As most of you know, I was in California for a few days this past week.  A friend of mine was going to court over some unpaid medical bills his friend owed him from accidentally shooting him through both legs back in July. So the reason we went is to be on Judge Judy.  I always knew she was terrifying, rude, heartless and pretty much the spawn of Satan.  So that being said, neither party won.  She went off on a tangent about one detail that had nothing to do with what the case was about.  She was mad that the guns were ever in the car.  While, that indeed was dumb, it was beside the point.  We even had it in writing the other party said he would pay and she blew it off.  So. Never waste you time going to see her.  But she paid for a trip out there for us so whatever. So that was no fun, but the rest of the trip was fun.

Day one-or night one I guess. We were supposed to get there in the early evening but since out flight out of Wichita to Dallas was delayed we missed our connecting flight from Dallas to LA and were stuck in Dallas for a good 2-3 hours.  So we finally got to LA about 9 or 10, waited for a taxi and went to the Sheraton Hotel in downtown LA.  That was my first taxi ride ever and it was terrifying.  I learned over the next few days that not just taxi cab drivers, but ALL public transportation drivers and terrible and on a mission to either kill you or make you poop your pants in fear for your life.  I also saw a real palm tree for the first time ever while I was in the taxi.  I love palms trees now, they’re so neat!  So once we got to the hotel, we checked in and found our rooms.  The rooms were nice but this being a fancy hotel that charges roughly $215 a night I was expecting there to be a fridge in the room, a pool, breakfast and free internet. But no. There were none of those things.  I’ll stick with super 8 next time, thanks.  After we dropped out stuff off, we set out to prowl the streets of downtown LA.  There’s not a lot of cool places to go in downtown LA that late at night so we mainly just walked around and looked at stuff and watched the homeless people harass people.  After losing ourselves a few times looking for a bar or something to go to we gave up and decided to go back to the bar in the hotel. But we soon found out that they close at 10.  The lady told us of a Japanese place across the street called Wokcano that was open til 2. So went went back out and walked all over looking for the stupid place. We couldn’t find it across the street so we walked and walked and finally gave up and headed back to the hotel.  Then we saw it. Right across. the street.  I don’t know how we missed it all the other times. So we went in and sat at the bar and had some drinks. By the time 2 am rolled around we had both had enough to drink.  So we got lost downtown some more.  Mike puked in the streets of downtown LA, but I waited til we got back to the fancy hotel to puke and pass out from alcohol and pure exhaustion.  I’ve never walked so much in my life.

Day 2. Got up around 10 I think. Walked down to some convenience store got somethin to drink and headed back to Wakcano to see if I had left my ID there. Yes, I lost it again. The manage wasn’t there yet to open the office to check so she took my name and number and was supposed to call me.  We left and tried to backtrack our steps of everywhere we walked the night before to see if we could find it.  But no luck.  So we made our way to the subway station and took the subway to Hollywood.  That was my first subway ride ever.  It wasn’t too bad, kinda fun.  When we got to Hollywood we strolled down Hollywood Blvd. for quite awhile and looked at all the shops and crazy people.  Then we tried to walk to the Hollywood sign but after awhile realized it was too far and we’d never get there and turned back.  We got back to Hollywood Blvd. and spotted a little pizza place and decided to have lunch there.  The slices of pizza were huuuge.  I only ate about half of mine. Then I decided to call back Wakcano since they failed to call me back.  They did not have my ID, it was officially lost and I’m sure some homeless guy in LA is carrying it around with him. After lunch we went out back down Hollywood Blvd. where we were then sweet talked into taking a tour.  It took us by famous people’s houses like Michael Jackson, the playboy mansion, J-Lo, Simon Cowell, The Jonas Brothers, Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera  and a bunch more.  Theses people’s houses are ridiculous to say the least. Most of them have more than one too.  Then it took us to this lookout place where you could see out over the whole city and see the Hollywood sign. Then we went back down to Hollywood Blvd. and got off the tour bus thing.  At this point it was about 5pm or so and Hollywood Blvd. was starting to come alive.  We saw Spiderman, Batman, Darth Vadar, Snoopy and ever Napoleon Dynamite! He was incredibly awkward and his staring creeped me out a little.  Then we made our way to the subway station and took it to Vermont I think.  From there we tried to find a bus stop for a bus that would take us to Santa Monica.  Finally found one and got on. This was my first bus ride ever.   It was now rush hour so taking the bus about 10 miles took over and hour.  Ugh.  This is when we saw a homeless guy get on the bus with all his bags.  He sat down across from us and passed out and started drooling.  It was funny.  We finally made it to Santa Monica and went to Santa Monica Pier.  We were hungry again so we went to this little place that had pretty much all seafood.  So I got some overpriced chicken nuggets.  Then we went out to see the beach.  This was my first time seeing the ocean.  It was really dark so it was hard to see much but a few waves.  After standing there looking at it for a bit we walked back up and looked at a few shops then headed back to the bus stop.  Got back on the bus and took it back to downtown LA.  It didn’t take as long to get back since the traffic had died down.  The bus was super crowded this time and we were the only white people on the bus for sure.  Was a little weird.  We got back to LA and walked back to the hotel.  Then a buddy of Mikes who lives in the area took us out to a place called Yardhouse.  We were gonna go somewhere cooler but options were limited since I had to lose my ID.  But this place was still neat.  They have the largest selection of draft beer in the world, 142 kinds I think.  The cool waiter took us back and showed us the keg room.  There was a lot of kegs. We stayed and chilled there for quite a while and they tried to get me to eat calamari.  It stank and looked absolutely frightening. I did not eat it.  Gross. I stuck with my usual chicken strips. After that he drove us around a little bit and showed us some stuff.  Drove by a movie set where they’re filming a new Meet the Fockers, as if we needed another one of those.  This one is going to be about the “little fockers”  Oh boy.  Then we went back to the hotel. Went to sleep fairly early since I was so worn out and we had to get up early to get up, get ready for court and head back to the airport.

Day 3. Woke up around 8 and got ready and packed up all my stuff.  Went down and checked out and the taxi picked us up and took us to the Judge Judy studio.  We got there and we had to take all our bags and stuff in with us.  The stupid security man opened my suitcase which I had to squeeze and stuff things into to get it to zip.  So then he couldn’t get it shut again.  Stupid man.  They didn’t allow phones or cameras so we didn’t get any pictures. We sat in the room with all the rest of the plaintiffs that were there and waited our turn. The producers came and talked to us.  She was excited cuz in 12 years had never had a case like this and didn’t know how it was going to turn out.  We got in there and she was rude and stupid like I had imagined. Like I said before, she didn’t really care of listen to what the case was actually about and went off on something else.  So neither party really won since she also threw out the counter claim. So we left and took a taxi to the airport. They didn’t allow us any time to change so I was stuck wearing super uncomfortable heels all throw the airports.  We got to the airport and I had to check in without an ID which is a pain in the but.  The Dallas airport actually went through everything in my purse and patted me down cuz “they’re a REAL airport” unlike LA.  So we finally got past all the security and made it back home.

You can see pictures of the trip here.