can i get get get

One of the many reasons I am glad to be back on the West Coast is being so much closer to family. And being closer to my family means it's not a big deal for Emily to come visit for a long weekend. So thursday morning I picked her up at the Long Beach airport and we went to L.A. to check out E3. Emily works for a company that does packaging and POP for video games so they hooked us up with passes.
We were very excited to go in!
Right away it was pretty much mass chaos. Every video game company in the universe is there showing off their latest systems and games. There is ALOT to see.
For example, this giant screen kept us entertained for a good 20 minutes.
There were some very questionable things on display
Emily won a t-shirt playing a fishing game on the new Nokia phones
I was hoping to discover what it is about x-box that can turn even grown men into drooling teenagers but the booth provided no answers. Just new games.
The truth is that E3 is less about gaming and more about sexy video game vixens. We walked by a booth where a bunch of chubby guys were having a dance contest on a small stage. Then the announcer came out and asked if we would like to some "real" dancers. And then 10 scantily clad video game women came bounding out. All of the sudden every guy in audience whips out his digital camera and starts snapping. It was truly awesome.

We worked up a pretty healthy appetite walking around E3 so we headed over to a little italian place in Marina Del Rey and met up with Keith. The food was yummy and Keith kept us well entertained. But soon it was time to say goodbye and shoot over up to Sunset Boulevard for a show!
The lighting in the club was perfect for taking weird pictures that somehow turned out really cute.
The opening act was sort of yawn so I tried my best bored hipster look. I think all I accomplished was to look like my brother Logan.
John Vanderslice, however, was not boring at all. I would highly recommend trying to catch him if he comes to a dark club near you. We finally got back to HB around 1 that night and I think we were asleep before we actually got into my house.

The next day I was getting a haircut in Beverly Hills (it's a long story but one where a friend was using me as a student, not one where I usually get my haircut in uber-expensive salons) and Emily graciously agreed to let this eat into her vacation day.
It ended up taking us two full hours to drive from Huntington Beach to the hair salon. I can't talk about traffic like we were stuck in without getting a little violent. Even Emily was starting to feel it.

My haircut also took a really, really long time and poor Em had to keep herself busy for another two dull hours. I still think she should have taken her camera to Rodeo Drive to look for shots of Lindsey Lohan shopping that could have paid for college but hey, that's just me. We had been planning to have lunch with our friend Greg but at this point it was much, much too late so we decided to just go visit him at work.

If you know anything about friday afternoons in Los Angeles, you know that 3:00 is not a great hour to try to get anywhere. When we FINALLY got to the Promenade, we found Greg outside the Apple store and he joined us for a refreshment break at this hip new convenience store that sells candy and sushi and will even heat up your egg salad sandwich for you. When the last time anyone heated your sandwich at 7-11? We got treats for the long, long, deadly long drive home and Greg was overjoyed to discover that they carried ginger beer.

We had dinner plans with some friends in HB so we rushed back to change our clothes and meet up with them. Well, "rushed" is probably not the right word. The 45 mile drive took another two hours. Fortunately, the four boys we met for dinner must have been eating sugar all day because they were F-U-N-N-Y. So funny in fact that we were too busy laughing to take any pictures. After dinner there was a big church activity at a skating rink that we thought would be fun. But then when we got to the rink and realized we really didn't feel like roller skating.
So we went to meet up with my friend Chris at the Harbor House for shakes instead.
Emily had a tough time choosing between chocolate and oreo so she ended up with a chocolate oreo shake. May I just say that I have never seen my sister leave half a shake on the table but this thing was out of control.
Saturday morning I really needed to do a six mile run for my marathon training. So we invited my friend Sean to come along and the three of us had a great run down by the beach. Sean was a good sport to run with two fairly slow girls but I was glad to see he really did break a sweat by mile four. Then we went out for a well deserved breakfast. That may have entirely negated all the calories we ran off but hey, I've told you before about these macadamia nut pancakes.
You have to love a city where you see as many of these parked at you do cars.
Em's one requirement for the trip was to fit in some thrift store shopping. When I go to a thrift store by myself, I typically root through a couple of racks, everything looks old and faded and I just throw up my hands in despair and go to a store that sells new clothes.
However, when you go with Emily the fashionista, you spend $70 and end up with two shirts, three skirts, two dresses, a set of dishes and a candle holder.
So then we took showers and got all dressed up in our new finds.


On our way to dinner we saw a vintage store so we decided to look around. It was a great store but the best part was when we both tried on the blue hair and actually couldn't tell which one of us was which. I guess we do sorta look alike.
The food is nothing to scream about but if you are going to come to Huntington Beach on vacation, you should go out to Ruby's on the end of the pier at least once. When I was a little girl and we would come here for vacation, we always went to Ruby's and I thought it was the only one. I was a little disappointed when I came as an adult and found out they have them in malls. But this one is still fun.
Sunday morning we got up and went down to check out the best thing about my neighborhood.

We went to church for an hour and then met up with Jeanine and Nate for dinner.
Emily and Jeanine were mission companions
and Nate and I served in Switzerland together. Emily introduced them and now they are married with a baby on the way! It was really fun to see them and we only embarrassed Nate with gross girl talk a few times.

We came home and relaxed, watched a little Grey's Anatomy, figured out how to redecorate my room, talked about boys, talked more about boys, filled Tasha's iPod, looked at pictures and finally fell asleep. Em's flight left at 6:45 the next morning and I'm still not sure I was awake when I drove her there.

Thanks for coming Em. Hurry back.