I don't know why III: the revenge of the day

So we've got quite a bit of fun ahead of us that we're SUUUUUPER excited about.

First I'll let everyone in on what we did for our little Johnny Cash party:

• Walk the Line: the obvious guess is watch the movie Walk the Line, which we did, but Andrea and I also went on a fun little walk around the 'hood.
• Ring of Fire: made s'mores using the ring of fire produced by our gas stove.
• One Piece at a Time: played Ticket to Ride-Europe (or Zug um Zug Europa if that's what you're into).
• Man in Black: it was REALLY hard, but I was able to find all black clothes to wear.
• It was Jesus: went to church (it's a good thing this was on Sunday, otherwise this would have been a little more difficult)
• Ball & Chain: broke out the indoor bocce set Andrea won playing white elephant and got her big bad chain to mark the line we had to stand behind. I'm sure our neighbors below us loved that.

Back to the future fun!

Andrea and I have had some great job interviews, cool.

We got a couple pre-screening passes for Monday, double cool!

Tomorrow we're going to be in the audience for Jimmy Kimmel Live, triple cool!!

As the whipped cream AND the cherry on the top WE WON TICKETS TO SEE TIGER ARMY!!!!!! And only a few hours after I entered to win them, quintuple cool!!!!! Added bonus, they're VIP tickets- free shirts, food, backstage benefits and other junk. Come to think of it, the Tiger Army tickets are really the whipped cream, the cherry, sprinkles, hot fudge and the ice cream, plus the steak and potatoes, tall, ice-cold glasses of Dr. Pepper and the tasty rolls with butter. I would have just been happy with getting in to see them play, but I'll gladly take all the crap they want give me too.

This is going to be a great week!

how we roll (in the new year)

While others seem content burning LA to the ground, Andrea and I partied like rock stars.  Well, if rock stars were cool, some are not.

We started it off low key, grilled cheese sandwich appetizers.

Next we got our cookies and milk on.

After we had a little fuel, we broke the games out (Andrea's fave, Mille Bornes).

Of course we had Andrea's playlist (which only took her seven hours to make).

The day before we stopped off at Costco to get some Martinelli's (a 4-pack for about the price of one) so we could all have our own bottles to drink out of to get crunked. I think the "original" flavor isn't as festive as the grape or cranberry variety, but that's all Costco had :( luckily we had our home teacher come to the rescue with a little treat to drop off! :D (in addition to this little beauty he gave us what became our new FAVORITE cookies: Carr's Lemon Ginger Cremes - DElicious. Who knew they made tasty crackers AND cookies?)

But as we only had one we busted out the fancy glassware so we wouldn't have to battle over who got to take a swig at any particular instance of the night.

In need of a little more sustenance we got our shrimpies (it looks there was one trying to escape).

They almost perfectly fit in our little bowl - it was meant to be.

Finally we brought in 2012 right - with Ligretto.

We're off to a good start.

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.

DC United

We recently made our way to a DC United soccer game against the LA Galaxy.

Much to the dismay of some people that went we were not able to find this man's wife anywhere to be seen.

For those who can't tell, this is obviously David Beckham.

It was fun though (as much fun as a 0-0 tie game can be I suppose).

One entertaining thing we found to do was watch the two sections of rabid fans.

Both sections had a guy to lead the chants,

(the guy standing in the little black box with the spray-painted image)

but only one really seemed to enjoy jumping up and down.

I decided that if we were to move here long term I would only support the Clippers as an LA sports team and now Andrea has decided that she'd be a Galaxy fan.  I don't know how much that has to do with the Galaxy and how much it has to do with Victoria Beckham.

we're off to see the sixers, the wonderful sixers play ball

So once we finally came home from vacation we went to see the Philadelphia 76ers come to town to take on the Los Angeles Clippers.

It was a good game, the sixers won.  I think these very strange metal pieces of "art" that can be found just outside the south-east entrance to the Staples Center are meant to represent the tears of the Clippers because they are perpetually losing.

Losing or not, if I had to choose an LA basket ball team to represent it would definitely be the Clippers, because it would be WAY better than the alternative.