California Uber Alles

A little over a month ago, Missy and I flew out to Southern California to visit my family for a whirlwind weekend visit. We had two main goals: to help my sister, Cynthia, celebrate her birthday and finally see the house she just bought, and pay a visit to the Los Angeles version of the RENEGADE HANDMADE craft fair in Chinatown...



We flew in to Riverside and went to my parents' house. The next morning, I rummaged through their garage where much of my belongings are still stored. I'm embarrassed to admit that my junk takes up a good 75% of the garage. I found a drawer filled to the brim with much of my CASSETTE SINGLE collection and various old MIX TAPES. You can't tell from the photos, but the drawer goes 4 to 5 cassettes deep. I dug out a bunch of the tapes and set them aside to send back Athens:





Digging through my stuff when I visit home is always a daunting task and I am always at a loss as to where to begin looking, save trying to decide what I can take or send back. Part of the hesitation is because, even if I was able to get all my belongings from California to Athens, we simply don't have room for all of it in our house. We would have to put another storage shed in our backyard. In one corner of the garage are boxes filled with pieces from my STAR WARS collection - there's even a box filled with even more cassette tapes, and a box filled with my old SNOWGLOBE collection, all of which I didn't even get to touch:



All these big plastic crates are also filled with my stuff - mostly books, magazines, videotapes, and toys:



These storage boxes are filled with some of my SIMPSONS toy collection, almost all of it mint in box. I pulled out a couple of items to send back home:











After spending the morning in the garage, we headed out to Los Angeles with my sister, Belinda, her hubby Shawn, and my nieces and nephew, Julia, Lillian, and Evan. We made a beeline to my sister Cynthia's new house in the foothills of Highland Park. Cynthia lives on the side of the hill, which is terraced above and below the house. We parked behind and above her house and worked our way down through her backyard...





Before stepping in we stopped briefly to enjoy the hillside view - we especially liked the house across the street below, with the FUNKY ARCH for an entrance way:





Inside, we were greeted by Cynthia and her cat, Toby:



















In the kitchen, Julia showed off her CARTWHEEL abilities and Lilly showed off her breakdancing skills by busting out a BACKSPIN:









Back outside, we explored the front and backyards before heading out to the craft fair...

















On our way to Renegade Handmade, we passed this cool looking TRAIN STATION in Chinatown:







The next day we visited my sister Belinda's house. Missy couldn't help but get up in the kids' playhouse and pull a few tricks on the swingset...







My brother-in-law, Shawn, who is a contractor, built this fancy modern STORAGE SHED FROM SCRATCH, without a blueprint or design. He just had a rough idea of what he wanted and started building it in his spare time. Amazing. Inside, my 7 year-old nephew Evan, had a STORYBOARD for an episode of ADVENTURE TIME taped up on a wall. Evan, who is a huge Adventure Time fan, had previously been writing ADVENTURE TIME FAN FICTION in the form of comic books. Here he was taking it to the next level...







We also got to play around in their new Winnebago, and meet their new cat, COCONUT:







Later that night, we had TABLETOP SMORES back at my parents' house. It was actually the second time that weekend we had tabletop Smores. Afterwards, the kids put on a little variety show called MR. FLUFFY PANTS...they even made POSTERS for the show, which they taped on the living room walls...