Blogs from Pasadena, Los Angeles, California, United States, North America

Another day @ The Huntington, and a few more photos.... ... read more

Roughly 2 years ago now, me and an old friend from college decided we should go to visit my cousin in pasadena calif. Partly to see my cousin but also to take in all that Los Angeles had to offer. Within weeks we had booked our flights, no need to book any accomodation! (Its not what you know, its who you know!) Mid august the big day arrived! We started off with a lift from my dad before catching a coach with good old national express down to London Heathrow airport. Minding you I am normally pretty confident with travel but this was my first long haul flight, my first time in the states and first time travelling without my parents to guide me! First part of the journey went pretty smoothly. The usual butterflies came ... read more

So after the cliff-hanger last ending, I can reveal that my friend's incredibly talented housemate adjusted, remade and sewed costumes for the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Yes, Faire. A frills and whistles recreation of Elizabethan England in LA. It was...something. Hillarious but also totally overwhelming. Overwhelming partly because of the huge numbers of people (and when you're wearing an extremely tight corset and layers of thick cloth in plus 20 degrees, your tolerance for crowds diminishes rapidly) and also because of all the stalls and performances. I tried archery and managed to utterly miss every target - although I got closer to the target I wasn't aiming at. I now have an impressive set of bruises to nurse. There was one fun performance by Men In Tights, about how to pose like a manly man. It was ... read more

Really looking forward to tomorrow and a chance to visit The Huntington. I'd thought I'd share a little about Henry and Arabella Huntington who originally lived on the compound and started the museum ball rolling... Henry Huntington was actually the nephew of Collis P. Huntington, one of the BIG 4 who orchestrated the original Trans-Continental Rail Road.... Connecting the East and West Coasts of America. Even more interesting Arabella was originally Collis' young second wife, and started her Art Collection out in Manhattan while Collis wine'd, dine'd and persuaded government officials to see things his way around making money. Anyway... for more info just take a look @ "The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California" by Richard Rayner. More photos and stuff to come tomorrow... ... read more

Dec 29, 2009 - Tuesday Plane left Asheville on time-- security not too bad - just taking care of all the little things -- Taking off shoes, getting out one qt baggie and mini-laptop (not sure I needed to do that - the man behind me left his in its bag and she said that was okay). Would have been a lot to deal with if I also had a carry-on suitcase. It was a good thing I checked my bag anyway, because we sat on the tarmac for an hour after landing in ATL - then I had to dash a long way to the train to get from D concourse to A, which would have been really hard pulling an extra bag (esp. since I don't dash very well anymore). Fortunately we had landed ... read more

I gave my talk at the conference today. It went fine, despite some technical difficulties (my laptop froze in the middle of the talk, and I had to reset it). I also met a lot of the people whose names I only know from reading their papers, and most of them are very nice. All in all, I'm having a lot of fun. Tomorrow is the last day of the conference, and Saturday morning I'm meeting Yuval, and we start our trip with a 7 hour drive to Zion.... read more