Saturday, November 28, 2009

happy thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving! We had a great time - made a turkey and all the fixin's in our lil' kitchen, ate in our lil' living room, and hung out with my brother and sister-in-law for a couple of days.
We got up early to get our first Thanksgiving turkey in the oven.

Success!



Post-Thanksgiving walk to the beach for sunset.

hotchkiss park, i love you

Jesse and I are so grateful to live across the street from a beautiful park. We have a great view from the living room windows, Yuki gets to sit and stare at dogs all day, and we are continually entertained by lots of crazies. Some of them are genuine crazies, like the ones that scream at no one for no reason. Some of them are only a little crazy, like the ones who think they are providing "live music" but really are only irritating all of us within ear shot. And others are just crazy on purpose. Why not. These are my absolute favorite kind of crazies. Here are three examples:

1) Hotchkiss Park (like everywhere else in this city) seems to attract a lot of filmmakers...mostly amateur, it would appear. One day, Jesse said there was a crew filming all day. The scene? A variety of people took turns sitting on a park bench. When the director yelled, "action," they jumped to their feet and screamed at the top of their lungs. I caught the tail end of this when I got home from work, and thought it was hilarious. Apparently Jesse had to listen to it all day, and it lost its humor after a while.

2) One weekend afternoon, two guys wearing clownish wigs sat in the back of a pickup truck beating drums. The passenger in the cab played a horn. They drove around the block for several hours. A couple of weeks later - repeat.

3) This one is my favorite, but unfortunately I missed seeing it in person. Jesse is so lucky he gets to work at home and watch all of this. While working of course. A guy in a cat suit was sitting in a tree. He was supposed to jump out of the tree on to an air mattress on the ground. Actually two air mattresses, including one really thick one. There were three or four other people there filming. Please note, the tree branch is NOT that far from the ground. According to Jesse, the guy sat in the tree for half an hour refusing to jump. I assumed it was the whole - can't get the cat of the tree thing. Nope. He really was too scared to jump, and apparently the film crew was getting really annoyed and was ready to pack up and leave him there, when he finally went for it. My wonderful husband captured this on video. It's hilarious.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

traffic

I've been pretty smug about traffic since we moved to Los Angeles. Traffic is one of the first reasons people cite for not liking LA, and I've been claiming it's not as bad as everyone says. Sure, we get slowed down from time to time when we are heading downtown on a weekend. But on a daily basis, I generally avoid any traffic as I don't have to take any freeways to get to work. Instead, I cruise up the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway at a pretty consistent 45-50mph.

However, the week before last, I made mistakes while driving twice, and they cost me an hour each. In both cases, I was crawling in the wrong direction, and knew it, but couldn't turn around. It was far more frustrating than I expected, and a little humbling. :) I am apparently not immune to LA traffic.

Yet, the next day, I walked out of my apartment mid-afternoon, and within ten minutes I was sitting on the beach. I think I am willing to put up with a little traffic for this...

Photo courtesy of Flickr user DRB62, some rights reserved

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

silverlake art crawl

Jesse and I went to the Silverlake Art Crawl last weekend. We visited a bunch of nice design stores and art galleries. One in particular, Sumi's, we liked a lot. It had a nice mix of paintings, pottery, and other accessible art pieces. But, despite all of the interesting galleries, I only took pictures of food. :) The place on the left is Dusty's Bistro, where we ate lunch. Below, are some pictures of Lamill Coffee. It had a great atmosphere, and even though I am not a coffee-drinker, I was pretty fascinated by the variety of ways they brew coffee. I'm definitely enjoying all of the fun new restaurants and cafes that LA has to offer, and it was fun to explore a different neighborhood.





Tuesday, November 10, 2009

our first movie premiere

When my family was in town last week, we took them to see the celebrity footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Unfortunately, there was a movie premiere scheduled that night as a part of the AFI film festival, and all of the footprints were covered over with red carpet. While that was disappointing, Jesse did a little research into the film festival and found out that for the first time they were offering free tickets to the general public. So we headed back on Thursday night and, after standing in a very long line, got in to the theatre. The movie was A Single Man, with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. I was surprised at how different it felt to watch a movie in such a large, historic, beautiful theatre. I'd love to watch every movie this way. The only bummer is that I would have loved to see Colin Firth on the red carpet, but we were around the corner in line for that part.


Yes, I live in Southern California and am wearing a winter scarf...it's been cold at night!!

Afterwards, we got a late dinner at Mel's Drive-In, which I thought I had read was a historic diner. Apparently not.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

trip to san diego

A good friend of mine from college was headed to San Diego for a wedding a couple of weeks ago, but first flew to LA and hung out with us in Santa Monica for a couple of days. I drove with her to San Diego, and while she was at the wedding, I wandered around Little Italy (where we stayed) and the Gaslight Quarter. It was great and I can't wait to go back. The drive is only about 2-3 hours, and much of it is really nice. Here are a few photos:

The wedding was near a harbor, and the fog was absolutely beautiful when I dropped Sarah off. I watched boats coming in, but could barely see them even though they were so close to the shore. Don't worry, I heard that the fog cleared before the wedding ceremony. :)

This was in the Gaslight Quarter. I had heard it was a great area, but when I exited the parking garage, I couldn't "find" it, and wondered what all the hype was about...looked like a bunch of boring old office buildings to me. After a few blocks, I finally came across this hopping scene: restaurants, clubs, galleries, shops. It lived up to the hype after all. Then I couldn't find the parking garage.

This is in front of the hotel where we stayed in Little Italy. It was a nice street lined with little Italian restaurants.

And I was quite content to find one of the little Italian restaurants and settle in for a while. My food was so good.