solid start.

it is tragic - and painfully so - that southwest airlines no longer flies direct from philadelphia to los angeles. luckily for me, i only have to make the trip a couple more times. it's just hard for me to take any other airline because, one, i'm trying to rack up enough flights for another free flight - having flown southwest pretty much exclusively for domestic flights (LA, philly, boston, chicago) over the past three to four years i've managed to get a few - and, two, their ding! flights are pretty dang cheap sometimes. but what used to be a 5-6 hour flight - direct - is now 7-8 hours of airtime plus an additional hour or two for the layover in between. and let me tell you, i hate airports.

anyway, after my networked life midterm on thursday, i rushed to the airport to catch my flight back to los angeles for spring break. had an hour layover in houston - my first time in texas since i lived their as a three-year-old - where i had a fat tire and guacamole burger at pappas burger. pretty good, and the beer definitely helped to pass the time. funny thing though, in my half hour sitting in the joint, i heard "y'all" and "yeehaw!" several times. oh, texas. finally arrived at LAX around 11p - a solid twelve hours since i left my apartment in philly, and got home around 12.30a.

friday was a perfect day. beautiful sunny blue sky, not a sky in the cloud and temperatures in the mid-seventies. drove to dreamworks for lunch and had such an awesome time seeing and catching up with people that i worked with last summer. and the fish tacos were pretty dang tasty as well. i was there until about 2.30p, then i did some grocery shopping at trader joe's with my mom and spent the afternoon doing small errands. we had dinner at the amazing dumpling house on valley blvd off baldwin ave - it's one of those places i seriously crave when i'm away from home.

afterwards, i drove over to the west side to watch 10,000BC with danG. we went to the mann theatre on the santa monica promenade, and had time to kill so grabbed a drink at barney's beanery first. the movie itself was, pretty, well.. to but it gently, terrible. we knew this going in because it only got 8% on rottentomatoes.. but we figured at least the vfx would be good since the trailers look awesome, but even that was pretty bad.

i got to caltech about half-past midnight for a milonga mike had told me about. i haven't tango'ed in something like four months, so i was definitely pretty terrible at first, but i was able to get a little better by the end of the night. i definitely had fun though and am glad i went. it went until 3am, but mike and i left around 2.30a, since we had to get up at 6.30a on saturday to fix some network issues at my dad's office. weeee..! needless to say, i am exhausted right now, but the weather is so perfect and i've had such a good time that i don't care. man, i sure do love and miss california.