I'm taking off tonight for Los Angeles -- there's a welcome event/scholarship reception thing tomorrow at the program I'm starting in the fall. I'm very much looking forward to spending the rest of the weekend visiting friends, record shopping, restaurant-hopping, taking pictures, and navigating L.A.'s complex bus system. And, since my hotel's not far from the beach, maybe I can get a little of that in as well.

I'll be flying into LAX on Song (Delta's low-cost carrier), which will be interesting. I've never flown with them before and they'll be discontinuing their service at the end of the month, when the current fleet will get a new coat of paint and get reabsorbed back into Delta proper, with all of the amenities but minus the lime green and orange color scheme and singing stewardesses. (I'll learn soon enough whether Song is a Chuck E. Cheese in the sky for yuppies, but my guess is that it's fine, and preferable to the soul-sucking Gulag-like atmosphere of other airlines.)