Friday Funtimes (again)

Last Friday, I took the train up to LA to meet up with Kate for a tour of Chinatown. I have lived in Southern California (specifically, Orange County) all my life. And yet I have barely scratched the surface of all the awesome things are to experience around here. Luckily, Kate is a good influence (thus, the list on the right side bar) on me and she's always up for taking me exploring. Bless Kate. She braved cross-town traffic on a Friday night to get me at Union Station, which is no small feat. Lesser women have perished in this traffic. This is the mark of a true friend.

So it was of critical importance for me to get to my train on time, which I did, but just barely. I hit every single red light on the way there AND had to park in BFE and run for dear life to get the train. The northbound track is on the other side of the station, so I had to hustle up and then down 3 flights of stairs on the bridge that goes over. My feet hit the platform just as the train pulled up. Luckily, I landed a seat directly beneath the air conditioning vent so I was blasted with icy air immediately and was able to dive right into my latest Fables book (vol. 10, The Good Prince - read it!).

Union Station is so pretty. I stopped to take a few pictures as I walked out and so many people stared at me like I was an idiot, then for the first time noticed the beauty of it. Much of the features and furnitures are the originals from the 1930's and it's amazing that any of it has held up through so many passengers!

Kate was waiting for me outside, so we jumped in the car and headed over to Chinatown to browse around. I scored a SWEET wooden fan for a DOLLAR (incidentally, someone is selling exact same one on eBay for a penny plus $7.95 shipping. Wuh?!) which is going to solve all of my summer heat stroke issues, along with my ever-present Disneyland towel AND my fancy schmancy new PAPER PARASOL. Heck yes! Chinatown is awesome. And the parasol was only $5! For $6 I have effectively ended all of my overheating problems for the summer. Boo-ya!

After scoring some excellent treasures and barely resisting the allure of ninja boots, we went to a recommended restaurant for dinner. The place was lovely and appointed all over in gold and had a giant dining room and at least 20 people on the waitstaff. And no customers. There were only 2 other occupied tables, obvious tourists like us. The waitstaff was bored with us and ignored us as much as they could. Between you and me, I think it was a front. I'm not making any accusations, but... *coughcoughmafiacoughcough*

After dinner, we headed over toward the theater where we were going to enjoy an evening of sketch comedy! Shows start every hour, so we stopped off at Susina's for cookies and coffee, and were enjoying our pre-show plate of cherry bombs and Mont Blancs (the best cookies in the house) when we got word from Adam that he was in the neighborhood, so we told him to come over. He was on the fence, but we sent out the cookie bat-signal. A few minutes later, someone attacked our table and shoved the whole cookie phallus in their mouth: it was Adam. Yay! So we skipped the show and got caught up with him for a while. He was supposed to be leaving to meet up with some out of town friends, but it turned out that while on the phone with him, they'd typed in the addresses in the wrong order into the GPS, so they ended up at Susina's instead of their hotel. So they joined us too.

I have to say, those poor girls. I hope that their LA trip turned out as good as they planned. They had booked a hotel "only 10 miles from LA" to save some money, but the poor dears hadn't realized that LA is a big city. It's not vertical like NY or Chicago, but instead it's spread out low over miles and miles and miles. So yes, their hotel was 10 miles from LA, but that's the furthest point of northeast LA. What they had counted on being a 5-10 minute drive is in actuality 30-45 minutes from anywhere they want to go -- and that's without traffic. Their faces fell when we kept advising them on new strategies. "Give yourself at least an hour and a half to get to... oh, no, wait. There's a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Give yourself two and a half hours... well, maybe 3 or 4 if you want to get dinner first."

So we sat, ate more cookies, more coffee. Then Ryan joined us. He'd been working in the LA office all day so he came over to meet us and we ended up missing the next show too, hanging out with MORE cookies and coffee. But it was all good. Eventually, we dragged ourselves home and set Kate free to join her friends at the theater for the post-mortem. It's good that she had someplace to be or else we would have kept her out on the street chatting all damn night long. We're good like that.