Still it was hard to accept letting it go. Selena had that car for eight years, and took great care of it. She loved having that car, it was one of her horcruxes (she decided years ago when we read the final Harry Potter and decided to list out our own).

Selena in her VW Bug

We may have caved and held onto it just as a fun car, except that my aunt and uncle, recent empty nesters, got in touch with us saying how they were looking for a smaller fun car themselves and were thinking of a VW Beetle. In a moment right out of the finale of Toy Story 3, knowing the car was going to a good home, we agreed to sell the car to them. They drove up at Thanksgiving and drove home the happy new owners of the silver VW convertible.

En route to Hollywood, we stopped at UCLA, which is a fantastic little carved out college town in the middle of Beverly Hills. We ate at In-n-Out Burger, which was a top priority to me. I thoroughly enjoyed my delicious burger, fries and shake, but will confess it did not live up to the high expectations I had for this legendary burger chain. In truth, I’m not sure I’d even say it was better than Five Guys.  I’ll need more time to think on that one.

We toured the La Brea tar pits, which stink to high heavens, and worse than the smell is this life-size display of a mama Woolly Mammoth sinking into the tar while baby Mammoth screams out and papa Mammoth looks on indifferently as if saying “It’s your own fault”.  Maybe I’m becoming more sensitive since becoming a parent, but I found this horrifying. I think I gave Selena a hug at this point.

Connected to the tar pits is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) that had a Tim Burton exhibit that we were very excited to see. So many drawings and art and puppets and clothing from Tim Burton’s early work as well as major blockbusters. I really want to better understand this man, because he’s beginnings seem rather ordinary, but somewhere along the way, unexplained in the exhibit he went from regular everyday animator to tent-pole to build major animated and blockbuster movies around. I want to know when and how that happened.

We took two tours of Hollywood, first a quick visit walking up and down Hollywood Blvd. with the family, looking at the stars on the sidewalk, the quirky characters in costume in front of the Kodak Theatre and taking photos in front of and in the Chinese Theatre. We decided to send Kaylee home with the grandparents and take in Harry Potter 7 (part two) in the legendary theatre and it was the most elegant movie-going I’ve ever experienced.

The second tour of Hollywood was in an open-air van with a touring company that promised to show us the homes of the stars. It turns out the stars really want their privacy so mostly we saw the tall gates and hedges of the stars, but it was fun to see the Hollywood sign from up on Mulholland Drive, as well as cruise down Sunset Blvd and see where so many of the eateries and clubs and action of the entertainment industry happens. I did take issue though with the driver’s references such as “This is Tim Allen’s house, you’d know him from Toy Story” or “Up there is the Griffith Observatory, that was where the legendary scene was shot of all the Autobots assembling in the first Transformers movie.”

We did actually tour the Griffith Observatory, but I’ll include that in the subsequent post about the wedding events. Until then, here are some pictures of the trip:

Greg and Kaylee at the Getty Museum

Selena and Kaylee at the Getty Museum

Greg and Kaylee at the Getty Museum

Greg finally has an In-n-Out Burger

Kaylee's first burger in an In-N-Out Burger

Tragedy at the Tar Pits

They have direwolves!

Kaylee having fun

Greg with Captain Jack Sparrow in Hollywood

Selena at the Tim Burton exhibit

Kaylee at the LACMA exhibit

At the time, we were long distance and I finished just around when Greg and friends were getting ready to put up the Delaware Shakespeare Festival. So I decided to send up a good luck card from the characters in the book as I envisioned them in my head as I read it. The main character Eddard was described so Fabio-like to me, that I just started picturing him in ridiculous situations.

Now you may wonder why the character of Jon Snow is so racistly Asian. In the book, his character is a bastard. So this was how I visually chose to represent “bastard.” PS: I’m pushing the limit, but because I’m Chinese, it’s not racist.

This opened a floodgate. Soon after, Greg’s best friend Duke (who recommended the series) had a birthday. So Duke gets a card from more characters in the book.

Then Christmas rolls around:

Then our friend Ken moves back home, closer to all the things he loves in New England:

Then we go on a weekend trip to the mountains with Duke and gang.

In fairness, I may have been too quick to dismiss the series, because I thought we were exchanging “this really affected me” kinds of books. Greg’s previous recommendation to this was On the Road. And after this, he recommended The Rock’s autobiography. I definitely have better expectations, and will definitely be tuning in to the TV series.

Because these images were started so long ago, we’ve started taking to these as the actual characters. Which is why when the HBO preview came out, we were disappointed to see that Eddard was severely lacking in pectorals and loincloth, that Catelyn wasn’t just one giant set of rosy bosoms and that Jon doesn’t wear rice paddy hats and ninja shoes. Oh well. Let’s hope 10 years from now, someone does it right.

Further evidence that Greg’s iPad is the “other woman,” as it’s now raising our child.

(I eventually found dad not too far away.)

Since then, Greg disappears into a different world every night. There is no waking him. Here are some things he has slept through:

Kaylee crying.

Sookie barking.

Sookie coming into the bed with us for a few weeks because I was trying to avoid Sookie barking and waking the baby.

Sookie bringing her treats into bed and burying them under a sleeping Greg to save for later.

Sookie bouncing onto Greg and licking his face, arm, etc, every time she got into bed with us because she is excited to be there.

Sookie getting untrained from coming into the bed where I let her bark for an hour one night, but held fast and didn’t let her in anymore.

That subsequent week where Sookie barked and whined every night because I was trying to untrain her.

Sookie getting mad and scratching at Greg and the bed.

And here’s the true testament to the magical powers of the memory foam. This morning, Greg slept through an EARTHQUAKE, and Sookie barking because of it.

Greg has a convenient excuse now of the memory foam. He’ll hear about things from me the next morning, and he’ll say, “Really? Memory foam.” One morning, he dug a treat out from under him and groggily asked, “Where did this come from?” I’ve told him that someday, I’m going to start making up stories and placing random objects in bed, and he would be none the wiser.