Tuesday, April 19, 2016

month around town

Ahoy,

Our weekends of late have been pretty thoroughly domestic. We were supposed to go to Yosemite, but weather reports washed that out. Which has left us in town for several consecutive weekends. Gasp! For a while we were looking at no weekends at home. This has given us some time to:


  1. make a bed. We got wood from Home Depot. The check-out lady was hilariously incompetent, and I think that resulted in not charging us for several 2x4s. We came up with design and measurements and got all the wood cut at the store. We only got in 1 fight, and probably because we were hungry. I was really skeptical that we would finish the bed in a weekend, but it happened. So now we are raised off the ground some 30 odd inches, which gives us a lot more storage. This is the closest I'll get to a bunk bed as an adult now; I was pushing for that for a while. My goal was to make it awkwardly too tall for me to clamber onto bed. I just think it would be really funny to witness my struggle, in my head and for you. Also, one end of the bed rests on a drawer set from Ikea, which is probably the least sturdy component of our bed. All in all, good job, us! I honestly did not think it would happen as quickly as it did, but our landlord let us borrow his drill and that made a big difference. 
  2. meet A's folks for dinner and lunch in far flung locales of the LA area. We had dinner in Chinatown one night, and I have to be honest - there are a lot of restaurants I would choose before I choose that one. But I think they have a massive load of nostalgia for that eatery, so what can you do but grin and bear it? Always a fascinating night of interactions with his folks. The following day, on a whim, we made the trek to Disneyland (!?!) for lunch with them. We always make the wrong turn for downtown Disney and end up somewhere the employees enter. The RRS loves the beignets at the jazz place. This is not the first time we've made this trip just for beignets. 
  3. create organization/storage solutions. We hung up a hook for his longboard, hooks for our closet, and replaced shelves with a new bar in the closet to hang things. We now consider ourselves just beyond the level of newbies with a power drill and wood/hook combos. What a thrill. But really, this closet stuff has been on our to-do list for a while, and it's been nice to have some time to knock these out. 
  4. go on Sunday morning hikes. That first weekend, we left a little later and we quickly realized that everyone and their mom was also going on a hike. Luckily for us, someone left right next to where we were waiting in line (there was a line) for parking. So despite all the folks that were waiting ahead of us, we were at the right place at the right time. Bonus, that morning was overcast. The following weekend, we left a little earlier for a brisk 3 miles in the Palisades. It was sunny so I was glad to be out of there when we were. And the last great escape into the urban wilderness took us into Beverly Hills. After wandering around for a while, this place probably had the least obvious trails, we went for brunch at a place we had passed up before because the line was too long. It was delicious! 
That's our generally unexciting & domestic month pretty well summarized. But I must admit, storage is really quite thrilling. 

pleasantly acquainted,
jt

Thursday, April 14, 2016

finally

Ahoy,

We finally got some more white rice and I switched out our rice bear from the icky brown rice mix to pure, unadulterated white rice and it is simply, blissfully heaven! Brown rice is the worst.

bearingly grainy,
jt