Watts Towers

WattsTowers_March2007 024
Originally uploaded by Minnaert.

We went to Watts Towers last weekend. Watts remains not the best neighborhood, but the towers are really quite cool. Reminds you a lot of Gaudi's buildings in Barcelona. The towers were built by Simon Rodia over 30 years, starting in 1921. Definitely worth seeing... the tour tries to make him seem more sane than he most likely was.

whomever visits us next is going to get the hard sell to visit them.

- Gary

updatin' the guest bedroom

The guest bedroom is a work in progress. it's never ending, as i guess most people's guest bedroom is. We had a pretty cluttery collection of things in an open storage wicker type shelves which basically drove Sarah crazy. So we got a new cabinet thingie from IKEA the other day.

Kinda nice, as always with IKEA, you can pick out all the different styles. We wanted something bright, since the walls are yellow in the room. So glossy red doors it was.



IKEA is always an adventure though. We go to the one in Burbank... and they have insane people working the parking lot there. The line of cars for the loading parking lot was around the block, yet not all the spaces in the lot were taken. The concepts of using the spaces in the lot efficiently was lost on those guys. I would hate to see their closet organization... it's probably a mess. Very un-scandinavian of them.

-Gary

Good weather & a turtle on the bike

It has been so much like summer here the last couple weeks, we have been trying to be outside on the weekends. We rode our cruiser bikes to the Hollywood Farmers Market over the weekend. Then we rode around town a bit, did some shopping. LA is nice in that it is mostly flat, so the cruiser bike does just fine with a single gear.



Anyway, Sarah got a new turtle horn for her bike, or 'turtle honker' as we call it some times.

We wear the helmets on the cruiser bikes, which makes us somewhat abnormal from the typical cruiser bike rider. But there are cars around here, piloted by actors and agents on cell phones. The best justification I have heard recently for wearing a helmet is "it's the difference between taking care of a few scrapes on your body to relearning the alphabet."

- Gary

the Uberorgan

We went to an opening at the Getty museum last week, Zoopsia: New Works by Tim Hawkinson. The part we thought was the best and most strange was this huge installation called the Uberorgan. It was basically a self playing organ which took up the entire 3 story entrance building of the museum. It looks like internal organs, and plays music. Madness! I want one in our house.

Acura LA bike tour 2007

Los Angeles has this great bike tour which is held before the LA Marathon each year. Riders get to essentially ride the marathon course before the runners have at it. It's a great tour of the city on closed streets. Gary rode it this year... and I took a couple photos.

Starting out at the LA Memorial Coliseum. It's a little packed here. Over 10,000 riders showed up.

Peace man.

Downtown view from Boyle Heights

I think these guys were Canadian. We are heading back into downtown.

Did you know the Scientologists had a cycling team? Only in LA.

And, of course, the Japanese drumming team welcomed us back. It was a round trip back to the Coliseum. About 23 miles in total.

- Gary

A fancy new air conditioner is on our roof.

A couple of weeks ago our furnace and air conditioner was making lots of bad noises, and seemed to not be working very well. We had some service people come out, who essentially said "it is dangerous to run this." The hunt for a new furnace & air conditioning unit began.


After hunting a little bit, and dealing with our home warranty company, who sent out an incompetent contractor. So we chose someone else, Continental Heating.

The old unit being dismantled and removed.


The new unit being picked up off the truck and lifted onto the roof.


The old unit being lifted from the roof and put onto the truck.


The new furnace and air conditioner is installed and running well. We live in comfort now.


- Gary

Honeymoon photos... finally.

So i finally got around to posting our honeymoon photos. I put them all on flickr.

The album of photos. Yes, there are 300 photos. BUT, at one time there were 600 photos, so consider yourselves lucky we edited as much as we did.
Honeymoon photos on Flickr

There is also this geo-tagging feature of flickr, where you can specify where in the world the actual photo was taken. So i tagged all the photos, and you can see which one's were taken at Chichen Itza, etc.

- Gary

one step forward, one step back

So while I was working at home today... there was a big crash which scared the crap out of me.

I guess we will have to work on replacing the cabinets above the washer and dryer sooner than we anticipated.

The old mirror is gone!

The mirror in the master bathroom left a lot to be desired. It was too big, the molding or frame around the mirror was done really poorly. The whole thing was as I like to call "crap-tastic". So we have been wanting to find a wall mirror with a bit more style that matched the rest of the bathroom. It only took us 1 year, not too bad.

The original mirror: crummy

After I took the mirror down. It was a bit scary taking the mirror off, Sarah was convinced that it was attached with a gallon of glue and would shatter once I tried to take it off. Of course, it was attached with probably not enough adhesive. It was held on only by caulking along the sides.

And our new mirror. Nice brushed silver frame, matches the rest of the bathroom. Also finding one of a size which was appropriate was kinda tricky.

Hooray. Now, who knows what else there is on the to do list.

- Gary

LA = strange + wonderful

Both Sarah and I get asked all the time if we like LA, or what is different about living in LA. Well it's not really that different, I mean, most stores in the mall have male ballet dancers out front, right? A female ballet dancer is a ballerina, what is a male equivalent, balleriner? Mark Foley's dream intern?

You can also get wonderful lattes, even at little french cafes where they make a little face in the foam. neato. LA is both strange and wonderful, often in the same afternoon.

And now... new blinds

Windows_Dec2006 030
Originally uploaded by Minnaert.

Since the new windows all got put in, it was time to take a step from the temporary blinds and get some real ones. One thing we discovered with the temporary.... They adhere really well to the window casings, which is great for the function of the blinds, but after you leave them up for a year, it takes off paint also! So there is a little bit of window moulding and casing painting in our future now.

Photos posted on Flickr

We ordered these blinds from www.JustBlinds.com. We used the same company when we lived in San Jose also. The blinds are good quality, are delivered, free shipping, in about 1 week after ordering, and about half the price of normal stores. I would recommend them. You have to install them yourselves... but it's pretty easy. Measure twice drill once though.

-Gary

an anniversary of sorts

Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of us driving to LA for good. Today is Sarah's 1 year anniversary at LACMA. Time travels fast. One year ago we posted to this wiki that we had arrived after a crazy drive full of all kinds of stinko weather.

The drive yesterday was far less eventful, less traffic and fine weather. I will post some photos from the Christmas in Santa Cruz once I get them all cleaned up.

After a year I don't think we can say we are 'acclimating' any longer. We have adjusted to LA, ad are enjoying living in WeHo. It's supposed to be in the 70's today, and the skies are clear, I think it's hard not to get to adjusted to this sort of life.
- Gary

Typical Santa Cruz

I am always saying that Santa Cruz has some strangeness to it (I am not the only to have made this statement...) but often it is difficult to quantify how Santa Cruz is a little more weird than anywhere else.

We walked downtown yesterday, had a little lunch, went to the book stores, checked out the shoe places... Downtown is known for attracting a variety of the interesting locals. There were several musicians (i.e. buskers) of questionable quality. But one who was quite good, and who typifies why Santa Cruz can be a strange place, I got a picture of with the camera phone. Nothing like a full orange neoprene suit for you & your accordion. I guess this guy is "Accordion Man", a local fixture.

New Windows!!!

We finally got replacement windows installed on Wednesday, Dec. 23rd. We had been wanting to do this from about the second night we stayed in our new place. The old windows were 24 years old, single pane and crappy. Since there is a fire station down the road from us, we would hear the fire engines roaring out of the station a couple times a night. Now all things are nice, energy efficient and quiet, most of all.

We used American Vision Windows. They did a great job. The installers were a lot of fun. Their ongoing joke to each other, when once was being slow, or lazy was to say "This is not the park!" (in a spanglish accent, and joking). Kinda funny.

The old windows. Ick, yuck. Leaky, lots of noise.










When the windows were all taken out. It was cold in LA (60s) and the windows were basically out all day, and I froze while the installers will all there.






Now the new windows all in!! Yippee! New windows are so much quieter and energy efficient than before.

Garage Kitty in the car

Our little friend, the Garage Kitty, who we have posted a few pictures of previously, is sly, just like a cat. If you are not paying attention when you arrive home and get out of your car, Garage Kitty sneaks under your car door and jumps into your car.

She jumped into the car the other day when I got home, then hopped on to the spot under the rear windshield. It was nice and warm there I think. The next day when we got home she jumped in again and wanted some attention from Sarah. Funny kitty. She doesn't want to get out once she's in the car, you need to pick her up and put her out.

Let the holidays begin, the tree is up!

Christmas Tree 2006
Originally uploaded by Minnaert.

Even thought its about 80 out today, and Gary is wearing shorts, we got our Christmas tree put up and decorated. Lots of good looking presents under the tree already. There really is no winter in LA.

When we were bringing the tree in one of our neighbors commented on how we really overpaid for our tree. That there were better & cheaper trees at the grocery store than at the nursery where we got ours. She could not believe what we spent.

- Gary

lots of wedding photos posted

We finally got around to sporting through all the photos from the wedding. We posted them all on-line, see the link below. The majority of these are from Leah, our pro photographer, but also from many others who sent us the great pictures they took.

Full wedding photo set on Flickr

A few of my favorites:
The photography corps

Steve & Gabe wondering how Kii beat them to the garter

A happy couple

Storm troopers at Thanksgiving

We went to Santa Cruz for Thanksgiving. Had a great, relaxing time. Excellent food and turkey. Les and I stopped by the Circuit City to scope out the fancy LCD TVs both of us lust after. Next door was the Toys 'R Us, which for whatever reason had Star Wars Storm Troopers out front.

Reasons? None is needed, this is Santa Cruz.

Seeing the Star Wars stuff reminds me that we saw Carrie Fisher at the Geffen Playhouse last week in her show "Wishful Drinking". She has led a crazy, celebrity family life. Funny play.

A new guest bedroom light

The light bulb burned out in the guest bedroom the other day. When i went to replace the bulb in the fixture, i discovered it was a halogen light. Surprise surprise.

Anyway, we were never big fans of the light, and i didn't have a replacement halogen bulb, so we figured, let's just replace the entire fixture. Why not!

Here is the original. Not a very inspiring design.

And here is the new one. Nothing overly fancy, a simple fixture. This one uses normal bulbs too, so we can put the energy efficient ones in here. We got our new fixture at Lighting Expo. Down on La Brea, just past Pinks.

This was surprisingly the first time there was not a profanity uttered in installing the fixture. Either this one was easier, or i have actually learned something in the replacement of all the overhead lights in the condo.

- Gary

Photos from Napa weekend

Les took some excellent photos of us all on our Napa weekend.

He posted them on-line here.

- Gary