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Name three things in our front flower bed.

Seriously…I just replanted this damn flower bed this past weekend, because dogs keep peeing in one corner and killing everything. This is planting #3…or is it #4…I’ve lost count.

Now its ME that is pissed.

Last night, our friends Brad and Brian invited us over to their neighborhood for dinner and a movie. At Cha Cha Cha on Haight Street, we barely beat the throngs of locals, who line up early for creative tapas and famous sangria. The colorful wall decor was a bonus.

For our movie, we walked a block to the Red Vic Movie House…a worker-owned city favorite. The theatre had that quirky Haight charm, although the popcorn (served from a traditional theatre popper) was surprisingly cold and stale. They asked if I wanted yeast on my popcorn…maybe that would have helped?

We watched the Oscar-nominated flick There Will Be Blood. We all left the theatre scratching our heads, but somehow we just felt wiser…or at least happy not to be in the oil drilling business.

But the real show was on Haight Street itself. We had about 30-minutes to kill between dinner and the movie, so we walked several always-colorful blocks. Lots of people offering items for cash…or just outright begging.

Our favorite? Two young men who offered to do “extreme ultimate fighting” right there on the street for cash. Awesome!

Last weekend, I coaxed Jeff into flying south to LA for the weekend, rather than having me fly north Friday and back south on Sunday. (No, its not that tough to coax Jeff to LA 🙂

For me, LA is a blur of supersaturated images intensified by the bright sun. So, as I was working on the snapshots for this post, I had some fun and pumped up the colors.

NOW they are LA!!

For this weekend, we returned to an old favorite hotel that had been recently renovated. The London (formerly the Bel Age) is definitely aiming for the high-chic West Hollywood/Sunset Boulevard crowd.

On Saturday, we took a sunny drive out to the coast and then up the Pacific Coast Highway. (The photo at the top of the post is in Malibu.) On our way to and from the coast, we wound our way past ritzy houses in Beverly Hills and Bel-Air (actually…mostly gates and high hedges). Yummy food and mojitos at the Abbey, amongst other indulgences. (The window display below is selling bedding? You tell me.)

On Sunday, we drove to the Getty Center, perched on a hill overlooking downtown LA in the distance. The Center’s dramatic marble-clad buildings and popular gardens were PACKED with Angelenos soaking up some culture along with some sun.

The primary reason for my trip to Southern California this past week was to support a conference in Anaheim. Last year, careful readers may recall a fascinating giveaway dealing with urination and…well…the need to urinate somewhere you might not be able to urinate. Anyhow, this year’s tip-of-the-hat for best giveaway goes to a tiny booth handing out cans of armadillo. Bravo.

My trip was non-stop busy, and I didn’t get a chance to load up a photo of my hotel window…which was actually a balcony on the top floor of the Sheraton overlooking Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. Sadly, no fireworks during the week to photograph.

I did enjoy this tiny warning sign on the wall near the ceiling. You just know more than one person set the sprinklers off before they posted this.

…finally.

[Note: I had a yummy work dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf on Thursday night with visiting colleagues from across the West. Sure, Alioto’s is deep in tourist territory, but it still feels like old SF…and the sunset views of the Golden Gate Bridge with the wharf in the foreground are pretty damn nice.]