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But Have They Bought a Campus Parking Sticker?

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No, that was not a freight train at Santa Monica College.

The boxcar-like procession in the middle of Pearl Street was actually a line of temporary classrooms delivered to the college Wednesday and moved onto the campus Thursday for final assembly.

The six bungalows will provide more classroom and library space while earthquake repairs and expansion work continue on Santa Monica College buildings.

They’ll join more than 40 temporary buildings already in use on the campus since last year’s Northridge earthquake, said college spokesman Bruce Smith.

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While they were strung along Pearl Street, the bungalows added to the already considerable traffic congestion caused by the start of spring semester, which officially got under way on Monday.

They’ll be needed. Enrollment, Smith said, is up 3% from last spring.

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BUT WAS IT A SAMSONITE?: If you think you left your suitcase on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, don’t bother going back for it.

An employee of an art gallery in the 300 block of North Rodeo Drive called Beverly Hills police about 9 p.m. Wednesday, wondering what she should do about a suitcase someone had left outside the shop.

Police came to take a look.

The suitcase looked suspiciously like “a suspicious package,” so police decided to cordon off the street.

“Better be safe than sorry,” a police spokesman said, and they called in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad.

The suspicious package looked so suspicious to the bomb squad that it was decided to pull no punches. They blew it up.

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It turned out the package was as advertised--a suitcase. Now it is a suspicious jumble of shredded clothes.

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GOES WITHOUT SAYING DEPT.: Farrah Fawcett will be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next week.

And guess where.

“Star is Appropriately Located in Front of a Hair Salon,” a press release notes.

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LEAPING LIZARDS! For those who might have wondered, performing CPR requires creativity when the subject of revival is an iguana.

Just ask Tori Matthews, an officer with the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who must be among the few ever to adapt the lifesaving method for reptiles.

Last weekend, Matthews dove into a frigid pool in Beverly Hills and rescued a resident’s pet iguana, which had drowned just minutes before. By the look of the reptile’s head lolling to the side, Matthews figured the spiny-backed reptile was dead.

But before giving up, she decided to try CPR on the 3-foot creature. She held the iguana with both hands--its stomach facing the ground and its head angled slightly downward--and pressed her fingers into a spot somewhere between the stomach and chest.

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She pressed 10 times and then breathed into the iguana’s nostrils, alternating about 20 times between pressing and breathing.

“All of a sudden, its eyes opened . . . and then the tail started to wiggle a little,” she said. “I was shocked.”

Of course, Matthews was relieved that she had saved the iguana, but she said the rescue has had a downside.

“Once guys find out that you’ve kissed an iguana, it’s so difficult to get a date,” she said.

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