June 2008 Archives

From the 17 - 24th I had a friend visiting from out of town.  So basically we spent the week playing tourist in LA.

After picking my friend up at the airport, we headed straight to the beach (Manhattan Beach).  Spent a little time there and then headed back to my neighborhood.  My friend was craving mexican food, so we walked over to the taqueria that is near my house.  After that we just kind of chilled out for the rest of the evening.

The next day we did some more exploring around the neighborhood.  We walked down Melrose, to about halfway between Fairfax and La Cienega.  The plan was to check out some of the stores (even though neither of us had money to spend).  However, we left a little early in the morning, and a majority of the stores weren't open.  In the end, we got some coffee and did about 7 miles of urban hiking getting there and back.  Needless to say, after that much walking in pretty warm sun, we didn't do much else the rest of the day.

Thursday, we got day passes for the Metro and did some exploring public transit style.  We had an early lunch in Little Ethiopia, went to the La Brea tar pits, and in the evening went a saw a sneak preview of the movie Finding Amanda in Beverly Hills.

Friday, we got up early and headed downtown to check out the LA Flower District.  They claim its the largest flower market in the world.  It's basically 2 big warehouses full of venders selling flowers (and other accessories).  It's mainly geared towards the wholesale market, but they have public hours each day as well (though some of the vendors shut down by then).  After that we went up to Griffith Park and walked around the Observatory for a bit. I'm pretty sure we went to the beach at some point as well.

Saturday, my friend wanted to visit another friend in San Diego.  So we headed down south to do that.  I dropped my friend off at her friends and headed over to one of my friends place to hang out with her and her husband.  They decided to take me to Coranado Beach to check out that area.  We first went to Mr. P's Irish Pub for lunch.  Mr. P's is a big Navy hangout (my friend's husband is in the Navy.  I had a pretty good corned beef sandwhich.  Then we walked over to the beach and hung out there for a few hours.  My friends husband and I spent a significant amount of time body surfing.  It was pretty much a great time (and I managed not to get sunburned).  Later I met back up with my visiting friend and her friend for some dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  After dinner, we started our journey back to Los Angeles.  But on the way, stopped at Stone Brewing Co. in Escondido.  We got two beers to split between the two of us, a 2006 Double Bastard and a Cali-Belgique IPA.  Both were good, the cali-belgique was a really interesting hybrid beer.

Sunday, we went to church and then to the beach all afternoon.  I think we got there a little before noon and didn't leave until after 6pm.  It was great (and again...no sunburn).

Monday we got up late, had some breakfast and had a somewhat lazy day.  We went and saw the new Incredible Hulk movie at the Arclight.

Tuesday, we went to Doughboy's for breakfast and then it was time to drop my friend back off at the airport.

It was a great week...and fun being a tourist in my own town.

I just heard from my little sister about her dog Hallie's head xray (mentioned in this entry.

There was nothing abnormal on the xrays, and the blood tests came back negative.  So they don't really know why her eyes rolled back and why she was lethargic.  My dad says she seems to be doing better the past week though.

So good news for sure.

Posting early this week, because I have a friend visiting for a week starting tomorrow.

It's been a pretty slow week event wise.  Mainly I've just been job searching.

I did ride my bike to Pasadena last week, which was a significant ride for my out of shape self.  I did cheat and take the Metro train home.  Baby steps with the getting into shape.

I'm slowly starting to get in the swing of cooking again.  Tonight, I'm going to make my first attempt at homemade pasta.  We'll see how things turn out...but it'll be fun just to try.  I'm liking getting back into cooking...and who knows...maybe I'll even start blogging about it soon like my friend Nicole at Pinch My Salt.

For those of you reading this in a feed reader...I tweaked my design a little bit over the weekend.  There are more tweaks to come, so check out the actual site every once in awhile and let me know what you think.

I forgot to mention in my last sketch...

Went and caught Doc Martin at sublevel (His monthly underground party) last Saturday night/Sunday Morning.  Had a great time dancing until almost 4am with my friends Charlie and DJ Drue.

Here's a little taste from the March 29th party at 6:30am (I didn't make it to that one):

I don't have much to talk about this week, which is why I'm late posting my weekly update.

I'm still looking for a new job.  I got laid-off at the coffee shop, because we just weren't busy enough.  It will be a long tough summer I imagine for Rich.  I hope he survives because it is the best cup of coffee near USC.

I've been sending off resumes every day, still haven't had much of anything biting though.  I'm starting to get a little concerned.

My little sister, who lives in NYC and works as nanny, is going to Dubai with the family she works for on Sunday.  They are staying at the Burj Al Arab for three nights. Rooms there start at $1,500 a night.  It is a whole different world my sister lives in.

I had a great weekend.

Friday night, I went out with my housemate and a few of her friends to The Mint to see Mama's Cookin'.  The band is friends with one of Kathryn's (the housemate) friends.  It was nice to get out and see some live music.  If only the second band would have been any good (they needed a bit of practice).  We got there a little before Mama's Cookin' was set to go on...so we also caught a bit of Janeane Garofalo's stand up act.  She had some funny bits...but seemed to be phoning it in a bit.

Saturday was my friend Frank's 30th Birthday.  The festivities started off with a BBQ at the park in front of their apartment.  After a few hours at the park, the party moved to an art gallery on La Brea.  This part was a surprise for Frank.  There we had wine, champagne and a little dance party.  We only had the art gallery space until 11pm, so once that rolled around we tried to figure out somewhere else to go.  We ended up at a place on Melrose, but they were booked with private parties...so we couldn't get into the section where the dancing was going on.  Some of the folks were hungry, so I suggested we check out Kitchen 24, a new 24-hour diner on Caheunga in Hollywood.  It's on the same block as quite a few of the trendy clubs in Hollywood.  Kitchen 24 had only been open for a few days at this point...so they are still working out some issues (about half of their menu was unavailable), but the food we did have was pretty cool.  The best part was the place has a DJ booth and when the DJ came on around 2am, our group started an impromptu dance party.  We eventially got about half of the folks in the diner dancing with us.  I think we may have been the first group to jump up and start dancing...cuz the staff was taking pictures with their iPhones, etc.

On Sunday, one of my friends and I headed over to Manhattan Beach.  We just hung out on the beach and talked for about four hours.  It was nice and relaxing, though I didn't quite get enough coverage on the sunscreen, and am now paying for it with a quite red back.  Oh well.

You will be missed...but your music will live on...