A post

Hi. I'm just posting for the sake of posting. How was everyone's Memorial Day? I enjoyed having a 3 day weekend. I finally have a job that closes for holidays. We went to see Shrek The Third yesterday morning. Its nice going to a movie at 9:55Am. Noone is there. I ate butter popcorn even though later the butter gave me a stomach ache as it usually does. As I type this, I just saw on the news that they are recalling the type of contact lens solution that I use. Bummer. That's it for my random post. Bye.

California is nice but...

I've lived here now for over 2 1/2 years. Living in California is neat. It is fun to live so close to Hollywood, around all the studios, the rich and famous and all the hustle and bustle of living in LA. It is fun to tell people that I can look out my window and see the Warner Bros. lot. And a short walk or drive would take me to the Disney studios, NBC (which always has a loooong line for Leno), Universal Studios and many radio stations. It is neat to have a husband who works in that field and gets to meet some big name people. Its also neat to see a random movie/tv/promo being shot when I drive down the street and the production trucks for many shows that film here. There's a lot more to do around here too. We're going to the Hollywood Bowl pretty soon which will be fun and theres always a bunch of theme parks around to go to too. Scenery is beatiful with mountains surrounding us and the beach isn't far away either.

HOWEVER

There is so much that I miss about Buffalo too. Here's some of them:

- Snow. I miss a change of seasons. I love how different each season is. Here, its always the same. No snow, hardly any rain. If it does rain a tiny bit, all the people call it a "storm" and freak out. The winter gets chilly and we need jackets but thats it. I haven't heard a thunderstorm in years.

- Light traffic. Traffic here is one word: Horrible.

- Cost of living. If we lived in Buffalo on our incomes, we'd be in a nice house. However, it costs sooooooo much to live here. A simple old small house in Burbank would cost approximately $750,000. Yuck.

- Grass. Unless you have a house, you don't get grass. I miss having a backyard. There are several parks around but even there, the grass isn't very soft because its so dry here in CA

- Family and friends. With the exception of the Wilberts who live in Valencia, all my friends and and family are back in Buffalo. I miss out on a lot of stuff. For example, (what got me thinking and caused me to make this blog entry) right this very second I am missing two things because they are taking place in Buffalo. One is my cousin Becky's baby shower. That would have been a lot of fun. The other is my suitemates from college are having a reunion get-together. They are all going to have fun and catch up on old times. All of them are going except me. I wish I could be there.

Overall, life here is pretty neat though. We've met some good people and we have a good time. So now I ask.... If you are reading this, come out and visit us! We love visitors!

On a completely different topic: Michele and Drew are in England right now. How neat is that? I'm excited to see her pictures upon her return.

Bye for now!

Major minority

Recent stats show that in California and three other states, the majority of the population is made of minorities. And the minority population is growing quickly. I wonder if they will still be called minorities when they are the majority.

TV

For those of you who watch Survivor, another season comes to a close. What'd you think of this season? It was actually a pretty entertaining one for me. I think everyone was bummed when Yao Man was ousted by Dreamz's betrayal. He should have won. But of the bottom 3, it was a good thing the person who did win won.
In other TV news, this season of Lost is ending this week too. Soon American Idol will be done. What am I going to do in the evenings now? All my shows will be done. (I'm kidding mom, I have a life beyond evening tv.)

Birthday

Happy 28th Birthday Michele!

My work has a new website. www.synergyperformancehealth.com

Another fire

The hill right next to the mountain that burned last March 31st is now on fire. It is buring Griffith Park, threatening the LA zoo and all the other things in there. It started yesterday around 1:30pm and is still going now at 7am the next morning. LA is facing the driest year that its had in a really long time resulting in many fires. Yesterday it was 94 degrees and 6% humidity. There was another fire east of here and another one in Santa Monica a couple days ago. The air this morning smelled like smoke. Reminded me of camping. Oh, the Griffith Park fire started because someone flicked their cigarette butt on the ground.

Science Center. Did we miss something?

Yesterday Rob and I thought it'd be fun to check out the California Science Center. The website said it was free admission. Technically it was but there was a suggested donation of $5/person. We paid it, though by the end we wish we hadn't. First came the "world of life" section. It was ok. Nothing great though. We went through it fairly quickly expecting that the next section would be better. Next came the "creative world" section. By the end of this we had to laugh. The displays were dumb and a couple didn't work. Here are some examples of some of the little display exhibits:
- "how a remote works". It let us push a button that turned a TV on and off
- "Wet sand is not good to build a house on". The thing had a little toy house on some sand. Then I could turn a knob which made it shake like an earthquake and the little house would bury itself in the sand. Don't build a house on sand? Well duh!
- "Conserve our air by carpooling." It was just a video of some kids sitting in front of a school talking about going out and figuring out how to carpool.
- "whisper dishes". You are supposed to be able to speak softly and have someone on the other side of the room hear it while standing in front of a dish. The problem was that there were exhibits all around and people walking right through the two dishes. No way it would work.
- "earthquake buildings" I could turn a knob to make these 2 buildings shake. They were supposed to tip over at a certain amount of shaking. They didn't.
- "how fish react to current" The fish were more interested in eating than swimming against a current.
- "driving drunk" Like an arcade game, first you drove a car sober (I crashed about 5 times) Then you drove drunk. (The thing would make you close your eyes for several seconds and when they opened I'd be off the road.) It was funny.
- There was a thing that said to put on earphones and talk into a microphone. It didn't work.

The third section of the science center was closed. I've been to the Cleveland and Toronto science centers and they were great. Too bad Los Angeles doesn't come close to comparing. We finished the entire thing in under 2 hours.