I�m off to Los Angeles in four weeks and so my thoughts have turned to the things I love about being in LA. I know its not cool to love LA, but I do at least partly because I had such a good time living there when I was at college and I have good friends there.

So here�s an incomplete list of things I love about LA, in no particular order. You will notice that many of these are related to eating and/or shopping, and many of them apply to the States generally but that�s no reason not to put them in the LA list.

- Hanging out with Dada and Frank who I only see once every 18 months or so but feel like I see all the time, and the way we immediately slip back into comfortable chatter as if we only saw each other yesterday

- The shoe department at Macy�s in the Beverly Centre (sorry, Center)

- Ben and Jerry�s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice-cream

- In-n-Out Burger

- Banana Republic

- Versailles

- Anthropologie

- The Bruin Theatre in Westwood, especially on opening weekend

- Hershey�s Kisses

- The dress code � unless it�s the Oscars, jeans are always appropriate

- The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (and yes, we have a few of them here now and no, it�s not the same)

- Barneys

- Third Street. Both of them, for completely different reasons

- The Kings (though if they�d bloody well win a game I�d be a lot happier)

- Sephora

- The Felafel King

And this time I will be catching up with Greer who I haven�t seen since 1993. Amazing.

Also, within minutes of me advising my travel dates, Dada had already started organising a party, a hike and a trip to the outlet mall. This is why we are friends.

* * *

Entirely unrelated aside. Our next book club meeting is in a couple of weeks. Betty planned this and emailed everyone about it back in November! I feared this was planning way too far in advance and nobody could commit themselves that early, even for the meeting set to resuscitate the book club after Fraulein�s near successful attempt to kill it with Dante�s Inferno. No one did commit themselves, though no one said no either.

I thought it was worthwhile to send out a reminder today because the invitation was sent in November (!) and I needed reminding so I imagined everyone else did too. Several people then immediately committed themselves and confirmed that they were reading or had immediate plans to read the book. And then just now I got an email from Betty which said in a hopeful tone �Have you had any �I can�t come on that day� responses? I�ve had a better offer for that night, but I wanted to check to see if book club was still on before I turned it down�. I laughed out loud. At least Betty's already read the book.