greetings from LA!

i forgot to bring the digital camera, so i have no photos to prove it, but i'm currently on a (working) vacation in sunny los angeles!

i'm a city boy at heart, so this is a wonderful vacation spot for me. just today, i went to a spacious comic shop and the world's largest independent record store. last weekend we attended a sold-out show headlined by one of my new favorite bands—a band that won't be coming to indy any time soon (and if they do, they surely won't be able to draw a crowd like the one they drew here).

and oh, the cuisine! in addition to partaking in delicacies like in n out burger and wienerschnitzel that we don't have in the midwest, we've eaten hawaiian bbq, sushi, filipino, thai, and authentic mexican, and supped on fancy sandwiches at the place that claims to have invented the french dip! and there's so much more to try: we hope to eat haitian, bangladeshi, and maybe korean bbq, and probably won't have time to eat ethiopian, guatemalan, salvadorian, or california pizza kitchen, as we'd hoped. and that's not even mentioning the hip little cafes and the many quality donut shops!

the trip has had its down sides, as well. we've been having a hell of a time connecting to the free WPA wi-fi here at the motel, a problem apparently caused by microsoft's half-assed support for windows XP. and since this is a working vacation, daily internet access is a must. as such, i've spent way too much time and money at a nearby coffee shop, using their easier-to-connect-to WEP network. today, this problem culminated in me scraping against a wrought-iron fence as i tried to navigate out of the coffee shop's tiny, labyrinthine parking lot. i'm unharmed, but the paint on our rental car is not, and the deductible for my car insurance is an expense we hadn't budgeted for. this is exasperating—especially considering that i shouldn't have even needed to be at the coffee shop—but in the end it's just a nuisance.

(i'm writing this from the motel room. curiously, for the past few days we've been unable to connect to the motel wi-fi during the day, but had little difficulty connecting at night, once the sun has gone down. feel free to make your own wi-fi vampire joke.)

virago & i both have family in southern california, which is an added bonus. tomorrow, we'll get to spend some time with my aunt and cousin who live in orange county; saturday we'll get to see virago's father & siblings, and presumably head down to the beach. then it will be back to the land of cold and snow. i'll be a little sad to return, but then again i'll be delighted to see our poor lonely kitty again. and she'll surely be glad to see us—she's so shy that she hides whenever anyone other than the two of us comes into the apartment. ¶