A Winter Woodland Walk

This is an appendix of sorts to Thanksgiven. The day after Thanksgiving, I took a walk around the property of our rental house with my mom and my sister, and this is what we saw.

Intrepid explorer, Haley Bechtel, scouting the frontier with only her hoop, her wits, and her adorable hat

      Treasures:

Thanksgiven

I was going to stay home in LA this Thanksgiving, but I got a wild hair to fly to VA and surprise everyone. Turns out no one was really that surprised, but I'm glad I did it anyway. My trip there was relatively painless. I seemed to bypass all the madness of traveling the day before Thanksgiving, and the rest of the trip was ever so relaxing. I didn't even mind so much that it was bloody freezing outside.

This was the lovely rental house we stayed in on a GORGEOUS Thanksgiving day.

Thanksgiving with my parents means Etaturk, a gathering dating back to my mother's days at Elon College, when the students in the liberal arts forum got together to eat and drink and carry on in a sort of high brow low brow fashion. The Etaturk group and ritual has fluctuated and evolved over the years, but it still involves eating at midnight on Wednesday and dressing up in costumes. You may recall from my previous post how much I love Halloween. Well, I love it so much, I do it twice!

Does this costume look familiar?

My sister with her roommate, Tierney

I love this photo. It looks like some bizarre 19th century French play

Mikey giving a traditional toast

Larry in a turkey coma. Not sure why he's got my wig.

My favorite thing about doing dinner Wednesday night is that Thursday, when everyone else is cooking and being busy, we just laze around and eat pie, cozy in the knowledge that we're loafing while people elsewhere are working hard.

The ceremonial Thanksgiving morning MFK eggs. The ceremonial pie has already been eaten.

Perfect.

Friday I was back to the grind a bit. I spent about 6 hours launching the fundraising campaign for my album from my laptop in the dining room. It was sort of grueling, but it really needed to get done. If you haven't heard about this already, check out our page: http://www.kapipal.com/thepictureandtheframe, and - no pressure - maybe give a little if you've got it.

So once the work was done, I got back to the serious business of having fun. Mom and I made dinner with some help from Haley and Sunil. The idea was to use up everything in the fridge before disbanding the next morning. I think we did pretty darn well. There was left-over split pea soup, more turkey, ham, and stuffing. Mom made a nice mess o' greens, and I made a what's-in-the-fridge soup that was out of this world. I was inspired to make something vichysoisse-esque with the leftover mashed potatoes and cauliflower, but that was just a jumping off point. I added leeks, turkey bacon, white wine, and a little buttermilk, and it was divine!

Mom makes greens next to my magical wonder-soup

Sweeties. I forgot to mention they made a souffle and some cornbread.

The Spread, aka, Larry Carves Another Turkey

Results!

Consequences.

I would be remiss if I did not mention a couple more things before I draw this to a close. We have a time-honored tradition at Etaturk of writing an illustrated verse about each year, in the voice of Etaturk himself, the turkey king. It is presented before dinner by the artist, Renny Johnson, and the bard, none other than Larry Bechtel (though Larry took up the mantle only a few years ago). Here is ETA XLV:

The other thing I thought important to acknowledge was the presence of our canine companions:

Lucky

Lilly

and Buddy, who lost his leg to a flock of angry geese.

Three cheers!

Halloweekend!

I love me some Halloween, y'all. I might love it more than Thanksgiving or Christmas. I love any occasion to get dressed up in a costume (which sometimes encompasses Thanksgiving too, in my circle). This year I didn't go as big as I have in the past. I was a bit more conservative with my spending, plus Alex had to work, so some of the grander plans were set aside. We had planned on going as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, but I could hardly be Zelda on my own, so I wore a different dress and called it Roxy Hart.

Weekend/Week of Epic Proportions

I lead a blessed life. I truly do. I live in a place with the most perfect climate. It's been just Fall-y enough lately to make me comfortably feel like it's Autumn, and I have been riding a wave of non-stop awesomeness. Let's just talk about the last 6 days, shall we?

Saturday I woke up early-ish, and for the first time in quite a while Alex didn't have a meeting on Saturday morning, so we had a lovely brunch at The Village Idiot. Then we went to the Beverly Center to pick up his new suit from J. Lindberg (which he looks extremely handsome in). He went off to a screening of his film at the Arclight (!!!), while I did a couple errands. We met up with some of his friends at The Cat and the Fiddle for drinks. It was the bar's 30th anniversary, so there was free champagne! We had a tasty dinner at Loteria Grill. I like that place, but $9 for chips and guacamole seems a little steep to me.

Sunday morning I packed mimosa supplies and chocolate chip cookies, and met up with my Picture and the Frame bandmates at our friends Justin and Clarissa's place to take some photos in their pool for our album cover. The water was freezing, but I was having a great time until the waterproof camera proved not to actually be waterproof. We'll be trying again in a couple of weeks, much to Rickett and Mark's chagrin, I'm afraid. We were so close, but we didn't quite get there before the camera ceased to function. But the shots we got convinced me that it was, in fact, a great idea, and worth pursuing.

As Summer Wanes...

Yes, I know it's October, but I live in Southern California, so summer doesn't really end until about this time of year. This weekend was the first time in weeks it hasn't been ungodly hot. It's always such a relief when the heat breaks. The sun shines, but the air is cool. At the farmers market everything is in season, from peaches to pumpkins. Here's how I've been spending the waning days of LA summer.

Movie screening in Barnsdall Park with illicit wine and dinner from the Dosa Truck. The film was "Drive." Nothing like magic hour on the lawn of a Frank Lloyd Wright house with a curried potato burrito, a Bulgarian red, and a wonderful man.

Hanging out with some of my buds at Nick and Lindsay's new place.

My biggest achievement: finishing the move. It's official now - Alex and I really live together. There's no going back now. So long 503!

Given that I came upon this one night while I was moving my stuff out, I don't think I'll miss it.

A Little Jaunt to San Diego

I just got back from a weekend trip to San Diego, and man was it great. Lauren, a close friend of mine from William Paterson, is having a baby, and the shower was a Sunday brunch in San Diego, so Alex and I decided we might as well make a weekend of it. It was short, but lovely just the same.

We stopped at a gluten-free restaurant in Encinitas on the way down to get some cupcakes for the shower (and also a chicken pot pie, pizza margherita, cinnamon roll, coffee and tea for lunch). Really good stuff. In LA, gluten free baked goods tend to be vegan as well, so it was refreshing that 2Good2Be did not have that hang-up. That cinnamon roll was bangin'!

We arrived at Hotel Solamar at about 4, after a little snafu at the hotel next door. They had a sign that looked very similar! We checked in, made ourselves comfortable, then changed into our evening attire. We enjoyed the complimentary wine service in the lobby. Pretty decent Torrontes. Our dinner reservations weren't until 9:30, so we changed into our bathing suits and got drinks by the pool.

We had a little swim in the heated pool, then another costume change, back into evening attire, and walked to dinner.

My domain name has become a lie. I am so busy!

Wow. Life picked up big time. I have been so busy! I feel like this is the first time I've sat still in weeks. I've been working three or four days a week. Things are ramping up with The Picture and the Frame. I'm trying to fundraise for the album. And if that wasn't enough, I moved in with my boyfriend. Figuring out how to fit two people's stuff into a one bedroom apartment has been challenging to say the least. We were going to wait until the end of October, but we decided to just go for it, so I've spent the past couple weeks packing and schlepping. I have to be out of my apartment by the 30th of this month, so I've been doing as much as I can on my days off and even after work in the evening. Yikes!  As you can imagine, pretty much everything else has disappeared for a little while.

I'm actually in a pretty good place with the moving process. All my stuff is in the new place, and it's mostly all put away, but I'm down to the odds and ends that don't have a place yet. I even registered to vote at my new address!