I haven’t been very good with the updates since I got home, eh? I always forget how hard it is to get anything done while I’m here. Too many distractions. I actually haven’t even been sleeping too well because I’ve had too much on my mind–exam reading I haven’t managed to finish (and which my cohort group graciously isn’t scolding me for), too many errands I need to run while I’m here, reading and research for other projects I haven’t started yet, friends I need to see, working out engagement issues–my brain won’t rest ever! And it’s exhausting!
But I’m updating now because I had a pleasant day yesterday that I want to record, and anyway, I’ve got a new haircut to show you. 🙂 This is going to be kind of a “what I did yesterday” entry though. Not much analysis, more descriptive. That would get me a C on the papers I grade. ;b
Got up early yesterday, took the car in for maintenance, then Mommy and I drove up to Berkeley for my haircut, a yoga class, and some errands.
As I mentioned about a month ago, it’s been almost a year since my previous haircut. I kept thinking I should find a stylist in LA, but then I never had enough money, time, and energy all at once. So finally I just gave it up and decided to come back and ask my old stylist, Sarah, to cut my hair again. I enjoyed my haircut and talking to Sarah again. Sarah is so nice and she is so good at cutting my hair! It feels great to have short hair again, and I love my new cut. Unfortunately the pictures I have of it aren’t the greatest.
I’ve been thinking that I should fly back home for more short weekend-type visits. Maybe I’ll just keep coming back to have Sarah keep cutting my hair.
We stopped at Body Time, my new favorite body shop, and I bought some soaps and lip balm and had a lotion custom scented. I was trying to decide which essential oils I wanted to use to scent the lotion, and since the oils smell different when concentrated (as in their samples) and when diffused into a product (as in the finished lotion), I wasn’t sure which would smell good on my skin. Finally I thought of combining rose geranium and ginger. Both I and the girl who mixed it for me really liked the finished scent. I kept smelling it and smelling it and finally I realized why I like it so much: one of my favorite ice cream flavors is Mashti Malone’s Ginger Rosewater. Oh. I smell like my favorite ice cream.
Then we went to a yoga class… oh, I’ve so missed Inner Heat! This was the first yoga class I’d taken in a year and it was so wonderful to be back. I’m much more relaxed now than I was before yesterday, and I’m all sore from being so thoroughly stretched. Sigh. I wish I still lived within walking distance of Inner Heat. Now that I have some more income than I did before, I would go more often. Wah. And you know if you read my last entry that I think doing yoga makes me a better person, and that being away from it keeps me from remembering some kinder part of myself. Miah. Berkeley and Inner Heat are spiritual homes for me. I hope someday I’ll be lucky enough to return to live in Berkeley.
It was so nice to be back, walking around in the not-burning sunshine. After yoga class Mommy and I had lunch at the Capoeira Arts Café, where I’d actually never eaten before (despite having included the place in my second short story last quarter). I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a big bowl of açaí puree and sliced bananas. Mmm. We enjoyed the colorful café setting, watched the capoeiristas, and ate our lunches: I was delighted to find that my sandwich had been made with my favorite Berkeley bread, Vital Vittles’ Sesame Millet! Ahhh I’ve missed Vital Vittles… and all the Berkeley eats.
I eat better in Berkeley too.
Here I am in my yoga clothes:
And I look better. ;b
After lunch we stopped at Lhasa Karnak so I could buy an eye pillow to replace the one I lost a while back, and then we dropped by Far Leaves so I could pick up some more teas. I miss having tea dates with Margaret there. 😦 But now Antonio doesn’t work there anymore, and the girl who rang up my teas is new and not very friendly, so I suppose it might be all for the best. I wanted to get Purple Bamboo (“these young leaves glow with kelpy goodness,” hehe), White Peony, and Black Mango, but then they only had really big sized tins of all of those, so I settled for just Black Mango and a small tin of Pearl Jasmine instead. They both smell incredible.
We wanted to get back home before rush hour, so we headed out then to go pick up my car. But they had to do some more work on it so it wasn’t ready, so we went and wasted some time at Santana Row instead. ;b Spend, spend, consume, consume. I got a skirt and shirt at Anthropologie, and many many colorful pens at MaiDo. 😀 Like… $34 worth of them. I haven’t bought pens in a long time, though; I think the last time was last summer. And $34 is pretty tame considering what I used to spend on those pens. ;b Some of them are bright inks with 0.4 tips, very fine. Pretty exciting. I’m kind of curbing my spending these days… I had decided on six things at Anthropologie, then at the last minute decided that was silly and whittled it down to the final two, which I’m quite happy about. It’s a start. ;b
After I got my car back I went to see DANA! 😀 I haven’t seen her in so long and I have so missed her. Erik drove from work and we all met at her new apartment, which is really spacious and homey. And there’s a park across the street, and another one around the corner! I’m so glad she has such a nice place to live in. We went to Castro in Mountain View and stuffed our faces with Indian food. Really we ordered an obscene amount of food. We were so hungry when we walked in, and when we walked out we could barely move and we still had three big containers full of leftovers. Aiy. But it’s okay because then we helped Dana move a futon from her cousins’ place to her apartment, which was silly-ly hard and we had to keep putting the futon down because we were laughing too hard to hold it. When you need three people to move one bed… and we had all these flights of stairs to move it over, too, since neither apartment had an elevator. We moved that too-much-dinner feeling right on out of there. ;b
Then Erik had to drive me home because I’d been up since six-thirty, and hadn’t slept well the night before, and was completely incapable of driving myself. ;b So now Mommy and I are going back to pick up my car, and tomorrow we are going to visit Shra and her new kitten and see Jackie too, and I am well exercised and fed and am starting to feel more at ease. So I plan to get lots done this afternoon, and hopefully I will sleep better tonight!
Bye. 🙂
[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 