Erin's Birthday Day

Well - I've now typed two almost entire posts, only to have them erased by some strange PC thing where it highlights all your text and then it disappears. However, I will not resort to bad-mouthing PCs. I'll just add it to my list of why I don't like them. Anyway...let's give it one more try, shall we?

Today was an awesome day. We started out by meeting our friend Randy at the Good Neighbor Cafe, right up the road from our hotel in Studio City. It was a really neat place. Very quaint, but obviously very frequented by Hollywood types. Randy knew lots of people there. He's so Hollywood, and I mean that in the best possible way. He's so fun to be around. We talked about our OBU memories, and I caught him up on his 20th reunion last year, which he missed. We also marveled at how two people as young as us could be 20 years out of college. Just doesn't seem possible. He and his mom were leaving for Santa Barbara, but he took time out to come and treat us to breakfast. A true friend.

We changed our itinerary a bit and decided to do Beverly Hills tomorrow, so after breakfast Erin and I headed to Hollywood Boulevard. We went to the Wax Museum and the Guiness Book of Records Museum. Fortunately she was museumed-out so she didn't insist on Ripley's Believe it or Not (whew!). I used to beg to go to these kinds of museums when I was a kid, so I indulged her. It was really pretty fun, and I am sure we will fool all our friends with the pictures of the "stars" we saw. From there, we headed to Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and studied all the hand and footprints and took photos. I'm not sure why it's so fascinating and alluring to see these - the place was packed. Fame is funny. Put your hand in some cement and people will flock to see it. But there we were, right in the middle of the frenzy. We did some more walking and people-watching, then headed to Mulholland Drive where we cruised up the mountain and took a photo of the Hollywood sign. It was very smokey from the Malibu fires, so we didn't get good photos. By the way, 45 homes have been lost so far and several of the Canyon roads are closed. The humidity here is about 5 percent which makes it worse. People here are very keen to the damage that these fires can do, but they also have a very "go on and live life" attitude, which is to say that they are willing to take the risk of building these beautiful homes and perhaps losing them to fire. Of course, they do their best to keep it from happening, but they do understand the risk. Anyway, it's a sad thing but they hope to have it 50 percent contained by sunrise tomorrow.

After we left Hollywood Boulevard, we ate Mexican food (the second best tamales I've ever eaten) and headed back to the hotel. Erin is reading a book she bought on the history of Grauman's Theatre, and we have both vowed to watch more old movies. We're starting with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. A great movie. Erin hasn't seen it yet.

So Erin had a wonderful 16th birthday here in sunny California. More tomorrow! And I think I made it through this post so I will hit publish before anything strange happens...