Ketchup

I've got some serious miles to cover on my blog - pun intended! I've actually been pretty busy lately running around to see various doctors since my diagnosis of myotonic dystrophy, not to mention the regularly scheduled trips to the chiropractor, orthodontist, California, and Peru :o) .

First of all, three weeks ago I went out to Southern California to attend my friend Jeff's surprise birthday party and to hang out with my good friend Ryan. I got an awesome deal on flights and it was a three-day weekend for me, so I made the trip on pretty short notice. As I've said before, I usually don't like to go to LA because there are so many different pockets of friends and family there that I would have to spend a week there just to visit them all. So if I didn't visit or I didn't tell you I was going, don't blame it on me - blame it on...something else (??).

I've been in sort of an outdoorsy mood recently, so Ryan stacked the weekend's events around various outdoor activities - which is a good thing because 66.6% of the time there was 70-80 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Saturday I woke up early (jetlag) and Ry and I got some early morning breakfast at a local joint before heading down to Newport Beach to go water kayaking around Balboa Island on a perfect, warm day with a light breeze. We took our time, spending most of the day cruising around, giving my shoulders a nice workout while admiring the rich and the famous's huge yachts. I can't imagine living in a place and having one of these monstrous things sitting right outside my house. I don't ency them, I just think it would be kind of crazy to have a lifestyle like that.

After a short visit back at his parent's house, Ryan and I went home and relaxed until our night-time event - Jeff's birthday party at a place called El Coyote in West Hollywood. It's a classic, old school Mexican restaurant from the 1930s with mediocre food but an interesting atmosphere. I can't put my finger on exactly what, but LA is definitely much more different than New York, but I can't really tell you why that is. Anyway, after that we went to a bar called St. Nick's and had a few drinks before heading back home.

For some reason, when I stepped off the plane the night before, my voice was squeaky and was going away - probably from the air-conditioning on the airplane. It was even worse by Saturday night so I asked my local pharmacist - the bartender - to prescribe me with something to make it feel better. One shot of Patron tequila with hot sauce and salt later, and my throat was in fact feeling a little better. It was a short-term fix, though...


Sunday, being the other 33.333% of the weekend, was overcast and cold, a good day to sleep in and be lazy. Ryan's friend was having a barbecue at his house that day so we headed up to the hill above Long Beach to his place in the afternoon. He made some wonderful burgers on his massive barbecue set and we had a good time meeting his friends, one couple - half of which was from Bulgaria - recently getting married and dealing with Greencards and what not. Interesting to get their perspective on the amount of time dealing with the government for such matters. The evening's meal was followed up with some drunk piano debauchery, Ryan's friend and the gay couple from next door singing pop classics while playing the piano - well I might add!

We finished up the night watching two movies - Alpha Dog (with my hero Justin Timberlake) and a movie with Morgan Freeman and John Cusack. I found the story-line of Alpha Dog to be pretty blase, but I thought the acting was great. The other movie, however, was absolutel probably the worst movie I have seen in my life. Poor story, poor acting, it was just terrible. I lost an ounce of respect for those two actors' agents' skills in finding them good movies to start in after seeing that one. It was so bad, I don't even remember the name of it. But don't watch it :-s!!

Monday, my last day in town, Ry and I headed up to the hills above Palas Verdes (sp.) to try to go hiking. He hadn't been up there before, but we figured it was close and the views should be nice for such a nice day, so we hit the road and spent some time trying to figure out if there was actually a trail or not at the place we found online. We found some marked trails, took some other unmarked trails and finally ended up in some rich people's backyards. We wandered back downhill and enjoyed stretching the muscles and getting some California sunshine.

After burning those calories (do I sound old yet?), we went to a nice Greek place in downtown Long Beach and ate a ton of food and had a bit of wine in the nice weather before it was time for me to go to the airport and fly on my red-eye back to the cold, wet NYC!

J. Riley, Next stop: Peru