Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Trip to LA and down Memory Lane

Last week was quite a week! Dave, being in the investment industry, went for a rather eventful ride on the rollercoaster of the DJIA and NASDQ. Man, I think everyone was happy when Friday finally rolled around. There was a story in Christianity Today last week that talked about the people on Wall Street praying more these days than ever before. Yeah, no doubt!

On Saturday the family took a car trip up to Beverly Hills to map out the hospital and surrounding areas. We still can't find a decent place to stay that is less than $400 a night. It's pretty sad when you can get a cheaper room in Hawaii than the mid-whilshire district!

Cedars Sinai is a pretty impressive complex. Beautiful, and big, and somewhat immaculate for a hospital. In fact, in the years since getting out of medicine it has always surprised me how dirty a lot of the better hospitals are kept. Cleveland Clinic and UCLA are prime examples of hospitals with great reputations that are just so impacted that there is never any time to clean before a new patient gets plugged into an open room. No wonder MRSA is on the rise in our health care facilities!

Across the street from Cedars is the Beverly Center, a very upscale shopping mall. We took advantage of the fact that the kids were needing a break from the car, ad walked around this multi-level, shoppers dream. We have a lot of the same stores down in OC, so I wasn't blown away. Then, my son David saw it....the place he had only dreamed existed. The Ferrari Store! Seriously, there is a Ferrari Store in Beverly Hills.

I guess it's the place where you can get dad that cool Ferrari cap to wear as he drives the family minivan! No, really...there was everything "Ferrari"; to include a Ferrari LEGO playset. My boys live, breathe and almost eat LEGOS. We had to get one. We got the playset and a die cast Ferrari and spent way too much money and got our huge testosterone rush. Then went back to the car (not a Ferrari) to make our way back home. My son, still wearing a huge smile on his face after visiting boy-Mecca.

On the way back we decided to take a detour and head through Hacienda Heights, where both Dave and I grew up. Fun, fun, fun walking down memory lane! We showed the kids the houses we grew up in, and the church we attended and Dave's high school. We even showed them our cool mall...ok, it wasn't that cool....but the movie "Back to the Future" was filmed there, so it was our idea of cool for most of the 80's.

When we finally got home we were officially pooped! But had a pretty fun day.

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