Visitor

I've been pretty lucky to have had some visitors here in LA since I moved here a little over a year ago. This past Thursday, I welcomed one of my oldest and dearest friends, Blake! He came all the way from Chicago. He hopped off the plane at LAX on Thursday night and he got to my place around 9pm. We immediately went to D-Town Burger and I ate a cheeseburger and he had a chocolate milkshake. We hung out for a bit, but with him having a long day and me having to get up the next morning for work, we called it a night pretty early.

Friday was cool. I went to work per usual and Blake ventured around the downtown area. He then got me for lunch and I took an extended lunch break. We had gourmet sandwiches at LA Live. He then had dessert at BL and I went back to work. Got home from work and we headed to Hollyweird to walk the strip, check out Amoeba, and most importantly: eat In-N-Out. I think he was pretty impressed with Amoeba. I almost bought one of my all-time favorite movies, “Pumpkin,” but figured I could prob find it on the Internet for cheaper. We hung around Sunset for awhile and watched some taping for “How Do I Look?”

The next morning, we ventured off to Hollywood again because Blake couldn't see the Hollywood sign from the previous night. We walked around that plaza area and ate lunch at Hard Rock Café. Man, I really love Hard Rock Café. Their burgers are so yummy and their fries are overly seasoned (meaning: NOM NOM NOM). We chilled, had some cocktails, watched a few videos, got a bit tipsy and headed to the beach.

It was freakin HOT!!! We were taking the bus to the transfer point to Malibu/PCH (not Publisher's Clearing House, ASHLEY) and it broke down. So we had to wait under the hot hot sun for like 15 minutes for the next one. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing to Santa Monica Pier. We got there and we immediately stopped at Pinkberry. I had a medium original with mangos, strawberries and pineapples. We walked around, Blake bought a $15 bottle of sunscreen (he forgot some and boy do those Azn vendors up their prices!) and picked a spot to lay out on the beach. After impatiently waiting for his sunscreen to set, we ran (okay, we slowly walked) to the water and it was freezing!! But felt so good after being hot and sweaty all day long. We kinda hung around in the water for awhile until we got bored and just laid out for awhile. We both fell asleep but woke up because a little boy was playing soccer TOO CLOSE to us and kept kicking sand in our face. He was pretty cute, though. We got back in the water to cool off, I realized I slept with one cheek unexposed to the sun but luckily I don't have any weird tanlines. I came out slightly burnt but it has already turned a nice, golden color.

Once the sun started to set, we got some funnel cake, overpriced water and sat on the pier watching various street performers. We saw a really weird homeless man with a super grungy puppet. He tuned his radio to an R&B/Hiphop station and was making his puppet dance very sensually. It made me feel uncomfortable. We kinda hung out on the pier and watched sailboats and once it started to get a bit chilly, headed to the Promenade. We walked around the strip, watched this cute Asian guy balance a teapot on his head and couldn't decide on what to eat for dinner. There was a Chipotle! I haven't had Chipotle since last December, so that was nice. We ate our burritos whilst watching a Latino sing a slow, acoustic version of S.O.S.

We found a bus back to downtown but it was SOOOO crowded. We ended up standing for 45 out of the 115 minutes it took to get back. Oh well. Then we just relaxed and zonked.

Sunday was Blake's last day. His flight left a little before noon so we got up early and had breakfast at LA Café. I had a breakfast burrito and a blended mocha. He had some breakfast platter and coffee. Yums all around. (Man, we ate a lot while he was here) We said goodbye outside of the Pershing Square stop and he was off to LAX.

The rest of Sunday was rather uneventful. I caught up on my Hulu queue, worked on my website and worked out. Most importantly, I got to see and talk to Kenny!! Three more weeks and he'll be here to celebrate our 1-year-anniversary. It's gonna be da bomb! Out of the 12 months we've been officially together, we haven't got to spend any of our mensaversaries together. Just seems as though everytime it turned the 20th of a month, we just were not in the same zip code. So October 20th will definitely be extra special!

ALSO: today was the hottest day in LA history. Ugh. So freakin' hot. According to weather.com, our "heatwave" should end here relatively soon. I hope so! I'm sweatin' bullets!

- J.