In between rounds of “you post too damn much, stop flooding my streams,” or “do you eat 37 meals a day?” I occasionally hear positive things from my social media followers, such as “you do the coolest things on weekends, I’m so glad I can follow your shenanigans.” Well, thanks! While I often find that I work too much, and spend way too much time sitting on the intarwebs, when I get some free time, I like to explore. But not by myself.

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

My family went to Las Vegas after Thanksgiving.  Apart from the traffic (7 hours to get from LV to LA) and the usual family bickering, it was a pretty fun trip.  Even got to see LOVE.  Here are some photos (all shot with my trusty Blackberry, so excuse the quality).

I promise I won’t turn this blog into a Virgin America fanclub, but I just had to post this little gem.  As if my favorite airline weren’t awesome enough, they sent me this the other day:

On Nov. 22, Virgin America will launch its beta version of Gogo® in-flight Internet service during YouTube Live. Tune in at 5pm PT to watch the first-ever live, air-to-ground video-stream during the show. Check out youtube.com/virginamerica to see exclusive videos by some of YouTube’s biggest celebrities.
Virgin America will begin rolling out Gogo® internet service in late November, and will be the first U.S. carrier to offer fleet-wide in-flight wi-fi by Spring 2009.

How awesome is that?  The first airline to offer in-flight WiFi, and they’re debuting it by videoconferencing live during the big YouTube event this month.

Swoon.