flowers and the kitchen sink

One excellent thing about us having had two birthdays and one party within the space of six days is that there are lots of flowers everywhere - and these ones arrived with this morning's vegetable delivery.  We do a good deal of Googling to check that various blooms are safe for cats - which these are! - the others get banished to a table outside the kitchen window and, happily, were being visited by hummingbirds today.

 

illuminated orchid

Strange, how an orchid in front of a pillar lamp with semi-opaque sides - are they very thin marble? - that's the general effect - renders the light insubstantial, like a projected beam.  After the excitements of the past few days, one would have thought it would be a tranquil day - but somehow, trying to cram in too many catch-up errands, and an eye appointment for Alice, it didn't feel that way, at all.  It really isn't a good thing that the entrance to the parking for the USC eye clinic in Glendale is somehow mangled up with a Macdonald's drive-through, and both Macdonald's and USC have scarlet and gold as their chosen colors.  Errors can happen.

 

various yellows

First and above all - so many thanks to people who wished me a Happy Birthday today!  It was a wonderful, sunny day - a very welcome quiet day, after yesterday.  It included a walk (admiring other people's lemon trees - ours shows no signs of blossom, let alone fruit, but we're hoping that will change this week when it comes out of a pot and into the ground);

working (that's Moth, behind the sunflowers); and having dinner at a very good Mexican restaurant, Mirate, on Vermont: next door, indeed, to where I had dinner back in 2004, on my first ever visit to USC - that's now a sports bar.  Calling that lump of ice "yellow" might be rather a stretch - more like - well, what? Pale seaweed? - I think it may be frozen pineapple juice? - whatever, it contains a wondrous little hollow holding avocado and cilantro oil.  Yes, I know - that's maybe a tad pretentious, after margaritas that we know and love in New Mexico, but it was, like the tacos, extremely tasty.

 

West Coast Book Party

Time for the West Coast celebration of Black Power White Heat - and, as befits Los Angeles, decidedly less formal than on the East Coast (both were much fun, though ,,,).  Luckily, the rain cleared off and out, and although no one could remotely call it warm, especially as the sun went down, we were definitely all out on the deck, which is a wonderful party space.  And it was a belated retirement party, too, in that some of the people who had been invited to bounce out at Alice on her last day of teaching couldn't be there then ... so all in all, it was truly celebratory, with food from Porto's (for those of you who don't know, Porto's has been in business since 1960, so only a little younger than us, and serves wonderful Cuban American food - my favorites are the cheese/pepper/potato balls, and the dulce de leche bisochitos, which gives you a sense of quite how deliciously unhealthy they are).  We picked them up so as to be as fresh as possible, which meant that we weren't back here until 3.15, unshowered, for a 4 p.m. party ... but by the time people turned up, we were clean, and ready ...

and the Cake!  A shout out to Sweet E's Bake Shop, who do custom photo cakes ... and who deliver via Doordash ... I was so nervous about how this might turn out, but this was perfect.

 

a new use for utility meters

Somewhere down the street and up Effingham: a resourceful neighbor has realized that utility meters make highly adequate shelving for variegated heads.  I must go and look and see what repurposing ours could be put to ...

 

Not actually Moth's birthday

... but Alice's.  Moth, however, is taking a decidedly proprietorial interest (her birthday is March 8th, she might point out, and she'd like some butter, or some ice cream, please - both of which are forbidden her on medical grounds).  She would doubtless have liked the Birthday Dinner, too - foiled by the weather in our plans to go to the ocean, have lunch over there and walk on the beach, I devoted several hours to making an exquisite Julia Child coq au vin - perfect down to every little individually cooked pearl onion.  OK, I'll be honest: Moth did sneak one quick lick of Alice's plate.

 

the dampness of carparks

The top of the Royal Street carpark, drying out, but that won't be for long.  

Why should Royal Street, however, be called Royal Street?  I suppose, maybe, possibly, improbably, but why not? someone wanted to evoke the old Camino Real, linking the Jesuit Missions - not that I'm confusing the car park with one of these structures, and in any case, the CR more or less followed the 101, not the 110, which is the freeway by campus.  That is, the 101 followed the route of ... Or maybe it's named after the Royal Cinema, which was a theater that opened in the 1940s and showed Latino films.

I can't find any regal connection between the street and the Shrine Auditorium, opposite the carpark (Royal Street runs up its side), so I was on the point of saying No Kings, until I found, at last, a Kingly connection: the scenes in King Kong where the giant ape is chained and displayed on stage were filmed in the Shrine.  I think this is what's known as an interpretive stretch.