(Maddie) Parents' Week - Part 2

Monday, I had to work, so my parents tooled around Malibu. Lucky stiffs:) Tuesday was a delightful day. I took my parents to the Getty Center, of which I have already written extensively. We spent most of our time in the amazing garden, but gave a fair shake to each of the art galleries. The looked like it would turn into another gorgeous evening, so we thought we would give the Griffith Observatory another shot. SUCCESS! *just like Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory* We found a parking space in the overflow along the road. If required a little bit of a trek, but we got there in time to see the sun set and saw the "Hollywood" sign in the distant mountains. We quickly aquired tickets to the Planetarium show in a few hours and then went about our business. The building itself was built during the Great Depression, utilizing the Art Deco style. We had a great view of Los Angeles that would only get better as the sky dimmed. We thought the line looked really short to the telescope, so we got there just in time to see them switch from Venus to Saturn...and I was the first one to see it! Score! As I was waiting for my parents outside, I realized that we had accidently cut in line, which extended through the terrace. I felt kind of bad...but not really. No one told us that we cut. Also, it looked like everyone was just looking over the scenic view, not waiting in line. Their fault, not mine;). The sunset was beautiful. We tooled through museum and saw the Tesla Coil, the Pendulum, typical elementary science / physics displays...Then, we went to the Planetarium show, which was freaking awesome. It reminded me of how small we actually are in the Universe. After we got out, we looked out to L.A., which glittered like a pile of jewels on a black velvet cloth, stretching for miles. By the way, one of my favorite movies - The Rocketeer - was filmed at the Observatory. It was a wonderful, fun-filled day. If you are ever there, you need to visit Getty and Griffith:) They are both worth your time.

Wednesday - second-to-last day at my internship. My parents visited the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. On Thursday, we ventured out to the La Brea Tar Pits. I was expecting dinosaurs, but no. The tar pits did not form until the ice age...*raspberry* It was still pretty awesome, though. There was one major tar pit, which reminded me of the Bog of Eternal Stench in Labyrinth. Methane gas and tar balls bubbled up everywhere. The museum needed some updating, but they had a lot of full skeletons from the Ice Age. There were some smaller pits which were being excavated. Some of the mini-pits were only 2 feet wide, but still had fences around them;) As a part of their interactive exhibits, they removed some tar from the pits and put it in a plunger thingamajigger. When you pull the plunger, you got to see how powerful the suction is. As we were leaving, we noticed that a movie crew had set up to film a scene from NCIS: Los Angeles next to the big tar pit. Everyone flocked to be a part of the extras. We fled the scene after observing it for a few minutes, not wishing our faces to be part of the background.

I will write up a post about my last day (Friday) at the production office and our trip back to the Mitten in the next few days. Again, I must subject you to suspenseful waiting. Poor you.

(Maddie) Parents' Week - Part 1

I am now back in the world of the living...jetlag no longer has any power over me. But, alas, Pacific Standard Time still does. Damn time zones. Meh. I am back in America's High-Five (the Mitten); but, I am still going to recount my amazing adventures over the last week of my internship. I had been following a mostly-routine schedule in the days after my last post. Nothing special. I'm sure I could have churned out something witty and sarcastic, but, I'll be honest - I was just too damn lazy;)



My parents arrived in LAX late Friday evening and picked up a rental car. I had told them to take the 405 at their own peril. You see, L.A. traffic never ends. It is somewhat akin to the Energizer Bunny. Although it would take longer, the Pacific Coast Highway would have been far less stressful. They took the 405 at 11pm on Friday night. As my Mother said, "The GPS paid for itself that night." My poor Father, worn down Spirit Airlines, had to take his life into his own hands and enter the hell that is California's highway system. Be Aggressive, B-E Aggressive! Since everyone is from somewhere else in L.A., there is no established road ettiquette. Turn signals are optional equipment, horns are near-constant backround noise, weaving in and out of lanes is a normal way to get into the next lane, and illegal texting is still a common past-time. Fortunately, they arrived in one piece. Poor Dad had to drive around in this crap for the rest of the week. (Traffic is one of the major negatives in L.A.). Let's just say I appreciate the public bus system more after this.



Early Saturday morning, I took Mom and Down down to Santa Monica Beach, the place I frequented on my free days. It was a foggy, nippy morning with barely a soul on the beach. We walked barefoot in the wet sand. Dad got his ankles (and the bottom of his jeans) nailed by a particularly wiley wave, prompting him to yell a benign expletive and giving me a great photo-op. We walked down toward the Pier, picking up a sandwich-bag-full of seashells along the way. We walked up and down the Pier, laughing at the strange, New-Jersey-esque people we saw. When the sun came out, we shrank away like vampires toward the Third Street Promenade, protecting out pastiness. Burgers, Pinkberry, a walk down the Promenade, and we were on our way back home. It was a wonderful day and deserved a siesta in the afternoon.



I took my parents to the OPC Church I had attended while in L.A. They got to meet everyone I had gotten to know over the 10 weeks I was there. In the evening, we noticed that it was going to be a crystal clear night sky. Apparently, so did everyone other frickin' person in L.A. Since Dad and I are astronomy nerds, we all decided to go to the Griffith Observatory. Our stressful journey took us through the narrow streets of Korea Town, whose signs were mostly in Korean. Ironically, I saw more Hispanics there than Koreans. Oh well. After driving through hills of old Hollywood homes, we arrived at the Observatory Road, only to find the parking lot full and the overflow parking streching down the hillside. Not tonight. Double damn! I think most people were there because it was free, not because they were astro-nuts. Whenever something is free, I always feel more inclined to use/take it, even if I don't need or want it. For instance, I have a collection of bus maps and L.A. Weekly's in my room. I don't need or particularly want them. I just feel like taking one anyway. Maybe I have a mild, subconscious form of kelptomania.


Now, you must wait in suspense for part 2. Mwahaha!

(Mary) there's no place like home

I'm ho-ome! And it's great to be back. I've got a few loose ends to tie up, but for now, I'm home.

I've got different glasses on now. It's weird. I don't see bursts of life standing amid the broken concrete; I see weeds invading a vacant lot. Stuff like that all over. Not everything's wonderful here, but it's home.

I'm painting my room.

(Amanda) Hmm?

I need to finish up cataloging the maps in the next few days, so I have spent all day flipping through the huge folders and typing the relevant information into excel (a program I am coming to terms with...slowly). The current batch of maps includes some aerial photos of the MA coast taken in the midst of WWII. They were produced by the Army Corps of Engineers, and have "RESTRICTED" stamped on them. I feel rather illicit, even though the information is no longer sensitive. These particular maps are printed on shiny white paper, when I turn them over in the folder they have the gloss of almost-done meringue.

I'm in a meringue-y WWII map induced haze.

(Amanda) indecision

This afternoon I took an accidental driving tour of the Boston suburbs. You see, I am a good driver, and a good navigator, I simply cannot do them both at the same time. I was double checking my route when I overshot my exit and ended up on the turnpike (there are so many tolls!) which is like prison, or a roach motel, or something equally hard to get out of (the one turnaround exit required a toll pass, which I do not have! discrimination!). I was never lost in the strictest sense of the word, but I did take the (very) long way home.

Once I returned to my home turf, as it were, I stopped by a thrift store and the grocery store. Now, when I am grocery shopping I, as I assume most people do, keep a running tally in my head, rounding each item up to the closest dollar, so I can stay on-budget. As I stepped up to the register I thought "this should be $16." The lolling checkout guy rang through all my items and, lo and behold, my total was exactly $16.00. He mustered up some energy and said "hmmm, well, umm, that doesn't happen very often." No, no it does not.

I'm currently trying to decide what to do this evening. I could go to an event at 5:30, or I could stay here and cook/read/watch things/read/sleep. I am horrible at making decisions where absolutely nothing is at stake and I will be happy either way. Just ask my grandmother and my aunt how good I am at deciding where we should go for dinner....

(Mary) bourbon

I had to take yesterday afternoon off for something not related to work but still important. I found myself in Owosso, Mich., then Flint, Mich., and got back to Toledo pretty late. I finished my work and got to bed around 4.

My normal alarm is 7 a.m., though I usually wake up before it goes off. This gives me plenty of time to shower, read, enjoy the morning before Betsy gets up and we eat breakfast. We usually leave the apartment between 8:30 and 8:50, except on Tuesdays, when we have to be in an hour earlier.

I was wiped. I set my alarm for 7:45 -- because 45 minutes makes a huge difference, I know -- and fell asleep.

I woke up before my alarm -- maybe 7:42 or so -- and realized that it was Tuesday morning. I woke Betsy up.

"Betsy? It's Tuesday, right? We have to be in the office at 8, right?"

"Yeah. What time is it now?"

"Seven forty-five."

"Okay. If we get out the door in five minutes, we can make it."

We did, and had a wonderful lunch with an assoc editor, and I am still tired.

(Amanda) sweet endings

Last weekend we went to OSV, and had a lovely time walking the grounds. It reminds me of what Greenfield Village used to look like, if the village was all from in the 1830s.

The next day we (a different "we") found ourselves at a bookstore with the (entirely accurate) slogan "books you don't need at a place you can't find." It is in a converted mill building, near a really pretty river. We looked at books (and of course bought some), had dinner, splashed around in the river, and had a long and muddy drive back home.

I got back to "my house" around 11, tidied up, fell asleep, then woke up and began my second to last week of interning here. This afternoon I finished the presentation draft of my Ed. project (those pesky vocabulary words took forever...). I'm hoping I can try it out on actual visitors, so I can provide *real* feedback with along with my proposal.

We took a field trip to Pilgrim Hall today. The curator showed us around for more than two hours. They have a really impressive collection, and he did a great job of explaining the significance of everything we were looking at. It took me a while to figure out why he seemed so very familiar, then I realized that his manner, speech pattern, and wardrobe made him the Nikolai Wenzel of curators. They have the same way of geeking out about their subjects in infectious ways (and a similar affection for the brewer's arts :o)

So, yes, it has been a really nice couple of days...if more than a little tiring. School might mean less sleep, but it also means less travel.