Alien Spouse

My Sweetheart and I.

Our favourite bakery sends out e-mail newsletters every week with the bread schedule for the week ahead, and once a month they have a customer of the month spot.  Doc C and I are the customers of the month for February, which is really nice, not least because we get a gift voucher!  Yay for free tasty baked goods!

Of course, the February newsletter is promoting the Valentine's specials, so it's all hearts and pink.  Our customer-of-the-month profile is suitably gushy, and we are described as "Lovebirds", which is very sweet I think.

The really hilarious part, to me at least, is that Doc C loathes Valentine's Day and here he is as the poster boy for smoochyness.

Goodbye

Our last morning in LA was literally washed out by the torrential rain, I mean it's no ice storm but it was pretty intense none the less.  This was made all the more problematic by my having to throw away the Ugly Kitten Umbrella, after years of loyal service.

Why would I do this?

It stank to high heaven.  Because somehow or other a cat, oh let's be frank, Edith had managed to pee on it.  How I didn't notice this is a mystery; however the fact remains that adding a palpable aroma of cat urine to it's already hideous decoration was just a step too far.  There is comedic value, and then there is "crazy cat lady who doesn't know when she smells like cat pee" territory.  That's really not a good look, or perfume, for anyone.  Anyway, the umbrella stayed in in the rubbish bin at the hotel, and we caught the shuttle to the airport to begin waiting for our flight. 

Great!  That takes care of the stinky right?  Well, yes and no.  I was no longer carrying a stink bomb with me, but on the way home we drove the car into the Bog of Eternal Stench.  About half an hour into the two-hour journey home, there was a loud bang as we hit something on the road and the distinctive aroma of dead skunk rose to greet us.  That smell is bad enough, but it also takes days for it to fade.  We toughed it out all the way back to our town, and then took the Mini through a frosty car wash in the hopes of at least minimising it.

All in all, it was a smelly day.

LAX-ATL-CLT

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."

Douglas Adams - The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

So true. 

Let me reconstruct our journey through the non-pretty...

LAX - Nothing really momentous happened on our way through check-in and security, apart from discovering that the TSA actually don't give a toss if the liquids and gels in your hand luggage are in a one quart clear plastic bag; ours certainly weren't, and no-one blinked an eye at us.  So then we went to our gate to sit and wait.  Boring.  Except it was a pretty busy lounge in the terminal, and when a seat opposite us became free a man sat down who I immediately recognised.  Doc C and I have got to get some sort of subtle code going, because I couldn't think how to alert him to a quite excellent celeb spot without being totally obvious and uncool about it.  Fortunately the actor in question stood up to make a phone call, and I could mutter at top speed "Have-you-seen-"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer"?-Because-there's-a-serial-killer-sitting-opposite-us!"  Doc C thought I was unusually rude about the gentleman in question for comedic effect, but soon realised what I actually meant and I have to say I was particularly pleased that Doc knew who he was too and we could both geek out.  I delights me to be able ton confirm that Michael Rooker is my first celeb spot since October 2008, and I was starting to worry that I'd lost my celeb spotting knack from lack of practice, so this was very reassuring.  And damn cool too!  The man has had an amazing career!  I have no idea where he was going though, he wasn't actually on our flight.

ATL - We had a stopover in Atlanta, and that felt like the longest part of our journey.  I just hate hanging around at a half-way point like that.  Plus there were no celebs to spot, and instead we had two groups of rednecks in quick succession on the seats opposite.  I wouldn't normally stoop to using a derogatory stereotypical description like that, but one woman was incredibly rude to Doc C and frankly I hope her team loses at the Super Bowl today.  There!  I said it!  I'm sorry Colts, but at least one of your fans is a very poor ambassador for your team, so I shall be rooting for the Saints.  In a vague "I don't actually care" way.

CLT - Finally we landed in Charlotte, I hope no-one wanted a coffee because Charlotte airport, supposedly a travel hub, had not a single concession stand open.  Fortunately we only had carry-on bags, so we could just sprint off the plane to our car and away.  I was wrong when I said we'd get home at 11, it ended up taking a little bit longer than that because we actually landed at 11pm so there was no way we were getting home before 1am.

Heading Back East.

Back on the plane at 1pm, we should be home at, oh, 11pm.

What with the rain, my mono-mandated need for sleep and Doc's schedule at the college, we haven't really explored Pasadena.  This is a pity, because from what I've seen it's our kind of town; let's just hope we get to visit again for longer.

LA Rain.

Doc C is back at the college this morning, and I'm planning to pop out in a bit to get myself a smoothie and a shot of wheatgrass. I've also been told there is a shop that sells British food near here, I may have to check that out. 

It's raining in LA today, and apparently this is regarded as bad weather in Los Angeles - Ha! Back in North Carolina the University is closed for the whole day because of snow.  It's quite nice to all I have to do is throw on my trench coat and grab my ugly kitten umbrella before stroll over to get that smoothie, rather than putting on boots, a scarf, a hat, a coat and find at least one pair of mittens.

Napping in Pasadena.

Today Doc C left the hotel before 9 to go and meet with the Philosophy department of a local college, so I hung out in the hotel.  We've stayed in loads of hotels, but this one definitely goes the extra mile in terms of pampering.  The room has lovely bedding, with complimentary soaps and shampoos in their signature fragrance of white tea and aloe; all of which, and a lot more, is for sale through the hotel's website, which I think is genius. 

I slept until about 2, and then I went to find food.  Pasadena is great for wandering around, and everyone was so nice.  I ended up at a local supermarket, which had a really good deli; so lunch was an antioxidant chopped salad and low-fat rice pudding.  Yum.

My only complaint so far is that Bravo is not one of the channels available to watch.  which means that last night I missed the actual finale of "Launch My Line" and the season opened for "Shear Genius".  And if that's the only problem I can think of, I'm sure you will agree, we really have nothing to complain about.

Hurry Up and Wait.

Today has been a very long day.  It was broken down into sections of travelling, eating, napping but mostly waiting to do one of those three things.

• We drove for two hours to get to Charlotte airport, then flew to Atlanta where we had a two hour lay-over before our flight to LA.  Then we caught a shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel.  That is a lot of roaming for one day.
• The main problem when travelling is finding veggie food, it's lucky I eat fish, eggs and cheese because if I were vegan we would have to plan all of our meals before leaving the house.  Still it's been totally impossible to eat what you might call a healthy diet, whilst on the move today I've eaten a doughnut, half a breakfast burrito (scrambled eggs, potatoes, cheese and salsa in a tortilla), a tuna melt, french fries and a chocolate milkshake.  Dinner was a small shoal of sushi.
• I've slept sitting bolt upright on the plane, which meant my mouth kept falling open (I hate that) and curled up on a seat in the airport with my hand luggage has a pillow.
• The waiting involved a lot of waiting.

Doc and I had to sleep as soon as we got to the hotel, but what really helped was sitting in the hotel hot tub.  I think I could definitely get used to whirlpool hot tubs.

So far I like LA, anywhere that has flower beds full of Birds-of-Paradise on traffic islands is ok with me.

Airplane!

At the airport, waiting for our flight to board. I'm a leetle bit excited; pity Doc C. We had to leave the house at two, so all he wants to do is sleep and I'm full of over-tired manic energy. I really hope I crash on the plane or the poor man will snap before we get to Atlanta, let alone LA.

Packing. I Really Hate Packing.

Packing for LA is going well, because we are only there for three days so it's not like I need a lot of clothes.  I need

1. One rocking dress to go to dinner in. Tick.
2. One pair of pedal pushers. Tick.
3. T-shirts. Tick. Tick. Tick.
4. Swimming costumes.  Tick. Tick. Tick.
5. PJs. Tick.
6. Undies. Tick.

Ok.  Good!

Preparing for a Long Weekend in LA.

This weekend I did a lot of knitting and not much else.  It was very nice.

What I should have been doing is getting ready for a trip to Los Angeles, because we're going on Wednesday and unless my laundry dries super-fast I'm not going to have anything to wear.  I'm not sure I have anything suitable to wear in LA anyway, but I'm guessing something is better than nothing.  Right now the only thing I have ready to pack is three swimming costumes, because our hotel has a swimming pool, a whirlpool hot tub and a sauna.  I am going to look like a wrinkly lobster.

I also need to have decided what to pack by tomorrow evening, because our flight is at four o'clock in the freaking morning.  Which means we have to leave the house before two.  This is the part of the trip I'm not looking forward to, but what can you do?