one year anniversary

Aric and I will be celebrating our one year anniversary in New York City over Labor Day weekend, where we met and spent three unforgettable weeks together before launching into a five-year long distance relationship. We'll stroll through Central Park where we first held hands, sip coffee at a small French restaurant in midtown where we celebrated his birthday, and walk the boardwalk of Brooklyn Heights where we first kissed.

Aric, in our year of marriage, has taught me what it means to be lavishly loved by someone, what it means to have dreams come true and what it feels like to live with someone who can cause you to become so angry and so happy in a matter of hours. Aric wrote a beautiful reflection on our marriage on his blog. Take a look. http://aricallen.blogspot.com/

a story resurrected

Remember a while back I wrote about a horrible day in May -- "a story killed, a wet purse and an ugly dent in my car"?

Well, that story got resurrected this week and the response has been better than expected. LA Observed, a blog run by a group of renown journalists, picked up my story today about Koreatown banks here in LA. The excerpt is called, "Wall Street turns on Korean banks."

http://www.laobserved.com/biz/

The story can also be found on http://www.labusinessjournal.com/ It's the top story on the right -- "Korean Banks Taking a Hard Hit." If you're visiting this blog after Aug. 26, you have to pay to read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a pain. But that's the only way I get paid. I'd be happy to zap you a copy so let me know.

So the story has been revived to a better state, the purse has survived with a little sag, the only thing left... a new car?

a house on ridgeview avenue

It was the day after I arrived from Tokyo three years ago. Aric and I were trying to take our first steps as a couple on the same soil, after having been apart for eight months. We were fiercely trying to get past my final days in Tokyo, which were hard on our relationship. So before I could get over jetlag, we went to a birthday party together.

The whole house was lit up with people laughing and eating. The backyard, with a lone wooden swing, was idyllic. I remember clutching onto a purple lily for the birthday girl I'd only met once. The house, with its dark wooden beams, Rockwell paintings and oversized black leather chairs seemed rustic and inviting. The girl, a newly wed, had just leisurely walked out of a shower and seemed at ease as she brushed her hair even as people bustled around her, cooking and prepping for dinner. "I like her," I thought. "She knows how to take things at her own pace."

I would sleep over in their guest room that night, and many more nights as I drove up from San Diego on weekends to spend time with Aric in Pasadena just across the bridge. The house on Ridgeview Avenue became sort of a home to us just as Kenny and Alicia became a resting place for our relationship. It was to that home we returned to after Aric proposed on a winter beach. It was in that home our small group became a family. It was to that home the Kaos brought home two beautiful, beautiful daughters.

This month, the Kaos sold their house and they're moving away. And while most of my life has consisted of goodbyes and long-distance relationships, I am finding myself mourning a loss. We know Kenny and Alicia, who stood in our wedding, are perennial friends. And their daughters Naomi and Olivia have a permanent place in our hearts. But it's the end of an era for the Kaos and the Allens.

I'll miss Alicia's note to her husband -- "You so hot in Eagle Rock" -- that always hung a little to its side on the refrigerator, their creaky door that I never managed to open on my own, and Kenny's "magnificent" tea.

Kenny and Alicia, here's to a new chapter. You'll be missed, sorely missed, here in Eagle Rock.