A special edition of Life Lately because it has been an entire lifetime since I last wrote anything. Turns out bar study really does take up all your time and energy!
A long summer of studying came to an end this week. It’s funny; I thought that Wednesday July 31st at approximately 5:30 pm would be one of the happiest moments of my life. But it didn’t really feel that way. The overwhelming emotion was emptiness- I felt like a balloon that had finished whizzing around the room, hit the ceiling, and drifted towards the ground to lie there for the foreseeable future. I didn’t feel like celebrating, I didn’t really even feel a sense of accomplishment. I think part of this is becuase results don’t come out until November, and so I don’t know if I can feel proud of myself or like I achieved something (even though I know that taking the test itself is an accomplishment). Another part of it is that, ever since mid-April when classes ended and finals started, I have been propelled by stress and single-minded determination towards studying. All of a sudden, my purpose is gone. After neglecting all of my interests for so long, I need to rediscover what I used to like to do and what life was like before I felt guilty for doing anything other than studying.
Yesterday, the day after the exam, I felt like I was recovering from a flu. I spent most of the day lying around various areas of my house, ruminating over questions I thought I missed, and engaging in way too much screentime. Today, I feel better, though still tired, and am getting back on track with the tasks I’ve ignored this summer, such as plannign our trip to Japan at the end of the month. Somehow all we have booked are the flights, so I definitely need to get on top of what we’re doing, where we’re going, and where we’ll be staying.
I feel like the summer has passed in the blink of an eye and my FYP is all fall content as of August 1st but I am desperately trying to cram those summer moments into this next month. This weekend, we’re going to the OC Fair and a demolition derby (my first!). I’m also hoping to get to the beach since it looks like it’ll be a hot one. Summer peaks late in LA anyways so I think it’ll be a good month.
Did
Went to Valle de Guadalupe:
We went on a little getaway for the 4th of July (necessary due to our neighborhood’s extreme love of fireworks). We’ve been to Valle once before in, March 2021, and enjoyed it so we decided to head back and see what’s changed. It seems like it’s gotten a lot busier since we last went and there were a number of restraurants and cafes that we got to try for the first time this time. I am writing up amore in-depth post about our expereinces in Valle so I’ll leave it at this for now, but overall we had a very nice, relaxing time!
Joined a hot yoga studio:
I knew that I would need to figure out some sort of workout class situation for the summer since, left to my own devices, I would simply rot at home all day and that would have disastrous consequences. Since I no longer had access to the USC gym and the unlimited workout class pass I bought every semester, it was time to go out into LA and see what kind of options were out there. I’ve been a fan of hot yoga for a while and you may remember that Axel and I had a membership to a studio in January and went quite a bit during that month. It feels like both a workout and a trip to the spa, in a way, and emerging from that hot room, dripping in sweat, feels like being reborn (possibly a slight exaggeration but it feels GREAT). I’d tried a couple studios in LA, including Corepower and the studio on the Westside where we did the membership in January, but I wanted to check out a couple more that were nearby. I first did a one week trial of Hot 8, which has a lot of locations and has very devoted members. While there was a lot I liked about the studio, I simply could not stand the insane temperature of the classes. Whereas the classes I had taken before ranged from 95-102 degrees, at Hot 8 I took a class where the thermostat was set to 116! And this was a very intense barre class. I honestly thought taht I would not be able to get off the floor at the end of it.
So I decided to try another studio, called Sweat, which had a convenient location downtown. I didn’t expect that this would end up being my studio of choice, because it had a couple of cons (paid parking and “free flow” style classes being the main ones) but Axel and I ended up signing up for unlimited memberships at the beginning of June and have been going strong ever since. I try to go 5x/week, it sometimes ends up being 4 or 6, but I truly love it. During bar prep, many days the only time I left my house was to go to Sweat. We started going to the 6:45 or 7:45 am classes, which, once upon a time, would have sounded horrendously early to me. But I started to appreciate being up early, getting my workout in, and getting started on studying before my normal wakeup time. Now that we are on the thick of summer, I have to admit that it’s getting harder to motivate myself to go sweat in a hot room and then emerge into the hot day, but going in the evening or early morning keeps things tolerable.
Celebrated my brother’s high school graduation as well as my law school graduation:
We took a quick trip to AZ in May for my brother’s graduation and got to see all our family, which was really nice, especially since we had just seen mine two weeks prior for my graduation too. I don’t usually get to see my family so often in the middle of the year like that so it was lovely to get some family time in before delving deep into bar prep. We hit up some local spots for food, tried the Melting Pot for the first time, which I had been fixating on for weeks for some reason (it was okay), swam in my mom’s pool, and got a taste of the Phoenix summer weather we’d been missing for a few years (we were happy to head back to cool LA weather at the end of the weekend). I also made my signature butterbeer cupcakes, at my brother’s request.
It was also fun to have my family in town for my graduation becuase I got to show them around and take them to my favorite places. We got Korean barbecue, pizza at Pizzana, burgers at The Win-Dow, and ramen at Men-Oh Ramen in Little Tokyo. It was a very busy, but enjoyable, weekend to celebrate three years of law school done!
Made
A lot of sandwiches:
Since I was at home all day, every day, essentially, for the entire summer, I had to figure out how to make easy lunches that I actually enjoyed eating. I made a ton of sandwiches, my favorite being sliced turkey, granny smith apples, dijon mustard, and Unexpected Cheddar from Trader Joe’s, on the TJ’s Olive Fougasse (a cousin of Focaccia), which is an odd, steering wheel shaped thing of bread, that heats up perfectly in the toaster oven and can be sliced into four mini-baguettes. I also relied on mainstays like Annie’s mac and cheese, experimented with the delicious, but epxensive, Amy’s organic frozen meals, various types of instant noodles (my favorite being the TJ’s soy sesame knife-cut noodles doctored up wtih peanut butter and chili oil), and, of course, leftovers from dinner whenever we had them. I always looked forward to the break in the day where I got to make my little lunch and stop studying for a while and I’ll miss the ease of eating lunch at home once I start working in September and have to pack lunches again.
Bought
I did a close to successful No Buy July, which I was happy about since my April/May attempts were disasters. I did up my workout wardrobe this summer though, since I was sorely lacking in hot yoga appropriate attire. I trawled Amazon for the best bike shorts and increased my Lulu collection by a couple more sports bras.
My two favorite Amazon bike shorts:
I have been on the hunt for good bike shorts for a while. I’ve tried two Lulu styles and hated them both so I then turned to Amazon. After trying out 4-5 different brands, I settled on my two favorites. The Hey Nuts brand is more compressive, made of thicker material, and has pockets. I have the black and navy colors in the 4” inseam. The Roself Moment brand is softer, a little less constricting, and a little thinner in material and has no pockets. I have the bean pink and lavender, both in the 4” inseam as well. Overall, I think there’s no reason to pay $60 for bike shorts when great options exist for $10-$12.
My yoga mat:
I went with the Lululemon The Mat 5mm and I love it. It has two sides, one that is textured and one that’s smooth. I use the textured side when I have a yoga towel on top becuase the towel sticks to that side better and then the smooth side is perfect to use without a towel and doesn’t slip at all. I got Axel the Alo Yoga Warrior mat and it’s awful to be honest. It never fully dries and so there are always wet spots on it (From sweat or from the cold towels they give us at our studio). I want to get him a Lulu mat soon because it is just far superior.
New additions to my Lulu sports bra collection:
Lastly, I got another Flow Y Bra and a Like a Cloud Longline Bra in Espresso. The Flow Y is a classic and is perfect for wearing under tank tops or on its own with high waisted bottom. The Like a Cloud is softer and less structured, but very comfortable, it feels kinda puffy; they describe it as “marshmallowy” which I think is accurate. I also like how it’s a little longer so it feels more like a top than just a bra.
Watched
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder:
This is a Netflix mini series based off the books by Holly Jackson. I was so confused when the setting and the characters were British becuase I could have sworn that it took place on the East Coast in the US. Axel tried to gaslight me into thinking that they were always British (he read the books too) but I discovered that, for some reason, they changed the setting to Connecticut for the American version of the books. Anyways, this was a fabulous mystery series that had us fighting the urge to watch it all in two days. The visuals were beautiful, the storyline (even though we vaguely remembered the plot from the books) was compelling, and the soundtrack was great. I highly recommend giving it a go.
Read
I am so behind on my reading goal and have big plans to catch up this month. I only count new books towards my goal and during bar prep, all I wanted to read was familiar favorites at the end of a long day of studying. However, I did read a couple new books over the past couple months:
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: A common issue I’ve found while reading books translated from Japanese is that the translation is clunky and the flow of words doesn’t feel natural. This book had that problem as well, but it was short and interesting enough that I liked it anyways. It follows a woman, living in Japan, who works at a convenience store and has really no other ambition, despite the expectations of society, which dictate that she should be looking for a husband and a more rewarding career. I identified with the main character’s simple pleasure in the organized efficiency of the convenience store and thought it was an interesting perspective on modern day societal norms in Japan. I’ve sometimes wished that I could earn enough to live on by working as a restaurant hostess, a job I held in the past and loved doing. 4/5
- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn: This book was so disturbing I felt like I was mentally recovering from reading it for the next day or so. The main character is the daughter in a family that runs a carnivail and the plot jumps back and forth between following her in the present day and flashbacks to the past, when the carnival was still running. Essentially, the father of the family decides to create his own carnival “geeks” (essentially, performers in the freakshow) by having his wife experiment with different substances while she is pregnant with the goal of giving the children unique bodily differences. This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the unsettling elements of this book. I enjoyed the writing for the most part and, though the book starts out slow, I was racing to finish it by the second half. 4/5
