Every Time You Go Away

Last week was my spring break and Mother and Father of Ken came to visit. We spent the weekend doing church things as Mother of Ken was preaching at my church for both services on Sunday and then we had invited several people over to the house for Sunday dinner. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died during the dinner preparation, so I don't have any photos. I can tell you that we made papaya glazed ham, twice baked potatoes, roasted butternut squash and we also cut up a pineapple and served an assortment of rolls that we bought at the bakery. For dessert, we made Ina Garten's Pavlova, which was quite good.

On Monday, we met with the new realtor so that she could see the house and tell us if there is anything that we need to do before we put it on the market next spring. In general, she really liked the place and thought that it looked great, but she did suggest that we install carpet in the bedrooms, so stay tuned for that fun and adventure in the next few weeks.

Tuesday, we went to Auburn, NY to see the Seward House, which we really enjoyed. It is the beautiful home of former presidential candidate and Secretary of State William Seward (of Seward's Folly fame). The house was originally built by Seward's in-laws, but Seward remodeled and added to the house and what you see today is mostly original. The Seward family lived in the house until 1951 and these people never thew anything away. There are rooms full of furniture, fabric, carpet, paintings, sculptures, and clothing (and I'm sure all kinds of other things) that are not on display. The parts of the house that visitors can see are also fully decorated and the family, who still lives in Auburn, continues to give things to the museum. They saved clothing and put notes in the pockets about where they wore certain garments. They have the bloody sheet from the bed in which Seward recovered from being stabbed on the night Lincoln was shot. They have a huge library that includes several first editions of books like Uncle Tom's Cabin. The whole place is a historian's dream and if you're ever in the area, it is worth a visit.

Actually, it is worth a visit not only because the house is so cool, but also because if you are as lucky as we were, your tour will be lead by Paul. Ask for Paul. You won't be disappointed. This guy was hilarious, although I don't think he intended to be so funny. He was probably in his late 50s and he had a wallet on a chain, which he wore with khaki pants and a St. Patrick's Day sweater, and he had longish gray hair. His voice had a very strange rhythm that is difficult to describe except to say that if you didn't follow what he said from the very beginning of a sentence to the end, you were totally lost. He had a story about everything, although we're pretty sure he made some of it up. For example, he told us that Lincoln stunk. As in, worse than other people during that time. He inferred that it was a known fact that Lincoln was very smelly, although Mother of Ken, who has read quite a bit about Lincoln, has never read this. Throughout the tour, he would give us a factoid and then holler "INCREDIBLE! WHO DOES THAT?" while stretching his arms out in front of him and staring at us.

After spending Tuesday in Auburn, we spent Wednesday working on securing some carpet for the bedrooms, cleaning up the yard, and planting bulbs in the front flower bed that will (hopefully) come up in the summer. We also played our favorite game: Who Will Come Along and Take the Crap That We Put by the Street? This time, we had some cinder blocks that we dug out of the area near my propane tank and this stupid bench that I have been trying to get rid of since I moved in. Mother of Ken made a sign to entice potential takers:

This was gone within ten minutes. All of it. I finally got rid of that damn bench.

We ate well last week--besides Sunday dinner, we had rare roast beef using a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that was almost like eating beef tenderloin, pork tenderloin, and Parmesan chicken. Here are is Father of Ken enjoying his salad one evening:


Mother of Ken with her plate of pork tenderloin, brown rice pilaf, edamame and peas, and a roll from the bakery:


Father of Ken enjoying some chocolate chip cheese ball (which I just put in a bowl instead of making into a ball this time) with graham crackers for dessert:



And, finally, Father of Ken enjoying a large glass of wine after working hard to recaulk in both bathrooms, install a new doorknob, spackle some seams on the master bedroom ceiling, and change some difficult-to-replace light bulbs:

The creek one evening when it was foggy:

Kenna loves it when Mother and Father of Ken come to visit--she gets way more attention and a lot of scraps:

On Thursday, we had planned to go to Seneca Falls, but ended up staying home and doing more work around the house. Even after four years of living here, we continue to discover the stupid things done by Mr. Disgustington (the previous owner). This time, we found a poorly installed fluorescent light fixture that Father of Ken had to completely replace and two more poorly installed lights in the loft closet, among other things. So, on Thursday, we cleaned out both closets and replaced the lights in the loft closet. In the process, we found more stuff to get rid of, so we loaded everything into the car and took it to Finger Lakes Reuse.

They ended up taking everything except for the crutches, but I'll make some calls to get those into the hands of someone who can use them. I finally put my foot down and insisted that we get rid of this terrible light fixture, which used to hang in the picture window. Father of Ken wanted me to keep it for the next person who lives here, but I think it is just too ugly and I'm sick of storing it.

There were a few other special items that went out by the street with another of Mother of Ken's signs:

This stuff didn't last long either. Too bad Mother and Father of Ken will miss the action when I put the old upstairs bedroom carpet out there in a few weeks.

We had a good week together and got a lot of things done at the house, for which I am grateful. Mother and Father of Ken had a safe, if long, trip back to Kansas and Kenna has been lonesome since they left on Friday.

One Thing Leads to Another

In January, I received an e-mail from a colleague in Puerto Rico asking if I would help her edit an article that she had written for a journal that is published in English. Through no fault of her own, this was kind of a rush request and I happily agreed to help her. Traditionally, people get paid to do this, but I am sure that someday I will need someone to edit something that I have written in Spanish, so I suggested that we just exchange editing instead of money. My colleague, Maria, insisted upon at least sending me some coffee from Puerto Rico to thank me and I accepted gladly. Imagine my surprise when my "Puerto Rican care package," as she called it, arrived a few weeks ago and contained much more than coffee.

This picture shows the contents of the package: two kinds of candy, the a bag of "fancy" coffee (the brown one), "regular" coffee (the yellow and black package), papaya marmalade, and the tiniest, cutest coffee maker I have ever seen. I love this coffee so much that I am only allowing myself to drink it on the weekends and I make it in my really tiny new espresso maker. We used the papaya marmalade to glaze a ham that we made for Sunday dinner while Mother and Father of Ken were visiting and it was very good.

Thanks, Maria! This just goes to show you what happens when you do people a favor. I told Maria in my thank you note that I think I got the better end of the deal.

Bette Davis Eyes: Sunday in L.A.

Leah has blogged about the fun part of Sunday here.

We received phone calls and text messages all day about how bad the weather was going to be on the east coast. Everything was fine when we arrived at the airport, but at about 7:00 p.m. all hell broke loose. Leah's flight was delayed to Atlanta, my flight to Philadelphia was cancelled, and people were starting to lose it. I had to wait in the United Airlines customer service line for quite some time and there was a woman behind me who kept asserting how important she was because she had a "class to teach at a major university on Monday morning." Yeah, good for you. The rest of us are unimportant losers who don't mind living at LAX for several days. They tried to put me on some flight to Chicago where I could connect to Syracuse, but that didn't work out the two times they put me on standby, so I finally asked if they could confirm me on a flight the next day. They were able to get me an actual seat on a flight to Denver and then fly me from Denver to LaGuardia, and from LaGuardia to Ithaca, so I jumped at the offer.

Leah left at about 1:00 in the morning and I spent the rest of the night sitting around LAX making sure that my flight hadn't been cancelled again. Leah made it to Atlanta before I even left L.A., but I did get to Denver around noon and slept for most of the flight. The problem was that everything was so backed up from the disastrous night before that my flight to LaGuardia kept getting delayed. We finally left Denver about three and a half hours late, which meant that I didn't land in NYC until about 9:30 at night. By the time I took the bus to the US Airways terminal, I had missed my flight to Ithaca by five minutes. Thankfully, I saw that coming, so I had the nice customer service man in Denver confirm me on the first flight from LaGuardia to Ithaca on Tuesday morning. So, I called a hotel near the airport and was able to get a room where I could take a shower and get a little sleep.

Since I was supposed to teach a class at 10:10 on Tuesday morning, I knew that I would be cutting it close, so I told my students that we would start class at 10:45 instead and prayed that my flight would be on time. Thankfully, even though we were a little late leaving, we arrived just before 10:00. My luggage was waiting for me at the airport since my flights had been so screwed up, and I grabbed it, ran to the car, and drove to campus. I made it to my office at about 10:30, exhausted, but on time to teach at least most of my class. I still haven't quite recovered from the loss of sleep and the beginning of daylight savings time hasn't helped with that, but I was definitely glad to get home.

McKenna got to stay an extra day at the spa, and apparently the morning spa person loved her so much that she was thrilled when I called to extend her stay. She was definitely glad to see me when I arrived on Tuesday afternoon to pick her up, though, and she has been very supportive of my need to sleep a lot in the past week.

Despite the two day trip home, the trip was a much needed break for me in warmer weather. Leah and I had a lot of fun playing tourist, so the trip was totally worthwhile.

Bette Davis Eyes: Saturday in L.A.

We spent Saturday at Universal Studios. Since we were still on east coast time, we were up early and discovered a really good bakery in the shopping center across the street from the hotel. We got to Universal Studios well before it opened on Saturday morning, which was good, because you have to travel quite a distance between the metro stop and the grounds of the studio. This is the sign that you see when you begin the uphill journey:

Along the way, we saw the entrance for Frankenstein parking--if we had driven, I would have insisted that we park here:

We actually took a bus most of the way up the hill and we saw some pretty flower beds along the way:

After walking through CityWalk, we arrived at the entrance to the theme park, where they also have studio tours. Here is the famous globe:



As you enter, you walk down a red carpet and we arrived early enough to see people vacuuming the carpet. While we were waiting for the ticket booths to open, we walked around looking at the pretty palm trees and flowers at the front of the property:







Pansies (my favorite):








When we finally entered the park, we headed straight for the studio tour. We rode a tram through the back lot and saw a lot of cool movie stuff, including the DeLorean from Back to the Future:

Somehow, our tram ended up not only crossing a bridge that spontaneously broke and caught on fire, but we also ended up in a underground train tunnel during an earthquake and on a flooded road! I was sure scared. Here we are driving across the flooded road--the edge of the road is at the bottom of the photo:

After miraculously surviving all of those events, we continued our tour and were able to see the entrance of Wisteria Lane. Normally, the tour goes through Wisteria Lane, but they were filming scenes for Desperate Housewives that day, so this is all we saw:

We also drove through Whoville:

We saw a prop live lizard on the set of War of the Worlds:

Unfortunately for the shark-phobic Leah, we drove through Amity Island. I had no idea that Jaws itself would come out of those bubbles:

Jaws--a bad picture because a certain shark-phobe was clinging to me for dear life (I love you, you know ;-)):

The best part of the tour was when we drove past the Bates Motel and NORMAN BATES HIMSELF came out of the motel with a BODY--didn't see that one coming, either. He totally put the body in the trunk and then came after us!

The jig was up when he got close enough that we could see him laughing:

After we finished the studio tour, which wasn't as good as the ones at NBC and Warner Brothers, we headed back into the park. No matter where I go, I cannot escape atrocious fashion mistakes such as this shorts wind suit purchased at Mervyn's circa 1991:

First stop: Krustyland (at Leah's request). This is the Simpson's ride. I'm not much of a Simpson's fan, so having to wait in line and watch scenes from the Simpsons was not my idea of a good time, but the ride itself was pretty good.

We took a series of escalators down to the lower lot, and I stopped to hang out with some of the Apollo 13 astronauts:

We decided to brave the Jurassic Park ride, even though it was a water ride. We didn't think we would get that wet. Big mistake. The ride was a boring, slow moving ride through "Jurassic Park" and, just as I was drifting off to sleep, they dropped us down a huge waterfall. We got soaked, but thankfully it was sunny and hot, so we dried quickly.

This was our favorite ride, the Mummy roller coaster. We rode this six times, once next to a gentleman wearing a suit and turban, which was a first for me at an amusement park.

I even met a mummy on the way out:

Then, we decided to eat lunch at the Cove Cafe.

Predictably, this was the worst meal we ate all weekend. I had pizza:

Leah had chicken fingers and fries:

After that tasty treat, we went to the Backdraft show made famous in the episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry and George go to L.A. George is so excited about the trip that he asks Jerry if they can go to the Backdraft show. "I've heard it's very cool, Jerry. Very cool!" I'm sure it was very cool about 15 years ago, but not so much anymore...

After the Backdraft show, we visited the small museum of Universal memorabilia and found costumes from last summer's hit, Mamma Mia!

Out of nowhere came the Mystery Machine, driven by Shaggy! No Fred, Daphne, or Velma sightings, though.

After I met Scooby and Shaggy, Leah met Matt Damon:

Then we went to the Shrek 4-D show, which was okay, but not nearly as good as the 4-D show at the Newseum in D.C.

For pansies whose feet hurt from walking around the park, these were available:

We did not avail ourselves of the services of the Foot Massage Vibrator.

Universal Studios is up on a hill, so the view of the surrounding area is really nice:

After we ate our requisite funnel cake, we headed back to Hollywood Boulevard to see more of the Walk of Fame. We didn't take too many pictures because the part of the Walk of Fame that we saw on Saturday was in a pretty sketchy neighborhood and we were tired.

From there, we walked back to our hotel by way of In-N-Out Burger, a California institution. We were not disappointed--we wanted a quick, inexpensive dinner and this was really pretty good as fast food goes. We also made a quick stop at a nearby 7-11 for provisions that included wine and a corkscrew and then we took our food and wine back to the room (yes, we are always this klassy), put our sore feet up, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Bette Davis Eyes: Friday in L.A.

Leah and I are both blogging about our trip, so she has written about our experiences on Friday here, here, and here. I'll be back with Saturday's escapades soon...

Bette Davis Eyes: Thursday in L.A.

...so, the "hotel." My cab driver pulled up to this building:

Bear in mind that this establishment was surrounded by fast food restaurants and dry cleaning stores on LaBrea Avenue between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. Not exactly the nicest neighborhood ever. The lobby was full of fake flowers and Tuscan-looking furniture, the building itself was more of a Spanish-style stucco kind of thing, and all of the public areas reeked of incense. They told me that I had to walk through the pool area and take the stairway up to our room (no elevator)--again, I felt like I was in Spain. Here's the pool area:

I was pleasantly surprised by the room, which was far larger than the room at the Wilshire and also quite clean.

The one problem with this room (besides the gigantic arrangement of fake flowers on top of the TV) was the toilet. This thing was pretty scary. It had very little flushing power and wobbled a lot on the tile floor. Right off the bat, we had to call the front desk to ask for a plunger. Leah-Fallon made this phone call and it went something like this:

Muhammad (the front desk guy): Front desk.

Leah: Hello. The toilet in our room, 219, is not flushing properly and appears to be clogged.

Muhammad: Well, you need a plunger.

Leah: Yes, that would be helpful.

Muhammad: Hmmm.... (long pause)

Leah: Do you have a plunger?

Muhammad: Hmmm... Yes, you can come down and get it.

Leah: Ok-ay. One of us will be down in a minute.

Because someone had just gotten out of the shower, I ended up having to go down to get the plunger. When I arrived in the lobby, Muhammad was looking around in all of the cabinets and closets for the plunger. After about ten minutes, he finally found one.

This is the Toilet of Doom and the plunger (in the black bag on the floor). We left the plunger in the bathroom to see if housekeeping would pick it up the next day--they did.

Another fun activity for Thursday was a dining experience at an L.A. institution: El Pollo Loco. Leah was hungry when she arrived and wanted to eat at the closest place, which happened to be this fine dining establishment:

Thankfully, we had plans to dine at the Sunset Marquis that evening, so we weren't dependent on El Pollo Loco for an entire meal. Yuck.
It was restaurant week in L.A. (actually, this started in January, but they extended it until the end of February), so we decided that Thursday night, it would be fun to get dressed up and go to a nice restaurant for dinner. We made reservations at the Sunset Marquis, which turned out to be a good choice.

After calling a cab to take us to West Hollywood and enduring a wild ride, we arrived at the beautiful Sunset Marquis hotel, which is nestled in the hills and separated from the rest of the city by lots of trees, shrubs, and plants. The atmosphere is quiet and calm and we were able to stroll through the grounds before dinner. We didn't want to take too many pictures with flash that would disturb the ambiance, but here are a few.

The path to the restaurant:



You can see the outdoor dining area in the center of this photo:



There were really pretty flowers everywhere, which made us happy since we haven't seen colors like this in a while:



We dressed fashionably for the occasion, Leah in a lovely J. Crew ensemble:

And me in a Michael Kors dress:

They seated us in the outdoor terrace next to a heater and it was really nice to eat outside at night without being incredibly hot or dealing with bugs. The air was fresh (for L.A., anyway) and we were surrounded by vegetation, so it was a nice change for two girls who have been confined to their houses for months of the cold east coast winter.

After ordering glasses of wine, we perused the restaurant week menu. This is the regular menu, but everything that we ate is listed here. They first brought us small appetizers of avocado, peas, and onions dressed with balsamic vinegar--it sounds strange, but it was very good. The avocado was perfectly ripe, the peas were fresh, and the balsamic vinegar was a nice balance to the other flavors.

Next, they brought us bread with small dishes of butter, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and olive tapenade--all three were wonderful and I am planning to do something similar when Father and Mother of Ken come to visit next week.

For the first course, Leah had the Caprese salad with burrata mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes and I had the French onion soup with Gruyere puff pastry on top. Both were delicious.

We both had the Black Angus filet mignon for an entree and they were both perfectly cooked (and you know that this Kansas girl knows how a filet should be prepared) and they came with these really cool medallions of thinly sliced potatoes arranged in a circle and then fried. It is difficult to describe, but it was a nice, light side to go with the beef.

Finally, for dessert, Leah had the sticky toffee pudding and I had the molten chocolate cake. The waiter recommended the sticky toffee pudding, so Leah ordered it and wasn't sure if she would like it, but it really was quite good. The chocolate cake was cooked just a little more than it should have been, so it wasn't as molten as I like, but it was still pretty good. Here is the regular dessert menu, for anyone who is interested.

We had all of this for $34 because we ordered from the restaurant week menu, so it was a great deal on some delicious food. The service was wonderful and the surroundings were beautiful. We really enjoyed the evening, so thanks to the staff at the Sunset Marquis for making our first dinner together in L.A. so memorable. If you're ever there, please try this restaurant--you won't be disappointed.