Murders and Jigsaws
Trip Start
Nov 11, 2008
1
12
22
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Irvine,
California,
United States
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Sunday December 7th
It's another lazy Sunday afternoon. A couple of hours ago, Paul, Amanda and I went out to breakfast (even though it was gone 12) and had the most delicious french toast with cream cheese, fresh fruit, bacon, eggs and a basket of flavoured teas. That's what Sundays are all about!
On Friday, Erika was here visiting from San Diego, so we went to the Beverley Center; a mall in Beverly Hills. It only took about an hour to drive there and it was a lovely sunny day. The shops were pretty good; two big Forever 21's and a huge H&M as wlel as lots of designer shops... and a pet shop with cute little dogs, aww! However, LA is infamous for its bad traffic at rush hour, so our drive home took about 3 hours as the freeway was busy so we took a detour through places like Santa Monica, Venice and Long Beach... but that took even longer! But at least I got to see some more sights and I got a nice mexican takeaway on the journey.
Last night Amanda hosted a murder mystery party at a friend's apartment locally in Irvine. I'd not been to one before so wasn't sure what to expect, but it was a lot of fun and I am sooo hosting one myself with 'the gang' once I get back in January (Hev and co, I will message you all soon to arrange it!) The concept is pretty simple - there has been a murder and everyone has to figure out who did it. Everyone is assigned a character and given a description of how you are connected to the murder victim and the other characters, and various clues and evidence are given throughout the evening.
The theme was law firm Lie, Cheat & Steal's xmas party - one of the partners A. Big Scam had been murdered a few days previously then at the party the newly appointed partner Ben D. Toy was also murdered. I played A. Big Scam's aspiring actress widow Barbie Dahl-Scam, so I wore a lacey black dress (as I was a greiving widow) and a santa hat. Throughout the game everyone mingled (and drank a lot) in character and tried to get gossip from one another to figure out the murderer. There were so many suspects, including the other law partners (Paul played a hot shot lawyer Will Lie), ex wives/mistresses and the local gossip journalist who I thought it might have been... but it ended up being Masha Mallow, a character who had access to poisons and toxins (the victims had been poisoned) It was a lot of fun, and afterwards we had a White Elephant present exchange - the concept is that everyone finds or buys a funny/random gift and wraps it up, then we each take it in turns to take a present OR 'steal' one that someone has already chosen. Once everyone has had a turn, you each get another go to either keep your current gift or steal another one... but a gift can only change hands three times. I got a cool fortune telling kit, which I used on people later that evening, while Paul got a Jonas Brothers dvd (he was thrilled!), Amanda got a Dancing With The Stars jigsaw and other gifts included a shark bottle opener, three identical pairs of earrings, bubbles, a knife and a massive Twilight movie poster (which was very popular!) It was a fun night, everyone ate and drank a lot... although me Paul and Chris stayed up til gone 1am outside on the porch doing Amanda's jigsaw... how rock and roll of us!
It's almost 3.30pm now and a group of us are about to drive into Hollywood to go to Ameba, a really cool record shop, and have dinner in Roscoe's chicken restaurant, should be fun. Then on Tuesday I'm heading up the West Coast for my next trip... one of the attractions on my list to visit is the first ever Starbucks... not that I haven't been to one here yet, they seem to be on every street!
