Beaches and Baseball

This week we had our 3rd Wedding Anniversary.  To celebrate we went out to a nice dinner, and scheduled plans for a weekend at Disneyland at the end of the month.

Saturday we drove up the coast to spend the day in Santa Barbara.  We walked along the beach, down the pier and along the State Street Historic Downtown shopping area.  We have heard that Santa Barbara is a nice place, but we were surprised by how much we loved this quaint beach town - Bogey included.

 

Sunday we decided to catch an afternoon game at Dodger Stadium.  For you Baseball buffs you may find these factoids as interesting as I (Tim) did: Dodger Stadium is currently the third oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball (behind Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago) and is the largest ballpark by seating capacity.  Since the game started right around lunchtime we purchased tickets in the "all you can eat" Right Field Pavilion.  Despite no respite from the California sun, our 1st row seats in the outfield were almost as fantastic as the unlimited Dodger Dogs.  The game was uneventful (offensive wise) until the 9th inning where the Dodgers won by a walk-off home run. It was a great ending to a wonderful day at the ballpark.

As usual, here are the rest of the pictures.

Here and There

We have had a couple of pretty laid back weekends since our last posting.  Two weeks ago we went to the neat town of Orange CA to visit one of Tim's former teammates from Greensboro College.  We spent the day walking around Historic Orange and visiting with Lawren, his Wife and their 3 children.  Last weekend we headed down the street to Six Flags  to ride a few roller coasters before the Final Four.  

Yesterday we went to The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley.  The Museum was quite remarkable, it definitely exceeded our expectations.  Unknown to us, we ended up timing our visit to the Library very well, as it was the last weekend the Miniature White House exhibit would be on display.  Unfortunately flash photography is not allowed, so our pictures will not do justice to this phenomenal replica. But I was able to track down more in-depth pictures of the model here.  One of the highlights of The Museum is the pavilion that hosts President Reagan's Air Force One, Marine One and his motorcade.  We were able to board the Air Force One, but have no pictures since photography is not allowed while on the plane.  The 80's state of the art communication center on Air Force One is now laughable, but it was really cool seeing President Reagan's Nuclear Football sitting in between the seats of the communication center.   Also featured at The Museum is the suit worn by President Reagan when he was shot, a section of the Berlin Wall, a full-sized replica of The Oval Office and President Reagan's final resting place. 

For our Sunday outing we went hiking at Runyon Canyon Park in the Hollywood Hills.  This 4 mile hike had amazing views throughout its 1000 ft. of elevation change.  

As usual, for the rest of the photos visit our Picasa page.  

For those of you who are interested, the folks at Google have created new ways to view blogs.   For a dynamic look at our entries visit the following link - Dynamic Views for Readers.  

The Friedberg's Visit

This weekend, Jodi's parents came to visit us for a long weekend in SoCal.  Friday we spent most of the day in Malibu.  We got an early start and drove a short distance along the Pacific Coast Highway around Malibu.  We made one stop along the water and it didn't take long for a wave to soak Mom and Dad's legs past their knees.  If was quite funny for us, but Mom was less than pleased.  They had to spend the rest of the day in wet jeans with wet socks and wrinkled toes.  We then took a 2-hour Whale Watching tour that left from the Malibu Pier.  Of course, we did not see any whales, but we did see plenty of dolphins and seals.  The tour also showed us a handful of celebrity homes that are located along the water in Malibu, including Cher, Dick Clark, Barbara Streisand, and Olivia Newton John.  One of the coolest things we saw were the enormous starfish attached to the legs of the pier.  After the tour, we ate lunch outside at The Beachcomber on the Malibu Pier.  We made a quick stop at the Cornell Winery before making our way home.  For dinner, we headed across the street from our apartment to BJ's where we enjoyed a great dinner and had our first star sighting.  We saw 2 soap opera stars (formerly on Port Charles and General Hospital), Erin Presley and her husband, Brian Presley.  After dinner, we saw One Night of Queen at the local performing arts center.  Gary Mullen and The Works spent the evening covering many Queen songs as we sang along.  Gary Mullen looked, sang and entertained just like Freddie Mercury.

On Saturday, we spent the day in Hollywood.  We started at the Griffith Observatory overlooking Hollywood and downtown LA.  After taking pictures of the Hollywood sign, we walked along Hollywood Boulevard looking at the walk of fame and the handprints in the cement in front of the Chinese Theater.  We think Mom and Dad enjoyed it more than they thought they would.  We then ate lunch at the Original Farmer's Market at the Grove where we had another star sighting.  While Mom and Jodi were looking for something to eat, they saw Anna Kendrick of the Twilight movies and Up in the Air.  After lunch we drove through Beverly Hills before heading back home for the day.  Later that night we headed to downtown LA to the Garrett Morris Downtown Comedy Club for an evening of stand up comedians.  We saw about 10 different comedians in about 3 hours including Garret himself.  It was much more entertaining than we first expected and we all had a great time (including the $1 Ring Dings and Twinkies they sold at the bar.)

Sunday, we spent the day at the apartment, relaxing, mostly because it rained the entire day (yes it actually rained here).  We received about 1 inch of rain every hour and this literally dampened our plans.  However, we needed the day to recover and relax from the previous event-filled days and Tim was happy to finally be able to watch some of the NCAA Tournament.

On Monday, we spent the day at Venice Beach and Santa Monica.  Venice beach is not as lively on Monday as we assume it is on the weekends, but we walked by the gym on Muscle Beach and got to see the Pacific Ocean.  The waves are much bigger than we are used to from the Gulf of Mexico.  We spent some time walking along the shops along the sand and seeing the people who post up along this strip.  It was interesting!  We then drove up to Santa Monica and walked along the Promenade.  We ate tacos and enchiladas at Wahoo's then walked up and down the many blocks of shops along the Promenade of Santa Monica.  We then walked along the Santa Monica Pier to see the Ferris Wheel and other rides.  We then met Jodi's dad's childhood friend, Steven Middleman who is a local comedian.  Mom and Dad left with Steven to spend the afternoon with him and he then took them to the airport to close out their trip to Southern California.

All in all, we think they enjoyed their visit to LA and we were glad they made the trip.

Check out picasa for the rest of the photos.

The Big 3-0

On Thursday, Tim celebrated his 30th birthday!  To celebrate his Big 3-0, we ventured into downtown LA on Saturday.  We ate dinner and watched the Duke/UNC basketball game at Big Wangs, a restaurant/bar that is as good as its name!  Tim couldn't resist the 25 cent wings and the PBR special to celebrate his birthday.  Despite Duke's loss, we had a fun time at dinner.  After dinner, we went down to LA Live and to the Staples Center to watch the Clippers vs. Nuggets basketball game.  This was Jodi's first live NBA experience and we had a good time.  We were very excited at the potential of witnessing one of Blake Griffin's ridiculous dunks, but as our luck would have it, he didn't even attempt one.

On Sunday, we drove to UCLA for the women's gymnastics meet against Georgia and Arizona at Pauley Pavilion.  Given that UCLA won the national championship last year and Georgia has also won in recent years, we knew it would be a good competition to see.  We also knew there would be some previous Olympians in the competition. We saw Samantha Peszek (2008 Olympics) and Shayla Worley (who trained at Orlando Metro but missed out on the 2008 Olympics due to injury) compete for UCLA and Georgia, respectively.  It was also cool to see Chris Waller (1992 Olympics) on the sidelines as a UCLA assistant coach.  While their routines are   quite watered down from Olympic material, we still saw some excellent gymnastics.

It was another successful weekend of memorable adventures in LA.  We haven't yet made any plans for next weekend, but we are positive we will not have any trouble coming up with something.

10 extra weeks

For those of you who do not know, two weeks ago we both accepted offers to extend our contracts at our respective facilities.  Both facilities were hoping that we would extend for another 13 weeks, but to make sure we can attend beach week in July we could only extend for an additional 10 weeks.  As it stands now we will be here until July 8th.  We both really enjoy where we work and more importantly love where we live.  There is so much to do and see here, we're not sure we can fit it all in even with the extra 10 weeks.  

Tim had to work yesterday so we had to cram in our weekend outing into 1 day.  We made our way into Hollywood on Oscar Sunday to attend Rock of Ages at the historic Pangtages Theater.  For those of you who watched The Academy Awards tonight, you may have seen that this theater hosted the awards from 1950 to 1960 which included the first televised Academy Awards.  We arrived in Hollywood several hours early to walk around the Hollywood Farmers Market and along Hollywood Boulevard towards the red carpet.  We made it close enough to see all of the barricades and the enormous oscar statues along the red carpet (sorry we didn't get any pictures, we only had our phones which couldn't zoom in well enough) before we turned around to make it to the show on time.  If anyone has a chance to go see Rock of Ages we highly recommend it, we both absolutely loved it.

It has been a cold weekend here in Southern California, all elevations above 2000 ft saw snow accumulation on Friday. The mountains around us and throughout L.A. County are beautifully snowcapped.  Believe it or not Tim had a snowy drive to and from work yesterday.  Our scenic commute along CA Freeway 14 ascends over 4000 ft before we make it into the high desert of The Antelope Valley.

Since our adventures were limited to just one day, all of the pictures of the weekend are within this posting.  See you next week!

San Diego

  We took advantage of a 3 day weekend by heading south to San Diego.  On our way down we made a quick stop at the San Juan Capistrano Mission (well, we took pictures from the outside).  Next we stopped at the La Jolla Cove to see the wild seals.  Not only did we time our La Jolla visit just before a storm came in (it actually does rain along the coast sometimes) but we were able to see a baby seal pup who was born 10 minutes prior to our arrival.  They are not as furry or cute as you would think. For those of you with a soft stomach skip over the next few sentences. The Seagull in the picture was anxiously awaiting to make a meal out of the afterbirth.  Within a matter of a minutes there were dozens of birds on the beach devouring the afterbirth (we will email you that photo if interested).  From La Jolla we made our way to our hotel in San Diego.  After checking in we spent our first evening dining and walking around the Gaslamp Quarter district.

Sunday morning we made our way straight to the world famous San Diego Zoo.  It was completely worth all 6+ hours it took to make our way through the zoo. We will let the pictures tell the story of our visit to the zoo.  From the zoo we took a walk along the Bay through Seaport Village to The World's Greatest Generation walking tour next to the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier.  We had a fantastic ending to our day by eating dinner with Kayla and Evan (Jodi's college friends) at their home on Coronado Island.  

On our way out of San Diego we made stops at Old Town San Diego and Torrey Pines State Reserve.  We were hoping to do some hiking along the Torrey Pines beach, but dogs are not allowed on the reserve (this is the first outdoor area we have been to in Southern California where was Bogey discriminated against).  Jodi and Bogey sat in the car while I (Tim) took some pictures and walked around the clubhouse of the famous Torrey Pines Golf Course. From Torrey Pines we headed north along to coast to Carlsbad where we grabbed lunch before making the rest of the journey back home.  

Visit our Picasa page to see the photo album of the weekend's adventures.  

Hollywood and Beyond

This past weekend, I (Tim) finally had a normal weekend (both Saturday and Sunday off) which allowed us to get back to our adventures. It was because of my work schedule that we did not blog last weekend, I guess one could say we didn't have anything to write home about.

We spent the day yesterday visiting various sights in and around L.A. We started the day with taking in the views along famous Mulholland Drive. From Mulholland drive we went straight to Hollywood Boulevard where we made the compulsory stops to The Grauman's Chinese Theater and The Hollywood Walk of Fame. We have heard these sights were not in a good part of town, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the riffraff have been replaced by the Hollywood and Highland Center (shopping mall) and The Kodak Theater. From what we saw, it has been transformed into a much nicer area with a lot of shopping, dining and nightlife establishments.

Next we went to the La Brea Tar Pits. For those of you who do not know about this gem in the middle of the city, click the embedded link for the FAQ's. From the Tar Pits we made our way around the corner to another L.A. landmark, The Original Farmers Market and the adjoining outdoor shopping mall, The Grove. Once we made our rounds at the Farmers Market and The Grove we got back in the car and headed for Beverly Hills.

No day would be complete without driving down Rodeo Drive, but don't worry our Prius blended in well among the Lamborghini's, Ferrari's, and Maserati's. We decided to wait another day until our nicest hammy-downs were donned before we walked these streets. From Rodeo Drive we made a quick drive through the campus of UCLA before we headed back home.

On Sunday Bogey joined us to hike and climb among the rock formations at The Vasquez Rocks Park. The greatest part about the park is that you're allowed to hike around as well as climb up and down all of the rock formations. No ropes, no nets, and apparently no rules. Once in the park it's easy to see why it has such an extensive filming history.

Please visit our Picasa site for the latest photos.

We both have a 3 day weekend next weekend. Stay tuned to see what kind of trouble we may stir up with 3 days of Southern California at our fingertips.