Home Sweet Home

Here's one more L.A. picture -- the so-called "cactus promontory" at the Getty Center, a huge art and cultural complex on a mountain in Bel Air. The Getty consists of a series of museum buildings featuring all kinds of art, linked by patios and formal gardens. We went there on Friday morning before catching our flight -- we had a few hours to kill and though it wasn't enough time to see much art (and Dave's not that into art museums anyway), we at least got to see the center itself.

To get there, you have to park at the bottom of the hill and take a tram to the top -- a much more dramatic tram, I might add, than the Angels Flight! It offers scenic views of the surrounding city and traffic moving ever-so-slowly, as always, on the San Diego Freeway. It even has its own soundtrack, some very stirring music that plays for riders during the climb. I felt like I was in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

While we were at the museum, Dave ran into someone he knows from Drum Corps International -- a guy who lives in San Diego and happened to be visiting the Getty with his family. Again, what are the odds?! Dave randomly ran into TWO people he knows during our six days in greater L.A. (You may remember he saw a former student Thursday night at the Disney Concert Hall.)

Anyway, around 1:30 p.m. we got on the freeway ourselves and joined the steady stream of traffic headed south toward LAX. It took a while, but traffic was moving, and we had plenty of time before our 6 p.m. flight so we weren't worried. We gassed up the car, dropped it off at the Budget lot and caught the shuttle bus to our airport terminal. I was SO relieved to get rid of that car. I'm a fairly decent driver, I think, and nothing very dramatic happened to us on the roadways of L.A., but I was still about 40 percent terrified the whole time just given the volume of traffic and my unfamiliarity with the city. I'm patting myself on the back for making it through without so much as a scratch. (I can say that now without jinxing myself!)

The flight was smooth, though some poor person had a medical emergency of some kind in the back of the plane. I only knew because I went back to get some water and found the flight attendants bent over him as he lay on the floor in the galley. They were administering oxygen, but I heard him talking so he was conscious. No one made any announcement and the plane continued on its path so things couldn't have been too critical, though they did bring paramedics on board when we landed in London.

And here we are!

Olga looks glum in this picture but she's actually been quite happy to see us. She was licking my face just seconds before I took that photo! Oh, and that's my mango-colored Pann's shirt, which I've decided I like after all.

Now the washing machine is churning and I'm neatening up around the house, even though our friend Warren took good care of it. No matter how neat a house-sitter is, when I get home I instinctively want all traces of them gone and everything back in its proper place. I think Olga agrees with me.