A land of contrasts

Our “borrowed” wireless connection has been down for a little while, but finally today I am able to post a little something and to let everyone know that I am still alive! I have not been mugged and left for dead in the parking lot of a Winchell’s outside Compton!

I don’t have too much to report…disappointingly. Life here has been fairly mundane with a couple exceptions thus far, though hopefully with a few important meetings with our agent next week things will start to pick up and I’ll feel a little less idle. We have mostly been exploring our neighborhoods (Silverlake, Los Feliz, Glendale), though yesterday we drove out to The Grove and did a little shopping in that Disneyland of outdoor malls. Driving there I was shocked at how instantaneously the world changed from blocks of graffiti, grimy dollar stores and endless rundown gas stations into the picture perfect world of The Grove with its perfectly manicured palm trees, spotless pedestrian streets, fountains orchestrated to music and even a shiny trolley that goes from one end of the mall to the other. What a land of contrasts this new city is...

Today we made the first of what I'm sure will be many wonderful excursions to Griffith Park, which is basically right outside our front door. We drove up to the Griffith Observatory (made famous in many films over the years, most memorably as Sal Mineo's last stand in Rebel Without a Cause). Parts of the park have been clearly ravished by the fire last year, but much of the park is still green, hikeable, picnic-able, and overall very enjoyable. I look forward to the hikes there (50 miles of trails!), especially the one above the observatory for the 360 degree view, and the one up to the Hollywood sign itself.



And now to entice you with some celebrity sightings!! Okay, it's not Britney or Paris or Brangelina or whatever, but we think it's pretty cool. First, our neighbor downstairs is this guy, a real live working actor on "The Wire" (which none of us had ever watched, and therefore did not recognize him initially). He lent us the first season to watch, and we are all really enjoying it. Second, we went to our first improv show in L.A. (it's kind of a thing here, I guess) at The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, and who should be hosting it but Matt Walsh (who you'd recognize from UCB, The Daily Show, and many many commercials), Matt Besser (UCB) and Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development). Not all names you'll see in People or Us Weekly, like I said, but still very cool for us to see some talented people we know from the television doing good improv.

Anyway, I am missing home often, which I am sure is partially the result of the idleness of not working. I've been reading ravenously in the hopes of taking my mind off that particular pain (I'm halfway through "The Amber Spyglass", the final book in "The Golden Compass" saga...a very interesting series of books, I must say. ) More than keeping my mind occupied of course, knowing that Chad is here with me tempers the pain of being so far from home, since I know and feel that wherever he is, that's my home, that's my heart. Even so, I frequently have that deep homesickness resonating in my gut. I don't feel it as desperately as I did the day we left Seattle, but it's there. Expectedly, it's there.