the time has come to end our visit. i packed my shit and went to pick up twiddle thumbs. she went to disneyland with her family and bought some mickey ears for the family dog. they love dressing up that damn dog. the results are always hilarious though. i had to take a picture.

it's ren hoek disguised as a mouse!

on the way leaving LA, we decided to meet a friend and watch "the matrix revolutions" at the imax theater at universal city walk. in case you're wondering, yes, i can drive and shoot. not that kind of shooting, i know it's LA but really! i was taking pictures of the freeway.

while we were at universal's city walk, we ate lunch at the hard rock cafe (i tried an appletini, yum!) and checked out the shops. these pictures are for heliosphan:

all the m&m's you can eat, and in non-traditional colors!

an entire store devoted to your favorite, popcorn!

then we saw something weird. ice skating. in LA. outdoors. fucking ice skating!

after we finished watching the matrix, we said good-bye to our friend and headed to the parking garage to drive home. there were tons of people wearing thick jackets, gloves, and scarves. what the hell, i know it's a bit cloudy but i doubt if it's even as low as 70 people! come on, you have enough hair on your arms to keep you warm through this light breeze. i took some jackets and a sweater with me for the LA trip, just in case, and i never needed them. i was too hot even in t-shirts. to give you an idea of how hot it has been, yesterday i saw a sign off the freeway that displays the current time and temperature and it noted that it was 84 F.

in the parking garage, i noticed this amazing view. it was kinda cloudy but the light was coming in in just this special way so i took a couple of pictures.

driving back up, the traffic was a little thicker but still not bad. we made good to average time. along the way, one passes several prisons. there's these lovely signs that warn people not to pick up hitchhikers. in the salinas area, there was a bit of an oddity. we noticed a truck with red lights stopped at the border of a fence. we knew the prison was close but thought if someone had escaped, there would be more commotion. we didn't see any other cars or lights. we didn't even see any people. perhaps they're investigating something else or repairing a hole in the fence. a little bit later we saw the same thing. a truck pulled over at the fence with red lights on. again, nothing else, no other lights, no people visible. but now we knew that something was up. i'll have to look out for this on the news.

[update 12/2/03: found this article which explains it. there was an escape at the salinas valley state prison. http://www.theksbwchannel.com/news/2673624/detail.html]

when i got home, i immediately checked the fish. everything seemed fine in the tank. i didn't see any marks on the janitor or the frog so i guess ardeth left them alone. maybe he only took their lunch money. ardeth was acting a bit weird, but that's probably just because we've never been gone for so long before. his color is fading too. i should put him back on betta pellets for awhile, the kind that are supposed to keep the color vibrant, and see how that works out.