Well, We're Here- Thursday, July 6, 2006

Our flight left from Buffalo on time, a little after 6:00 Eastern. We got to see Buffalo and Fort Erie on the way out, and recognized the stadiums where the Bengals and the Reds play on our way into Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky. We stayed in Cincinnati just long enought to stretch our legs, and we were off on the longer flight to LA. There was a little bit of turbulence, but the real problem for me was the cramped seats. On the first flight, Anna sat with me and Emma sat with Julie, so we had a decent amount of room. On the second flight, I was across the aisle from the other three, and I'm not sure how I made it through the flight all cramped like that. I've forgotten how much I hate air travel. The kids were good though, and generally played together nice. Emma got us all laughing when she tried to wear her barf bag as a hat. We arrived in LA at 9:40, Pacific, 12:40 Eastern.

We waited in line for our Rent-A-Car and tried to check into our hotel, only a stones throw from Knott's Berry Farm. Unfortunately, our room wasn't ready. After lunch at Burger King, the room still wasn't ready, so we went to try to write to the blog.

I don't know how this blog thing is going to work, because we decided to leave the laptop at home. We didn't want to risk losing it or breaking it and weren't 100% sure it would work anyway. So I've just spent over an hour at the public library waiting to fill everyone in. Maybe our next hotels will make it easier. We're not giving up on it yet.

We may not be able to check into the blog for the next couple of days, so here's the plan:
Tomorrow we'll be taking the epic tour of television and film locations around Los Angeles. I'm looking forward to that, partly because of all of the time I've invested in the research.
On the 8th, Julie's birthday we'll be at Knott's Berry Farm.
After that, we'll be driving up the coast to a different hotel, and maybe it will be easier to post.

For tonight, we'll do a little shopping and do some swimming at the hotel. We'll check in again as soon as we can, hopefully with pictures next time.

California, Here We Come! - Thursday, July 6, 2006

It's a little after 4:00 AM Eastern, and we're packed and ready to go. Julie's Dad is expected to arrive soon to take us to the airport. In the meanwhile, Anna is up and excited to get going. We're letting Emma sleep until the last possible minute because she gets cranky in the morning. Julie slept a little bit, but I didn't sleep at all. It seemed I always had one more thing I wanted to do-- another book that I might get signed at Comic Con that I had to dig out of my stash, another map to a filming location that we'd like to see. Before I knew it the night was gone. But now, in just a few moments, we'll be off to Cincinnati and then on to LAX.
"LA International Airport... Where the big jet engines roar." (Emma likes that song.)