Erica comes to visit!

From March 17 through March 24, one of my best friends from back home came to visit. I've known Erica since high school, and we became very close during senior year. After graduation, she went off to Temple while I went to Penn State. Even though we went to separate colleges, we have remained close and always try to see each other when one of us is in Allentown. We decided back in December (when I was home for 2 weeks, and spent a good deal of time with her) that she absolutely MUST come visit me out here. At the end of February, I started looking up tickets and we found an excellent trip deal so she snatched it up. Erica had never been to the west coast before, so I planned tons of things for us to do and places to visit. I was off for the entire week because of my school's spring break.

I picked Erica up on Monday at LAX around dinnertime. I took her over to Santa Monica to see the beach and also to stay away from the rush hour of LA. Santa Monica was the first west coast beach I had ever visited as well.
On Tuesday, we hung around Bakersfield and I took Erica to my favorite park, which I've talked about on this blog before. It was beautiful out and we had a nice time just walking around and talking.

Wednesday, we drove down to Anaheim and spent the day in Disneyland. We had SO much fun!! We even bought ears!








If you buy a hat, you can take it to the "Mad Hatter" where they will sew your name on...FREE!
Towards the end of the day, we began looking for a ride called Space Mountain. It's an indoor coaster that's mostly dark except for little lights all around, giving the illusion you're flying through space. We asked an employee where to find it and he looks at us with a smile and says, "How would you like it if I took you ladies to the front of that line?" We looked confused and he continued, "Have you heard of Disney's new promotion 'Year of a Million Dreams'?" He went on to tell us that he was a "dream maker" and all day long, his job was to grant wishes - whether it was getting a thirsty mouth a bottle of water, a new shirt for someone who ruined their own, or a replacement popcorn for one that had spilled. I asked him what we had to do in return and he responded, "How about a hug?" I jumped on him before he could manage to say "Just kidding!!" and he led us to the front of the line saving us over an hour wait. It was a great end to our day!
We stayed the night in Anaheim, and drove over to Huntington Beach the following morning. Huntington is known as "Surf City" and we had a relaxing time watching the surfers and walking around the pier, boardwalk, and beach.

In the afternoon, we began our drive back to Bakersfield and stopped in Hollywood to see the typical touristy things.

The following day, Friday, we drove east to Las Vegas. Erica was blown away by all the windmills (get the pun??).We stayed for a couple days with my friend Colin who works for The Flamingo (one of the big hotels on the strip) and the day after we got back, I had to finally say goodbye to Erica. It was awesome for her to stay for so long and it was really the charge I needed to get me through the last couple months of school!

- Carol

Hollywood and Goodbye Scott

On Monday, I drove Scott to see Hollywood since his flight wasn't until the afternoon. We got stuck in a lot of traffic and ended up stopped right in front of the Kodak Theatre wondering what was going on. Imagine my surprise when we hear, "And now, Michelle Pfeiffer! Here is your star..." and then in a woman's voice, "Oh wow...wow, thank you so much!" Here's an article about it. What a coincidence we decided to go there at that exact time! Well anyway, we had to keep traffic moving so I parked the car in the deck and it was only TWO DOLLARS. We had lunch and watched all the commotion for Michelle directly below us. Then I took Scott to where I knew a good view of the "Hollywood" sign is. The second picture shows the bridge we stood on for the view of the sign.
After Scott took the typical tourist shots, we walked a block or so down to Grauman's Chinese Theatre. More touristy photos were taken, and we walked a couple blocks up and down the street checking out the various stars on the walk.
Traffic was annoying through Los Angeles and I dropped Scott at the curb at 2pm for his 3:05 pm flight. I pulled into a parking deck - just in case - to wait for him to call and tell me he made it through. He called a while later and said he made it through quickly and was at his gate 5 minutes before they began boarding. It took me about 45 minutes to get out of the parking deck, and by then it was 3pm so it took another 1.5 hours just to get out of L.A. Los Angeles rush hour begins about 3pm and lasts until about 7pm - NOT. FUN. I knew this, so I took a longer, but less crowded route to get out, along Sunset Blvd. This took me through Bel Air, Beverly Hills, then back through Hollywood. Here are some random snapshots... sorry they're not amazing, remember, I was driving!
After I got out of L.A. it was about another 1.5 hours because of regular rush hour traffic. It was such a relief to finally get back into Bakersfield. That night, I revamped Turkey's cage. He had destroyed that entire 2nd level, so I went with the plywood option. I found out that Jeff used to do carpentry so he had a saw and cut the wood for me! I also took a cube off the top to use for storage and moved his wooden house to the middle level so he wouldn't keep moving it around.
I found out that Scott had incompetent airline issues in Atlanta (where he was supposed to only have an hour layover) and he was stuck sleeping in the terminal for the night. I felt so awful... He did get a flight back to Philly at 6am on Tuesday morning and is readjusting to PA time. He sent me his trip pictures and this was at the end of the mix. I guess it is people he met in the terminal! Hahaha...Lindsey has begun moving into the apartment and we have been getting to know each other. She and Jeff asked me to come with them to Las Vegas this weekend and while I was initially not interested, I am now pretty sure I'm going to go. I hope it's fun, even though I don't gamble. I feel like if I don't go, I will miss out on roommate bonding, not to mention I'll be bored and lonely here all weekend. Tomorrow I have some new teacher orientation and I'm getting my fingerprinting done. Fun fun. My room is about 85% complete... so I will have pictures soon, I promise!

- Carol

*P.S. What do you think of the new layout for my page? I thought the other one looked a bit jumbled. Should I keep this? Change back? Let me know!*