Weekend in Los Angeles
December 8th, 2008Brianna and I spent the weekend in L.A. We headed down at about 6 PM on Friday and headed back around 1 PM on Sunday. At first, I thought that the traveling-to-time-to-do-stuff would be too far in the “traveling” area, but it was actually a decent balance. Although, I wouldn’t travel much farther for a weekend’s worth of vacationing.
Friday night we arrived in Beverly Hills/Los Angeles area around 1 AM. We checked in to our hotel, which felt really creepy that late at night. There was no parking as a couple jackasses took up two spaces with their cars, so I was forced to park on a side street. I was nervous at first, but it was actually no big deal. Come light, the place and neighborhood was actually okay.
We stayed in the Beverly Inn, which is by no means a fancy hotel, but it wasn’t all that bad. We were across the street from the CBS studios, which was kinda cool. Saturday morning we took a walk and decided to eat at a place called Tart. Their portions were perfect, and their prices weren’t bad for the area as well. Afterwards, Brianna and I parted and did our own thing. What brought us to L.A. was an X-Files afiliated charity event Brianna wanted to attend. So, she did her thing and I did mine…
My first stop was my cousin Debbie’s house in Bellflower. I am very thankful for my TSX’s naviation system because with its aide I never made any major wrong moves. I felt like I dominated in L.A. traffic! Anywho…it was only supposed to take me a half hour to get from where I was in L.A. to Bellflower, but I had a little trouble at the gas station. It turns out that I pulled into a “full service” lane at the gas staiton! Without noticing, I start the process of getting gas and the attendant comes out and was like “hey, you’re in the full service lane!” I was like, “wha?!”. So, I apologized, canceled the transaction, and moved to a “self serve” pump. Here’s where the problem started. Apparently, Chevron (or at least this station) has a policy to where you must wait a certain period of time before a card with a canceled transaction can start another. After attempts at two pumps, I finally go see the attendant and he told me this. So, he rung me up for $20 worth of gas, I filled up, and I was on my way.
To get from where I was in L.A. to Bellflower, I had to take 101 to 710 to 105. It was a lot of fun. There were two things I had to get used to. 1) Carpool seems to be 24 hours, 2) Metering lights are more often on than not. Once I remembered those (and brought some patience), I was set. So Debbie and I hung out for a while, talked and whatnot. It was nice to see her. I’ll definitely do it again.
After my visit with Debbie, I went and saw my friend Sam down in Irvine. took me about a half hour to get down there which was expected. To get there, I had to take 91 to 605 to 405 to 73. Apparently, a portion of 73 is accompanied by toll, but luckily my exit was just before toll started. I got there with little problem as well. My only mistake was I turned into a UC parking lot rather than the shopping center where we were to meet. The shopping center and the UC lot I was in were maybe 500 feet apart, so it wasn’t a big deal.
I met Sam at Lee’s Sandwhiches in the university shopping center. Afterwards, he showed me around U.C. Irvine. The library has a pretty cool shelving system for material they deem less popular. The shelves are normal library shelves, but they’re on a track and slide around like an accordian. You can only access one side of a given shelf at a time. So, it saves a lot of space. The neatest part about it is that it’s computer controlled. There’s a simple control panel on the side of each shelving unit, and you can tell the system which side of which shelf you want to access, and it takes care of the rest! Sam also showed me the building he does most of his work in. He’s got a nice 30 inch Apple Cinema Display at his disposal, and a fancy lab coat with “Dr. Kaufman” embroidered on it. There were lots of neat projects spread around the building, something you just have to see for yourself. I thought it was all very neat.
After we finished with the U.C. Irvine “tour” we headed back to his apartment and “hung out”. This “hanging outage” eventually turned into something geeky. Sam decided to play One by U2 on his guitar and he wanted me to sing. Me, having zero singing voice, obviously didn’t want to sing. I jokingly suggested that the computer can sing for me, and it lead to this…
It’s just a short 10 second clip that we whipped up in like 10-15 minutes. We didn’t have time to fine tune it as I was due back to Beverly Hills by the time the idea exploded. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Sam. Hopefully we’ll do it again!
Sunday, Brianna and I decided to check out the Santa Monica Pier. It wasn’t as exciting as we thought it would be, but it was neat nevertheless. If the weather was better (it was overcast when we were there) I’m sure the experience would’ve been better, too. We stopped at a local Denny’s to get a bite to eat and then we hit the road. Highways 10 to 405 to 5 to 152 to 101 to 85 to 17, all over the course of 340 miles.
All in all, it was fun!