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A day to myself, for myself -- 04.11.06
 
I make a couple of mini pizzas from scratch today, one for me and one for my Aunt I wanted today to be an adventure like yesterday was. Yesterday I basically went on a day by myself, for myself. I've been going to school and work basically everyday for a couple of months straight now. It's not so bad but I was due for a little bit of a rest. Thank the maker for Spring Break because another day and I might have had to do something drastic like call in sick to work. I'm not going to miss school because I'm already behind in my studies.

As I was saying yesterday I went on a little adventure. I went to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. The aquarium has been on my list of things to do for a long time now. Basically since it opened a few years ago, but I haven't had the chance to go. Well I finally made the time to go and it was OK. It took me a good two hours to get there on the Metro. How come it takes so long to get somewhere when you're in a hurry and the trip back takes half as long? Anyway, the aquarium was OK, but certainly not worth the nearly $20 they charge. I had a coupon that made the price $18.75, but even that's pretty steep. I think that if they charged $10 or so I would think that it's a great deal. Especially considering that the place is kinda small.

This past November I went to The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is much bigger/better than the one here in Long Beach. There are so many more exhibits at the Monterey aquarium. As I walked into the aquarium in Long Beach I saw that the first exhibit was all jellyfish. Sadly there were only a few tanks in a small room with a few jellyfish in each. I remember the exhibit in Monterey was huge and probably had a few thousand jellyfish of different varieties. Compare the following pictures.

The one on the left is part of the exhibit in Monterey. The right side shows the same kind of jellyfish in the exhibit here in Long Beach. The Long Beach exhibit had that one tank with that kind of jellyfish, while the Monterey exhibit had about a dozen huge tanks like the one pictured.

Either way I'm not here to bash the Aquarium of the Pacific, I just thought that it would have been bigger and with more exhibits seeing as they're charging $19.95, the same price I paid for The Monterey Bay Aquarium (w/student discount, $21.95 regular price). Still, the whole idea was to get out of the house, which I did.

On my way back to the train I walked through this shopping center called "The Pike" in Long Beach. As I passed through a couple of things came to mind. The first was how completely desolate it was, as the following picture will illustrate.

It's clear that someone put a lot of money into this project in order to take advantage of the Blue line station being a block away and having the Long Beach convention center across the street. But man is it ever an eyesore. Look at the picture and tell me that doesn't look like the side of some warehouse painted a bunch of crazy colors to disguise how ugly it really is. The Pike is very ugly, so it's no wonder that there weren't but a half dozen people walking around in the middle of the day. Someone should have thought to have the buildings have some sort of nautical theme, seeing that it is LONG BEACH. As it stands "The Pike" is just a stupid collection of nondescript buildings painted a bunch of annoying colors.

After the aquarium I treated myself to lunch at Clifton's. I wanted to have another slice of that lemon pie I had there last time, but they didn't have any. :( I took that as a sign to go to my other planned stop, The Fair Oaks pharmacy in South Pasadena.

I heard about this place a broadcast of this Metro line program that showcases places you can visit on the Metro. The Fair Oaks pharmacy is famous because it has a soda fountain inside, like how pharmacies used to in the era before I was born (pictured below).

I treated myself to a hot fudge sundae and a cherry Rickey (pictured below).

Both were subpar, which disappointed me. I heard so much about this place, and it does have a cool atmosphere, but the sundae was just OK, and the Rickey was bland. How hard must you look to find ice cream that has no flavor? Why not serve some damn Thrifty brand ice cream, or H�agen-Dazs, or Blue Rabbit, or something that has flavor? I still enjoyed myself because of the atmosphere. It was just cool to sit there eating a flat tasting sundae and banal Rickey.

It sucks that today is day two of my four day spring break but I didn't get to do anything fun. I wanted to do something fun today, but I wasn't sure what to do or where to go. I'm thinking that Thursday I should go somewhere fun, maybe Disneyland or something. Disneyland might be farfetched at this point, but it's on my short list of places to visit. I don't just want to sit here doing homework on my last day before I have to go to stupid work.

Speaking of work, I put in an application to a couple of other jobs. Honestly this current job isn't super bad, but it's a complete dead-end. I see that everyone there is COMPLETELY miserable. I can understand that. I'm sure that most of them had dreams of working at somewhere other than a supermarket. They must wonder how they ended up where they are now. It's easy, you go with the flow and next thing you know you turn around and you've put 10 years into a job you hate. I rather jump off a bridge than end up that way. Mark my words, if I'm working at this job at the end of the Summer I'm going to either quit or jump off the Vincent Thomas bridge.

Anyway, that's it for this entry. Here are some more pictures from The Aquarium of the Pacific... enjoy.

End Communication.

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