My sister doesn't kid about frozen yogurt.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A pretty great sticker
I found it in a box of Botan Rice Candy, which is delicious, in case you were wondering.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Thursday Night at the Bowl
Hi readers! I'm back, and while I won't say I'm better than ever--since that would imply I've done something of value in the past three or so weeks since I last posted--I'm doing alright. In case you were worried, I haven't completely fallen off the face of the planet or been abducted by aliens or been holed up in my parents' basement in my underwear watching all six seasons of "Lost" (silly--I don't even have a basement!)
Post-collegiate life is weird, since for all intents and purposes, right now feels like any other summer, except instead of the promise of school, friends, a different city, and a much-beloved apartment to return to, all I can see is the rest of my life stretching out in front of me in all its inscrutable, maddening uncertainty.
What have I been doing, you may wonder? There's no easy way to answer that, because while I'm always busy and never bored, it doesn't sound like a whole lot when I list it out. It's not as easy as saying, "I have a job" (which I don't) or "I'm traveling" (which I did already) or "I'm writing a novel" (which I should have done--sorry Katie). But trust me, I am by no means sitting around twiddling my thumbs.
Oh, but here's something I did do: last night I drove my grandparents, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend to the Hollywood Bowl. Being both of them in recovery from various medical procedures, my grandparents needed a chauffeur to a Hollywood Bowl* concert they had tickets to, and I was happy to oblige. Diana, Spencer and I bought the $8 tickets and stuck around for the show. While it was still light outside, I watched a couple bats swoop and dive to the music (which was really entertaining--I like to think they were purposely groovin' along with the beat), and drew the doodle you see below. It was altogether much more socially acceptable than that time I pulled out my sketchbook at a hockey game.
Diana and Spencer were huddled like this basically the whole time--poor planning on their part, since contrary to popular belief, L.A. can still get pretty damn cold when it feels like it.
*For those of you unfamiliar with the Hollywood Bowl, it's an outdoor concert venue in, as you can probably guess, Hollywood. It looks something like how I've drawn it above, but more like this.
Friday, July 2, 2010
S'more
Hello again, my fair friends,
I have returned to the City of Angels, as planned, and have once more settled into my summer routine: Cardio Barre with my sister, frozen yogurt, and, of course, projects. While I have decided to forgo Novel Writing Month, much to my dear friend Katelyn's chagrin, I am nonetheless busy with things that went undone the past three weeks I was away.
I have a few more photos from our last (half) day in London. After packing, and checking out, we went to breakfast. After, with some time to spare before leaving for the airport, we returned once again to Waterlow Park.
We so greatly enjoyed our travels, and again, I appreciated every one of you who followed along in our adventures.
Always,
A
I have returned to the City of Angels, as planned, and have once more settled into my summer routine: Cardio Barre with my sister, frozen yogurt, and, of course, projects. While I have decided to forgo Novel Writing Month, much to my dear friend Katelyn's chagrin, I am nonetheless busy with things that went undone the past three weeks I was away.
I have a few more photos from our last (half) day in London. After packing, and checking out, we went to breakfast. After, with some time to spare before leaving for the airport, we returned once again to Waterlow Park.
We so greatly enjoyed our travels, and again, I appreciated every one of you who followed along in our adventures.
Always,
A
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Oh.....
So apparently Highgate Cemetery, near where we were staying our last few days in London, is the final resting place of Karl Marx! And suddenly, the Karl Marx Tea Party at the local pub makes so much more sense.....
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Day the Twenty-First
Sunday the Twenty-Seventh of June, Two Thousand Ten
My dearest and most ever so faithful readers,
It is the final day! Tonight will be our last night in Furnival House, the University of Westminster dormitories, as well as our last night in London, and, indeed, all of England proper. By tomorrow night (in Los Angeles, for it will be mid-night in England) we will be home, flying backwards in time, as we shall have done.
We decided to have a bit of a lie-in this morning ("a lion?" Diana asked me the other day, confused by the British turn of phrase), and awoke to the sun beating through our windows and turning our adjoining rooms into downright furnaces. Once we had completed our respective toilettes, we set off in the direction of Hampstead Heath, a large, wild garden with a supposedly superb view of the city of London. We never, however, made it that far. We took first a pleasant stroll through Waterlow Park near our lodgings with the intention of emerging out in the direction of the Heath. However, where the Heath was, I could not figure out, for none of my maps went so far as to include it. Ah, well. After much wandering aimlessly about, hot and tired we found a Tube station and set off instead for frozen yoghurt. One brief repast later, we made our way to Trafalgar Square to peruse the National Gallery. While there were many impressive works therein, there were also far too many ugly baby Jesuses and preposterous-looking dogs for my taste. I felt moved, though, seeing the Van Goghs in person.
Once we had developed a serious case of Malade de Musée (more commonly known as "Museum Legs"), my sister and I left the cooler confines of the galleries for the hotter steps outside. There, a young man engaged us in conversation with an unlikely opening line along the lines of "What's the deal with all these Squares? Is Leicester Square even square?" I believe he really meant Trafalgar, but it worked nonetheless: we talked to him. His name was Kit and he should well have known the difference between the two, for he was a born and raised London man. What he was doing strolling past the National Gallery, a location swarming with tourists, is beyond me, though it is not, I suppose, a bad plan for meeting young defenceless foreign ladies. He was quite nice, and we discussed his upcoming adventures in South America and what we thought of England, before he had to leave.
From Trafalgar Square, we then walked northwards to Picadilly Circus, then onward to SoHo and Oxford Street. It being a Sunday afternoon, and the weather being so glorious, the streets were seething with people, making brisk walking nearly impossible. We ducked onto a side street, where we discovered a dimly lit Thai restaurant with open windows facing the street where we ended up eating dinner--our last dinner in England. Across the street was a famous bakery called The Hummingbird Bakery, which we had glimpsed earlier. We decided that pudding today would be cupcakes. And while I would choose pie over cake any day, these cupcakes might have made me reconsider. I said "might.
We opted from there to take the bus back to Archway rather than the Tube--in this way, we would get one last city tour, perhaps see places we hadn't yet seen. And so we did. Back at the dorms, my sister and I watched another two episodes of the programme "Chuck," before it was time for us to retire.
Much traveling will be done tomorrow. I am not so much looking forward to that, though, as I am to seeing my parents, and settling back into normalcy, some kind of routine. This trip has been simply marvelous. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know my younger sister better; we got along! (Mostly.) And I have finally been to England. Not since I was three years of age was I here: it was about time.
Thank you all for reading and those that commented, either on this blog or through various other media, I thank you for your feedback and your compliments. It was hard work keeping you all up to date on our various adventures, but it seemed the best way to remember all those stories likely to have been forgotten or muddled up upon our return. Your readership means a great deal to me.
Ever yours,
Angela
My dearest and most ever so faithful readers,
It is the final day! Tonight will be our last night in Furnival House, the University of Westminster dormitories, as well as our last night in London, and, indeed, all of England proper. By tomorrow night (in Los Angeles, for it will be mid-night in England) we will be home, flying backwards in time, as we shall have done.
We decided to have a bit of a lie-in this morning ("a lion?" Diana asked me the other day, confused by the British turn of phrase), and awoke to the sun beating through our windows and turning our adjoining rooms into downright furnaces. Once we had completed our respective toilettes, we set off in the direction of Hampstead Heath, a large, wild garden with a supposedly superb view of the city of London. We never, however, made it that far. We took first a pleasant stroll through Waterlow Park near our lodgings with the intention of emerging out in the direction of the Heath. However, where the Heath was, I could not figure out, for none of my maps went so far as to include it. Ah, well. After much wandering aimlessly about, hot and tired we found a Tube station and set off instead for frozen yoghurt. One brief repast later, we made our way to Trafalgar Square to peruse the National Gallery. While there were many impressive works therein, there were also far too many ugly baby Jesuses and preposterous-looking dogs for my taste. I felt moved, though, seeing the Van Goghs in person.
Once we had developed a serious case of Malade de Musée (more commonly known as "Museum Legs"), my sister and I left the cooler confines of the galleries for the hotter steps outside. There, a young man engaged us in conversation with an unlikely opening line along the lines of "What's the deal with all these Squares? Is Leicester Square even square?" I believe he really meant Trafalgar, but it worked nonetheless: we talked to him. His name was Kit and he should well have known the difference between the two, for he was a born and raised London man. What he was doing strolling past the National Gallery, a location swarming with tourists, is beyond me, though it is not, I suppose, a bad plan for meeting young defenceless foreign ladies. He was quite nice, and we discussed his upcoming adventures in South America and what we thought of England, before he had to leave.
From Trafalgar Square, we then walked northwards to Picadilly Circus, then onward to SoHo and Oxford Street. It being a Sunday afternoon, and the weather being so glorious, the streets were seething with people, making brisk walking nearly impossible. We ducked onto a side street, where we discovered a dimly lit Thai restaurant with open windows facing the street where we ended up eating dinner--our last dinner in England. Across the street was a famous bakery called The Hummingbird Bakery, which we had glimpsed earlier. We decided that pudding today would be cupcakes. And while I would choose pie over cake any day, these cupcakes might have made me reconsider. I said "might.
We opted from there to take the bus back to Archway rather than the Tube--in this way, we would get one last city tour, perhaps see places we hadn't yet seen. And so we did. Back at the dorms, my sister and I watched another two episodes of the programme "Chuck," before it was time for us to retire.
Much traveling will be done tomorrow. I am not so much looking forward to that, though, as I am to seeing my parents, and settling back into normalcy, some kind of routine. This trip has been simply marvelous. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know my younger sister better; we got along! (Mostly.) And I have finally been to England. Not since I was three years of age was I here: it was about time.
Thank you all for reading and those that commented, either on this blog or through various other media, I thank you for your feedback and your compliments. It was hard work keeping you all up to date on our various adventures, but it seemed the best way to remember all those stories likely to have been forgotten or muddled up upon our return. Your readership means a great deal to me.
Ever yours,
Angela
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