A California adventure.

Will and I both had Martin Luther King Day off from work, so we decided to drive down to LA to visit Ashley and Colin.  (You may remember Will and Ashley, frequently recurring characters in Claire Blabbing.  As both are also new residents of California, I imagine they will continue to appear in the Blob.)  The drive down on Friday was long—extra long because there was an accident that took us on a two-hour detour through the middle of nowhere.  Better to be in traffic than in the accident, as my mom would say.  Nevertheless, I was a grumpy passenger (sorry, Will).  We finally made it to Chez Ashley Colin and unwound with our gracious hosts on their porch with a few beers.

Ashley and Colin live on the top floor of a wonderful, quirky 100-year-old house perched on top of a hill.  The floor plan is really unusual—rather than have a hallway to circulate through, all the rooms are pushed together in this little maze.  Very funky.  Apparently the former downstairs tenant was a Korean mask artist/serious hoarder, and a few of his art pieces are scattered around the yard.  Colin said it was quite the excavation job to salvage the apartment after that guy moved out.

The weekend was mostly an exercise in eating wonderful food, drinking beer and margaritas, and lounging in beautiful weather.  Colin's friend's Facebook status summed up the weather pretty perfectly: "Janu-marry-me, Los Angeles?? <insert sun and palm tree emojis>"  We spent a lovely afternoon by the pool at Colin’s parents’ house in Pasadena.  Ashley proved that California cannot thwart her from making a Texas-worthy pulled pork feast.  (I have missed my personal chef :_______O <<that emoticon is crying and has no food).

On Sunday night, Ashley, Reiko, Will and I went to a comedy club.  We saw five different comics.  The first three were mostly funny, but the two after intermission completely lost me.  I consider myself a fairly intelligent person with a decent sense of humor, but I just did not get the fourth guy’s jokes.  Could someone please explain this one to me:

Q. Of all the historical events he was directly involved in, which makes Forrest Gump most proud?

A. 9/11.

……………….it’s probably really bad.

The dude also did not win me over with his grating, Gilbert Gottfriend-esque screaming and occasional phlegm hacking up.  (To be fair to Gilbert Gottfried, I feel obligated to say that I recently listened to an interview with him and he is actually hilarious.)

After coffee with Colin on Monday morning, Will and I set out on our journey back to San Francisco.  (I got my first In-n-Out burger—quite yummy.)

Sending many thanks and hugs hugs hugs to our perfect hosts—can’t wait for you to come visit San Francisco!