Steph Lloyd » Pasadena

February in SoCal

Steph — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:46:07 +0000

Hi friends! I thought I’d share this picture of Matt and I at the park yesterday. 80 degrees on Valentine’s Day is okay by me! Matt studied and I read. It was so beautiful.

Also… Matt and I have been watching more of the Olympics this year than ever before. Go USA!!

That’s a Wrap!

Steph — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:55:50 +0000

The holidays are officially over in the Lloyd household. My mom-in-law flew back to Colorado this morning, having stayed with us since Thanksgiving. It was great to have her but our place really shouldn’t house more than two people for very long. It’s tight up in here!

Apart from missing my family at random moments, all went well. We spent Thanksgiving at our house in Pasadena and Christmas at Matt’s brother’s place in Encinitas. Both main meals were delicious. We tried new recipes for almost every dish and, thanks be to Martha Stewart, they all turned out. Ha.

Going to the beach on Christmas Day was a highlight of my life. I’m being serious. There is definitely a place for snow (mountain caps in the distance comes to mind!) but I’m perfectly content with our lack of seasons here in Southern California. I mean it. Blue skies and warm temperatures have yet to get old. I feel like I’m on vacation, like it’s too good to be true! Cabin fever was never my friend and I’m glad that I won’t have to experience it here. We had chilly weather for a week-ish but our landlady loaned us a space heater and it kept us basically warm. Oh, that cold spell was pre-Christmas. Christmas Day was beautiful.

Matt and I didn’t stay up to usher in the New Year because we went to the Tournament of the Roses Parade in the morning. My family watched it every year growing up, so I was pretty excited when I found out the parade route comes within a mile of our house. We bought tickets for the bleachers (you can also sit on the side for free but people camp out two days beforehand for the best spots) and had a great time. At some point I’d like to sit over near the cameras though, where everyone starts out because we were close to the end of the route and everyone was tired by the time they got to us. Several bands weren’t playing anything, they were just marching. Really the only person that I saw that was still grinning and waving his little heart out was Jackie Chan on the Shanghai float. Haha. It was awesome!

Now that the holidays are over, we can return to our normal routine. Me- working, Matt- studying. We have hopes and plans for this year but I have yet to document them. We are still discussing a bunch of options, actually. I’m excited to see what this year brings though. 2010 seems so futuristic!

A Rainbow in the Sky

Steph — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:49:58 +0000

Matt and I were out walking the other day and came around the corner to find thousands of small flags strung overhead. It’s a temporary art installation by a French artist at One Colorado (until tomorrow!). I kinda wish they’d leave them up all year! Walking under them reminded me a bit of walking under all the lanterns for Buddha’s birthday in Korea (pictures). Okay, that was way cooler, but I was still loving the flags in the courtyard!

Paloma Street

Steph — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:21:21 +0000

There are so many textures and colors in my neighborhood. I love these pictures. I really oughtta get out of the house more often and enjoy them in person.

Work and Eat – It’s What I Do

Steph — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:25:45 +0000

To say that things have been busy at the Lloyd house would be an understatement. Life’s been tough. Never have I been so short on time. Seriously. I do not have enough time to do everything that needs to be done. Pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever felt this way. My first priority has been my new job. I’m learning so many new things, which definitely makes it easier, but things are always changing. The people I’m working with (via email and text) have helped out TONS… I’m grateful to them. The job has been challenging. Challenging is good though. I’ll take challenging over boredom any day!

I’ve been saying I need a hobby recently but really that’s just me saying that I need to do something other than work. Which I’ve been doing for a month straight. No, seriously, I eat, sleep and poo in my office. I have a bathroom in there… you’re sick! The things I normally do to keep myself happy haven’t been done for so long. I have over 2,600 unread blog posts in my RSS reader. I’m still working through a book that would normally take me a few hours to finish. My house isn’t completely unpacked (not that I unpack to stay happy, but having full use of the house generally keeps a person slightly less irritated). I keep talking about planting a garden but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to devote the time necessary to keep it alive. For now I have the few flowers my friend left behind (thanks Mel!) and three red bell pepper plants. I’m trying my darndest to keep them alive. It’s probably a good thing that I have them since they force me to leave my computer for a few moments each day to go outside and water them.

I don’t mean to sound negative. I’m actually quite happy. The smoke from the fires cleared a couple of weeks ago and we were left with beautiful weather and clean air. We’ve been to the beach every weekend since we came (except last weekend when we stuck around our ‘hood to explore and go to a church party [hehe, church party]). I love the ocean. Every time we get over there, I nearly melt. I literally want to sit there and just breath the whole time. Oh yes, and get a milk shake from Ruby’s… they are the best! And then there is IN-N-OUT. We’ve been there quite a bit since it’s the closest place to our house to get food. Like I said, life here is tough.

Holy Smokes

Steph — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:29:01 +0000

See all that smoke above the mountains? That is basically right. in. our. backyard. This photo was taken yesterday as we were leaving town for the beach. We were quite impressed with the amount of smoke and could even see the plume over in Huntington Beach. I read online that it can be seen in San Diego too.

This morning I woke up early because my throat was scratchy and I felt like I was having a hard time breathing. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was completely smoky in the house. Ugh. I looked out the window and it was completely gray. Quiet and gray. All the birds flew away because they know that even though it looks like fog, it isn’t. I’m not sure what kind of weather conditions changed, if it had to do with wind or pressure, but something happened to cause a ton of that smoke to settle on our neighborhood.

I looked over at Matt, who was sleeping soundly, and tried to decide what to do. Surely it’s not good to be inhaling all that smoke. It sure didn’t feel good. One might think closing the windows would be a good move but closing them creates a whole new issue as we don’t have air conditioning and it’s 100 degrees outside.

After a few minutes I decided to passively wake my hubby up by opening the curtains. It took him a few minutes but he finally woke up and was surprised by all the smoke too. Haha. We closed the windows and got ready to leave the house. I read that there is danger of looting, since so many people are clearing out, but I figure we don’t have that awful much to steal. TV’s can be re-bought… big deal. I would just hope they don’t trash the place.

Anyway, we be chillin’ here and there around Pasadena until we go home tonight. The skies are looking bluer, so I think the smoke is moving on. I still feel kinda crappy but I’m looking forward to going back to our hot, smoky hiz-ouse!

The Beginning…

Steph — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:57:12 +0000

We’ve been in LA for two weeks now. Wow. It’s crazy. I still can’t believe we live on a street lined with palm trees! While I was outside watering the plants this morning, the whole ‘I live here’ concept sunk in even further. I mean, the weather, the ocean, the ginormous plants and flowers, the different foods and cultures… all around me. I love it.

The past two weeks have been filled with work. Work, work and unpacking the house work. I’m not going to talk about unpacking because you all know how enjoyable that task is. Blek. My job is much more interesting. Day-to-day I’m at home, getting ready for sporting events that our trucks are at. What does that mean? I work for Mobile TV Group. We have several trucks all over the country that are basically rented by our clients to park at stadiums so they can get their games on the air. I’m the coordinator for LA and work with a couple of the trucks, and their engineers, out here. The other day I went to Angel Stadium to “meet” the guys (I had talked to them on the phone at Vyvx before), talk to the stadium guy and meet as many people from the crew as I could. It was tons of fun.

Once everyone was completely busy, I went to see how close I could get to the game. There was some baseball player watching a monitor and then stretching. I thought it was weird that he was there but just kinda stood near him and watched the game. After I left, I looked him up and found out that he’s the pitcher. Too bad I didn’t know to be impressed. Heh heh.

Besides working and unpacking, the only other thing we’ve done was to cruise over to see the house from “The Wedding Singer”. I found out that it is a few minutes from our house the other night on the Internet. It’s one of my favorite movies! I was giggly as I quickly took the picture because I was very much aware that this is someone’s house. Hehe.

(All three of these pictures are from my iPhone… I still haven’t gotten any pictures with my camera.)