I often describe myself as being "boring." What I mean by that is that I have a fairly regimented life: I don't usually go out on school nights because I want to get to bed early and get up early. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, have casual (or formal) sex with casual (or formal) people, and generally I don't have a sparkling social life. I am single. I am a crazy cat lady. Yes, I only have 2 cats, but #crazycatlady is a state of mind. The words "dinner party" conjure nightmarish visions of cooking, organizing, and then dealing with  ... ugh ... people! I'm also not a clubber, even though I much enjoy singing along with the music in my car and "car dancing," which entails lots of chicken-head neck movements, bopping the steering wheel with my hands, and wiggling my butt in the car seat. Sometimes I go take photos of things or people. Often said photos are taken on my iPhone, spontaneously, and at most posted on InstagramFacebook.

What occurred to me is that perhaps boring is not the most accurate or empowering word to use. Not accurate because, let's face it, if you car dance you are automatically not boring. Also, I travel more than most, even though I'm a somewhat reluctant traveler and if I could basically never leave my house I would be pretty happy. Nevertheless, I travel. In recent years I have been to Egypt, Turkey, Paris, Pompeii, and Iceland, as well as the east coast a bunch of times.

What occurred to me is that my life is largely organized around one big commitment: performing at my best at work. And so I eschew activities that take up much energy, I go to bed early, I limit my social contact on weekends, so that I can do my very best at work. My work takes a lot of focus and mental energy, and requires constant growth and expansion of my skills and responsibilities. Nothing and no one sways me from this focus. Except of course taking care of my cats, but I can work from home part of the time so that largely takes care of that. Energy is a limited resource, and my time and energy are the most valuable resource I have. I refuse to expend it on anything that does not contribute significantly to my life and to my work. Time off and rest support this commitment. And so, as Warren Buffett suggests, I say no to almost everything.

I reject the idea that I'm boring, or that I should be following my passion (whatever the heck that is) instead of working hard at being an attorney, and I reject the idea that being fun (whatever the heck that means) is a requirement of good character. No. Actually, I don't reject those things, because that is actually the same as accepting those things, but with resentment.

Instead, I see myself differently now, like a professional athlete of the mind. Professional athletes live regimented lives because they have an unwavering commitment to their highest performance in their chosen field of practice; I, too, have a regimented life because of my unwavering commitment to my highest performance in my field of practice, the law. It is not who I am, it is what I do, but while I'm doing it, it is my passion and it takes the lead on how I run my life. 

And that's pretty much all I have to say about that.

Guess where my mom and I were a few weeks ago? 

It turns out that a cousin of my dad's and his family live in the Bay Area (G, MG, and their daughter F). My mom had wanted to check out San Francisco for a while, so we hopped a Southwest flight out of Burbank, and off we went. We stayed in Fremont, which nowadays is smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley (it wasn't when they moved there). G and MG are both retired now, and very sweetly gave us a lovely tour. We checked out Stanford (fancy!), drove over the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate, checked out Sausalito, Ocean Beach, drove through Half Moon Bay and all the way back around to Fremont, and also got to visit the San Jose Mission. 

We walked through Stanford on Friday evening, in the golden light near sunset. The students were not back yet, so it was somewhat quiet. It is beautiful and perfectly manicured. When you get there one of the first things to greet you is the Rodin Sculpture Garden.

There was a lot of chatting and laughter. I took pictures with my camera, and MG took pictures with her iPad. MG is a very talented artist, and as such also takes lovely photographs. She's a painter and a sculptor, and also works with glass and colored pencils. 

There was much discussion of history, literature, philosophy, and art. Stanford was the perfect place for it.

We had breakfast at a popular place for families, the Black Bear Diner, and there was a balloon lady who was making animals and flowers for the kids. 

After breakfast we drove across the Bay Bridge (the new bit) and pulled off the road to enjoy the view before crossing the rest of the Bay Bridge (the old bit) into San Francisco.

Then we made a beeline for the Golden Gate Bridge, because we're tourists.

Then we went to Sausalito and my mom got to hold a parrot. Or cockatoo. Or something.

We stopped off at Cliff House, overlooking Ocean Beach on one side, and the ruins of the former Sutro Baths on the other. Here's a tidbit: "A classic Greek portal opened to a massive glass enclosure containing seven swimming pools at various temperatures. There were slides, trapezes, springboards and a high dive. The power of the Pacific Ocean during high tide could fill the 1.7 million gallons of water required for all the pools in just one hour. The Baths could accommodate 10,000 people at one time and offered 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels for rent." There's more info about these here, including a lot of really amazing photos. It seems like the attraction wasn't just going to the baths to take a dip, but also going to the baths to watch the folks taking a dip. Very bizarre, but what an interesting peek into life over a century ago. If you listen to the video, you will learn that everyone had to wear the same outfits, and the plan was to make access to the baths affordable for all. On weekends they would host boxing matches, trapeze artists, whatever. All entertainment, all the time. 

The baths were a popular attraction until 1966, when a fire destroyed them. This is all that is left now, and it helps to place it in space if you check out this interactive map.

And this was the view of Ocean Beach.

It wouldn't be an Elena trip without pulling off the road at least once to take a picture of some lovely flowers. I believe these are called Naked Ladies, and they are only around for a short period in the late summer. But aren't you glad I did?

On Sunday morning we took a swing through the San Jose Mission. The Mission is at once minimalist and gaudy. Everything is fairly simple and clean and then you get to the main church and boom! bleeding Christs and other accoutrements of creepy religiosity. Still, kinda cool from a historical perspective.

Before leaving we had lunch at a great Indian restaurant that MG has helped decorate over the years with her art. My new cousin F and I got our picture taken in front of this painted peacock, the national bird of India. MG painted it. Nice, huh?

And here's just the peacock just because it's beautiful.

Cousin F is really amazing: she's about 10 years younger than I am, and she's getting a Ph.D. *and* she's an entrepreneur. Talk about unstoppable! She even made us a lovely dinner, including a delicious flourless chocolate cake, which I of course thoroughly enjoyed.

It was a great visit, hopefully the first. More pics here.

I scrapped my original plan, whatever that was, and went with the flow. I found a spot on the edge of a cliff, sat down, and took pictures from that spot as the sun went down and the light changed. Some had people in them, some didn't.

There are houses nearby that have their pylons right into the beach, with the waves beneath them. To me they look like one small tsunami away from being washed into the ocean. Gorgeous, but I would not sleep easy. The houses on top of the hill with an ocean view, on the other hand...

As background I will tell you a tiny bit about the job move. And since this is a new blog and people might stumble upon it who don't know me, I am an amateur photographer, but during the work week I am an attorney. I am not one of those unhappy attorneys who loathe their job and their life and long to give it all up to follow their dream of being an artist or a clown or a kindergarten teacher. I love my job. It's interesting. I work with great people, both colleagues and clients, and what I do matters. Photography is my way to bring brain balance to my life: I love my job, but I have other interests as well. This is one of them. 

Back to the story at hand. I left the firm where I had worked for 12 years, my first and only job since taking the bar, and moved to another firm that does similar work. The move was not motivated by any problems at my old job, far from it, but by what I think is a better opportunity for me at the new place. Besides, sometimes you just have to shake the tree you're in just to see if you'll fall out. I'm not sure where to go with that metaphor after that.

I started the new job in June. The new office is in El Segundo, CA. This is meaningless to anyone who does not live in the LA area, but while the office is not really that much closer in terms of commuting time, I'm now back in LA County. The office is in a commercial corridor that has all the yummy chain stores: Trader Joe's, REI, Costco, Equinox, 24 Hour Fitness, Starbucks (not everyone agrees that it's yummy, I get it), Fresh 'n' Easy. And I haven't even had a chance to fully explore yet, there are lots of as-yet-unexplored commercial centers between my office and Sepulveda Boulevard, where there is a Whole Foods and a Yogaworks, for starters. Lots of restaurants of all sizes and prices, too. A number of these places are within walking distance. 

The key to this post is the 24 Hour Fitness.

Due to a special offer many years ago, I've been paying $99 a year for my 24 Hour Fitness gym membership for about a decade. If you're a member of 24 Hour Fitness, you can go to any club of the same level, and all the ones of lower level. I am a member of a Super Sport club, so all the clubs in LA County, basically, are accessible on my already existing and obscenely inexpensive membership. Thus, I can use the 24 Hour Fitness a block from my office to my heart's content.

Here's another thing you may not know: I hate gyms with a white hot passion. Well, no. Gyms bore me to within an inch of my life, and there's no passion, good or bad, in extreme boredom. I prefer being outside. But the reality is that I can't run anymore and I don't have time to gallivant in the wilderness with any regularity. (Also, I'm justifiably weary of the wilderness since I'm a hopeless city slicker.) As I get older, I need to keep an eye out for the inevitable loss of muscle.

So I'm sucking it up and going to the gym after work, once or twice a week. (I also go to yoga once or twice a week.) But here's the genius part: I only go for 30 minutes. I time myself. 30 minutes and I'm gone. I do something different each time: bicycle, stair machine, treadmill, elliptical, weights, rowing machine, or a combination of a couple of those things. I don't give myself time to get bored, although 30 minutes on an elliptical was about 25 minutes longer on that thing than I wanted to be on it, but you know what I mean. 

These quickies seems to be the way to make myself go with any consistency. I’m not going to win any athlete of the year awards, that’s for sure. And my FitBit is thoroughly unimpressed with me. As far as it's concerned, I'm a couch potato. It has even stopped giving me encouraging messages in the morning when I first put it on. I swear, if one of these days I get an "Well, look who decided to get up"s, that thing is flying right out the window. Technobastard.

But I digress. 

Unexpectedly, I am enjoying the rowing machine. I feel like it should be harder; it’s just kind of lovely and meditative. Maybe it gets hard when you do it on actual water for hours. I bet that’s hard. But as I sit there “rowing” I find myself regretting not trying out for crew when I was in college. Not that I would have made it, but who knows, maybe they might have been desperate right then. Of course, at that time, I didn’t know that crew was even a thing, I was an Italian coming from Japan.

Anyway, point is, I wouldn't mind trying the rowing thing.

Some of you (bless your hearts!) faithfully followed my previous blog efforts. But my blog shifted from a personal blog to a personal/photography blog. I needed to merge the two, so that I could have my photos readily accessible at all times and not just lost in the flow of the blog posts. So instead of doing a blog that links to my photos, I thought I would try a photography site that has blog capabilities. Occasionally someone asks me if they can buy prints of my work, and since I no longer have my fabulous printer friend (he sold his business, unfortunately for me), I needed to work something else out. I used to be on SmugMug but found it unwieldy and annoying. I tried FourSquare and I just didn't get it at all. Finally, I found ZenFolio. Right now it's just a trial but I think it might work.

What has me decide which site to use? Simple: how long it takes me to figure out how it works. If I can figure out about half on my own, and the rest by watching a couple of tutorials, I'm sold. Honestly I just don't have the time for fancy-ass websites. And honestly this is not going to be a very polished site, at least not for a while. Or ever. Maybe never. Because I have a job. And friends (yes, I have friends, you're one of them, and you know it). And cats. And errands. And I have to exercise, and sleep, and read books, and fritter away time so my brain can regenerate. And it's possible I won't ever care enough to have a super spiffy site.

There is still much to do, I have to figure out the pricing and how this all links to my new printer (I think I may have found one, keep your fingers crossed). I also have to populate photo galleries and figure out how to make them accessible, or if I even need them to be accessible to any degree. And 2 weeks from now, when the trial ends, I might decide this is not it for me after all. Who knows. We'll see. 

Anyway, since I'm not a professional photographer, and I'm not a professional blogger, this is going to be neither fish nor fowl, and both fish and fowl. We'll see how it works. If it works. Feel free to wander about, see some of the photos I've uploaded. I think if you click on the Portfolio link on the top right you should be able to see the galleries I've added so far.

Enjoy.