So not important...so on my mind.

I think there should be a white house hedgehog.

The Obama family should definitely get their dog, and I will stand by any dog they choose. I hear the goldendoodle is up there on their list, good for them. But in the spirit of change and ushering in a new era, I think they should introduce a new species to the west wing. Thus, I say, they need a hedgehog.










Let's look at the advantages here:

1. Hedgehogs are cute. You can't see one and be in a bad mood.

2. They are both cuddly and prickly, much like leaders should be: tender and warm-hearted toward the nation they are leading, protective and vigilant against potential enemies.

3. Unlike other spined animals, their quills are not barbed or poisonous. This means they are OK in the hands of both children and foreign dignitaries.

4. Hedgehogs are nocturnal. Meet the new night watchman on the beat.

5. They interact well with other pets in the house.

6. Some people use them as natural pest control in their gardens. Meet the new gardener.

7. Did I mention cute already??

Michigan, I've let you down...

For the last couple weeks now, I've been fighting it. But the time has come to admit the truth:

I am a weather wimp.

I came to California, laughing at all those who say "oh yes, it gets cold here". I sneered at people who said "We get snow....on the mountains". I'm sorry, do you scrape it off your car every morning? Drive through it 5 months of the year? No? Oh, well then, you have NO IDEA what snow really is! Clearly these people are all spoiled rotten by the weather and just don't know it.

I woke up a couple weeks ago, smacked the alarm clock, got ready for school amid the chaos of my two 16 pound cats, and stumbled out the door.

Cold.

Hmmm...that can't be right.

Went to school, parked, and walked to my room quickly.

Cold.

Next day, same morning routine.

COLD!!

It's got to be 30 degrees outside. Why did I leave my coats in Michigan? I should have my parents send my winter gear over, this is clearly only the beginning.

A hasty check of weather.com confirms what I feared. Actual temp. on those mornings: about 60 degrees.


I'm sorry Michigan, I thought I was stronger.

It's not all smog and pixie dust over here.

I just realized that my 'you know you're from LA when' was totally depressing. So I would like to add some things that I adore about my new city, things that make me want to wrap the whole metropolis up in a big hug and let it seep into my veins. In no particular order...

1. I drive by the Hollywood sign on my way to work.

2. There are hills! And I can drive up and down them! I would like to specifically recommend Baxter Street in Echo Park.

3. I live 2 blocks from a yummy Indian restaurant.

4. People here get their daily vitamin D from the sun, so people are friendly.

5. Going for a walk outside can happen 360 days a year.

6. I can walk to the Griffith Observatory.

7. If there's a specialty store for it, it's usually no more than 5 miles away.

8. It's hard to decide which yoga place to go to.

9. I'm no longer percieved as crazy liberal, but just normal.

10. Humidity does not happen.

11. FOLIAGE. LA is a living tribute to all things floral and green.

12. You can dress however you want on any day of the year, and fit right in.

13. When it's 9am in Michigan and the teachers over there are starting 2nd hour, my alarm clock is just going off.

14. Pacific Ocean. Enough said.


15. Not everyone is fake, like some would lead you to believe.

16. You can watch a TV show, run to the grocery store afterward and potentially run into someone you just saw on the screen.

17. No salty roads.

18. No frostbite.

19. 92 different languages spoken here every day.

20. You can catch a great band most any night of the week.

21. I live a block from a place called "Nature Mart".

Celebrity Sighting #1

First of all, I should mention that I am not cool. I spent most of my life assuming that if I ever met or saw a celebrity or anyone of importance that I would either pretend to ignore them completely, smile possibly say something witty, or not recognize them at all because I really don't see a lot of movies or watch much TV.

Boy was I wrong.

R and I went to a friend's birthday party, and had a great time listening to said friend's band. Afterward we were hanging out on the sidewalk chatting with friends, when someone incredibly tiny walked by. She was wearing black, and I detected wispy blond hair and bubbly cheeks kind of like I had when I was younger. Did I mention she was tiny? That was the first thing that got me thinking "maybe that's like an actress or something".

So what do I do? No no, I didn't discreetly look to see who it was. That would have fallen under the "cool" category, which I do not belong to. Nope, I had to be the one who, without thinking, got up on tiptoe and leaned over the people I was with to see who it was. Said person caught me leaning and staring, and abruptly darted the other direction, as anyone being leered at would do. This was my second clue that she was probably someone noted. Sure enough, half an hour later, I keep hearing "did you see her too? She was here, I swear!" And I had to be the idiot gawking from the sidewalk.

I hope I get better at this.

I'm caught between two worlds...

I only put the ones that apply to me. Most of you will only find humor in half this list. Sorry. You know you're from Michigan When... "Vacation" means going to Cedar Point. At least 1 member of your family disowns you the week of the Michigan/Michigan State game. Half the change in your pocket is Canadian... eh! Your idea of a traffic jam is 40 cars waiting to pass an orange barrel. You know how to play (and pronounce) Euchre. It's easy to get VERNORS ginger ale and Sanders hot fudge sauce, and Faygo pop. You know how to pronounce "Mackinac". You've had to switch on the "heat" and the "A/C" in the same day. You bake with SODA and drink a POP. The word "thumb" has geographical, rather than anatomical significance. You show people where you grew up by pointing to a spot on your right hand. Traveling coast-to-coast means driving from Port Huron to Muskegon. When giving directions, you refer to "A Michigan Left". You know that Kalamazoo not only exists, but isn't that far from Hell. Your year has 2 seasons: Winter and Construction. You believe that "down south" means Toledo.

You know you're from Los Angeles When...

You’re driving on the 101 and see a clear cut definition of where the smog begins and ends.

You go to the beach and see that real lifeguards actually do look like the lifeguards from Baywatch.

You begin to “lie” to your friends about where you are (i.e. “Yeah I’m like 20 minutes away”) when you know that it’ll take you at least an hour to get there).

You eat a different ethnic food for every meal.

You look around at the nice cars around you during traffic, thinking it’ll be your favorite Laker or WB star.

You know it’s best not to be on the 405 at 4:05 pm.

Getting anywhere from point A to point B, no matter what the distance, takes about “twenty minutes”.

You’ve inadvertently learned Spanish.

You know what “sigalert”, “PCH”, and “the five” mean.

Your TV show is interrupted by a police chase.

You know someone named Freedom, Rainbow, Persephone or Destiny.

You think that Venice is a beach.

You drive next to a Rolls Royce and don’t notice.

Calling your neighbors requires knowing their area code.

You have a favorite Thai restaurant.

When giving directions , you follow up with the phrase: “With/Without traffic.”

It is not unusual for your waitress at a restaurant to have blue streaked hair, a dragon tattoo and tounge piercing.

Walking out of Jamba Juice, you see that a movie is being shot on-location across the street.

You have to yell at your bank teller through a 2 inch thick wall of plexi-glass.

You know that not everyone in Beverly Hills is a millionaire.

The guy at 8:30 in the morning at Starbucks wearing the baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney IS George Clooney.

It’s sprinkling and there’s a report on every news station about “STORM WATCH ‘99″

A shout-out for all the Mitten People!

Hello Michiganders!

I have been promising pictures and stories for awhile now, and here they are! I hope you'll forgive how late they are, as I've been worried about silly things like getting an apartment and a job, and starting a brand new school (stories about that to follow). There is good news on both those fronts now, and I have a little time to share my moving adventure with everyone. I'll try to go as chronologically as I can. Here we go!


DAY ONE (and feeling very “manifest destiny”)

Robert and I left Coldwater on Wednesday July 17, in a 16 foot Budget moving truck, towing my car behind us. I waved and called out goodbye to the whole town, did you hear it? We went through Bronson and caught the 80, a road that we would stay on until we were almost to Colorado.

Along the 80 we saw many interesting sights, such as a town that might have been named by Fozzie Bear:



The Mississippi River:



A Very Boring Town:

and lots of very beautiful countryside. Indiana and Illinois were nothing new to my eyes, and probably not to yours either. But as the sun began to set in Iowa on our first day on the road, we got some pretty nice pictures.


We stopped that night and stayed in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It's almost on the border of Nebraska.


620 miles down, 1500 to go.


DAY TWO (here comes corn)

We passed through Omaha almost as soon as we were on the road, and saw that we had 454 miles of Nebraska to get through.



This was Robert's least favorite day, having been told by a fellow Californian that “Nebraska will test your patience for boredom...there is literally nothing there”. Now, it wasn't the most exciting drive ever, but I thought the scenery was just fine. There were fields, horses, and gently rolling hills to watch as we slowly climbed the plains and got ready for the mountains.





















































































Sometime in the mid afternoon, we entered Colorado, and the landscape started to change. It didn't look like Michigan anymore at all. The trees pretty much disappeared, and were replaced with rockier looking hills, lots of cows and horses on farms, and the scrubby, scraggly looking vegetation associated with the high plains.



We got to Denver and decided to call it a day, having driven 545 miles. We didn't really do much in Denver, being a bit worn out from two days of doing nothing but driving. This was the last time we were bored until Nevada.



DAY THREE (I do not heart Colorado)

I woke up nervous as all get out. Having lived in a relatively flat area all my life, I did not want to spend my first day in the Rockies towing my car, driving a moving truck, and contending with traffic. Worse, we couldn't seem to get an accurate estimate of how long it would take us to get through The Mountains. We had heard the following:

“It's a 90 mile stretch. Should take a couple hours.”

“It'll take you the whole day.”

“Well, that depends on a lot of things. Just don't overheat the truck or run outta gas.”

“You're driving that thing up there?”

So I got ready and went out to the truck, anticipating a 2 to 10 hour drive of winding turns, steep grades, traffic, and elevation issues. Robert was out there checking the truck. I looked at him and said “ready when you are.” He gave me a look and said “Yeah, I don't think so.”



I have no idea how we drove on that tire, when that giant hole had happened, or how we managed to get to the repair shop without it blowing out on us. But we did, thankfully. While it was getting fixed, a nice guy who was also waiting for a repair told us he was from California but had recently been to the midwest. He was headed to Sturgis for some business or another, and he and I spent a moment “nerding out” about Michigan together.

An hour later, we were on the road.




For lunch, we stopped in a little mountain town called Idaho Springs, where we ate a picnic lunch by the river, and watched white water rafters float by.



































The mountains are very beautiful, and very nerve-wracking to drive through if you aren't in a car, truck, or van. So I will just put the pictures up, and you can view them without my commentary of how nervous I was that day.




















































































Oh yeah, and this is the Colorado River.



















We finally got to Utah!



We drove to a town called Moab, which is 30 miles off the main freeway. We went this far off the beaten path because the next day we were going to get up early and see Arches National Park.



































DAY FOUR (and getting sick of driving)

The park is gorgeous! We did a little driving through the park, and a little hiking. We saw some wildlife, cacti, and lots and lots of red rocks. We were definitely not in the midwest anymore.
































































































































































































After we left Arches, we filled up the gas tank. It was good that we did, because five miles afterward we saw a sign that said “No services next 100 miles.” 100 miles in Michigan terms = 1.5 hours, right? Oh, I wish.

Here's the thing about Utah. It snuck up on us. We were all worried about Colorado, and never even thought about Utah. Utah sat there, quietly and unassuming, and didn't make a big show about what it has. And then we got there, and found mountains upon mountains, deserts that stretch forever, and we started to think two things: 1. how in the world did people live out here before electricity and cars, and 2. Are we going to make it out of here? The pictures are neat. But if you stop and think “how did they get up there?” it gives you an idea of what that 100 mile stretch was like.
























































Somehow we got out of Utah, ducked through the top left corner of Arizona...


Into Nevada...


and made it to Vegas. We booked a hotel outside of town a bit, ate dinner, and then I won exactly 20 cents in a slot machine. What can I say, I take the big risks ;)

DAY FIVE (are we there yet???)

After four more hours of desert, we finally rounded our last mountain in the early afternoon and entered the Inland Empire. I don't have any pictures because it's not that exciting. It's basically suburbia on steroids.

We drove through suburbia for about 45 minutes, just to give you an idea of how big it is. Finally, we went through Pasadena, and popped into Echo Park at about 3:00 in the afternoon. The sun was shining, the traffic was light, and the graffiti was everywhere. Here are some shots of a few of my favorite murals, all done by the same artist:



















































That night we celebrated our trip's end by going to a restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. called Palms Thai, a place with Thai food and a Thai Elvis Impersonator who serenades the crowd every night at 7:30. Afterward, I celebrated more by starting a very long process of unpacking.

Ok, that's the end of the tour. I miss you all and would love to hear from anyone and everyone (even Doug). I think my LMS account will be up for some time, and if you write me I'll send you all my contact info. If you send me your address, I'll send you a postcard :)

Also, I'm going to update this occasionally if something really wierd or cool happens, so you can check back.

If anyone is going to be out in LA, you'd better call or write so we can hang out! I plan to be home at Christmas time to remind myself what snow is.

Hope you are all having a terrific school year so far!