Tale of a tub and flub of a tale

Pomona, CA – Today was one of those days for doing laundry, picking up groceries and resting.  Even in California, with perfect temperatures and beautiful sunshine, one has to address the mundane from time to time.

You never know what you’re going to find upon entering the laundry room of an RV park. The one here was clean and had plenty of machines, with only a couple labeled ‘out of order’.  It’s always nice to lift the lid and see that the tub is big enough for your entire load, and to find it requires fewer, rather than more, quarters to run it.

Another plus is if the dryer cycle is long enough to remove the moisture from the clothes without frying them to a crisp – and that the previous user has cleaned out the lint trap.  This laundry room had a nice folding counter at a good height, but it lacked rolling baskets to get the load from the dryer on one side of the room to the counter on the other – necessitating multiple trips with hot armloads of clothes, and the inevitable sock or towel landing on the floor in transit.

I have mentioned previously the fun of grocery shopping in a strange store, with products one doesn’t find at home.  It lengthens the exercise when one has to read labels and roam about trying to figure out where the raisins are, too.  There are upsides – such as discovering new products or lower prices.

With the chores out of the way, we decided to go see a movie.  The Monuments Men was the only one on our list that seemed to be still in local theatres, so it was an easy choice.  Unfortunately, we were disappointed.  Although it was based on a true story that is extraordinary – a team of American art experts sent into wartime Europe to locate and return precious works of art stolen and hidden by the Nazis – the writing and narrative flow of the movie was not very good.  There were some redeeming scenes and moments, but Oscar material it was not.

So that was our day, but since I have a bit of space, I can add a bit about yesterday that there wasn’t room to include (I try to keep these blog entries to one page): For dinner last night, following the tour of Sony Pictures Studios, we met our friend Sam and her boyfriend Jon at Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City, just a couple of blocks from the studios. “Ford”, it turns out, is restaurant owner Ben Ford, the brother of actor Harrison Ford of Indiana Jones fame.  I kept looking at the staff to see who might be Ben, and finally I caught sight of him – the family resemblance was unmistakable! It was kind of a treat to have another close brush with Hollywood personalities.