I’ll forward you all an email with the new phone number for Facilities.

I was going to wait to write my first post for this blog until we had a new adventure I could tell you all about, but realized I should just focus on some of the as yet untouched upon hilarious moments from the past few days instead.

LA driving is good so far, except within the labryinth that is Park La Brea. For example, the gated entrance about 30 feet from our building that seems to open about 28% of the time. The other 72 you have to look like an idiot as you do a U-turn and block traffic, and cry in frustration as it opens for the next car to approach it. It is, however, frightening that my life is essentially in the hands of my GPS. Take, for example, our adventure the other night as we attempted to locate the building where both Lauren and myself had an interview the next day. First, we discovered that my GPS has a strange setting where its volume is proportionate to the speed of the car. Therefore, driving on the freeway= angry GPS yelling at you. Combined with the fact that we had ignored its last three directions and it would conceivably be annoyed, it really seemed to be yelling at us. Then, we confused it so much that it decided the most direct route would be to drive through a building- literally, there was a dotted line with the car on it going directly through one. As we laughed so hard we nearly cried and approached delirium due to a lack of sleep, a Winnie the Pooh balloon appeared in midair, just floating in the street. I had to confirm that Lauren and Jenn also saw it to make sure I wasn't losing it. The whole experience was very bizarre, especially considering the fact that the next day my GPS took me a completely different, much less complicated route.

Then yesterday morning I woke up, went to the kitchen to make breakfast, and stepped in a puddle of water. We suspected it may have come from the dishwasher, which we had run the night before. It didn't make complete sense, however, since the puddle was at the end of the kitchen farthest from the dishwasher. Last night we ran it again and everything seemed to be fine until we realized there was soapy water everywhere.

And of course, we did not even have a mop, so aside from a roll of paper towels, we were helpless. We had no choice but to ask the very kind Park La Brea maintenance people to bring stuff to help us clean up. In the meantime, Lauren expressed her frustration over not being able to navigate the very wet kitchen. Josh, who was visiting, reminded her that "the only thing your neighbors will appreciate more than water coming out of their ceilings is you stomping around angrily."


Embarassingly enough, it turns out the incident was completely our own fault- apparently this dishwasher can only use the powder kind of soap, and you should never put any kind of liquid soap in it. Oops? According to the very friendly maintenance guy, however, this is a common mistake.

Mechanical failures aside, LA is great so far. Just going to the offices and lots where my interviews were was one of the craziest, most surreal experiences of my life, and now we all have at least one sure-to-be-awesome internship lined up. Tonight we comforted ourselves over not being able to attend the 118 read-through by taking an amazing scenic trip to the top of Mulholland Drive- pictures and videos to come!

-Erin