SV07 #4

Sunday came rather quickly. I told Grace that would be by to pick them up at around 9:00 to go to church. Their job, was to find one. When I pulled up and knocked on the door they were dressed and ready, however they still hadn’t picked a church. Matthew has gotten out of going to church and his girlfriend isn’t much of a motivator. I sat on the blue couch and just scanned the videos that the two of them had. They have a mighty nice selection of everything from Seinfeld to interesting chick flicks. Grace came down and told me that they had found a church that wasn’t too far from where Matthew lived and that it started around 11:00 or so. She also filled me in on some of the other weird church in the neighborhood, like one that was pastured by a lesbian. Could you believe that? I will never understand some of the things that are allowed in the church. Anyway, we got to church, and they had what I like to call dueling preaching. This is where one pastor would start and the other would get up and talk and then they would switch back and forth several times. I really enjoyed the church service. It was comfortable, and I got a lot out of. Not saying that this is the church that I would choose for myself, but they had good music, and not too long after sitting in a pew, we had a couple of people come up and greet us. My biggest prayer is that this might help Matthew get back into going to church. He said that sometimes he is too busy.
After church we drove Matthew home and I thought that it would be a good idea that now I had a camera that we go back to the Regan Library to take some pictures of the things that we did the day before. We figured that we would drive back and pick Matthew back up and take him out to dinner. We got on the freeway and headed towards the 101 freeway and took it all the way to the Oak Park Mall. This was a mall that I used to go to all the time growing up in the area. We stopped in there and even went into the same door. It’s funny every time that I go home and do things that I remember doing 10 years ago it is always odd to me.
They were doing major construction at the mall. One of the reasons that I took her there was to see the “Lions and tigers and bears…OH my” But once we got there we noticed that where they used to be had been totally removed and they were in the process of putting something else in its place. Needless to say I was a little bummed. We ended up just walking around the mall and taking in the sights of where the pet store used to be and where it look as though they were going to build a new parking structure. On our way out we thought it would be nice to pick up some cheesecake from the new Cheese Cake Factory. We picked up several that we thought that Matthew would like and then continued on our way. We drove through Thousand Oaks on the way back to Simi.
We pulled up to the library hoping to be able to at least go to Air Force One again. Alas we noticed that they was a different color to be able to get in, then the normal powder blue of when we were there before. We did go around the outside and took a bunch of pictures. The first one that I EVER took with the camera was one of Grace in front of the library near a statue of Ron with a cowboy hat. We also took them near the piece of the wall of Germany. They also had an area that they had gardened to look the way of the White House garden. Ronald is also laid to rest there and so I got my picture taken near his grave site. Grace also saw a sign that told us to be aware of rattlesnakes and so we did just that…but before we did she thought it would be cool to take her picture near it. After the library, I could tell that Grace was starting to get a little hungry, actually this had been happening ever since church. I was hoping that we could find a place that we didn’t normally get a chance to go to. We headed down the mountain where the library is kept and headed into the heart of Simi. Most of the things that I wanted to show Grace, had been shown on Friday, so I was more interested in finding a place to get her something to eat. I thought I would take her to In-&-Out. This was a place that I don’t really care for, but Grace had heard about it from a few people in Korea, so I thought this would be the time to take her there. The problem was that since I didn’t like to eat there, I think that I had only been there once while I lived in Simi. We took a few roads and turns and u-turns, and finally found it near the freeway onramp. We got something to eat, and then a t-shirt for her to be able to show off to John back in Korea. After getting something to eat, we got back on the freeway and hustled back to Matthews house because we were also suppose to be going to get something to eat with him. It would be about a 30 minute drive back to his house, and so we ate in the car and just again enjoyed each others company.
We pulled up to Matthews house and went inside, not really hungry anymore. But Matthew was. We kind of talked about things and came to the decision to have some home made pizza. Matthew would go get the stuff to make it, and we would head out real quick to see if I could find a normal adapter for my computer from the Best Buy that we saw driving in. We were a little late again, but we still had a great evening. We watched Casino Royale, ate some pizza and then had some cheese cake. I think I might have gained 20 pounds in just this one day of the trip…=) After the cheese cake Grace was starting to fall asleep and so we thought it was best to call it a night and pick up early the next morning…we had yet another big day to come.

SV07 #3

Saturday was to be a busy day as well and so I felt that I needed to get some rest, but I woke up again at 5:00, but hey Coach was on and needed to be watched right?
After taking a shower and having a doughnut from yesterday, I got in the car and drove to pick up Grace. You know in Korea I’m used to just walking down a street and then a little alley and turn right and I’m at her door. Driving 15 miles to pick her up is not the same. But she doesn’t know this, but I would drive 1,500 miles to pick her up.
I pulled in and knocked on the door to be greeted again by this stunningly beautiful woman. Grace was busy, hehe just kidding. From where her brother lived I wasn’t sure how to get to the Chinese Theatre. We had to look it up on-line. We got the directions and then got the directions to Griffiths Observatory as well. Her brother was gone, so we locked up and left his apartment. We got in the car and I followed the directions that Grace was giving me. We pulled into a parking garage off of a very busy street, put the car in a spot and then walked up to the main street. On this street was the Grumman's Chinese Theatre. This is where actors put their hands, feet and yes sometimes lips into concrete. We still didn’t have a camera because mine wasn’t working and I’m not sure what was wrong with Grace’s. We had to buy a disposable one so that we could take some pictures of the concrete with us putting our hands into the hands and feet. Grace had hers taken with several like Shirley Temple. The newest ones were just put there two weeks before we toured the place. The actors from Oceans 13, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and others were all together, and people were crowded, actually more people than I have ever seen there. But we did get some pictures taken and walked a few blocks down to go through the Hollywood Wax Museum. By paying for tickets into this place we also were able to go across the street and tour the Guinness Book of World Records Museum as well. I think Grace had a lot of fun in both places. At the wax museum they had Forest Gump and all the characters from the show M*A*S*H. Grace had to go to the bathroom, so while she was in there, I went and looked at the Titanic exhibit. The last set of wax figures was a little on the confusing side. It was a story of the Last Supper. They had DaVincci’s “Last Supper” done in wax, but not just the last supper, they had someone narrating the story and had three crosses as well, something that I didn’t expect to see in the middle of Hollywood. We walked across the street to the Guinness museum. It was interesting and disturbing all at the same time. Some of the feats that they accomplished were pretty good, but some of the food stuff was off the charts disgusting. As we walked from place to place along the sidewalk were these stars, on the stars were different names, hence the “Hollywood Walk of Fame”. We saw names like Billy Graham, Buster Keaton and others. We didn’t go looking for names, but we did see some that Grace wanted to see. We were pretty tired from walking around the whole time so we felt that it was time to head out. On the way back to the car we had to walk through this mall type area. On the left was a place called “Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory”. We went in and smelled the most amazing chocolate ever. We looked at a few magnets and Grace saw one with little kitty cats on it. On the way out we saw these huge dark chocolate peanut butter cups. I saw Grace drooling a little so I had the lady behind the counter wrap us up a couple. In the car she couldn’t wait as so we ripped into the package and tried eating them. I got through all mine pretty quick. Grace cutely nibbled on hers and found the inside peanut butter cream to be simply incredible. We left the parking garage and headed up the mountain to go to Griffith Observatory. But before getting to far we encountered a guard and a blocked road. I kind of got snippy with him a bit but he directed us to where we needed to go to take a bus up to the top. Apparently they aren’t allowing anyone to just drive up there anymore because of all the fires that they have been having in the area. We went back down the mountain and went to the zoo parking lot, which was next to the buses we had to take. We made it just in time to catch the next bus. It was so funny because the bus went back the way we came and the guard at the road block opened up the gate to let the bus through. At the top it was just like I remembered it. They had done a lot of remodeling that we would discover later. First we went up to the top and took some pictures of Grace sitting on the ledge over looking the Los Angeles basin. She looked so beautiful in the pictures I would later come to find out. Meanwhile we went in to the dome. This was the first time that I was there that they actually let us look through the massive telescope. Apparently they were focused on Venus which looked like a half moon to our eyes. I looked and looked but only saw my own eye. I remembered an episode of Friends where Rachel was trying to see her baby on the scan but couldn’t, but said she did anyway. I tried that, but it didn’t work. I had to be the tough smart guy who could see it, but in reality I couldn’t see anything. After that we walked down and into the building. Inside they have several experiments and rooms set up to that you can see how things work like how the moon changes shapes and the suns flares. In the center I remembered the swinging pendulum that would not move but the floor would to demonstrate the rotation of the earth. When it would swing it would knock over a little chip on the floor every ten minutes or so. Those chips were no longer there because OSHA had told them hat it was unsafe for people to get down in the pit to reset them. What a stupid politically correct world we live in. I would be willing to bet that during the what 200 years the place has been open, there hasn’t been even one near miss.
This is one place that I really enjoyed when I used to live here. When I was in high school I took a class entitled Film History, where the teacher showed us movies and then asked us questions about the movies. One of those movies was “Rebel Without a Cause”, starring James Dean and Natalie Wood. I showed the movie to Grace while we were in Korea. She really impressed me when we were walking around. She would say things like “Isn’t that the place where they had the knife fight?”, “Or isn’t that where they had the shoot out in the end?”. She really took an interest in those things and it made me feel special because it was something in which I was showing her and she was taking the initiative in asking if I wanted to be in a picture here, or there.
They had built on a new section which was really cool to go through. We got to see how much we weighed on different planets. But the other thing that we had fun with was this interactive simulator where you could pick what type and weight and speed and size of the object you wanted to smash into our planet. Then you would press enter and it would tell you the amount of devastation that you caused. After going through the new section we went to the gift shop and got a few things for the little children that we would be seeing in New York. We got a shirt that glows in the dark. Back in the main yard and took a few more pictures of Grace standing near all of the main astronomers, Kepler, Newton and the likes. It’s incredible, every single picture turned out so great. Griffith Observatory is also a great place to see the Hollywood sign. That was something else that Grace wanted to do. The sign was right across the way. We actually thought that we would have time to go horseback riding up to the sign, but we just ran out of time. Maybe next time.
We headed for the line to get back on the bus to get back to our car. It was hot and sticky, but the thought of that air-conditioned seat made things more bearable. After getting back in the car we headed back to her brothers house where we met up with his girlfriend and we all went out to a place that Matthew knew of all in our car. It was a Mexican place. We ordered lots of food and I had my usually bean and cheese burrito. As we ate I excused myself and said I was going to go to the restroom, however, I actually got the waiters attention and had him produce the check and I secretly paid the check for everybody. I used the restroom and then headed back to our table. There was a really cool table fountain that was right in the middle of the restaurant. It had colorful lights under the water, one that I would love to have on my own. I got back to the table and the conversations went on and on. Then at one point Matthew’s girlfriend started to get a little upset about the fact that the check hadn’t been brought to our table. I seemed to have forgotten to tell them that I had taken care of all that. I finally did and Dara (Matthew’s girlfriend) said that she had planned to take us out. I told her that I didn’t realize that and it was a special treat for us to take them out. We went back to their apartment and I dropped everyone off and told them that I was still a little worn out from the whole days activities and I was still jet lagged. After pulling away I thought about the fact that we didn’t have a camera, and I didn’t want to keep buying disposable ones. So I went all the way back towards the place where we ate and went to the Target that was across the street to see what they had in the way of digital cameras. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw one for only 150 bucks. I bought it and then headed back to my hotel to read the instructions and get some sleep. The camera seemed to be a pretty good one. It had 7 times the pixel rate that my old camera had. I also picked up the newest M*A*S*H season and the final episode. I put them into my computer and it made a weird noise and I had to shut it down by flicking the switch. I tried to turn it back on and nothing happened. I plugged it into the wall now hat I had an adapter, but nothing happened. I left it plugged in over night in hopes that I would have my computer back up and running the next morning.