Me and My Imaginary Friends

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

LA Update

Thursday night, Sporty Nice picked me up at LAX and we went to dinner on Rodeo Drive. Nice place - I'd never been there.

Friday Sporty Nice was working so we spent the whole day with her charges. And I do mean the whole day. She'd missed some work earlier in the week, so she was "on" until 7:30. When she finally got off work, we went to dinner in Malibu at Gladstones 4 Fish. I picked the place not realizing that she doesn't like seafood. And let me tell you, they have almost nothing on their menu that isn't seafood. But it was a cool atmosphere and she seemed to enjoy it enough to want to bring the boys back there. I thought I'd been there before, but I guess I'd only driven by. It's on PCH at the end of Sunset Blvd.

Saturday, we didn't really have plans. As I notified you at the time, we'd decided to go to the Getty Museum in the afternoon. For the morning, we decided to head over to Marina Del Rey to take a little one hour boat tour of the area. But once we were there, we changed our minds and decided to go over to Catalina Island. The ferry ride was fantabulous. I love being on a boat! Catalina Island was really interesting. Sporty Nice mentioned that she felt like she'd traveled out of the country. And I don't blame her, there was a cruise ship anchored off the island and people were taking excursions to it. So, yeah, it was like we had traveled out of the country.

The first thing we saw when we landed was a sign from the island churches welcoming us. Yep, you guessed it, there was a placard for the island Kingdom Hall with a phone number. So we called it. They were having a Spanish language meeting that afternoon, but we weren't exactly dressed for it. (We also aren't The Polyglot.) We grabbed a quick bite to eat and looked in a few shops. The shops were filled with typical tourist crap - nothing very original. Then we hopped on the "Sky Road" tour. There's a road that goes from the main town of Avalon up to the airport.

Sky Road is one lane, but serves two way traffic. It runs along the side of a mountain, very curvy and very dangerous. The bus driver took the curves way too fast. The people at the front of the bus screamed like we were on a roller coaster. Thankfully, the bus driver was not actually in the bus, he was pulling our passenger car from his big rig type cab and couldn't hear us at all. He would pull over for what he called "Kodak moments." But he never stopped long enough and I always seemed to be on the wrong side of the bus. I got some photos, but haven't developed my film yet. (I should probably get around to that.)

We stopped at the airport for 20 minutes. I thought that was a little odd. Maybe the engine needed a rest after pulling that contraption up the mountain. I don't know. Then we started back down. On the way down, we finally saw what I'd come to see - the buffalo, a whole herd. A movie company brought buffalo over to the island back in the 60's or 70's at the order of Zane Gray. He wanted his book filmed into a movie in the location where he wrote it. That meant making Catalina look like the American West. Whatever. I got to see buffalo. More undeveloped film.

We were so exhausted (and fried) by the end of the day that we just caught dinner close to her house. It was low key and uneventful. I was BEAT!

Sunday we bailed on the convention - we'd each been and she didn't know enough people for us to think we'd run into anyone we knew. We decided to catch the Getty on that day. We got there not too long after it opened and boy was I glad. It was stinking hot that day. We looked at all the pretty pictures. It got more and more crowded as the day progressed. By the time we left, there was a decent line of people waiting to get in. SO glad we missed that!

Big news is that I stood in front of Van Gogh's Irises. I shot photos of many of hte photos with my cell phone. If you want a good wallpaper for your phone, you gotta shoot it yourself. See...


We chilled out that afternoon then went to dinner at Trader Vic's, a place I've always wanted to go. I had a lovely champagne drink infused with vodka. We then drove around Bel-Air and gawked at the houses. You know, just your average night out.

I delayed my flight until that evening so that I could go directly to Orlando to see Super Mom. We ran some errands and then stopped at the house of a family from her new congregation. The husband's brother and his wife were there showing photos from their trip to an international convention. It was very nice. We swapped stories of traveling internationally. I drank some wine from Hungary. I look forward to getting to know this family better the next I visit. They were lovely people.

And that was my trip to LA...which blended into my trip to Orlando.

5 Comments:

Blogger Elizabeth Escalante said...

Sounds fabulous. Im jealous.

I DO have Van Gogh's "Irises" as my wallpaper on my phone. It alternates with "Starry Night".
Im sure your photo of the real thing is better, though.

9:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't even want to talk about undeveloped film. I just ran across at least a dozen rolls ranging from our last trip to Ireland to present. I don't even know whats on there. Is it worth my money to develop them??? Who knows?

BUT, i did get the pics you took for (ok, OF) me developed. Picked em up yesterday. My mom is very happy with them. My fav is one of the "country girl calendar" shots Lol

1:23 PM  
Blogger Horse N. Buggy said...

I want to see them! I am dying to see how the front yard photos turned out. Any good ones from that bunch?

My word verification is agyry - that's close to "angry."

Which makes me think of the little carnival game where you bop an alligator on the head when he peeks out of his "hole." After a certain amount of your success, the alligator says, "Now I'm angry." It always made me giggle.

1:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

lol..don't think i've ever played that one.

yeah there's probably 6-8 we liked from that roll. I wish the one of me sitting on the rock with their amazing house in the back came out better cause i know you loved that spot but i'm sitting up way too straight..it doesn't look natural. My fault, not yours.

anyway, maybe i can come up again there soon & you can see em all.

3:14 PM  
Blogger Affable Olive said...

Oh man, that's my favorite arcade game. I always beat the high score. I have anger issues, plus I use my hand and the club. Man, I need to go to the beach!

4:01 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home