Living Life to the Fullest: Cupcake ATMs and Spaceships

So far the most viewed blogs of mine have been pictures of my apartment. I guess I'll have to start taking way more photos wherever I go. This post has quite a few pictures, but you're also going to get a lot of my talking about what I've been up to (which you can skip over if you just want to look at pictures).

Friday afternoon we ended up going to the place Corey had lunch at while doing background acting. It's called Native Foods and it's all vegan. We went because between 3pm-6pm on Fridays, the nachos Corey had are half off. We split those, along with a blackened "chicken" wrap they had on special that day, and because I started a rewards card, I got a free drink! We stuffed ourselves on nachos, fries, and half of the wrap, and took the other half home.

You can't see it, but there are black beans and taco "meat" in there

In addition to blackened, the "chicken" also comes crispy or grilled

Afterwards, we made our way over to Beverly Hills! That's where sprinkles is. They have a cupcake store, the cupcake ATM I mentioned before, and they recently opened an ice cream store. I got a red velvet cupcake from inside and Corey got a chocolate marshmallow cupcake from the ATM. We took those home and ate malted chocolate ice cream in a red velvet cone from the ice cream store.

An ATM. For cupcakes!!!

Corey with his ice cream and cupcake.

Marshmallow on the left, Red Velvet on the right

I took a video of the cupcake ATM in action that I'll have to see if I can post later. To get home, we decided to go through the hills of Beverly Hills. It was getting dark so we couldn't see a lot, but there were a lot of really nice houses. It was also scary because the roads are super narrow and winding, there are sharp turns and no shoulder. Did I mention it was getting dark? At one point we turned down the wrong road, but we happened to find a scenic overlook. My pictures aren't that great, but you could see city lights for miles and miles. It was awesome!

This weekend, the Space Shuttle Endeavour has been making it's way from LAX to the California Science Center. If you haven't heard about it, google it. It's really cool. There are some awesome pictures here. Plus there are tons of videos on YouTube. They removed trees (they're going to replant more), and took down street lights so it could fit down the streets. Saturday afternoon Corey and I went with our other roommate, Mary, to see the shuttle.

On the way, we drove through Korea Town. Mary used to live in the area. It was such an interesting place. If you didn't know any better, you'd think there was some sort of street fair going on, but I guess it's always like that. There were tons on people out on the side walks, people in the park, people with stuff for sale lying out on the sidewalks, it was a super busy place.

We parked a couple of blocks away from the Shuttle route and walked to an intersection near the Science Center. It was maybe... 6-6:30? It wasn't supposed to be getting to the Science Center until 8-ish, but there were still a lot of people out. We got a really good spot right in the front of the sidewalk though. And we waited. And waited. Mary kept looking at updates on her phone. It only moves 2mph, so we knew it was going to take a while. Here it was like a fair! There were people selling food from carts. Corey tried his first LA dog. I sadly didn't get a picture. It's a hotdog wrapped in bacon, topped with grilled peppers and onions. Corey thought it was amazing, and he only paid $3 for it. Mary said downtown around the bars she's paid as much as $6. There were also people selling light up toys, space shuttle t-shirts, commemorative posters, etc.

Waiting in front of us was a boy who was roughly 2 with his mom and grandma. At one point I looked down and he was staring up at me. I smiled, waved, and said "Hi!" His mom said something to him in Spanish, then she picked him up and he gave me a kiss on the cheek. Then we motioned over to my roommate, Mary, and the mom walked him over to her and he gave her a kiss on the cheek. It was a little weird, but super cute :)

We'd been there over an hour and the updates kept saying it hadn't left the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza where it was supposed to stop for viewing for 30 minutes. People walking by said they were 5 hours behind and it wasn't going to get to the Center until 1am. A policeman on a bicycle with a bullhorn confirmed that later when he announced exactly that to the crowd waiting. So we decided to drive closer to where it was.

Good thing we did, because we got there around 8, and it still hadn't moved. We pushed through the crowd towards the front and got some awesome pictures. After a while they started something up and we thought it was going to move. Turns out they were just adjusting the wheels from wide to narrow to fit through the streets. We waited, and waited, and waited, hoping to see it move. But finally around 11 or so we decided it was time to head out. Good thing we did because it sounds like it didn't start moving until 1:30am, and it didn't make it to the Center until 10:45am.