Home Sweet Home

I'm back in San Diego and I'm very happy about it. I loved LA, but I actually felt very happy when I saw "my own bed". I know - I know, San Diego isn't REALLY my home, but I'm set up pretty well here and just being here relaxes me, which is exactly like being at home would feel. I know my way around and I have most of my stuff here.

Walked past practicing firemen in the morning.

When I got home the cats were really sleepy - they hadn't expected anyone to turn on the lights at that time. But once they realized who it was, one of them was really happy to see me and the other one is just shy and never approaches me unless she's absolutely convinced I won't attack her. You see, both of the cats were taken from the shelter when they were already grown-ups. Both have their own reasons why they ended up in the shelter even though the owner doesn't know about their past in detail.

I'm glad Rachel took me to the train station since it looked scary big.

Shayann is the furry cat that has been in a couple of pictures in my blog before. She's very affectionate. She just loves being petted. Actually it only took her minutes to get all cute and affectionate with me when she first saw me. By now she likes me enough to run in my room when I get home. The other cat, Maria, is really shy. She's afraid of people and won't let anyone walk towards her. The owner thinks her previous owner must have stepped on her or kicked her, which is why Maria always gets spooked by people walking close to her, even if it's the owner whom she totally loves. Maria is also really suspicious of new people and it takes her weeks and sometimes months to get used to someone she hadn't met before. You can imagine how privileged I felt when she carefully came close to me after only one and a half weeks.

It barely wasn't dark when I arrived in San Diego.

Why am I telling you all this now? Because as it turns out, the shy cat Maria has got herself a new hobby when I was in LA. Lately she has been started to sleep on my pillow. AWWWWWwwwwwwwww......

Pillow is covered in cat hair, but it's sooo cute!

Less is More

Spent the day in. I have been running around so much lately that I needed time to rest and relax. Also, I actually wanted to do some work on my laptop. It's stuff I know how to do and it is actually fun to do and these things need to be done a.s.a.p. but I have just been so busy that there has barely been any progress in the past few days. But this is where the title of today's blog comes from - I had less plans and less running around, but I got more stuff done.

Sushi - the cat who maims people for fun.

Rachel's cat is insane. Like really. She's just violent! She likes attention so she'll come and let me pet her, but she can't be petted unless she can claw me at the same time, so she'll just point her claws at me and rhythmically torture me. Well I'm not really into that stuff, so I lift her paws off me. Then she rests them on my arm and continues the torture. I decide I'm not gonna pet her if she's like that, so she keeps purring and bites me! Literally. She's like that all the time. Even when I just walk past her, she won't get out of the way and sometimes just hits me with her claw just for the heck of it. But I'm pretty serious about not getting any open wounds for no good reason, so I just ignore her sometimes or push her off my bed or just put a high pillow between us. She doesn't like it much, but she still keeps coming back for the petting and torturing.

Display of cool old stuff.

But today I watched three movies at Rachel's place: Hard Candy, D.E.B.S., and Imagine Me And You. It was lots of fun. She has a projector and HUGE speakers. Good quality movie watching. Rachel lives in this cool old house that used to be a hotel. Now all the rooms are just rented out as apartments. There's some really cool old furniture in the lobby. Plus there's a really old looking church quite close to the building.

Coolest looking church I've seen in USA.

In the evening, my friend Rachel invited a bunch of her closest friends together. We spent the evening in a bar that has an extra entrance straight from the "hotel" lobby. So I never even stepped outside to go to the bar. I got my non-alcoholic beer again.

Sailor theme pub/restaurant downstairs.

We were ordering one thing after another, but eventually we had got like a meal and on average 3 drinks per person. And we got the check and it was 167 dollars. Well, that seems like a lot. It's 2000 EEK. But actually I wouldn't be surprised if I was out with 9 friends in Estonia and the bill ended up being 2000 kroons. Everyone would get maybe 4 or 5 drinks, but the bill would be the same. Especially considering that they add the tip to the bill as an obligatory extra when there's more than 4 people in the table. That rule can vary in different places, but it is something that you should definitely be aware of when you pay the bill in USA.

Tip included in the bill.

Hollywood Day

We saw a lot of LA today. I've seen more LA during two days of sightseeing than I have seen of San Diego within my 2 whole weeks there. I have decided to make a tour of San Diego as well. I have to get a day pass and just see as much as I can. Won't be as easy without a guide, but I'm hoping to make it work somehow.

I like tall glass buildings. They look so neat and shiny. And they look really expensive. The house would collapse if builders didn't pay attention to details, so big houses always have the best quality windows and the most exact symmetry. It's not like new small houses that might as well be made out of cardboard (and often almost are!) and half the windows look glued on and a little crooked.

Nicer parts of down town LA are really worth seeing.

I keep seeing these wet floor signs everywhere, but the floor is never really wet. Like really. Those signs are never to be trusted. If you were actually looking for a wet floor, never use those things as indicators of how wet the floor is. Ok, one time there was a water fountain and wind splattered tjeand the floor was really wet, but it wasn't even the sort of stone that would get slippery when wet and the stone just got really dark when wet, so even then it was just stating the obvious.

Perhaps an USA interpretation of "wet floor".

My friend took me to this huge building and said that we have reached Hollywood now. Didn't seem all that familiar , but it had a good view of the Hollywood sign and a ton of tourists.

"Now this is Hollywood!" - "...but... I haven't seen it in any movies!"

Obviously today was just a really good day for making pictures, since I ended up with 85 new images on my camera!

Kid jumping in the water fountain.

Heh, according to the hand- and footprint thing, it would seem that I have the same size legs as Sylvester Stallone, but actually the cement shrinks over time, so the oldest movie stars had really tiny feet and hands.

One of the very few modern celebrities there.

And even the more regular stars on streets - I was surprised I only recognized like up to 10 names.

Streets are paved with these stars.

And that wasn't all today - we also got me a train ticket for Sunday to San Diego, we went eating to a sushi place (I ate cooked stuff) and we saw an indie gay zombie movie and I had lots of pop corn. And we visited many mexican shops with cool mexican jewellery.

AND, last but not least! I had a celebrity-sighting! I saw one of the Olsen twins in a movie theatre. She wasn't at the odd indie movie cinema. She was meeting up with friends at one huge movie theatre which looked really nice! No idea which Olsen twin and we (me and my friend Rachel) didn't stalk. Actally Rachel was the one who spotted her. We just discreetly confirmed it was her and then left.

Yay to Gayfest!

...And no one is allowed to get offended by the title, because I mean it in the best possible way!

Today was Thanksgiving! A true feast holiday. You know how Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ and there's all the angels and stuff, New year's eve is about a new start and new year's resolutions... Well, Thanksgiving is about turkey and pumpkin pie! With Christmas in Estonia, people often comment about overeating on different holiday dishes, but it's really not what it's about. But whenever I had the conversation about celebrating my first thanksgiving here, people's reaction was - "there will be SOOOO MUCH FOOD! You'll love it!". I actually did a 1-minute background check because I thought Thanksgiving must have had another theme when it first started, but no, not really. Thanksgiving is a harvest celebration. So basically it's "We give our thanks for having so much food. Now lets overeat!"

Rachel covered with scary dough!

The first half of the day was spent watching the Macy's Day Parade and cooking. That's the tradition. Macy's is a chain of general stores. They sell anything from electronics to pianos. And every year they spend a ton of money funding a parade that's filmed right in front of their store in New York city. It's like a cheerful parade with many orchestras, but also HUUUUGE helium cartoon characters and people doing saltos and stuff. I loved the smurf balloon. The commentator said that "The size of this smurf is so big, that it could fit 30 000 smurfs inside, since a smurf is supposed to be 3 apples tall." And we cooked a traditional Estonian Apple-Farmer's Cheese Crumble cake (õuna-kohupiima purukook) with plenty of cinnamon. Plus we made sour kraut with pork and banana corn bread.

We finished the cake! Success!

We spent Thanksgiving dinner with my friend's gay friends and it was really fun. They were, like, soooo gay! There were more guys than girls there and I'm pretty sure none of them were straight. They were great though. They had this nice gay body language. The apartment was decorated with good style and there were nice paintings on the walls. The gay guy who lived there had some of the coolest kitchenware! Like he had this cheese grinder and he made the best cheese biscuits I've ever had.

Rachel's friends were really nice relaxed people. I loved the jokes with bananas and nuts. I had actually expected it to be quite awkward because I hadn't met any of those people before, but it was a very easygoing event and very accepting group of people. Lovely. I wasn't really used to seeing guys casually leaning over each other in a semi-flirty way or anything like that, but it's not like I minded any of that. It was actually a refreshingly different sight from what I'm used to.

Food!

MOUNTAINS OF FOOD! People were just bringing more and more of it and we ate until we were stuffed and then people were reminding each other, "leave room for dessert!" and then we watched a movie and waited a little and then had so much dessert that people were groaning again. But I actually can't eat so much at a time, so about an hour after dessert I had my eye on the turkey. And soon afterwards, when I thought that people will start drinking now, we gathered some leftovers, packed our things and went home. A surprisingly big amount of our apple cheese cake was eaten and we were complimented because they liked it. Sour kraut seemed less of a hit, probably because it was too salty (we only added salt to the pork), and everyone loved Rachel's tasty banana corn bread.

Best turkey ever!

Weird thing - what they call cranberry sauce is actually round slices of cranberry juice jello things that look like slices of beetroot. Taste was okay though. Nothing like "pohlamoos", which is our traditional holiday feast mountain cranberry (or cowberry) jam with actual berries inside!

All Over LA

Tomorrow will be a true eating fest. We will start at about 3 or 4 pm and there will be so much food that we won't be able to move afterwards. So how should I go about food today? Perhaps eat extra healthy food? Or maybe eat a little less and make sure I eat lots of good nutrients? Well, maybe I SHOULD have, but I sure as hell didn't.

Wow, could it be so?! Is that really the finger of God? It's sure big enough...

The day started with a "quick" getting ready session which took no less than one and a half hours. Me and my friend showered (SEPARATELY!!!), ate, and went out for coffee and shop-browsing. Rachel declared she was taking me out for horrible American coffee, but I have to admit that the hazelnut latte was REALLY good!

I would have taken the picture from up there, but I was too busy holding on to the railing.

We took the metro, which is basically an underground train, and during the day, we rode 5 different buses and walked A LOT. We were out from 10:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening and saw a lot of Los Angeles.

My socks got wet within half an hour after leaving the apartment.

We started with the Grove. I had never heard of it. Well it's a market sort of shopping center kind of thing. That should describe it. And it's Christmasy! There are many stores there - from indoors glimmering stuff stores and a huge bookstore to outdoors fruit stands and open air restaurants. One thing that the Grove is known for is fake snow. Since it never really snows in LA and people are constantly taught that it's not real Christmas if there's no snow, the Grove is actually spending money each year to get fake snow there. People from different parts of LA visit the Grove to play with fake snow.

Christmas Wonderland Grove.

They didn't have fake snow out yet because it's still November! But the Christmas decorations are out and the entire thing looks like Christmas Wonderland. But they actually sold fake snow there and they also had a demonstration. Some guy poured a little white powder on my had and then poured water on it and it turned almost 10 times bigger and really weird soft white brittle stuff. It was light and felt really nice against the skin. However, it was nothing like real snow. Real snow is cold and nasty and usually sticks together. But that's why we love it. It's so temptingly tasty white looking, but it feels sharply cold against the skin. This warm white thing just fell apart. It was almost like the white plastic stuff they put into boxes when they pack something really delicate, only the "flakes" were really about 1 mm diameter and really light. It would be really disappointing if LA kids actually thought that snow really is like that. They probably do.

Fake snow - soft and light. Feels much nicer than the real stuff.

Then we went to the Russian quarter to get some "kohupiim", which, as it turns out, is called "farmer's cheese" here. We are going to make farmer's cheese-apple-cinnamon cake tomorrow. We visited this weird store that looked exactly like the worst stereotypical village stores in Estonia. It was crowded and people were speaking a lot of Russian. They sold Russian caviar, Latvian and Lithuanian chocolate and desserts and nothing from Estonia. A bit disappointing. But the atmosphere felt really horrible there. I just felt so suffocated. My friend didn't seem to mind, but after 20 minutes in the Russian quarter I really needed to get back into the real world.

A store in the Russian quarter - doesn't look like USA at all.

We walked down Melrose and visited many stores. We would have eaten at Pinks but we felt too full from fatty Mexican food and a cappuccino. Pinks is a famous Hot Dog place here. Usually the lines are about 1 hour long. And then finally we also stopped by at Target's store in West Hollywood. People toldd me that Target is like Wallmart, except it is a bit more expensive and the stuff is nicer. It looked very cheerful and there was a lot of space there. Me likey! Gonna have to visit it before I come back to Estonia. They had really cool stuff there.

Look what I saw!

Finally it was getting late and my friend was going to a concert. She had bought the ticket before I even knew I was coming here on Tuesday already. It gave me a chance to do some work on my computer, which was very convenient for me. However we didn't cook, so ate some more fast food. Altogether, I ate as much as an athletic woman should eat. I hope the pregnancy and the hours of walking make up for it, because tomorrow I have to be as starved as I can be!