An Amazing Post Thanksgiving Lunch

Ben arranged for us to have an AMAZING multi-course lunch on Friday at M.A.K.E.  

It's a raw food restaurant in Santa Monica.  

They use all Blendtec blenders in their food preparation.  

Here we are getting a tour of their teaching kitchen where they teach raw food preparation classes. Shaun was our host for the tour and the lunch.

 It was truly a splendid table.

I was almost persuaded to join the vegan crowd.  Almost…

Bye bye 21 Sunset Avenue, Apt. 3, Venice, California.  It was a golden seven years.  Gone, but never forgotten.

Our landlord, Marie, will turn the apartment into a vacation rental.  
So we have left a few things behind for her to use.

Thanksgiving & The Last Visit to the Venice Beach Apartment

We spent the 2014 Thanksgiving holiday at the Venice Beach apartment.  It was our last hurrah at this wonderful place.  

Mason & Madison and Penelope & Aaron stayed with Gordon and me in the apartment.Ben & Karen & Brent and Emily & Jeremy & Vivian and Alice & Isla stayed at the Cadillac Hotel down the block. It's icky, but it's where the overflow always stays.  It's our icky.
We had wonderful weather all week.

Vivian copacetic at the beach.

Brent loving his first Thanksgiving at the beach.

We walked up and down Abbot Kinney for pizza and Chocolatier Blue chocolates and over to Moon Juice on Rose for smoothies and we found a new bakery called Gjusta on Sunset Avenue. 

Thursday morning walk to the bakery with the kiddos.

We had Thanksgiving dinner up in Somis at 

Aunt Pat & Tio Richard Barroso's house.

Here's the family.

The grandkids love the beautiful Barroso back yard.
Back row: Mason Lonsdale, Penelope Morris, Aaron Morris, Madison Lonsdale, Laurelyn Rosas
Front row: Isla Curtis, Vivian Morris, Brent Lonsdale, Daniel Rosas Jr.

Faces From Home

Susan & Dave Nicholls Came to Visit New Orleans...

It was a beautiful fall day in New Orleans so

Susan and I took a Garden District Walking Tour.

This is our Guide – she was full of character and started our tour with the story of Lafayette Cemetery #1.  Here, accompanied by some iTunes jazz, she’s telling us about the tradition of Jazz Funerals and her hope that we get to see one.  Later in their visit Susan and Dave saw a Jazz Wedding in the French Quarter – even better.

That afternoon Susan and I drove out to Vacherie, Louisiana to see Oak Alley Plantation on the Great River Road along the Mississippi River.

Susan outside the master bedroom on the second floor.

On the second floor gallery looking down the famous live oak alley toward the Mississippi.

After the tour of the house was over, we sampled their virgin Mint Julep.  (Minute Maid Lemonade in place of the Bourbon.) 

We picked up Dave from the hotel after his conference and we headed out to the NCIS set. They were in LaPlace, Louisiana at an empty hospital used by film companies when they need a hospital location.  Here we are later that night. 

Dave did his part to keep the script medically correct by suggesting a dialogue change from “we stanched the blood flow” to “we controlled the blood flow.”

Dave told me, I told Gordon, Gordon told the director and the director told the writer, who was on set – he agreed and told the director who told the actors...and the change was made. 

On Saturday the four of us dined at Emeril's in the Central Business District.  We had a great meal and an excellent time together. Scott Bakula came in with a friend & dined at the table next to ours.  He also just happened to pay for our meal.  I guess the evening couldn't have ended any better.

My Accidental Southern Life - Hearing the Voice of New Orleans

The Unique Language of New Orleans* or <nyoo AH-lee-'@ns> .

On our drive down here in July, Gordon and I discussed how to pronounce the City name. This is a sticky subject. There are oodles of ways that the locals pronounce the name of their beloved City. Natives know instinctively if you're getting it right, and <new or-LEENS> is wrong every time. 
I'm sticking with <new AW-l@ns>  and I won't worry a bit if my pronunciation gives me away, because I'm not from here and I'm not trying to be. The Big Easy - Avoid uttering this phrase at all costs.  Under almost no circumstances would a native ever refer to the City in this way.

When I first walked around my neighborhood in New Orleans, the thought that came to my mind was the question of “Who Dat?"  I saw this on signs and posters everywhere.  Alright, who is this Dat?  Well, the dog next door is named ‘Who Dat'.  But I soon got the picture, and we got a Saints t-shirt for Game Day too. (Actually only Gordon got one.  As a girl from Packerland, I'm holding out.)

They say having a lazy tongue is helpful in New Orleans.  I found pronouncing Tchoupitoulas <CHOP-uh-TOO-lis> Street was actually easier for me to remember then Calliope <CAL-lee-ope> Street.  Only natives can spell it.  Neutral Ground was easy to understand, as long as I didn’t confuse it with Common Ground, which is nothing.   I learned what makin’ groceries is and I do it at Rouses and what a gentle and lovely thing it is to be called dawlin’ while waiting in line at the deli counter or checking out at Target.  It took me a little longer to fall in love with having the 6’2”retired NCIS agent on the NCIS set call me ‘Baby’, but he’s a gentle giant and it’s all in the tone… I’d feel sad now if he stopped.

"Do you want that sandwich dressed?"  I looked dumb the first two times I was asked, but yes, you do if you want mayo, cheese, lettuce or tomatoes.  I ate a Praline everyday until I got sick of them  - so I took note that it's <PRAH-leen>  not <PRAY-leen>.  Got it?  Good!

I thought saying 'Catlick' was sort of a joke on the tourist, but a Baptist might actually call you a Catlick if you are one...a Catholic that is.  The girls I occasionally pick-up from school call their grandmother 'Maw Maw' - that's a sweet one.  Over Halloween my across the street neighbor informed me that she’s always lived “near her mama an nem” & then she explained what it meant.  It explains New Orleans in a nutshell, everyone wants to be near their ‘mama an nem’.  We all do.  

So my ear is learning to hear the language of New Orleans.  It's only taken six months, and it's ongoing.  

  *Caveat:  There are exceptions and exact opposites to everything I just said.   

My Accidental Southern Life, continued...

Yesterday.

Paul McCartney came to the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans.  Gordon and I were there.  It was just like 1965. 

Sir Paul was supposed to play NOLA back in April, but he picked up a virus in Japan and one of the concerts he cancelled while recovering was this one.  It was our good fortune that he rescheduled and we were in town.  It was further good fortune that one of the production assistants on the NCIS set had a friend on the crew at the Smoothie King Center and he had two great seats to sell us. 

My sister Barb and I saw Paul on tour (Yes! Our favorite Beatle) a few years ago when he played the Rio Tinto stadium in Salt Lake.  Out of this world.  What a terrific night. But the closest Gordon had ever gotten was driving by Candlestick park in 1964 and seeing the lights shining up as the Beatles played and wishing he was there instead of in the car with his family going to visit his aunt.  Bummer.

So, together we had a blast. Paul and the band played the old stuff and the new stuff non-stop for over three hours, did a 30-minute encore, and oddly, they didn't seem to break a sweat.  We sang along, we were rock'n and rolling, remembering our youth, and the sweet nostalgia of coming of age in the ‘60s washed over us.  We were not high, we were 60 something grandparents, and our rock n’ roll guy was 72.  It was groovy.

Paul taking his bow.

My Accidental Southern Life

Roll Wave

My walk to Hebert Hall on the Tulane campus

    I ride the vintage green St. Charles Avenue streetcar uptown to Tulane University every Monday and Wednesday morning at 8:15.  It costs $1.25.  Exact change required.  Trying to insert a dollar bill into the payment box often holds up the line, so quarters are best.  I only go sometimes on Friday.  On Friday 19-year-old undergraduates have quizzes and exams, papers due or push their desks together for group discussions.  I don’t do those things.  What I do is sit-in.  I sit-in on two classes; a lecture on Southern History and a class on disasters.  Why disasters you ask?  Because the only class on Katrina wasn’t offered Fall semester, and the curriculum for this class promised a two week section on Hurricane Katrina.  I want to know more about New Orleans - so I ride the streetcar up to Tulane.

    And I’m in love with this early morning ride on the varnished slatted seats and open windows of the streetcar that rumbles down the Neutral Ground of St. Charles and I love these two classes.   The invitation to sit-in was a beautiful gift that gets me out the door in the morning and into the city.  And by now I’ve mostly gotten used to feeling like I’m wearing a sombrero - different that is - the only non-faculty (not dressed up), older female adult walking around campus.  Just casually dressed me among the 19-year-old comely coeds in track shorts, tank tops, or a very little sun dress and flip flops.   I can identify a sorority girl by the addition of a string of pearls to the tank, or a higher-end flip flop.  Or the give-away would be the commemorative t-shirt from the ‘Kappa Spring Beach Night of 2013’. The boys differ only in that their shorts are knee length and they add a trucker hat. Of course I’m (very slightly) exaggerating.  It’s a uniform that’s just barely giving way to long sleeve t-shirts and jeans as October brings a bit of what they call fall here in Louisiana.  I’m just trying to make sense of my surroundings. I’m interested in what kind of kid gets into and then attends a highly competitive school in the south, tuition 60K.  I sometimes look around to see if they’re paying attention at 9am in the morning.  And mostly they are, and they show up on time for class, and they're taking notes, and a few ask interesting questions.  And only occasionally do I notice the collective exhale of alcoholic fumes on Friday morning, signaling the Thursday night start of a campus weekend.

    I do know I’m drawn to this campus three times a week for the very outstanding teaching by a nationally recognized expert in Southern history and for the disaster class teaching roster that rotates weekly through the best historians lecturing on a disaster in their geographic or political field of expertise.  Last week was the Armenian genocide and the week before the North Atlantic slave trade.  But I also recognized the Tulane campus as a type of comforting place I know how to negotiate in the otherwise very unfamiliar city of New Orleans.  Put me on a college campus and I know what to do.  The French Quarter? Even with all of it’s charms, not so much. 

  After I finish my three-hour idyll I walk back out to the Neutral Ground and hop on the streetcar that goes back down St. Charles the other way and drops me off at First Street.  I walk the six blocks back home through The Garden District and I’m home on Constance Street again.

Hebert Hall where my two classes are held.

Etched into my desk by someone who loves their cat.  I'm smiling. 

Tulane with early morning southern sunshine and humidity in the air.

Look Back to August and Labor Day Weekend at Home

We took the chair lift up the mountain from the Silver Lake Lodge at Deer Valley.

Beautiful day at the top...
We're ready to hike down.

Madison, Ben, Mason & Karen has Brent.
What a vista.

Emily, Penelope, Aaron & Jeremy has Vivian.

The two of us & we have each other.

We headed down the Ontario Trail & it was gorgeous.

Aaron, Mason, Madison, Penelope - good hikers all.

Aaarrrggg.

Come With Me on One More Saturday Adventure. September 13, 2014.

The beautiful & colorful Laura Plantation.  It's a typical Creole-style plantation - a visitor to the lower Mississippi could tell from the road if a home belonged to a French Creole family or an American family by the color of the house - a stately white house said 'American',
and a colorful house like this one said 'French Creole'!

The tour included these neatly dressed historic cut outs of the original owners 
Guillaume Duparc and Nanette Prud'Homme.

I loved these beautifully painted doors.

Each set of doors had panels hand painted with a different flower.

This is one of the two remaining quarters for the enslaved African workers.
The tour says that in the 1870's a neighbor began listening to the traditional stories the black freemen & women told their children.  He wrote down these oral stories and they became the source for the Brer Rabbit and Br'er Fox folktales.  
The gift store sold a great edition and, of course, I bought it.

Laura is a traditional sugar plantation, but they are growing bananas here too.

After our tour of the plantation we headed back to New Orleans to a late dinner date with the very talented NCIS set designer.  I don't often feel sick, but as we drove home I was not feeling well at all. I thought it was the spicy Mexican lunch we had in Baton Rough giving me indigestion.  Then it began to feel worse then that.  You know how when you're feeling sick you figure you'll feel better soon if you just hang in there?   That's what I told myself and I went to bed as soon as we got home.
My favorite doctor kindly does phone consultations from Wisconsin - his entire family is always putting him on the spot like that - he listened to my symptoms and suggested I might want to head to the emergency room if I didn't feel better soon.  For the ER to sound like a good destination tells you I felt seriously yucky.
  

Funny how a little morphine can be your best friend!

So one CAT scan & a few labs later I was the proud owner of my very first (and last) kidney stone.  Thanks to that morphine and lots of fluid I was home again in a few hours.
Thank you to the great staff of the Touro Emergency Room & to Gordon who made everything seem like it would be OK.
I publish this photo in homage to Lisa Bangerter whose own photo in the ER we posted on FB last fall after her allergic reaction on our trip to the beach.  This is for you Lisa.

Alice and Isla Came to Town!

Alice came to visit us last weekend from North Carolina!
We all bought hats from Meyer the Hatter.   Sam & Marcelle Meyer have been selling hats in downtown New Orleans since 1946.  The shop was founded by Sam's grandfather in 1894. 
He put the top hat on just for our photo.

 Isla came too & she was the cutest baby in town.

Quick Trip from New Orleans to our Favorite Beach.

Gordon got off of work at about 11:30 on Friday night last weekend.  
We threw bags in the car and arrived in Destin, Florida 
about 3:30am for a quick weekend visit.  

This is where my Graham grandparents lived 
& where I vacationed as a child.  
Now my siblings and I bring our 
children and grandchildren.

Hurricanes, oil spills & crazy tourism - 
but it's still our favorite beach 
& we loved every minute.

The Garden Tour, June 13 & 14, 2014.

The yard was in the Utah Valley Hidden Garden Tour in June.  I tirelessly whined about it to anyone who would listen throughout the entire spring.  So I've added it as part of the summer 2014 history.

 

I have nothing else to say about it, except that Gordon was a hero, we both worked really hard, had help from friends and family (thanks so much) and after all the angst & in the end, we were glad we did it.