Oh January

I know, it's been awhile and I haven't updated.  Consider my hand slapped.  I've been doing a lot of serious soul searching and haven't really had the energy to write.  Anyway, on with what's up!


The week of January 11th was rather dull.  There is nothing of importance to note until Thursday, January 14th.  One of our reps took us to a restaurant called Gordon Ramsay at the London.  The chef is, you guessed it, Gordon Ramsay, the chef from Hell's Kitchen.

The food was delicious.  I had organic chicken with some kind of sauce and some kind of other thing with it...Clearly I'm not a culinary expert, but it was really really good.


The next day, on Friday, my friend Martha came out from Arizona to visit.  Martha and I have been friends since high school.  We met at the Lebanon Valley Youth Scholar's Camp and kept in touch.  Martha loves to tell the story about how I applied to King's just so that I could visit her.  I'm not really sure how true that is, but we'll go with it.  So according to Martha, we kept in touch after LVC and she went to King's.  While I was looking for schools, I decided to visit her at King's and told everyone that I wanted to apply there just so I could visit her.  When I visited, I fell in love with Bro and the entire theater gang so I decided to go there.  Martha and I became very close during college.  She took me under her wing and fully immersed me into the theater, even making me her assistant stage manager for our first show in college, Henry 5.  She allowed me to become friends with all of these people and have the time of my life.

After I left King's, we kept in touch and 2 years ago, she asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding.  I'm blessed to be able to call her one of my best friends.  Martha is the kind of person who will drive 6 hours to take you out for coffee and egg white omelets when you just broke up with your boyfriend.  She is the person with whom I have some of the greatest memories in my life, like nights spent at the hospital together, nights hanging out at Eddies, nights talking about love and friendships and the people with whom we share insane memories.  At the cast parties at King's, we would toast the people who had helped us out most during the show.  My final show, Martha wrote a toast to me and it is one of the items I have in my "accomplishments" box.  I haven't seen her in forever and it was so great to have the weekend with her.


She got to LA on Friday night around 7:30.  I immediately took her to my office to park her car because there is no extra parking in my building.  We left her car for the weekend and I took her to the Grove and Farmer's Market.  These two joined shopping centers are complete opposites.

Fresh Produce, Farmer's Market

The Grove

The Farmer's Market has booths of fresh produce, dried fruit, handmade candy, little trinkety shops...The Grove has stores like Gap, Crate and Barrel, Barnes and Noble and Apple.  We went there and looked around.  Spent a few minutes playing at the American Girl Doll Store.  It was a lot of fun.  At the end of the night, we were deciding on where to eat.  Martha (and I) watch the show The Big Bang Theory, which is hilarious if you haven't seen it.  It's about 4 lovable geeks (and super genuises) living in Pasadena, CA who befriend their beautiful neighbor, an actress/waitress who works at the Cheesecake Factory.  Martha wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory and since I love the Cheesecake Factory, I didn't object!  We went home that night and talked until 2 in the morning...catching up and sharing stories.  It was fun.

The next morning, we woke up and drove out to Hollywood.  Martha has aspirations to be an Oscar winning filmmaker so Hollywood was the one place that she wanted to see.  We did the Walk of Fame and the Egyption Theatre before we hopped on a tour of the star's homes.  But first, we had to have our picture taken with Samuel L. Jackson.

We went on our tour of the stars homes and Martha saw the Hollywood Sign, Rodeo Drive, The Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Sunset Strip, and about 2 dozen stars homes.  She was happy to see that both the Playboy Mansion and Tom and Katie's house were flying American flags.  We got our picture with the Hollywood sign in the background.  I look terrible though, so please don't look at me...

 

After the tour, we stood and explored the Kodak Theater a little while we waited for my friend to meet us.  The Kodak is where the Oscars are held so Martha was in her element.  It was fun to watch.  We ate lunch at a place called "The Wine Bar" and while we were eating, my friend Angelus came to meet us.  He was going to take us to the Fashion District for the afternoon.  We drove to the bad part of town where there were a million stores.  They sold everything from fake designer bags to $5 shoes, to electronics, to Ed Hardy and Affliction t-shirts.  I have a running joke with a friend about Affliction t-shirts.  They are $65 t-shirts and we both think that is ridiculous.  Everyone knows about his dislike for Affliction and Ed Hardy, so I sent him Ed Hardy tattoos and he made his own Affliction t-shirt using a white undershirt.  Just in case you don't know, Affliction shirts are so stupid.  This is what they look like:

So I spent most of the afternoon looking for a cheap Affliction t-shirt for my friend, Martha was looking for dress shoes for her husband and Angelus was looking for a cool jacket.  I didn't find my t-shirt, but I did find a fake Birkin bag for super cheap.  Angelus tried to talk me into buying a bunny or a turtle while Martha reminded me that I work a lot and bunnies smell and buying one on the street is a really bad idea.  But they were so cute...

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That night, we dropped Angelus off at his apartment and went home to change because it was getting cold.  We tried to check out Venice, but nothing was happening, so we went to Santa Monica Pier.

It was a blast.  Martha wanted to ride the roller coaster and ferris wheel.  We decided to eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co before the ferris wheel so that we could have cotton candy and churros on the ferris wheel.  It made me laugh because just the day before, my co-workers were talking about "who eats at Bubba Gump?  I don't think I want to meet the kind of person who eats at that place."  Guess what folks, I eat at Bubba Gump and both times, I have had a great meal and a great time.  Marth and I took a picture with the giant shrimp:

Then we took pictures riding animals and making new friends:

We walked to the end of the pier, Martha found a cool hat and made friends with the Turkish salesman.  Then we got on the ferris wheel.  It was great, there were wonderful views of the beach, Venice, Santa Monica...and Martha had fun!

Sunday we woke up and tried to go to church but that turned out to be a fail.  When you live streets away from South Central, make sure the church you chose is in Hollywood.  Martha's friend Katie came over.  Martha and Katie knew each other from their studies in Scotland.  Martha took Katie through her wedding pictures, then other pictures...I tried to make myself scarce.  We were going to go back to the Fashion District so that Martha could find Joe's shoes, but the rain started.  I went out and got stuff for dinner while the girls talked and I made dinner for everyone.  Around 8, Katie left and Martha and I headed to bowling with my trivia group.  We lost a bet because we are both really bad bowlers, so I owe two people from my trivia group beer.  Martha left early Monday morning to go home.  It was a wonderful weekend and I'm so happy that she came out.

As I mentioned, the rain started Sunday.  It rained all week last week.  We were hit with 5 back-to-back storms.  I didn't have any problems with the rain, but over 30,000 people were evacuated from the mountains and the coast.  Thousands were without power.  We had a tornado!!  It's funny how the rain affects people.  We were encouraged to go home early from work just because it was raining!

I only had a problem with the rain on Thursday.  I was driving to work on Wilshire Blvd.  Wilshire Blvd has 4 lanes, 2 on each side.  I was in the left lane and a woman in front of me slammed on her brakes.  I had more than enough time to stop, but because I knew the roads were wet and slippery (the oil builds up on the roads) I veered into the turn lane so that I wouldn't accidentally slide into her car.  I was sitting there for a good 30 seconds, and suddenly I heard a squeal and felt someone hit the back of my car.  The impact was enough to make the CD's sitting under my radio fly into the back seat.

I knew the damage wasn't terrible so I maneuvered my way around the stopped traffic to get off of the busy boulevard.  I got out of my car and started walking towards the woman (who did not follow me) to see if she was okay.  She got out of her car and started screaming "What is wrong with you!  Why the f*** did you stop?  This is all your fault!"  I had already started calling 911 so I held up the phone and said "I have 911 on the phone.  We'll get the police out here and they can determine who's fault it is!"  At that, she jumped in her car and took off.  At this point, one of my back lights was dangling (it's not the main light, but one of the smaller side lights).  The 911 operator suggested I wait for the police so that I could get a police report so that's what I did.  They asked for a description of the woman, but because I didn't get a liscense plate number, there was really no hope.  Ugh!  When I was driving, I realized that my car isn't quite right.  The alignment was thrown really off and the back end of my car fishtails whenever I go over a bump.  I was hoping to be able to drive around for a little bit before having to take it to get it repaired, but I wanted to make sure that was an ok idea.  Well today I took it to the shop and they told me that I probably have about 5 days before my back wheel falls off.  When she hit me, she bent something having to do with my wheel and suspension.  They also confirmed that my alignment was off.  They haven't even gotten it up on the car lift yet, this is just what they could tell by looking at how my car was sitting on the ground.  So I guess I have to get it fixed now.  My insurance will cover everything but my deductible because it's considered an "uninsured motorist" claim.  I'm going to have to figure out how to get around for a few days, but it could be worse.  I wasn't hurt (with the exception of pain in my back and neck which is just a tightness at this point, but still uncomfortable) and my car had been drivable, so it's not crisis just yet.  It's just annoying.  It was clearly this woman's fault and now I have to deal with all of this...but such is life!

So that's all for now.  I don't really have plans this week, so we'll have to see what I can find to blog about this weekend...hmmm...