In the Meantime, Los Angeles

The countdown stands at 5 days. I fly out Friday morning. It’s only now slowly sinking in. Kind of crazy.

Los Angeles has been pretty great. Nice and relaxing, and I’m even getting a bunch of work done. The only thing that I’ve really wanted to do and not had a chance to do is go hiking or camping or something like that. In case you hadn’t hear, there have been some pretty serious fires, one of which, the Station Fire, has burned pretty much all of the San Gabriel Mountains right behind my house (which you can see a glimpse of above). It’s incredibly sad to look up and see nothing but ash. Seriously, there’s almost nothing left growing up there, at least from what I can see. BoingBoing posted a video of a drive up the Angeles Crest highway and described it perfectly as “a post-war moonscape: death, charred remains.”

I was in sixth grade during the Altadena fires in 1994… They evacuated my school because no one was showing up and it was raining ash. We had family friends and their pets staying with us because they had to leave. This fire has been worse – and it’s still only 93% contained.

But what’s SoCal without some nature? I had to get outside, so I took a trip to the arboretum on a Tuesday. Nice and relaxing, and I guess it sort of counts as hiking.

I also managed to get down to Huntington Beach – quite possibly the best beach in the world. Definitely my favorite. I went down on a Friday afternoon and met up with my friend Josh for some Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. Josh is a Connecticutter, so he doesn’t really have much of a concept of a real beach. He’d certainly never been bodyboarding, so I took it upon myself to remedy that and teach him. It was a perfect day – probably low 80′s, bright and sunny, warm water with about 3 foot waves. Perfect day. I’m hoping to get down there at least once more sometime this week. What’s life without a beach? I don’t ever want to find out.

The weird thing, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, is that I’ve been enjoying Los Angeles a lot more than I have in a long time. I’ve had a chance to head downtown for Philippe’s, drive around, get in some live music, and I’m sure there’s more to come this week (Amoeba!). I even had a chance to try the amazing and delicious world-famous Kogi BBQ truck. (So good!) Maybe it’s because I’ve been making an effort to be a part of LA this time – it is, after all, my home in the United States for the foreseeable future.

Which brings me to… grad school. I have no idea where I’ll end up, but I’ve been plugging away at the applications. The best news so far is that I’ve finished my portfolio – it’s finalized, printed, and bound, all ready to go out. Hopefully, that’s the worst of it. I am so sick of paperwork. There’s plenty left, but it’s pretty simple.

I think.

One of the schools I’m applying to is SCI-Arc, the Southern California Institute of Architecture. My old boss was speaking at their graduation, so I went down there on Sunday to visit. It was nice ceremony in an outdoor pavilion the students built, followed by a reception. I had a chance to talk to Michael, the graduate admissions director, and some students, as well as look at all the various theses up around the school for final review.  Then I went back again yesterday for an official tour to see the school in action and put faces to names.

SCI-Arc is a pretty cool school, housed in an old railroad depot building that seems like it goes on for about a mile. It’s a very creative school, and it looks like there’s a lot of collaboration that goes on there – both on purpose and accidental. As with any architecture school, I wonder where they draw the line between creativity and practicality and just how much it actually matters, but overall I have a very good impression.

God, I want to go back to school so badly!!

On a completely different topic, I’ve been following the health care debate pretty closely. It makes me want to vomit. I don’t understand what is so hard about this whole thing. Everyone admits that health care is a right we have a moral duty to make available to all. Everyone also admits that the health care system in the United States is broken. But no one seems to want to actually fix it! We’ve had the pleasure of watching a month of bickering by idiotic conservatives afraid of the public option, decrying it as “socialism” (or “Markism” as one sign said) while they turn around and draw on their Medicare benefits, VA benefits, or vast pools of cash whenever a health problem comes up. Then their representatives get up and say they won’t vote for reform because they want Obama to fail. Meanwhile, we have Democrats – who supposedly want this thing to pass yet somehow take more money from the insurance industry than anyone else – presenting “solutions” that actually make things worse. If the Baucus bill were to pass, everyone would be required to buy health insurance, but there would be no changes to it – so they could charge you exorbitant amounts and drop you when you actually need it. And if you can’t afford it, then you get fined. Fined! So apparently not being able to afford health insurance is not an excuse for not having it. If you choose to use that excuse, you won’t be able to eat either.

Nice. I hope this whole thing just goes away. I don’t really care for now, I guess, because I’m going to Spain, where I get free health care when I need it by simply walking into a hospital or clinic. Amazing, isn’t it? That’s why the WHO ranks their system number 7 and ours number… 37. Yes, 37. Right below Costa Rica and a long way behind Morocco.

Gah! I don’t want to think about this anymore. Instead, I’m going to be excited by the great new albums coming out very, very soon. Brand New’s Daisy is coming out on Tuesday (hence the trip to Amoeba), and Switchfoot’s Hello Hurricane is going to be out early next month. I can’t wait!

Here’s a little taste of how awesome the new Switchfoot is going to be:

And you know what, just for the hell of it, here’s one other video that I’ve thought was pretty awesome recently: Friendly Fires’ “Kiss of Life”. I think it’s the percussion that gets me.

Anyway, 5 days left in LA!!