The New Year's Eve Party

The Lead Up--A week before

I made every attempt this year to thoroughly plan out this New Year’s Eve party so that I wouldn’t have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, work at a breakneck pace all day, lose my patience with Cindy several times and apologize profusely later, end up 86ing several of the dishes because I either ruined them in haste or didn’t have time to start or complete them and then invariably after all of this I am still preparing things as guests arrive and in the shower at around 10pm.

This year was going to be different. I had simplified the menu, stuffing it full of recipes I had made in the past, only a couple of experiments this year. I had finished shopping for all but the perishables the week before, leaving just the fresh ingredients and the flowers to be shopped. And to further prepare, I went down to the Flower Mart the week before to preview where and what I would get, checking on their holiday hours several times.

The Days Before

We hit the Farmer’s Market on Saturday and picked up what we couldn’t find there at Whole Foods, Pavilions and a Japanese market on Sawtelle. Won Ton Skins are harder to find than I remember.

What could go wrong?

The Day Of

I woke up at 6 am on New Year’s Eve. I know it’s early but it is a big improvement on 4:30. Checked out the E-vite, again. “Wow, more people than expected, maybe need more Champagne, fine no problem. I’ll get it after I go to the Flower Mart, which as I double/triple check, opens to the public at 8 am. “ I roll up to the Mart at a little after 8. And it is, what the f**k, closed? Oh, Sh*t. Ok fine I see a few of the smaller stores open, I’ll improvise. After buying a substantial amount of flowers to make everything work, not as planned but it can work, I think about what was going to be the center piece of the entry way arrangement. A huge cluster of beautiful barnacles that I had spied in one of the stores that was closed that none of the smaller shops had. Do I forgo this concept as wonderful as it might have been or do I try to find a cluster of barnacles early in the morning on New Year’s Eve?

Two closed aquarium shops, 2 open pet stores, a gift shop, a nursery and the only barnacles I found were fake and about 1/30^th the size I needed. And then finally, at an aquarium store that happened to be open I found barnacles. Three smaller groupings were enough to make up the shape of the one I had fallen in love with a week before at the Mart and for half the price. Hurray, except now I was running hours behind schedule.

I got home, unloaded the car and went at it with a fury. I was catching up. I came up with a brilliant and simple idea(so I thought) for an arrangement that I had been struggling with in my mind all day. After hours of struggling with horsetail reeds, plexiglass, goop and floral foam, and losing patience with Cindy, once (and the only time that day/evening) my concept was realized. And I was again, further behind.

Now I was jumping between flower arranging and cooking. But things were going well and because I knew most of the recipes, there weren’t many surprises, except with the coconut battered shrimp popsicles which ended being the sacrifice of the evening. Oh well.

In the end, most everything was finished on time. Cindy was dressed by the time the first guest arrived and I was showered by 9 instead of 10, and much more relaxed and rested along the way.

The Flowers










Note the barnacles



The experiment-I wanted to somehow integrate the hardlines and glass of the coffee table with the arrangement. I think it finally worked. It does make conversing across the table interesting.

The dining room-An marriage of flowers and food





















Prosciutto wrapped figs were delights to be plucked and eaten




A bit phallic, I guess, but delicious. A wasabi-edamame puree with tuna sashimi on toasted Won Ton Skins




Putting on the finishing touches. Thank you Tom




The bartender is ready

The Children











The Guests- I'm not labeling everyone, you know who you are





































Thanks to everyone who came and shared the passing of 2007 and welcoming of 2008
A special thanks to Michael and Helene for taking pictures and to Cindy and Skye for their patience and love

2007-- What a Year It Was

Wow!!!! Writing a blog has been an amazing experience. I looked back at the beginning, back in January of 07. A lot has happened. I'm going to just do a quick rattle off of the highlights, actually more like a highlight of the highlights. I urge you to take a clickity-click back on the blog, it's pretty cool.

We started the year with a lot of traveling, Cindy off to Oregon; Skye, Charles and I off to Nicaragua, then Skye and me back and forth to visit Cindy in Portland, then Charles and I driving through most of Central America to meet up with Cindy and Skye and then Cindy, Skye and I off to Paris for our 10th wedding anniversary(Cindy and mine).

And then the parties, of course we started and ended with our New Year's Eve Event, had a huge 40th bday for me, then a series of pizza making parties, a couple of cocktail parties, a Thanksgiving feast. Those were just the ones that we hosted, we made it to a bunch as well.

In between Cindy worked a lot while I continued the backyard project, which is pretty much done, at least the big hard stuff(see previous blog for more on that) and more importantly and time and energy consuming, Skye's home schooling. I worked for a bit as well which required a lot of juggling .

And I raced. I ran some 10k's, a 75 story stair climb, did the Urban Assault with Skye. Kip and I raced in the Urban Dare, the Muddy Buddy and then took 2cnd in the Great Urban Race.

I took up Brazilian Jui Jitsu again and Skye started the flute and Tae Kwon Do. We somehow managed to get up to Mammoth to ski, camp and mountain bike, although just one time a piece.

It was an amazing, tiring, unbelievably full year.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year’s

The first blog of the year could have been a summation of 2007; it could have been a projection of 2008; it could have been a report of the New Year’s Eve party; or even a recap of December, seeing as how my entry in that very full month was “Where did November go?” Instead I am writing to celebrate the completion of the backyard remodel/landscape endeavor, that I have been slaving at for years. It’s not fully complete and probably never will be but it is done enough for a respectable before and after.

The house from below, before we did anything.

When we first bought our house on Milagro one of the things we agreed on was that we would not do any major remodeling, at least not for a couple of years. And then ….. It started out with me wanting to shore up and make safe a couple of stairways and a small deck that led to the pool, mostly so that when we had a party, we wouldn’t have any disastrous You Tube worthy incidents. I thought this to be necessary and responsible. As I cleared away the vines, weeds and shrubs that covered the bases of aforesaid structures, it became clear that it would take a bit more than a couple of 2x4’s to make these things safe. As I cleared away more stuff, several other issues arose. There was not sufficient drainage for the existing retaining walls and they were beginning to move away from their original position. Again, a situation I thought necessary to deal with. This entailed me digging out behind the walls and replacing the dirt with gravel. No easy task, but again necessary. In my digging I gained access to part of the house that is not on the slab, an overhang. When I stuck my head under the wall, I could literally hear the termites chewing away. This had not been picked up in inspections, because prior to my excavations there was no access. Again a situation I deemed necessary to deal with. All this started because I wanted to brace up some exterior stairways and a deck, so that we could get down to the pool to actually use it. Reasonable enough, but now we have several major projects that need to be done. Along the way these essential redo’s opened up the, as long as we’ve got this all dug up why don’t we…..

The house as the excavating stage began.

Before we knew it we had an extensive herb garden with an intricate irrigation system, a dozen new citrus trees, an entirely new way to reach the pool which was now salt water and nestled under a steel structure that housed a state-of-the-art solar water heating system. The journey down to the pool takes one down a new spiral staircase, past the grape-vine covered pergola that gives shade to the outdoor kitchen with its wood fired pizza oven and BBQ island, along the brick and stone stairway that ambles past a couple of fountains through the new garden down to the pool. Now granted this took a couple of years and each addition “made sense” and now that it’s complete or close enough, I am very glad to have done it. But what a ridiculous and taxing journey it was at times.




How the house looks now, more or less.




Me literally in the trenches. I dug out several tons of dirt and replaced it with several tons of gravel, just to get the drainage sorted out.




That's what 10 tons of DG (Decomposed Granite) looks like in a pile. Eventually it was used throughout the hillside. I did a rough calculations based on the 10 40 yard containers I filled or overfilled, and then calculated the sand, DG, gravel, bags of cement and mortarless retaining blocks (300+ at 75lbs each) and realized I hauled out up that hill and into front and from the front down the hill about 60 to 70 tons going each way.




One of several deliveries, 7 pallets of block, sand, gravel, and cement.








These are all photos of the final level where the BBQ, pizza oven and grape pergola went in. This was the one with the least amount of hauling if that can be imagined.


And now the before and after pics



"Look honey, it's perfect we don't need to do a thing." Cindy says.

"But that platform and stairway are pretty unstable. Plus where will I put my garden and pizza oven?" I reply.




Pizzas and herbs for everyone.




The treacherous, rotting, termite infested stairway down to the pool.




A few potted dwarf citrus and the edge of the new stone stair/path.



This stairway, although built never could have made it up all the way so this is where and how they ended it. You can see the little gap under the house where my head fit in so that I could here the termites sing.







More potted citrus and a garden path that meanders past potted herbs and a couple of fountains.




I capped off the wall with a block wall, creating a bench area with a fountain center piece. Then I added a wall of hanging plants to create at the very least the illusion of privacy.




I added the middle orange tree. It was in a 36" box. Getting it into position almost killed me. When I did it there was no lower wall only a slope, so it almost crashed into the pool. My left leg stopped it. Luckily I have big legs or else it would have snapped it and still went into the pool. I added the tree rings to tie into the lower wall that I put it. The ground cover is marjoram, thyme and sage.




The trees are all beginning to produce.




A view from the opposite side.




And finally the pizza oven is in and I've laid the patio. I had to cut a lot of brick to get that design. I poured literally tons of cement myself for the foundations.

I did have a qualified, and very competent and thoughtful contractor do the brick work around the grapes, the pizza oven itself, the bbq and the marble work.

Otherwise I did around 95% of the work in the backyard myself, the hauling and digging and everything. I learned several new skills, that I hope I don't have to use again.







Home made pizza from a wood-fired oven with herbs from my own backyard, doesn't that just make it all worth it.




Home Sweet Home

What happened to November???

A lot of stuff happened in the last few weeks, so much that I have been neglect in my blogging and I'm afraid that I will invariably forget things and muck up the chronological order of things.

I braced myself early for the coming onslaught of holiday happenings and I think I did fairly well all things considered. I made a goal to finish the brickwork for the patio by Thanksgiving. And I did accomplish that, although mixing and throwing mortar the morning I am also preparing for a feast was probably not so wise. Let me put it this way, I was so busy scrambling around before and during Thanksgiving I actually lost several pounds.
I started working on Cindy's show on the 19th which made for an interesting juggling event, trying to do a good job and homeschool Skye and deal with the Thanksgiving (I will go into more detail in a separate blog), very interesting indeed. I created several lessons out of visits to prop houses and research on Afghanistan.
We had 16 people over on Thanksgiving Day. It was potluck so I didn't have to prepare everything, mostly just the turkey and its fixings. It was a wonderful success although it almost killed me.

The following week put Skye and myself on location in Victorville a few nights with a monumental amount driving. We had lots of long discussions along the way, carschooling. Don't laugh I actually have a book with that very title and CD to go along with it. I shouldn't really read while I drive now should I?

On Monday night I recieved an e-mail telling me that a Danish girl who I'd arranged a house-swap with was indeed arriving. Now don't get me wrong, while it was a surprise, it shouldn't have been, I mean, that was the plan and what was discussed. I think I was in denial and was hoping for Cindy to be my voice of reason, but she too was in denial. So because I was coming back to LA so that Skye could make it to her Flute lesson and to Taekwondo and I could shop for the set, it worked out that I could make it back to house in the evening in time to welcome our guest.


Skye started taking Taekwondo at the same studio where I practice Juijitsu.

A very dear friend of ours from Florida was going to be in town this week as well. I was going to be back and forth to Victorville, and then it rained on Friday and I had to work on Saturday, as did Cindy. And oh yeah I had signed up for one of my crazy races, again teaming up with Kip Haynes. Realize, along with all this madness, are all of the events that just start coming up, a few birthday parties, Kip's band, Beautiful Criminal had its first show in LA, Terrell Moore's art opening and, Skye's park dates, lessons, soccer, of course the slew of reality shows I'm addicted to.

The Great Urban Race
I had planned on training and getting into racing shape. I did sign up for the LA marathon, so I had to start training anyway. I squeezed in one day of running, but I was feeling good the day of the race. Ok the photo is a little weird, but it was one of the dares and we took second place and more importantly had a fun time. We took second place.






While waiting to receive our prize at 5pm, guests were arriving at my house for a pizza party. Had we come in 4th or realized what the prize was(a $20 gift certificate at the restaurant we spent $40 on drinks and bar food while waiting to collect our prize) we would've been home by 2:30, plenty of time. I raced through traffic, snuck to the pizza oven to get the fire started and was hosting by 5:30. It was another wonderful party with our Floridian friend, our new Dannish housemate, Kip and his family, including his wife's Theresa's brother, Tim who whipped together not only an amazing pizza but a wonderful dessert out of what he was able to find in the refrigerator and pantry. And then off to the desert, leaving at 5 the next morning.



Skye chillin' out on the road to Victorville.

11-11 Ramblings, Catch up

So today's blog is a lot about not having the shots of my bruises be the first thing that pop's up on my blog. Cindy left for Chicago last Sunday. She'll be back on Wednesday, so it was a quick trip. Skye and I have had several little adventures, ranging from a day at the zoo to check out the new gorilla habitat, (a disappointment we all thought), and a fiasco involving the monumental task of cleaning a rented brick saw, (too much to get into), to preparing to help Cindy out on her show doing a ...(can't tell you, much top-secretness on Cindy's movie, Eagle Eye. Oops can I say the title?) and AYSO soccer(they lost this week, so sad)


A beautiful hawk has taken to hanging out in the neighbor's tree.


Skye and Micah checking out the one gorilla that graced us with an audience, the other four were apparently too busy to make it to the gala event.


Skye, Micah and River as condors


I can fly.

The evolution of a bruise

The Aftermath of the Muddy Buddy

One might think that there's not much going on, a slow news day as it were or that this has something to do with the writer's being on strike, but it's really just my fascination with the changing colors of this major bruise. It looks worse than it feels.


Monday 11-05-2007

Tuesday 11-06-2007

Wednesday 11-07-2007

Muddy Buddy Results

Results were posted and we did alright. Not great, not bad. Pretty much right in the middle of the pack. In our age group there were 49 teams that finished. The winners ran it in 37 minutes and 29 seconds. We were 25 with 53 minutes 41 seconds. Interestingly the team that came in behind us at 26 was 1minute and 20 seconds behind us. Less than 2 minutes seperated the 10 teams that came in before us. Next year we'll break the top ten.

Muddy Buddy

Yet another crazy fun race event, the Muddy Buddy. And again Kip Haynes steps up as my racing partner at the last minute. I've been wanting to run this event for a while now and it turned out to be a lot of fun.



The race; 1 teammate starts on a bike, the other starts running, 2-minutes behind. There are 4 obstacles on the course, each serving as a transition point as well when teammates trade biking/running responsibilities. It was a tough one to figure out a good pace, at least for me. I went out pretty strong and was dying by the end, actually grateful to do something as simple as crawl/swim in mud.

One of the obstacles that I "went out strong on" was the balance beams. You know there are like five balance beams alongside one another, a turn around moment for Richard Gere in "An Officer and a Gentleman". Anyway, I started to lose my balance, my legs were a little wobbly from the bike, so I jumped over to the beam next to me, no problem. Oops lost balance again, just jump back. Not so fast, I missed and landed hard on the beam with my thigh, luckily not my ribs, they would of cracked like toothpicks. My leg however could withstand the blow. I shook myself off, told the race officials I was fine, no I didn't need an ambulance and took off running.


This mark is 11" by 2.5", swollen and growing more purple as the hours pass.


We made it!!!


I am going to fire my photographer. Just kidding Cindy.


Their showers consisted of around 20 sets of hoses. This only got more interesting as the day went on.





Check it out. We've got video.

Happy Halloween

We ditched the tree costume. (I have no idea what we're going to do with it. Cindy suggested using it as our Christmas tree this year. I suppose that's the environmentally sound fiscally wise thing to do and it would certainly be different, we'll see.) We scrambled the day before to get a new costume.

My favorite little devil, Skye out trick or treating.





Skye and Amandla checking out their goodies.

Tru as Wednesday

A few days earlier, an amazing sunrise. One of the only good things to come out of the fires.

GOODBYE OCTOBER, WELCOME NOVEMBER