Today I...May 18th

Today I...

...am sharing these two photos taken in front of Sid Grauman's Chinese Theater with you. An important thing to remember if ever you visit Los Angeles and are majorly pumped about Hollywood and star watching and celebrity home hunting: the Hollywood we see on TV meaning the Kodak Theater and the Chinese theater are not even a block long. The walk of fame is kilometers long, but it also begins kilometers away from these two famous theaters. Do not go there expecting to see celebrities as they are very good at camouflaging themselves and also do not expect to see anyone at the movie premiere as they close off a good sized chunk of the area the movie premiere is being held in. My Sweetheart and I, on our first evening in Los Angeles decided to walk to Hollywood. We figured it had to be no more than a half hour walk away as our hotel was named 'The Hollywood Hotel' and was on the corner of Vermont and Hollywood boulevards. We had to walk for two solid hours before hitting the super long walk of fame and another 15-20 minutes to get somewhere in Hollywood that was mildly recognizable and then were shunted across the street and half a block away from the Chinese theater because the premier of 'Something Borrowed' was going on that night. As for Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, they are a good hour and a half away by public transportation and maybe half of that by car if you don't get stuck in traffic, which would be astonishing. So, my friends, the moral of this story is: Los Angeles is huge, meaning that its name should be the sole definition for 'urban sprawl'. It is a marvelous place to visit and you can see pretty much everything in a week, but be armed with patience, lots of guts if you're going to be taking the metro and buses...and pepper spray in your purse wouldn't hurt either, because you can see some pretty crazy stuff in the metro. Be prepared to travel long distances and to be disappointed if you're going there to see movie and TV stars, because when they aren't at work or at a premiere, the are just like the rest of us and have no desire to be hunted. If you do cross paths with one, watch out for the rabid photographers and the very serious bodyguards. I really enjoyed my time there though and had lots of fun taking pictures and spending time with my Sweetheart. The only stars we were seeing were each other though...so we didn't care who else we saw or didn't see :o) More on Los Angeles as I continue posting photos :o)

On another note: work is still rough, the weather is still so-so, but I managed to walk home for the second day in a row. The cold water tap in my tub has been broken since Sunday and I'm getting sick of having turn on and shut off the water for the tub with the valve behind the panel in my bedroom wall, but I'm going to be doing it for a few days yet as I firmly refuse to have anyone come into my apartment to do work while I'm not here since I have visions of one or both of my cats venturing into the hole in my wall where the valve is and getting stuck in there thanks to a negligent contractor who would very well not close up the hole once he was done. I permanently have one of my dressers in front of it to avoid such an incident. The orange line on the metro has broken down three days in a row now for over an hour each time, so I'm wondering who has hexed it and am thankful that I no longer rely on it for my daily commute, though I feel for those who do. Talk about a nuisance! Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for the orange line patrons...and for C and I, if the secretary we are borrowing from another department can begin working with us.