I just had my first really crap day in Los Angeles. And when I say crap, what I really mean is HELL!

My room mate who I car pool to work with decided to stay home today. (Not normally a problem but you will see why later). So, I drove to work this morning. The car was acting up a tiny bit, but that's pretty normal for his car. It's always cranky in some way. I left for work 20 minutes early and got there 20 minutes early. I had a pretty no brainer day, busy but not bad. I finished everything I had to do so I left work at 4:30 instead of 5.

This is where the SUCK begins.

I pull out of the drive way and the car's oil light comes on. This is what proceeded the car leaking oil the last time. I pull over and check the trunk for oil....None to be had. I pull over at the next gas station, they don't take checks - which is all I have.

(Have I told you how hard it is to use a check book for anything but rent here? another story)

I spend 20 minutes on the phone, and on the web browser on my phone, trying to figure out where the closest Wells Fargo is to my current location. The bank is just a few miles away. I follow the directions given by the poor teller I end up talking to at that branch. I make it to the appropriate exit, I turn the wrong way and the car dies. I get directions from the people at the business I end up stalling out in front of and go back to trying to find my bank. I get 2 blocks before the engine clacking makes me nervous and I stop at another gas station. I play distressed maiden, which is not hard to do at this point - I'm worried that my room mate will hate me forever because I killed his car. I beg the guy to take a check and he reluctantly does. I apparently lucked into to talking to the owner of the Phillips76 franchise pit stop.

I start the car after dumping THREE, count them, THREE quarts of oil into it. The oil light goes off and immediately comes back on. I think "well maybe it will just take a minute for it get back to normal." I take off again in search of the bank. No luck after looking for 10 minutes. The car is not sounding any better.

I call the SO. He says either put one more quart of oil in the car or suck it up and come home. Not wanting to spend another hour on the side of the road trying to get a check cashed - I sucked it up and started to head home. I get on the 405 freeway headed toward downtown. I don't get more than a mile because the car won't go over 55 no matter how hard I punch it. I get desperate and roll over to the shoulder just before the Normandie/Gardena exit.

The car is smoking. It will not start.

I call the boy again, wailing at the top of my lungs. I killed the car what do I do? Crying and crying and crying. I am a car weenie. I need help.

Luckily, LA has these handy highway patrol TOW TRUCKS. The tow truck driver was the only bright spot in a totally suckie day. He was courteous and explained to me the ins and outs of abandoning a car in LA, ie: the best place to leave it with the least possible repercussions for my room mate. We ended up leaving it at an Office Depot in Torrance. (Yes, the Normandie/Gardena exit was for the roads not the slums.) This guy was super cool, half Hawaiian, half German - he had a German face and fat guy physique, but was tan and dark haired like a Hawaiian. He had a German accent, he had just moved here 5 years ago to work at Boeing as an aerospace engineer. He got laid off 2 years ago and has been driving a tow truck ever since.

I took a cab home from the Office Depot and my day of suck continued. The cab ride was 60 dollars, not too bad considering I was driven ACROSS the ENTIRE city.

I get home, and bawl some more and eventually laugh as my room mate shrugs off the whole car issue.

I try to go to the bathroom before I walk the dogs and suck episode number 2 rears it's ugly head.

The dog has taken a dump all over my bedroom.

The SO says he'll clean it up, just go ahead and take them for a walk. I take my dog first, since he's gone poo and a very naughty boy who obviously still needs to go. When I get back, The SO annouces that the dog has soiled his old camera bag that I use for carrying stuff when we go exploring in LA. I ask him to rinse it off, so I can at least salvage the REALLY cool Max Headroom patch he attached to it. He throws it in the tub and I go to walk the room mate's dog.

And we pitch head long into suck episode #3 for the day.

I am done walking the second dog, I take this one to the dog park because he gets along well with other dogs and my dog does not. I am gone for about 20 minutes. My dog is barking his head off, I mean barking like he's insane. I let him out of my bedroom to give him dinner (we keep the dogs separated). I go back into my room to go to the bathroom, finally. The bedroom is warm and humid. I'm thinking, "damn, it got hot today this is funky." And I step right into a flooded bathroom. The water flows right up over the top edge of my flip flops and I scream at The SO. At the same time, there is a knock on the front door. It's our downstairs neighbor. Their bathroom is flooded too, and she's spoiling for a fight expecting us to have an S.O.L. attitude about the water pouring from her ceiling. She starts giving The SO hard time and doesn't even notice that he says it's "okay, we'll help clean up - be down in a minute. Let us get some of it mopped up up here so it ill at least slow down in your bathroom." The neighbor has to back up in her little speech and gets a puzzled doggie look on her face.

It took us 2 hours to clean up the mess.

At least it's only one suckie day... and the first one in a long time. The SO says that we used up all our good karma points getting to LA with so little trouble. Anything that was going to wrong was going to be really wrong. Have to build up our good karma again. ^_^

Los Angeles is so lush. That's the only way to describe it. Austin is beautiful, but in a the way a tree covered plain is pretty. Austin isn't really a forest covered, it's overgrown scrub. The trees are pleasant to look at but, they don't contribute much but pecans and allergies.

LA is lush in the tropical sense of the word. There are flowers and fruit everywhere. Flowers bloom on every corner and trees pop out of the most bizarre places. The little gravel covered lot a block away from my apartment at Yucca and Las Palmas has passion fruit vines growing on the fence. Passion fruit on a fence, an you believe it? The little hotel right next to the lot has a rose garden and vegetable garden. Our building is surrounded by flowering bushes and orange trees. Everyone I know who owns a house has some sort of fruit tree in their yard, lemons, avacados, oranges. It amazes me.

And the palm trees.....every street has them it seems. LA is an oasis, an oasis created by man rather than by nature. This area was desert waste until us humans decided it would be cool place to live. The weather gods still think it's a desert. It almost never rains any substantial amount. The first week I was here, it rained the most it had rained all year. It rained two times in one week, like a monsoon on both occasions. Remember the national gegraphic specials about the desert in Africa (not the Sahara) that floods into a huge lake every year during the rainy season - which is like a whole day? That's how the weather is here.

I live in an apartment building at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills, a few blocks from the Hollywood Bowl. Our neighbor across the hall, who we're sort becoming friends with, threw a party that lasted all day. When the sun went down, we all headed up to the roof of the building to check out the displays. We could see the fireworks from all the surrounding little cities on the way down to the coast. It was amazing! It was like a show across southern Cali just for us. The Hollywood bowl had a fireworks display, and it was neat to get to watch it closely, but it didn't last for very long.

I ca't tell you how special I thought it was to see s many people celebrating our country at the same time. There were literally millions of people staring at the sky at the same, and I was able to see most of what everyone else saw. It was beauiful!!!!!!!!