Tue 13 Dec 2005
My girl friend Sandy and I had our first complete “real Christmas tree” experience on Saturday at Manhattan Beach. Her friend Johnny was thrilled that he gets to “kill two birds with one stone” by popping both our cherries in this respect. Remember the last time I was there and was upset for not having my camera? (see posts Out of Character, Part I and Part II) This time I made sure to bring my camera! I had so much fun, they’re wonderful cheerer-uppers, the location was beautiful, and there was lots of festivity, tradition, sarcasm, laughter, and a smokey cat named Chunk!
Memorial to the Vets next to the tree lot:
I never knew pine needles grew straight out of the tree’s bark.
Taking the tree home
Setting up the tree
Johnny showing you his blood, sweat and tears invested into the project.
Santa’s Workshop, aka Johnny’s Decoration Collection. Some of those things date back several generations to 1920!
Moon over Manhattan. Beach, that is.
Johnny about to break into song, inspired by the beautiful beachy sunset.
And what view is so inspiring for Johnny? This one:
Oops, the image hosting site just crashed. Something I did? I’ll post the tree photos in a followup entry. Rest your mouse pointer over the photo for a caption!
I like the sky. Pic No. 1, 8 and 10 are my favorite. 🙂
Thanks!
[…] I didn’t finish the Raytheon roughs until midnight, and Sandy was still working next to me on her own laptop. This girl works till about 7p, and then goes to some group meetings at work, and then comes home at 8p, gets on her laptop, and continues working remotely while IMing and telephoning with her project teammates. She says she normally goes to bed about 1a. Anyway, we chatted for a little bit, I showed her some random photos that were taken since I’d last seen her in December (which I wrote about here and here). Then I left at about 1a. After the parking garage gouged me $65 for parking (it was automated, there was no one to argue with, and the $10/hour rate was not posted ANYWHERE, I checked), I drove toward what I thought was the 710 fwy entrance. Turned out it’s changed somewhat in the last 2 years or the sign’s fallen off on the street, cuz I ended up crossing bridges and going to the ports. I was following these big tanker trucks at 1:15 a.m., getting really nervous, cuz there’s nowhere to turn around, and I’m over water. Finally, I managed to get off onto a side bridge and went back up on a street that had a name I remembered passing while going down the 710 South to her house. And I was right. There was an entrance to the 710 North on that street. So happily, I got on… and got detoured off on the very next exit, Pacific Coast Highway. Apparently the freeway was doing some construction or something, and everyone on the freeway (there were amazingly quite a few of us at 1:30 in the morning) got herded off onto PCH. Soon, the “freeway detour” signs disappeared. I found myself driving God knows where passing factories, run-down storefronts, questionable staggering men, and strip clubs. Lots of strip clubs, offering full nudity on their Girls!Girls!Girls! as proudly emblazoned on their neon signs. I finally called Sandy and wailed. She had just come out of the shower so she was still up, and she at first didn’t recognize the streets I was on and told me to pull into a gas station to ask for directions. I refused at that hour at that time of night. Eventually I got to an intersection she was familiar with and she guided me to a different freeway entrance and saved me. I didn’t get home until past 2 a.m.. […]