A wedding on the beach

Well, more of a wedding on a cliff overlooking the beach, but pretty awesome all the same. On Sunday, at sunset, we headed up the coast to Point Mugu to witness a small civil ceremony for Marcus and Kinga. Although they are "getting married" in Europe, in a fancy castle with all the relatives, the dress, flowers, etc., for legal purposes, they needed to get married on American soil first. Something about the waiting period in Hungary for a license, but no wait if you are just doing a "re-enactment" ceremony. Long story short, Darren and I, Agnes, Bernadette, Bojzana and Chris watched a brief ceremony performed by Kinga and Marcus' friend GP the JP (I know, I know). We then went for a wonderful dinner, where we were joined by a couple more friends of the bride and groom. We left our digital in the car, so I'll have to see if I can post some pics from Agnes' camera, or scan some of the prints from the film camera when I get them developed.

Our First Star sighting

ALERT - there are no pictures to go along with this post

Today we went for lunch with Terrence and Jen, who came to LA for the weekend to see Kathy Griffin perform. The lunch place was Baby Blue Ribs, which is a pretty well known rib joint on Lincoln, in Venice. The theme is all blues music and southern barbecue, and other than the ribs, the most famous dish is the mac n' cheese, made with blue cheese. Delicious foods, blues music in the background, and an awesome staff made this a fun place to eat, and we will go back. while sitting at the lunch counter, in walked someone to pick up a take out order - Jaleel White,
AKA Steve Urkel.

Now, this may not seem like that big a deal to some of you. No limousine, no entourage, no screaming fans. Bout considering I have lived here for almost 2 months now, it was about time I saw someone famous. It didn't seem very cool to take his picture while he was waiting to pick up a sandwich, and I was up to my elbows in ribs at the time, so this is the first one that got away. Oh well, maybe next time.

"The" bachelorette/bachelor party

Saturday, June 18 was Kinga's bachelorette party (BP for short), and Marcus had a "surprise" bachelor party that someone told him about the night before. We all met at Kinga's place, which is just around the corner from my apartment complex, with a suggested start time of 5pm. Now, everyone who was at the BP was like, "What in LA starts at 5pm?", and "if you want to be anywhere in LA by 5 in the afternoon, you need to leave the day before", so most people showed up between 6:30 and 7:30. I met Kelly, who is an assistant vice-principal at an elementary school, and super funny. She was telling me all about my next career, as a movie extra (apparently it involves a lot of standing around and waiting). She also let me know where I can go to buy fake social security cards so I can work, although she is sure that I could work under the table as an extra. I also met Sencee (don't know how to spell it), who has just moved to the US from Mexico, Mercedes, Ras, Bernadette, and Kinga's mom Bojzana. Agnes organized, so there was a good sized group of us. I was the only uni lingual in the group, as half spoke spanish as a fist language, and the other half hungarian. We left Kinga'a place to go to a favourite Mexican restaurant, Lula's, where this pic was taken [need to add], then off to Penthouse, a nightclub in West LA. We ended the night singing Karaoke at a little japanese place in a strip mall, which is open until 4 am, where they had to replace the books and the controller with English versions (although Kelly does speak Japanese). [add pics]
All in all, a very fun night.

Ice meets metal

Nothing more Californian than going to a party. Not just any party, of course, but a Stanley Cup Championship party! Rayla and I made the trip down to the Honda Center on Saturday to join in the festivities with the Anaheim Ducks and their hometown fans.The Honda Center is an impressive place. Although, parking was tough to find, especially since the parking lot was being used for the party! But, a local business was kind enough to open up their parking lot for the evening, which meant we didn't have to walk to far, and it only cost $10. Damn enterprising Americans ;).
The crowd was already crowded around the red carpet that the players would walk up. The attendance was estimated at 15,000, and I'm pretty sure most of them were there before we were. Still, there was plenty of room to walk around and check out the Honda Center, and do some people watching.

I must admit, it was quite surreal looking at the Stanley Cup banners on the building surrounded by Palms.

There were a couple bands performing on stage as people waited for the players to show up. After the bands, we got a couple of speeches, which took us to the arrival of the players.

The players were paraded down the street behind a firetruck with sirens blaring. The boys rode in this double decker bus with an open top. They basically drove up the street and parked out in front of everything.
I'm not sure how they got from there to the red carpet though, but they did. Especially after the cup arrived. Which, of course, arrived in a helicopter. Trust me, these people know how to entertain! The helicopter was a police helicopter and landed on the street beside Honda Center. This was a four lane street, surrounded by people (well, surrounded by lots of cops, who were surrounded by people). The street also had street lights on it. This was not a very big area for this helicopter to land. It was an impressive site.

This picture doesn't do it justice. If you look in the rear side window of the helicopter, you can see a shiny thing. That's the Cup. Even from where we were standing, you could see it through the window without any problem.

The players (who somehow made it down to where the chopper landed) then walked the Cup up the red carpet. I tried my best to get a couple decent shots. However, I had the camera over my head, the light was fading and I was in a crowd of folks doing the same thing. Here's the best I could do.

I also managed to get a very weird shot. Not that I could ever replicate it, of course. Lets's call it art :).
And, of course, what's a party in Southern California without a star sighting. Although, it's also a politician, so I'm not sure if the Governator counts as a 'star sighting' anymore. The light was low at this point, so I had to take a picture of the bigscreen.

For good pictures, check out the official slideshow.

Some sights around home

A shot of the marina at night. The camera we have isn't the greatest at night shots, but you can get a bit of an idea what the area is like at night. It's fairly quiet, although there are lots of people living in and around the Marina, so it is not super quiet. The calmness of the water is telling what it's like around the water once the sun goes down.

There are a few critters swimming around in the water. Lots of birds, and several big ones (I'm not up on my California fauna well enough to know what they are, well, except for the mallards ;)). It's not uncommon to see fish jump either. There is also the occasional sea lion that comes through as well.

Oh, did I mention my boat finally showed up? Hehe, I wish .

Who the ?!@# is Natasha?

Many of you will have read the previous blog postings about the difficulties we faced getting cell phones is America, so you will appreciate that I have spent a lot of time just getting to the point where I even have a cell phone number. Our land line is through Vonage, and the internet connection in the apartment is not that stable, so at times I do not have any phone other than my cell. This means that I worked hard to get a number, and that I rely on it a lot. So you can ONLY IMAGINE how I feel that someone named Natasha is so STUPID that she is giving out my number and telling people it is hers. It is the only explanation I have for the number of phone calls I get per week asking for her, the text messages from people thanking me for dinner, and the voicemail messages. it can't just be a wrong number, because everyone is asking for the same person. Now, most of the calls are from guys. Different guys, all rather insistent on talking to Natasha. This makes me think she must be hot. Unfortunately, she can't memorize the number for the autoclub or a local restaurant. No, instead she has memorized my number and is giving it out randomly. I could take advantage of it if I was single, using it as a dating service (although I suspect that the cute guys get her real number, not the fake one that really isn't fake). Being happily married, I am not inclined to strike up a conversation with these men, most of whom have fairly thick European accents and who don't understand the phrase "You have the wrong number". So Natasha, who ever you are, STOP GIVING OUT MY CELL PHONE NUMBER!!!!!