l.a. trip

Last Sunday, Byron and I decided to take a totally spontaneous trip to LA when we heard that one of our friends, Mark, had gotten into a very bad accident. Given my flexible schedule and his less busy time at work these days, we just decided to drive down Wednesday after community group so that we could spend time with him.

It was a great trip, filled with seeing lots of friends and family and eating lots of tasty LA food. Highlights included:

-having lunch at Hide Sushi (haven't been there since we got engaged, four years ago)
-seeing Joe and Frances before they moved to Colorado
-having dinner with Karen and Andy and seeing their Europe pictures
-hanging out with Mark a bunch of times
-working out with Joyce and Grace (even though I was sore for two whole days afterwards)
-watching The Banquet with Byron's parents
-trying (finally!) Pinkberry--I had it three times in two days!
-seeing Esther/Andy and Joseph
-hanging out with Andy Y and seeing Transformers at Paramount Studios!

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of what we did and who we saw earlier in the week, so the following are mostly of our day in Hollywood:

had lunch at a personal LA fave, Urth Cafe

Pinkberry near Paramount Studios

Byron wasn't too impressed but I loved it. YUM.

Andy works at Paramount Studios so he was able to get Byron, Joyce, and I into an early screening of Transformers for free. We missed the 2:30 pm show, but waited around for the next one. In the meantime, Andy gave us a tour of the Studio.

sign nearby Paramount

"Production Park," where supposedly many scenes were filmed there, including Tom Cruise climbing down one of the buildings for Mission: Impossible 3

this huge parking lot with the blue sky canvas is where they film a lot of ocean or ship scenes

walking around, checking out the different soundstages

us on the Forrest Gump bench

It was really fun walking around the Studio and seeing how filmmakers are able to shoot big scenes based on such a small piece of land. The movie itself was excellent, really well-done. The graphics are amazing. I definitely plan to pay full price and see it again this week! That's how much I liked it. (A big thanks to Andy for bringing us!)

After our fun Hollywood day, we went to see Mark one last time and also catch Andy, Esther, and Joseph:

Finally, today on our drive up, we were stuck for one hour in non-stop traffic in the Grapevine, near the 5. There was a huge fire by the side of the freeway:

Byron, very concerned about whether he would be able to make Sunday b-ball (which he did)

And now we're back! A whole lot of writing is waiting for me this week...