visitor from the east

Recently we took home a vagrant and let her stay with us for a weekend.

Let's call her Lulu.
First thing we had to do was throw Lulu in the back seat

after she said goodbye to her buddy.

It took her a while to decide on where she wanted to go.

At first she was content just writing in some wet cement along with some of her friends.

But after a while she just wanted to play on the ground.  It was a little weird if you ask me; you don't know how dirty the ground can get!

Lulu could finally pick herself up off the ground when she had some one to lean on.  Sometimes you just have to find someone that has walked in your shoes to really understand you.

I, however, am not such a person.  Lulu kept on insisting that she was being watched and I just couldn't empathize.

The only thing we could do to help her get over her paranoia was get her out in nature and hold her and tell her it would all be ok.

When that didn't work we thought it might be a self-esteem issue so we dolled her up in fancy clothes.

When that didn't work we figured she may just need some food.  I don't know if these were the circumstances to have her try new grub, but we thought it couldn't hurt.

Apparently it did hurt because after she ate she insisted that there were huge cats wearing "people clothes."  Great, add hallucinations to the paranoia.  I don't know if it was because we fed her sushi or not but Lulu described it as a very Japanese cat.

After that I started to notice that Andrea was going off the deep end too.

I was left with no other choice but to tell little Lulu to get lost after that.

All I need is for Andrea so start acting like a weirdo.

Dodgers game

In the not too distant past Andrea and I participated in "Mormon Night" at Dodger Stadium (and by participate I mean we went and watched a baseball game).

Now what all does "Mormon Night" entail?  Well, in addition to getting some blue rubber bracelets all of the Stakes (a Stake is group of congregations like a doicese) that were in attendance got a shout out on the big sign!

This is what it looked like from our seats.

 In the center of the above picture you can see a little fake Hollywood sign that says:

It makes everything feel really LA-ish.  It's too bad the Dodgers can't pull out the Cinderella championship win like in all the movies (it's pretty funny that they have Angels billboards not too far from Dodger Stadium - guess everyone just loves a winner).

Here's what it looked like from the opposite side of the park.

Can you see us?

 (If you're still looking the answer is no, we're taking the picture).  Anyway, as you can tell from the crowd the  Dodgers are a stellar team and really dominate out there.

One thing that was really cool was that they let anyone who wanted come down onto the field after the game

TO WATCH THE FIREWORKS!!!!

I don't know how many people came for the game and how many came for the fireworks, but there seemed to be a lot more excitement around the latter.

One fun thing we saw at the game was seeing LA City Hall (or as I described it to Andrea: that building they always show in Drop Dead Diva).

Another was seeing Jackie Robinson's retired number.

Even though all of the Major League Baseball stadiums have Robinson's number retired, he played for the Dodgers which makes it a little cooler (even though he played for them when they were in Brooklyn).

Here's a useless trivia fact: only Robinson and Wayne Gretzky have had their numbers retired by every team in the pro league of their sport and they both played for teams that are now in LA (Gretzky played for the LA Kings).

All in all the best "Mormon Night" I've ever been to.

Sarah McLachlan

So a WHILE back Andrea had a really tough work day.  First she had a half day at her actual work place then was forced to go hang out at the Roosevelt Hotel's pool and have food and drinks from the Tropicana Bar on the companies dime.  As if that weren't bad enough she, along with a group of her coworkers, had to go see Sarah McLachlan at the Hollywood Bowl.  I don't think she realizes how much her hostile work environment has affected her because instead of just taking one for the team she made me come along with her :(

Getting good video of the performance was not an easy task because a couple of people in front of us felt the need to scream "We love you Sarah!!!!" every moment they could.  I'm sure Ms. McLachlan really appreciated it because having the place nearly sold out (or so it seemed) would probably make her think people really hated  her.  Let's assume your random yelling meant a lot to her, really touched her on another level, isn't once enough?  Sometimes I don't know what's wrong with people.

chips, tortilla chips

If there is one huge benefit to living in the South West it's fresh tortilla chips.  Go to any Mexican food place (not always hole-in-the-walls or "fast food" places) and you are greeted with some hot chips and salsa (and when they are fresh they are the best things on earth).

SO, in Arizona we knew which chips we liked and which were nasty (stale tortilla chips are no bueno!) but now we've left planet earth and landed in la-la land with very few "local" products that we know are any good.  Well, it was tortilla chip time and I saw "Homeboy Tortilla Chips."  How could you not be interested in a product like that?

Now I've heard of such gimmiky products as Rap Snacks, which are hip hop themed chips, but I got the feeling that they wouldn't actually taste very good.  I don't know, I just don't associate hip hop and delicious food, but I guess...

But my suspicions were put to sleep when I was listening to the radio and lo and behold the head of the Homeboy Industries was doing an interview!  Turns out the "Homeboys" are "at-risk and formerly gang -involved youth" and Homeboy Industries is an organization that helps them "become positive and contributing members of society" and their chips are really good!  They are so good I'd still get them even if it wasn't for a good cause.

Needless to say I'm sure our $1 or so bag of chips didn't make a huge impact on anyone, but they were so tasty we might go though a bag or two a  month.  Who knows, by the end of the year we could have contributed a whole $10!

We are such philanthropists.

We're back, baby!

Yes, to quote the great Bender Bending Rodriguez, "We're back, baby!"

So the last attempt to have a-post-a-day fizzled out a little over half way through the month followed by total silence the next month.  We'll try to do a little better this month, but probably won't be so ambitious.  No doubt we have more than enough adventures/pictures/story time to have two posts a day for the next month, but as a well known doctor has stated - slow is better.

Even though I could have been on top of things and had a months worth of posts ready and had them automatically post, that just wouldn't be our style. I'll just blame everything on the painfully slow internet we had at our hotel-partment and leave you with this image.  I feel like it may explain how crazy the last few months have been.