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What I planned to do on my mini-vacation of 5 days:

Spring clean the apartment.
Continue BrownieFest2009
Spend time with the Finnish branch of the family, currently visiting LA.
Organize files from work and at home.
Go to the LACMA & a couple other galleries.
Buy frames for more of my tinyshowcase and other prints.
Go for a long walk through LA.
Read a bunch of books and write reviews.
Other interesting and delightful things I could write about here.

What I ended up doing:

Laying on the couch with a box of tissue and cough drops, watching The Rockford Files.

I did go and see my brother and family before succumbing to a cold.  It is the first time I’ve met my youngest nephew, and I haven’t seen the twins since they were two.  It was lovely to catch up.

P.S.  I love the Rockford Files so much.  Jim Rockford rolls around in that gold Firebird with a mini-printing press so he can make his own business cards on the fly.

The RSS feed for this thing seems to have stopped working.  I have no idea.  If you would like to get my infrequent updates in your feed reader, try using this.  (I’m working on blogging more often, really!)

Although we have lived a couple blocks away for a year and a half, we still hadn’t been to a concert at Disney Hall until last Sunday.  The Frank Gehry building is featured in movies and photos of LA and has become an important part of the architectural vocabulary of the city.  Almost everyone is familiar with the sweeping lines and cool metal exterior of the building.  I was delighted with the unexpected warmth of the interior, most of which is wood and incorporates shapes of trees and branches.  I’ll have to go back and take a self-guided tour of the interior of the building soon.

We saw the last Disney Hall performance of the season for the LA Philharmonic. The performed Mozart, Symphony 34 and Brucker Symphony 7.  Bruckner must have been a jerk, or had a grudge against percussionists (or perhaps both).  The piece was about an hour and a half long and there were three percussionists on stage - a timpani, a triangle, and a cymbal.  The timpani had work to do throughout the symphony, but the cymbal and the triangle guys just sat there through the entire thing, except for one moment of excitement in the second or third movement (I don’t remember which).  They both stood and prepared for their parts.

Ting, ting, ting

Crash

That was it.  A single cymbal crash and about a dozen taps on the triangle.  The percussionists resumed their seats, and it was apparent from their posture that they were done.  They got an appreciative burst of applause from the audience at the end for their work of endurance and timing.

My Memorial Day weekend plan was to make three different brownie recipes, using recipes from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, and Martha Stewart’s Cookies.  My plan got a derailed by rotten pecans, Rick’s toothache, and my own overwhelming laziness on Monday.

I made the Dorie Greenspan recipe.  I made it twice; the first time with rancid pecans that had been sitting in the cupboard way longer than I remembered.  After throwing them away in disgust, I decided to take a trip to Surfas in Culver City to get some better baking supplies.  They have about 87 different kinds of chocolate, so I picked up a few different types to try out.  They also had an astonishing array of sprinkles, except for those little silver ones that look like BBs.  I used to love those as a kid, and I can’t find them anywhere.  I got curious about why, and found that they have been banned in the state of California.  Thanks for protecting us from the evils of silver poisoning, California!  It has clearly given us an edge over the other states.

The brownies turned out delicious, fudgy in the middle and crispy on top.  I overcooked them a bit; clearly I need to experiment a bit more.

This time, I’m keeping the walnuts in the refrigerator.

Toast spends most of her time under the bed, unless she thinks food is about to appear.

(Here you go, Dad.)

A friend came to Los Angeles to visit recently, and I realized that I’m not a very good tour guide.  When I was growing up in the suburbs of LA, my family would go and do all of the tourist things - museums, parks, attractions.  I’ve gotten out of the habit since I’ve been an adult, mostly sticking to my favorite places and restaurants.

I picked up a book on walking tours in LA to get us out and visiting some new neighborhoods.  We started with a walk around the Sunset Junction area, and the residential area in the hills.   We walked up a set of stairs featured in a Laurel & Hardy film, past houses in various states of repair, and through a favorite stretch of shopping on Sunset that includes my favorite comic shop.

More photos.

Cheddar has decided the couch is his territory, along with the bed, the kitchen and most of the floor.

I know that you were all concerned about the lack of cat pictures on this blog.  You are welcome.

Don’t you hate it when you go to a blog and they tell you it will be a whole new world of blogging frenzy and then there is complete blog silence for two weeks?

Yeah, me too.

Um…

Here are a few photos of rocks and ocean and trees from our vacation up the coast over Christmas vacation.

I had some issues with the old blog, so I’m starting fresh for the new year.  Now with actual content!  (That is the plan, at least.)