a day off

the day started for the first time on friday at 430 in the morning. as i was laying down for bed thursday night around 1230, it suddenly occurred to me that friday comes after thursday: my friend vanessa asked me to take her to the flyaway friday morning. so i set my alarm for 4, knowing that i never wake up when it goes off the first time. at 430, my cell phone alarm went off. i texted vanessa to see what the plan was and she arrived at my house about 10 minutes later. we headed out to the flyaway: she had a 7 o'clock flight. she wouldn't make it if she tried the flyaway, so i drove her down to lax. got home at 6 -- back to bed!

the second time i woke up friday morning was at 730. should have been 7 o'clock, but, yeah, that didn't happen. got to becky's around 815 and we went to breakfast at marmalade cafe, bringing along her tourbook and my list of "fun things to do in l.a." so we could plan the day over breakfast: breakfast was so good!

around 915 we headed out to the zoo. i called and spoke to my sister eden on the way -- we were meeting her and her baby at the zoo. fun times. i love the hippos. the rhinos weren't out, so we didn't get to see them. but the baby orangutan was fun to see.

becky had a dental appointment at 1, so our time at the zoo was a little short -- though we didn't leave before hearing the howling monkeys that really just sounded like they were burping. like, amazingly long and *loud* burps -- any self-respecting man over 200 pounds would have been intensely jealous.

we left the zoo around 1220, and thankfully traffic wasn't too bad so we made it to becky's dentist appointment at ucla in pretty good time.

while the dentist was polishing becky's pearly-whites, i spent some time in the botanical gardens at ucla ... with my sister inge. she lives in texas. here's a photo of us at the botanical gardens:

beautiful smile, inge!

leaving ucla, becky and i grabbed some teriyaki at a nearby restaurant then headed up 405 to the getty museum and spent a couple hours enjoying the art and playing in the rain. i love museums. there are so many just truly talented people! makes me wish i could do so many things! in fact, i was talking to a friend last week about giving up the exciting world of accounting to become a painter. of course, i wouldn't be famous until after i die ... so i would have to fake my death and then my art would be discovered. and i could get rich! while dead -- err, hmm -- still gonna have to figure out that one, i think.

the gardens at the getty museum are beautiful! just amazing.

around 630, becky and i got tired and went home. i dropped becky off at her house then hurried home, changed, fixed my hair, and went out with a friend for dinner: yummy dinner! i don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it's an amazing mexican place in northridge. i'll need to ask him for the name of the place again. it was *goood*!

home from dinner at 103o, grabbed my flip-flops and picked becky up again to go dancing up in santa clarita. there weren't too many people at the dance that night, but becky and i danced our hearts out anyway. after the dance, a cute guy asked becky to meet up with a bunch of people at denny's, so we went -- i couldn't deny her after all the begging. ha. we met lots of new people and hung out at denny's until about 230.

*finally* got home for the night at 3am. man, that was a *loooong* day!! used almost every one of those 24 hours.