Odds and Ends

Just a few odds and ends that I have heard about recently:

- The news is Los Angeles is nuts. Ever night at 11:00 (what normal person--i.e. not a college student--stays up until 11:00 everynight on a weeknight anyway?? Do people on the West coast not sleep? Don't they have to get up early to go to work? That could explain their driving, which is a topic for a whole other day.) the news anchor comes on and tells about some breaking news story where, without fail, there has been another car accident or shooting. Then we always have, of course, the reports of shootings, robberies, and abductions that have happened during the day. It kind of reminds me of the newspapers in Guatemala where everyday without fail they had pictures of a horrible murder or deadly car accident as the frontpage news. Just something you come to expect. In L.A. we have the mundane things that would be top news stories in Utah, and then move onto the real crazy stuff: whole families being murdered in their homes, ladies claiming the life insurance money of homeless men who have died, ladies offering to buy a baby and then kidnapping it, three children drowning in backyard swimming pools in the same weekend, stuff like that and crazier stuff that I can't even remember. Only in L.A.

-Speaking of children drowning in swimming pools... there was a ward in our stake that at one time had four lawsuits going where people were suing other people in their ward, members suing members. One lawsuit was between the Primary President and her first counselor. It's a sad story really, made even sadder by the lawsuit. The Primary was having a presidency meeting at the Primary President's house and the first counselor had brought her three year old child. Somehow the gate to the pool got opened and the child fell in and drowned. Really sad, especially since it happened while they were attending to church callings. However, the first counselor then went and sued the Primary President over it! Another lawsuit a woman was suing the church because she had tripped on a step and she claimed that the church should have had better lighting in the area. Only in L.A.

- Well, we are in L.A., near Hollywood (the sign is not that impressive by the way), so I have to tell about all my movie and T.V. connections. First, the two old ladies in New York Doll that work at the family history center are in our ward. Also in our ward is Doug Heder, Jon Heder's (Napoleon Dynamite) brother. Another guy that I have met at work was in an episode of 24, he was a guard in CTU who Jack Bauer knocks out. Yeah, I know, my list isn't that impressive, but I have only been here a month, give me a little more time. Robert saw Adam Sadler at a Dodgers game.

-I say we are near Hollywood because L.A. really isn't as huge as I thought it was as far as space. Every place in L.A. is nearby if you go by Utah standards. Isn't Salt Lake close to Provo? Well, here people would balk at having to go that far to get to anything. That's because there are so many people packed into this town that it takes twice as long to get anywhere! Downtown is like 15 miles away from us, but it takes an hour to get there because the freeway doesn't ever move and the surface streets are just as bad.