i need to see this movie again...

...I can't stop thinking about the ending, and articles like this don't help :p

Inception Explained: Unraveling The Dream Within The Dream

awww....

Two Facebook friends posted a link to this blog - Mila's Daydreams - this week and it's just too cute not to share. That baby must be the soundest sleeper ever!

what a weekend!

This weekend could be described in three words: AC, Movies, Friends.

Considering I came home from the movies on Friday night to a house that was 88 degrees inside due to the AC going out, it was a pretty good weekend overall.

Thanks to my long-lost awesome AC guy Mark (who installed the new system in my condo back in the day), I got cool air back mid-day Saturday. I highly recommend him for all your air conditioning needs... seriously.. I do. Read the recommendation here on Yelp. 

Movies consisted of the better-than-I-expected Sorcerer's Apprentice, which sadly did not do great at the box office. But I would recommend it. It was suspenseful and fun in that National Treasure way (which is a shocker considering it has the same director and star as NT ;). But the movie of the weekend, and possibly year thus far, was Inception. OMG! SO GOOD! It's about going into people's dreams to retrieve information...or plant it as the case may be. Did I mention it is SO GOOD! SEE THIS MOVIE! I LOVED IT! Amazing script (by Christopher Nolan)! Amazing cast (Leo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Wantanabe, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine)! Amazing director (again..Christopher Nolan)! Amazing "how'd they do THAT?!" effects! I will be seeing this again!

And Sunday was spent with my friends... first at Dane's 3rd Birthday party (that's the first of TWO cupcakes he ate! :) .....

... then a little Lowe's shopping and BBQing on the new patio. Very fun, but also tiring... time to snooze. I anticipate a crazy week ahead.

hockey, music and margaritas

Had a fun day wandering around downtown today on almost no schedule, taking the metro from Hollywood & Western down to 7th & Figueroa. (Cuz we're green like that!)

First stop was the Grammy Museum at LA Live. I've been wanting to check it out for over a year, and was running out of time since the Michael Jackson exhibit will be closing soon and I wanted to see that. So, we handed over our $10 (thanks to the AAA discount ;) and spent a good 90 minutes wandering the three floors of the museum.

One of the coolest things is the "Crossroads" table, which is like being on Star Trek or in Minority Report, swiping images on a giant table to activate graphics and audio that tell you about just about ANY genre of music you could EVER imagine (seriously!).

From there, we went to the MJ exhibit, which had a lot of video of his Grammy moments, a light up floor like in the Billie Jean video, numerous sparkly jackets, gloves (but not THE glove), handwritten lyric sheets, and the suit he wore on the cover of Thriller -- he was even super-skinny then, which is really frightening considering how much tinier he seemed before he died. Anyhoo, it was cool to see, but I kinda expected there to be more to it.

As we finished checking out the main exhibit on the 4th floor, we found this bit of awesomeness -- the Songwriters Hall of Fame listing -- near the stairs leading down to the 3rd floor:

...What makes this more awesome (or odd) is that they felt the need to tell people that David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills were in Crosby, Stills and Nash (duh!), but didn't feel the need to ID Jon or Richie? (Or whoever Galt Mac Dermont is? Okay...) 

Other cool things in the museum: "The Dress" J-Lo wore to the Grammys in 2000; a guitar smashed by Kurt Cobain; the carbon-fiber, temperature-resistant cello Yo Yo Ma played at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics; a thank you note from Elvis' real estate agent; and handwritten letters and lyrics from Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin ... Oh, and a telegram from Mick Jagger explaining to NARAS why he couldn't be a presenter on one of the mid-'70s awards shows because of the Stones' Australian tour and the possibility of airline delays. LOL!

Our one appointment of the day was at 5pm at Staples Center. I had to go "select-a-seat" to get myself out of the evil section 205 that only has ONE aisle entrance (which equals a super-PITA during hockey intermissions if you are on the aisle, like I was last season). I luckily found two seats two rows lower across the aisle in section 206, which has TWO aisle entrances. Hopefully that will be less annoying. We also got to tour the Kings locker room...sadly there were no Kings in it at the time ;) It's super-deluxe with a main room (left pic) for putting on gear, a hang-out room with a kitchen and TV where they probably have team meetings, and then a back locker room where they lock up their normal clothes and valuables during games. Fans were writing all over the white boards and I found the message below on the right to be especially poignant :) 

From Staples, we headed back to LA Live to Rosa Mexicano, the one place Diana will drink alcohol at, which is odd considering it's REALLY STRONG alcohol (in the form of a really good pomegranate margarita). They have good guacamole too if you ever stop in. 

By then it was after 7 and starting to look like it might rain, so we went back to 7th & Fig and hopped a train home. But I will be back to wander again... there are so many good places to eat and discover down there... like there was NO line at The Pantry when we walked by, but we weren't hungry anymore. I need to eat there someday.. it's an LA Landmark! 

trust your gut

A former co-worker posted a link to this interesting blog post on twitter this week. It's so true... the draining just ain't worth it anymore. You must trust your gut/internal compass to be truly happy.