trinacriabob

Jeep

Fantasy Island

With $ 3 + a gallon gas, who isn't concerned about gas mileage. My current car, at 14 years and 225,000 miles, still gets what was posted on the window sticker...about 18 in town and 28 on a road trip. It still gets that 28....amazing. Cautiously, I'm looking at new cars. I've been out of town the last 3 weekends, so I've had the opportunity to rent. I had a GP as a rental in Florida. On a road trip across the lower part of the state, the 3800 returned 27.7 mpg (with the AC on the whole time and some non-freeway driving). This past weekend, I was in L.A. I wanted a Monte 3.5 to see the mpg, but they gave me an Impala 3.5. UNBELIEVABLE. From LA to Santa Barbara and back, mostly freeway, some bottlenecks and the AC on part of the time), I got 233.6 miles divided by 7.437 gallons = 31.41 mpg. C'mon folks, for a car like that and not even driven cautiously, that is fantastic. Driven at 65 with no air would have probably returned 33 or so. What kind of MPG do you get? Happy or sad about that?

PB, are your neighbors white trash? They sound like it. What's with the cat not wanting to let go as she is about to give birth? They mark people and things. Sounds like she's marked YOU. I'm not much of a cat person, but I hate to see them get the shaft. It is a domesticated living creature. On the other hand, it is EXTREMELY painful to see a dog suffer, in contrast.

constipated

Monica Lewinsky

mouthwash

Man, Sci, I read between the lines on some your posts and you tend toward the KINKY! Like a lot of people here.

Seattle native (God, is she weird)

Orange County, Florida, right? Ha ha. Gotcha back. Hey, Flybry, I was in your fine state 2 weeks ago for vacation. If you were in the FLL/PBI area, I would have looked you up, but you are on the other side of the state. C'mon, you love Cali, admit it!

I can't stand them and I'm fairly good at it because I work hard and think the clients are entitled to get good work for their money. It's out of respect to the client, mostly. I graduated with a 3.9 and passed the registration exam easily. I just shut it off and only like to hang around the ones who don't eat, breathe and sleep architecture. In fact, I have few friends who are architects....they all do other things. I want to talk about travel, cars, dirty jokes, ethnic jokes, the economy, sex, music and movies in my spare time. Can't do that with most uptight architects. I did have lunch with a Jewish architect friend who came down from the Bay Area along with some of his Cal Poly SLO buddies. They were hilarious. We went to "The Pantry"...a dive, but a downtown LA institution that doesn't even take credit cards. Incidentally, don't you generally find the pissy, elitist and higbrow architects to be "less than" masculine? They're kind of pussified, IMHO. Those are the ones that annoy me, whether it was in school or in the workplace. I really love reminding them that they are quite a few notches below a doctor or a lawyer....both in how they are viewed and especially in the thickness of their wallets.

OC, OC, OC...you're preaching to the choir. I am Santa Monica-born and West L.A.-raised and with the exception of 4 years divided between Italy and the NY suburbs, I did all of my schooling through college(all of it Catholic) on the west side of L.A. It just feels SOOOOO different now, that's all. I remember it as a "kinder, gentler" LA and a more affordable one, too. This afternoon, I pulled an open house flyer for a townhome on the Woodland Hills/Canoga Park border with 1150 sq. ft. and they were asking $ 459,000. I'm sorry, that's $ 400 a square foot for a crappy late 80s townhome. Get bigger and get closer in and it becomes a veritable nightmare. I don't mind it at all...it's just that I'm on edge in a few places. When I was growing up, I pretty much stayed on the West Side, the South Bay and the West Valley...that's it. Sometimes, because of friends, I might venture to Pasadena/Arcadia or to Whittier. Today, Sunday, I went and spent the day in Santa Barbara...truly a superlative. The weather can be described in one word: GLORIOUS.

chatty

Scandinavian

Company paid for it so I took the opportunity to come down to LA and get some continuing education credits at the AIA (read "geek") convention. SENSORY OVERLOAD..not the convention but LA, rather. The convention is at the Convention Center downtown. All of the hotel prices were high in the immediate area, so I stayed in El Segundo (by LAX) where you can take 2 subway/light rail cars (Green Line to Blue Line) and get to downtown for a pittance. This is the first time I have ever been in South Central! An eye opening experience. All the houses have bars on windows. Also, this historically African American area is almost fully Hispanic at this point judging from the store signs I was reading. Also, Hipanics tend to surround their houses with wrought iron fencing that has an arch-top pattern. So then, where did all the black people go? Doesn't matter, but I was wondering. Downtown is NOT very nice. They're getting on the loft - condo bandwagon and they are NOT cheap. Move a couple blocks in the wrong direction and it's not very nice. So, they want a million bucks or so for these? Get real. This morning, I drove my rental (Impala 3.5 VVT) to the Universal Studios station so I would feel safer leaving it there with crap in the trunk. I rode the Red Line...this is a real world class subway that doesn't run on the surface streets. It kicks ass. It is sickening that LA inagurated this in 1995 while BART kicked off in 1972. There should be at least 4 other subway lines given that the city alone has 4 million people, not counting the "undocumented." There are so many people not doing well here that the subway is the best way to make sure they don't operate a motor vehicle they can't maintain or insure. On the way back, I was a real ass hole. I get on the train outside the convention center. This architect dude (60ish, smug looking) has his badge on. It boasts the name of one of the name partners of Atlanta's biggest architectural firms. He sees me looking at it so he takes it off as if he is annoyed. At this point, I though "f*** you" since I was surrounded by smug and pissy architects for 2 entire days. So I look at him and say "So, buddy, slummin' it and riding the rails, huh?" He mutters something under his breath that I couldn't quite make out. As I left the train car to catch the Red Line connection back to the Valley, I gave him a good back slap to say "good-bye" or "you're a piece of $h! who thinks he's too good." As far as I can see, if you omit O.C., you almost have to live on the West Side, the South Bay or the West Valley. The rest of LA is pretty gross and depressing. This is not the "I love LA" that Randy Newman sang about. Innocence lost, for sure.

architects (yep, stiff and stuffy....but not me)

Geez, have you folks noticed how when Ocn starts a thread on his personal conundrums, everyone is on it like flies on $h!? PB, they broke the mold with you!

Biff and Buffy

preppy

electrical gremlins

Hey, Enzorafication is a good thing. That's a good "-do" there. The dog is cuter. I've got too big of a weak spot for our four-legged friends. Just think of how $h!ty the world would be without them. Cheers!

high maintenance

dream on Ocn

Pennsylvania

Good point. I'd say PB is a little hypersensitive on this one because he doesn't know if he has it "in the bag," so he beats himself up thinking about it. PB, you do need to chill on this one.