Fall (a.k.a., more of summer) in California

Fall is here and I've found myself missing Minnesota fall like I did last year in Pittsburgh.  Only this year it's different.  This year I'm sitting on my porch in perfect 75 degree weather while it's 52 degrees in Minneapolis today.  I love those chilly, crisp fall days when it seems like you can almost smell the apples and pumpkin spices in the air.  But I'm surprised to admit that I'm enjoying this season in Southern California.  

In the past week, we've actually had rain two days in a row.  I'm learning quickly, though, that "bad" weather here means just an hour or two of pouring rain or waves that are too choppy (I'm sure this is not the correct term) for surfing.  By lunchtime the sun is out again.  Gabe and I have a friend here who grew up in Pennsylvania, and I often reminisce with her about fall days in the Midwest.  She says the perfect temperatures in California can get pretty boring.  I'm sure it can and that it will, but I liked going outside this morning in shorts and a T-shirt.  I'm looking forward to not worrying about digging my way out of snow in the morning or scraping the ice off of the windshield. 

Of course, California does have its quirks.  Some of them are the ones everyone talks about - the surfers, the nice cars, the insanely high gas prices.  There's some others, though, that we've had to discover on our own.  Bad traffic is another staple of Californian life that everyone seems to know about.  But I never knew just how much traffic dominates people's lives here, even when they're not driving.  In Los Angeles especially, traffic is the first thing that people ask about.  Your co-workers ask which route you took to work today, and when you tell them, they immediately tell a better route you could have taken. 

And highways here, they're not just "405 North" or simply "405." No, here it's "The 405," "The 55," "The 110." Every highway name is preceded by "the," almost as if every highway is equally important.  And of course, importance is marked by the amount of traffic on it each day.  And it's true, there's traffic everywhere, almost all the time.

Also, we knew that many Californians were health conscious, but we didn't expect that the amount of calories in each food would be listed on the menu of every restaurant.  We've actually found this feature helpful since we've been trying to watch what we eat lately.  But at the same time, sometimes you just need a cheeseburger and you don't want to be reminded of how much you're breaking your diet.

Yes, there are some annoying things about living in California.  But for the first time in a while, I think we're allowing ourselves to relax and enjoy a place without constantly thinking and worrying about the next place we'll have to move to.

Apartment hunting and unexpected things

Now would be about the time that Gabe and I would be moving into a new apartment in Los Angeles. Gabe would be starting his orientation week in a couple weeks, and I would be starting a new job and he a new internship. That was the plan anyway.

A couple weeks ago, Blizzard offered Gabe the chance to stay with the company, this time as a producer. Though he has already been doing some producing, his internship has mainly consisted of doing financial projects. In his new position, he will solely be a producer (while still attending classes in Los Angeles). This means that he’ll be creating and keeping track of production schedules and working with the artists to complete projects—among many other things. He has recently been working on the new expansion to World of Warcraft. Here’s a link to the trailer that was just released:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeZ8khSEC0

Since the new job offer, we’ve been scrambling to figure out details for the fall. It’s amazing how these details have started to come to together. Just last week, I was offered a full time position at GEOS, the company I’ve been working with this summer. To my surprise, they offered me a position on their office staff rather than on the teaching staff. At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. After all, I left an office job in Pittsburgh where I often felt purposeless and unappreciated. But I’m actually really excited about this position. For once, I’m excited rather than scared or worried about this unexpected thing.

Many good, unexpected things have been happening, but finding an apartment has definitely not been one of them. I knew that Southern California would be more expensive than anywhere we’ve lived before, but I was really shocked to find how little we could buy with $1,000 a month in this area. Our first experience searching for apartments was quite a depressing one. A dirty, dingy apartment in a frightening part of Anaheim with a vase of flowers on the side of the road which one of the residents told us was “there for a reason.” After a few overpriced apartments later, we found a month-to-month apartment in Costa Mesa, a city about fifteen minutes away from Blizzard and eight minutes away from GEOS. Yes, the apartment is overpriced compared to what we’re used to, but we’re pretty thrilled to find a decent apartment in a decent neighborhood close to our jobs.

The future is still full of uncertainties, but it’ll feel nice to settle down here—for a little while anyway.

Rainy Days in California

 Last week we had our first rainy day in California. Of course, being the good Midwestern girl that I am, I was prepared and pulled out the umbrella from my car. I even ventured out to get groceries in the rain while everyone else huddled under shelter. Like I said, rain is certainly not the typical weather here. I have never been in a place with so many “perfect” days. The temperature is slowly getting hotter each week, but in our first month here, the temperature was neither hot nor cold, a concept that I have trouble explaining to family and friends in Minnesota. I was actually starting to miss rain, and Gabe is still hoping for a thunderstorm.

As you can imagine, the beautiful weather means that most people spend their time at the beach. Since we’re not exactly the surfing types, we’ve spent most of our time outside disc golfing. California is the birthplace of disc golf, a sport that we started playing together in Springfield. Apparently, most native Californians seem to think this hobby is only for hippies and college students. We keep enjoying it anyway.

Our jobs are really what’s kept us busy lately. It’s hard to believe that Gabe has been at his internship for over a month now. Although he has had to do some chores typical of an intern (like buying edamame for his boss—that’s California for you!), he’s also been put to good use and has worked on important projects. Blizzard creates and produces video games, but since Gabe is working with the cinematics department, he has had the opportunity to work with the filmmaking side of the company. Many of the producers he works with were formerly producers with DreamWorks, Disney, and other major animation and film studios. The most important thing is that he is loving the company and his work.

My job also started at the beginning of July. I have been teaching Spanish students at GEOS Languages Plus, a language school that teaches English to university students and adults who have come to America to learn the language. Every summer, GEOS hosts a holiday program for high school students from Spain, France, and the Caribbean. In the morning, the students learn English and in the afternoon, they do site seeing activities. So, not only do I get to teach them, but I also get to chaperone them on their activities. Since I’ve started, I’ve gone with groups to Huntington Beach, Sea World, and on a tour of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. Next week, we go to Universal Studios!

And yesterday, Gabe and I celebrated our two-year anniversary. We’ve had quite an adventure already and still have many, many hard decisions ahead. We’ve gotten tired of each other, pushed each other’s buttons. But at the end of the day, I know that we have each other for all the adventures—good or bad—that are still ahead. And that makes it all worthwhile.

Restoring normalcy

 
We are finally here, settled (somewhat) in our apartment in Irvine, California. The road from Pittsburgh to Irvine was long and tiresome, but we had our fun, memorable moments, too. Gabe and I were very blessed to have his parents and his sister make the trip with us. His parents helped us move our things into a Penske truck, which we packed up and drove the six hours to their house in Kentucky within a day. I think Gabe and I agree that the day we left Pittsburgh was our longest and most stressful. But it wasn't until we had picked up Kala, Gabe’s sister, in Springfield that we felt like the move had truly begun.

We must have made quite a strange sight on the road. We had the truck towing one of our cars on a trailer with our second car following behind (cars with license plates from two different states, on top of everything else). Surprisingly, the two and a half days it took us to get to California were not so bad. We started seeing new and interesting landscapes after our first day and especially once we entered New Mexico. Along the way, we were even able to stop at the Grand Canyon. We went to the Canyon early in the morning, and we were all freezing. I never knew Arizona could be so cold!

Any landscape can become boring after a while, no matter how beautiful or grand it is. We were all happy to finally reach California after five days full of packing and travel. Once we reached California, however, our new source of anxiety was finding an apartment quickly and finding me a job. Gabe had already been in contact with a UCI (University of California-Irvine) student willing to sublease her room for the summer. And I already had an interview set up with a school where I was hoping to teach ESL students for the summer. I am thankful to announce that both the living and the job situations worked out. We are no longer homeless and we'll have enough money to pay the inflated California rent so that we won't have to return to being homeless.

Gabe’s family stayed for a few days after we moved our essentials into the apartment, so we were able to explore Irvine and even take the hour long trip to Hollywood to see some sites. Gabe and I will have many more chances to explore Los Angeles further, but what I first saw of Hollywood definitely made me cringe. I enjoyed seeing the Hollywood stars etched with names of famous actors and actresses, but the surrounding shops were dirty, grungy, and honestly a little scary sometimes. I was glad to leave and go to Rodeo Drive, which had dramatically different scenery. I came so close to buying a purse that was far too overpriced for its small size just so that I could say I bought something there. But $40 for a purse that can barely fit my phone? I still can’t do it.

You can tell there’s too much that I want to cover here since so much has happened between the time we left Pittsburgh over two weeks ago and now. Living in California is a big change in a lot of ways, but every night Gabe and I come home and have dinner together, like always. Although it was hard to say goodbye to our family, we’ve been restoring some normalcy and getting along pretty well, just as we have had to do in Springfield and in Pittsburgh.

And more details about Gabe’s internship will be coming later, but he’s loving it so far!

The Grand Canyon!

Gabe and I in front of the Canyon - we are freezing but smile for the camera.

The Kodak Theater - I never knew that it would look so small from the street.

The coolest thing I saw among the Hollywood stars: footprints of R2D2, C3P0, and Darth Vader.

Oh, the places we'll go

Gabe got an internship and an amazing one at that. It feels so good to say that with finality and to know where we’re going to be living for the summer (even though we don’t have a place to live quite yet).  After weeks of applying to dozens of internships in Los Angeles, San Diego, and even New York, Gabe received an offer from Blizzard Entertainment.

I know that many of you do not know what Blizzard is and you may have questions about where we’ll live and how we’re going to move our lives (and all of our stuff) across the country. First, I’ll cover Blizzard.

Blizzard is a company based in Irvine, California, that makes video games. They don’t just make any game—they make World of Warcraft. Even if you know almost nothing about video games, you may have heard this name. This is the game that made many of our friends in college (mostly, Gabe’s friends) stay up until the early hours of the morning. As one of my friends at work said when he heard Gabe will be working for Blizzard, he has given hours upon hours of his life to that game. The game and its devoted, maybe somewhat obsessive, followers even spawned a popular web series, The Guild (which you should check out on Netflix, if you have it!).

This internship will be great for Gabe for many reasons. First, it is a paid internship, often a rare thing in the entertainment industry. They’re also giving him a short stipend for our move across country. Also, Blizzard is a big name in the entertainment world, so working for this company will hopefully give his resume the prestige to apply for other big name companies later on. Enjoying the job is, of course, a major factor besides the salary and prestige. The internship will mostly consist of doing finance work for their cinematics department, so I have a feeling he’ll be doing some real, hard work, not just getting coffee for people. We’ve heard from numerous people that Blizzard is a great company to work for and that they treat their employees, including interns, very well.

And no, Gabe is not an avid World of Warcraft player, but this program at Carnegie Mellon has not only renewed his interest in working with films but has also created an interest in the video game industry. While films have been rehashing the same story lines and only expanding the same technology, the video game industry has been coming out with some of the most innovative, interactive story lines and technology.  Gabe will be looking for internships in Los Angeles for the fall and spring semesters, so we’re hoping that he can get some experience in film as well. But for now, we’ll see what this field has to offer.

And as for me, I will be looking for temporary work in Irvine while Gabe is at Blizzard. I’ve especially been looking at some companies that offer summer tutoring.  But who knows what could happen once we get there. Right now, I'm still missing my friends from work that I had to say good-bye to on Friday.  Living in three different states within a one year time frame has brought its adventures and excitements, but of course, the awful part is having to leave people we’ve grown close to and have made our lives a little brighter during the times we’ve missed our families or doubted our decision to go on this path. So, Pittsburgh friends, I will miss you!

Blizzards in Los Angeles

Our apartment is a mess right now. But it’s not our mid-week, too tired to clean up mess. We are in the midst of packing up our apartment. Our big move to L.A. is looming just around the corner. Now, I know what Billy Collins said:

“The more you clean, the more brilliant

your writing will be…”

So in the mess that is my apartment right now, I’m clearing a space on the couch to make room for some brilliant writing—well, some writing anyway.

These last couple months leading up to L.A. have gone by fast, though sometimes it felt like we'd be  in Pittsburgh for years rather than just a few weeks. Gabe has mostly been focusing on his studies, but at the beginning of March, he was able to go to South by Southwest, a festival of film, music, and interactive media in Austin, Texas. He got the chance to see many film premieres like 21 Jump Street, Blue Like Jazz, and Raid Redemption. One independent film he saw that’s actually coming out in theaters in June is Safety Not Guaranteed, a film featuring many of our favorite people like Aubrey Plaza (April from Parks and Rec), Mark Dupless (Pete in The League), and Jake Johnson (Nick from New Girl). A graduate of Gabe’s program actually was a production coordinator for the film, which basically means that he helped to coordinate and manage the schedule for production of the film. Here’s a link to the trailer in case you’re interested. The festival premiered many films like this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jSnAs7mq8

Since he came back from the festival, Gabe has been applying to all the internships that he can. In case you don’t remember, the main focus of Gabe’s program is to get real life experience in the entertainment industry. Part of this is getting a summer internship in Los Angeles or New York. He had interviews with companies like Sony Entertainment, USA, Blizzard, and Zynga. The whole process has been stressful and grueling for both of us. In some cases, there are hundreds of other students applying for the same position. I thought for sure that Gabe would have heard from someone at least a month ago, but Gabe and most of his classmates have only starting hearing back within the last couple weeks. Up until then, Gabe thought his prospects looked pretty grim. Then, he got another call from Blizzard Entertainment. They had created a new position and said Gabe was at the top of the list.

After three interviews, lots of prayers, and many days without any word from California, Gabe was offered an internship with Blizzard! More details to come….