Right about now, I should be coming back from my daily walk to the Starbucks up Culver Avenue and sitting in the tiny hotel room's overstuffed chair, typing on my similarly teeny phone screen. Instead, I am sitting in the living room with my laptop at home. The only consistent thing? Mason is still SOUND asleep.    

So, yesterday was a very short day, even though our plane didn't leave until 6:40 pm. That was partly because my wife is a bit anxious about planes, and, as it turns out, so it Mason a little.

We did have time to a few things, however. rachelmanija  took us out to a VERY COOL (look how I didn't say "amazing," even though it totally WAS _amazing_!) dim sum place. Mason had only ever done dim sum where you check things off on a menu, so he was very impressed with the controlled chaos of the carts. He was also happy to have recognized the word for "pork bun." The food was exceptional (and also AMAZING.) 

I was quite distracted by the giant screen TVs showing Beautiful Cooking (for jiawen : 美女廚房). Before Rachel thought to look it up on Wikipedia, I was trying to piece together what was happening. It was clearly part variety show, part cooking show, but that was all I could entirely understand. Fascinating to watch, because so much of what makes a competitive cooking show work clearly seems to be universal. There has to be some competition that's timed. Judges have to make expressive faces while tasting the food. And, there has to be some kind of drama involving live animals in need of butchering. Fascinating.

From there we went to a manga/comic bookshop where we probably would have stared sadly at all the things we wanted to buy but couldn't find room for in our luggage, except that Rachel offered to ship it back to us. Suddenly, we had most of the run of Full Metal Alchemist (for Mason, he's read it, but wanted to have it to re-read) and the next two volumes of Spider and Me for me. At this point, Shawn was frantically texting, "You're shopping? But... heading to the airport next, right?" The conversation ended in: "Okay, do what you think is best. Love you!" and I figured Shawn might actually implode at home if we didn't hustle towards the airport.

We finally ended up in a Lyft at Rachel's instance. It was fine, but I can't say it was monumentally better than any of the other forms of transportation we took around LA. Possibly superior to the bus, but that would be about it. I mean, the guy was nice? His car was clean? But, so was the taxis? He even took the exact route the taxi driver had taken us FROM the airport. Possibly it was significantly cheaper, but since it was Rachel's app, I have no idea.

Of course we got through security and to our gate, HOURS before we needed to. On the other hand, that gave me time to get started reading the book Mason loaned me, Six of Crows. 

The flight on Spirit Airline (mostly known for it's pay for everything as you go model) was fine. It was, at least, direct, unlike our flight out to LA. So, three and a half hours (and a two hour time shift) and we were home just after midnight. 

Today is a lot of laundry, retro fitting the photos from the trip, and then... I work tonight at Maplewood. I would totally blow it off, but we now need to pay for this trip AND, thanks to Shawn's illness, I think I've already missed four out of the six days I work this month.

C'est la vie. It's only a four hour shift. I can survive.