OMG!

This is Mingus. He’s my cat. When he was just a few weeks old, he flew onboard a Northwest Airlines cargo flight from Minneapolis to Boston, where my roommate Jawad picked him up at the airport and brought him to me.

He was a tiny baby.

Now he’s a giant. This is normal, since he’s a Ragdoll, one of the largest cat breeds. Although he could probably afford to lose a few pounds.

He’s super friendly, though territorial around other cats. He gets along well with my sister’s chihuahuas, since he could easily swat them down – he’s about twice their size.

Most of the time, he just loafs around the house. He likes to stare out the window, and he likes to play with a laser pointer. When he isn’t eating, he’s probably puking. Again, normal for ragdolls, since they have long hair. For some strange reason, he likes to lick plastic bags before and after puking (which is a nice way to alert me that I’ve got some cleaning to do). He also likes to wake me up at 3am when his food dish needs filling. He does this by punching me in the face. Literally.

I love cats, especially Minguses.

I’ve recently taken to finding new and exciting places around Los Angeles that require little or no money to enjoy (times is tough, people!). So today Lisa and I did a couple fun things.

First we went to the Greystone Mansion & Park. The mansion once belonged to oil tycoon Edward Doheny, a once-prominent figure in Beverly Hills. The house and grounds have long since passed into the hands of the city, and are now available for public enjoyment. Today there was a wedding in the garden and house, so we couldn’t see much, but here are a couple more photos.

After a pleasant picnic in the park, I decided to head downtown to visit the LA Central Library. This library is much like the New York Public Library, or the Seattle Public Library: massive architectural milestones, and incredible book repositories to boot. It was my first time at the library, and I’m guessing it won’t be my last. Fortunately, today was a pretty quiet day at the library, and I was able to browse without crowds. And on weekends they have cheap parking!

Here’s the atrium of the library:

And finally I made a trip into Chinatown, where Lisa and I browsed the strange and wonderful culinary and cultural oddities that make Chinatown unique. How about dried sea dragons?

Then we headed into a mall to grab some boba tea. Unfortunately they were out of boba (for real), so I opted for a vanilla and red bean smoothie. Not bad, not great, way too big.

Total cost:
Greystone Mansion & Park – $0 ($20 if you count the lunch we brought with us)
LA Central Library – $1 for parking
Chinatown – $15 for two smoothies, wasabi peas, kiwifruit jelly candies, and a giant box of oolong tea

Someday I’ll actually get to fly on a rocket, but for the time being it’s pretty exciting just to see one launch.  I had the opportunity to watch a test flight of TrueZer0‘s entry in the lunar lander challenge.  This is not a launch vehicle (i.e. something that’ll fly you into space), but rather a next generation landing module, designed to softly land and traverse on a foreign planet.

I snapped a whole lot of awesome pictures, available on my Flickr stream.  Here’s a sample: