Dolly's Blog

First of all....my apologies for not having posted for a while, I'm sure you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for another fabulous musing by Dolly.  Well, your wait it over. 

I hadn't been writing because I was either too busy, too tired, or too boring...sometimes I really have nothing to write about.  I have been in LA for a week so I have some things to say, finally.  My trip here was pretty smooth.  A woman from the LA office came to Dubai to fill in for me while I'm at home, which has made my life sooo much easier.  I trust her and know she'll do a great job, so I won't have too much work piled up when I get back.  We had a little bit of overlap in Dubai, so my last night we had a nice dinner at the top of the Emirates towers and then I went home, grabbed my bags and took off for the airport.  All I have to say is that I love business class, and a tear comes to my eye as I say that because my company has decided to downgrade our travel to save money, so from here on out I'm coach all the way. 

I must have done something really bad to someone, because my karma was wreaking havoc on my life first 24 hours in LA.  A coworker picked me up from the airport and took me out to lunch.  I had been in the same clothes for over 24 hours, so I got some clean clothes and changed in the restaurant bathroom.  I sat back down with me coworker, had a nice lunch and left.  Only a day later did I finally figure out that I left not only my clothes at our table, but also my wallet.  I went back to the restaurant, but there was no sign of anything and nothing had been turned in.  The same day I realized my wallet had been taken, I also walked out of work only to discover that my beloved graphite grey, Trek hybrid bike that I loved had been stolen.  It was a sad, sad day, which also happened to be Monica's birthday!  It worked out beautifully though, because last year on her birthday I had misplaced my wallet and she ended up paying for me, so we decided that we would continue the tradition this year. Mon's birthday party was really fun.  We went to the Geisha House in Hollywood for a sushi dinner with Lindsey, Kristen and Anna and then went bar hopping for the rest of the night. 

Sunday was the real highlight of my trip...the Flaming Lips at the Hollywood Bowl!!  We had a little daytime shindig at our house before the bowl, but because of the heat all anybody wanted to drink was water...can you believe that!?  After a few hours of laying around in pools of sweat, we got up and walked ourselves to the bowl.  After the sun started to go down, it transformed into the perfect Bowl night.  We got there in time to see most of Theivery Corporation, who put on a good show, although I was disappointed that David Byrne didn't show up to sign his part of "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter", but I guess you can't have it all.  All I can say is that the Lips were amazing.  We were really far back, so we couldn't see everything, but we could hear, so we were perfectly satisfied.  Nights like that one make me love LA.

The rest of this week has been pretty laid back.  Since all of my work responsibility is in Dubai, I have a bit of a hard time trying to occupy myself in the LA office.  I have been trying to help on other projects and stuff, so it's been nice to do something different that the routine I have in Dubai.  It's been good to have a loose schedule especially since I'm bus dependent now.  I made it to capoeira only a couple of times, but I paid my batizado fee, so I'm looking forward to that in September! 

Tonight Mon and I take off to Portland for the weekend mainly to visit Kate, but also to scope out the living and working situation up there for a possible move in the future.  My life is so up in the air right now, that I have no idea where I will be in a year, but my plan at this moment is to be in Portland.  We'll see...

Okay, I'm off!