iMovie: iThink iM Doing It Right

This post is a twofer because not only is it about stuff I did, it's also about stuff I did after I did stuff. So there!

Way back in April I was a very busy bee. I threw my very first bridal shower, along with Miriam and Lauren, for our friend Anne. There were paper cranes.

And balloons.

And cupcakes.

And watermelon mojitos.

And a DVD that I made for power hour. It was a 60 minute collection of wedding or true love related moments from movies and TV, all with a countdown clock letting viewers know when a minute had passed and it was time to take another sip of beer/mojito/champagne/whatever. This idea came up somewhere into the party planning committee's second bottle of wine, and it didn't occur to any of us that we had no idea how to pull it off.

Fortunately, I got crafty and decided if I was ever going to figure out how to learn (the free trial version of ) iMovie, this was it! So I set about downloading clips from movies and TV. Memorable moments like this one:

And this one:

And even this one:

And, just for kicks, "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid.

If you're wondering why, then I guess you've never seen its effects on a group of a dozen drunk chicks before. It's really something else. Turns out, no one forgets the words. It's like "Shoop" in that way.

Then I set about futzing around, moving the clips in the timeline in iMovie until I got it to precisely 60 minutes. I even figured out how to add a title that came on at each minute.

It took me probably 20 hours to do it because I was still learning, and tended to delete clips by accident or make other rookie mistakes. But anyway, I did it. And it was a hit at the party.

For my next trick, I decided to rip off an idea from an old friend. Whenever he had parties, he'd set up his Mac laptop in a corner, and let all the guests take pictures of themselves with the photo booth application. Then, he'd string them all together to music and make a little video. It was a great way to remember the night... even the parts you might not actually remember.

So again back in April, my friend Delara hosted a Royal Wedding Party, for which we all had to dress "fancy" and/or "royal" and show up to watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. She set up her laptop. We took about 500 pictures (somehow)... and then I never got around to figuring out how to edit them together. Until now!

First I loaded all of the pics, then went through and got rid of bad ones. Then, I set the duration of each to be .25 seconds. I fussed around with the brightness and movement on them, and then imported a music track.

Now, here's where either iMovie sucks or I do, but if you edit a music track, you can only put a start and an end. So if you want to take the beginning of a song, then jump to somewhere later, you have to cut the first piece, then import the song again, then cut the part that you want out of that one. And then if you want to get one more piece of the song, you have to import it a third time and cut that part out. It seems like it would be easier if the audio editor just let you extract pieces of a track... and maybe it does in the pro version. Who knows.

In the end, I got the music edit good enough. I retimed a few of the pictures to be longer than .25 seconds so they'd mix it up a little to the beat. And here's the finished product:

BTW, apologies to my unborn child who, unbeknownst to me, had just recently taken up residency in my belly when I helped myself to many glasses of white wine at the party. Mommy promises to lay off the sauce from now on. But once you make it outta there, all bets are off.

If you're wondering, yes I also used iMovie to edit the timelapse video of the weekend bedroom makeover. Now that I've got the editing bug, I'll have to see what else I can create. Ideas?

Being Pregnant Is Weird

Admittedly the Doing Stuff Blog has been a little dismal lately. Avid readers may wonder what's become of the Doing Stuff Club. And why I haven't gone back to further explore the Old Zoo. And you don't even know that I didn't write a post on the return to Tribute Fest. What gives?

Will it impress you at all to say that I'm 14 weeks pregnant? I'd say this is proof that I've been doing something. If ya know what I mean. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Now that I'm meandering into my second trimester, things are looking up. I no longer feel like the walking dead, suspicious that someone's swapped my prenatal vitamins for Ambien. And I don't want to barf in your face any more. Not that morning sickness was ever as bad as I feared it would be. I believe everything I see on TV and movies, and what I saw of pregnant ladies is that they uncontrollably projectile vomit. But I'm happy to report that this is not the case. At least it wasn't for me. I was queasy constantly and found everything to be wholly disgusting, but I can live with that.

For those of you keeping score at home, yes I was pregnant while on the trip to Venice, and yes this is likely why I barfed on the plane. And, more importantly, why I couldn't stand the site of any food and why the whole city made my skin crawl. So if anyone had been planning a trip to Italy and my horrid reviews of the place lead you to rearrange your plans, let me assure you that Venice is, in fact, lovely... so long as your future child isn't forming in the depths of your gut, ruining your cheery outlook.

Aside from the physical lameness, being pregnant has been fine. I have a mile long list of things I can't do, eat, or drink, but it's not so bad. I'm rather enjoying the reprieve from drinking and it's been a good excuse for being a lazy homebody. Also, my boobs are bigger, which is fun.

I know some women absolutely love the whole pregnancy experience and gush about it. I don't think I will do this. I hope it isn't misinterpreted as being anything less than thrilled about my impending first born, who I'm sure will be seriously awesome and who I can't wait to meet.

What does all this mean for the blog? Nothing really. Probably just more stuff about babies. Oh, and we have to move AGAIN. The thought makes me want to bang my head against the nearest locker --if only I could find one. And this means undoing all of that work I documented on the blog, like my wall decals and my window treatments , and (heartbreak of all heartbreaks), my weekend bedroom makeover. So stay tuned for moving related posts and of course an adorable nursery decorating extravaganza.

That's all for now!

Doing Venetian Stuff: Part Three

And now for the exciting (if completely overdue) conclusion of my Venetian adventures.

View of the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge

The Doge's Palace

The entire island of Venice is one big tourist scene, but the most touristy part is the Piazza San Marco.

I didn't take any pictures of this place because the whole thing was covered in scaffolding and no matter how I tried to angle my camera to set up a picture, it all looked like crap. The last time I was in Venice, about nine years earlier, there was scaffolding everywhere as well. Get it together, Venice.

So here is a mediocre picture from Wikipedia. It's about as good as mine would be.

Okay, so see that building with the little domes in the background? That's a cathedral, and to the right of it, behind the brown tower, is the former palace of the Doge, the king of Venice (I think).

Inside is where all of the important meetings and war plans and conspiratorial plotting took place. We met up with the wedding gang to have a look around.

More scaffolding. I want a refund.

I don't think I've ever before purchased those little audio tours available at museums. You know, the ones where you get to a certain point in the exhibit and press a number to dial up the corresponding info on the little hand held thingy. But I'm just a wild card these days. Living on the edge.

I went to get us each an audio tour, but then the woman at the desk asked if I wanted two tours at 6 Euro each, or pay 8 for the shared one. When I inquired about that, I was told two people share the same audio tour, using the hand set and headphones. Suddenly interpreting the audio tour set up as indicative of the security of our marriage, I felt obligated to get the couples' audio tour.

The result was being tethered to Devin by 16 inches of wire for the next two hours. So that worked out well. It felt like some manner of corporate team building exercise.

I blame the impracticality and discomfort of the couples' tour as the reason I learned precisely squat about Doge's Palace, aside from a few odd facts. For instance, the Great Room (I may have made up that name) where the Congress (or whatever the old Venetian equivalent called themselves) met was destroyed in some year by "a fire caused by carelessness." That was exactly how it was described in the tour and I found the wording so funny that I stopped listening to the rest of the explanation.

Oh, and one other fun fact: One of the rooms was for the super secret cabinet to the king. There was the cabinet the public knew about, and then there were the other guys. And in the wall of their super secret room is a tiny mailbox-looking thing, where citizens could file anonymous complaints and accusations against anyone else in Venice and the super secret cabinet would read them and decide how to administer justice. It's like the comment card box at Denny's, but deadly!

No photography was allowed inside the palace and since I'm a stickler for rules, I have no more pictures to show you of this excursion. But if I could've taken pictures of anything, it would've been of the graffiti from the prisons. Centuries and centuries of words and drawings carved into the stone walls of the dungeon. You know what prisoners really seem to like? Boobs, mostly. And penises. Yep. Just lots and lots of anatomical doodles. They looked like something done by a middle schooler in detention. But no, they were the work of a 17th century political prisoner. Fascinating.

Pics from the Wedding

The whole fam

Frolicking in the street outside our apartment

The Cemetery

One of the islands in the Venice area is entirely surrounded by a tall stone wall. Inside is the city's only cemetery. (That's a guess. There may be another one.) In contains graves both new and old, and some of well known people, including, said Meghan, the final resting place of Ezra Pound. I didn't really know who that was, so I didn't look for that grave when Devin and I took the water bus to cemetery island for a look around.

The Food

I'm afraid to say that this is the portion of the vacation recap when I turn into Karl Pilkington.

Before the trip and after my return, food was the topic of much discussion with my friends. All that yummy pasta! Right? In fact, I planned to pretty much eat constantly and with reckless abandon, hoping all that marching around the streets of Venice would burn off at least a few calories.

But here's the thing. I don't love Italian food. It's good, but not my favorite. I only make spaghetti at home so much because it's cheap and I'm lazy. When it's time to pick a restaurant for dinner, an Italian place will probably be last on my list. I'm sure I'm making a few enemies with these statements.

The first thing we ate when we arrived in Venice was pizza. It was pretty good. For dinner that night, I ordered gnocchi, but I was given an incorrect translation from the menu of the dish's ingredients and wound up with a plate of gnocchi heaping with ham. The whole thing smelled like hot dogs and butter. I wanted to vomit. The waiter was nice enough to fetch me a pesto gnocchi instead, but by then my appetite wasn't so great. I couldn't eat, or even think about, gnocchi for the rest of the week.

On Monday I gorged myself on fried calamari. Little did I know, this was one of the main dishes served all over Venice, and unfortunately by the end of the week, it was another food I couldn't stand the site of.

On Tuesday afternoon, after waking up ridiculously late, Devin and I sought out some lunch in one of the city's eight million cafes. These cute little places were exact replicas of one another, with a menu of pizzas and pastas, and a display case by the register filled with sickly looking pre-made sandwiches. I was hungry, but by this point already burnt out on Venetian cuisine, so I ordered nothing. I soon gave in and ate half of Devin's sandwich, removing the prosciutto (side note: Venice is all but drowning in prosciutto), which left me with a sandwich of stale bread, spinach, canned mushrooms, and some kind of tasteless cheese.

If I wasn't at my limit before, I was now. But what was I going to do? I was stuck on this island where the only things to do are shop and eat, and the only thing to eat is Italian food. To be specific, Venetian food. It's made up of lots and lots of pork (which I don't eat) and seafood (which I enjoy, but a person can only take so much). Some of the most popular items I encountered were this white fish paste stuff that looks vaguely like tuna and tastes like gefilte fish, and "black spaghetti," which is called something else and is actually spaghetti cooked in squid ink. Look, I'm an adventurous eater. I really am. But I was just done. And I still had 4 days to go.

So I made it through the rest of my stay eating Italian corn flakes with whatever marvelous whole or 200% milk I bought at the store because I couldn't read the label.

Also, gelato.

Italian Ice.

And banana nutella crepes (not pictured). (Not Italian).

When we made it back to the US, specifically the Philadelphia airport, I went psychotic on some Wendy's.

It's been nearly a month since we got back, and I haven't been able to eat any Italian food. Pizza, yes, because I could never turn down pizza. But everything else? Gag. I'm hoping this eventually passes because I have no clue what else to cook.

Lido

As you can probably judge, I got a little cranky toward the end of our trip. Say what you will about how I should just appreciate that I got the chance to travel and all that, but Venice for a full week is challenging. It's glorious for 1-3 days.

Being on an island of narrow streets is claustrophobic. There isn't really all that much to do. And there aren't any parks (or grass anywhere), to just sit out and relax for a few hours. I don't need to be entertained every moment of every day; I just need someplace to sit.

So on Thursday afternoon, feeling like we might explode if we didn't find something else to do, Devin and I ventured to Lido, another island in the Venice area. This is where wealthy Europeans buy vacation homes and play golf. It was worth a shot.

Lido was like magic. There were trees! And grass! And sunshine! And cars! And wide streets! And you could see the sky! And breathe the air! I can't even tell you how, by comparison, actual Venice now seemed like a prison.

We merrily strolled along the main road, which had something else I hadn't seen all week: stores that offered stuff people needed. A drug store, a salon, something that looked like an Italian Pac Sun. At the end of the road, we found a public beach with miles of sand and calm, pale blue water. Finally! Some place to sit!

On Friday we returned, dragging the family along with us.

The End

For all the complaining I did (hey, that's just me), it was wonderful to have a chance to get out, hop across the ocean, and do something different. And I bought a cool watch.

Doing Venetian Stuff: Part Two

Home Sweet Apartment

Rather than staying at a hotel for the week -- and really I think there are only a handful of hotels in Venice anyway -- we stayed in a two bedroom apartment. Me, Devin, his parents, his sister Meghan and her boyfriend Dave. Yes all 6 of us snuggly stowed away.

Even though the apartment building, and all the buildings in Venice, are about a million years old and look it... the inside of the apartment was modern and had everything we needed. Including an army of friendly Italian ants. They were all, "Ciao! We justa wanna eata your crumbs. Prego!"

The whole look of the place reminded me of every friend's apartment in the first three years after college. In a good way.

The balcony off the kitchen overlooked one of the smaller canals.

This was nice, most of the time, but in the morning it was sort of like being plunked next to a major highway. Or shipyard. There were loud boats, and loud voices, and loud clanging construction noises. This was a nice dose of cultural immersion, though less than ideal for a group of people attempting to sleep as best they could with a huge time difference.

But the apartment had a working shower and cute tiny tea cups, so I can't really complain.

Over Two Bridges, Then Take A Right

All of the wedding guests received a giant packet about Venice that included maps, directions and assorted tips. One such tip was, "You will get lost. A lot." This didn't worry me as I figured I couldn't get too lost, and even if I did, I was bound to encounter one of the other 90 wedding guests eventually, and hopefully they'd be able to save me.

And of course we did get lost. A lot. Sometimes in the rain (because I'd managed not to carry with me the umbrella I bought and packed especially for this trip). Sometimes at night, while fighting with one another and eating pizza. Sometimes we stumbled upon something new and interesting. Often we passed the same exact thing 6 times in 20 minutes and realized we were really screwed.

But if you're reading this and wondering, "What? Are you too proud to stop and ask for directions?" Allow me to clarify.

Within the very first few hours of arriving in Venice I asked for directions to a pay phone (side note: being without a cellphone is more horrendous than you'd even imagine). I was told by the man behind the counter of a little shop, "It's over two bridges, then take a right." Everyone in Venice speaks near perfect English, btw. Since, at that moment, we were trying to meet up with the landlord of the apartment, we didn't want to wander too far so I didn't follow his directions. But as I came to be more familiar with the lay of the land over the next few days, I realized that had I actually gone two bridges and taken a right, I wouldn't have found a payphone.

Hmmph. Interesting.

In a separate conversation, Meghan explained her and Dave's experience of being lost and asking for directions and she was told by the Venetian she asked for help, "Go over two bridges, then take a right." They followed the directions, which didn't place them anywhere specifically more helpful, but they eventually found their way home.

I was getting to be suspicious about the reliability of these locals.

Then, when walking with Devin's mom to find a grocery store, we spotted a woman carrying a plastic bag from the precise store we were trying to locate. I suggested we just keep looking on our own, but Kathy thought there was no harm in asking. I waited a few feet away as she went up to ask the woman with the bag. When she came back and announced, "She said it's over two bridges, then we take a right," I was not the least bit surprised.

"I don't think that's going to get us anywhere."

We tried anyway. No grocery store. Only resentment.

So here's my tip for you, should you find yourself in Venice in future travels: Don't ask for directions.

Murano

Our first day trip was to the island of Murano, which is part of Venice and only a quick boat ride away. This is where they make all of the Venetian glass doodads to fill the hundreds and hundreds of glass shops in Murano and Venice. We even got to see a demonstration of a glass blower making a little horse. The demo and the product were cool, but the guy himself was the main attraction. Smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, picking his nose. This guy has it all figured out.

Afterwards, we wandered around (Venice is for wanderers), checking out the island, which somehow looked more like a fishing town than the main island.

Then we had some lunch to kill time (Venice is for eating... and time killing) and made our way back by Vaparetto (water bus), which is the main form of public transportation in Venice. See how I picked up some local lingo?

Doing Venetian Stuff: Part One

Technically I've accidentally skipped over a few smaller things that have happened between the bedroom makeover and today, but going to Italy seemed like the most doing stuff I done did all year. So without further delay...

Random Beginnings

You know how you'll have AOL IM up and running all day at work and occasionally you'll step away from your desk, and then return to an IM from someone that reads "OH MY GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE!" or "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED!" And right away you'll reply, "WHAT!? WHAT? OMG!" Except that the person who sent the IM sent it about 25 minutes earlier and has since wandered off, so you're left pondering what's got them so worked up. And then by the time they finally do respond, it's sort of a let down because the major news event is actually pretty minor. You know, that whole thing?

Well this trip began with something like that. In March, Devin IMed me with "Can you take a week off work in May?" When I saw the message and asked why, there was the inevitable delay. Naturally, during that time, I thought the worst. Someone was dying and we'd have to pay a visit to their bedside. We're being kicked out of our house and we'll need time to pack up and move. Why do I think such bad thoughts? Because spur of the moment Italian getaways do not typically fall in my lap.

But huzzah! The week off would be to fly to Venice and attend a friend's wedding. This wasn't the first time I'd heard of the wedding. We'd received a very elaborate invitation (more like a small book) in the mail months earlier. I'd promptly put it in the "Yeah right" pile along with a giant medical bill and a fundraising letter from my college.

And now suddenly it was being discussed as an actual possibility, thanks to a generous offer from the in laws to pretty much sponsor our trip. The whole family would be going and, well, what family trip would be complete without us?!

Immediately I decided this was happening, even as Devin attempted to fuel the conversation with questions about potential work opportunities on the horizon, expenses, dog care. To all this I could only respond: We are going. The end.


Venice, Here We Come!

In the weeks that followed, we renewed our passports, made arrangements for the pets, shopped, packed, and all that other pre-vacation stuff that makes you all the more relieved you're about to rest up for a week..

The total flight time from LA to Philly to Venice was something like 14 hours. I completely dreaded this as somewhere around hour 3 on any given plane ride I start to get claustrophobic and restless. Fortunately, however, in my old age I've gotten over my inability to fall asleep on planes and now I manage to conk out almost immediately, and proceed to sleep fitfully for the duration of the flight.

The first leg of the trip was uneventful. Then, the layover in Philadelphia, during which we met up with Devin's parents, went from being 2 hours to something like 5. Most of that time was spent sitting in the McDonald's by our gate, listening to wholly unsolicited updates on the loudspeaker about our plane. "We'll be off the ground shortly. Just had to switch out one of the windows. It was cracked and falling out." "Now we're just testing the window to make sure it holds under pressure. If that goes well, it should only be another twenty minutes before we board." "The test didn't quite work so we're trying something else, should just be another hour... or so."

By the time we finally boarded, I was much happier to enter the plane of doom than spend another minute in that McDonald's. I slept almost the whole flight.

Then, as we descended into Venice, disaster struck. No, the newly-repaired window did not come loose again.

I threw up.

I blame the turbulence and the long, long day of traveling and bad food. Also, I'm not sure what this says about me, but as I was about to blow and rummaging around in the seat pocket for the air sick bag, I paused for a moment and thought, "Wait, do people actually use these? I've never seen anyone do it." Heaven forbid I look lame while I'm publicly barfing in an enclosed space.

I like to think I was discreet. After we landed safely, I realized Devin hadn't even noticed, as he was looking out the window. "I threw up."
"Where?"
"The air sick bag."
"Huh. I didn't think people actually used those."

And so we arrived, groggy and nauseated, at the Marco Polo airport. Things could only get better from here!

The Weekend Bedroom Makeover

As I've mentioned before, I never much liked the aesthetics of our old apartment. The place was just run down and bleh, but I still did whatever I could to make it presentable and not a total embarrassment. I painted the living room, the dining room, the kitchen cabinets. We got new furniture. We hung pictures. The bathroom got a pretty wall decal and a snazzy new shower curtain. But I never put in any effort in the bedroom (that's what she said?).

Seriously, that room was horrendous. For the whole time I lived there it looked exactly the same as the day I moved in, put my stuff wherever I could, and said, "I'll deal with this later." It was just dingy, and uncoordinated and uncozy. At least at night it was dark and I didn't have to look at it. But sometimes in the mornings I'd wake up, look around and just think "UGH."

So when we moved into the new house a year ago, I vowed to make the bedroom my first priority. I hurried to pick out everything I'd need to assemble the perfect sanctuary/love nest.

Turns out, rushing to decorate a room produces only marginally better results than not decorating at all. And for the past year, I've been suffering with this:

The gray paint didn't really turn out to be the right color. I wanted something richer.

And speaking of the wrong color... how about those curtains? They didn't seem that bad when I bought them, but even as I was hanging them up I was having second thoughts. By the following morning, when the sun was shining through them and the whole room was bathed in a lime green glow, I concluded they might have been a mistake. To add insult to injury, one of the curtain rods is bent and partially ripped out from the wall from the time someone locked himself out and had to climb in through the window.

That wall decal hanging above the bed does absolutely nothing for me. It was an impulse purchase at Ikea that I thought would serve as a placeholder until I could find something better.

The mattress and box spring are on a metal frame with wheels that, even when locked, roll around on the hardwood floor to such an extent that when I wake up in the morning I'll find I'm not in the same place in the room as I was when I fell asleep. Also, because there's no headboard, two dark gray splotches have appeared on the wall, one on either side, above our pillows. Apparently we produce a great deal of soot while sleeping.

About the only things I like in this picture are the duvet cover, the bedside tables, and the cats (and even one of them is on thin ice).

Even though this room was meant to be my pride and joy, it received less care and attention than literally every other room in the house... and this includes the second bathroom which is used almost exclusively to house litter boxes.

And so in the spirit of spring cleaning and adhering to my New Year's resolution to generally be better in 2011, it was time to do something about this monstrosity. After some online perusing and a reconnoissance mission to Ikea, I finally had a perfect plan.

On Thursday after work, I drove to Ikea and picked out everything I needed. A bed, new curtains and curtain rods, some closet organizers, and a Kvartal panel system to hang some textured fabric on the wall behind the bed. Saturday morning I went to the Do It Center (my favorite place) to pick up some paint. And also back to Ikea to pick up some Kvartal pieces I forgot to get on Thursday. Whoops.

By the time I got started on the project, it was already 3pm. But I promised myself I would get it all done by Sunday night, come hell or high water.

Ready... set... go!

Bedroom Redo In A Weekend from Briana Mahoney on Vimeo.

For those of you playing at home, take a drink every time you catch a frame with a cat, an inadvertent close up shot of my butt, or a look of total despair on my face.

This is actually my favorite frame from the whole thing:

No, that's not a ghost. It's me, delirious on Sunday night, getting tangled in the duvet cover while making the bed.

The process went smoothly enough, I guess, though not without random small cuts on my fingers, extraneous holes in the wall, and a bed which may spontaneously collapse in the middle of the night.

And although it's cliché to point out that assembling crap from Ikea can lead to insanity, self-loathing and divorce, I still feel the need to complain about the Kvartal curtain rod, which came with no instructions. And the regular curtain rod, which came with instructions that started out all, "Yeah you should just have some screws laying around if you're going to do this." And the bed, which had holes too small for the screws it came with. I definitely had my moments when I wanted to claw at my face with an allen wrench.

Shut up, Ikea instruction booklet guy. Your illustrations are ridiculous.

Hey! Uncalled for!

NEVER!!!

By Sunday evening, I had finished nearly everything I'd set out to do. I meant to also organize my closet and hang some pictures, but enough is enough!

Bring on the before and after pics!

Here's closer look at the curtains and new paint color:

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the paint is really closer to black. It's actually called chalkboard black. I only painted that one wall, and I think it makes a nice complement to the lighter gray walls.

And a blurry look at the panels behind the bed.

Of course last night as I lay in bed, I noticed we could really use some shelves on the opposite wall. But I think that can wait.

Monkey Ghosts?

It seems we've stumbled onto a bit of a theme here at The Doing Stuff Blog. And that would be Hidden L.A., the secret places we hear about but seldom see. Or, really, never hear about and then don't believe exist when someone brings them up in conversation. The phenomenon is well documented on the aptly named blog, Hidden Los Angeles. Its delectable tagline: Embrace the deep beneath the shallow.

So last week I found a waterfall. Now it was time to find the Old Zoo, which I'd read about in a magazine article. This brings us to Griffith Park, which isn't hiding from anybody. Covering over 4100 acres of land, it's the largest urban wilderness area in the US. But within all that space and among all of the outdoor activities, there are nooks and crannies that go unnoticed. And in one of those nooks, there's rumored to be the relics of Los Angeles's abandoned zoo.

From 1902 to 1965 it was of course just known as THE zoo, but then it closed down (not for intriguing reasons like an escaped lion eating a family). The new sprawling facility opened in a different area of the park and the old animal enclosures were just left behind. This fact surprises me, as most cities don't leave old zoos sitting around, but hey when you've got 4100 acres to play with I guess it's easy to let things slide.

Devin's parents were visiting this weekend, and were up for anything, so it was time to drag them into this quest as well. I prepared by looking up the Old Zoo on Yelp. If I may take a moment to review the Yelp reviewers regarding this topic... I give them one star. Sure, they were all happy to tell me how awesome it was. How it was a great place to bring a joint and/or a camera. But would anyone offer up some insight on its locale? That's a big fat sarcastic, "Noooooo."

Somewhere in one of their sentence fragments, one yelper mentioned it was near the carousel. That was exactly the area of the park where I'd once gotten Devin and I severely lost while searching for our friend's kid's party by the pony rides. (Now I know the pony rides are immediately obvious from the Los Feliz entrance. You live, you learn.)

As we drove through the park, I directed Devin to the carousel.

"Wasn't that where you got us lost?"

Shoot. I was hoping he wouldn't remember. Meanwhile, I'd unconsciously fooled myself into "remembering" that "come to think of it, I did see a bunch of signs for the old zoo while we were snooping around that area looking for the ponies."

We arrived at the carousel and circled around. Of course there were no signs for the Old Zoo. There were no zoo-like structures. And, owing to the miserable rainy weather, there were no people in sight, so I couldn't even ask for a little guidance. Okay, there was one guy cleaning hamster cages on the trunk of his car in the parking lot, but I didn't want to get involved with him.

Now what? We drove along until, whoops, we drove clear out of the park. No matter. We'd just go around and enter again by the Greek Theater. On our way, we saw signs for the Griffith Observatory, so decided to make a stop.

Nothing much to report here. We saw a show at the planetarium and I played around with the panorama setting on my camera.

Okay well that was fun. But everybody knows where to find the observatory. It isn't hidden L.A. and definitely not a haunted zoo!

[Note: No one ever claimed the zoo was haunted, I just started presuming that at some point during the day.]

So we drove back to the carousel area of the park and set out on foot. We walked up a path that quickly dead ended at a heap of dirt. No zoo. Frantic, I turned to the useless yelpers, referring again to their drivel courtesy of the Yelp mobile app.

I found another clue in the form of one yelper's tip that "It's only marked by one brown sign that's easy to miss."

Where is this sign?

What does it say?

WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?

We wandered aimlessly through the picnic area for a few minutes before I spotted, in the distance, a brown sign (gasp!) nestled in some plants. In the next ten minutes, there would be three instances where I'd jump up and down, screaming and waving my arms around like a small child at Disney World.

The first instance occurred when I ran across the grass to have a better look at the sign.

Me: WAHHH THIS IS IT THIS IS IT!

Ahead were three paths. Oh, great. But I had a good feeling about one, and volunteered to run up ahead to spare everyone another dead end. (Really I just wanted to run because I couldn't contain my excitement.)

As I got closer, I saw...

Me: WAHHH THIS IS IT THIS IS IT!

We'd found it. The Old Zoo and all its marvelous ruins.

The third instance of stupid elation came when I noticed a ghost right in my field of vision in a picture Devin's mom snapped.

Me: DEVIN, WE HAVE A PICTURE OF A GHOST! WAHHH!!

He took one look at it and dismissed it as a rain drop. This from mister "There's an alien base under the Denver Airport."

Okay, it's rain. Obviously it's rain. But that's not the point.

Wanting him to find this all as creepy as I did, I was pleased when up the hill we found...

A SPOOKY SHED!!!

The cages out front may have once held birds or... worse... monkeys. Little turn-of-the-century monkeys that, without the benefit of modern day laws to protect them, were outfitted in tiny waistcoats and put on display. Now, they haunt the Old Zoo, fishing around in our pockets for change.

Sadly, the rain was really pouring down by this point and the others were eager to head back to the car. I resisted, until my camera was getting soaked.

Stay tuned for part II, when I make my way back to the Old Zoo for further explorations.