Walk, Don't Run

"Here I go again, smiling too sweet / Can't seem to hold it in every time that we meet..." is what I think whenever I see an adorable doggie while I walk back home. I smiled and gave a little chipper "hi!" to a small dog earlier.

The dog I saw today kind of looked like this lovely doggie I had the pleasure of meeting last year.

The pet owner was an elderly Asian lady. What a lucky pet owner! The cute pup was white and fluffy. I walked and ran (more walking than running at the end) for about a good 2+ hours (I probably covered about 5+ miles), and I love it. Time flies by so quickly when you're walking with a friend and chatting about things like GREs and library science programs (hehe. future librarian in the making here! ^^). We walked probably more than a mile to a Starbucks up in Sierra Madre. I confess, I got an iced cherry mocha because cherry's my favorite fruit and I had to try it. If this helps, I got a tall iced cherry mocha instead of getting a grande sized drink like I usually do (ugh, but then again, there was whipped cream on top ^^;; mea culpa!). It was a very pleasant walk to Starbucks even though it was a very long walk. I love how Sierra Madre, like Old Town Monrovia, is such a quaint, small town where there are little shops with adorable things you probably don't need and interesting local restaurants. The area is very suburban Americana. Cés, a native Madridnik (hehe. Woody Allen uses that word in Love and Death (1975). I used to know a boy in high school who looked like a young Woody Allen; his name's Sam), is right about one thing; people (unintentionally or not) tend to take the area they live in for granted and so they don't explore it as much as other places they visit. I admit it, I'm a small town girl at heart. I find simplicity in such a small town lovely and charming. I'm one of those people who love curling up in bed with a good book.

Star Star avec Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart - read it! You'll love it.

Don't get me wrong-I also love going out with friends and dressing up to go dancing (or go watch men fight it out on the ice rink in hockey games); I'm not strictly a homebody. I love traveling...

I've gone to several places in Europe,

gorgeous Lucerne, Switzerland

went to the Cannes Film Festival for an internship in May 2008 and had a blast,

moi with blah hair and a new liking towards tonic

James Cameron in a Skype conference before the world was exposed to Pandora

spent about a month in Spain (oh, how I miss salmorejo!),

@ the Park Güell in Barcelona

and had gone to China and Hong Kong.

That was one long, tough workout of a walk up the Great Wall. It's way too steep for my liking (though you really wouldn't be able to tell that about me with me smiling like that)

It would have a been a crime for me not to stop here.

Anyways, today's suburban excursion was very calming. Listening to music while walking brings about a nice sense of clarity because it's just me and A Fine Frenzy or the occasional No Doubt or opera music I have on my cheap mp3 player. (I have never ever owned an iPod in my life. It's not that I'm against iPods but I never really felt the need to buy one. I'm not like Janeane Garofalo who said that she'll never own a cell phone a good many years back on some late night show; she probably has a cell phone by now, one would hope.) Well, I leave you with A Fine Frenzy song called "The Minnow and The Trout" that I enjoy listening to while I'm walking or running. This song makes me feel like I'm top of the world, like I want to get along with everybody and sing, "Please... I know that we're different / We were one cell in the sea in the beginning / And what we're made of was all the same once / We're not that different after all." (hehe, I finally got the piano book with all the songs from A Fine Frenzy's first album the other day, and I'm ecstatic about trying to play those songs soon! ^^)