, if rock stars were cool, some are not.

We started it off low key, grilled cheese sandwich appetizers.

Next we got our cookies and milk on.

After we had a little fuel, we broke the games out (Andrea's fave, Mille Bornes).

Of course we had Andrea's playlist (which only took her seven hours to make).

The day before we stopped off at Costco to get some Martinelli's (a 4-pack for about the price of one) so we could all have our own bottles to drink out of to get crunked. I think the "original" flavor isn't as festive as the grape or cranberry variety, but that's all Costco had :( luckily we had our home teacher come to the rescue with a little treat to drop off! :D (in addition to this little beauty he gave us what became our new FAVORITE cookies: Carr's Lemon Ginger Cremes - DElicious. Who knew they made tasty crackers AND cookies?)

But as we only had one we busted out the fancy glassware so we wouldn't have to battle over who got to take a swig at any particular instance of the night.

In need of a little more sustenance we got our shrimpies (it looks there was one trying to escape).

They almost perfectly fit in our little bowl - it was meant to be.

Finally we brought in 2012 right - with Ligretto.

We're off to a good start.