Goodbye Park La Brea, Hello Downtown...

After 7 years at Park La Brea, I have finally decided to leave it behind in exchange for a life in downtown.

Had a nice long run at Park La Brea starting on the 1st floor in Tower 43, to the 11th floor in Tower 38, and then to the 4th floor in Tower 37...The time there saw plenty of trips to the Grove and at least one trip a week to the Farmer's Market for dinner (of course Brazillian bbq at Pampas Grill was the best).

Park La Brea is a good apartment for the amount of space you get, and it's just an overall nice looking place. It is centrally located- 15 minute drive to Downtown, 15 minute drive to Santa Monica, 5 minute drive to Hollywood, 10 minute drive to Beverly Hills. I'll miss Park La Brea, so many more memories and stories than I could ever write in a blog....






And now, I say hello to downtown.

I anticipate somewhat frequent trips to LA Live, many trips to Ralphs around the corner, and trying many local eateries for dinner. It'll be the start of a new era, that is, taking a 10 minute walk to work.

Blackout

I guess candles are a good investment when there's no electricity....
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Ellen's 12 Days of Giveaways

So earlier, I posted a picture from the street at Warner Brothers Studios around 1:00 AM. We had standby tickets for a taping for Ellen's show.

Check in time for standby guests was at 8 AM so we decided to arrive at 12:30 AM to give ourselves the best chance of getting into the taping. At 8 AM, they handed out priority numbers, and we got 255 and 256 (5th and 6th in standby) and then we were asked to come back at 1 PM. Around 2:30 PM, they began letting guaranteed ticket holders into the showing. I think there's about 250 guaranteed tickets per showing (since standby numbers started at 251).

Around 3:00 PM, they gave us the okay to cross the street and head over to the studio. As they were seating the guaranteed ticket holders, they informed us that they in fact had plenty of seats left for standby ticket holders, so we were in! I think in total, they probably allow somewhere between 250 and 275 people into the taping. Standby tickets seem to be sort of hit or miss. We talked to some people who had friends from previous tapings, and their taping only allowed in a few standbys. Our taping let in probably over 20 standbys.

Anyway, the reason for all this was Ellen's 12 Days of Giveaways! So today, each of us in the audience received:

5 Jane Fonda workout DVDs (she was the guest)
20th Century Fox 75th Anniversary DVD collection (worth about $500)
Just Beats headphones by Dr. Dre
Just Beats in ear headphones by Dr. Dre
Gift card for The Beatles complete box collection on Itunes
$200 Visa Gift Card
Vectron Wave toy
Nintendo Wii
uDraw Studio & Tablet for Wii
Wii game: Pictionary
Wii game: Dood's Big Adventure

and here's the craziest part,

a $1650 value Springfree trampoline

Well worth the wait!

Waiting in line...

at Warner Bros studios with standby tickets to see Ellen....(You must be wondering why the heck I'm waiting all night to see Ellen)

Anyway, got here at 12:30 AM and we are about 10th in line (luckily the crowd is split into two shows)...

Check in time is at 8 AM...
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Tailgating + UCLA/USC game

Getting the food started around 3 PM...(looks like im falling asleep or something)



Lots of people had beer pong, we had pai gow...


Getting the fire started for barbecue round 2 (about 5:30 PM)







UCLA v. USC kickoff at 7:30