Coffee snobbery and yoga

It's been a relatively quiet few days for me after the shopping frenzy. On Friday I went to my favourite yoga class at Black Dog in Sherman Oaks. When I was in LA last year I was at Black Dog two or three times a week doing Anusara yoga and loving it. I returned to Melbourne with good intentions of continuing regular yoga practice but after a trying a couple of classes that didn't really rock my world I slipped easily back into the gym routine of step and pump classes with all my gym pals. Now feeling travel-stiff and yoga-less for nearly a year, compounded by sleeping on an inflatable mattress since arriving in LA (did I mention my new, grown-up, proper bed will be delivered this Friday and I CAN'T WAIT?!!), it was great to step back into a familiar class with my favourite instructor. By the end of the class I felt simultaneously fatigued and invigorated; perfect! Today I can feel the work on my body and am planning on checking out an Ashtanga class tomorrow morning.

Sleeping on an inflatable mattress encourages one to rise early, even on a Saturday morning. Which can be a good thing in LA at this time of year when it can reach 30 degrees (or the 80s, fahrenheit) by 10am. I got up and went for a walk in a nearby park. It was lovely, but unfortunately not as shady as I hoped for so after one circuit I'd had enough sun and headed home again. It's a big park with lots of playing fields and this morning it was alive with kids' soccer and baseball matches.

Once home again I then took a stroll along Ventura Boulevard, a busy strip filled with restaurants, cafes and shops of all kinds. Think Chapel St, but twice as wide and three times as long. Halloween is but a month away and there are several large costume shops dedicated to all manner of Halloween paraphernalia; from costumes (usually either elaborate affairs complete with masks and rubber prosthetics, or teeny tiny slutty versions of superheroes and cartoon characters) to home and car decorations. Pumpkins abound and Starbucks has a special coffee for the season: a pumpkin spice latte. Out of curiosity I tried one; it's more like a dessert than a coffee (and I declined the offer of extra cream), very sweet, not unpleasant, but not what I would call coffee either. But then perhaps that's exactly it's appeal. Starbucks seems designed for people who don't actually like the taste of coffee. Of course coffee snobs like me don't actually like the taste of Starbucks.

This afternoon I've been hammering craigslist (kind of an online trading post and therefore the go-to place for everything from shared housing - tick - to second hand furniture, cars and sexual partners). Me, I'm just looking for some basic furniture; a desk and chair, and a floor lamp. Houses in LA (and the rest of America for all I know) very rarely have ceiling lights. It takes some getting used to that there is usually no light switch near the dooor when you enter a room. You must reach for a lamp, or several lamps, and so light comes gently from corners of the room instead of directly overhead. I must say it's quite a flattering lighting arrangement, and cosy, but it can be annoying not to have that one strong light filling the room from above. That said, in this heat it's a blessed relief to hide away in a cool, dimly lit apartment.

I'm listening to INXS. I heard an old INXS song played on the radio the other day - Devil Inside. It was great to hear, I hadn't realised that INXS were that well known in the U.S. So today on my Ventura Blvd meanderings I popped into a second-hand CD/DVD store (wittily called Second Spin) and found myself a copy of INXS' greatest hits. Loving it. I've had another pang of pop cultural patriotism in discovering that Kylie Minogue is playing the Hollywood Bowl next weekend. I'm dying to go! Tickets are still available, I just want to find someone to go with me. I suppose I could go on my own but I'd rather not, it would be so much more fun with company. It seems our little singing budgie is starting to achieve recognition here in the States. Yay Kylie!