Why I am a Bad Blogger, My LA Vacation...Sort of, Part the First

It's not that I want to keep my vacation secret from anyone...really! But um, yeah, you know those picture thingies that people share with one another?

Weeeeelllll, there weren't any. I know, I KNOW! I bought a new spiffier than I'd ever imagined camera to have on hand and take eleventy-million fotos...and I just didn't. In fact, my older brother took more pictures when he was checking out my camera than I did, the entire trip.

No really. I suck. I know. I had dinner with fellow blog-a-holic Richard, and yeah, NO BLOODY PICTURES!

I just finished going through the ones I can post (I don't do the "post family pics on the interwebs" as I am a conspiracy theorist at heart and I just know the wrong people are scanning through blogs to steal baby pictures and make them into parts of their own blogs or blog forbid, make something perverted and nasty). Besides, as they are not my children, I don't want to get anyone mad at me, you know?

When did I become my dad?

Instead I will share with you some highlights:

So, like a good paranoid traveler who over-thinks the whole packing/3-3-1/TSA deal, I showed up HOURS before the flight and there was NO ONE at SEATAC Airport.

Andy was all, "where are all the people" at the "the white zone is for loading and unloading only" (oh wait, they don't do that at SEATAC. Anyone who has ever been at LAX knows that electronic voice from hell of which I mock).

I digress.

So, no people and I am too undercaffeinated to remember I even own a camera, much less record a re-re-creation of "Abre Los Ojos" (or single re-creation of "Vanilla Sky"), of the EMPTY check-in area for posterity. No fewer than FIVE Virgin America um, attendants (?) asked me to let me let them check me in.

Security/TSA lines? A ghost town.

AND YET! When I had voiced one of my cajillion TSA-over-thinking concerns to Andy the night before, he said my best bet was just to do what the person in front of me was doing and let it be. I joked that I'd be behind the little old lady who'd never stepped foot in the airport...a 'yup. Though he was a little old man. And no, no pictures. I mean really, would you bust out your camera in front of the people who are looking for suspicious activity?

"Hello nice man who can keep me from my flight. Me? Oh nothing, just taking pictures to post on the intarwebs about how great security is here! For serious!"

Um, not with my luck.

Instead, waited until I was waaaaay past security and all the good picture-taking stuff before pulling out my camera. And by then I kinda had to, seeing as I still had no idea how to use it and was determined that I'd figure out all its ins and outs BEFORE imposing it on my family. So sit back, relax, and be prepared for my slideshow from the edge:
Can I go on your airplane? Hawaii, LA, no big difference, who'd miss me?

I love the wall-o-window of this airport.
Too bad I'm not a "Saturday Sky" participant. The sky was kinda cool. My goal, however, was to try to get a picture a plane taking off. (They go faster than you think! Yey for quick shutter-speed!)

Yes, these are the kinds of things that entertain me when on too little sleep and/or coffee.
I'm just about positive my seat mate thought I was super-dork. Check out my view:
Get it? Virgin America? An American flag on the wing?! So easily amused.

And then I decided I had to know if the zoom worked:
Seriously I am uber-dork. And um, geographically challenged...anyone know if this is Mt. Baker? Maybe?

And then we get to pretty much the last picture I took until maybe the last day I was in LA, when I made my niece, nephew, and mom pose for me...and failed miserably. My nephew hates pictures worse than I do. Family ties, I tell ya'. But yeah, this is proof positive that if I don't start using my camera more, the picture police are going to come and take it away and give it to someone more deserving:
See this mess? Still ON MY WAY to LA here, and about to land. Yeah, I know, I should not have had the camera out, slap my hand next time. To keep this picture from taking over blogger, the only thing I did was resize it to make it itty bitty (megabyte-wise, it's pretty big when you click it.)

Check out what happens when I center and crop and once again resize the image to be SMALLER:
18 years I lived in LA; 4 of those years I had monthly visits to an orthodontist whose chairs all faced this sign and not once in those visits with multiple cameras on hand, was I ever able to get such a clear shot.

***
The week flew by. I spent most of it playing with small children, yakking with my mom, and little brother, making lightning visits to scattered family, exploring parts of S. Pasadena to find some yarn (oh yeah, baybee), exploring parts of El Sereno for candy/confections for the folks at work, and staying up far too late watching my little brother's copies of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (seasons 4 through almost all of 6).

All of the "fun" (picture-worthy) stuff my mom and I had chatted about doing was totally canceled thanks to the fires and the smoke and the smog and the unbearable heat that gave me a TAN within minutes of poking my head/arms outside, and the hacking coughs the little ones ended up with. So instead we played with trucks and fire engines and colored and watched cartoons. I suppose I could have pulled out the camera to document these things...but I think I mentioned before about my suckage?

And how funny that I could have lied to you all and just said, sorry, can't post them, see above about crazy-tin-hat-wearing tendencies...I am a bit silly, I guess.

Next time, pictures that aren't of the airport, promise.