4 posts tagged “bad phone cam tour of la”

Surely you're all dying to know how we spent Brian's birthday, this is it!  We tried to go to the pier but for some reason the city of Santa Monica closes all of the parking lots at 7 even when it's still sunny out - except for the main pier one which was of course full.  So we drove around forever like idiots, passing The Hotel California several times (I swear it looks like what you'd imagine from the song of the same name), before finally giving up.  So we were going to just drive up the coastline a bit as Brian mainly just wanted to see the sunset at the beach.  Then we realized there were parking meters open quite a way from the pier but still in an area that you have a nice spot to see the beach and sunset.  When we went to turn around, even better the side street had parking spots open -- for free.  Much better than the $8-$11 parking near the pier though not so easy to get to the actual beach from as you would have to walk down a ton of steep stairs and cross the highway. 

Instead of that we walked along the "park".  Park being a sandy sidewalk path, high above the beach and highway.  It's lined with grassy areas, park benches with memorial plaques -- I had to read them all and found the most touching to be a full poem about the beach from a book the woman the bench was in memorial to had written.  Saddest, one in memorial to a mom who died before the age of 40. Oddest being a man who died on his 70th birthday. 

We talked of how nice it'd be to be able to afford to live in one of the places right there, but not so nice to live at the fancier places down below as people coming off of PCH drive like f'in maniacs.  Seriously... On these pics from the "bad phone cam tour of LA" series, as  I call my phone cam pics, please note that the road below in them -- just off to the right it turns into PCH.... scariest road I've been on I think.  Only  thing that could make it scarier is to put Oregonian drivers on it -- Oregonian Truck Drivers... Yeah you'd probably not survive it if sharing it with one of them.  Oregonian Truck drivers in a blinding rain storm on PCH, that'd be my worst nightmare.

Sadly my picture of the mutant root didn't turn out very well, not even for a bad phone cam tour pic.  It wouldn't even all fit on my phone's camera screen.  So cool in person.  Just a giant root on the ground, among normal trees, weaving its way around them, growing up in weird angles. 

I did not take a picture of the giant circle of interwoven wood rings dedicated to all who help the planet, nor did I take a picture of the center of this park area with the statue dedicated to umm... Arcadia something I think?  And a rose garden.  Sorry, bad phone  cam tour of LA is sort of sporadic,  and I felt like enjoying the views and reading the memorials more than I felt like taking pics.  Brian took pics with the real camera, maybe I'll see how they turned out sometime and post them.




Anyway, then we came home and watched Juno, which I thought was good, but not as good as the hype I'd heard.   After that we watched I Am Legend, which I found to be extremely boring.  Wil Smith is ok and all, but yeah bad stuff happens, the world is all gonna die, gotta save us, blah blah.  Been done, don't care, not my kind of movie.

Then my laptop starting sounding like a jet taking off so I figured it was gonna blow up.  We think it was just something stuck in the fan thing at the bottom of it.  Seems to be fine now that we noticed something got sucked under it and removed it.  Think I'll leave it off again tonight just to be sure and I have my email, bookmarks and most if not all of my art backed up on my external drive -- just in case.

It's time again for the bad phone cam tour of LA.  I apologize for the photo quality, Brian's Treo usually takes better pics than my phone but it too couldn't get a good picture of this.  A combination of the bright sun yet lots of low clouds made it a bad time to take a photo.  You see, we celebrated our country's birth with the great American past time of shopping.  We were going to Fry's (since Brian didn't expect to work this week and did his budget without a check, now that he's working 3 days this week, was the perfect time for him to buy his $350 Wacom Tablet).  On the way there is a Starbucks, Border's, and World Market (grrr closed even with people inside and no holiday hours listed on the door) in a new shopping center.  This giant metal dog sculpture is in front of Starbucks (yes a dog with a briefcase in one hand and a bone in the other).  Off to the left a bit (didn't get close enough to get a pic) is a cat catching fish.  The entrance to shopping center had what Brian described as a rocket... with a bowl on top of it (really that's what it looked like).

Now that Brian has a new tablet, if I can find a stylus for his old one, I get it! Or he might let me install art rage on his tablet PC so I can use it as he hasn't used it since he built himself a new desktop machine.  As for me I bought girlie bathroom items, and... best of all... The Return of Superman.  I've read The Death of Superman and A World Without Superman but could never find, until today, the third and final book in that series.  w00t!

Now... the idiot part.  I haven't had a really BAD BAD pain alien headache in awhile.  Until today.  While in Target, Brian needed soap.  We use different soaps as bar soaps dry out my skin bad but that's what he uses.  But, while in the soap aisle, I just had to smell those men's body washes.  You know the ones where commercials tell you they'll make you irresistible to women?  One or two of them smelled good.  But one, in particular was STRONG and bad smelling.  Like I couldn't close it and get it away from me fast enough.  Perfumes, bleach, several strong smelling things, I just can't be near.  This is apparently one of them as pain started a few minutes later.  That combined with the two kids racing around the store yelling with no parents in sight = pain alien in full force.  Good thing I at least didn't head down the bleach aisle. 4 Advils = a hint of pain relief.  4 Advil being the equivalent of one rx strength one.