17th March 2014 - Los Angeles
It was a really good day. Charlie, Maria and I felt the 4.4 earthquake at 6:25am this morning. Rayls and Ryan slept through it.
We headed off to Hollywood just before 10am. Around a 40 minute drive. $10 to park the car and we joined a small crowd just down from the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. It was Kate Winslet's turn to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was very interesting to see the ceremony. The crowd control was just abysmal but I managed to get just a metre or so from Kate. Classy lady, there were some other stars there including Kathy Bates and Mekhi Phifer from ER.
After the ceremony we walked down Vine to find Neil Diamond's star. Then back to the car and we went to Silver Lake to do our walk of remembrance for our dear departed friend Scott McKenzie.
After this we visited Scott's old girlfriend Fleur who returned a quilt that Rayls had made for Scott back in 2009.
Then it was back to Carson via a Kohls store where we all bought some clothes.
Dinner with Maria and Charlie was very nice and we got to meet Shannons youngest sister Ashley and her son Jacob.
Now we re watching TV as the Kings lose to the Coyotes.
Sone nice chates with Maria and Charlie. We are moving on tomorrow but will be back next week.
Hollywood
USA 2014 - Day Three
16th March 2014 - Carson (Los Angeles)
Just a very quiet day as we try and get use to our new time zone.
The three of us went To Del Amo Shopping mall. Rayls managed to spend $30 at Joannes. Ryan and I spent nothing. The Del Amo mall t is one of the largest shopping malls in the United States. There are three Macy's locations, JCPenney & Sears, more than 314 other retailers, multiple full-service restaurants, a fitness center and an AMC Theatres multiplex.
Quiet afternoon before we all went to Lucille's Smokehouse Barbeque for dinner - so yummy.
Quiet night, pleasant day and we are slowly building up for more things to do tomorrow and out flight to Chicago on Tuesday.
For those of you who know me well would be are aware of my love of the late 50's/early 60's sitcom Leave It To Beaver. In fact next weekend we will be in De Soto, Missouri to see Jerry Mathers (The Beaver) at a film fesitival. Another character in the show was Eddie Haskell played by Ken Osmond. Ken ended up being a cop in the LAPD and Charlie has just told me that he worked with Ken back in the 1980's. Very interesting, in fact Charlie has told us many interesting stories about his LAPD career, makes my 27-year police career seem very tame in comparison (which it was).