new year’s eve fun

February 2nd, 2010 | Filed under life in LA, snapshots | Leave a Comment

For New Year’s Eve we were going to go to dinner and a movie. Then we decided not to be old and invited R’s cousin over for dinner before going out to see R’s brother play in his cover band. It was fun, plain and simple…

I made a delicious, vegetarian Hachis Parmentier, which is a French Potato Casserole that I learned from my brother. Mmmm, good! Greg enjoyed being our guest and we loved having him…
Gregory Awesome in our dining room new year's eve dinner

We opened party poppers during dinner, which provided us with fancy hats to don throughout the night. Kind of perfect: blue for him, pink for her…
festive hats kiss!

And here we are in the back of our cab as we made our way into the valley for the show. You will notice the beautiful, orange butterfly clip which was my popper present.
Cute, eh?
cab ride

And, of course, it wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve if there wasn’t a bit of silliness at midnight. Unfortunately, the midnight kiss was a bit flubbed. He wanted a kiss, I wanted a photo. I won…
silliness at midnight lovely midnight kiss attempt: fail

All was fun and we were home by 12:30pm. Old, but still fun. Maybe?
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holiday review 2009

January 31st, 2010 | Filed under snapshots | Leave a Comment

Here are some long overdue snapshots from my holiday season…

First, there was a holiday dinner for my work, which was much more subdued than Rory’s. Just dinner and smiling. Here I am with some fellow teachers and with Sheila, our founder and CEO.
with Tracy and Samantha S holiday dinner

After the S dinner, Sheila and I went to a birthday party at a club in Hollywood. I stayed for about 25 minutes before I was ready to leave. Big, Hollywood clubs aren’t really my thing, but it was fun to celebrate Vicki’s birthday! The first photo is of me with Vicki and the second is of the rest of the group…
happy birthday, vicki celebrating birthdays

Later in December I headed to my parents house, which was lovely and restful! One day I drove down to my hometown and got to see my dear friend, Amanda. I finally got to meet her son, Rex. Look how cute and mischievous he looks…
michevious
We went out for lunch, stopped for cupcakes and then I got to take a tour of her home…
cupcake face amanda and rex at home

I wish I lived in Northern California so I could see them more often!

Back at my parents house, Christmas rolled around and we made a flaming cocktail drink that my Dad saw on television. See the flame? It was fun to make, but I didn’t love the taste of it. Mom did, though!
burn! shake sprinkle, crackle making flaming holiday spirits

After Christmas, I returned home to LA where R and I had a little Christmas celebration of our own. Here is R modeling the jacket he got from my parents and posing with the new book of short stories by his favorite writer, Kurt Vonnegut.
modeling the new jacket a new Vonnegut book for R
R gave me a pair of short, black UGGs. Finally, I fit in in LA and my feet stay toasty.

finally, i might fit in in LA with new UGGs

He also got us season passes to Magic Mountain!!! We went last Sunday and had a blast. We heart roller coasters, so season passes to go ride them whenever we want was a brilliant gift.

All in all, it was a great Christmastime!
{New Year’s Eve coming soon…}
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indelible impression

January 28th, 2010 | Filed under journal | 3 Comments

I know…it’s been a long time without words here. I do plan to post some photo updates, but first, a love post to Mr. JD Salinger, may he rest in peace today.

My brother gave me the book Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger at a time when this book was important for me to read. There was one, long section near the end that has never left me. Here it is ~ it still makes me cry…

~~~
“It’s this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why’re you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line – in one damn incarnation or another, if you like – you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You’re stuck with it now. You can’t just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to – be God’s actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to – there’s nothing wrong in trying.” There was a slight pause. “You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I’m talking about . You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.”

–Zooey, to his sister, Franny in Franny and Zooey, 1955
~~~

Thank you Mister Salinger for your words…
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company holiday party #1

December 15th, 2009 | Filed under goings on | 2 Comments

Over the weekend we went to R’s company holiday party. It was at one of our fave restaurants, which meant great food and super-duper margaritas! There was a white elephant gift exchange, in which R got his cool gifts stolen about 4 times and then we ended up with a small version of the game Boggle. We already have Boggle and this was a disappointment since we took a very cool gift. I mean seriously, we took a Trader Joe’s gift card and some Peppermint Joe’s. That’s cool. (And on his 3rd trip up to choose a gift, I told R to just take our gift, which he did, but then it got stolen. Boo) But, it’s all in fun and we did, in fact, have fun with it.

There was also karaoke and at the beginning of the night, when he first spied it, R said, “Ugh, I hate karaoke.” Toward the end of the evening, guess where he was?

IMG_2500

He wailed FOUR SONGS!

He’s fooling himself that he “hates karaoke”. I am now of the belief that he unwittingly LOVES karaoke, although if you ask him he will maintain that he hates it. But come on, look at that photo…

All in all we had a great time.
My company holiday party is this Friday ~ which I believe will also be fun!
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holiday family portrait: FAIL

December 14th, 2009 | Filed under makes me laugh, snapshots | 1 Comment

We tried to take a silly family photo for the holidays. We found a Santa pet costume and decided to make Marceau the cat wear one in our portrait. As expected, he resisted. We tried very hard to make it work several times, but this is what we ended up with…

portrait fail
We’re going to try again after Marceau has had some time to forget the trauma of it all…
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