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ritaxis: (hat)
Thursday, June 27th, 2013 03:54 pm
I have been traveling since Saturday and I am only half sure of what day it is at the moment. First I went to Los Angeles and spent some time doing mutual culture shock with my very kind cousins. They took me all over as I got various doodads for Emma and Frank and visited Glen Fitch and Elizabeth Strong in Venice. My Uncle Jerry had a ninetieth birthday party. You'd think, almost, that he lies about his age, but if you knew him all along you'd see how the years do sit on him. But he's vigorous and sharp and makes me wish I had any genes from him.

Eleven-thirty Tuesday night I caught a flight to JFK, arriving after one of the most uncomfortable nights I can remember at a bit before eight in the morning. I had to collect and recheck my suitcase so I took advantage of that and moved some things from my carryons but it was still a lot to haul around New York. But the Air train - J train combination to get to the Tenement Museum was simple and fun. I took pictures but you won't see any till August.

The Tenement Museum was great. I went on the installation tour called "shop life" which I thought was going to be about sweatshops but was about ground floor commerce from saloon in the mid 1800s to an underwear shop in the mid 1900s with a kosher butcher in between.

Using the tablet is not conducive to long posts so I will go into detail later.

My flight out of JFK was two hours delayed mostly due to rain but we had a tail wind most of the way and we only arrived an hour late. I was greeted by Frank and Hana and now I should try to sleep because it is late night here even though it is mid-afternoon by my real clock, which is Pacific time.
ritaxis: (Default)
Monday, March 31st, 2008 08:41 am
I don't have much time to say anything because Truffle demands fun.

We went to Southern California for a couple-few days -- a day each of driving, more or less, and two days to run around enjoying ourselves. We had a day to check out the "fashion district" which is an insane conglomeration of garment district, slum, yuppie amusement park, and oh hell probably a dozen other identities. We did buy something -- too much cloth from a loft where they sell remnants at $2 a pound. In the evening we met with my aunt and uncle and my two cousins and had culture shock and family reminiscences.

The next day we drove by the Vicente Point lighthouse on our way to catch the one cousin and take him to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific which looks really huge but is a little short on exhibits for people used to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But it was cool anyway. Emma was a little impatient with the explanatory exhibits because she has studied all this way much: she really just wanted to groove with the animals. My cousin is unaccustomed to walking and stairs and was glad when we decided to call it quits. He gave us eight bags of citrus from his trees. He was hoping we would totally strip them but we couldn't do that.

The plan was to grab my other cousin and take her to Griffith Park but she begged off because she was exhausted from preparing a women's seder -- I didn't quite get why that was happening a whole month early, but it sounded like fun. Anyway, we went to the observatory, getting there well before sunset so we had the best of both day and night. Though it was foggy after we got out of the planetarium. The planetarium show could have done with more science and less drama: one of the employees heard me say that and smiled his agreement.

That's it for now. I'm going to go throw weeds for the dog.