Miraculous Medal was busy preparing for their Spring Carnival. This is a full on carnival. There were rides, a midway, food vendors, a beer garden and live music all in our parking lot. It's pretty sweet-unless you're trying to get some sleep. Fortunately, the first night of the fair was Thursday night and none of us worked Friday as we were headed up to Los Altos Hills the next day for the retreat.
The ride up to Los Altos was uneventful. I drove most of the way with Jess and Alli. Everybody arrived in reasonable time, we ate dinner and gathered to talk about the impending silence. Everybody shut off their phones and we put them in a basket which was locked away for the weekend. I fell asleep at 7:30pm and woke up at 7:30am. It was glorious. We ate breakfast in silence and had only 3 30-minute sessions where Fr. David Pettingel spoke to us. He is a fantastic speaker that makes you feel alive and gets you thinking. It was nice. In between all of these sessions and regular meals I would basically do the same thing: walk around the beautiful campus for 20-30 minutes and then nap for 30-45 minutes. Repeat. I went to bed at 9:00pm and woke up at 8am. Glorious.
We debriefed about the silence. For me, it was fine. Neither amazing or terrible. I was just thankful to get caught up on some much needed rest. Jess, Alli, Meaghan and I drove back on the 101-S. We wanted to take the PCH, but there was a landslide that blocked our way creating an epic detour. Still, the 101-S was much better than taking the 5-S. Totally worth the extra 1.5 hours on the road.
The carnival's last night was Sunday and nearly all of us worked Monday. Alli and I took advantage of the beer garden and enjoyed some of the music. They shut down at 11pm and began tearing everything down. My room is on the front of the house overlooking the parking lot where everything was. While I am a hard sleeper, it was difficult to get to sleep. I think it was around 1 by the time I fell asleep. Fortunately, I slept a lot that weekend. I worked Tuesday and Wednesday. After work Wednesday, I picked up Brendan from LAX. We got back to the medal around midnight. Brendan is a friend and mine and Holly's. She and Brendan are both from Brainerd and have known each other since middle school. I met Brendan in college and lived together with 2 others last year at CSS.
The next day Brendan, Holly and I went to St. Francis as Holly was taking the Pediatric Advanced
Life Support Class. We dropped her off and took the car to West LA. We went to La Brea Tar Pits and then to the Grove, neither of which I had been to yet. Her class was scheduled to end at 4. While at the grove she called saying she was done at about 12:30. We bustled over to Lynwood to pick her up. While there, we gave Brendan a tour of SFMC and the 8th floor. We met up with the housemates at Spitz in downtown for some Happy Hour. Later that night Brendan and I went to Chico's for additional drinks and so he could see what our neighborhood bar was all about.We didn't do a great deal the next day since we knew Holly would be home early. We got Pho and Yogurtland that afternoon and showed Brendan more of where we live a
nd work. That night we prepared ourselves for the Abbey in WeHo. Jonathan and Laura were kind enough to drive us there. It was a blast. Sally, from the Santa Barbara house, was there as well as Courtney Mitchell, a CSS OT grad doing travel OT in Santa Monica. It was a great night out with everyone.The next day we went to Santa Monica to meet up with Courtney and roam about. Unfortunately, she was unable to meet up with us. We still roamed about. We walked the farmer's market, the promenade and went down to the beach. It was a beautiful day. We had planned to go to WeHo again, but the crowd was looking to stay in and it was too difficult logistically to go out, so we stayed in with the gang and had a great time, as we always do. We made homemade margaritas, which I now have a great recipe for, and ended the night with J & S (Cheap, mexican drive in food just down the street that is SO good and SO cheap).
Jess, Brendan, Holly and I went to Worldfest in Van Nuys on Sunday. We took public transit, which was in the spirit of Worldfest, but was more time consuming and most costly in the end. Thanks LA. Your public transit system is terrible in so many ways. Worldfest was all right. I was under the impression it was going to be music, green vendors, etc (peace, love and recycling). It was really focused on vegans and animal rights. A bit much for me in that regard, but was still a good time. We heard some life music and ate some really good food. I had an amazing Thai Red Curry.
We had yogurtland again that night (because you can never have too much yogurtland). Monday was Brendan's last day. We went to Homegirl Cafe, checked out the giftshop and stopped by Dockweiler beach before dropping him off at LAX. It is a great beach to wa
tch the airplanes fly overhead, which Brendan loved as he is a plane fanatic. Once Brendan was gone it was back to work for me and Holly.Yesterday we went to Redondo beach and soaked up the sun. It was beautiful there. The waves were pretty big and we got misted every now and again as we laid out on the sand in the sun, which felt amazing. That night we went to Bahn Mi Che Cali (A Vietnamese diner, which I will miss like crazy). The gang got pho, I got dac beit (Sandwiches). It is so delicious and hella cheap. Alli and I had beer on the stoop.
We're off to the Aquarium today (1/2 off!) Pictures to come. I have 81 more hours to meet my required 1700 to get my AmeriCorps grant. I'll be done with them at the end of next week. After that, everything is a buffer. I'll still go in, but I will be a bit more liberal with the days off. We're all starting to feel the service year's end close in. We're going to take the next two months and own Los Angeles like we did when we came!
