Neon Trees

Highlight of UCSB tour...

Tommy's updated

What used to be Tommy Burger and yellow is now Tommy Taco and pink,
but they still have the same awesome chilicheeseburger--it's all good!

Inverted fountain at UCLA

Good for aching feet!

Inverted fountain at UCLA

Nice for reliving aching feet!

Second Day

no college tours on sunday... we were going to drive by/through Pepperdine, but the traffic on PCH was hellish, so a leisurely drive down to Venice Beach with a stop at Tito's Tacos on the way (wow, those are good burritos!), street performers, basketball, muscle beach, handball, and people watching galore--all the fine things that VB has to offer. Drove up PCH to Sunset and back into Westwood and our swanky hotel--boys went down and worked out in the gym for a couple hours--I went down to check on them and I promptly broke a light fixture--large pieces of glass showering down from the ceiling... so that was good...

I did go for a long run in the morning, all around campus and Westwood--turns out that the annual sprng UCLA fun run was yesterday, but I missed it, only realized it had happened as a ran through the after party... oops!

Ate at Noodle Planet in Westwood (Pho and Pad See Ew) and then saw the fine flick "Fast and Furious" and then I called it an early night while the boys played video games...

all in all, fairly educational, I'd say...

First Day part deux...

Harvey Mudd, one of eight intitutions that make up the Claremont Colleges, was the next stop on our way in to Westwood.

Pomona College
Claremont Graduate University
Scripps College
Claremont McKenna College
Harvey Mudd College
Pitzer College
Keck Graduate Institute
Claremont University Consortium

We walked about the various interconnected campuses--no official tour was available on sturday afternoon. we started at Harvey Mudd where there were lots of serious-looking science buildings and fountains and people practicing fencing on one end of the small campus and on the other were a number of dorms situated around a field across which many lemons were flying; seems there was a spirited dorm versus dorm lemon fight going on which included lacross sticks, lemon cannons (loud) and various other devices. We made a qick right turn--because a 140mph lemon to the head hurts--and went on the other campuses. Each of the campuses has an acedmeic emphasis, the only one that emphasizes the hard scineces is Harvey Mudd, but a student at any of the colleges can cross enroll in classes at any of the others, in fact, must do so to meet graduation requirements. All of the colleges and students share athletic facilities--there were lots of fields with all kinds of serious events going on... and a lot of field-side tailgating with bbq and air jumpers too. Seems that at least on this Saturday, no one was inside studying and everyone was out enjoying the day. I got the feeling that the separate colleges would be a bit insular, not allowing too much cross-mojination between the art history majors and the engineers. Of course, the website touts this arrangement as an advantage--all the benfits of a small school in the individual colleges (small classes, know your professors, esprit de corps) with the advantages of a big school (athletics, student body activities, clubs)...

Up to the boys to decide on that I guess.

We continued westward towards Westwood, but the boys were, once again, hungry--boy do they eat! So, we fumbled our way to chinatown where ryan directed us to Sam Woo BBQ and we ate some serious noodles. Thus fotified, we made our way--finally--into Westwood where we drove around a bit to see old apartments and dorms where I had lived, we drove around the campus, we drove to the hotel, checked in and hooked up the XBOX...

Not much time to play though, as we decided to go grab a snack and movie and dinner--in that order--in Westwood. We had to hurry to catch the 7:40pm movie as the boys were tired (from what!?!?) and voted against staying up to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Nuart Theater on Santa Monica Blvd... alas, how will they make it in college??

Time to eat.... Again!?!?