Watts Towers

Krystle and I went to see the Watts Towers, an impressive art sculpture in the middle of the ghetto built by a dedicated man named Simon Rodia. He spent 33 Years of his life sculpting these towers from 1921 until 1954 on his off time with his own funds. The tallest tower stands 99 feet tall. He was a real recycler with his art sculpture and used broken plates, and soda bottles to embellish his beautiful towers.

Queen Ammann on the Queen Mary

God save the queen! This vessel gets 13 feet / gallon gas mileage, has 160,000 hp, and at it's peak it was able to transport 15,000 troops at one time from the US to England during WWII. I found it interesting that this wonderful cruise ship and ships like it were the primary way to cross the atlantic up until the 1950's. By the time you get to Europe, you would have had already used up one week's vacation time. I'm glad we've got fast jetliners that can get us anywhere in the world within a day's travel.

I really enjoyed running around the decks and having a romantic lunch on board this cruise ship with Krystle.

• Queen Mary's Website

The Getty Museum

... WoW... Describes this museum, only $7 for parking and admission is free! What a wonderful value, and a great place to spend a day or two. The architecture of the museum is beautiful, and the panoramic view of downtown is breathtaking. There are lot's of famous paintings to see, and my highlight was a photography exhibit of one of the first photographers in Europe, Roger Fenton.

We've got it easy these days with digital photography:

1. Turn camera on
   
2. Push button
   
3. See picture on screen.

Roger Fenton had to make his own negatives (by mixing his own chemicals) then had to fight with bulky equipment, deal with extremely long exposeures, and finally develop his own pictures with more chemicals in his own darkroom. I admire his determination and effort.

• J. Paul Getty Museum Website

Easter Sunday.

Krystle and I Visited Grandma and Grandpa Ammann today and shared Easter Service with them. Grampa read a poem written by his daughter to his bible study class, just like he does every year. He says that most of the ol' folk don't remember that he read it just last year.

"He is Risen"
Jesus is our savior
and this is how it be,
He did us a great big favor
By dying on calvarys tree.
They put him in a stony cave
and thought he was dead and alone,
But the glory angel came to save
and rolled away the stone.
He is Risen! He is Risen!
his diciples cried with glee,
For on this Easter he is Risen
For everyone who believes.

- Annie Ammann (Age 11) -

The poem is written on an old shoebox cover, written in pencil and crayon. He loves this poem so much, and I can see why.

Shopping in West Covina

I thought this was pretty cool. Vincent Ave and Sunset during sunset. Lots of traffic for a Saturday Evening.... Ya gotta love Los Angeles.

Rex and I went out to West Covina to hit up IKEA and Target to get stuff for the new pad. I really like Rex's moving style. Instead of moving all of his old stuff, he just goes out and buys all new stuff. We didn't do too bad though. He's nearly fully furnished for under $1k.

Here's the remaining items on the shopping list...

• 50" HD Plasma TV
• 8' BigOne Love Sac
• Rex's Bed
• Nails To Hang Pictures
• Patio Furnature
• BBQ Grill

The order may very.

The Original Pantry

Mmm.. Good Food. In business since 1924 the original Pantry has made
great food for those who stay up late. They're open 24 hours a day!
I had a juicy New York Steak and Eggs at 1AM, and service was
excellent. I'm sure this place is doing extremely well now since It's
only a short walk from the Staples Center and a block from our pad!

Snow Day From Work

Snow! No work today because I can't get my car out of the parking lot. This was taken on Tuesday Morning just as soon as I was able to dig my car out of the snow. NAU even shut down for Monday, just because they were not able to get the snowplows out in time. This was a unforeseen snowstorm, it just got a little colder than expected and ran was forecast for Flagstaff.

Driving Driving...

So this weekend, LA to Flagstaff, then down to Phoenix back to Flag and finally back to LA. Total Milage: 1,322. Average Speed 21 MPH for the entire weekend from time off to time back onto work. Was it worth it? HELL YEAH!! Although it's a lot of driving, I got to spend some quality time with the Wife, Family and Friends.

Kitty Meets Birdie

We now have a one legged bird named Mona. Nichole, one of Krystle's NAU buddies got busted for having a bird, cat, hamsters and other animals all in a dorm room... Yeah, so now we've got a bird. Sean-Delle really likes his new toy.

Farewell Holiday Inn Express

Well this was my home over the past few months, the Holiday Inn Express in Lawndale, Ca. I'm going to miss this place, the beds always get made, there is good service and friendly employees.

Hot Transformer

Dan Working on A Hot Transformer... Bzzzz

Flight Time

I got to do a lot of flying this past weekend. I flew Ben's 1964 Cessna 172c for 6.2 hours. This included a flight to Hawthorne Airport to pick up Rex, Flying the Gillespie Field Eagles Mechanic Walt around the East County of San Diego, then flying Cullen and his girlfriend Sheryl over La Jolla, and then I spent an hour teaching Will Rash how to land.

The real icing on the cake was flying with Andy Hendrickson in actual IFR at night in his Cessna 206. We shot three IFR approaches, a VOR-DME into Ramona, the ILS into Carlsbad, and the GPS back into Gillespie. Andy is an Excellent IFR pilot, and I really enjoy flying with him, he got his IFR rating back in 1989 and has all ratings up to Multi-Commercial. We flew for 1.6 hours at night including 1 hour of time in the clouds.

This was my first flight of the year, I've really gone too long without flying. It was really a lot of fun to get back into the air.

Hangin Out Downtown LA

Well, I spent Saturday with Rex looking around downtown Los Angeles and finding some pretty cool places that I didn't even know existed. I went into the downtown library building which is huge and has 5 floors of books! We also hit up the top of the Standard Building which features a swimming pool on the top floor of the building right next to a lot of skyscrapers and we got to enjoy the beautiful ceilings of the Biltmore Hotel.

The whole purpose of going downtown was to find a place to move into. We found one apartment complex which was quite nice but didn't work out for us because the manager turned out to be an idiot and cannot input information correctly into a computer.