Saturday

My friends and I went to the L.A. Festival of Books yesterday. We planned an eight a.m. departure, but my procrastination and the fact I was driving made us late by one hour. We found little traffic on the way there, except a brief hiccup on the 405 exit.

Arriving at 9:45, we wandered around the small city of UCLA trying to find free parking; however, we all knew it was beyond hopeless into the realm of ridiculous to find such parking. Throwing up my arms in frustration (not literally, though, because I was driving), I caved in and shuffled into a parking structure. A whopping $10 was my punishment.

Fresh from our adventures in parking, we walked a short distance to the actual book festival. Immediately we went to a 10:30 panel on the importance of literature upon a child's imagination with David Shannon, Pam Munoz Ryan, and Kadir Nelson. I was the one who primarily wanted to go because I had to find my professor and sign-in for extra credit. I did find her, although I never signed-in because after the discussion was over and the authors were going to sign books, I got lost and couldn't find the signing booth. I looked for twenty minutes before finally giving up. Now I hope it was enough for her to see me to get the extra credit.

Afterward, we wandered for a bit, making our way to the comics on the other side of the festival (a good quarter-to-half mile), retraced out steps to the food court in the center because I felt lightheaded from hunger, then doubled backed a final time because my friends' lunches were in my car.

We ate in the mostly pedestrian-less parking garage for half an hour, then we all took an hour nap because we were all exhausted already. I tried going to sleep, but my body couldn't relax.

Around 2 or 3, we saw the Wayans brothers, Henry Winkler, and Alicia Silverstone signing or promoting various things. The sun was hard on our faces by this time, so we sought some shade and relaxed for a bit.

The day was winding down around 4 pm, but we waited for a friend of ours who lives in UCLA to return from a trip. We waited for another hour, but by that time we were all so exhausted we decided to leave without seeing our friend and hoofed it back to my car.

The return home was far worse than the morning drive. We spent a solid hour in fifteen mile per hour traffic. We got home around 6:30, having left at 5. We had some McDonalds, then waited until 10 at my friends house before seeing Kick-Ass. I enjoyed it, but I didn't agree with my friend--who had already seen it before--who place it in his top 5 movies of all-time.

After the movies, we went back to my friends house where another one of our friends came over and they started to play 'Kings Cup'. It's drinking game where you pick a random card from a deck and have to follow the corresponding rule to that card. One rule was called Heaven; when a person draws a 7 of any suit, everybody at the table has to point to the sky. The last person to do this takes a drink.

As one who doesn't drink (or smoke), I found the game pretty fun even though I was drinking Pepsi. Most of my friends were definitely buzzed by the time I took them home. I finally came home around 3:30 in the morning, a new personal best (or worst).

I went to bed and read the last pieces of Tom Sawyer before finally sleeping off the long day. My mom reprimanded me a bit for being out so late, but I apologized; everything was fine when I woke up this morning.