Loveliness (Sigh)

What a nice weekend. I hope I am doing a good job appreciating them. On Saturday morning David and I drove to LA because he was giving a talk at some HD film festival. I'll let him tell you about that. :) We stopped in the OC for my favorite-ever egg salad sandwich (really it needs some other category because its elements are discrete instead of mush) and then continued on to the Geffen Contemporary Museum in Little Tokyo (once charmingly known as the "Temporary Contemporary," but I guess they finally faced the fact that they weren't going anywhere.) This museum, an auxillary of MOCA Los Angeles, is a cavernous warehouse that specializes in installations, the kind that invite frolicking in their capacious innards. The current exhibit, "Ecstasy: Altered States" was so much fun. One room is entirely filled with giant twirling red mushrooms hanging from the ceiling. Another room was entirely dark except for pinpoints of light arranged in a grid pattern. All of the rooms had the effect of disturbing your equilibrium in a pleasurable way.

Afterwards we met Lindsey at a mall called "The Grove" for a bit of shopping and a wander through the Farmer's Market. It was lovely with all the holiday lights and stars, but incredibly crowded. The wind whipped around all day, leaving the sky so clear that the falling darkness looked velvety. And we saw Matthew Perry! He was just ambling through the mall on his own, kickin' it LA-style.

Speaking of which, what is the deal with distance in LA? Is that city 50 freakin' miles across? Any time we had to go anywhere, it took a half-hour. I felt like I was in the car forever. From the Grove, David went to Burbank for his event (another amazingly long drive, and I was not a good enough wife to keep him company) and Lindsey and I went to give Zooey her dinner and then out for tapas with Thomas. (Tapas With Thomas! Possible children's book? Chewable?) The first choice of restaurant involved eating out on the sidewalk, where the tablecloths were literally lifting off from the wind. I said, "I'm going to promise not to complain if we can just eat anywhere that's not outside." We ended up at another tapas place, where Lindsey doesn't like the ambience as much ("Indoors is good ambience for me," I said.) It was fun, though we had a good laugh when they brought the dessert, supposedly Spanish-style churros with chocolate dipping sauce. "What does that remind me of?" I asked when the waitress had walked away. "Chicken fingers?" Thomas asked, and I said "Exactly!" And then they TASTED like chicken fingers, which was altogether disconcerting.

We stayed at my parents' house because it was so late by the time David was done (the event started at least an hour late) and had a leisurely morning, including breakfast out, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do on a Sunday. And the food was perfect. After that we took a meandering two-hour walk on Balboa Island, including a detour on the auto ferry to the Peninsula, where we stood on the pier and watched some guys sail off on the world's largest kayak-type boat. Once again, the day was dazzlingly clear and sunny, and Balboa was blissfully empty of crowds, reminding me for the millionth time how delicious it is to be local.