Daily Life 2009

January 31

A little-strange auto-shot with bright sun pouring into windows on both sides of the room.

Windy is moving! She’s leaving Venice-Venice Beach-Venice Canals and moving to Topanga Canyon. Now there’s a change of pace. Here’s the sister-sister crowd pitching in. Also participating were Lucas and Hartley.

Windy’s new place is fairly close to PCH so it’s not That bad for commuting and for visiting with your sisters…

January 30

January at the beach in LA. Oh yeah.

January 28

What Cynthia’s been up to…with Mark in Wisconsin where, when the temperature tries like heck to reach up to freezing it’s a heat wave, watching Mark’s twin niece Payton and nephew Nolan, while the parents of the twins Go Away for a few days. What Fun for all!

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D&A invited Emily and Zoe over for dinner. Emily is 6 weeks from delivery of her second child and her husband has been traveling a lot lately for work. She was very happy to come!

Darryl and the girls, Zoe and Rome. Zoe and Rome are excellent friends. It is sooo funny how they both know Just So how things are Supposed to be. Sometimes they know things differently…but they always come to an accommodation in the end.

Also Zoe is a great good-bye kisser. She runs up to you with arms wide and gives you a big fat one right on the lips. Yummy it is.

January 27

Rome, doing her Shiva pose in catface and crown.

Here come seagulls getting fed by a Bird Lady tossing up slices of bread that she is retreiving from a full sized shopping bag full of bread…

…’they’re hungry’ she says…

…’they don’t bother to fish because you feed them’ I mutter, since I’m taking advantage of the situation by snapping away to get these photos…

Sunset at Marisol for dinner.

January 25

Ben and Bonnie met me at Casa del Mar this afternoon and then we walked along the beach in the bright cold wind.

January 24

Happy Birthday Angela! Angela chose, for her birthday outing, to go to the Noah’s Ark display at the Skirball Center.

It’s a cool layout, huge really, with giant animals made of unexpected materials, surprising ‘hey kids let’s make a drum circle’, cranks and gears that make the two story giraffe’s head move, a crafts table, and on and on.

You’ll want to go with a kid.

So much fun.

See Rome over there, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?!

Then I got to stay with Rome while d&a went out for Date Night. Rome and I practiced our Shiva pose. But I don’t have a photo of it. That’ll be for next time.

January 21

More! Darjeeling Limited (last year’s), about a colorful dysfunctional family with great scenery of India; Rachel Getting Married, about a not-so-colorful dysfunctional family, with a fabulous India themed wedding.

And speaking of India, I see Slumdog Millionaire has a big presence in the AAs. Please be forewarned, and I’m not giving anything away here – all those Bollywood promos do not reflect the whole of the movie as there are many many scenes of terrible violence most involving children.

Burn After Reading, Coen Brothers for sure with all the blood and 1/2 the charm, except I have to say, that Brad Pitt’s performance was dang funny.

January 20

Ann got a Wii!! We had a chance to do a few rounds of hurdles which got me panting! I can’t wait to play MORE.

And here she is, ‘A Lady Writing’. Small, isn’t she. We all thought her skin looked kind of greenish and unwell. But what they say about ‘it’s the light it’s the light’, that’s true.

I’m very glad to have seen the picture and I like how they chose to display it. Actually, I liked the whole place A Lot, this visit completely dispelling my previous impression of the Norton-Simon.

Sculptures along the entry way.

They’ve got a room of these war posters.

What they say about this one, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Triumph of Virtue and Nobility Over Ignorance, c. 1740-50:

“Virtue is dressed in white and a sun symbol on her breast. Beside her, Nobility holds a statuette of Minerva and a spear. To the left, Fame blows her trumpet. Below, the figure of Ignorance is being vanquished.

“The poppy wreath, seen dropping in the sky, alludes to the ‘sleep of the mind.’ The bats symbolize ignorance which refuses to see the light of wisdom and knowledge. The confident figures of Virtue and Nobility display a distinctly lofty, detached air indicative of the mythological world they occupy.”

I don’t know that tomorrow will so much represent a triumph over ignorance but it will surely represent a blessed relief.

The view from our dining table at the outdoor cafe where we ate a good lunch and happily whiled away the afternoon.

January 19

We, at the Norton-Simon Museum especially to have a look at the Vermeer here on loan from the National Gallery of Art in DC. Hi ladies! Sharon, me, Nancy, Sandy.

One of my very favorites and it’s still here! It’s Degas, Waiting

Dec 2011-I learned today that this work is owned jointly by the Norton Simon and by the Getty with no particular plan as to who will be displaying it when.

January 18

For the last 10 days I have spent a few hours of most every day dealing with ‘property issues’. I haven’t said anything about any of it yet. Many chores done, more chores uncovered, chores yet to be completed. Booo, work.

Forgetting about chores, the Santa Monica Symphony had a free concert in honor of MLK Day. It was fantastic, really. I thought it was going to be pretty good but it was better than that. Yea!

They usually play at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium but this is the third year of doing the MLK Day concert at the SGI Auditorium at 6th and Wilshire. That’s one of their chandeliers in the photo, and some low strings.

The SGI Auditorium is a central meeting place for worldwide Nichiren Buddhists. They’re the “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” guys.

Here’s a quote from one of their websites: “Buddhism is practiced to make one’s prayers and dreams come true and to achieve the greatest possible happiness. The purpose of Nichiren Buddhism is to enable one to realize victory. The fact that prayers are answered proves the correctness of this teaching.”

Goes to show how flexible Buddhism can be…One thing about this group though is that they have no clergy which has to be better than the alternative.

January 16

Sandy’s show at the Rumor Mill! There they all are, and plenty more on the other walls for your viewing pleasure. That’s Sandy and ND Nancy enjoying a flavorful treat while we admire the displays.

January 17

Ken and I met for our regular dinner and our regular dance extravaganza at the Granada Pavillion where we danced every dance. What a luxury for me!

That’s Ken with the woman who runs the dance. She Loves Ken.

Movie update! I saw ‘Milk’ today with Sandy and Sharon. Sean Penn was excellent and the whole movie start to end was a total flashback. Also recently I saw Gran Torino with Sharon. (Can you tell, Sharon is on a movie campaign too.) Gran Torino was pretty good, but a few days have gone by and it hasn’t stuck much like a really good movie should.

My life in trash. Grrr. We have three 3-little ladies living in my complex and I am obliged by the city of Santa Monica to pay for those two giant cans. We generate a few bags of garbage, a bit of recycling, and some lawn clippings. However this is how full and disgusting the cans get and my gardeners haven’t even come yet this week.

In the complex across the alley they have no less than twenty 20-residents and their trash facilities consists entirely of that one container on the lower left (having just been picked up). So of course it gets piled to the sky and they just throw their trash and all the recycling over my way.

The other properties near me in the alley have smaller cans like the ones on the lower right and no recycling, so passing by the recycling (in front of my gate), well, might as well toss the garbage too (in front of my gate).

And notice how the cans on the lower right are lined up. I have to move them every week from in front of my garage. Grrr. Sometimes several weeks will go by with only minor aggravation and then…this kind of hideous mess makes me craaaaazy.

Ahhh, a good vent. That felt good.

This is such an entertaining display. It’s called Urban Light. Here’s some text I copied from the LA Times online:

“The experience of looking carefully at ‘Urban Light’ as a work of art, exploring the details of the individual objects, has the added benefit of making other similar city lamps still in operation suddenly stand out. And their forgotten beauty – both in Burden’s lamps and on the streets – is a pleasure to discover. ‘All that detail in the casting is what I wanted people to look at,’ Burden said.

But Burden also sees in ‘Urban Light’ something grander: architecture without walls.

‘It’s a folly,’ Burden said, an extravagant, grand and deeply meaningful gesture about Los Angeles’ past – complex, finely crafted and made to last.”

January 15

Susie and I went to lacma today mostly to see the Vanity Fair exhibit. We went into bcam too, enjoyed the fabulous lamp posts, and walked to Farmer’s Market for a nice lunch. What a good day.

The first lacma building opened in 1965. Over the years the city has added six or seven more. You can’t help but feel the mishmash of the decades although I do rather like this view.

January 14

Two and half weeks of 25 sit-ups every single day. Every day I do 25 sit-ups I get a Sticker. It’s Fun to get a sticker.

I got the idea from Rome’s enthusiasm for the stickers she gets. She gets a sticker on her calendar when she stays in bed until 7am. See loves to get her stickers, and I want mine too!

January 13

It’s Tuesday and time to eat lunch in an interesting shape. Today let’s have lunch in the shape of a Tree! Then Rome ate the trunk and…hurray!…a Triangle. The ends, which Rome loves as much as the sandwich, came out in the shape of smiles. Like our beautiful smiley little girl.

January 12

Sandy is having a show for a month beginning January 16th at The Rumor Mill, a coffee house on Washington Blvd. at Atlantic Ave. It’s always a delight to see her work on display.

I’m on a mission to catch up on movies. I have just come off my longest movie drought in for maybe Ever. Until this past Saturday I had not been in a theater since September. Wow.

So far of the Golden Globe nominees I can report 1) don’t miss Frost/Nixon 2) Slumdog Millionaire is not for the queezy and I have a long complaint about the ending but still, worth seeing 3) In Bruges is basically violence all buffed up with wry charm and wit 4) WALL-E, another Pixar marvel 5) Heath Ledger really was fantastic in The Dark Knight but if you were going to see a Batman movie you probably have already.

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Rosie hosted a PartyLite candle buying opportunity with lots of delicious food, and featuring this lovely woman who puts on the program. It’s exactly in the model of the old tupperware parties but smelling better.

Then Sharon hosted a Golden Globes watching opportunity and she had a table full of delicious food too. I thought very little about my new mirror.

January 11

For more than four years I didn’t have a mirror in my house except for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. During this time I have added eight pounds to my seemingly permanent weight.

This is bad. Perhaps it would not have happened if I had had a mirror? I have a mirror now so let’s check back in another four years.

January 9

A shot from Cynthia in Wisconsin on a recent sunny day. Livin’ Large.

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January 8

Here’s a word you don’t want to know how to spell: periodontal surgery. There are pages and pages of pictures on the internet of truly disgusting images. I’ll spare you.

Mine isn’t that bad, really, just around one tooth, and it doesn’t hurt that much, but still. I’m thinking to do the procedure before I leave in February just so as not to have a Central American health crisis.

January 6

Hey, what’s this? Why, it’s lunch in the shape of the letter ‘M’! We were singing about the Mickey Mouse Club so the letter ‘M’ seemed a good choice for today. Last week we ate lunch in the shape of the letter ‘K’.

Then she ate the legs and we had the letter ‘V’! Yum!

We took the new Hello Kitty (her name is Cinderella Kitty) out for a walk. We went all the way around the whole big block, with a lot of leaf kicking and sidewalk crack jumping to add to the fun.

January 4

It’s HAPPENING…

…Alex and Carol are going and I’m going TOO!

First I’ll go by myself to Guatemala in late February for several weeks of Spanish ‘study’ and home-stay with the occasional weekend side trip perhaps even as far as Belize. Then around March 21st Alex and Carol will meet me in Guatemala City from where we will fly round-trip, to spend 10 days in Cuba(yes!)!

Time for me to start thinking about habla-ing me some espanol.

PS, no worries! 1) Alex is a fluent Spanish speaker 2) his parents are Cuban 3) he already did the trip to Cuba just a few years ago. See…no worries!

I haven’t seen these guys around the pier for a while. We can only hope that soon they’ll have no more reason to be here.

January 2

Mindy is visiting from her Peace Corp assignment in Zambia and Ken hosted a wonderful get-together in her honor. Kudos to Mindy! Thanks to Ken!

back row: Pam, Ken, Kim, Kyle, Bill. front row: Linda, Ross, Mindy, Cheryl.

January 1

From a mid-morning walk, the view looking south from the bluffs of Pacific Palisades.

I spent the morning and afternoon at Sharon’s eating snacks, having a walk, and watching the parade and football on her luminously gorgeous new flat-panel tv. What an excellent New Year’s Day.