This past weekend my husband and I took a trip to Los Angeles for a conference¹. We decided to make it interesting… so we took a 2 hour train ride (Amtrak) to Union Station, which allowed us to look at the coast for about 1/2 the trip, it was beautiful. Then we took the light rail (Metro Orange Line) up to Pasadena. From there we walked to our hotel or the Pasadena Convention center. We weren’t sure when we made the plans if we could actually do L.A. on foot, but we did! It was so nice not to have to deal with traffic and parking. We found a great restaurant on Friday and we loved it so much we ate there again on Saturday (they had so many choices!).

Friday night I had the beginnings of a migraine so I took some Excedrin… unfortunately it contains caffeine, so my headache was gone but I was wide awake! So I worked on this Zentangle while my husband looked over the conference schedule…

My husband said it was transdimentional soda pop! 😛 I lean more towards tentacles and outerspace… so we totally agree. 😀 It didn’t occur to me until I showed my husband my drawing that the other image on the page I was working on was the same tangle pattern (Lollywimple) that I did back in September… so fun to see my progress as well as the pattern reimagined. FYI, I started out with the same string as my last tile…

On our way to the conference Saturday morning we strolled through a little park and I took some photos. I had to take the obligatory shots of the squirrels and some interesting flowers…

This photo is really about the red Mustang (one like my husband remembered his grandfather having when my husband was a kid), but it was a neat building. It is the City Hall building, we just don’t make beautiful buildings like this anymore…

Oh, and we saw a street sign that we thought was amusing…

In case you don’t know… the characters in the show Big Bang Theory live in Pasadena and work at CalTech.

We had a good time at the conference, but by Saturday night we suspected my husband might have caught Con-Plague. Sunday morning we knew for sure that indeed he had… he toughed it out for a few talks but ultimately we decided to leave the conference early… Luckily switching to an earlier train on Amtrak was easy and we were on our way home. Once home I made my husband ‘get better soup’² and some tea (and I drew on his mug)…

then I sent him to bed.

We really aren’t used to all that walking and being in public business and we wore ourselves out, but we had fun and that’s what is important.

Until next time…
~nic

¹ We went to SCaLE – Southern California Linux Expo.

² get better soup – originated with vegetable broth, 5 minute rice, and frozen peas… but it has quickly evolved to seaweed ramen made with vegetable broth (with added umami powder, fried garlic, and fried onion) and frozen peas.