Graphic Novels!

On wednesday, it was time for another visit to HiDeHo Comics again, but I decided to walk this time. It's so beautiful everywhere, with all the christmas decorations, I really wanted to enjoy everything. But unfortunately, the walk wasn't that pleasant. See, earlier in the day, I had had some v spicy food, and..well, lets just say that I had to go to the bathroom...badly. Of course, that was something I realised a bit too late, and had no chance in turning back. So I walked on, a bit faster, without...shaking too much =). After walking 10 (!!) blocks in agony, I stumbled upon a gas-station. I ran over to their restroom, locked. Ran over to the store-section, had to stand in line, panicked a whole lot (I was wearing my _white_ jeans) and finally got a huuuge stick with a small key at the end. If I wouldn't have been so stressed, I probably would've commented on the stick, but time was dire. I ran out of the store-section, crossed the gas-stations ground, which by now must've had grown twice in size, jiggled the key in the lock, came close to breaking it (the key that is, heh), eventually threw the door open and got to experience how Harry felt in Dumb & Dumber. I am _never_ walking again.

The remaining 10 blocks just flew by and I found myself standing outside the comicbook store minutes later. To make sure I don't blow away too much money, I decided to just get in, pick up the magazine I knew I had to get, talk to Ian some and then leave. Luckily, I managed to stick to my plan. I come in, and as soon as he sees me, Ian says "hey, the comic you've been nagging about for so long finally arrived", I shine up instantly =).
I get my beloved Spider-Man & Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do and go to pay for it. As a fank jew to Ian for helping me spend more than $300 over the past few weeks, I brought a long some lussekatter =). He was might pleased. Bottomline, I had a lot of fun in that store, and made a good friend in Ian, hope he can come visit in Sweden.


If you're interested how I've spent my money more specifically, look at my bills

Alright, alright, alright

The past couple of days...well..how should I review them. Half I've spent out sightseeing with Ted, half I've spent inside, watching Friends on DVD =D. Both equally fun for me, altho writing about the latter half seems..silly, frankly.

Nov 22nd, Ted and I went to Hollywood and walked up and down the whole Walk of Fame stretch. Something I've done once back in -99. After doing it for 2 min, you're bored if you're not there for your first time. This was Ted's first time, so it was alright for him, I just followed along. Luckily for my mental health, we stopped along the way and walked into lots of different souvenir-shops that line Hollywood Boulevard. At the end of the day, we'd gone all the way up and down, didn't find a certain star we were looking for, but had enjoyed the day very much anyway. I took a couple of boring just-a-star-pictures, but felt that this was the only one special enough to post.



2 days of various DVD-watching, cookie-eating and relax-ing (heh) passed, then on Nov 25th, Ida drove me to downtown LA, the place to buy cheap stuff. I needed a suitcase to fit all the stuff I've bought here during my travels. While walking around in the marketarea, I noticed an increase of mexicans around us. At one point, Ida and I were the only caucasian in a group of about 100ppl. Interesting. What was even more interesting was the fact that the mannequins were _quite_ different from what I'm used to seeing in stores back home, and places like Rodeo Dr, in Beverly Hills. The asses on those "dolls" were huuuge! I'm serious, they were so big, it looked weird. I guess they're used to serving latinos in the area, a part of mankind with notoriously large behinds. Just had to get a picture of the phenomenon. Hilarious.


Nov 27th I managed to get a picture of me and all 3 cats in at the same time!
What, you wanted me to write about what I'm doing...
Sure was difficult to get Mocca, the shy one, to stay still. It's (obviously ;o) ) the cat looking away from the camera.




Nov 28th, I decided to go back to Malibu, this time with somebody else. Ted definitely wanted to come with me and walk along the shore of countless celebs' (and people "in the biz") houses. It was another warm sunny day, albeit not as pleasant as the day I actually took a swim a week earlier. Mostly, we just waded thru the supposedly unsanitary water, while looking at beautiful expensive houses.

Ted enjoyed looking at incredible architectural feats the likes of which you probably wont find back home in boring traditional sweden where having a square house covered in red paint is considered "nice".
Thats why, the next day, we took the bus to the only area in the world more famous for it's zipcode than it's actual name, even tho the name is quite famous itself. I'm talking about 90210, Beverly Hills (duuh snäckan, 'course I know :-P). We got a couple of pictures there as well (my, I just can't upload another picture, too much work), nothing special. I mean, they were still just houses. Just annoying that I didn't get a picture of a streetsign, since (for some reason), they've added the acronym of the city we were walking around in. It'd be soo nice to live in a place where all the signs bear the name of my favourite part of women's attire.

On wednesday Nov 30th, I experienced the first notion of the fact that my departuredate for sweden is actually creeping closer. It was time to end part of my wednesday-tradition. It was my final visit to Hooters. Sure, it's a nice place to eat, but it's just simply waay too expensive, so I had to decide to not go there anymore. I went to the comicbookstore as usual, then went over to Hooters to enjoy a christmas issue from Marvel. Before I left, I made sure I got a picture, to remember my visits by =).



The title of this post comes from the persistant requests of my siblings to keep writing. Very nice of them, altho I'm getting bored of writing. Haven't really taken any pictures of late, just longing to go home. Felt even more homesick today, when I listened to O, Helga Natt, which I got hold of bcuz my roommate demanded to hear some swedish christmas music. When carola started singing (there's a short intro of inaudible hums, weird) I just closed my eyes, leaned back and instantly found myself in our green couch back home in HBG in the livingroom, drinking warm glögg and ate almonds, basking in the heat from the fireplace that warms the house from the cold snow outside which makes the dark night glimmering white. (phew, long sentence). *sigh*, bottomline, it's just wrong to be somewhere warm in December. Can't wait to go hoome.

Swedes in America

Today the swede I met up in frisco, at the hostel came to Santa Monica, and we spent the day talking about everything and nothing. We both remarked over how easy it was for us to share n stuff. I guess we bring shame to the swedish culture, considering our people are known to be cold and closed...too bad =).
We started out by walking down to the beach, ate at an expensive mexican restaurant, where the service was so bad, we actually didn't tip anything at all. Now, back home that wouldn't really have mattered, since tipping isn't such a big thing in Sweden. But here, you tip on most things, and you're expected to put down 15-20% of your bill at a nice restaurant (I.E., not "fastfood"). The reason why the waiter didn't get anything is because he actually forgot what I ordered, and I had to wait another 10min after my friend got his meal...outrageous.
After eating, we sat on the Santa Monica pier, gazed out into the beautiful sun, laughed at the crappy streetperformer behind us, and basically just basked in the fact that it is late november, and real warm n nice. Can't get enough of those pictures with a strong sunglare in the ocean...think I went a bit...overboard (teehee) with this one tho.

We continued our day by walking along Venice Beach, ended up at Venice Beach Pier, enjoyed the view from there for a while. Then we walked back towards Santa Monica, passed 2 swedes on our way. Incredible, we really do exist all over the place, don't we =) ?
After that we checked out pretty much the only interesting thing in Santa Monica. The Third Street Promenade. Just a simple street where cars aren't allowed, filled with lots of stores and movietheaters. Nice, but not extravagant in any way. To me, I don't much all that much of a difference between it and Kullagatan..oh well. Also checked out The Legend of Zorro, t'was good.

All in all a pleasant day, relaxing, with a lot of interesting conversations, but nothing special besides that. I did however get to see something that Mr A asked me to keep a lookout for. A bike cop! But not the hot chick he figured it would be. Still something I guess.

Surf's up?

Well, the comment left by my sister on my SF-post (the _only_ comment even! hmpff) inspired me to hop onto bus 434 from Santa Monica pier, and go up to the city with the most beautiful (and "famous") beach in the whole LA region; Malibu. I heard that it's slightly snowing, halfmelting away back home in sweden...today we had 30°C (87f for those using stupid systems..like they do here in this silly country), no noticable wind and nearly a clear sky, almost no clouds at all. It was perfect.

Malibu is real beautiful, if you get off the PCH (the highway from the frisco trip, remember?) and actually find your way down to the beach. See, malibu mainly consists of expensive beachproperties, built so close to each other, that you can reach the beach without trespassing on private property. Luckily for those of us without $ 17 million to spend on a beachhouse, small "hidden" accessways have been constructed here and there. They're difficult to find, but when you do, it's completely legal for you to walk along the shore, even if many houseowners put up signs saying that the beach is somehow private, all the way down to the water.

After walking for a couple of km along the lovely beach, gazing into celebrities' and "people-in-the-business"'s beach-houses, I decided to jump into the water. I realised that I can't travel all the way to California, and not swim in the pacific. The water was cold, just like I remembered it from my last trip, back in -99, but man, those waves. I understand why so many people get surflessons in this area. It was, once again, perfect.

In the end, I had a great day, here in Malibu, California. What did you do today :-p ?

teh Gay Capital of the world

Previously mentioned friends from Sweden had planned to drive up to San Francisco (from hereon referred to as "frisco", local nickname) and after much careful deliberation I decided to go with them.

Roadtrip!
Since we knew it would be a long drive, the journey (for me at least) began in Santa Monica, at 6:35am. Insanely early, for somebody used to going to bed around 2am, and get up at noon...but sure, it's a trip, we all have to make sacrifices =). Now, driving to frisco from lala land can be done in three ways actually. You can either go on the most boring freeway in the world, the I5, which is almost an exactly straight line going thru desert-landscape from LA to SF. Quickest route, as long as you can stay awake from the boringness. Then there's highway 101, going partly along the historic route El Camino Real, which apparently was set up by spaniards when the americas were still being referred to as "The New World". We drove part of the way on the 101, and got to see the lovely signs marking the old kings highway.

The third, and by far the most interesting alternative is also the longest, not by distance, but by time. It's a small road so it takes a long time to drive on. It is easily the most beautiful road I have ever travelled. I know I said in a previous post regarding grand canyon that it was basically pointless to post pictures of breathtaking views of nature, but in this case, I just feel that I have to put up a series of pictures. Partly because it's just evil of me to say "oh yeah, I saw this and it was so cool...but you don't get to see it, ha, ha" and partly because, well, the pictures turned out a whole lot better this time. Can't really say all that much about the pictures, so I advise you to just look at them, and enjoy the scenery. This is the Pacific Coast Highway, also referred to as "Number One":

Incredible, isn't it? We stopped a number of times, altho as you can see, some pictures were taken in motion, from inside the car. I'm still shocked/impressed however of how one of the pictures turned out, since I got it from sitting at the front passenger seat, leaning back to see out the lefthand side passenger window, while the car was turning in a corner. The picture I'm talking about is the 8th photo. Such a wonderful trip, even tho it took about 2 hours longer than it would have had we taken the borefest that is the I5.

After many hours in the car (close to 8 to be specific), we finally get out in front of Hosteling International (still keep thinking they say "hustling intl." when you call them) and get our bags and check in. Everything works out smooth, not a single complication. The hostel provides housing with a continental breakfast, linen n towel included, and all for just $23 / night. You just have to be ok with living with other people in the room, which really isn't a problem, since there's a large common area to sit n relax in before you turn in, in a smaller room with just 10 beds in it. Great for 3 travellers like us.
Both KeeWee and his companion Sara went to bed early, but I stayed up another couple of hours, because I met up with a swede who lived at the same hostel, who was on a near 2 months long trip, similar to mine, only with less planning. He arrived in Fullerton (a part of south LA) a week ago, and left by bus to frisco 2 days later, and simply go's from hostel to hostel. So awesome. Gave him my ¢¢ on Las Vegas, a destination he's headed towards later on. After talking about how sweet it is to be on a long vacation in california when it's cold and half-snowing back home and how jealous all the friends are, we said goodbye, and I went to bed.

Wednesday morning started with a simple continental breakfast and discussions about what we wanted to do during our stay in SF. We decided to just walk around and see what we find. After walking for 6 hours, passing by nice buildings, walking up and down hills, we finally find something interesting to see. We climbed up on a little hill, just north of SanFrancisco's most elevated point, Twin Peaks, and.I.was.amazed. I've seen a lot of beautiful sights in my life, a lot during my vacation here in the states...but the view from that hill was just simply spectacular. I was pondering if it was one of the nicest city-views I've ever seen, but I might have enjoyed it so much partially because it was gratifying just to reach the crest of that hill, considering how long we had been walking to get there. Like when you get your paycheck after working for a long boring month. Nonetheless, a great place to see all of SF from. Ofc, the battery in my camera was dead at the time, so no picture for me....but it wouldn't look all that good with my small cam anyway, so why bother. My friend, a hobbyphotografer with an awesome camera (canon! supposedly that means something extra good), got a couple of pictures tho, hopefully I can post some of his work as soon as I get hold of it.

At 5pm we drive away with the golden gate bridge behind us, a setting sun to the right, and a long boring drive ahead. We had planned to drive straight home on the I5, to save time. There was just one more scheduled stop we had to make before we left the area. Google Headquarters. Unfortunately, we disagreed on if we should drive up to the guard at the entrance or not. I figured we could just enter the area real quickly to get a couple of pictures of the place, but my suggestion was voted down, 2 to 1. Aah, democracy at work. Regardless, it was cool to be outside google, and at least see part of the building in nighttime...
On the way home, we discussed everything from anti-smoke campaigns to the nerdiness of computer enthusiasts, and if being a computernerd is a revered title or not, to my obsession/fascination of large mammaries. Very interesting. If we hadn't discussed such hot topics, I'm afraid we would all have fallen asleep from walking all day long, coupled with the monotony of the road...including the driver! But we all made it to Santa Monica in one piece..or...well...rather, no pieces missing or broken =).