fotos de Mexico

Courtyard of Casa de Gracia

Mexican Coffee

More Jumping

Facing the Pacific

We were on a horse riding beach

Where you can get the best fish taco on the face of the earth

The Ladies

Protecting chicks

Me contemplating the sea

Swimsuits I didn't wear

Surfing dolphins

Surfing dolphins

The time I went to Mexico

One of the things I like about living in Los Angeles is how easy it is to get every/any-where else. During the space of this blog I have been to Zion, San Francisco twice, Hearst Castle, out to the desert, but I have never been further south than San Diego. It was time for that to change. How could I be so close to Mexico and have never gone?

In April a group of friends and I packed into a passenger van and headed down Mexico way to celebrate a friends birthday. We drove down the 405, traffic blissfully non-existent for a Friday. Our last stop in the US was the surf themed Pizza Port in Carlsbad for pizza and beer. (They have an okay gluten free pizza, but are a little afraid to cook it)

Then it was through San Diego and National City and then on to colorful Tiajuana which is filled with graffiti style murals, drove too quickly to snap any of them, and smells a bit like sulfur.  Shacks hang on to sides of hills. It is a striking change from just 20 minutes north. From there it was through Rosarito and Primo Tapia further south to the house on the ocean that we rented for the weekend.

When I say on the ocean, I really mean it. A small strip of sand separated the house from the Pacific and when I sat on the couch, all I could see is ocean it was like the house was an island in the middle of it. (Just kidding, that is not the house) We passed this house every time we drove into town and wondered how it was holding on. (I'll post pictures of the house in my next post of photos, but this was just funny....

An hour into our stay we were greeted by a pod of dolphins escorting a whale north, I was henceforth called the whale whisperer for my ability to look out into the gray ocean and find animals in it. We say whales just about every day. I even snapped some pictures of body surfing dolphins which will also be in my next post.

There are two Rosaritos in Mexico the one where it was supposed to be 90 degrees the entire weekend, the other 60 degrees. I chose the wrong, optimistic Rosarito. I packed sundresses, a swimsuit for every day. What helped was my ability to set a fire in the fire place and my deciding on a whim to bring my fuzzy brown at work poncho.  We spent a lot of time around the fire playing games and singing into the night. When we were out we ate some of the best food I have ever had. The seafood was fresh, the vegetables were brighter, the margarita's were stronger. In Rosarito at La Estancia, where I have had one of the better steaks of my life, we were treated to a free drag race show.

The highlight of our trip was the two times we went into Primo Tapia and had the best fish taco I have ever eaten in my life and I still dream about. We talked about how easy it would be to drive there just for lunch.  The tortillas in Mexico are unlike anything you have had here, they are thick and a little chewy. Almost like a tortilla and Indian naan had a baby.

For a first trip to the drivable south it was pretty great. My next post will be a good selection of the  hundreds of photos I took of my time there. Including capturing surfing dolphins which is much harder than it looks.

Yucca Bloom Forrest

On Memorial Day I went to Redbox, no, not the kiosk to rent dvds, but the trail high up in the mountains of the Los Angeles National Forest. (insert bad joke sound here. wah wah or ba dum pump)


We were yearning for nature, not the nature that puts you in a car on the pch during a beach holiday in which your one arm gets sunburnt as you inch slowly towards your goal. We wanted the nature on the other side of LA the one that was the anti-thesis of the carlocked beaches, we wanted the mountains, we wanted trees. So we drove 20 minutes to the forest, and we hardly passed another car on the way. The Angeles Crest Highway winds its way straight up into the sky, through rock formations and atmosphere. You pass people on bikes with strong calf muscles inching their way through mountain passes. Those people hardly enjoyed the view, they were determined to keep going and hopefully not look down because it was a long way down, my white knuckling the passenger side handle going unnoticed.  I always have these thoughts of speeding through windy mountain roads and the brakes failing, those are the things I think about as I am griping something hard and stationary. Princess Grace. Morbid thoughts of my mortality that sometimes prevent me from enjoying the view. I tried concentrating on the Yucca Booms covering the mountain sides, many the sizes of pine trees and I had never been that close to one.

We intended to go to Switzer Falls, but it seemed like everyone else wanted to go there too so after a 10 to 15 minute wait for a parking spot that would probably never come we headed on to Redbox, where surprisingly there weren't a lot of people. Redbox is a great hike, a lot of straight down, but not steep, winding trails that go a little up a little down, eventually leading to a stream. We passed tons of Yucca in full bloom within feet and inches from me and I feel now that I can finally check this off my list.  They are that beautiful in person.


There were giant thistles, corpses of burnt out trees from fires, bearded tongue, birds singing, the smell of leaves and flowers. We hardly passed a single person, but when we did they were extremely friendly.It was exactly what we were looking for and the anti-thesis of what we knew would be waiting for us up the pch.

But what goes down must come up and the hike retracing our steps was a bit hard on the legs and lungs.



We heard many lizards racing through the woods, loudly, I got a picture of this one, who was probably frightened from T scaring it my way so one of us could get a photo.



All in all the hike was two hours, slightly stretched out for breath and a reluctance to go back to the land of sound and bustle.



I would like to say that we all made it out alive, but we actually lost a buddy on our way home. After a gallant effort and safe distance from the mountain passes, we did indeed lose our breaks, at a slow speed a SUV slowing our trajectory finally putting the nail in the coffin of Ts car.

RB

Ray Bradbury recently passed, he was my Great-Grandmother Kitty's cousin. I thought I would share this from a fantastic blog called Letters of Note. Here he talks about the importance of libraries.

who, what, what

Who have I seen?
It has been a long time since I mentioned this. I haven't seen a lot of people in the past few months. These are who I remember
Justin Theroux- by himself. Taller than I thought.
Micheal Rappaport
Jason Ritter-my first boyfriend was in a movie with him recently. He said I should have said hello. I didn't.
Laura Prepon- I wish "Are you there Chelsea?" would have been better. I don't know why it wasn't.

What have I been reading?
This year I decided to read less. I don't think it is working.  I have read 8 books so far. Inspired by Midnight in Paris I read the Paris Wife and A Moveable Feast. They are great companion pieces and I don't recommend reading one w/o the other. I just finished Death With Interruptions, which I feel would have been a brilliant novella and proves that just because you win a Nobel Prize, does not mean that you should never have an editor.

What are they wearing?
Hair in bun w/ a pair of Ray bans.

the time I turned 36

Oh, 36 I was not very excited to become you. For all those self depricating reasons and what I thought you meant. 35 I was excited for, I assisted in the planning of a weekend stay in Palm Springs surrounded by music, friends, sun and food.  It was a vacation to remember, filled with inside jokes and introduced me to grilling breakfast.

36 I didn't really want to plan anything, expect anyone to come, nag people for headcounts, which might in turn have a monetary value involved in head counts or reservations. It is very hard to tell a restaurant I might have between 3 and 25 people, so plan for that.

So I planned two events and hoped that people would come.

Event 1 was a street fair in Silver Lake called the Silver Lake Jubilee. We could just wander and listen to music, one of my favorite bands was playing, eat food from food trucks.  My two closest friends came and it was pretty fun. We bounced between the jubilee and a neighboring bbq, having very LA conversations including a musical involving a fruit themed stage comic. I wish I could explain more, but I am sworn to secrecy.

Event 2 was a return to my favorite korean bbq place "smokey meat house" and it was in fact that. Eleven of us descended on Soot Bul Jeep, a place that doesn't take reservations only to be asked "Do you have a reservation?" It was no problem, the wait was only 15 minutes and we proceeded to order various meats and bottles of soju. I took my turn cooking for us, when the waitress got too busy, while I cooked the restaurant joined in in singing happy birthday to me.

On the grill there are nicely cut up squid parts. When it comes to you the squid is whole.

My friend baked a black berry, blue berry, peach cobbler for me and all 11 smokey smelling of us crammed into my studio apartment for cobbler and pie before ending our night at the Bounty.

On my actual birthday, I spent it alone, getting a massage and eating cobbler for breakfast and dinner. It was my birthday so I didn't care.

Adventures in LA-rest of last day

I was really excited to finally show Dad where I worked. It is a pretty impressive place after all.  We took the Sunset scenic route back to the Getty. I was surprised that my suggestion of Mullholland was turned down. Oh well next time.

We first checked out the Herb Ritts photography exhibit, which was pretty fantastic. You may remember him from that iconic Richard Gere and the classic car photo, covers of Madonna albums, Calvin Klein ads and the Chris Isaak "wicked game" video starring Helena Christianson. (I had that song stuck in my head for several days after) The human form is a very important theme in Ritts show. (i.e. tons of nudes)

We lunched at the white table cloth Getty Restaurant and had amazing crab cakes and soaked in the view of the ocean and Denzel Washington's house and sipped on Arnold Palmers.  The food there is pretty great. I was tempted to eat the Bouillabaisse, but thought every time I sucked on a shrimp head or discarded some shells, I would just hear "yuck" and "gross" from mom. I recommend trying it if you ever go there that or the arctic char.

I gave them a tour of the building I worked in showing them as much cool stuff as I could. The gallery in my building was between shows. I showed them the view from my office which overlooks the garden which was closed at that time for repairs

I left them to wander around the museum, while I worked, which is an unfortunate thing when you come up to work on your vacation you might just end up working.  I hurried and met them in the Italian Renaissance paintings gallery.  There is a lot of art at the Getty, as my Dad said "someone could easily spend a couple days there."

We had someone take a picture at the entrance to the museum on the way out, coincidentally a professional photographer vacationing from Japan. Maybe that is why this photo is so artfully done. 

This pretty much concludes the trip. I am pretty sure that my parents had fun.  I was really surprised that my Dad liked Los Angeles as much as he did. It is a pretty great place.

If you have any interest at all in seeing the kind of work that goes on in my building, I can sign you up for the e-news letter. Just send me your email address.

Adventures in LA-Last day early morning

Before I go on to what we did on the last day, here are some photos of the house we stayed in. It had a lot of great music memorabilia, but I am still left to wonder why the Spinal Tap poster was hidden in the closet. Maybe a previous guest was too frightened to turn anything to 11.

Adventures in LA- Manhattan Beach is in LA

Manhattan Beach is my favorite beach to take people who come visit me. It is nice and clean and has a great main street to go window shopping. I like this beach as opposed to Santa Monica because there is a certain way that it smells that is off putting and Venice which is a bit seedy and I always joke with friends that I feel like they dropped off the busload of the extras from Mad Max on the boardwalk and said "Here, establish a city! And you can keep the props!"

We headed to MB on a Monday a perfect day to travel the 405 without too much traffic. Which I guess is all relative to someone who lives in a town of 700 people. The day was sunny, but chilly, and wonderful to walk around in the sun. We walked the Strand to Hermosa Beach, walking past people's beach houses that would also go on that pinterest list of "things I would buy if I had a gazillion dollars" strangely some of those houses are listed on vrbo.com, hint hint.

A storm out in the middle of the Pacific and high tide strong undertow provided some of the largest waves I have seen since I have moved here. Which I guess do not look so big in these photos. What you also do not notice is that the undertow was so strong that a lot of these wave were full of sand.

We spent a good portion of the day in Manhattan Beach then booked it out of there before 3 pm traffic taking a leisurely way back up through LAs west side to see some sites before having dinner at Tender Greens. which was a continuation of our awesome food parade.

Adventures in LA-B-Day

I think my biggest regret this trip is that I didn't take a single photo on my Dad's b-day. If I did I would have taken pictures of us at Target, brunching at Tart where my Dad discovered a new way to make corned beef hash, a photo of us peering through stacks of antiques and mid-century furniture at t.i.n.i (this is not ikea) on Fairfax and the look on his face when he bit into his steak at Taylor's but stupid me, I did not take a single photo.

Adventures in LA-Hooray for Hollywood

Cover your eyes because your eyes won't believe what I have to say next. My Dad walked the Walk of Fame!!

Shut the front door right?

For this trip we rented a great little apartment in the Hollywood Hills. The famous Yamashiros and the Hollywood Bowl were our neighbors to give you an idea. It was very quiet and peaceful, you never knew that one the most touristy areas in the nation was just a stones throw away. We saw stars, we heard birds, we were greeted every morning by a dog with a rasta collar named "Okay"

We decided to take the short walk to Hollywood & Highland to do a little shopping and for Dad to see what it was all about. I carefully chose my route to avoid the "Street Performers"  I use that term very loosely. (There is an excellent documentary about the Hollywood Superman, if you are nerdy, like me and like documentaries)  It is amazing how the south side of the street is completely empty, we were able to still see Grauman's Chinese, the Hollywood and Highland Theater and see the stars in the sidewalk without the stress of the crowds.  Even though that crowd was across the street.

Shopping was quick but made us hungry, so we grabbed a bite in the 24hr diner in the ground floor of the Roosevelt Hotel. I had never been there before.  I love the wall paper.

The lobby of the hotel is really amazing, loungey and fancy, when I went back to take photos after lunch, they were breaking it down. Maybe there is a no lounging after noon policy?

The verdict on Hollywood was that it wasn't what he expected, but not someplace he needed to visit again. Which seems to be the general consensus.

And that was Day 2.

Adventures in LA-real day one

There is a tradition that we keep to when visitors come to town and that is no matter what you always start at the Farmer's Market/Grove. Usually that also starts with a meal at Cafe Marmalade, but we decided to be wild and reckless and do our own thing and individually pick our own places in the plethora of choices which is the Farmer's Market. We were joined for lunch by Brian, who I hadn't seen since my move. He and my Dad grabbed a burger at the newly opened Short Order, which was enjoyed by both and proclaimed one of the best burgers ever. I was slightly jealous, but preparing myself for the beef parade that was coming. (foreshadowing) I had sopes de tinga, which were very fantastic, but I like spicy food. (I would call this flavorful, but mid-westerners would say spicy) Mom enjoyed a crepe at the French Crepe Company, and picked a pound of mushrooms out of it.

We bought our winning ticket for the Megamillions. I say winning, because in fact we did win.....$3.

We enjoyed our lunch and then decided to check out a museum I had never been to called the Petersen Automotive Museum. I figured my dad would like it, because he likes cars and stuff. I was right and I was pleasantly surprised by its coolness. I guess you can't judge a place by its website.  My favorite exhibit was the Italian design, the were just so far ahead of us aesthetically. As shown in the pictures.  There were several things that would go on the "If I had a gazillion dollars" pinterest board.

I saw a gold Delorian!!! (Another Back to the Future movie perhaps, everything else is coming back)

Another exhibit followed the history of the scooter, which sounds really not that interesting at all, but really was. The first scooters looked like instruments of the Spanish Inquisition and I think you might have been burned very very badly if you were riding in a rainstorm. It continued on to the vespas we know now and a bunch of James Bond inspired fold up scooters that fit in very handsome suitcases. (I guess this was before wait limits and bag checking fees)

It was then off to a nickle tour of my tiny apartment  and a short walk to Soot Bul Jeep (or smokey meat house as we began to call it) to introduce my parents to Korean BBQ at the oldest K-BBQ place in LA. They also cook with charcoal, which is a rarity. We ordered spencer steak and chicken, which where both really good. I was especially surprised by how good the chicken was since this is kind of known as a beef and pork area of town. My parents told me that this was the first time they had both eaten an entire meal with chopsticks. 

 After all that running around, we were exhausted, so we went back to our quiet little house for the week, smelling like meat campfire and went to sleep.

Adventures in LA-

As many of you may have heard my father made his first trip out to see me in LA a couple weeks back. Here are those posts in order.

I won't really write about the real day one, the one where they picked me up at work and by mistake got on the 405 (oh, no!) and then we checked into the house ordered pizza and went to sleep early.

I will write about all the other stuff, the food, the beach the museums and all the rest.

Stay tuned.

There is actually something called pork sponge

It had been a really long time since I had gone tide pooling, very close to a year and a half when I had visitors from Minneapolis visiting.  I have been tidepooling a handful of times, as you have seen on this blog, often visiting Malibu Lagoon. We thought it would be nice to try some place different. I asked a California native a new place to go. He recommended Broad Beach, a little further up the Malibu coast's 27 miles of coastline.  As we passed Moonshadows and the rows of beach cottages, I remembered that many of these houses were featured on the Star Tour I went on when mom was visiting.  Strangely, no one was outside signing autographs like usual.

Broad Beach is a little harder to find and a bit daunting, because although there are public access points to the beach they are hidden between rich people's houses and even though those access points are in fact public, the residents may try to dissuade you. That didn't happen to us luckily. If it does though, you definitely have the right to be there.

We made it there just as lowtide was happening. When the tide receeded, it didn't reveal pools like the other places we had been, but rather revealed tide boulders. Hidden in and around those black jaggedy boulders were all kinds of things I wasn't expecting. Attached to the lower parts of these boulders were dozens of sea stars attached together like a blob as shown above.  I found something new (pictured right) which looked like some sort of alien armor in a sci-fy movie. It has a fancy Latin name I am sure, but it is more commonly called "Pork Sponge" I wanted to touch it, but didn't.

There are a few small caves and arches carved out of the rocks not a lot of room to walk around in. T spotted a few fossils and pre-historic tide creatures.

As we walked around the boulders we heard clicking clicking clicking and when we looked closer in the small canyons in the rocks we saw little crabs hiding clicking their claws, most likely from the birds that hang out during low tide to see what they can come up with for an after lunch snack. They would squinch up a bit more as our shadows passed them. I wish my camera could have caught the amazing reddish pink of its claws.

I hope to go tide pooling more often because I miss it. Until next time sea creatures.

Notes from the amazing Mandu

The Amazing Mandu's foray into blogging has been fantastic but brief. Since she is not blogging, I asked her to write me an update on Charley, since I am sure that everyone is waiting for some news about what she is up to.

She is super smiley and happy all the time. She does the open mouthed smile like Nora.  She likes to be sitting up so that she can see what is going on all the time (she has those crazy abs like Evan had).  When we go to watch Evan play hockey, she cries if I turn her away from the ice. She likes to watch all the kids skate around in their bright jerseys.  She likes to sit in her chair and swing and talk to her friends (her friends are the little animals that hang down from her chair and swing).  She gives them an earful, especially if she hasn’t seen them all day.

I'll try to keep the updates coming.

Steak and boulders

The book club I am in recently read Hollywood by Charles Bukowski, which is the somewhat fictional story of his life being turned into the movie Barfly.  It seems like every few pages Musso & Franks is mentioned. I had never been, and always wanted to try it. So we went to celebrate what we thought was his birthday, but ended up being the anniversary of his death.

Musso & Frank's opened in 1919 and has been a celebrity favorite ever since. Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, the Fitzgeralds, etc. When I was there Friday I saw Debra Jo Rupp, who you may remember as the mom in That 70s Show.

They make a darned good martini and are quite famous for it. (And it is only $9.50, with a pony, which is pretty economical in these parts)  I got a steak, which was good, but it wasn't Taylors.

Los Angeles is filled with wonderful and strange things. The new and newsworthy thing that everyone has been talking about, no, not you Lindsay Lohan, is the LACMA Boulder, which more technically should be called Levitated Mass.

Levitated Mass is a Land Art piece consisting of a concrete hallway with a 340 ton rock monolith hovering above. This rock was cut from a quarry in Riverside California and moved extremely slowly to LACMAs location in Los Angeles. They published the slow moving route and the rock even had a twitter and facebook account, which was an excellent example of brilliant marketing, because if you think about it, who really cares about a rock?  But people totally did, people were following the parade for miles, there was a Block Rock party with bands, there were people who proposed in front of it. It was truly strange.

I had to see what it was all about, and since it was rolling through my neighborhood, it would have been silly not to.  I met a neighbor after that huge meal at Musso's and we walked to Western to watch it come by. I was surprised at how many people had come there to meet it, even more surprised that people had no idea about it.

We met it at Western and 8th and walked with it for a few blocks, as seen in the photos, picked up more and more people, who were waiting to see if it were possible for it to turn onto Wilshire, people were videoing it with their phones and ipads. Some loon ran around it with an American flag and people were holding up signs that said:

"God hates rocks, god loves scissors"


You have to love how creative people are here.


I think that I may have been on the local Korean news channel laughing.

Spring Forward, Fall back

It has been several weeks since I have written. I think my problem has been that I haven't known where to start. So I think what I will do is start with the most recent and work backwards. Logical I think.

I have a lot to say, so get ready for a lot of posts.

booohwlliiieeen

Or how Minnesotans say bowling.

I think I was on a kick of things I haven't done in 10 years or so this trip; skating, bowling, coloring in a coloring book a later thing I will explain later.

It seems like a new hot spot for the locals is to hit up the newly remodeled Thunder Alley. So when in Rome..... (see pictured)

There is something about bowling alleys that give me a hankering for nachos with cheeze whiz. I abstained though because I had just had chicago style hot dogs from Portillos. What an awesome gift.

I have to say that I was rather frustrated at first because it wasn't coming as quickly as ice skating did for me, and I wasn't having very good luck.  I had no idea how good of bowlers the rest of my family were.  It kind of ended up being pretty fun. We clapped, we cheered, we booed, we bowled.  I think we were the loudest people there. (Not surprising)

Photo essay portion:

skating-a photo essay

It has been a while in Minnesota since the weather has been perfect for lake skating. I took advantage of the above 30 degree weather to do something I hadn't done in 10 plus years. But since I played camera girl, here is a bunch of photos of other people skating.

Happy new year!

I am back and adjusting to life back in Los Angeles after 2 weeks in Minnesota. My pictures are finally uploaded and I hope to give you a snapshot of my time in the tundra. (For the most part the weather wasn't tundra like except for the couple days where it was 10)It was sunny, it was not very snowy, but not sundress weather.

One of my first stops in Minneapolis was to meet Charley(sp?), who was very new and sleepy, because it is hard work being born. She is awfully cute and tini-tiny with really long fingers. Everyone is still happy and healthy and I can tell that Evan is very excited to be a big brother, but rather impatient that she can't do stuff yet.

Something tells me that those two will get into a lot of trouble together.