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It has been a good vacation. This morning we woke to find the ocean covered in a layer of fog so thick, we appeared to be in some kind of land above the clouds. I understand, for the first time in my life, why people want to live in Los Angeles. It's very nice here - even the weather.
Howver, it has also been a very long and very tiring trip. We've driven about 1000 kms since Sunday, as LA is so spread out that everything seems to be a 60 minute drive from everywhere else. Everything is expensive. Apples, for example, cost three times as much as they do in Canada. But it is undeniably beautiful here.
Other thoughts:
The "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" and "GOD BLESS AMERICA" stickers, billboards, bus shelter ads, placard ads over urinals, etc., which I see everywhere were all really unnerving, until I realized that they were mainly place holders for unsold ad space. The worst, though, were the giant billboard ads profiling one or two members of the USMC in New York State. They'd have a giant photo of the person - a local boy - and a bullet point listing of his achievements, followed by a number to call the recruiting centre. It was all terribly "Comrade Ogilvie."
Hospital ads remain unspeakably creepy to me - all full of smiling, healthy, anonymous, multiracial clipart. They seem almost menacing. There is a health care service here called "CareMore Inc." They have a huge glass building over in Cerrito. It sounds like an ironic joke, or the name of an evil multinational from a bad comedy, but it's real.
The TV ads are alarming, too. "Do you want STRANGERS coming into YOUR HOUSE and TAKING YOUR MONEY, to spray POISON around your CHILDREN?" That's the tagline for a line of "digital wave" pest repellers they're shilling on TV. But, hey, in return for watching those, I seem to get 24 hours of "Andy of Mayberry", and I've yet to overdose on that show.
There was a lot of dire local coverage about Eliahn Gonzales, who has just joined the Communist party in Cuba. People on TV were calling it a propangda victory for evil. As though keeping away from his only living parent would not also have been a propaganda victory for Cuba?
In any case, media weirdness aside, it's been a good trip. It was great to meet up with both![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
summerfields again. I'll miss my little sister. I also got to spend much quality time with my parents and older sister, and her new boyfriend.
I'm very ready to get back to the daily grind. I'm looking forward to green grass, pine trees, sweltering humidity, boring politics, Skyway bridge, the 6:45 AM train, eggs at Paddington's Pump, and writing about magnetoresistive circuits. The song "Dirty Old Town" keeps playing in my head...
TOmorrow is going to be a very long day. We have to be out of our room here at 11 AM, the plane leaves at 11 PM, and we arrive back in Buffalo at 10 AM EST. Then we have to drive home...
I wish I could fast forward to Saturday night.
Howver, it has also been a very long and very tiring trip. We've driven about 1000 kms since Sunday, as LA is so spread out that everything seems to be a 60 minute drive from everywhere else. Everything is expensive. Apples, for example, cost three times as much as they do in Canada. But it is undeniably beautiful here.
Other thoughts:
The "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" and "GOD BLESS AMERICA" stickers, billboards, bus shelter ads, placard ads over urinals, etc., which I see everywhere were all really unnerving, until I realized that they were mainly place holders for unsold ad space. The worst, though, were the giant billboard ads profiling one or two members of the USMC in New York State. They'd have a giant photo of the person - a local boy - and a bullet point listing of his achievements, followed by a number to call the recruiting centre. It was all terribly "Comrade Ogilvie."
Hospital ads remain unspeakably creepy to me - all full of smiling, healthy, anonymous, multiracial clipart. They seem almost menacing. There is a health care service here called "CareMore Inc." They have a huge glass building over in Cerrito. It sounds like an ironic joke, or the name of an evil multinational from a bad comedy, but it's real.
The TV ads are alarming, too. "Do you want STRANGERS coming into YOUR HOUSE and TAKING YOUR MONEY, to spray POISON around your CHILDREN?" That's the tagline for a line of "digital wave" pest repellers they're shilling on TV. But, hey, in return for watching those, I seem to get 24 hours of "Andy of Mayberry", and I've yet to overdose on that show.
There was a lot of dire local coverage about Eliahn Gonzales, who has just joined the Communist party in Cuba. People on TV were calling it a propangda victory for evil. As though keeping away from his only living parent would not also have been a propaganda victory for Cuba?
In any case, media weirdness aside, it's been a good trip. It was great to meet up with both
summerfields again. I'll miss my little sister. I also got to spend much quality time with my parents and older sister, and her new boyfriend.I'm very ready to get back to the daily grind. I'm looking forward to green grass, pine trees, sweltering humidity, boring politics, Skyway bridge, the 6:45 AM train, eggs at Paddington's Pump, and writing about magnetoresistive circuits. The song "Dirty Old Town" keeps playing in my head...
TOmorrow is going to be a very long day. We have to be out of our room here at 11 AM, the plane leaves at 11 PM, and we arrive back in Buffalo at 10 AM EST. Then we have to drive home...
I wish I could fast forward to Saturday night.
