To Cali we went...

 Palm trees get me everytime I am in California.  They are just so funny looking...especially these tall skinny ones.

 Kate in our sweet ride!

 There were fountains everywhere in this open air mall.

 A dizzying number of escalators in this mall.

 Battle of the Dances.  We would highly recommend this to anyone down in the area.  It is Anaheim.

We did have some fun in California too,  It was a nice break for me and my friend Kate was able to come along so I didn't have to aimlessly wander the streets by myself.  We flew into LAX, rented a car and drove the notorious 405 down into Orange County.  I had to pat myself on the back for not getting freaked out by the 5-6 lanes of traffic wizzing around and various off ramps that sneak up on you and can spit you out in unknown neighborhoods.  It all started off good because they were out of the compact economy cars that I had paid for so the guy in the lot told us we could pick whatever was available.  We B-lined for a convertible and giggled as we got in because we were pretty sure we weren't going to get away this it.  We were sure we had misunderstaood.  Low and behold we did so we were cruizing in style...well we were after we figured out how to get the top down which was a good 24 hours later.  Before we left LA we made our way down Hollywood Blvd and drove around the city.   This was all made possible by a little thing called G.P.S.  You would have found us curled in a corner of a bad neighborhood in fetal position clenching maps if it wasn't for this.  How did we do it before these little beauties came to existance.  It was our first time using one...can ya tell?  We had to laugh and comment that it thought we were idiots everytime we had made a wrong or missed a turn and it started in with "recalculating".  We went to a an improv dinner theater, cruised around and open air and regular air mall, shopped in IKEA (twice), went to an amazing dance show called Battle of the Dances, and ate out a lot.  The latter of these always appeals to me because it means that I am not cooking!  We drove to the beach but the smog was a buzz kill to the beach excitement.