On Tuesday – we both worked a lot of the day (at least in the morning) and puttered around the house in the afternoon. On Wed, Jeremy went for a bike ride and what did I do? A lot of nothing. Napped.

I knit another hat.

Wed night, we walked to Culver City for exploring – less than a mile away. It’s a spot that is hip now even though the name makes it sound very boring. So, even though there are sidewalks, LA is not made for walking – and even less so with a wheelchair. A lot of sidewalks don’t have curb cuts and they are uneven from tree root growth. And there are homeless encampments underneath freeway overpasses – so besides that, it was totally OK! Haha. Yeah, it was a bit tough. Once we made it to Culver City, the sidewalk population exploded and there was very little sidewalk space for anyone – though usually folks easily parted ways to make way for Edda. (It was kind of a free-drink night where all the restaurants made drinks and gave out like 20 mL for free and you had a card and you could collect them all! I failed to get a card even though I tried, the lines were too long). We planned to eat at the Shake Shack (I know, not very original) and get ice cream afterwards.

We found the highest end grocery store – Erewhon and went inside to explore since Jeremy lives for and loves grocery stores. I thought we’d by a reusable bag for a mement0 – how much could it possibly be? Well it could be $50! We passed on it.

Their soup section – all handmade and in glass jars:

Not a single radish out of place. Jeremy said – there is a person whose job it is to constantly rearrange everything so it looks fabulous all the time. It’s a perfect job for someone who is a little OCD.

Then we made it to Salt and Straw for ice cream. Dave highly recommended it – and the ice cream was very good – but it is a little weird. They have seasonal flavors like fried chicken and potato salad. They consider a “normal” flavor to be honey lavender which is too bougie to be a regular flavor. Jeremy loves ice cream with peanut butter – they didn’t have any flavor with PB except a vegan one which he wasn’t about t0 try. I always look for strawberry – but also not a flavor they carry. I ate the seasonal sour cherry pie (delicious!).

On Thursday, we braved the LA traffic to spend the day with Vince who is at UC Irvine for his summer program.

Jeremy wore his UC Davis Aggie shirt and got some funny comments all day about it. We saw anteaters and posed with them.

Vince all dressed up in front of the conference hall in his nice suit jacket.

It was like an adult science fair (all the undergrads who had a summer program presented posters). Here’s Vince telling us about his project. It is so weirdly close to the work my lab did like 30 years ago – it’s both familiar and strange to me at the same time. So much more computer stuff and now you can tweak proteins anyway you want them. Before, we struggled so much with all this stuff.

After his poster session, he still had talks and lunch to attend. We were let loose on campus. We ate lunch at the very nice shopping center across the street and wandered around the buildings waiting for Vince. The student center seemed like a very new building but it had weird handicapped access with ramps tucked in here and there and elevators not where you expected them to be and this crazy wheelchair stair lift which we could operate ourselves.

Then we spend a mostly aimless, but pleasant afternoon together and this is what we did:

1. Went to the bookstore. Thought about buying a shirt. Didn’t buy anything.
2. Went to Vince’s dorm. Napped in one of Vince’s 4 beds and ate mango slices.
3. Decided to go on an adventure to the Santa Ana zoo to find a capybara which many websites told me that they were found there. Called the zoo and found out they haven’t had a capybara for over a decade. THE INTERNET LIES! sigh.
4. Went to a local marina/wildlife place. Bought a cap in the visitor center for Vince to shield his head from the sun and applied their free sunscreen (how nice!). Walked around outside in the laser-like sun for 15 minutes before settling onto benches where we chatted about nothing really. Made everyone play Pokemon Go.
5. Went to a japanese grocery store and bought odd asian food.
6. Went to the adjacent japanese food court and ate ramen and udon. Yummy!
7. Dropped Vince back at his dorm with big hugs and headed back to LA.

Elka did not go on this Irvine Adventure and we didn’t want to leave her with Julia – we hired a dog sitter for the day which was great. I’ll show you the pics soon.