The Birthday

Yes, it is becoming funny that people are sending me emails of birthday greetings to John. Thank you.

The birthday is going well, but not as I had originally planned. Isn't that always the case? Thank you Susan for stopping at a Panera to send me the recipe and to let me interrupt your beach time with frantic questions. Making the tamales wasn't that hard, getting the ingredients was. Another lesson in not waiting to the last minute. But it all went well. I had the stove working overtime in this little pad...beans, and meat, and steamer, and brownies all going at the same time at one point.

I made chicken, beef, and cheese and jalapeno tamales for the poker group. And they enjoyed it. John especially and said I was doomed as he would ask me to make them again. Some eaters brave enough to say that they liked the beef the best. The beans turned out great, but not that many people ate them so we have a huge pot of yummy beans with no inclination to finish them. John ended up chopping for 1st and 2nd so we could leave the game t 1130pm. It's about a 30-40 minute ride home. I was Bubble Girl, again. (means I went out one before making any money)

Yesterday we worked till noonish. I had some sporty surprises to take him to, but that got foiled when his contact ripped in his eye. We had to put the eye doctor at the top of the list and that took us to Northridge. The upside is that he got to show me where he grew up, went to jr. high, college, and one of his favorite restaurants.
Then we took Topanga Canyon over to the water, looked at this area for future residence, and drove along the beach to Santa Monica.

There's a GREAT hotel called The Huntley with a bar called Toppers on the 20+ floor. It has an amazaing view of the coast line, and we had some drinks up there. (Note: bad mojitos, but good happy hour prices between 4-7pm) Then we wandered around 3rd Street and saw Elizabethtown. I think I'll talk about that on Written Road. So yeah, we wandered, we shopped, we didn't play sports, but he was happy because we had no agenda and were wandering around doing whatever we wanted to do.

But it's a birthday weekend. Today is a poker day and we'll both be playing in "Saturdays with Dr. Pauly" on Poker Stars at 10:00a.m. Then I'm going to the SC game later in the afternoon with a friend of his. Tomorrow I've got the rest of the b-day activities lined up including going to the King Tut exhibit at LACMA.

Thanks for asking...it's going well.