Hunt's CatchUp: California Dreamin'

First of all, sorry for the incredibly long gap in posts. Graduate school has been keeping me far busier than I'd like :)

Last week was spring break, and for the first time ever, Andrew and I actually took a trip somewhere. For Christmas, Andrew's parents gave us plane tickets to visit Andrew's sister Sydney in Los Angeles. So, we decided to use them for spring break. Tales of our trip will be divided into multiple posts because I don't have time to do it all in one!

Day 1

When we arrived on Saturday, we were pretty tired so we just grabbed dinner at In-n-Out and headed to Sydney's apartment. After eating, we accompanied Sydney while she walked her 2 dogs, Frodo (a big black dog) and Coco (a chihuahua). Well, about 3/4 of the way through our walk, a skateboarder came up behind us AND some dogs in a window next to us started barking. This scared both of the dogs and sent them running- Frodo right out of his collar and down the sidewalk and Coco right into traffic - LA traffic. I chased Frodo down while Sydney and Andrew ran after Coco and all I could hear was yelping. I thought for sure poor Coco was a goner. Amazingly, she was perfectly fine. Her leg had gotten stuck in the sweater she had on, causing her to fall just short of where tires would have run her over. It was pretty much miraculous. She had trouble keeping her eyes open though, so we went with Sydney to an emergency animal center to have her checked out. THREE HOURS later, we left (Coco was fine - just needed some drops in her eyes). Needless to say, Andrew and I were exhausted. And I won't even get started on the crazy lady/alien that came into the vet center while we were waiting....ok, maybe I will. This woman (at least I think she was a woman - the only clear shot I got of her face put her more in line with ET) comes in all hysterical holding her dog (I think it was a Westie). She's freaking out and the vet tech can barely understand her. She just keeps saying that the dog's hair is all matted down and his skin is pink. Umm, yeah? The vet tech keeps asking her questions, trying to figure out what the heck is really going on and the woman/alien starts whispering. From what Andrew and I could pick up on, we're pretty sure she said that the dog took crack. As in cocaine. The dog actually seemed fine to me, a little frenetic, but otherwise fine. His owner was just nuts though. The vet tech checks the dog out to make sure its stable then has this woman/alien fill out some paperwork. She took the entire time we were waiting on Sydney to fill out that paperwork. She disappeared into the bathroom for about an hour and I'm pretty sure she was using the sink to bathe herself. The whole episode was surreal/hysterical/really sad.

On to Day 2: Sunday

Andrew and I woke up fairly late given our late night at the vet center, and our bodies were totally mixed up on what time it was. By the time we were up and had taken showers, we could hear the church bells ringing -oops.

Sydney took us to a little sidewalk cafe for brunch and then we walked down Hollywood Blvd. to the shoestore that Sydney used to work at and her friend Andy works at now. I decided I needed a good pair of shoes to walk around in so I got a pair of shoes (p.s. Andy, you need to work on your salesmanship !)

Then, courtesy of Andrew's parents, we went to Disneyland. Sydney's friend Chris came along with us. One thing you should know: I love Disneyworld and by default Disneyland - so does Andrew - so does Sydney. And, surprisingly Chris turned out to be a Disney aficionado as well, so it was a great time.

We ate dinner at a restaurant called The Blue Bayou which is actually inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was awesome.