The weekend in review

Saturday was a real rush job (except for a relaxed few hours in the afternoon, which only contributed to the rushing continuing into the late afternoon.

I dropped Liz at the hairdressers Saturday morning, then took JE to the Huntington Arboretum for a Kids Art Class. Liz had said it was at 10:45, but when we got there everyone tried to tell me the only class was for 12 noon. Now it's not like my wife to be wrong. I'm not saying she's always right (she has a horrible sense of direction and could get lost on a one-way street), but when it comes to organizational stuff she usually knows exactly what's going on and when. So when the girls at the front entrance to the Arboretum told me the only class was scheduled for 12, not 10:45, I was a little skeptical. The girls passed me off onto the Members Office, apparently a separate entity from the Front Entrance, the two areas never know what each other is doing. On this they both agreed, there was no 10:45 class. Feeling a little confused that my wife had insisted the class was at this time JE and I went outside and looked at the peacocks for a few minutes. Then I noticed a man who looked suspiciously like an Art Teacher going into the Gift Shop; a third building at the entrance to the Arboretum (the tub of pens & pencils, and the art folio kind of gave it away that he might be an Art Teacher). JE and I headed into the Gift Shop and found no sign of the "Art Teacher". We looked around for a minute and JE decided he wanted one of the Peacock feathers they sell for $1.50

I bought a feather for him and made small talk with the cashier about the art class, and sure enough, it had been the Art Teacher who'd passed through. The cashier directed me out on exit door (an exit door from the Arboretum, but the way we were going it was an entrance into the Arboretum) so we followed his directions and discovered the 10:45am Art Class, just like the wife had said. Apparently the 12 noon class had been overbooked, so the Art Teacher had set up a 10:45 class at short notice, hence no one else knew about it.

I left JE at his class and raced back to the hairdressers where the stylist was applying the finishing touches to Liz's hair, turning her into an even more ravishingly beautiful woman, and here you were thinking that was just not humanly possible :)

We then raced back to the Arboretum and arrived just as the class was winding up. Dropping the kids at the in-laws it was off to Santa Anita where Liz wanted to get her nails done (we had a wedding reception that evening, wedding was six months ago, reception was tonight). After lunch Liz went to the nail salon while I headed upstairs to Dave & Busters. Around 3pm Liz called me to say she was finished. I suspect she'd been shopping too, but I'd been shooting bad guys and collecting tickets for JE to turn in next time for a prize so I wasn't complaining.

We got home around 3:30 and Liz checked the Invite to discover the reception started at 4pm. Fortunately it was in Pasadena, not too far away, so after a very quick shower and shave (me) and dressing and make-up (both of us...except for the make-up) we were off. We made it to the reception shortly after 4pm, but no one is ever on time for these things. We hooked up with a couple of people from work (the girl who got married was a girl from work), had a little bit to drink (not too much, just enough, 4 or 5 Coronas ;) then headed into the dining room for the dinner.

What a great night. Good food, good friends, just enough alcohol, great conversation. 'Twas an awesome night.

Sunday morning I had a mild hangover, but nothing to worry about. I'd just finished my bowl of cereal when Liz got up and was dismayed to see that I'd eaten already. Apparently she'd wanted to have breakfast at some coffee shop she'd read about on someone's blog. Well the coffee shop is in Hollywood so it took a little while to get there, but not too long, about 20 minutes. Neither the food nor the service were anything to write home about. The coffee shop is located under a hotel. It's more of a Diner than a coffee shop, and not a very good Diner at that. It appears to service both the hotel's guests and neighborhood locals, not that that's a bad thing. I don't mind eating in Diners, I work in downtown, I've eaten in some places that you'd drive past with the doors locked and windows rolled up, but this was not a good Diner.

I expect top quality service in a Diner. I'm not talking 5-Star service, but Diners have legendary waiters. These are the waiters who are supposed to get customers seated, take their orders, get them their food, get them coffee refills right when they're needed most, then have the check sitting on the table as the customer mops up that last bit of egg yolk with the last bit of toast or biscuit. The service at this Diner was nothing like that. We seated ourselves and had our waiter tell us he'd be with us in a minute. He then brought us a glass of water (each) and the menus, then we never saw him for 10 minutes. Ok, that's not true. He walked right by our table many times carrying food for other customers but never stopped to take our order. I was seriously thinking of getting up and leaving when he finally stopped to take our order. We ordered our meals and two coffees; one coffee arrived. Liz & I both said we wanted two coffees. The waiter returned with a second coffee. Liz pointed out that she did not have a napkin or cutlery. He had to come back with those. These are little things that a good waiter should be looking out for. I downed my first cup of coffee in no time at all, then had to wait forever for a refill. Low points for that effort as well. Then the bill arrived. $20, for two breakfasts & coffees, at a diner in a run down neighborhood in a town that has a far greater reputation than what it deserves, but then nobody in "Hollywood" actually lives in Hollywood.

We left Hollywood for a better part of town, namely "The Grove". The difference is just a few blocks, ok, it's a little bit more than "a few blocks" but it's not too many more. Our breakfast Diner and The Grove are on the same Thomas Guide page, but they couldn't be in two more different areas if they tried. Ok, they could, stop making me contradict myself.

I think this was my third time at The Grove (maybe it's been more, trips have been few and far between) but if it is the third time, it means every time I've been to The Grove I've seen a star. The first time we saw one of the many Wayans brother (should Wayans be apostrophized? Is there even such a word as apostrophized?) and Nicholas Brendon (Buffy's Xander) on another trip. This time out we ran into Tom Lenk, (Buffy's Andrew) one of the evil trio who helps to make Buffy's last season particularly difficult for her. He was standing in the checkout behind us at The Gap. Man, is he short. No, really, he is. He's only 5'6". Danny Strong, who played Jonathan Levinson on Buffy, is only 5'2". No wonder Adam Busch, who played Warren (the third of the evil trio), who's not that tall at 5'8", seemed to tower over Jonathan.

After The Grove, Liz was in the mood for Vietnamese food; there's a Vietnamese noodle house we like to go to close to home but we hadn't been there for a while. I was still full from breakfast (and a milk shake I got at The Grove) so I talked Liz into going home where I finished relaying the floor boards that I'd had to pull up when we had the water leak all those months ago. I'd special ordered a couple of boxes of replacement boards a few months ago but when they arrived they were the wrong shade, so I had to return them and reorder new ones, after making sure we had the correct shade. It took a lot of work, cutting, shaping, fitting, etc, but I finally got the planks replaced, including laying wood down on the floor of entryway closet because I'd left it carpeted when I did the job the first time (much to Liz's chagrin).

After all that work I was ready to eat, so off we went to the Vietnamese restaurant where we ate dinner for cheaper than we'd had breakfast. In my opinion, the food and service was far superior, too. To go with our meal we each got a Vietnamese Iced Coffee, French-style, with condensed milk. OMG is that stuff gooooooood! :)

If we'd just drank water the meal would have been even cheaper still, but you can't have Vietnamese food without Vietnamese Iced Coffee. It just wouldn't be right.

The weekend was almost over by that time so home we went to chill out and relax, or relax until the in-laws dropped the kiddies back home, and then things were back to normal :)