Long Beach

Count up four floors and four or five panes in (probably the first without the reflection of the building) and that was our room ... the next to the farthest from the elevator. We had a "lovely" view of the lagoon, the sports arena, and the back of the convention center. Oh, yeah - and the Pacific waaaay off in the distance if you craned your neck around. There is a beach in Long Beach, if you go east. If you go west, not two minutes from the hotel, there is a deep water port and those big oil tanks. Like the rest of the LA area, there are oil derricks pumping away in the most unlikely spots: say, parks.

I highly recommend this hotel (whatsis, the Hyatt Somethingorother), or at least the half of it closest to the elevators, as a convention site. It was apparently expensive and after taking a poll, it was decided that they'd go back to Disney*%##ingland next March (not this March). I can believe it! Long Beach is a beautiful city, the hotel is near abso*%33inglutely everything you could possibly want or need by foot - everything from the Queen Mary and the Aquarium to Wal-Mart (which is so expertly hidden in downtown, you'd hardly know it was there).

I visited my cousin in Rancho Palos Verdes and we went to lunch with her friend, Debbie. This is my rich cousin, by the way, who picked a restaurant from a coupon received in the mail that morning. Okay, it was a restaurant she liked and not Bojangles, but it just goes to show that we are definitely related. Marylyn is having rotator cuff surgery (she is recovering at this writing) and she seems to intimate that this will be next for me after a gall bladder operation (which also seems to run in the family). And for those of you who don't believe that our family's health stuff is that related, five of us have had to have carpal tunnel surgery, at least two the gall bladder, and Dad's shoulder hardly moves at all these days but he never had anything done because it might have interfered with his golf.

I managed to get to one beadstore, two Indian restaurants, and one Thai restaurant. I have written reviews for same on Yahoo Travel. Don't I love this 2.0 stuff!

I will post further photos on Flickr. Click on title above for link.