The Magic Castle

In between rain storms last week we found this huge pool hall in Glendale and played with Celia & Aaron. Turns out they met at a pool hall so it was a special night. It was definately an old authentic pool hall with a distinct smell of a frat house. See that green wall in the background?? That is a fountain wall....I guess it helps relax the players that are playing an intense game of pool.
Saturday was the first rain free day, so Al and I took advantage of the sun, clear skies and went running on the beach. We also did lots of people watching because we were at Venice. We noticed a new evaluation center to get your "medical marijuana license." There are people handing out flyers that tell you what to say when you go in for your appointment. It said something like do you suffer from stress, anxiety, anorexia, depression.....etc., get your card today. What is this world coming to?
Let the people watching begin.....A guy in a American Flag speedo or possibly even underwear.
And Wala.....THE BEACH. I can't even tell you how beautiful it was. The sand and water were so clean, the waves were huge, and the air was amazing.


Look at this house closely....
Those are mannequins in the window, so random
Another pretty picture of the beach
Al and I watched the waves forever.
We also watched this bird


This lady was awesome. She was the best hula hooper I've ever seen
Some guy on rollerblades, but with homemade wheels
These guys hang out in this little circle and dance on rollerskates.....a video is after the picture

This is talent right here. He also did the splits and touched his head to the ground. I was in too much awe to take a picture of that.
This is a picture of a kid and his pet snake. I don't know what that snake eats, but I wasn't about to get close to it.
The guy that steps on glass which is just as painful to watch
Another crazy car accident in L.A. which is unexplainable since the roads were dry and had no traffic for once
Hopefully they are ok
After the beach we went to The Food Trucks For Haiti Fundraiser. More than 20 food trucks were lined up to raise funds for Haiti relief. Any kind of food you could think of was there. Al and I were starving, so we were a little overwhelmed at first. We started at the vietnamese truck and had spring rolls.
View of all the trucks

We had pizza from the Italian truck, fries with feta and honey from the Greek truck, Korean tacos from the Korean truck,and to top it off an ice cream sundae from the ice cream truck. Now that sounds like a lot of food, but since it was going to Haiti that made it ok.
I wanted to try the grilled cheese truck,but the line was insane I became their fan FB and will find them around town one of these daysNow to the big news....We got invited to go to The Magic Castle. What is the Magic Castle? It's this huge mansion in Hollywood that is an "elite" club with magicians.

Aaron & Celias neighbors are members and were kind enough to let the 6 of us come along. See the book case behind us? You have to say a password to get in, so fun

We saw 3 different magic shows and they were all way impressive.

The Magic Castle made for a magical evening.

Rain Rain Go Away

The last 4 days it has been raining non stop. It's so bad that there has been tornados, floods, and mudslides. It was nice the first day to have some rain, mix it up and be able to wear a coat, scarf and boots, but now it needs to go away. This is not the deal I had with California. Here is a view from our balcony. I wish you could see how hard it's raining in this picture. The pool is about to overflow
The amounts of water on the freeways is crazy, photo from USA Today
Mudslide, photo from USA Today

Al and I drove to Woodland Hills yesterday and what is usually a 20 minute drive on the 101 turned into a 2 hour drive due to flooding on the freeway.4 lanes were shut down to 1 lane....UGH

and on the our way back the same thing happened, but this time it was because a tree fell onto the freeway and they decided to cut it up in the middle of the freeway.
This rain is ruining everything including my social life which is working 2 days a week at Anthropologie...lol No one wants to shop at an outdoor mall so all my shifts got cut which is so lame. I've had to come up a LOT of extra things to do like editing pictures, cooking, looking for real jobs, and of course watching Lifetime Movies. I finally figured out what to put in my cloche that Stacy gave me for Christmas. First, let me tell you how excited I was to finally get my very own cloche. Isn't it perfect:) I debated what to put in it for a couple weeks and decided to go with lemons and limes. I bought some fake ones, but Al told me they looked faked and that didn't sit right with me, so here it is filled up with real lemons and limes.

After I go to bed my cloche fills up with humidity. I was really excited when we first moved to LA and I didn't have dry skin anymore. Lotion was finally paying off, but now little things like this happen. Every morning there is less and less humidity in there, so I'm hoping the lemons and limes dry out soon. I will keep you updated.

Now onto baking!! I love to cook and also love to try new recipes. Yesterday I made Al chocolate chip cookies. I used the Neiman Marcus recipe,but I think it's actually Mrs Fields....anyway they are way good. Here is the recipe if you're interested. You will be so glad you made them.

A big thanks to Kitchen Aid. It has made mixing so much easier in my life. It's great when you can throw all the ingredients into the bowl and stand there and stare at it.

The final product was so amazing that Al ate 9 of them and I ate the last 3.

I thought I was going to go crazy from being inside all day, so I talked Al into taking me to the mall to look at the Droid. I don't know what it is about living in California,but T-Mobile and AT&T SUCK. I LOVE my iPhone and it will be hard to let it go, but when I'm at home which is actually a lot right now I drop almost every call. So long sweet iPhone....I loved you while I had you, but it's time to move onto a phone service that can handle me. After the mall it wasn't raining anymore, so we walked around downtown Glendale. It doesn't get anymore romantic than that. We saw a movie being filmed, so we stopped and watched. My first thought was OMG a Rolls Royce, this has to be a good movie
The Producer sitting in his chair

They were letting us get really close for 2 movie stars to be in that shiny black Rolls Royce, so while Al asked someone what it was for I watched.

Turns out it was a commercial being shot for JCPenney......I had to laugh.

NeuroDisney

Last week we went to the L.A. temple with Celia and Aaron. I hadn't been there since my Uncle Andrew took Christy and I there during Spring Break of 2003. Of course I looked for some pictures, but since digital cameras weren't big then this is all I could find (Janae I thought you would get a kick out of these:)). Andrew and his family just happened to moved out of CA as soon as we moved here, but they are on to bigger and better adventures on the island of St Kitts where Andrew is going to medical school!! Here are some pictures I took at the temple

Last weekend I had the opportunity to accomapny Al at a Neuro Surgeon convention at Disneyland. The Disneyland part caught my attention so I agreed to go. On Friday night we had a cocktail and hors d'oeuvre party with all the neuro surgeons and their wives. Saturday was the convention. Here is a picture of Al at his table

There was the craziest devices there. This beauty is $300,000, but it has an ipod hook up so the Dr can listen to music during surgery, so it's totally worth it.
The white square on the picture below is called DuraGen. That little square is like $1000. It is placed on the brain at the end of surgery before they put the skull back on. It feels like foam when it's dry then when you get it wet it feels like a slimy square of silly putty. Al let me play with it when we got home...lol Expensive entertainment
I talked Al into walking around Downtown Disney with me afterwards....so fun, but not as fun as actually going to Disneyland.

Does this picture remind anyone of Honey I Shrunk the Kids when they find the lego in the backyard?? So fun