Aging gracefully

I hope I'll be one of those women who ages gracefully -- someone who has great-looking wrinkles and just carries herself with elegance.

For example, Lisa Vanderpump-Todd. She's 50, and she knows it. There's no scary facelift, no trying to be young. She always dresses very classily.

And then there's Adrienne Maloof, who's 49, but dresses really young. She's got tons of makeup and sparkly stuff in her hair, and wears clothes that someone in her 30s or even 20s should wear. And I *think* she's gotten plastic surgery (I mean, her husband's a plastic surgeon... she's got to take advantage of that massive discount).

Case in point: the dinner party Camille threw on the show last week... On the right is Adrienne, in a tight pink shirt, huge earrings, and majorly highlighted hair. And on the left, we have the lovely Lisa, in a classy white shirt and pencil skirt, and sophisticated hair. I would definitely rather be a Lisa.

I don't think I would ever get plastic surgery. Would you?

Style transformation

Ever since I got to LA, I've been trying to up my style quotient. I feel like LA is a much dressier city than San Francisco and Seattle. SF is pretty dressy but since I was working from home for 6 months, most of my time in SF was spent in sweatpants on my sofa. I think people in Atlanta are actually well-dressed (something about Southern sensibilities I believe) but since I was a college student, and at Tech to boot, I think I was pretty insulated from all that. I mean, one summer I rotated through 4 pairs of sweatpants Monday through Thursday and then wore a skirt on Friday at a feeble attempt at not being hopeless.

Anyway, to amp up my style, I've been trying to modify outfits I would ordinarily wear to be a little more edgy or at the very least, put in a little more effort.

So for example, this is something I may have worn to work in the past:

It's not a bad outfit, but it's sort of plain. And I think the fact that the t-shirt is untucked makes my legs look short. And my shoes are a little to bright to wear with the tights, and match the skirt too much.

And here's how I modified it:

I tucked in the shirt and added a wide belt to define the waste. I also added shoes with a little more darkness to have less contrast between the shoes and the tights. I feel like the outfit is more put-together and I think my legs look a little longer -- which is important when you're all of 5 feet tall... I mean, 5'1" -- that's what my license says :)

I am still working on getting the fashion down, but what I am really struggling with is picking jewelry. Can anyone recommend jewelry that might work with the outfit?

Real Housewives of Atlanta

So I'm watching Sunday's episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta and Phaedra just said her baby weighed 7 pounds, 23 ounces. Ummm... does she mean 8 pounds, 7 ounces?

And Kim is actually a nurse! But she claims to be a registered nurse when she's actually a licensed practical nurse.

Ugh... weather

So I can't really complain about weather in LA, given that most of the country is facing temperatures about 20 degrees colder. But because it's LA and it is my right as a citizen of LA to enjoy sunny skies 365 days a year, I am going to complain.

It has been raining for about 7 days straight, and it will rain for another 5 days. And it's not thunderstorming or anytihng but it's enough rain to make running outside horrible and make it inconvenient to park far away from where you are trying to go. We are thinking about seeing Tron and our choice of movie theater was driven by where we could go where we would not need to go outside between a parking spot and the theater. Santa Monica Promenade was out because it's about a 15 minute walk. Even Century City was out because even though it has a covered parking garage, the mall itself is open air (although there might be an entrance to the parking garage from the theater... will have to look into that). So we're going to the semi-ghetto mall since the parking garage is covered and there is a covered walkway between the fully indoor mall and the movie theater. I've become such a wuss. How did I survive in the Atlanta thunderstorms, walking to class at Tech?

I remember one day when the rain in Atlanta was particularly bad, I thought wearing boots might solve the feet-getting-wet issues during the 15 minute walk to class. What I did not realize was that the area around the zipper was not waterproof, and so that small area was enough to let water in and leave me with wet, wrinkly feet for the next few hours. I have since bought rain boots (although I've only needed to wear them about 3 times in the last year since both San Francisco and LA are pretty dry cities).

On a good note, I did manage to get a few pretty cool pictures while my husband was driving in the rain. Speaking of the husband, it's his birthday!!






A post about my company's holiday party will follow shortly :)

Holiday Party

My husband's holiday party was this past weekend. It was a red carpet event only in that they laid out a red carpet from the parking garage to the entrance of the club, but as you can see, the pictures they took weren't against the red carpet and were instead on some green astroturf. It's okay... I got some practice posing for when I actually am accosted by paparazzi at next years Oscars. =P

Spaz-tic

So when I define myself as a spaz, I think of myself as the taking-corners-too-sharply-so-my-shoulder-hits-the-wall type of spaz or the not-knowing-where-my-arms-end-so-my-wrist-smacks-against-parking-meters type of spaz. Not really the fall-down-when-walk spaz, except for the occasional tripping in heels as I cross the road sort of thing. So three years ago when I lived in Cambridge (MA, not UK) for the summer, when I fell down while running, I felt like a really big spaz.

Let me explain. I got up almost every morning to run since I was trying to be diligent about being healthy. That and I was trying to offset the junk food that was available at the company I was interning at. Since I was worried about wearing contacts for too many hours a day, I decided to run without my contacts in, since I could see enough to avoid running into people and being run over by cars. This was fine for the first month or so. Keep in mind that this is on a dirt path, which is generally great for your knees and reducing impact. And then one morning, I was running along and suddenly I found myself on my hands and knees on the ground. I don't know how I fell or what I tripped on, but I somehow fell. I scraped up both knees pretty badly and scraped up my palms a little bit. Being a trooper (and being very stubborn) I continued on the rest of the 2 miles left in my run instead of heading straight home. I cleaned it up and headed to work. Later that day, my husband (my boyfriend at the time) made so much fun of me, saying that only little kids fall down while running/walking. I walked around with these huge bandaids on my knees for weeks, which by the way looked awesome with skirts.

Anyway, I thought I was a huge spaz for falling down, until a manager at work, who is a serious runner and personal trainer, said she falls down while running once every few years. That made me feel a little better.

So on Wednesday morning, about three years after my last fall, I went for my usual run. I was doing just fine, and then suddenly I tripped on an uneven section of sidewalk. At least, unlike in Cambridge, I knew I was falling and could try to react. I tried to roll into the fall, ninja-style, which sort of helped. I had only one major scrape on my knee, and my workout top sacrificed itself for the safety of my palm. Again, being stubborn, I finished my workout before going home and showing my husband my scraped up knee.

So now that I have this huge bandaid on my knee, I have to figure out how to wear dresses for my husband's work party, which is tonight, and my company's holiday party next week.

And I can throw caution to the wind during my runs... at least for the next 3 years.