United States

November 24th, 2008 by alephnaught

Pictures from Palm Desert

We drove out to Palm Desert to visit Aviva’s mom and her boyfriend Dave.  They’re snowbirds – they spend the winter in Palm Desert and the summer outside Detroit. We walked on El Paseo on Thursday (lots of closed stores, not a good sign for the economy), and walked around Palm Springs on Saturday (the […]

August 31st, 2008 by alephnaught

Santa Barbara

We woke up Sunday looking for something to do.  Aviva wanted to go for a drive.  I suggested we go out to Santa Barbara.  So Aviva, Basil and I packed into the Prius and headed west. It took about two hours to get out there because somebody got rearended on the highway; auto accidents around […]

August 10th, 2008 by alephnaught

A day in Pasadena

Aviva and I dropped off Basil at our dog sitter and drove to Pasadena. We ate lunch at Mi Piance; don’t bother, the space is uninteresting and the food wasn’t worth the cost (the service was pleasant and good at least). We then went to a travel bookstore, Distant Lands Travel Bookstore. We made reservations […]

July 8th, 2008 by alephnaught

Things to see and do in Los Angeles

I’ve decided to organize all the web related stuff we find useful on Los Angeles into one place on my web site. This will include pages on places we’ve been (including links to blog entries), as well as links to other sites with information we found useful on LA. Hopefully that will make it easier […]

June 14th, 2008 by alephnaught

Venice Beach

We decided to take the dog down to Venice Beach – it was hitting over 90 degrees in the Valley and it was only in the mid 70s at the water front, and we’d heard that Venice Beach was still a hippie holdover from the ’60s. I liked it. We walked perhaps a quarter of […]

June 4th, 2008 by alephnaught

Trip to Renton, WA

I made my first business trip to the home office of Classmates.com. Its located in Renton, WA, which is about 10 to 15 minutes outside Seattle. I enjoyed the trip. Alaska Air is a nice airline, the planes are pretty clean and reasonably new and the flight crews were pleasant (not quite Southwest-jovial but I […]

May 26th, 2008 by alephnaught

Mulholland Drive

We decided to go on a drive and consider David Lynch as well…. Mulholland Drive is a famous road that runs north of Los Angeles through the mountains. It twists and turns, dives and climbs, surrounded by green trees and mansions. The Canyon Country Store on Laurel Canyon Boulevard is a fixture from the sixties […]

May 23rd, 2008 by alephnaught

Sawtelle and Govindas

Got to kick everyone out of work early today. So, Aviva and I took a trip into West Hollywood. First, we stopped on Sawtelle. This is yet another Japanese area, with a few really cool stores like Giant Robot, which is a cool store that sells Japanese toys, books, and just general stuff; I bought […]

May 17th, 2008 by alephnaught

Chinatown in Los Angeles

We decided to take a drive to Chinatown. Not as big as the ones in San Francisco, New York City or perhaps even Chicago, but its still pretty neat. There’s a big sign when you walk up The gates look really cool There are some nifty, oriental-looking buildings And of course a statue of Dr. […]

May 12th, 2008 by alephnaught

The Getty Villa

We went to the Getty Villa to celebrate Aviva’s birthday. The Villa is located in Malibu across from the ocean on a hillside. The building is modeled after an Italian villa; one part is designed after Hadrian’s villa. The collection is centered on art of the ancient world. There are two gardens, call peristyles, one […]