I have had a day.

At UCLA, we stopped by the mascot. I guess I'm now a Bruin! Ang wanted to take a picture in the ocean for my mom, she wasn't expecting to be quite so in the ocean. Even her pants got in the ocean:-)

The famous Santa Monica Pier!
Inside the Hollywood United Methodist Church.

(Note: I started this Sunday night and needed to sleep before I could finish. Just getting back to it Tuesday night.)

Yes, a day. Actually two. Going on a week now. Saturday Angela and I headed for Los Angeles. We made it over five hours later, thank goodness for our new Sprint Instinct phones with the crazy GPS lady. She helped us get back on the right freeway and find our way to our hotel without incident. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Century City and it's pretty nice. Like the nicest bed I've been in outside of the Bellagio. And that's saying something.

So we made it to our hotel then we headed out for the theater. I'd gotten tickets for the musical The Next Big Thing and we wanted to make sure we got dinner before we saw the show. We found the theater, on theater row in West Hollywood, and then backtracked to find a restaurant. We ended up at Target, yes, the big red-themed store, because it had an underground parking garage that ended up being free because we were there less than an hour. I've heard it more than once, and now seen it live and in person, Los Angeles loves its' cars and parking is at a premium. So we parked and found this cool little Italian place to eat at. And yes, I had to go and order red sauce. And yes, I got it on my blue shirt. (But not the white pants I was wearing!) So over to Target we went for a Tide pen. Crisis averted!

We got to the theater early and parked on a side street. There was a lot with a "valet" (a man checking his teeth in a car's mirror) for ten bucks but we decided to take our chances. Worked out fine, everyone we saw at the play seemed to park on that street! The theater was beyond small. But this was an awesome experience. The woman who took our names and gave us our programs/tickets was the writer's girlfriend and some of the actors sang outside with a karaoke machine before the show. Very cool.

Then there was the show. It was a musical, set in 1983, with lots of great pop culture references and set pieces. One of the stars of the show was Missy who is in the band Breech and she was awesome. Has this unforgettable voice and was just great. I'll tell you - if you're in the LA area at all in the next few weeks (I know so many of you will be) check out The Next Big Thing. Definitely worth it!

Afterward we hung out and talked with Missy and her bandmate and one of the other actors, very cool. Then we found a 7-Eleven and got chocolate sorbet to eat at the hotel. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your view, we got home well before Shia LeBeouf's accident so we didn't get to see the Indiana Jones co-star in all his drunken glory (but we did drive through that intersection just hours earlier).

Sunday we got up and had breakfast at the hotel which had these surprisingly okay cheese omelettes and really good cinnamon rolls and then headed to church. I'd researched United Methodist churches in the area and found four to choose from. We settled on the Hollywood United Methodist Church for two reasons (click on the name of the church and look at the pics and you can even hear the sermon!). One it was built to look like Westminster Abbey, big and Gothic in style. Two, it's trying to start a 20s/30s group which I thought sounded like a good idea. So off we went. Thanks to GPS lady we found it pretty easily (only had to turn around once - she tells us to make a lot of u-turns which are really not all that easy to do) and were very impressed with the building.

The sermon was interesting, they're doing a series on films and this week's was Ratatouille. Yes, the Disney movie about a rat who cooks. They did a great job with the PowerPoint, we saw scenes from the movie throughout the sermon and that was cool. The songs were familiar and it was a overall good experience. The pastor, Rev. Kathy Cooper - Ledesma, seemed very nice and we walked around the church grounds afterward.

That's when we crossed paths with Pauley Perrett. At first I wasn't sure it was her, she smiled and then I heard her talking to a young boy who said he felt like he was staring at her and she said something about she gets that a lot. She seemed pretty normal and I saw her again a little later talking to some younger kids. For those of you who don't know who Pauley Perrett is, check out the hit CBS show NCIS. She plays Abby. Yep, this was our very first celebrity sighting! It was pretty exciting! And apparently a woman at my parents' church knows Pauley's boyfriend who went to the United Methodist's Camp Kinawind! Small world!

After church we headed back through Hollywood and West Hollywood and Beverly Hills (Ang likes Beverly Hills because she knows where the police station is, we've driven by it about twenty times already) and tried to find the school where Ang would interview on Monday. We found a school, several actually at that address but none looked the part of Jewish day school. Also, we seemed to have wandered into Koreatown and then suddenly, a Hispanic neighborhood. We noticed mostly because of the gang tags and then because of the Hispanic men giving us a look that said, "We know you don't belong here." So we left. Of course not until we'd walked around for half an hour and I'd tried to get the ice cream man to help me out, which he wouldn't.

We were defeated but not about to give up so we headed to UCLA. This required getting a valid address for the GPS. Luckily our fancy new Instincts have the Internet. So off we went to campus! And it was beautiful! We stopped and asked for directions and quickly found the student union/bookstore. We ate at the only restaurant open, Panda Express, which tasted so good because it was about 3:30 at this point then we wandered into the bookstore which is HUGE! I have never seen so many sweatshirts in one room. Seriously. We got some postcards, Ang got a magnet and I got a sticker for my car and off we went (we only had an hour on our parking meter, yep, they enforce on Sundays!) to find Melnitz Hall where I'll take some of my classes. It's right on the edge of campus which I think is a good thing.

Then we started calling about some apartments. And guess what? No one answered. This is why I feel Craigslist might be sketchy. So we decided to try this westsiderentals.com we'd heard a lot about (okay, one of the actresses in the play last night is from Michigan and she suggested it so...). They have offices all over LA so we found one in Santa Monica and signed up. For sixty bucks we get a password for two months plus we could use their computers and printers right there for free. We printed off some listings and made some calls. And off we went again.

The first apartment we saw wasn't too great. It was stuck in the sixties, the fixtures, the colors, even the carpet maybe. The counters were all cracked and the stove looked way older than me. Hmmm...all this for $1850 a month. Oh, and no parking which means finding street parking. And did I ever mention that parallel parking is the one part of driver's ed I never passed. Nor was I ever tested on. Yeah. So we went to the next one. But before that we needed to recharge. And find a bathroom.

Did you know restaurants don't have to have restrooms. I think this is ridiculous. Subway had no bathroom so we left but we did find a Frogo that had a restroom. And this awesome nonfat chocolate frozen yogurt. Seriously. If I lived in Santa Monica I'd be buying it by the gallon. So we recharged and made another apartment call.

The landlady was about 97 years old and seemed very sweet. When I talked to her on the phone she wanted to know my name and what I and my sister did for a living. She also wanted us to come right over so we did. The apartment was nice, much better than the first one but (there's always a but isn't there?!?!?) there were a few snags. First, no refrigerator. She's hoping someone will have their own and she won't have to "think about it". Yep yep. Then she told us that someone had applied for it already that afternoon. Finally, neither of us have a job yet so we couldn't apply anyway. We thanked her and found our car and decided to give up apartment hunting and head to the ocean for a walk.

Over an hour later we'd made the three or so mile drive to the ocean. Yeah, it really took us that long. Santa Monica was hoppin'. We paid three dollars to park and walked to the pier. We headed to the water where we both got a little wet with the tide coming in but it was great fun. And cool, something different from life in Yuma!

About this time Ang got a call from the other school and set up her interview for Monday afternoon so we headed back to the hotel for our PB&J dinner. And then we headed out to Kinkos to get copies of her resume. And then we watched some TV on our 40-inch flat-screen TV. Yeah, life's rough!

Monday we managed to find both of Ang's interviews and another westsiderentals.com office. Her second interview was in Encino, in the "Valley" which is just north of LA. We are actually quite found of the Valley despite what some people say and we looked at an apartment there as well. For $1650 we could have three levels, washer-dryer hookups, a roof patio, and two parking spots in a garage! So we're really liking the Valley. So we'll see.

It was quite the weekend. We got home Monday night about 9:30 after driving down the coast and through San Diego (not the route we'd intended but the GPS had other plans). Today I'm tired. Tomorrow I'll try to get a little more caught up. I'm still applying for jobs but think I'll wait on too many more until I have an LA address or some more direction. We'll see. All in all, a good trip. It was great to start to get a feel for the city and surrounding areas. To see where I'll go to school and have a little fun too!