Los Angeles- Adventures of a Cali girl

Yeah… I’m a Cali girl, born and raised. Just not a SoCal girl. I’m a Central Cal  girl- which is actually pretty sweet because you can get to anything you want and home in a day trip, but that’s neither here nor there. The point of this page will be to share some of the fun and adventures I have had since moving to Los Angeles in August of 2009. I came here to go back to school. I’ve been coming down to LA all of my life, but since I graduated high school I’ve been taking trips to things down here more often. Now I live here but I refuse to not do things because I live here. I love the touristy things. And on this page… I’m going to share all the fun with you! Hope you enjoy!

October 28- November 2, 2009

yes, it is redundant for a person who doesn’t work (and isn’t a stay-at-home mom) to talk about being on vacation when they didn’t go anywhere but… for the last week… we’ve been on vacation. see… my Jackie (i.e. one of my two best friends from Chicago) came to visit. not only first time to LA, but first time to California! so hally and i had to show her around and give her a good time! especially since i think she should move out here

Wednesday~
picked up Jackie at LAX and headed south to Torrance to go to a favorite Peruvian restaurant, El Pollo Inka. J had never had peruvian and i’ve been working on H for a few years. tasty tasty food! yum. then we slowly meandered (on the 405!) back to our apartment where we spent some time hanging out and visiting. we eventually popped over to Larchmont for some cupcakes and pinkberry. in the evening we hopped back into the car and drove up to near Thousand Oaks and the Pierce College Farm Halloween Festival. we picked up a few pumpkins (which as of this writing are still sitting on the floor in the kitchen waiting to be carved) and wandered the amusements. we did the haunted house, where we discovered J is not to lead because she walked us right out an exit. we did the corn maze, where they told us not lick or smoke the corn. and we did the haunted corn maze, where we talked to all the performers and they got mad at us. we saw a goat, at the petting zoo, who had gotten on top of the structure and declared himself king. i think he was evil king- look at the picture for proof!

afterwards we were all pretty hungry so we headed back towards home and went to Marie Callendar’s for dinner because they don’t have those back in Chicago. weird, i know. lol.

Thursday~
i think we had a leisurely morning and then ran over to Hollywood and Highland mall for lunch and then to take one of the bus tours around Hollywood. We opted for the double decker tour and when we went to buy our tickets the lady kept trying to convince us that wasn’t what we wanted. we won though. the tour was fun. the commentary was cheezy. but it was nice to be able to sit and listen and not have to be driving- we could all look and enjoy! a bit too much sun for me and H though. oh well. after the tour and a little wandering to find Patrick Swayze’s star for J, we hopped back into the car and over the hill to wander over to Santa Monica pier. i’d never been, neither had J of course, so it was a nice little stop and J wanted ocean. lol. we walked the whole pier and especially enjoyed stopping to watch the new york trapeze school staff have a little fun on the swings. pretty pretty boys.

after a game of skeeball and one of table hockey we headed up to the promenade for some delicious crepes for dinner. then it was back home to veg out with dvds before sleep.

Friday~
this day was spent at home, mostly. i had a few pieces of homework to do and we didn’t really have any plans. i don’t think we left the house until i left for class and H & J left to go to the Dr Horrible/Guild screening. but we all did get out for a lil bit. lol. my class was lame. they had fun. oh well.

Saturday~
the plan was to have a leisurely day, with naps, and then go to Universal Studios for the last night of Halloween Horror Nights. of course, we got hungry and that led to going to Masa in Echo Park for pizza. so good. and then we wanted to show J something very uniue, so we went and walked around the La Brea tar pits. that was cool! love the tar pits. then after another trip to Larchmont for snacks, we headed home to rest for the two hours before Debbie picked us up. the park was so much fun! and being both the last night and a saturday… the hours were extended til 2am! with our Front of Line passes we totally were able to do everything! we started out on the lower level with the Saw Maze, then we rode the Mummy (we ended up there twice), and H wanted to do Jurassic Park. nothing else was open below so we headed back to the main level and went on the Terror Tram. which didn’t really give a tour as much as it took our to the backlot and you wandered some mazes out there. turns out, we were supposed to work as a group to make it through the mazes but apparently one chick failed (it’s cool, she was sort of a douche) and ended up flayed in the trees. Oh well. lol. then we opted on some food. off to KrustyLand cuz it was there and then we booked it through the scare zones to get to the Rocky Horror Tribute.

and then back to see the other show, Bill & Ted’s Land of the Lost pop-culture. AWESOME!

after that we had to find the last three mazes, My Bloody Valentine, Michael Myers (H kissed Michael, but then i think he cheated on her), and the Chucky maze (which was LAME!). at the point we finished all of them it was a little after 1am and we opted to hit one of the shops- J got the sweatshirt for the event (i have one from 1997) and H & i bought awesome top hats! at this point we were all beat and opted to head home. only problem… one of the tires on D’s car had a flat! but we filled it and were able to all get home. the time only mostly screwed us up… lol. but not too bad. i still love the “sliders” but the chain saw guys get annoying.

Sunday~
we had lunch plans in Bakersfield to meet mom and james so we had to head up north. the drive was really easy and we were actually about 45 minutes early. which turned out to be a good thing because the place we’d planned on was dead! but we picked a new place and called the change into the them. then we went to play at Toys-R-Us for a bit. lunch was good. short. but good. we talked a lot about saturday because we’d had so much fun. it was interesting listening to J and mom talk work because J does juvenile probation and mom, of course, is DCFS. two sides that are sort of but not really opposing. anyways, after lunch we headed south with a stop for Starbucks and then a tour through Fort Tejon (sort of at the base of the grapevine). it was edumacational.

locked up H in the fort jail. hehehe. after the fort we stopped at the visitor center for Pyramid Lake and got even more edumacation! in all my years, i don’t think i’ve ever stopped at pyramid lake.
eventually we made it back to LA and decided to hit Citywalk for dinner. we’d been at Universal the night before but we didn’t walk through Citywalk at all… ended up being a great idea because J got most of her souveniors for her nephews and neice there. and more crepes for dinner. and eventually we came home and all passed out watching dvds.

Monday~
for J’s last day we took it easy until early afternoon when we hopped in the car and went to another taping of the Late Late Show wit Craig Ferguson. the waiting was horrible! and we had sun! ugh! but once inside and settled… so much fun! unlike last time when we had just the monologue, an intor piece, and one guest this time we had a russian musical act (with a giant mouse), monologue, intro piece, George Eads from CSI, a closing piece, and Mo’Nique (which airs on Wednesday, so Craig had to change suits). yay! and it was funny!!!!! but not eating lunch was bad and poor J’s blood sugar was too low and she got a headache. so we only got food and didn’t wander the grove.

Tuesday~
J flew away.

all pictures can be found here

Universal Studios

One of things my roommate and I did after moving to LA was get annual passes to Universal Studios. This is one of my favorite theme parks and it happens to be super close to our apartment. So we can take off just about anytime and run up the hill to play! It’s paid for itself so many times this year… the only thing that caused us any unhappyness is that we learned how to bypass the line on our favorite ride and then when we went on my birthday… we were told not to do that again. But it turns out that one of the guys I know from back home works there and so now when we go, I get to see him. Also, since we are idiots- my roommate and I have made friends with one of the guys in the WaterWorld stunt show. So it’s extra fun to go and hang out for the day and get to say hi to people we know. Someday, I’m sure- we’ll make it over to Disneyland. But for now we are content to hang out at Universal Studios.