day #2

recap of day #2 (08 march 2010):
- we headed back to north hollywood from san rimo (where we were house-sitting) @ around 6:15a. while mara was @ work, i lazed in the room doing work & relaxing.  :)
- after mara finished @ CBS, we headed back toward san rimo. on the way, we stopped @ a middle eastern grocery store i happened to see in a strip mall on our route -- the basha grocery. we got lots of cheese, including a couple flavors of laughing cow i'd never seen & a block of danish stuff recommended by the attendant who laughed @ us (i.e. me) for taking pictures of another cheese that had a crazy package (it featured a mostly bald man in a leather jacket looking really excited about a hunk of white cheese, & for some reason it really cracked me up). we also got lemon & herb pita chips, a couple of drinks to try, & some other miscellaneous goodies.
- we headed to joey & leona's place to let dixie the puppy out & eat some dinner (which consisted of the goodies we'd purchased @ the grocery, etc. -- i ate fresh strawberries & nutella plus pita chips with pieces of danish cheese & the olive spread i bought @ the farmer's market the day before). we looked up movie times for "alice in wonderland" but again decided we'd prefer an evening in (johnny depp was postponed a second time), so we headed to blockbuster to rent "the hurt locker". while we were there we also picked up "love happens" & learned that one of the male employees has memorized the entire "mulan" soundtrack...
- we snuggled in for the night in san rimo with "the hurt locker" (didn't get to "love happens"... had to get up too early). it was very good. i can see why it won the oscar, but i can also see why it didn't gross much @ the box office. it was a very enlightening movie in terms of learning what it means to serve in iraq, dismantling IEDs on a day-to-day basis. not a bunch of gratuitous violence, definitely not your typical action movie. very smart, very minimalistic (which gave your brain a chance to work instead of having the whole pre-packaged story handed to you). powerful ending too. overall, i was very impressed. i'd like to see it again, as one of my professors/thesis committee members recommended seeing it twice to digest the whole thing (he actually saw it two times back-to-back in the theater). so tyler, we can rent it together, don't worry.  

i think today i'll venture out of my room for some lunch. room service has been OK, but i'm craving something that's not a panini.

(note: the timestamps are three hours ahead of local time in CA.)