When we last saw our tour group at the Warner Bros. Studios VIP Tour, we were on our way out of the “Midwest” and about to visit a working soundstage, which is where most interior filming happens. Some of that does get done on the back lot too, though. These are two different kinds of interior sets used on the back lot. The one on the left is a “facade,” and on film you’d see […]
Unless you live in the middle of it, you might not realize how little of the work associated with “Hollywood” is actually done in Hollywood, California. (Conversely, I work in Hollywood at a job that has nothing to do with “Hollywood.”) Last Saturday, Tall Paul and I visited one of the places where Hollywood’s work has been done for more than eight decades: Warner Brothers Studios in beautiful downtown Burbank. You may have done the […]
This past Sunday was much too nice a day to stay in and watch some football game, so we drove out to Malibu–not to go to the beach, but to visit a museum. Did you know that a “museum” means an institution filled with the presence of the Muses? It says so right here! And at the Getty Villa, that’s quite literally true… The Getty Villa showcases its collection of Greek and Roman antiquities in […]
I spent my last morning in New York City building crossing bridges. Well, one bridge, anyway…it connects Brooklyn and Manhattan. This is the Manhattan Bridge, as seen from the bridge I was actually standing on. Jill and Teresa were my companions for a walk across this bridge. I’m sure you know which bridge it is… Meanwhile, down at the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge, someone was keeping their bicycle warm and cozy. For the week preceding that walk across […]
As I do almost every year, I gave up buying books for Lent. Some years I stick to it pretty well, and some years I don’t; some years I take way too much advantage of the “Sunday loophole.” (Count the days between Ash Wednesday and Easter; they’ll add up to more than 40 if you count Sundays. Therefore, “Sundays don’t count” in keeping a Lenten vow. So said my mom.) This year had been a […]
Weekend Assignment # 357: The Art of Packing When you go on a trip, do you travel light, or try to make sure you have everything you might conceivably need? Specifically, what do you bring along by way of electronics? Extra Credit: What’s the most important thing you ever lost, broke, or forgot to bring on your trip? I don’t usually pack for a trip until the night before I leave, but I’m thinking about […]
Days that don’t follow the normal routine – get up, go to work, come home – seem to exist in a different time stream, pulled out of the calendar and somehow blown away somewhere. The “normal” days can become compressed together, and suddenly it’s later than I thought – time has certainly flown, but there seem to be holes in it. The last few months have had more than their share of out-of-the-norm days, and […]
We didn’t have much planned for our Wednesday in New York City until evening…but before that, Katie needed to find some shoes. Wet hopped on the subway headed to the 34th St./Herald Square Station. These days, nearly every city has a Macy’s, but there’s really only one MACY’S. Two full city blocks, seven floors, those historic wooden escalators…and the shoes! After our shopping trip to Macy’s, we rode back uptown, stopped at the hotel to […]
On the day we arrived in New York, I received an unexpected – and more than welcome – message from a dear friend asking if we might be able to meet up during my time in the City. Ann and I met over 20 years ago, when I was an accounting temp and she was a secretary for a communications company in Ithaca, New York, and hadn’t seen each other since I moved to Memphis […]
The Washington, DC portion of our trip was recapped here (part 1) and here (part 2). Days 7 & 8, Sunday-Monday June 20-21: For Tall Paul’s first-ever train ride, we boarded Amtrak’s Acela Express at Washington’s Union Station on Sunday morning bound for NYC’s Penn Station, just like East Coast natives travel! We passed through Baltimore, Wilmington DE, Philadelphia, and a couple of New Jersey stops before arriving in the City around 1 PM. We […]
Part 1, in case you missed it… Day Four, Thursday 6/17: On a sunny, hot, and breezy Thursday morning – duh, it’s Washington DC in June, but I will say it was slightly less muggy than usual – we hopped aboard the Tourmobile bus to make the rounds of some of the city’s famous Presidential and war memorials. Seeing these places in person, when I’ve seen them in photos and on screens so many, many […]
Thanks to my unfortunate incapacitation and temporary one-handed state, I had to revise my vacation-recap blogging plans to be more photo-sharing and less story-telling. (It takes fewer left-handed keystrokes to browse and paste pictures.) This is the first of several installments, and just a sampling of the pictures. It will take longer than I anticipated to cover the whole trip… Day One, Monday, 6/14: After a long day that started very early in order to […]
