When you return to a place you haven't been to in a while, you tend to immediately notice the changes. So while I was only a mile or two north of where I live for basically all of my Los Angeles time at college, it was a bit of shell shock when I drove into a downtown LA that had somehow gone upscale in my absence. Granted, my time there even predated the Staples Center, but now there's this whole entertainment complex thing attached to it. And crazy constantly-expanding affordable light rail service, which I (gasp) actually even used as a convenient way to meet up with friends one evening. Though hey, at least the traffic and driving patterns have stayed pretty consistent.
Anyway, it's been a very productive and good trip to Los Angeles; as with New York, I thankfully got to spend some time with college friends in between lectures (both giving and attending), meetings, learning about new technologies, and catching up with the latest from many professional contacts and friends. I got to catch up with a number of friends from both college and post-college, including friends J and A and their son L (who is close to O's age and really reminded me of him; J reports that he was still asking a few days later when I'd come back to read more stories, so I must've made a somewhat positive impression). And I even got to go see my friend J's excellent new documentary film in an honest-to-goodness first run mainstream movie theater as an anonymous patron -- there was spontaneous applause at the credits! Congrats to J, looking forward to the Seattle premiere next week! But even more than that, definitely looking forward to and ready to be heading home tonight, to snuggle with the family first thing tomorrow morning with the boys wake up.
No comments:
Post a Comment