For Thanksgiving this year Jesse and I were smart and instead of going to where everyone in LA was (ie Disneyland) we went to where they weren't. Driving down Sunset on Thanksgiving day has to be the best time of the year. Not a single car. Well, maybe one or two, but still.
As promised, I waited for Jesse to return before going to see Across the Universe. So we chose Thanksgiving to see it. Since it had been a while since the movie's release, it was playing in very few theatres. The one closest to us was the theatre in the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills. Lucky for us, our theater was empty. Or at least it was until a family of 4 arrived but they sat on the other side, so our side of the theater was still empty. The movie was awesome.
After the movie, Jesse and I further took advantage of the empty LA streets and walked to the Grove to look around the stores that were open and see the Christmas display.
This is Jesse's favourite restaurant. Although the one we go to is in Northridge. If you come to visit us here, I'm sure you'll get to enjoy yourself like all of our other guests have.
Jesse heading over to The Price is Right.
Unlike my mom predicted (cough, Debbie Downer, cough) our local Ralph's grocery store was open on Thanksgiving. However, given that we arrived late in the afternoon/early evening, all of the pre-roasted chickens were gone. So we had to make due for our Thanksgiving dinner and resort to the good old Schneider's Red Hots that were kindly left for us by our recent guest.
Luckily Jesse loves a good hot dog. especially with mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.
On November 24th, Jesse and I drove to Pasadena for the last UCLA football game of the season against the Oregon State Ducks. UCLA plays at the Rose Bowl which is a great venue, and it was a beautiful day. I only wish that we had come prepared with a barbeque and snacks, oh and a truck, because the tail gate parties outside the stadium before the game were awesome. We wanted to make sure we could still get tickets so we didn't doddle long, but it sure looked like fun.
The Oregon fans.
The UCLA marching band.
The actual game was pretty disappointing. Both teams offenses sucked and there was very little action. What made it worse was that we were sitting in front of the noisiest fans in the whole stadium .... and they were from USC, a fact that they made known every chance they could.
We resisted buying the ridiculously expensive food for a while, but by half time we were too hungry. I made the trip to the concessions area and came back with something well worth the $7 that I paid: garlic french fries! There was so much garlic on them that it burned. Ed, you would have loved them! They smelled so good that two other parties sitting near us went and got some for themselves after I returned.
The $6 coke that Jesse bought was not, however, worth the expense.
For some reason it seems that who ever designed the stadium did not take into account the large number of fans when designing the parking lot. There were over 70,000 people at the game we attended alone, and the parking lot was definitely not large enough. So the majority of the parking was to be found on the surrounding golf course, a sight which Jesse could not get over which explains the number of pictures he took (I did not post them all).
On second thought maybe the golf course parking was part of the design because it sure made a more comfortable place for the tail gate parties.
