Venice at Twilight

A moment of Zen.

La Brea Tar Pits

Hi, all! Beth here, with another overdue update. Here's a bit about my visit to the La Brea Tar Pits, possibly one of the coolest things I've seen in LA so far. I went here with my East Coast visitors on an unseasonably hot day.

This was a glimpse at the largest tar pit...they have a fake mammoth stuck in the tar for dramatic effect. They also have statues of the mammoth's panicked family standing at the edge of the pit.

I was so surprised to see and hear the tar slowly and intermittently bubbling, like a boiling pot of really thick, sticky stew. You can also smell the tar. It smells a bit like gasoline.

Inside the George C. Page Museum, there's a real working laboratory. No one was working while we were there, but normally you would be able to watch real-live scientists at work, brushing off teeny-tiny fossils, cataloging finds, and generally being awesome. (I can tell I would love their nerdiness—see the license plate that says "I DIG91"?)

While weaving our way through Hancock Park and among the pits, we came across some giant wooden crates. These are a part of Project 23, an endeavor to explore the contents of—you guessed it—twenty-three blocks of excavated material ("asphaltic deposits") from the grounds. This stuff was dug up to create a parking area, and the team has uncovered more than 700 fossils from it so far.
As I learned from the educational museum videos, the La Brea Tar Pits have yielded one of the world's richest collections of Ice Age fossils. That's why the folks at the Page Museum can display an entire wall's worth of dire wolf skulls (there are more displays like the one above; 400 skulls in all, I believe)—they have plenty to spare (1600 or so found to date). (P.S. Yes, this was a real animal, which I had never heard of. Possibly the inspiration for the one-word direwolves from Game of Thrones.) These animals are the most common found at this site. Scientists suspect that the wolves, being pack hunters, would team up to attack prey stuck in the tar...and get stuck themselves.

I somehow left this adventure with a tiny splotch of tar on my pants. I really have no idea how this happened. The pits are fenced in, so you're not really all that close to the tar. Leave it to me to accomplish something like this. Well, now I can say firsthand that modern-day laundry chemicals are no match for Pleistocene tar.

Vistas

As I mentioned in the last post, we were so happy to get a visit from East Coast friends this month. I'd venture to say that the theme of their visit was vistas. This wasn't really intentional, but we kept ending up in places that just happened to offer some great views of sprawling Los Angeles. I wanted to share a few with you...

(That's the ocean in the distance.)

Where is Los Angeles?

Well, we have been quite the busy bees with work and friends' visits and (work-related) travel! I hope to get some more pictures up in this space soon, but I had to show you what's now hanging by my desk: A hilarious postcard from Hold the Mustard Productions. Check them out, because all of their postcards cracked me up. This one perfectly summed up the continual confusion I expressed while apartment-hunting:

An excerpt from the text below the picture...

Strange But True: Another common-but-rarely-talked-about tourist probelm is the inability to actually locate the 2nd largest "city" in the U.S.A. The confusion is mostly caused by the fact that once you get close to it you discover that it's really a lot of little places trying to pass themselves off as one big one...If all else fails, it is good to remember that the Pacific Ocean is almost always Southwest of you & going to the beach instead is likely your best bet.

This was just too perfect. Whenever we'd schedule an apartment viewing in a new neighborhood, my questions would start: "So, Culver City...is that 'L.A.'? Is it like a borough? Like, the Queens of L.A. or just 'L.A.'? What's considered 'the city'?

To help us learn where Los Angeles is and isn't, this handy Ork Poster hangs in our kitchen:

I think I'm starting to get it...but most of the time I do give up and go to the beach instead.

Just one shout-out before I wrap up: I got the postcard at Small World Books, my favorite hippie bookstore in Venice (which you may remember from my gushing review). I just love that joint. It's tiny and tucked away, but everything on the shelves is clearly curated by people who love books...and other fun, unique, artsy things, too. Plus, you can pet their bookstore cat, Conan the Librarian, as you browse.

The world is small like that.

We're slowly starting to add a few more things to the apartment. It's fully functional, but some things could function better. For example, we realized that we really could use a small bookshelf in the study to help keep work files organized and accessible. We found the perfect candidate on craigslist and went to pick it up last night.

The person we bought it from is moving to New York with his fiancé and is still going to be freelancing for his current LA employer from afar. How strange that he is making my move—in reverse! The world is small (and weird) like that.

Viva Las Vegas: Part 2

After a very busy Saturday, we woke up on Sunday, got some coffee, and headed off to the Hoover Dam. We were shocked to feel actual rain that morning, but were grateful that temp had cooled all the way to 92.

The dam was amazing. Both of us spent our time in the mini-museum just imagining the lives of the brave people who flocked to the dam for work during the Depression. I also marveled at the fact that it was completed about 2 years ahead of schedule—that has to be the first (and last) time in history that a construction project was completed early, right??

From the museum building, I looked down and got a peek at what we were in for. It was freaky.

Since I know you're dying to ask: Yes, we did take the dam tour. We took the whole dam tour and Chris couldn't stop making dam jokes. ;) The tour actually takes you INSIDE the dam. You go down this tiny tunnel (it pays to be short in this case!) and can look out at the water from one of the vents on the front of the dam.

When we resurfaced after the tour, we found our state represented in front of the monument by the dam. The American flag flies here, in memory of those who died during the construction.

The dam is still functioning, and even the beautiful floors inside are original to the construction. The whole experience made me think of that saying: "They don't make 'em like that anymore."

My favorite part of the experience was actually not an official part of the tour. It was a teenage tourist (Indian, we think), who was excitedly asking intelligent questions of every single guide and docent in sight. He clearly knew a lot about engineering; probably more than the guides. We heard him thank one guide for answering his questions, and then he enthusiastically told the man that it was his dream to see the Hoover Dam. Still warms my heart days later.

Finally, as must all good things, our time at the dam came to an end. We drove off into the sunset (and into Labor Day traffic). The desert was beautiful at night.

We basically collapsed of exhaustion when we got home, but don't worry, Vegas...we'll be back.

Viva Las Vegas: Part 1

Apparently this is a summer of travel. As Fabio from Top Chef would say: "I love it!" This past weekend, Chris and I took a road trip to Las Vegas for his 10-year high school reunion. Many of his international school classmates now live in the US, so it was a fun place to meet up. Here are some highlights from the first part of our trip...

As we drove through the desert, it started to get hot.I took a trillion pictures from the car because I'd never seen desert before. Some parts featured scrubby little trees, while others were just vast stretches of sand.It kept getting hotter.Before long, the Vegas strip came into sight! The Paris was one of the first casinos we drove by.We stayed at the Luxor with the reunion group. This hotel is shaped like a pyramid and features crazy Egyptian-style statues, including a giant sphinx out front. Neither Chris nor I had ever been to Vegas, but something about this joint looked very familiar. I think this hotel must have been featured on Wheel of Fortune when I was a kid. (I also kept feeling inspired to say things in game-show announcer voice: "Today's prize is a trip to fabulous Las Vegas! You'll be staying at the famous Luxor resort. Take a ride on the Inclinator. Enjoy a cocktail at the luxurious Oasis pool!")The first night, I did my first-ever gambling. (Well, if you don't count playing poker for Bugles snacks on camping trips with my neighbors as a kid.) We came out ahead $27 on the slots! We packed the next day as full as possible. We hit the pool as they day heated up. Then, just as I was wondering if it could possibly get any hotter, the car told me the answer.As we headed out for the day, I took a shot of New York, New York. (Hey, we're not that far away after all!)

From there, we scoped out Old Vegas. Next time we'll go at night to see these awesome signs lit up. It is really nice during the day, though—much lower-key than the strip. Plus it's covered and they have some kind of fan system set up under the big archway. There's a zipline that stretches down the whole little promenade, so as we were walking, people were flying by overhead.We moved on to Sigfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage. Obviously, I was incredibly happy here. We saw 2 baby dolphins, and these older dolphins loved hanging out by the window!There were also lions, tigers, and leopards. The lions were especially close to us! I even caught them doing an affectionate head butt.

We checked out the inside of some other casinos during the day. It was so cool to see the different themes inside each one.

Before I go on, I have two words of advice to Vegas visitors: Buy water. For some reason, there are stores and cocktails everywhere, but water is hard to come by. And by the time you realize you're thirsty in the dry heat, you're practically ready to pass out. I tried filling my Earthlust bottle from the tap, but the water was really, really icky (seriously, we were later told that unfiltered Vegas water will eventually give you kidney stones) and warmed up so fast. So if you see water, buy some.

At night, the temp cooled and we walked down the strip. We made it to the Bellagio just in time to see the dancing fountains. (I was too absorbed in the outdoor shows we watched that I forgot to take pictures. Here's a nice HD video of one of the songs we saw.) I loved this part. I love that someone even thought of this, and I love that they actually went ahead and built it. Since I didn't catch the outside, here are some of the tiny leaping fountains we saw during the day.

After the fountain show, we hauled our tired legs back down the strip to the Luxor and geared up for Part 2 of our road trip. Stay tuned...!

Los Angeles, the Land of Outdoor Movies

One of my favorite things about LA so far is that there are so many opportunities to be outside, even in the evening. Outdoor movie screenings are especially awesome. So far, we have hit a grand summer total of 2 outdoor movies and 1 outdoor play.

A while ago, we watched Young Frankenstein at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. (Yup, INSIDE the cemetery! They project the movie onto the side of a mausoleum. I had my vampire-slaying skills at the ready, but they were not needed.)
Luckily, we had friends on the inside to tell us important tips for this event: get there early, bring snacks, bring games, bring layers. They also inspired us to get the exact same backpack chairs they're sporting in this pic.
We later toted our backpack chairs to this Outdoor Cinema Food Fest in Beverly Hills. This time we saw Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. It took place in a baseball field with a huge inflatable movie screen.

Before the movie, we all got dinner (and then dessert!) from various food trucks stationed around the edge of the field. (Chris already has a post planned on food trucks, so I don't want to steal his thunder.) I got chickpea sliders from this truck.

One thing I didn't expect: It became SO. COLD. at night. LA is deceptive like that. For the Young Frankenstein screening, I had enough layers (flannel shirt plus hoodie). My face and hands were chilly, but that was okay. This time, my sweatshirt was not nearly enough. I plan to attend plenty of these, but next time I'm seriously considering long johns and a ski hat. If that happens, I promise to post a picture of me wearing full winter gear in Los Angeles for your amusement.

Day and night

The East Side of Los Angeles on a Sunny Day from clark vogeler on Vimeo.

LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

(HT: The Daily Dish).

California Kills

I know, I know, from these posts, you'd think that California is all sunshine and lollipops. But let me tell you a secret. In California, deadly things lurk at every turn. I know this because I just confronted my first poisonous spider: a brown widow.

I failed to take a good picture of this beaut' because I was only willing to view it through the balcony's sliding door. However, it had a telltale orange splotch on its belly. (Was it an hourglass, exactly? I wasn't close enough to see, but what else has an orange splotch on its belly??) It had created a web stretching from the side of our camellia planter to the balcony wall. For hours, it just hung there, upside-down, giving me a good, long look at its belly.

I hate killing things, but this sucker had to go. Sorry, spider. I can be deadly, too. (OK, I'm being a bit unfair to the brown widow. Apparently their bites are rarely deadly.)

I have also been watching Shark Week on iTunes, where I learned that great white sharks are coming closer to shore than ever before. Tagged sharks were even traced to one of their favorite local hangout spots—right under the Santa Monica pier!

And don't even get me started on mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and everything else that can kill you on a hike.

Now, I know that these species are all largely misunderstood and that probably 99% of the time, deadly encounters are either very unfortunate mistakes or human-incited (shark thinks you're a seal; you stepped too close to a snake's hideout). But...they can still KILL you. So could a rabid subway rat, I guess, or a diseased pigeon, but this is a pretty big wildlife shift from the sights of old NYC.

image credits: shark, mountain lion

Jewelry stand

Until now, all of my "everyday" jewelry has been sitting in a cardboard USPS box next to my dresser. Yup, despite having been here about four months, I still had not unpacked it. In New York, I used the shelves of my old post-college TV stand (covered with a curtain) as extra storage for jewelry, lotions, etc. But I sold the little TV stand before we moved, hence the cardboard box.

I've been struggling to find a solution that works for me. I love little framed earring hangers, but what about necklaces and bracelets? (Even hangers with pegs wouldn't necessarily fit everything.) Jewelry racks and trees are cute, too, but I doubt I'd keep everything neat enough to always be on display. And once again, they probably wouldn't fit everything.

Most home stores sell every make and manner of plastic tray, but those would require clearing precious drawer space. I even considered a tackle box (cheaper than a large jewelry box, easy to transport in a move, and full of little compartments!), but don't have a good place to store one.

What I really wanted was a binder. I even thought about making my own, larger version of this jewelry book using a zippered binder and coin-collecting inserts, but I pictured the pages getting really heavy (and jewelry falling out). Seriously, though--wouldn't that be great? You could just stash the book in a drawer or on a shelf. Your stuff would be stored out of sight, but you could see everything neatly when you opened up the binder. It would be space-efficient and easy to transport.

At the end of the day, I did want things more or less out of sight. I wanted as much as possible stored in one place, and for it to be easily accessible on a day-to-day basis. I didn't want the responsibility of keeping things neat. (Plus, too much dangling jewelry might as well come with a sign that says "Fun shiny cat toys!")

In the end, I decided to try an inexpensive pastry stand. I have bracelets on top, earrings in the middle, and necklaces on the bottom. So far, it totally works! I can't see the jewelry unless I'm right next to the tray, so the "out of sight" element is pretty much covered. (Except for the 2 necklaces I chose to dangle, which can easily be moved.) Pieces are separated (no knots), but don't have to be neat. Everything is easy to access. The tray fits all of my "everyday" trinkets, and it seems that the cat could not care less about the new jewelry rack.

I know these home posts are not as exciting as the adventure posts, but now that we're done traveling for a little while, I'm happy that we're getting some things done here and taking steps to make the new place feel more like ours. It's the little things that count!

Bathroom facelift

I felt we'd mostly solved the overall beige-ness of this apartment, but for some reason, the one room still plaguing me was the bathroom. Now, I've never cared that much about bathrooms. In fact, they've often baffled me. Flipping through a home and garden magazine, I'll marvel at the cavernous bathrooms--how much stuff could you possibly want to keep in there? I'll puzzle over the phenomenon of his and hers sinks--does marriage hit a point where you suddenly *need* two sinks? The only thing I ever covet in those photos is a whirlpool tub (relaxing). But all I really dream of is a bathroom with adequate ventilation. One day...

Anyway, consumed by the boringness, I decided that bathrooms actually do matter in their own little way. We finally used a housewarming gift certificate to give our bathroom a little facelift. (Note: You'll see from these photos that we still have weird fluorescent lighting. Not much we can do about that.)

Rather than aggressively fight the beige, we attempted to work with it, using sort of muted colors. We found sage green towels on sale and a super-soft oatmeal-colored bathmat.

They looked good hanging on our existing white towel rack, too.

We added a tissue box cover (an item I'd formerly deemed as useless) and stuck a bunch of dried lavender in a Ball jar we had hanging around. My glass jar of lotion blended in nicely, as did a little framed mirror that used to be in our NY bedroom. Three rolled-up white hand towels gave it kind of a "spa" look (the spa thing was all Chris!).

We also bought a soap dispenser, which was a big step for me. (True story: I kept the same plastic dispenser in NYC for 3.5 years.) Finally, we threw some of my favorite milk and olive oil soaps into a glass apothecary jar. (We have green and white soaps; I'd like to add a few lavender bars, too.) I love all of the things we found, because they're pretty neutral and we can take them with us to our next place. We'd still like to add a little piece of art to the wall, but Roger liked it so much already that he decided to move in.

You know what they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

(Note: Very observant readers will see that the framed mirror is missing in photo 1. We added it later!)

Summer mocktail of the week

As I've mentioned before, I drink a ton of water here in CA. Here's a refreshing little way to jazz up your water and make the most some farmer's market finds: Throw a few slices of lemon and cucumber into your water, along with a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

This next part isn't a drink, but some of you have probably heard me rave about my "special" grilled cheese: crusty bread, raspberry jam, gruyére cheese. Here's my latest, more savory version...

-Thinly slice onions and white mushrooms. Cook together in butter. Butter is key.

-Spoon some of the onion and mushroom mixture into a sandwich of—what else—crusty bread and gruyére (I used ciabatta below). Grill that puppy until your cheese is nice and melty!

We may not have it all together...

We saw these words posted on a sign in the Coastal Maine Popcorn Co. store in Portland (P.S. Parmesan garlic=heaven!). A little corny, perhaps, but they've become our new favorite saying.

East Coast Nostalgia

Saturday night, I went with the boys to see Captain America. The old-timey New York backdrop tricked me into thinking that I was about to step out into modern-day Times Square, about to make the no-win choice between the depressing 7^th-to-8^th-Ave. tunnel (aka “The Tunnel of Doom”) or pushing through throngs of tourists/darting in and out of the bus lane to make it to the 7 train. I really thought for a minute that I’d be impatiently standing on the platform late at night, smelling that peculiar Times Square subway smell of stale popcorn and axle grease. I thought I’d be coming home through the dingy front hallway of our Queens apartment, pouring myself a glass of water in our kitchen with the sunny yellow paint, throwing Roger treats to scrabble for along the hardwood floor. It was a little freaky when I realized I was still in California.

You see, we just returned from our first trip “back East,” and I’m having some strange flashes of East Coast nostalgia. I’ve been steadily downing the California Kool-Aid for a few months now, but this trip reminded me of my lazy, leisurely summers growing up. I thought I’d hate the humidity, but I realized that it’s a mixed bag. I actually quite liked it at night, when I sat outside in Portland, Maine, in the exact same linen top and summery shorts I’d worn during the day. At night, humidity makes everything feel sort of tropical and romantic. (During the day, it wreaks havoc on my hair.) It reminded me of sitting out on the back patio at Bull McCabe's in NYC, or of listening to friends play the guitar on the shore in Bristol, RI. Even the heat (though we left before the extreme heat!) reminded me of days spent reading in the backyard; attempting to make it through the small classics shelf at the Pontiac Free Library.

On our way back from the East Coast, we had to switch planes in New York. Catching our shuttle from JFK to LaGuardia, I really felt like I should be explaining to a cab driver how to get to Woodside instead, following his movements despite his insistence that he knows where he is going. (Otherwise, the exit inevitably comes and goes, and we go on a nauseating and unnecessary tour of Queens Boulevard.) We had a very New York interaction with the shuttle ticket seller, that special kind of exchange in which you, as a customer, ask a service provider a simple question (“Is this where the LaGuardia shuttle stops?”) and s/he acts entirely offended that you have dared asked her/him to perform the job s/he is paid to do. The city felt harsh, but still felt like home.

When we came back to our current home, our apartment building didn’t really feel like “home” yet. Only when we picked Roger up from Sam’s did it start to feel “homey” again. (I think I’ll put that on a cross-stitch sampler: Home is where your cat is.) I’m still very happy here, and I think it will feel like “home” before long….but Northeastern summers will always hold a special place in my heart.