A Lovely Morning? Me?

It doesn't happen often, my friends. But the sky was calmly dull (not my perfect weather, but good for a morning) and it rained lightly, Neil woke me up not in the middle of a bad dream and said "Let's get this back rubbed", Sean ate all his crickets, I wore jeans (bad me!), and Mirror Mirror is getting good!

I also checked Hotmail at home and had two books requested on PBS, both of which I didn't expect would ever be chosen. One, Encyclopedia Solves Them All, names the title character as "America's Sherlock Holmes in sneakers." How have I read all these books and never seen that on the back cover?

I tidied up a little bit last night and regrettably had to throw out dozens of expired coupons. Since I'm not much of a cook, I generally go with dinners that real housewives would scoff at as easy to whip up, so working with a lot of ingredients isn't really part of it. With the Grocery Game, though, you have to be flexible...right now, I have about a dozen meals I can comfortably make, so it doesn't allow for a lot of "Hmm, I see that I have chicken breasts, asparagus, and cumin to use up. What can I make with these ingredients?" Hopefully I'll become more of a cooker this summer when I have more time and am less tired at the end of the day. And tomatoes might not taste like chewy water then!

Oh yes, so Wednesday 3/26:

Getty day.

Steve was off these last couple days, so he came over and we headed for the Getty Museum/Center...somewhere. It was a big fancy modern building way up on a hill, and we had to park in this huge parking garage, then take a tram up to the building--a ride with awesome views, if you were fortunate enough to get a seat facing away from the mountain. I generally enjoy the idea of museums, and I always find something I want to see, but it's always hit-or-miss when I'm inside. Maybe that's why I love Nelson-Atkins so much; I know exactly what I like in there, and basically what rooms to find it in. In new-to-me museums, I get overwhelmingly tired pretty easily, particularly when I'm not loving the exhibit, like I absolutely *need* a nap or else I'll keel over.

The Getty was a fine experience, especially the outside:



Those trees were weird. And my family refused to WAVE when I said WAVE, because they thought it would look stupid. But they look small. Which is why I said to WAVE.


Smile, Steve!




The galleries had a few Impressionist paintings, which I always find the most interesting, and a Turner showing a wildly raging sea (I've loved him ever since I saw some of his stuff during my first Europe visit). We had a nice lunch outdoors, then laid on this closely-shorn grass for awhile afterward (seriously, like half an inch tall), where my face got even more color.



How cute are these two?

Dad is so unfamiliar with his cell phone that he thought this might be it:

We went home after a few hours, stopping at Pinkberry on the way. I didn't really know how it would be, so I went the safe route and chose chocolate chips and oreo crumbles, but the employees pile on those toppings so thick that it was like I didn't have yogurt at all. Next time I'm getting *only* strawberry. Later, Gilbert drove us to Pasadena for dinner at this nice Italian place downtown, where we ate outside! Yay! They had the best focaccia-tasting bread.

Thursday 3/27

The plan was to go on the Kodak Theatre tour in the morning in recognition of our Hollywood Day, but we nixed that idea in favor of lazing around. Steve came by, and we drove to Gilby's work to go to lunch at this little Mexican place nearby. I had sopes, which I believe I hadn't eaten since my time in Chicago. Then we dropped him off, and went to the Hollywood Museum, which I was totally excited for...

until we stepped inside. I inwardly groaned, for sure. A super big deal is made about the fact that it's in the old Max Factor building, and makeup just isn't my thing. I couldn't care less that some pot of concealer was used by Joan Crawford in the 1902 Oscars, and display after display on the first floor were sets of makeup. Autographed photos in the cheapest frames ever lined the walls, and everything just seemed dingy. While the memorabilia collection was huge, it wasn't displayed well--all cluttered and mostly lacking placards, with typos and dated references ("These are shoes from blah blah blah upcoming movie, to be released in the summer of 2000!") everywhere. It was like someone dumped their collection and these people threw it into cases. The guy running the place was smarmy and irritating, and I was almost blatantly rude to him near the end there. Even the pair of Ruby Slippers didn't cheer me--I was almost embarrassed for them to be included in this musty place. Elvis' "personal stained robe," displayed on the third floor, is probably the epitome of this museum.

Mom would have enjoyed, though, Hannibal Lecter's jail cell. I have to admit I was glad to be with people when we encountered it in that dank basement.

Next stop: home sweet home, to prepare for dinner that night of homemade pasta, brought to you by Dad & Lily. We played games, and Steve made us laugh so hard (I cried) during Catchphrase, while he attempted to make us guess "Sound bite." I don't even think he was trying to, but it's another Steve moment I will never ever forget.

We left early the next morning for Missouri. We stopped at a Subway somewhere in one of those restaurant/gas station combos, and Dad and Joe played a spirited game of Shoot-Things in their bonus arcade. It was totally cute. Dad kicked Joe's ass. We also stopped at the Largest McDonald's in the World, I think.