Friday in L.A.

Ovid picked me up at the airport and then we went to the Arenas' Barber Shop where DeeDee and Stevie Arenas were doing their hair thing. DeeDee cleaned up Ovid's attemps at cutting his own hair and we all got caught up - it's been 17 years since I've seen either of them, but time doesn't really matter, does it?

Then we stopped for gas and here's Ovid, just being Ovid...














Here's a shot of O's green suede shoes - he always had interesting shoes - I didn't check out his socks, but he is known (at least I know him to) buy ladies socks because they have better colors!















Ovid - up close and personal - there's a twinkle in his eye, even if you can't see it past the sunglasses.














After that we met up with Nathan Stein and Nikki (fromL.A. Guns) and caught the new Michael Moore movie. Pretty soon my awesome neice, Vanessa will be here, and then a good day will be even better.

RUM CAKE PROGRESSIVE

While vacationing in Florida this summer, we celebrated a couple of birthdays. Those of you familiar with my blog may recall that our family has a special cake for celebrations - the HUNGARIAN RUM CAKE. In all our years of making this cake, I believe this might be the first time we've photographed it's progression... Here it is all put together in the spring form pan:

At this stage most of the work is done - the three cakes have been made and torn apart so that we can layer them with jam, chocolate custard, and simple syrup with Meyer's dark rum in it (dyed red and green of course - like the Hungarian flag!). After it's put together, we drizzle rum (Meyer's dark rum again) over it and put a flat surface on top and then weigh it down - usually with jugs of water, though my friend Tim recently made this cake and he used a rather large rock from the garden as a weight.

Now comes at least a week of drizzling at least once daily with rum and re-applying weight. The result is this:

The spring form pan has been removed and it has been inverted onto the cake plate. You can clearly see the layers and how much the cake has compacted. You can also see my mom, and our dear friend and fine cook, Louis Gualtieri, in the background. What you can't see is that Louis doesn't have his pants on!!!

Next comes the crumb coat. Normally I skip this step and make a simple powdered sugar glaze, but since my brother Jay, the pastry chef, is in town, he's doing the icing and he always does it right - because he's a damn professional!

Which is why he travels with his pastry bag and tips.

Of course, the chocolate that Mom has in the pantry isn't good enough for him to use to write the Happy B-Day message, so we are off in search of yards that have more blooms than ours - but first, we must take a break to make margaritas...

and play with our new toys...

OK - cousins are now trolling the neighborhood, looking for flowers to pilfer...

Et viola - the finished cake:

And the celebration:

THE UNEXPECTED

One of my favorite things in a day is when I come upon the unexpected. Like these grapes.

I was racing around doing the last minute things I needed to do before I left on my 3 week vacation. One very important thing was to pick up perscription refills, so I was at the 45th Street Clinic in Wallingford doing just that. I found these grapes in their parking lot, hanging over a storage shed. It looked like they were growing from an adjacent backyard and had spread, unchecked.

The day was hot, but somehow, standing near these grapes the air felt lighter and cooler and I was compelled to slow down and find my camera and capture the unexpected.

THEY DON'T MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO

One of the nice things about being a public transportation girl is that I do a lot of walking and it's easy to stop and take pictures when you see something very cool. This amazing Lincoln Continental for instance:
I was walking down 15th Ave. in Interbay when I saw this beauty. Can you imagine the ride this would give? I think it would be more like gliding than driving. A road trip in a car like this wold be a luxury, except of course, I'd want it to be a convertible. But still... So, here are some detail shots - they don't make them like they used to...

HAPPY DANCE

                        Yeah! I love it when I feel this way!
                 Too bad I can't express it the way Coco does.

FENCED IN

Sometimes we have to admit failure. I finally did today, and I feel so much better. No longer fenced in by impossible tasks. I took too many classes this quarter, one being a programming class (not my strength). I finally decided today to take a "fail" in the class and re-take it in the fall or winter. What a relief! Headache instantly gone. Schedule not quite as insane. Peace has descended. Well, not quite.

The thing about programming classes is that you not only have to learn a new language - the computer language - but you have to learn the jargon that the instructor speaks. The teacher would ex-plain something and all the programmers say, "OK". The rest of us say, "What did he say?"

Bothered and Bewildered am I. Not Bewitched.

On now to accomplish reasonable tasks and goals... then some working vacation time... hanging out with the family... perhaps some serious drinking, pool playing and body surfing... maybe even some writing...

SUMMER HYDRANGEAS

For some reason, Hydrangeas always remind me of grandmas...maybe that's why I love them so much. According to Wikipedia, the Hydrangea is native to Southern and Eastern Asis as well as North and South America.

Hydrangeas come in 3 basic styles; the mophead, the lacecap, and a cone shaped flower cluster. The mophead variety is by far the most popular with more than 600 cultivars. It is my favorite, but the lacecap is growing on me. This is a flatter shaped flower cluster with small, fertile flowers in the center, surrounded by larger infertile flowers - much like a lace cap.

Most Hydrangeas are naturally a creamy white but can range in color from deep to light blue, through the shades of purple and into the pinks. The color depends on the PH of the soil: A neutral soil will produce white flowers; an acidic soil will produce blue flowers; and, an alkaline soil will produce pink or purple flowers. Hydrangeas are hyperaccumulating plants, specializing in the soaking up of aluminum ions.

You can change the color of your flowers by amending your soil, however, newer cultivars have been developed to produce specific colors of flowers. You can change these colors a bit or, enhance them with soil amendments, but if you bought a bright pink cultivar, chances are you'll never get it to turn blue. A few years ago I saw a beautiful creamy yellow hydrangea cultivar on Martha Stewart's TV show, but I have never seen it since.

Hydrangeas like a moist, well drained soil and sunlight. They can tolerate some shade and I would recommend afternoon shade. Hydrangeas that have the full afternoon (hottest) sun tend to have faded flowers. Pruning should be judicious - most hydrangeas flower on "old growth" - this years new growth will bear next years flowers. Plants that are severely pruned every year never get the old growth and stop flowering. My favorite way to prune hydrangeas is to cut the flowers for arrangements. If you have a plant with vigorous flower growth, you can easily cut half the flowers in a season and still have a beautiful bush in the yard.
More good news - Hydrangeas are hardy plants and can grow from Nantucket to Florida, from Washington to New Jersey. For more information on hydrangeas, visit the United States National Arboretum.

BACK OF THE BUS

It's a rare thing to get on an empty bus in Seattle, but that's what happened a couple of weeks ago when I snapped this picture. I call it "Back of the Bus" because that's what it is and because I like the song "Back of the Bus" (by G. Love & Special Sauce.
Chorus lyrics below:

Let the wild rumpus start cause it
just can't stop
And all the cool kids in the back of the bus
Cop a feel
Steal a kiss miss
I hope ya won't regret it
And all of the kids in the back I hope you get it

All the cool kids in the back of the bus
Rubba dubba scrubba bubba
Whatchu talkin' bout gus breakin the rules
I hope we don't get caught sha la la la la la la la la

HEAT ~ WAVE

Last week all anyone could talk about in Seattle was the heat. It was a week of broken records. There was no relief; no breeze in the evening, no cooling down in the early morning hours, no famous Seattle rain to wash away the sweat. Or the smog. One of the nice things about Seattle is a lack of smog - most days. In the summer when it gets hot, we might see a thin layer, but last week it was thick. For Seattle. But nothing like L.A. in the summer. It made for a nice sunset though, and I took this picture of the needle on Broadway in Capitol Hill, looking down Denny. I took about 7 shots and couldn't get a clear one; I didn't want to use the flash, and my hand is not that steady. But I like the shot anyway.
Looking south on Broadway we have Dick's and all the hot, sweaty people out for a cheap dinner. It's too hot to be inside, and it's definitely too hot to cook. Besides, it's good people watching on a night like this.

Then panning back we have "Moon Over Dick's". Not exactly Ansel Adams, but I like it! It was a nice night, even though I was hanging out on Broadway becase there was a power outage by the University Bridge so the electric buses weren't running, and the driver didn't tell us in time for us to get off and catch the 43 which was going to the same place, only by a longer, less direct, but fully electrified route.
However, if the driver had told us in time, or, if the power wasn't out, I would have never been on this corner at this time taking these shots. So my irritation washed away, I eventually grabbed a cab, and had an interesting conversation with the driver, a guy named Jojo, from Kenya. I sure like Seattle cabbies. And hot Seattle nights.

MORE SIGNAGE

My friend Dimitri lives in this apartment building. Directions: On 15th, just past 55th, the one with the Viking Ship. Over the years I've passed this building countless times and wondered, "What were they thinking?" But, eventually the quirky ugly stuff becomes endearing. I love this bulding now, not just because of the signage...
But also because the building falls so far short of it's modernist yearnings that it's kind of like Charlie Brown's christmas tree... you gotta love it, poor thing.




Another example of great signage - the sign and the object are the same thing:

BUMPERS

I don't know why I love this picture so much, I just do. I like the contrast of the rough wood with the glassy-ness of the water, the reflected light, the semi-gnarly bumpers...

THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE

I was cutting through Greenlake last weekend to catch a bus home and I had my camera in my hand - it was a spectacular day and I was really liking the light through the trees and the view of the far shore. As I walked to the edge of the lake and snapped this picture, the kid in the lower right corner stepped into frame. He had been walking on the path with his friend and they were tossing a ball back and forth. The kid you see had tossed the ball behind him and it went into the lake. A disagreement ensued. The kid who missed the ball thought the kid who threw it should go into the lake. The kid who threw it thought the kid who missed it should do the wading.

I didn't stick around to see who went in, but, I have an opinion. I think the kid who tossed it should get his feet wet. He threw the ball blind and the trajectory went right into the water - the catcher never had a chance.

Anyway, I dig the picture. I thought about cropping the kid out, but then it's just another picture of Greenlake. I wonder what story I can make up about this kid the next time...

CHESS LESSON

Seattle parks are such a great place for people watching. I watched these two playing at the giant chess board at the Bobby Morris Playfield a couple of weeks ago. Well they weren't really playing, he was teaching her. It became obvious fairly soon that this was a chance encounter - they didn't know each other.

NEW FLYER

I've been looking at signage lately. There are signs everywhere, little tiny messages, giant billboards, but we have a unique capacity to filter most of it out. I remember seeing a photo of La Cienega Blvd. in L.A. - it was taken near the 10 freeway and looking east up to West Hollywood. Practically all that was visible were signs. Hundreds of them. This was shocking because I worked and lived right off of La Cienega, and drove up and down it at least twice a day, and yet I never saw the signs. It was like I had blinders on the whole time - and I did, because when we are looking for something in particular, we have a tunnel vision that edits out all the junk that doesn't pertain. If we were just hanging out, looking at the view from the vantage point of the photographer, we would probably let our eyes rest on the most pleasing part of the scenery - this hills in the background, or a particularly large building, and still not see the signs.

Anyway - the signs are everywhere, even this little gem, which I had never seen before even though it is on all the newer buses in the Metro sysem, and I ride the Metro buses every day.

BLUE PROW

One of the things I like about living near the water is all the water para-phanalia. Boats and all the boaty things. I also like that I can walk down to the water and out onto a dock and loiter about, listening to the slosh of water against hulls or jettys. I love being on the water. I love the crafts that ply the water. Once again, it's about going somewhere, but doing it in such a relaxing way. Often, on a nice day, I'll catch a ferry to Bainbridge, just to be on the water. When I get there, sometimes I just stay on the boat for the ride back. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.