Fabulous Friday

Something that I really dig about Southern California (and actually wish Utah had) is the restaurant cleanliness ratings.  The Health Department inspects restaurants and gives them an "A" to "C" rating (A being best).

Some things the Health Department looks for:
1. Demonstration of knowledge – The ability of the food employee to demonstrate safe food handling
procedures related to the task being performed.
2. Employee health controls – Employees are to be excluded from food service and / or food handling
when ill or injured.
3. Controlling hands as a vehicle of contamination – Enforce diligent handwashing procedures.
4. Time and temperature parameters for controlling pathogens – Utilize the established sciencebased
time / temperature requirements for controlling potential pathogens.
5. Consumer advisories – Advising consumers of known hazards associated with the consumption of
certain foods.

A = Generally superior in food handling practices and overall food facility maintenance
B = Generally good in food handling practices and overall food facility maintenance.
C = Generally acceptable in food handling practices and overall general food facility maintenance.

I'm sure you didn't want to know that much, but it is too late.  Now you know. 

The restaurant's grade must be posted in the window where it easily visible.  I won't eat anywhere that isn't "A" rated. I like knowing that a restaurant is clean and won't likely make me violently ill.  So, thanks for that California.


Once I ate at a Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles that was rated a B.  And it was fine.  But I was afraid.  Very afraid. 

Costumes

I was thinking that T and I could be Danny and Sandy from "Grease" for Halloween:

Mostly I just wanted to be able to wear pleather leggings in public. But T's hair is too short to slick back.

I told T that he should be a sailor for Halloween:

I asked T what he thought I should be for Halloween and this is what he picked out:

I'm not gonna lie, it would be crazy fun to rock that beehive rocker mess. Plus built in excuses for any kind of behavior.

Fabulous Friday

This week we had two days of rain.  Well, I don't know if I would call it rain.  More like constant sprinkling.  Anyway, LA's streets are so beat up that there are tons of dents and potholes in the road.  When mixed with rain you get puddles!  So this week's fabulous thing is LA has fabulous puddles for driving through.  They are everywhere, even with just a tad of rain!

The winners

These are the ElizabethTaylorFrandsen photos we are having enlarged to put up in the apartment:

 I love the red poppies and the wind blowing my veil.

 

 Yay for the wind!

 

Yay for the wind, again!  I like that this photo has a bit of an epic feel to it.

 

The balloons!  And my pink shrug!

 

My blue shoes!

 

This graffiti wall was off the hook.  And the couch was already just chillin there.  

 

I love my hair in this one.  You know that's a big deal for me.

 

Seriously, ETF made us look ridiculously good.

 

T really likes that we are in the sliver of sunlight.  You would not believe the amount of work it took to get my veil to do that.  There was absolutely no wind.  ETF's husband had to throw my veil in the air and quickly move out of the shot.  We used this photo for our thank yous!

 

Everyone (just family and very close friends) who was at our party!   

 

This is really epic.  It's hard to see much of us when the picture is so small, but it is going to look great enlarged.

 

I know we are all small, but we are going to do some cropping and zooming (but leave in some grass and the mountains) then have it made into a 2 foot by 5 foot canvas gallery wrap.  I love this shot - it's my immediate family and T's immediate family - baby wrangling and all.

 

This is the photo my mom chose for "the wall."

 

 This is the photo T's mom chose.

We are working on putting together a sweet album (just slide the pictures into place) and an actual book (by mypublisher.com).  Okay, it's mostly me working on it.  It's hard - there are just so many great pictures!  Over 600 of them!  Not counting ones taken by family that I want to include!  I will have it all done by our first anniversary if it kills me.  But it shouldn't. 

* I almost asked T if I should include some photobooth pictures in our album or book.  But then I realized that we don't need to because all the pictures are in our guest book!  Duh!

Fabulous Friday

So, you might know that I don't exactly have warm fuzzies for Southern California.  My feelings towards Southern California are more like rusty nails.  The first time around (freshman year) Southern California was not kind.  There was lots of crying and calling home.  Southern California and I didn't part on such great terms.

Now I'm back in Southern California for a second go around.  And we are going to be here for a long while.  And I'm still not on such great terms with Southern California.  So, Fabulous Friday is my attempt to find things that I like or that are good about Southern California other than the obvious T (I love that man!) and the beach.

Today's fabulous thing is free flu shots! 

Now, this might not sound so fabulous for some people, but it was for us.  I'm a big believer in flu shots and Los Angeles County has several free traveling flu clinics.  One was scheduled for our neighborhood at the end of October but we didn't want to wait that long. 

We went to a flu shot clinic that was being held at a senior center in Santa Clarita.  We were the youngest people there by about 40 years.  But it was fast and free and we got juice boxes and cookies!  I got the shot and T got the nasal mist (that so would not work for me - I would sneeze it right out).  Including driving both ways, the whole thing only took an hour - which is how long it would have taken at a doctor's office!  And we saved the $25 per person that it would have cost!

I'm sure it is costing LA County a pretty penny to do this, but I bet the cost is worth it if it keeps visits to the ER and sick days down during flu season.  Way to go Los Angeles County! 


*We'll be going back to get the free H1N1 when it's available.

It'a bird... it's a plane...it's Superm...wait a minute... That's T! Flying a plane!

A while ago I found out that T had a secret wish to fly a plane and drive a stunt car all crazy like. Okay, a secret wish is a bit of an exaggeration. It's more like he thought it would be cool to do those two things.

So for Valentine's Day I bought T a gift card from Leading Edge Aviation for a half hour Discovery Flight where T would actually get to fly a plane.

In March T came up for spring break and it was time to fly. T's co-pilot / trainer was Erin. She had beautiful red hair. I thought we would start out with some training videos or manuals or lectures, but Erin took T straight out to the plane!

Erin told T all the things to inspect before take off.

Here T is slacking off while Erin checks to make sure the plane won't fall apart while we are in it.

Really, I was just trying to get pictures without embarrassing T (and myself) in front of Erin.

I'm sure it is considered tres uncool to have your girlfriend ask you to pose for photos while you are supposed to be learning to fly...

Then we got in the plane and Erin started explaining all the stuff on the dash.

A self photo - I was in the backseat staying out of the way.

We all wore these sweet headsets so we could talk to each other.

Erin telling T how to fly. The whole instructional was about 5 minutes long! That's it!




Don't mind that the shot starts with my shoes. I was trying to be discreet about how many pictures and videos I was taking because it was a lot. I didn't want to embarrass us! Also, don't mind the shaky video. I think it is pretty apparent that I am not the half of this marriage that attended film school.


I was glad T had done some flight simulator stuff and was somewhat familiar with how a plane works because a few seconds later we were taxi-ing!




I was listening to the instructions Erin gave T but if I had to fly, we would all be in trouble. On this Discovery Flight T could do everything except land. He taxi-ed and took off and did swirly dos and turns and lined us up to land and then Erin did the actual landing. Oh, and Erin also pulled a zero G for us. More on that later.

T doing take off:



Remember I am in the back seat and could hardly see anything out the front window so these are all side views.

Flying in a big 747 is way different than flying in a little Cessna type plane. It is much more apparent that only a thin sheet of metal is stopping you from plummeting to the earth. I actually wasn't scared of the "plummeting to the earth" part because I've already done that (skydiving - my parents said, "Why would you want to jump out of a perfectly good plane?!")! It was such a rush to be with T flying in that little plane.

Don't worry, we are much higher in the air than some of these photos suggest because I was zoomed in:

Just over the airport (this one isn't zoomed)

The Utah State Capitol

Temple Square area

The Grand America

On our way into Immigration canyon we hit a bit of turbulence (more startling than it would be in a big plane), but it was over very quickly. T made this huge turn and we were almost parallel to the ground. I'm not moving the camera in this video; the plane is doing all the moving.

Immigration Canyon

You better believe it gets cold in a little plane with no insulation that high up!

Also, the engine is so much louder than I thought it would be.

That swirly do down there is a road. We are pretty high up at this point.

Once we were past Immigration Canyon, Erin asked us if we liked roller coasters because she wanted to pull a zero G. We said yes, and it was a roller coaster ride to be sure. Erin actually did three for us. The first one was the best and that was the one I didn't take video of! I was pulled up out of my seat and wished I had done my seat belt just a bit tighter. (In reality, I don't think my seat belt could have been tighter. I am the girl who sucks in so she can make the seat belt just a bit tighter at Lagoon so she is sure she won't fall out.)

The second time around I got the cup floats video:



It's hard to film in this situation!


The third time T caught a pencil:



Apparently this catching stuff after it floats from a G is pretty popular. My dad used to catch keys after a zero G when he would fly (as a passenger) with his buddy in California.

I'll be straight with you: I liked the first zero G but the second and third made me feel sick. Not sick like "I need a bag" sick, but sick like, "I would really like to lie down and be still for a while" sick. I didn't get over it until we were back at my house.


The propeller and the mountains. I just thought this one looked cool:




Coming out of Immigration Canyon check out how sideways we get! It's the plane doing that, not my fantastic professional quality camera work!

Downtown as we head back to the airport

T at the controls:




T lined us up for the landing, but Erin actually touched us down:

After we were done I got out and told T to stay in the plane and look "pilot-y."

I love this one!

SO much fun!

Erin said that T did a really great job, better than most people. I thought so too.

I was expecting it to be more bumpy, but it was a very smooth ride. Way to go, T!

When we got back to my house T was just like a little kid who played so much that he tuckered himself out.

So now in the event of an aircraft emergency T can fly us to safety and do an emergency landing! Or maybe only the first half of that...the second part was the one thing he didn't learn how to do...

Traffic

This is what the roads look like at any given time in Southern California.

source

It can take anywhere from half an hour to two hours to go 20 miles. So you never really know how long it takes to get anywhere.

On top of the traffic, the roads are pretty beat up. It doesn't matter if I'm driving my car or T's or if I'm on surface streets or the freeway, it feels like the tires are going to fall off and there is something drastically wrong with the car.

When there is finally some open road in front of you, you can't even go freeway speeds because everyone is still going 50. It's like they've never seen open road before and they don't know what to do with it.

And even if by some miracle you get to freeway speeds you better be prepared to slam on your brakes because traffic will suddenly stop with out warning.

I'm usually of the mindset that we are all friends on the road of life, but this traffic makes me want to scream sometimes.

People who say Utah drivers are bad have obviously not spent enough time on the roads in Southern California.

In short driving in Southern California is not so much fun. And now I'm done complaining.