Terra Incognita

...It smells like an airport runway*
La-la-la L.A. Why was I in LA, you ask? Why not? I didn't have anything else going on for the weekend, I found a cheap flight, and I had a floor on which I could crash (thank you, JDub). Observations from the City of Angels (or demons?)*:
• The Hollywood(land) sign would be a much better site were there a trail on which you could hike to the top. It's somewhat anticlimactic to drive up a hill, take a picture, and drive back down.
• Tourists are star-struck idiots who will pay any amount just to say they've tread in the tracks of George Clooney/Cameron Diaz/other star-struck tourists who have been inside the Chinese and Kodak theaters.
• In that same vein, my flip flops totally stepped where the heels of many an Oscar de la Renta-wearing, Oscar de l'Academy-toting actress has tread...well, minus the red carpet. But JDub and I remained outside, $15 richer than the tourists.
• Mr. Incredible and Elmo are buds. Or at least they hang around the walk of fame together.
• There are some real freaks out there.
• People in Hollywood/Burbank (I think it was Burbank, that's the town where all the studios actually are, right?) act at all times, as if they're expecting someone to discover them at any moment.
• We totally had lunch with people from the WB at the oldest remaining Big Boy in LA/Burbank/wherever...well, we at least saw an SUV with the license plate THE WB pulling into the parking lot, and they wouldn't give that plate away to just anybody, right? So someone from the WB had to have been in the diner somewhere, right?

JDub got the honor of meeting a contingent of the Brooks clan. We stopped by my cousin Damon's college soccer game, then went out to dinner with the rest of the fam. I think I take for granted how much fun my family is.

We celebrated Mizzou's Homecoming by going to an Oktoberfest party at Jayna and Heather's, where we met several more Mizzou grads and even a couple of other girls who were in LA from Phoenix for the weekend. I swear, Phoenix is LA's little sister, considering how many people come and go between the two (and Vegas is the slutty step-sister).

Total rock-my-world coincidence
It turned out that my cousin Kelsey was on my flight from LAX to PHX. She and the rest of the UofA club soccer team had flown to LA for a soccer tournament in Santa Barbara, and they were headed back to Tucson via Phoenix. We had one of those squealing, hugging, "Oh my God! This is so unreal!" moments when we ran into each other in the terminal waiting area. Oh my God. It was so unreal.

Who let the dog in? Woof woof woof
Let it be known that we now have a puppy in the Brooks house. Meet Bandit ("because he steals your hearts," says Mama Brooks). He is a 6 month-old Cavalier King Charles/Cocker Spaniel mix, he's absolutely adorable, and he doesn't do any of that barking stuff.

Pictures of all that and more TK.

*Name that song