What a weekend - Summer is here!

I could not ask for a nicer weekend! On Saturday, we headed out early to get some shopping done and my mother would be so proud because I got quite a few nice pieces for work. I stopped by the banana republic and picked up some sweet silk shirts (one in white, one in black) and a sweater. Also picked up some classy shoes and had enough time to get home and get ready to grab the bikes and head for some fun at the beach!

We hopped on the bikes and rode down to Hermosa Beach, where Festival Hermosa was already in full swing. We met friends at the beer garden after taking a long time to find a place to lock the bikes up...we ended up finding an old phone booth that no longer had it's phone and locked the bikes there. If we had brought the car down...there was no way we would have found a spot. It is best to leave the car at home on a vacation weekend like this one when you live near the beach. Here is a pic of the madness in the beer garden.

We did not spend too long in the beer garden, it was crowded with some rowdy people and the band that was playing was called "The Silly little Twits" ...they were a cover band that played a lot of 70s. I have no idea why they came up with that name. They seemed to be in the spirit of the beer garden though as they would play one or two songs at a time and then take a break for a beverage.
We moved onto the main pier area in Hermosa after the garden and we were lucky enough to get a table on the roof at Hennessey's!!!
That right there is major!!! You usually have to wait forEVER for a roof top table, as they are in high demand on such a beautiful weekend. It pays to be nice to the bouncer!!! :) We could see out all over the beach from our spot.
We also had a nice view of the pier street in Hermosa where they had a David Bowie cover. I like Bowie, but this guy went a little too far with a white mullet wig and stretch pants. You can sing the songs, but you do not need to dress up like that and make a joke of it all. Here are the people below at the concert level as well as the festival Hermosa.

We stayed and hung out until it was starting to get chilly and breezy and then we headed back to our friends place for a BBQ and to hang out on their balcony with some ice cream sandwiches....which is exactly what we did.
Something that I did not write about before was that on the pier in Hermosa, one of the most popular spots for the cool young kids to hang out, Sharkeez, burned down. It has left a big hole in the pier avenue area. Luckily the fire wall between the two buildings on either side was enough to keep it from spreading to the whole street. They were really lucky that no one was inside at the time...it was 4am when it happened, because that bar was always so crowded it was a HUGE fire hazzard to begin with.
They are going to rebuild soon, which is good because then it will keep the crowds out of the other bars.
Sunday, we watched the Indy 500 and then part of the Coca Cola 600. It was a huge race day. :) More BBQ at our friend's place and then we crashed in the afternoon. I made sure to call my sister before we left for the race watching as it was her B-day. :)
Today, we went down to the beach in the morning and stayed ALL day long playing beach volleyball. I think I did a pretty good job on keeping on enough sunscreen to not get burned, but I am definitely exhausted after a long day in the sun. I am glad to finally relax at home even though I wish the weekend was not over.
P.S. Here are the shoes I bought on Saturday. :)

Surprises and burns

This weekend was pretty low key. Tried to run some errands on Saturday, but the city was having an Armed Forces parade which kept traffic at the ridiculous level. It took 3 hours to accomplish two tasks on my list, so I gave that up and took a nap in the afternoon before we headed up to the surprise birthday party for a friend at a restaurant on Larchmont in LA called Cafe Du Village.

We walked through the kitchen to eat out on the back patio and to surprise our friend for her 30th birthday. One of the tasks in the morning was to get her an awesome gift, but unfortunately that did not happen as traversing around the parade route was ridiculous, we ended up getting her a small gift and hopefully we can take them out to dinner sometime soon. That is not me with the headband on in the pic, it is actually a friend named Leslie.
We ate and talked and like any good French restaurant, we stayed for a good four hours.
After dinner we took a ride out to see our friend's new condo that they purchased in the Highland Park area and to see their vacation photos from Ecuador and the Galapagos. It looked like an amazing trip, but it was late and we left after we looked through the photos.
I slept in on Sunday, met with friends at the Wildflower cafe and then played beach volleyball. The sky was completely overcast, no need for sunglasses...yet I ended up getting pink arms anyway. I must remember to always wear the high powered sunscreen or hire someone to follow me around with an umbrella. My friend Karen and I are indestructible at Volleyball. We were unbeaten yesterday! :)

Swamped

So, we had our HUGE work event (golf tournament) on Monday of this week, so I worked last weekend before the event and worked this week to wrap things up. The one day I took off to relax was Sunday, so we spent some time down by the beach. We took the bikes down, because the crowds were crazy. This pic is a little bit of the flowering plants that were along the path...they are taking over!
Due to the event, the house has become a disaster. Laundry everywhere, dishes to do, newspapers piling up and basically the place becoming a pit.
So, that will be on the plan for this weekend.
I also need to remember to get thank you cards for some at the office as well. They thanked me for my hard work with gift certificates for a massage and dinner and my supervisor even got me a bottle of chambord...because I told her how much I like a little bit of it in Fresca...yum.
I wish I could think of something to get them because they are so generous.
I am hoping this weekend is as nice as the last because I will be free free free from thinking of golf. :)
Hope to catch up with everyone soon...

Finally found the time

I have not updated in a while. This past week and weekend was busy. On Saturday, we took flat Stan (school project) to the Hollywood sign and Mann's Chinese. We ate at Johnny Rockets and the rest of the afternoon I felt like I had grown an extra stomach. We then gathered enough strength to go meet up with friends at Hennessey's Tavern for some catching up.


On Sunday, I went on a hike with the Sierra club in the morning. The hike was in the Santa Monica mountains and was an easy hike up to the Nike missle tower that they have now made into a little park with tables and bathrooms and a great view. This was the first time that I had hiked with the club and there were quite a few people who were new. Everyone was really cool and I got to try out my new Merrell hiking shoes which are ULTRA comfortable.

The weekend was nice break from the business in the office. The entire last week during the day I was confined to this one area, my prison cube:Well, that was when I was not fighting with my nemesis:

The cool thing about last week is that I got a chance to wear the necklace that my sister got me for my birthday. I really love it:

Birthday Week Celebration :)

So, since our weekend volleyball outing at the beach we have been celebrating my birthday, which was officially yesterday. My co-workers treated me to lunch and got me a delicious and beautiful bundt cake for lunch. YUM!
For dinner we went to Kincaid's on the pier so that I could get my favorite meal there...the filet mignon. I definitely crave their filet every so often and the prices mean it has to be a special occasion. The restaurant had about five other tables with birthdays as we could see by the balloons and candles on desserts. My candled dessert was the creme brulee:The waiter told us that there was one evening where every table he waited on was a birthday table. I never thought about Kincaid's being the chucky cheese of adult birthdays, but maybe it is closer than we would like to think.
The unfortunate part of the evening was that the Fun Factory was not open for me to play the skee ball....NOOOOO, why are you closed on Tuesdays....noooooo!I took a ton of photos because one of my gifts from Jon was a tiny digital camera that I will be able to carry around with me everywhere. :) More pictures for you to see! The other was a membership to the public radio station KCRW.
Plus, they sent an awesome CD along with the membership. Very cool!
Today, I came into work to find that I received some more flowers as a late birthday gift from a co-worker and the mail in the evening yielded gifts from my family! :) What a great week!
More pictures to follow soon!

Too much water

Well, this weekend was exhausting...in a good way.
I went out Saturday morning and picked myself up some new hiking shoes for the summer, I splurged and got myself some Merrells. :) They are unbelievable comfortable and I cannot wait to take them out on the trails.
The rest of the day was spent at the beach playing volleyball with friends. If you see me and I look like I have Popeye arms, that would be because I have bruised and battered my forearms at volleyball. I put on 55 sunscreen, but even that did not protect me for long, and I ended up a little crisp. After volleyball we hung out at the house and munched on those fabulous lemongrass chix stix and tater tots. Who does not LOVE tater tots?
Sunday, I woke up early to go volunteer at a work event called For Our Children. It is a food and wine festival and this year Honda was generous enough to host it on their campus. Here are some sad shots of the tent and the preferred area from my post in the volunteer tent. As you can see I was in the back tent by the empty boxes and propane tanks, and we enclosed our preferred guests behind a white picket fence in order to keep them corralled as we asked them for money. :)
We raised a ton for our hospital's pediatric mobile van that goes to low income communities and gives kids free check-ups and the food was fabulous!!!! I definitely had my fair share, plus I made a list of restaurants that I now want to go to in the area.
Today, I realized that I am really horrible, worse than I thought, with plants. Remember that beautiful hydrangea??? I think I watered it too much. Someone at work told me they required lots of water and I took that advice way too seriously...and this is what I have only a week after receiving it.