thespianlawyer

Our Anniversary

2011-12-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

Fiveyears ago, December 17, 2006, I woke up all nervous and giddy. My sister and I escaped the chaos of myapartment, which was filled with bridesmaids and flowers to make a Starbucksrun. She made sure I at least ate abagel, since my nerves were killing my appetite, and we all got ready for thebiggest day in my life. That sounds socliché, but it really was the biggest day in my life: my wedding day. It’s thatday that every little girl dreams about. And it was finally here. There wereno movie moments of final nerves or last minute second-guesses. I was just excited to be spending the rest ofmy life with my best friend. I willnever forget the look on his face as I walked down the aisle, or how my handsshook as my dad passed me off to my future husband. People are often down on big weddings, but Itruly loved every moment of mine – maybe it’s because we are theatre people, sowe’re used to putting on big productions. Or maybe it’s just because I’d been warned so many times that it allbecomes a blur, so I tried really hard to sit back and take stock every now andthen and remember each moment. Regardless, it really was a great day!

Tocommemorate our five-year anniversary (can you believe it’s been that long?),Aaron and I decided to revisit the places we celebrated. We started by driving out to Malibu andvisiting the chapel at Pepperdine where we got married. How many people can say that they got marriedon a cliff in Malibu overlooking the ocean?

Theweather was eerily reminiscent of the Saturday before our wedding – cold andgrey. Fortunately for us, it poured rainthe day before our wedding, clearing the skies so you could see all the way outto Catalina! Not so this year, butthat’s ok. It was just fun seeing that skyline again.

Aftervisiting the chapel, we had lunch at La Salsa in Malibu, which had been afavorite of ours while I was in law school at Pepperdine. Then we drove further down the coast to SantaMonica and got massages. Massages are arare indulgence for us, but I will say it was a most welcome indulgence thisyear!

Afterthat we had dinner at the location of our reception in Marina Del Rey. The restaurant where we held our receptionwent out of business about two years after our wedding – we like to joke thatour wedding was just so good, they knew they couldn’t top it. :) The location has now been through severaliterations, and just recently reopened as a restaurant called KillerShrimp. Even though it didn’t seem likea typical “anniversary” place, we knew we had to be cheesy and sentimental andtry it out. When we told the hostessthat our wedding reception was at their location five years ago, she squealedand let us go up to the banquet room to reminisce. After that, we got a table outside on thepatio, next to a heat lamp, right next to the marina. The food was delicious! Aaron won best meal with his steak, and myshrimp were delicious and spicy.

Nowthat we’ve passed the five year mark, and are officially an “old married couple”(especially by LA standards), I guess it’s on to the next chapter . . .whatever that may be. :)

Here We Come a Wassailing

2011-12-12T23:34:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the gap in blog posts –we've had some big things happening in the Stevens/Sherry family.. Mysister got engaged to her boyfriend of five months. Then we had Thanksgiving. And now it’s on to the holidays, whichincludes Christmas, plus my five year anniversary and my parents 40^th anniversary! Amidst attempting to plan for everything, thelittle bloggy got set aside. Anyway, Aaron and Ifinally set up our tree and did most of our holiday shopping, so now I have awee bit of time to blog.

Have you ever had wassail? It surprises me how many people have neverhad it! Wassail is a hot beverage(according to Wikipedia, it is English in origin), made with cider and citrusjuices and spices. My grandmother alwayshad a big pot of it on the stove whenever we went up to Oregon to visit for the holidays. It tastes like Christmas! I was never a big eggnog fan, so this was myChristmas drink of choice. And, bonus, it’s greatif you feel like you are coming down with a holiday cold – it has so muchvitamin C in it that it will knock that cold right out of you!

Yesterday, I made wassail whilewe set up the tree and watched “Love Actually” in the background. Here is my grandmother’s recipe:

1 Gallon Boiling Water
6 Lemons – Juice and rind
6 Oranges – Juice and rind
2 to 3 cups sugar
2 heaping tablespoons Lipton’s tea
Fresh mint.
Stick cinnamon, whole cloves, ginger, allspice, whole nutmeg
Cheesecloth
1 quart apple cider.

Put sugar in boiling water. Addfruit juice and a few rinds. Add Tea last.

Remove from fire. Let stand 15minutes. Strain.

Add handful of fresh mint. Makespice bag out of cheesecloth. Put in stick cinnamon, whole cloves, ginger,allspice; whole nutmegs are optional.

Add quart apple cider. Reheat andsimmer until spiced to your taste – 20-25 minutes. Remove spice.

Float citrus slices on top.

Serve Piping Hot!

I couldn’t find any cheeseclothat the store, so I just put the cinnamon sticks straight in the pot and thenused my tea strainer to contain the cloves and other spices. I have no idea how many servings this makes. We had 4 people at our house last night, andeveryone had multiple mugs of wassail, and we still have over half a potleft. It also makes a great breakfastbeverage as an alternative to coffee, if you are looking to limit caffeineintake!

For those who are interested,here is the accounting:

Wassail
1 gallon boiling water	$0.00
6 Lemons	$4.74
6 Oranges	$3.05
2-3 cups sugar	$0.05
2 tbsp tea	$0.05
fresh mint	$0.89
spices	$0.15
1 quart apple cider	$2.29
total:	$11.22

~20 servings	$0.56	per cup

Sunday Dinner: Spinach Leek Bisque (with Persimmon Cookies for Dessert)

2011-11-13T21:46:00.001-08:00

I often feel that opening my CSA box is like being on an episode of“Chopped” – especially when I am not familiar some of the items. For example, this week we received persimmons. I don’t know that I’d evereven seen a persimmon, let alone eaten one. So, this afternoon I found a recipe for persimmon cookies and madethem. I can’t say the cookies reallytasted like persimmon (which I did taste raw before turning it into a pulp andadding a bunch of flour and sugar). Bythe way, I kind of faked making the pulp – I couldn’t find any instructions onit, so I just boiled the persimmons for about a minute and then stuck them inmy food processor and essentially turned them into baby food.

I figure that’s what persimmon pulp should look like, right? In the end, it didn’t really matter becausethe cookies were delicious! They tastedmore like a Christmas-y bread than a cookie – so I added some white chocolatechips to the last batch, and that made them taste more like a cookie (at leastin my mind).

We also received some leeks. Fortunately, I already had a fantastic recipe for leeks in my arsenal! If this recipe looks familiar to you, it’sbecause I wrote about it in my (now defunct) blog that I was sharing with mysister (though it’s funny, this blog is turning more into what that one wasmeant to be – i.e. about food). Thistime I added potatoes – and they were definitely a brilliant addition. Of course, as we were eating, my brother-in-lawsaid “You know what would make this even better? Bacon!” Which is probably true, but then it wouldn’tbe vegetarian friendly. However, sincenone of us are vegetarians in the house, maybe I will try it next time.

Creamy Spinach Bisque
as modified from "The Whole Foods Market Cookbook" by StevePetusevsky.

Ingredients:
4 tbs butter
1 red onion, chopped
2 large leeks (sliced and washed well)
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
4 cups vegetable stock
12 oz frozen spinach (thawed and squeezed of any excess water)

2 potatoes diced
3 cups milk
1 pint half and half (or heavy cream)
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add onions and leeks. Saute theonions and leeks until soft (the recipe says it should take about 2 minutes,though it may take longer).

I think the combination of thepurple skins from the red onions and the green leeks is really pretty!

Add flour and cook for about 2 minutes to form a roux (which I learned from TopChef, ironically on the first night I ever cooked this recipe, that roux iswhen you brown the flour and butter and other ingredients. While the recipesays 2 minutes, I guarantee it will take longer than 2 minutes for any browningto occur, and tonight I was too impatient to wait for it to brown. But I still think the finished product wasdelicious).

Add the stock. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes, until themixture is smooth and thickened.

Add the spinach, potatoes, milk and cream - bring to a simmer. Cook uncoveredfor about 30 minutes. Add salt/pepper to taste and cook for 5 more minutes.

And now for the accounting:

Spinach Leek Bisque
2 Leeks	$1.50
1 Red Onion	$0.86
¼ cup flour	$0.05
vegetable stock	$0.05
1 bag frozen spinach	$0.99
2 potatoes	$0.87
3 cups milk	$0.60
1 pint half & half	$1.69
total:	$6.61

10 servings	$0.66 per serving

Holy moly! That’s cheaper than a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup – and waaayhealthier! No preservatives or weirdchemicals in this soup. And definitely alot less sodium! Also, we ended up withso many leftovers – even after Aaron and Dominick had seconds. The Whole Foods cook book estimates 8-10servings in this recipe, and I think my yield was actually more like 10-12, butfor the accounting I decided to stick with 10, since that was right in themiddle.

I really hope you try this soup –it’s soo delicious!

Sunday* Dinner: Indian Simmer Sauce

2011-11-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

I fell in love with Indian foodwhen I was living in Englandduring my junior year abroad. Unfortunately, I have yet to find an Indian restaurant here in LA that fullysatisfies that love. A large part of itcould be that I really like spicy food. Here, the owners of the Indian restaurants see me as this little blonde,white girl walk. So they assume when Isay “spicy” that I mean “white girl American spicy.” No, I mean “I want my eyes to water and myskin to sweat spicy.” I never had thatproblem in England. For example, one night in Bristol, a bunch of us went out for curryafter a rehearsal for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (which Iwas directing). Mid- conversation, I hadto excuse myself so I could retreat to the restroom and splash my face withcold water. Turns out, I bit down on apiece of chili pepper that was still whole in the curry sauce I waseating. To this day, I have yet to eatanything that spicy. It made my eyeswater instantly! As painful as it was,that is what I am looking for when I go out to eat Indian food. Aaron and I have found one Indian restaurantnear(ish) our house that we sometimes will order from for delivery (they can’tsee the white girl over the phone, so they will actually make it spicy . . .relatively speaking). However, wereserve ordering from them for special occasions, because it costs about $50 fora decent Indian meal for 2-3 people (from my experience that is the expensivestandard in LA).

One day at Trader Joe’s, I sawjars of “Curry Sauce.”

I decided, “What the heck, I’ll give that atry.” Boy, am I glad I did! This has been a favorite dinner in the Sherryhousehold ever since! Aaron’s not a hugespicy food fan, so I don’t make it as spicy as I might otherwise like it. It’s also not a permanent substitute for thereal thing. However, the pricedifference between this and restaurant Indian food definitely makes it worthit.

The recipe issuper-difficult. You ready?

- 1 jar Trader Joe’s Indian Simmer Sauce

- Whatever veggies or meat you want to add

- Brown rice for a side dish

Ok, ok, so it’s not really thatdifficult.

Here’s how I like to make it:

First, I take a can of chickpeas(garbanzo beans), rinse and drain them. Then I put them in a large frying pan with little to no oil. I then add various spices depending on mymood – but usually including garlic salt, Lawry’s season salt, cumin, currypowder, etc.

Once the chickpeas have warmedall the way through, I add whatever other veggies I have decided to use. For this weekend, I added all the veggiesfrom my CSA box that still needed to be used, which included kale, bok choy,greens of some sort (I am guessing collard?), beet greens and some red pepper.

Then add the simmer sauce and heatuntil bubbly. Simmer until the rice isdone.

I like to serve with a glass ofchilled Chardonnay.

Variations: I will often cook upsome lentils and add them at the end to the simmer sauce (I didn’t this timebecause there were enough other veggies). You can also chop up chicken or sausage and add it to the simmer sauce –though I tend to like it vegetarian-style.

Here’s the accounting:

Trader Joe's Simmer sauce
Simmer sauce	$2.99
Chickpeas	$0.99
Veggies	$5.00	(I am guessing that I used about $5 worth of the remaining veggies from my CSA box)
Rice	$0.50
total:	$9.48
6 servings	$1.58	per person

As you can see, that is MUCHbetter than what we would spend had we gone out to an Indian restaurant – andwe get leftovers to bring to work for lunch!

*Confession: I actually made this last night (Saturday)because I knew today (Sunday) was going to be jam-packed full of family funadventures.

The Joys of Homeownership

2011-10-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

Oh the joys of homeownership . .. when you don’t have a landlord you can call when something goes wrong. For example, in the middle of typing my blogabout pumpkin bread, Aaron came in and informed me that our sprinkler system(which had been hissing/leaking since the afternoon) was now geysering (yes, Ijust made up a verb) in our front yard. No landlord to call – we had to fix it ourselves. Oh, and it was already about 6pm and the sunwas going down rapidly.

A bit of background on oursprinkler system: It looks like at onepoint in time, the house had a very nice sprinkler system. There’s a control box in the backyard whereyou should be able to set the sprinklers to go off at pre-set times, and/orpre-set periods of time. However, sincethe house was a foreclosure when we bought it, we have no idea at what pointthe system decided to stop working. AllI know is that it definitely does not work right now. When we bought the house a little over 2years ago, we had the inspector try out the sprinkler system, and it worked –when you manually turned the heads for each individual sprinkler area . . . oneat a time. So that’s what we were usingto water the “lawn” (I use the term loosely because it was really more a dirt/weedpatch at the time).

A little over a year ago, Aaronwas out of town, and I was watering and the sprinklers decided they didn’t wantto turn off at all. It was stuck on, andno matter how much I tried they just would not turn off! Oh, and did I mention it was about 9pm on aweeknight? Fortunately, one of ourreally good friends happened to be coming over to pick something up and somehowthrough a series of turning off the water to the house and fiddling withvarious knobs and valves, we managed to get the sprinklers to turn off and stayoff. I haven’t touched the sprinklerssince then – even when we fertilized and seeded the front yard, I used a hoseattachment sprinkler for watering because I was too terrified that I wouldn’tbe able to get the sprinklers to turn back off.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticedthat the sprinkler system was hissing. When Aaron got home, I asked him to check it out. I guess in the process of checking it out, hemust have been fiddling with something and one of the parts flew off as thewater decided to spurt out into a geyser. Aaron turned off the water to the house, was able to get the geyser tostop, but then the sprinklers (which haven’t been turned on in over a year)turned on and would not turn off. Ultimately, we decided it was time for an emergency trip to HomeDepot. Aaron took a picture of thebroken head on his phone so that we would know what part to pick up (thankgoodness for iphones!). About 30 minutesand $20 later, I was holding a flashlight so that Aaron could see what he wasdoing as the sun was long gone by this point. After getting pretty wet because we couldn’t quite get the water to turnoff, we finally were able to get the sprinklers off!

Even though it was an adventure,it ended up turning into a kind of nice husband/wife bonding experience. J

Adventures in Pumpkin Bread

2011-10-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

I have never made anything withpumpkin other than a jack-o-lantern at Halloween. So, when my CSA box arrived this week with a pumpkininside the box, it was like a personal challenge to find something new to makewith it – not only was the pumpkin a little small for carving, but it seemedlike it would be a wasted opportunity if I chickened out and went the safe route(though I am looking forward to carving a pumpkin tomorrow in preparation forHalloween). I decided that for my first foray into edible pumpkin goods, it would be fun to make pumpkin bread.

It was definitely an adventure! ButI am really glad I took the risk because the end result is so delicious! I’m not going to do an accounting on this onebecause I already had all of the ingredients at home (except the eggs), so itwould really be pure speculation on my part.

I used a recipe from my BettyCrocker cookbook (I assume the 2006 edition bc I received it as a wedding gift)and then modified it to my tastes.

If you are using a fresh pumpkin,first you will need to make pumpkin puree.

Cut the pumpkinin half horizontally.

Scoop out allthe seeds and stringy bits (I’m not so good at getting all the stringy bitsout - but I do my best).

Then place eachhalf flesh side down on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with water, and bake at 350for an hour.

After an hour,pull it out of the oven and let it cool. Then scoop all the flesh out into a bowl and puree.

Now for the pumpkin breadrecipe:

- Pumpkin puree from 1 small/medium pumpkin (or 1 canpumpkin)

- 1 2/3 cup sugar

- 2/3 cup vegetable oil (I substituted the same amount ofapple sauce instead)

- 2 teaspoons vanilla

- 4 large eggs

- 3 cups all purpose flour

- 2 teaspoons baking soda

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

- ½ teaspoon ground cloves

- ½ teaspoon baking powder

- ½ cup coarsely chopped nuts or raisins (optional) (I happened to have a bag of trail mix lying around that had walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and dried apricots - I chopped up 1/2 a cup of that trail mix and it is definitely and amazing addition!)

Move oven rackto a low position so that the tops of the pans will be in the center of theoven. Grease bottoms only of two 8x4inch loaf pans (or one 9x5 inch pan). Preheat oven to 350.

In large bowl,stir pumpkin puree, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs until well mixed. Stir in remaining ingredients except nuts (ifusing) – stir well until there are no lumps in the batter. Stir in nuts. Divide batter evenly between the pans.

Bake for aboutan hour or until a toothpick (butter knife in my case) comes out clean. Then let the loaves completely cool on a rack before slicing.

Here is where my adventure began: I think since I used a whole freshpumpkin, instead of canned pumpkin, I ended up making more batter than BettyCrocker expected me to make . . . so, my loaf pans were, well, a little too full. About half an hour in, I smelled somethingburning and went to check on the bread. Turns out the batter had risen up over the top of the loaf pans and spilledonto the oven floor. So I had to takeout the loaf pans, and the oven racks and scoop the spilled batter up with aspatula, and then remove the bits that were stuck to the racks. Then I replaced the racks and the loaf pansand resumed baking. Fortunately, none ofthis affected the flavor of the bread. Once my butter knife came out clean, I let the bread cool on arack. And now I am enjoying a slice ofhomemade pumpkin bread with a latte made by yours truly!

* A note on the photos I use in my blog. All these pictures are taken by me, using my Sony Cybershot (pink) camera. Yes, that is a Han Solo bobblehead in the background on my counter. Please excuse any flour/cooking mess in my kitchen that happens to appear in the shots. I try to "keep it real" by not staging my pictures too much. :)

Sunday Dinner: Spinach Lasagna

2011-10-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

Tonight I invited some co-workersover for dinner. We’ve had a lot ofstress at work lately, and I thought it would be nice to invite the departmentthat I work most closely with over to my place so that we could all bondoutside of the workplace and in a nice, casual, comfortable environment. It also so happens that all of those co-workersare female. No offense to any of my malefriends, but there is definitely a different vibe to an all female gathering. The number one difference being how easy thecleanup is; I am not saying that this would happen with every group of women,nor am I saying that it would not be the same with a select few of my malefriends. But I will say this: I was completelyfinished cleaning up within 30 minutes of everyone leaving my house! The girls helped me put things back in myfridge, helped me put leftovers in Tupperware, put their dishes in the sink, etc. It was amazing! It also helped that I washed all the dishesin the house and cleared out the dishwasher before anyone arrived so that therewould be room in the dishwasher for dirty dishes at the end of the night. Also, while the lasagna was baking I was ableto wash all the prep dishes and generally clean up the kitchen.

My co-workers each volunteered tobring something, so I was only responsible for the main course tonight. One person brought appetizer-y things,another brought a delicious salad, another brought wine, and one of myco-workers actually baked a pumpkin pie today! First pumpkin pie of the season – I had forgotten how much I enjoywhipped cream . . . er, pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream . . . yeah, that’sit . . .

One of my co-workers isvegetarian, so I decided to do a Spinach Lasagna from “Diet For a Small Planet”by Frances Moore Lappe. I love thisbook! My mom gave it to me for Christmasmy first year in law school, and I read it in about two days – and then at theback, there are tons of great vegetarian recipes. If you were ever curious about the early daysof vegetarianism becoming mainstream, I definitely recommend this book. It’s all about complementary proteins,sustainable eating, etc. It’s like thegrandmother of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”

Ok, onto the food! I don’t think I would recommend doing this ona weekday – much too time consuming – unless you buy those lasagna noodles youdon’t have to pre-cook. If I were to doit over again, I would definitely look for those. I had to pre-cook the lasagna noodles, whichI did waaay ahead of time bc I also had to clean the house. So while the noodles were cooling, I cleaned.

Later in the day, I sautéed theonion, tomatoes, etc. and then added the spinach.

I cooked that until the spinachwilted. It never ceases to amaze me howmuch spinach cooks down!

Then I left the spinach on simmerwhile I mixed the cheeses together. And then added the spinach mixture.

Ok, ok, I know it doesn’t lookthat appealing, but I swear, even at that point, it tasted great!

Then I layered the noodles andthe spinach mixture in a pan and cooked at 350 for about 40 minutes. Et voila!

I’m not quite sure what happenedwith the top layer of noodles. Theycurled up on themselves and made it really difficult to cut into serving sizedportions! Fortunately, my dinner guestssaid that they like crunchy lasagna noodles. Hopefully they weren’t just being nice!

And now the accounting fun:

Spinach Lasagna
1/2 pound lasagna noodles	$0.75
1/2 onion	$0.75
2 tomatoes	$1.00
2 cloves garlic	$0.05
1/2 teaspoon oregano/basil/rosemary	$0.05
1 lb spinach	$1.79
1 cup low fat cottage cheese	$1.00
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese	$1.00
10 oz mozzarella cheese	$3.75
total:	$10.14

8 servings =	$1.26	per serving

* A note on the accounting –since there were several dishes that I did not prepare, this is not a price forthe whole meal – just the main course. Also,I did prepare another side dish that I am saving for a blog later in the week,and that is not accounted for here either. But it’s still fun to see. J

If you want to make this yourself, here’s the full recipe (with notes for my alterations):

- 3-4 tbps oil

- ½ lb lasagna noodles, cooked to al dente

- 1 medium onion, chopped (I used half an onion – I always cut the recommended amount of onion inhalf bc I’m not a huge fan of onions, but I like the flavor they add to recipes)

- 2 tomatoes, chopped

- 10 medium mushrooms (I detest mushrooms, so I just omitted them)

- ½ tsp each oregano, basil, rosemary (I used fresh rosemary from my neighbor’sgarden)

- 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsely (I bought the parsley, and then completely forgot to use it, but therecipe tasted fine without it)

- 1 lb spinach, washed, drained and chopped

- 1 cup non-fat cottage cheese

- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese

- 10 oz grated mozzarella cheese

· Preheat oven to 350.

· Heat oil in a big skillet, sauté garlic, onion,tomatoes and mushrooms.

· When onion is translucent, add herbs andspinach, stirring until spinach is wilted. Simmer.

· Reserving ½ cup mozzarella cheese, in a largebowl, combine cheeses.

· Pour spinach mix into cheese mixture and stirthoroughly.

· Layer noodles alternately with spinach/cheesemixture in an 8x13 in baking pan.

· Top with reserved mozzarella.

· Bake 30-40 minutes.

· Serves ~8

Not Sunday Dinner: Tim Burton at LACMA

2011-10-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

There will be no edition ofSunday Dinner tonight because, honestly, I find it hard to imagine that anyonecares about me making Rice-a-Roni with hot dog cut up into it (yes, I do eathot dogs occasionally). I had a very funfilled weekend, and now just can’t be bothered to cook! I spent all morning yesterday in the kitchenbaking cupcakes for my friend’s kid’s 1^st birthday. One of my other friends, J-fer, and herfiancé, Michael, came up to LA from San Diego for the birthday party and they stayed at myhouse. After the birthday party, a bunchof us went out for sushi and then came back to the house to play Rock Banduntil who knows when. Today, J-fer,Michael and I went to the Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA (Aaron had to work, so hecouldn’t join us).

I can’t believe I have lived inLA for 10 years and have never been to LACMA! (LA County Museum of Art – forthose, not in the know). The Tim Burtonexhibit is one of those where you have to buy special admission ($22) for aspecific time – our admission time was noon. I’m really glad it wasn’t any later. When we got there, the parking structure had plenty of spaces left, andwe were able to park without any real hassle (which, for that part of LA, is apretty big accomplishment). We exitedthe elevators from the parking garage straight into a courtyard surrounded bystatuesque heads of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac (honestly, I only pickedthat up once I saw my sign, the horse, and then the monkey, which was 2 yearslater – and from there I was able to make an educated guess). Then we were all standing around talkingabout it, and this lady comes up to us and says “There’s a sign over there thatexplains everything.” Thanks, I guess Ishould have looked for a sign at a museum . . . oh well.

I don’t have any pictures of the TimBurton exhibit because they warned us at least three times before even enteringthe big gaping mouth of an entrance that no photography was allowed. The guards kept repeating “No cameras, nocell phones, not even for texting or calling. Put it away, or it will be confiscated.” Even with all that, at one point in the exhibit, this 13 year old girlcame up to me and said, rather rudely, “Excuse me” and shoved me aside so thatshe could snap a shot of a black light painted picture with her iphone. Now that I think about it, I bet that picturedidn’t come out so well since it was so dark in that room! I was so shocked at her rudeness that itdidn’t even occur to me to call a guard on her.

Overall the Tim Burton exhibitwas very enjoyable and very informative. I had no idea that growing up in idyllic suburban Burbank could be so traumatic! (Though itdefinitely explains “Edward Scissorhands.”) For anyone who loves that slightlydisturbing artistic Burtonstyle, this is a must see. They haddoodles of his from when he was still in high school – up through costumes andfull puppets/3D models from his stop motion features that everyone loves. There were several iterations of JackSkellington’s head – each with a different expression/emotion.

The one negative that I will giveis that it can get really crowded. Thebeginning of the exhibit is a complete bottleneck. I will admit, I got a littleclaustrophobic/agoraphobic with all those people not moving in a very smallspace. Then it opened up in the middle,and it seemed like there was good spacing between each art piece. The last room was not only cramped, but ithad this diorama that played music, but not just any music – creepy, dollhousemusic, that overlayed an image of a kid in a house with a Christmas Tree andblood spattered all around the room. Iswear by the end of the time I got done with the last room, I thought I wasgoing to go crazy if I had to hear that music one more time! Oh, and then, of course, it opened into myleast favorite exhibit of all: the gift shop. I think I inherited my distaste for gift shops from my dad (though Itolerate them much more than he can). But I really hate a) being forced to walk through a gift shop and b)being forced to try to get past all the other people who don’t mind beingforced to walk through a gift shop.

One last caveat about the TimBurton exhibit: it is definitely not for young children. “Nightmare Before Christmas” is about as tameas it gets in there, but a lot of his earlier stuff is definitely not forchildren’s eyes. I saw people with veryyoung children, some of the kids were scared, others were just bored ormiserable. But, if you are an adult(and/or you have kids that are mature enough to handle more grown up themes)and you love Tim Burton, this is definitely a good exhibit to go see! Hurry though, if you are interested, because the exhibit only runs through Halloween weekend.

Sunday Dinner: Pico Rivera Special

2011-10-09T21:56:00.000-07:00

Today in the Sherry household, wehad a bit of a role reversal (for us). Aaron wentoff to work and I stayed home. Aaronjust got an editing job . . . I can’t tell you what it is because even I don’tknow. He had to sign a super strict NDA,and he can’t tell me anything about it. Theonly think I know is that he says he “can see why it’s so top secret” and it’s“super cool.” I can’t wait until whatever the show is becomes public knowledgeso he can finally tell me about it! Eventhough it’s Sunday, they called him in, and he’s all about taking any extrahours they can send his way . . . especially since he knows this job won’t lastforever (once the show is finished, so is the job). So anyway, I decided to be a super awesome wifeand greet Aaron with a drink and have dinner (almost) ready by the time he gothome.

Pico Rivera Special was afavorite in the Stevens household growing up. Aaron loves this recipe so much that it is now a favorite in theStevens-Sherry household too! The storyis that my grandfather came up with this recipe when he was living the bachelorlife in Pico Rivera (hence the name). I love this recipe because theingredients are all things I almost always have on hand, which means thateven when I haven’t been grocery shopping in a long time, I can still whip thistogether and make a fantastic meal!

You start by browning ground beefand adding onions.

Then you add tomato sauce, corn,and chili pepper.

Then you add noodles. And then you are done!

Simple, easy, family friendlyrecipe!

Here’s the cost breakdown:

Pico Rivera Special
6 oz noodles	$0.50
1 lb ground beef	$3.80
1 can tomato sauce	$0.88
1 can corn	$0.99
1 small onion	$0.60
chili powder	$0.05
total:	$6.82

6 servings =	$1.13	per person

* A note on the breakdown: like I said, I already had all ofthese items in my pantry, so the costs are estimated – except the meat, whichhad the cost stamped on the front of the package that was in my freezer. Also, I didn’t account for the salad that we ate, but I’mguessing it would add an extra 50 cents per person? One of these days, I will write a blog aboutthe other Stevens-Sherry family favorite: Chicken Caesar Salad. And then I will do a full accounting of mysalad costs. :)

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And for those whowant the actual recipe, here it is:

Pico Rivera Special

- 1 lb ground beef

- 1 onion

- 1 can tomato sauce (8oz)

- 1 small can corn, drained

- 1 tbps chili powder

- 6 oz noodles (about half a bag) (preferably egg, penne,or bowtie)

- Salt & pepper to taste

1. Brown meat & add chopped onion. Heat until onions are soft.

2. Add dash of salt & pepper

3. Add tomato sauce, corn and chili power

4. Heat to bubbly and blended (~10 minutes)

5. Boil noodles (can be done while browning meat)

6. Drain and pour into pan with the other ingredients

7. Mix & heat for about 5 more minutes.

Weeknight Dinner: Orzo Salad with Heirloom Tomatoes

2011-10-04T23:36:00.000-07:00

Weeknights are hard to cook areal meal! I don’t get home from workuntil 7:15 – 7:30 most nights (and that’s when I’m not rehearsing foranything). The last thing I want to dois start cooking the moment I walk in the door. If I do cook during the week, I won’t start until 8ish, which oftenmeans dinner at 9 (or 10 if I've chosen a recipe that is too difficult . . .note to self: don't ever pick a Julia Child recipe on a weeknight!). I don’t really mindeating a late dinner, and I know Aaron doesn’t either – I guess when we havekids we may need to change that schedule, but we’ll see. I can remember several family dinners growingup that were pretty late. We alwaysmanaged to eat dinner together as a family . . . even if it meant eating at 8or 9 or sometimes 10 (but that was usually when Dad was out of town and Momwas busy with a community meeting or something).

Tonight I decided to try some“real” cooking, even though it’s a weeknight. My CSA box came with heirloom tomatoes, and I’ve always wanted to trysomething special with them (rather than my usual green salad). So, I found a recipe for Orzo salad withheirloom tomatoes on the Farm Fresh To You website. This recipe definitely fits the weeknightrequirements: quick, easy, healthy, and tasty. It took about 30 minutes frompulling the box of orzo out of the cupboard to when it was ready to eat.

First I boiled the orzo. While it was boiling, I cut up all the herbsand tomato, etc. After draining theorzo, I whisked together the vinegar and lemon juice. I used the juice of an entire lemon (bc it wasjust easier than squeezing out only 1 tablespoon). Then I slowly added the olive oil. I actually used a little under ¼ cup of oil,and I think that was plenty! I also usedhalf the amount of mint the recipe calls for and twice the amount of olives (I slicedup both black olives and green olives to give it more flavor and color). Once the dressing is done, I just mixed allthe ingredients in a pretty blue bowl, and dinner was ready.

It is really a nice, easy recipeboth to follow and to eat! I also grilledup some chicken to add some protein to the dinner.

Here’s how much the weeknightmeal cost (add $0.50 per person for the chicken breast):

Orzo & Heirloom Tomato Salad
9 oz Orzo*	$1.00
2 tbs White wine vinegar	$0.05
1/4 cup olive oil	$0.10
2 large heirloom tomatoes	$1.50
3/4 cup chopped green onions	$0.89
1/2 cup sliced olives	$0.50
1/2 cup sliced basil*	$1.99
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint	$1.00
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley	$0.05
total	$7.08

6 servings =	$1.18	per person

* A note on the costs, that boxof Orzo has been sitting, half full in my pantry for who knows how long – so Idon’t actually know how much it cost. Ido know however, that I would never spend more than $2 on a box of pasta, so Iestimated high and guessed at $2 for the box, of which I only used half. On the basil, when I opened the smallcontainer of fresh organic basil, I was very disappointed to discover that itwas already starting to wilt terribly. So I used half of it and threw the other half away – had it been good, Iwould have been able to save the rest for future use. Also, I easily could have spent half andgotten twice the amount of basil had I been able to organize myself a littleearlier and trek over to the Lake Balboa farmer’s market onSunday morning. Oh well!

Sunday Dinner: Guinness Beets

2011-10-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness! I feel like I am about to fall over, I am soexhausted from all the domesticity I put myself through today. This morning I woke up around 7:30am, fed thecat, brought in the paper, and watered the lawn. Then I clipped coupons while watching “Meetthe Press” (one of my favorite Sunday activities). By 9:30 am, I was out in the front yardpruning/weeding. I wanted to try to getout there before it got too hot . . . which only lasted until about 11:30am, atwhich point, I was sweating through the baseball cap I was wearing (gross Iknow). I will say this: I never want tolet the plants on our side yard get that overgrown again! My arms and legs have small cuts all over fromthe red grass bushes that attacked me as they apparently decided they didn’twant to be trimmed.

After the sweltering yard work, Idecided to seek some respite inside, and found that Aaron had woken up and was loungingon the couch, eating a bowl of cereal while watching a Star Trek movie. I sat down to watch the end of it with himthen we started watching “Mad Men” – I am completely enjoying that show! I am absolutely in love with the wardrobe ofMrs. Don Draper. I would want to wearevery single one of her dresses. It’salso really interesting to watch the role of women in the Mad Men era and seehow far we’ve come. I find it amusingthat the housewives were taking pity on the one divorced woman on their street –her house was a mess, and she ate frozen food because she had to work and didn’thave time to cook or clean . . . yeah, when they showed her house, it looked alot like mine, and I buy frozen meals for weekday lunches . . . because I don’thave time to cook or clean a lot of the time either. Except on Sunday, which brings me to the foodI made today.

This week, my CSA box from Farm Fresh to You came with beets (and a bunch of other locally grown organic yummyness aswell).

I will keep experimenting withbeets until I find a recipe I truly love. After asking around for beet recipes, I finally decided that I would do Sautéed Beets with Beer (aka Guinness Beets). I mainly decided on that recipe because the only ingredient I had topurchase was Guinness and it looked pretty easy. Turns out it tasted pretty good too!

First I cut the greens off thebeets and then boiled the beets. Whilethe beets were boiling, I sorted through the greens and picked out the onesthat looked edible (many of them had wilted or looked like maybe a bug haddinner before the beets were picked at the farm). The CSA box also came with chard, so I cut upthe chard and added it to the beet greens. The way the recipe is written, it seems like it wants you to boil the stoutand make the sauce while the beets are boiling. However, I would recommend waiting until after the beets are doneboiling. The reason is that the beersauce reduces very quickly, and the beets take a while to finish boiling. And then, once the beets are done boiling,they still need time to cool down so that you can rub the skins off. To make up for this minor error, I ended upturning the sauce down to a simmer and supplementing more Guinness as itreduced.

Once the beets were done boilingand their skins were rubbed off, I put them in the pan with the sauce and letthem simmer while I wilted the greens. Iused half the amount of butter the recipe calls for – both in the sauce and onthe greens. I think next time I will useeven less butter on the greens . . . I prefer my veggies with as little greaseas possible. I also Foreman grilled somechicken breast and added spices to some leftover rice.

Et voila:

It turned out pretty darntasty. Even Aaron liked it, and he isdefinitely not a big beet fan. In fact,he wasn’t quite sure what they were at first. Since neither Aaron nor I are big Guinness fans, I also bought somecider and we made snake bites to go with our dinner (half Guinness, halfcider). We sat at the table and ate andtalked . . . like grownups. :)

We had some rice and beetsleftover, but the greens and chicken were gobbled up. I didn’t include the cost of the snake bitedrinks, which would add another $1.66 per person.

Here’s the tally for what themeal cost:

Guinness Beets
1 Bunch Beets & Beet Greens	$1.50
Chard	$1.50
2 Tbs Butter	$0.05
1/4 cup stout	$1.66	(cost of one bottle in a six pack)
1 tbs balsamic vinegar	$0.05
1 cup rice	$0.10
1 boneless skinless chicken breast	$1.00
total:	$5.86

2 servings =	$2.93	per person

Sunday Dinner: Spinach Tofu Risotto

2011-09-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had some vegetarianfriends over for dinner. As anyone thatknows me can attest, I love vegetarian food, even though I am notvegetarian. So, I decided to make my spinachtofu risotto. I love this dish! This is one of those dishes that appeals tovegetarian and non-vegetarian friends alike – even those that don’t liketofu. The trick is that the tofu isblended with some olive oil and salt into this delicious sauce that doesn’ttaste anything like tofu. In fact, ittastes more like a creamy, cheesy Alfredo-ish sauce!

I originally got this recipe frommy “Giant Book of Tofu Cooking” by K. Lee & Chris Rankin. However, I’ve made it enough times andmodified it enough, that I feel fairly confident in calling it my own.

First you blend the tofu, about 1tbsp of spinach (and squeeze some of the spinach juice out of the thawed bag offrozen spinach), 2tbsp olive oil and salt until the sauce becomes creamy andslightly green (wow typing it out, that doesn’t sound terribly appealing, but Ipromise you it is!).

Then you sauté the onions andgarlic in the largest frying pan you have (or saucepan, whatever suits youfancy) until the onions are translucent.

Then you add the rice, spinach,black pepper and sauce. Stir it alltogether and then dump everything in a lightly oiled casserole dish. Bake it for about half an hour and voila –yumminess in one dish! I like to addsome parmesan cheese to top it off.

(You can also keep the dish completelyvegan by not adding the cheese.)

Today, one of my friends postedan interesting article in which the author finally put into written words what I have been arguing foryears: that it is cheaper to cook at home than to eat fast food. While it may seem easier to hand over hardearned cash for food that is already cooked, I will argue that it is almostalways cheaper and healthier to eat at home. The meal we ate tonight is a prime example - even I was surprised after I crunched thenumbers:

Spinach Tofu Risotto
2 cloves garlic minced*	$0.05
1 package firm tofu	$1.25
1 bag frozen spinach (thawed)	$0.88
1 onion finely chopped	$0.70
1 1/2 tsp salt*	$0.05
3-4 cups cooked rice	$0.30	(I bought a 10 lb bag of rice at Costco for $4!)
1/4 tsp black pepper*	$0.05
2 tbsp olive oil*	$0.05
total:	$3.33

8 servings =	$0.42	per person

Did I really do that right? Less than 50 cents per serving??? Yes. Yes, I did that right. If you want to add in the Two Buck ChuckChardonnay (which we drank entirely) and salad that we ate (which still hasplenty leftover), that brings it to about $1 per person – and there is enoughleftover (even after people had seconds) for me to bring lunch to work tomorrow.

* Full disclosure, I have decided to assign a cost of 5cents for all “stock” pantry items – i.e. tablespoon here or there of spices or olive oil or something likethat. Unless I can quantify the exactcost (i.e. a quarter cup of olive oil, and I have on record how much I actuallypaid for that bottle of olive oil), in which case, I will assign the true costof that item, of course.

Sunday Dinner: Ratatouille

2011-09-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

In our CSA box (from http://www.farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php) this week, we got some eggplant (along with a whole bunch of other yummystuff). Instead of doing my usual stir frywith the eggplant, I decided to make ratatouille. My first thought, knowing this is a Frenchdish, was to reach for the Julia Child cookbook. But since her recipe starts out with “Areally good ratatouille is not one of the quicker dishes to make . . .” Idecided to search my plethora of other cookbooks for a less complicated recipe. I finally found one in my “The Taste of HomeCookbook” that sounded perfect for this particular Sunday evening. Aaron is out of town this weekend, and I hadplans to go hiking this morning with a friend, so I knew I didn’t wantsomething too labor intensive.

This recipe is actually really easy as far as prepwork. You cook bacon and onions together(I used turkey bacon because that’s what I had on hand), and then add a can ofdiced tomatoes, tomato paste, olive oil, garlic, salt and some seasonings. Then you layer half of the sauce followed byhalf the eggplant, zucchini, green pepper and cheese in a baking dish andrepeat the layer one more time. Then youpop it in the oven for about 50 minutes and voila!

Dinner in one dish!

Ok, now onto the really fun part: the costs. It aggravates me to no end when peopleattempt to claim that it is cheaper (and/or healthier) to eat out than to cookfor yourself. I seriously had anargument with a friend about this. Takea look at my numbers for this meal and tell me who wins:

Total cost:

4 turkey bacon strips	$0.50
1 cup onion	$2.00
1 can tomato paste	$0.69
1 can diced tomatoes	$0.88
1 large garlic clove	$0.05
1 large eggplant	$2.00
2 large zucchini	$1.88
1 large green pepper	$1.00
6 oz Monterey Jack	$2.50

	$11.50

$11.50 total, yielding a supposed 8 servings = $1.50 perperson (ok, ok, with Aaron in the house, that is probably more like 6 servings,so a little under $2 per person). Fulldisclosure: I had to fudge the numbers for the eggplant and onion a little bcthey both came in my CSA box, and I pay a flat fee per box, not pervegetable. But it’s great! I pay $15 for half a box every other week (myfriend and I each split a $30 box). Thisweek we got eggplants, apples, onions, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes and figs!

Networking is Not My Game

2011-09-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

“Where am I?” I scan my printed directions for the thirdtime to verify the address. I look atthe address on the building again . . . it's the same address. I consult the directory posted on the wall,searching for the law firm where I was supposed to be five minutes ago . . . itis not there. I look up and down theempty hallways wondering if maybe someone will know where I am supposed togo. Finally a woman emerges from theelevator and I manage to corner her and ask if she knows where this law firmis. She’s never heard of it. But then a light bulb goes off in her head! She says “Oh, there are two buildings withthis address, the other one is just across the road.” I thank her graciously and then walk acrossthe street all the while thinking to myself “Who does that? What brilliant city planner thought thathaving two different buildings with the same address on opposite sides of aservice road would be a good idea?”

Tonight I went to my first lawschool alumni networking event since graduation four years ago. I recently decided to attempt to get over myfear of networking and try to improve this skill that I never quite fully developed. I am not a natural networker; I am who Iam. I know that I am not good atperipheral chit chat. I am not good atmaking my work and/or life sound more important than it is without soundingpretentious or like I am bragging. Whethervalid or not, that is what I think of when I think of “networking.” Just thethought of walking into a room full of strangers and acquaintances, knowing Iwill have to engage in small talk in a noisy, crowded room is enough to make mypalms sweat.

I almost didn’t go to the eventtonight. I had already had two businessfunctions during the day – breakfast in Hollywoodwith a music supervisor and lunch back at the office with somecomposers/producers. I was essentially“functioned” out. The address fiasco wasyet another setback in my attempt to “network.” I also had not realized that the attire requested was “business” attireuntil half an hour before the event was supposed to start. Remember, I am an entertainment attorney – notonly that, I work in-house for a music company . . . we are not exactly a buttoned upoperation. Fortunately I had heels in mycar to change into so that I wouldn’t have to walk into a room wearing mytrusty converse sneakers when everyone else was wearing suits. The only thing that kept me from backing outwas that the new alumni relations director is a friend of mine and she hadpersonally emailed me asking if I could go. I didn’t want to let her down – otherwise, she might “accidentally” kickme the next time we go to a kickboxing class together (just kidding).

Once there, it was actually apretty good event. I saw some faces thatI haven’t seen since graduation. I will say that it was very nice to be able to talk to people in person about what I do and feel like I sort of belonged in the "lawyer" club. As I am the only attorney in my company, it can get a little lonely. I wasgrateful to hear that many other alums have been as bad as I have in relyingmostly on facebook to keep up with our old classmates. In the facebook age, networking in person canseem irrelevant. You already feel likeyou know what is going on in a person’s life. However, I realized through (in person) comments at this event that Itend to post things on facebook that are more relevant to my personal and/orperforming life than I do about my professional life. Perhaps I shall have to change that . . . or maybeI could give this in-person communication thing a try.

Sunday Dinner: Boef a La Mode (for cheap)

2011-09-11T23:29:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day in a very long time that I posted a blog entry. I have been following other friends' blogs for awhile and had been thinking that it would be nice to start mine up again. After poking around here at blogspot today, I realized that they have made it much easier to insert pictures and videos into blog posts. Back in the old days, you used to have to html a link to a photobucket account, and sometimes, if you were lucky, the photo would actually link and it would appear in the blog entry. Other times, you just ended up with html gobbledy gook and have to start all over again or just give up.

In honor, of the new ease of photo entry, I am posting pictures of the dinner that I made tonight. I love to cook, but I hate cooking for just me. So, now that I am married, and my brother in law is living with us, it gives me an excuse to pull out a cookbook and make a "real" meal on Sunday evenings. Tonight, I decided to break out the Julia Child cookbook and make Boef a La Mode. It sounds fancy, and, well, I'm not going to lie, it was definitely time intensive, but it was worth it. Around10 am this morning, I started by marinating some beef in a concoction of wine, onions, carrots, celery and thyme. Every couple of hours, I would open up the fridge and turn the meat and baste it a little. This was the bowl I used for the marinating (and yes, that is a Han Solo bobblehead in the background):

Around 5:30pm, I took the meat out of the marinade and had to dry it on a rack for about 30 minutes:

I browned the meat in a dutch oven and then added the marinade and cooked it at 350 in the oven for about 2 hours. While it was cooking, I made a salad and roasted some potatoes and made braised carrots (which is really just boiled carrots with some butter added). Once it was done, we served it with a fantastic wine: good old 2 Buck Chuck Cabernet.

Here is the finished product (my food photography skills probably need some improvement, but you get the idea):

How much did this delicious meal cost, you ask? Well, it kind of depends on how you want to divide it up. I had to buy an entire bottle of Brandy and a container of cloves and some beef boulion - but those are all staples that will remain in the kitchen for a long time to come. On the other hand, I already had some staples, like butter and garlic. Here are the two alternate calculations for the entire meal (including side dishes of salad and potatoes):

Meat	$6.50		$6.50
Wine	$2.00		$2.00
Bouilon	$2.99	(4 tsp used)	$0.40
Cloves	$3.49	(2 used)	$0.05
Brandy	$10.00	(1/2 cup)	$1.00
Potatoes	$3.69	(4 used)	$1.47
Lettuce	$0.99		$0.99
Onion	$0.79		$0.79
carrots	$0.99		$0.99
celery	$1.99		$1.99
cucumbers	$0.99		$0.99
parsley	$0.99		$0.50
green bell pepper	$0.99		$0.99
red pepper	$1.00		$1.00

total:	$37.40		$19.66

per person (4 people)	$9.35		$4.91

So, there you have it, a delicious Sunday dinner for 4 people for $5-$10 per person (depending on how you do the calculations). We didn't have any leftovers, except for a little salad (which I will probably take to work with me tomorrow for lunch). We had three grown men sitting at a table that had meat and potatoes on it - I knew there wouldn't be any leftovers. But I am glad it was a success!

September 11

2011-09-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

September 11, 2011

“What the bloody hell is goingon?” Those were the first words myBritish boyfriend at the time said to me as he called me from 6,000 miles awayat 9am on September 11, 2001. Not “hi”or “hello” just “What the bloody hell is going on?” I had no answer for him. I had just spent the past hour glued to the TV,jaw gaping, in complete silence as I watched the towers fall. It was like something out of a movie, notreal life. My entire view of the worldhad been altered in one single morning. Even though, I didn’t personally know anyone in the twin towers at thetime, and even though I lived on the other side of the country, September 11,2001 had a huge impact on my life.

Over the summer in 2001, mysister had the opportunity to play in her marching band in the 4^thof July parade in Washington, DC. We made a family trip of it, going to DC andthen taking the train up to New York City. It wasonly my second time in New York,and I loved it. We had a blast! We wentto several Broadway shows, and did all the tourist attractions, includingvisiting the World Trade Center. I have a picture of the twin towers 2 monthsbefore they fell. I remember looking upat them, reaching high into the sky, and thinking “What would they do if therewas a fire in one of these buildings?” Little did I know that, in less than two months, the entire world wouldsoon get the answer to that question.

I was 23 and fresh out ofcollege. I wanted to be an actress; soobviously, my choices were to move to either New York or LA. Even though I had a great time on our familytrip, I didn’t really know anyone in New York at the time, and my parents grew up in LA, so Ihad plenty of resources there. Somefamily friends offered me a job at their law firm in LA and were letting mestay with them until I decided whether it would a permanent move. I figured I would probably give LA a try fora year or two and then move to New York and try for Broadway. September 11 changed all that.

Growing up as a teenager in the 90’s,we didn’t have a “cause” to get behind. Ourparents had the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, our grandparents hadWorld War II. What did we have? Nirvana and the grunge movement; a bunch ofpretentious kids who don’t feel like showering and imagining that they aremiserable without necessarily having a real reason to be miserable. Rebelling against the bubble gum pop and neoncolors of the 80’s – (insert sarcastic tone here) because that’s something“real” to rebel against. I think it lead to a certain amount of apathy andselfishness on our part. And then ourworld was shaken apart in a very real way. But unlike the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and World War II,we were now engaging in a “War on Terror” not a war against a specific countryor government. It is very difficult towage a war on an idea. This is probablyone of the many reasons the focus of the war eventually shifted to Iraq; becauseit is much easier to go up against a country than an idea, but that’s an entry foranother day . . .

Obviously, the idea of me movingto New Yorkany time soon was completely out of the picture. I had been offered a job as a cocktail waitress at the Century Club the week before September 11. My first shift was September 13 – after myfirst night, they told me they no longer needed me because no one felt likegoing out and partying. I had a cousinwho got married in Vegas less than a week after September 11. I can remember sitting in the airport with mygrandmother. We were hungry, so stoppedat a restaurant to get some food, and there were real forks and spoons, but allthe knives were plastic. My sister and I each took home a centerpiecefrom the wedding, a potted rose plant, and were nervous that security wouldtake them away because of the thorns on the roses – and the potential forburying something in the dirt in the pot.

One upside was that my Britishboyfriend came out to visit that October and we went to most of the theme parksin Southern California. Everyone warned us not to go because “aterrorist might attack Disneyland.” I refused to be terrorized. My theory was: if I get killed at a bombingat Disneyland, at least I died having fun atthe happiest place on Earth. There wasdefinitely extra security at the theme parks. However, as a result of everyone elsegiving into the terror and staying home, there were hardly any lines and we hada great time. I don’t blame September 11for the break down of that relationship, but it definitely was a factor. September 11 made everyone skittish. It was hard to commit to anything long termin the immediate aftermath. No one knewwhere the world would be or what the economy would do in the days/months/yearsto follow. The dot com bubble hadalready burst, and this was yet another setback in the world economy. It was very hard to keep up a 6,000 mile longdistance relationship with that much world wide uncertainty.

In some ways, it’s hard tobelieve that it’s already been 10 years. The feelings are still fresh in my mind. I haven’t been able to watch the news thisweek without breaking down in tears. Butat the same time, so much has happened in the years since. Not just worldwide, but in my own personallife. I am now happily married, I own ahouse, I have a cat, who is currently meowing at me because she wantsattention. I didn’t become an actress(at least not full time). 9/11 causedall the production in both New Yorkand LA to come to a screeching halt – which seriously derailed a lot ofplans. It definitely broke my momentumfor pursuing that career path. But atleast I ended up in the industry I have always wanted to work in. I went to law school and now work inentertainment as a music licensing attorney. I am in the industry I always wanted to work in, and yet I have a steadypaycheck, which I definitely would not have had I remained on the actor careerpath.

The oddest thing to me in allthis is knowing that, someday, I will have to explain what the world was likebefore September 11 to my kids. Iremember, when I was looking at law schools in New York City, I came across the globe-like statue that had been saved fromthe rubble of the World Trade Center. I was standing there in front of itreminiscing when a family came up and I overheard the mom explaining to her 2year old what it was and why it was important. I have so many friends with kids now and they were telling me that itwas difficult explaining to their children who Osama Bin Laden was and why Americanswere happy that he is dead. I guess somedayI will have to face explanations like that myself. In the mean time, I think I will take todayand just remember what it was like before the world changed.

Performing again!

2010-04-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened in the last week! (see, I told you I would try to do this more regularly) And this gets to be a happier post.

Since my last post, Aaron and I went down to San Diego for a friend's wedding, I got a horrendous cold, I auditioned for a musical for the first time in years, I went to callbacks for that musical, I got into that musical and Aaron had his birthday.

So I guess I'll go chronologically:

1. Karyn's wedding.

My friend, Karyn Ruark, got married in a beautiful ceremony in San Diego. Karyn is like my little sister - seriously, I remember her in diapers. So it was kind of weird to see her get married. I wasn't in the bridal party this time, but I had the honor of doing the bride's makeup. Sharon and I woke up at some ungodly hour and drove down to the salon to do Karyn's makeup, as well as help some of the bridesmaids with their makeup. Then we drove over to the church and helped set up some of the decorations. The ceremony was at the Immaculata at USD, and then the reception was at the Town and Country hotel. All the roses at the hotel were in full bloom. The reception had dancing, karaoke and yummy food. Later that night I started to feel that familiar scratch in the throat. Of course, it could have been shouting . . . er, singing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" for karaoke. But, the next morning, I knew it was a full blown cold.

2. My cold

Sunday morning, I woke up with a sore throat. I knew it was much more than just wine and karaoke. Aaron and I came back to LA and I slept on the couch the whole day. I ended up calling in sick to work on Tuesday because I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like someone had burned a hole through my throat, and every time I swallowed, the fire would rise up and retaliate against my body for that involuntary action.

3. Auditions

Monday night were auditions for a community theatre production of "Chorus Line." I haven't done a musical since I played Wendy in "Peter Pan" 10 years ago (I cannot believe that it's been that long). I've been missing musical theatre so much. At least when I was dancing with Mehtropolis, I was performing regularly, so I was still able to satisfy that performance bug, but it's been over a year since my last show . . . and if you know me, you know that screws with my sanity. So, when I saw the audition notice, I thought "if there's a better show than 'Chorus Line' to be my re-introduction to musical theatre, I don't know it." I dug up my old headshots and resume, old sheet music and voice lesson cassette tapes and started practicing. (For once thankful for my horrendously long commute in my car that has a cassette player).

Of course, Monday came and I had no voice because of my cold. So I was hoping they would dance first and then sing. I showed up at the auditions ridiculously early because a) I always do that, and b) the theatre is around the corner from work. When I got there, there was just the director and one other auditioner there, so I asked if we were singing or dancing first, and the director said singing would be first - immediately I said "Ok, I have a cold!" She had a good laugh and thanked me for telling her. When I sang, it was OBVIOUS that I had a cold, so I am really glad I said something.

Fortunately, they didn't do a cut between singing and dancing - everybody got to dance. We learned the first section of the original choreography to "I Hope I Get It." Let me just say this, 80's jazz and me don't necessarily mix well. And the choreographer taught it really fast! It was not good. Seriously, I think we maybe spent 5 minutes learning the choreography before they broke us into groups of TWO for judging - and I had to go first, with a guy who doesn't dance! It was bad. Before doing the combination, we had to do a double pirouette on each side, followed by double and triple time steps on each side. My pirouettes were fantastic (yay ballet!). I can't remember the last time I did a single time step, let alone a double - and I don't think I've ever done a triple time step. I did not have the choreography down for the combination at all. I walked away from the experience thinking "Well, I'm glad I went. Now I just need to get back into the practice of auditioning . . . I'll find other auditions to go to." Honestly, I wouldn't have called me back after the disaster that was my initial audition.

But, lo and behold, the next day, they called me back! I seriously think it was my pirouettes that got me called back. After getting the callback, I went to YouTube to look up the choreography to see what I was missing. The first callbacks were dancing only – so we added to the jazz combination (good thing I looked it up). That round went much better, though I still was fighting my cold and my energy plummeted part way through. After the jazz combination, we learned a ballet section . . . (big sigh of relief). I like ballet! I can do ballet in my sleep (and sometimes do). But I still wasn’t sure if it was enough to get me called back again for the acting callback.

The next day, they called me back! I read for Val (T&A), Kristine (can’t sing), and Bebe (sings the alto part of “At the Ballet”). I was ecstatic to even be considered for Val – last time I was auditioning, I would have been the young ingénue, so to get to be considered for a “sexy” role, was exciting! When I read for Kristine, I thought I did pretty well, got a few chuckles, but then this other girl went up and was HILARIOUS! I felt confident about my read on Val’s monologue. But then we learned Val’s song, and there was a girl there who already knew the song and could belt it out of the park – seriously, she had an AMAZING voice. I didn’t get to see her do Val's monologue, though - we read those individually in front of the director. When we learned “At the Ballet”, there were a bunch of us all in the room together. It was the end of the night, and we were running late, so the director had us sing in groups of 2 or 3 and she just picked our voices out from the groups. It was weird learning the alto part (in the past, I had been a soprano). Honestly, I think the only reason I was able to hit some of those low notes was because I still had a cold and my voice was not yet back to normal.

4. Getting in the show.

I got into the show! I’ll be playing the “Cut Dancer” and understudying Val, Kristine and Judy, with “guaranteed performances.” Part of me is kind of disappointed that I didn’t get a named character role. But honestly, I really just wanted to be around musical theatre again. And this way I get to learn 4 parts (mine and the other 3) instead of just one. If I hadn’t gotten into this show, I probably would have found an acting class to take anyway, so this way I get to sing, dance and act for free – and still get to perform! It has seriously been so long since I’ve done a musical, I’m really kind of starting out at the bottom of the totem pole again, so I’m just glad to be involved.

Here are the details for the show: It will be at the Morgan Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica, June 26 – July 31. Here’s a link to the theatre’s website: http://www.morgan-wixson.org/ As soon as I find out when I’ll be playing the bigger roles, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Birthdays that could have been

2010-04-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Wow - so it may appear that I have abandoned this blog - but I haven't. I'm always composing in my head things to post. Perhaps I will start to get better at actually posting the thoughts that rattle around in my head on a constant basis.

If you are reading this, I am going to assume a) you know me and b) you know why I haven't touched this blog in over 6 months (something to do with the last part of 2009 being one of the worst times in my life). That being said, I don't feel the need to re-cap anything that's happened in the last 6-7 months.

On to today's topic: Today, April 7, would have been my father-in-law's birthday. So many things have happened in the past two days that remind me of him that I can't help thinking that perhaps it's not all a coincidence.

1) Last night the wind was so bad that it kept blowing a tree branch against the roof of our bedroom - Aaron and I ended up sleeping in the guest room for some peace and quiet. The last time I slept in the guest room was when Aaron was in Chicago while his dad was in the hospital. I slept there because I didn't want to sleep in our bed alone - not really the best reason for my first time sleeping in the house alone. At least this time I had Aaron with me.

2) Today I went to the beach for lunch. I used to text my father-in-law about all kinds of random things - I'd almost always text him when it was nice out. I really wanted to text him about how gorgeous it was today and send him a picture of the beach. I also went to the beach to de-stress after I dropped Aaron off at the airport when he returned to his dad in the hospital. The backdrop for my phone has been a picture that I took that day - I think I might change it to the picture I took today.

3) Oprah's new network (OWN) licensed some music from us for promos - of course, today was the day that deal went through. Almost cried while drafting the contract because I definitely would have texted or emailed him about it right away. We may be entering into a longer term contract with them, too, which is something I always told him they should do.

4) On my drive home tonight, the light-post, that had been going out almost every night after he passed, went out right as I drove past yet again. Apparently that sort of thing can indicate a sign from the other side.

There are plenty of other things, but I can't think of them right now. I just know that I miss my dad-in-law very much. He will always be remembered by me as being full of life and love and he would want us to keep living life to the fullest.

P.S. Stuff like this reminds me that life is short and you need to tell those close to you how you really feel. To all my family: I love you. :)

xx

Carpets and Moms

2009-08-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Wow - so much has happened in just the week and a half since my last post.

We decided to go with Empire for our carpet. The guy who came out to our house was the typical sales guy. I almost wanted to show him the door just because he was so obnoxious. I hate how sales people feel the need to treat me as though I am not as intelligent or as knowledgeable as them. Granted, I am probably not as knowledgeable about their particular product as they are - which is why I called them out to my house in the first place. But please, treat me as a reasonably intelligent human being. I almost got into an argument with the guy over jingles - yes, jingles. He was essentially trying to intimate that Empire was the first company to ever use a jingle effectively. Ha!

It took him forever to finally bring the carpet samples in - which was an issue because the bank had turned off the power to the house, so we were using the remaining daylight. Fortunately the house gets pretty good natural light, so we were able to make the most of it. Once he finally brought the samples in, Aaron and I devised all kinds of tests to decide which one we liked the most. We took our shoes off and stepped on it. I did a little dance. In the end, the most effective test was the "elbow test" in which we laid on the floor with our elbows on the carpet. That eliminated a couple right away for being to scratchy. In the end, we chose a mid-level plush in a color called "Milky Way." Then the guy told us it would be $3,000. We said, "Thank you. We have to think about it and price it out at other stores." At which point he hammered us with how great the company is and how nobody could beat their price and service (installation and haul away are included in the price). We kept insisting that we were not going to enter into a contract at this time. How could I be prepared to enter into a contract when they don't post their prices online and I had no way of preparing myself for how much we were going to spend? So then he pulled the classic sales guy technique of "calling his manager" - of course, right in our earshot so we could hear him reacting with "surprise." After the phone call, the price dropped by $900. At which point, Aaron and I decided that we might as well go for it because it was a little cheaper than Home Depot and it could be done before we moved our furniture in. Sweet. One more thing taken care of.

Aaron's mom arrived on Tuesday to help us fix up the house. I have to admit, whatever daughter-in-law nerves I may have had were totally unfounded. She has been fantastic! On Tuesday night, we went out to dinner in Santa Monica and then drove out to the house so that she could see it and we could go over ideas. Almost every paint color idea she had corresponded or was better than the ideas I had! She knows all kinds of stuff about how to fix up houses - what are quick fixes, where you can save money, what would be cost effective and what would not. It's amazing!

Yesterday, I rode my bike to work, Aaron borrowed my car, and Aaron's mom borrowed his car. While we were at work, Aaron's mom packed up all my wine glasses and other breakables and took them up to the house where she got straight to work. Aaron and I joined her after work. She had already painted our entire master bedroom (not to mention gone to Home Depot and gotten a bunch of supplies and unpacked the breakables and put them in the kitchen for me). We then went to Home Depot and picked out our new stove and hood. We were looking at the microwave hoods, but the way the tile in our kitchen is, we determined it wouldn't work. After Home Depot, we went out for pizza and then went home and fell into bed exhausted.

I'm a homeowner!

2009-08-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it is all done - at least, the paperwork and escrow and all that. Aaron and I are officially homeowners!!!

Now the real fun begins: fixing up the place. :)

We got our keys on Friday evening. I drove up at 5:15pm on a Friday night - great introduction to what my commute will be like. It took me a little over an hour to get there, which is about what I was expecting. Our agent had to be in Santa Clarita by 6:30, so he left the property open and the keys in the drawer next to the dishwasher - there's nothing inside the house for anyone to steal, and I got there only 15 minutes after he left, so everything was fine. Aaron joined me by 8pm. We wandered around the house, exploring everything and making notes of what exactly we need to do first.

Our next door neighbors had told us the AC didn't work in the front of the house - apparently the previous renters bought an AC unit for the front bedroom. When the next door neighbors inquired about why, the renters complained that the house was too hot and the AC didn't work at all in the front of the house. So that was one of the first things we checked out. I turned on the AC and went around to all the vents to make sure they were working properly. When I got to the living room, I noticed the two vents were closed - as was the vent in the front bedroom. Now, I never met the renters (who were running their Psychic business out of the house), so I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt - but if you go and BUY an AC unit without checking to see if there is a quick and inexpensive fix, then I'm going to call you a moron. Those people were morons when it came to the AC, not to mention, not very good psychics - Aaron and I opened the vents and they work fine. So that's good - one less thing we have to fix.

On Saturday, we drove out to a family friend's place. She's giving us a washer and dryer and may have some other furniture to sell us. We took a look at the washer and dryer - the dryer is very old, but it works and that's what matters. This will give us time to figure out exactly what type of appliances we want to get and enable us to save up for them. After that, we went back to the house and wandered around a little more.

Sunday was a very tiring day for me. Aaron and I went to Home Depot and spent about 2 hours and $150 there. I started to get a little whiny after an hour and a half. Who knew Home Depot would have so many fans blowing stuff into my face?! I wanted to claw my eyes out by the time we finished there. But after Home Depot, we decided to have our first meal in our house together. So we stopped at In-N-Out and then brought it back and had a picnic on the empty floor of our family room (or as my dad likes to call it, the "Seance Room").

We finally got the sprinklers in the front yard to work. I bought a garden hose and mobile sprinkler for the back yard. So we watered the lawn for a bit and raked the jacaranda flowers off the patio. We also bought timers for some lamps in the house so that it looks like someone is there even before we actually move in. We bought a really cool light sensor for the front porch that is supposed to turn the light on at dusk and off at dawn - I thought that was particularly clever. :)

Next step is figuring out carpeting. We looked at Home Depot and found some carpet that we actually like, but it will take 3 weeks for delivery/installation. On Wednesday, we have a free in-home consultation from Empire (you know the jingle!). So I guess it will come down to cost v. speed v. quality. We're still open to any other suggestions, so let me know if you have any recommendations!

So close!

2009-07-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Aaron and I signed our lives away - I mean, we signed all the loan documents and (hopefully) all of the rest of the documents necessary to complete the purchase of our first home! According to the escrow people, and our mortgage broker, all we need to do is sit back and wait for the keys - which should hopefully be delivered to us by Friday.

For those of you who have never purchased a home before - or for those of you who haven't done it in a long time, here is what we went through yesterday: We had to drive to Pasadena to be there by 4:30 (i.e. in rush hour traffic) to sign the documents. We got to the building where the escrow company was and had to sit in the lobby/hallway whilst we waited for the notary to come get us. The notary finally came and got us and proceeded to show us to "Signing Room #1." Signing Room #1 was empty except for some documents. It was just us and the notary inside this room signing a big huge packet of papers that we had never seen before. Here is my issue - I really wish they had emailed me the documents for my review over the weekend. That way, we could have had our questions answered before going in to sign. Instead, whenever we had questions, we had to call our escrow agent - who was downstairs doing other work - or our mortgage broker, who fortunately is a friend of ours, so we had her cell phone number to call after 5pm. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will just sign and not think twice about what they are signing . . . I am not one of those people.

This morning we had to go to the bank to wire transfer the remaining deposit/down payment and our portion of the closing costs. I looked at our copy of the documents to verify the amount we had to transfer and I could not find the correct number anywhere. The stack of papers we were given to take home with us did not have the same numbers as the stack of papers we signed yesterday. I have now requested copies of everything that we actually signed yesterday. Fortunately, the correct number was less than what was listed in the papers that we took home. But, I was livid - who does that? I used to work in a law office where I had people signing documents all the time. You ALWAYS give them the exact same paperwork as that which they are signing! It would have been best to just copy it after we signed it. But I understood that we were coming late in the day, so it wasn't necessarily practical to wait for them to make copies. Now I wish I had insisted on it!

I'm really hoping this is all over and done with by Friday. I just want to have the keys so that we can really get started on all the fixing up that needs to get done before we move in. Before you get too excited/concerned, really the only necessary things are: painting, re-carpeting the bedrooms, cleaning and re-keying the place. I think Aaron is also going to try to get the place wired for internet and other things prior to moving all our stuff in as well.

We seem to have lucked out on many of the items that we were going to have to purchase. A family friend is giving us a washer and dryer, and another friend of ours is letting us use his fridge on a "long term loan" basis - i.e. his current apartment does not have the space for it, so we will keep it for him and get to use it in the meantime. So the only appliance that we have to purchase is the stove - somehow I don't think anyone is just going to give us a stove. But this means that we may be able to get a better quality stove than we would otherwise have purchased.

Ok, I'm off to examine those documents with a fine tooth comb - at least they didn't try to charge me an "email fee" like some of our other friends who just bought a house experienced.

House Update

2009-07-12T22:22:00.001-07:00

1 month later and here's where we are at:

We had the inspection and appraisal. All went fairly well. The biggest issue was that the heating and ac were not turning on. However, the inspector said the systems were pretty good systems and fairly new, so he thought it might just be a breaker issue. You should see how big the final inspection report was! It's basically an entire book in and of itself.

The appraisal was fine - in fact, our appraiser had been out to the same house a couple years ago and appraised it at $600,000! hahahahaha . . . oh the bubble days. *sigh* But the final appraisal did come in about $30K more than what we are paying for it. So I guess that's good . . . on paper. It still makes no difference in what our monthly payments will be or how much it will be worth when we sell it. But at least we can feel like we're getting a good deal out of it.

We have been told that our loan has been approved - even though they seem to want more documentation each day. They even had to call our employers to get a verbal verification of employment. Then someone else from the bank will call back later to verify that it was verified - this is after giving them essentially 6 months worth of paystubs and getting letters regarding our employment. I'm surprised we haven't had to give a DNA sample yet!

Then there's the escrow company and the 50 pages we had to sign for them. We had to initial that we initialed documents - I guess to show that we saw them . . . again?

Oh, and we've finally found a homeowner's insurance company. Initially we contacted the company that does our car insurance. But they basically told us that they would be too expensive for us since we're buying in "an area like Van Nuys." They suggested we go to another company at least until we get the place fixed up.

Last week, Aaron had an electrician come out and look at the wiring. He got the ac and heat to work, so that's good. In addition, the electricity in the garage now works. Aaron verifided that the dishwasher was working - so that's one less appliance we have to purchase. :)

I think that's it. As of right now, we are set to close July 30. I have a feeling it may get delayed a little, but it should definitely be in August sometime. Then we just have to change the carpet, paint, and do a little gardening before we can have a housewarming party!

Home buying

2009-06-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

Aaron and I made an offer on a house last Saturday night. They countered our offer on Monday, and we countered their counter on Tuesday. They accepted Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday we had to sign a new purchase agreement reflecting the new terms. Yesterday we had our inspection. Escrow is set to close on or before July 30 (apparently foreclosures require a longer escrow period). Once we receive the inspection report and officially secure our financing, our contingencies will be met and then we just wait until the seller (i.e. the bank) gets everything sorted.

Here are the details: It's a 3 bed, 2 bath house, 1,900 square feet.

It's in the Lake Balboa part of Van Nuys (which is the nicer part). It's on a cute little street with lots of cute little houses (very little "manionising" in the area). Our house is on the corner of a pretty busy street, which gave us (mostly me) some pause, but I think with landscaping we can minimize the noise. The house itself is pretty quiet, but you can definitely hear the street noise in the backyard.

On Monday night when we were considering the counter offer, we drove out there and walked around the neighborhood. So we know it's safe to walk around at night. We also met a couple of the neighbors. One of whom was outside working on some new windows for his house. He said he'd been there 7 years and absolutely loved it. Apparently the neighbors next door to our potential house have been there since the 1950's and there are plenty of other residents who have been there for a long time as well. It was really nice talking to the neighbors that clinched it for us. I know I want to be in a neighborhood where neighbors talk to each other, and you get that community feel. And you can tell just by walking around that the neighbors really care for their houses (there is the occasional exception, but it's pretty rare).

Because it's a foreclosure, we definitely have a lot of work ahead of us to fix it up and make it nice. But it's not nearly as bad as some of the other houses we saw (there was one condo we went in where I had to pull my shirt over my nose because the stench was so bad). This one is relatively clean and definitely liveable while we are fixing it - and most of the fixes are just cosmetic repairs. I think the biggest thing we'll need to work on is the yard. The front yard has working sprinklers, so it could be that we'll just need to water and the grass will grow back. The back yard has sprinklers, but they don't work - and I don't think anyone has used them in a very long while. Aaron's mom loves landscaping and decorating, though, so we'll definitely be calling on her to help us make our place amazing. :)

Election and stuff

2008-11-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to write a new blog for a while now. I keep thinking of topics while sitting in my car on my long commute each day (ok, it’s only a 10 minute commute, but that’s still plenty of time to come up with some good ideas). The problem is that there are so many good topics that I could write about – but most are ones that I want to go incredibly in depth with – i.e. the election – why I think Obama is a MUCH better choice than McCain, or why Prop 8 is the most bigoted narrow-minded piece of . . . well, let’s just say that I’m definitely voting NO on 8. Or I could write about health care and how our system is so completely backwards – which relates to the election, but is not necessarily one and the same. Or I could just give a life update, but that’s pretty short: Aaron is still working nights. I’m still at Extreme. Our cat may be the most adorable creature to ever cross my path.

With the election coming up so soon, I think maybe that will be my topic for tonight - though I won't go nearly as in depth as I would like - mostly just my opinion. It is hard to understate the importance of this election. This is one of those elections that, regardless of outcome, is going to make a huge impact on America, the World, and more importantly each individual’s life. For the first time in my life, I am holding my breath in anticipation of Tuesday. This is the first time ever that I have felt so invested in an election. It is really exciting – and scary all at the same time. It’s refreshing to have so many people my age and younger talking about politics and actually caring about it. These are some of the same people that, I’m sure, back in high school when everything on the world stage was hunky-dory, didn’t care one bit about politics. I remember as a kid going downtown with my parents to watch election results – some of my friends in school thought that was weird. To me, Election Day has always been kind of a family holiday – even though I didn’t feel nearly as personally invested as I do now.

Everything in the world has become so difficult that it has everyone looking at this election as a single ray of hope for something to change. America’s reputation on the world stage has deteriorated to nearly a joke. Even though our economy is tanking, America is still such a dominating power the entire world is looking to us. They want to see which direction America will take. Will it still turn a blind eye and pretend like the rest of the world doesn’t exist? Or we will start acknowledging that there is life outside the US, and maybe, just maybe, other countries might have some ideas that are better than ours? The current administration’s belief that the US is the best country in the world to the point of ignoring all other policies and social structures drives me crazy!

By saying that, it doesn’t make me un-American or un-patriotic. I still love the US and, for the most part, I am proud to be an American. However, I do not like the direction our country has gone in the past 8 years. I was living in England during the first year of the Bush presidency. I saw what an impact an inane president could have on a country’s reputation – and this was before 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, the horrendous economy.

One of my friends from Pepperdine posted a thing on facebook saying, “I know high schoolers who understand economics better than Obama.” At first, I was hurt and a little offended. My gut reaction was a quick retort of “oh yeah, because the Republican economic policies have been working SO well for the past 8 years.” But then, I stopped myself, and realized that what makes this country so great is that we can have different opinions. I didn’t bother responding to my friend’s message because, obviously, I am not going to change her mind.

However, I have several reasons why the Republican “top heavy”/“trickle down” (whatever you want to call it) does not work. McCain says he doesn’t want to take “Joe the Plumber’s” money and give it to other people. (I take issue with the Republicans labeling Obama’s economic policy as a Robin Hood-type concept in this manner, but that topic is for another day) McCain says he wants Joe the Plumber to do give away his money on his own. Now tell me, how many “Joes” do you think are really going to give away their own money? If they don’t want to give their money to taxes, they certainly don’t want to give it to you or me. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that Republicans never give to charity. I have this theory that people are innately greedy. Rich people get rich by not spending money. All those jobs that the Republicans say rich people are going to create – where are they? Oh wait, I know! The jobs have been eliminated because the rich people decided that there was more profit to be made by eliminating people’s jobs and replacing them with machines or cheap overseas workers. That tax deduction for charity donations is pretty nice, too.

Before you jump and call me a cynic – I also believe that people are innately good (again a topic for another day). But I don’t think that supersedes the fact that people are greedy and want to hold on to what they earn. I understand – you work hard for your money and don’t want to give it up. However, there are certain aspects of a civilized society that I feel should be rights, and not privileges for the few who can afford it – i.e. healthcare, education, etc.

I also think people think they earn more than they actually do. I think that people hear that $250,000 mark and think “Oh my goodness, that could be me in a couple years!” I have news for those people - $250K is a LOT of money. You can almost buy a house in Southern California for that amount of money! I’m a lawyer and that amount is still way out of my reach. I would love to earn that kind of money – and honestly, if I ever do, I would be willing to shell out a little bit more. Of course I’ll gripe about it, but at least if I know that my money is going towards healthcare and education and anything else where I can see my tax dollars at work, it will be worth it. Maybe Obama should be touting is as a “quarter of a million dollars” instead – I think phrased that way, most people wouldn’t think they earn that amount.

Ok, I’m tired now. Prop 8 will have to wait for tomorrow. I just have this to say – I saw a sign today that said “Prop 8 = Religious Freedom.” I couldn’t help but think, “No, Prop 8 = Religious Oppression, which is exactly what this country was founded against.”

Digital Distribution Royalty Rate

2008-10-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

From the LA Times today:

Royalties for digital song downloads unchanged

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-techblog3-2008oct03,0,1330228.story

This doesn't affect me or my job directly because Extreme doesn't sell its music commercially, but I thought it was interesting. I also think the Copyright Royalty Board was wise in not granting either party exactly what they wanted (the music publishers wanted a higher royalty and the digital distribution companies wanted a lower royalty). Regardless, I don't think this is the last we will hear of this issue.

Update regarding Pepperdine and Prop 8

2008-10-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

I just received the following email from Pepperdine's administration regarding the Prop 8 commercial starring Professor Peterson:

From the Department of Public Relations

Dear Pepperdine Alumnus:

Many members of the Pepperdine community have voiced opinions over a TV ad regarding Proposition 8. The ad features a Pepperdine professor and currently includes reference to his affiliation with the University.

We’d like to stress that the professor does not represent a Pepperdine University-endorsed position, as the University does not advocate for/against political candidates or ballot propositions.

The professor in the ad was not advocating a Pepperdine position, but his own personal position.
We have received confirmation that our request to have the reference to Pepperdine University deleted from the ad will be honored. We have been assured that the ad will be revised, perhaps by today.

Jerry DerloshonExecutive DirectorPublic RelationsPepperdine University

Pepperdine UniversityLeading Lives of Purpose, Service, and Leadership24255 Pacific Coast HighwayMalibu, CA 90263Phone: (310) 506-4000E-mail: pr@pepperdine.edu

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I'm glad to see that the administration has done something about that ridiculous ad! Maybe Chemerinsky will come out with an ad giving counter-arguments to Prof Peterson's scare-tactic type statements.

Love Poem

2008-10-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

So far, I like this better than ANY ad I've seen on tv regarding Prop 8.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q2R7O-0WRo

Take a look - open your heart.

You can't write this stuff!

2008-10-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

Some of you know this story already - others don't. I have received permission from my sister to post the happenings of her life for the past week (and for background going back about 6 months).

Here's the story:

Tony (my sister's now ex) lives here in LA. Sharon (my sister) lives in NYC. They had been dating for 4 1/2 years - 2 while here and 2 after she moved. Turns out that Tony started dating an 18 year old (he's 30) who works directly under him at LMU. This has been going on since about March (I think). In June, right before Sharon came out to visit to see the Mehtropolis show (which Tony and I were both in), Tony sent Sharon an email breaking up with her and telling her that there was someone else. Meanwhile, he had told all his friends that he and Sharon had broken up "a long time ago." Naturally, she was devastated - who breaks up with someone via email after 4 1/2 years?

Sharon still came out in June, stayed with me - we had some good sister bonding time. She met with Tony and he back-pedaled on everything. He told her he didn't mean a single thing he said in the email, that he knew it was the wrong thing to do the moment he clicked send, blah blah blah. Meanwhile, he was bringing the 18 year old around Mehtropolis and even volunteered her to do box office for us - so I had to witness the hideousness of the kid hanging on his every word and them fondling each other . . . ew. So anyway, Sharon decided to believe him - because she was still in love with him and it was just easier for her at the time.

Since June, Tony has been telling my sister that he wanted to work things out with her, texting her that he loves her, emailing her how much he wants to be with her, etc. He decided to come out and visit her in NYC in September. However, he wouldn't give Sharon any flight details. He finally provided her with the dates - he was supposed to get in last Wednesday.

Here's where it all went screwy. On Tuesday, Tony sent Sharon an email saying his flight was changed and he was getting in Thursday morning instead, but he was trying to change his flights so that he would still get in on Wednesday. Meanwhile he said his phone wasn't working and he couldn't receive or send phone calls, but he could text. But his texts would come in random spurts - like 10 all at once. Somehow, he supposedly got stuck in Chicago on Wednesday afternoon. Sharon had no idea what was going on and started to get worried about him. She texted him to find a payphone - after all, airports are one of the few places where payphones still exist and are plentiful. She still hadn't heard from him by midnight my time (3 am her time) on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. So she called me to get Tony's roommate's phone number to see if Joey (the roommate) had heard anything. Joey said he hadn't heard from Tony and that he didn't even know Tony was going out of town until he got a text from Tony that day saying "I forgot to tell you I'm going out of town for a few days."

Sharon finally heard from Tony Thursday morning when he sent her an email (yet again) saying that this whole thing was just too stressful and he couldn't take it so he was turning around and going back to CA. He said he wasn't "breaking up but I guess that's what this is." Obviously, Sharon was upset and confounded. She knew right then and there that their relationship was over. She had taken the entire week off of work (which she can't really afford to do). She had bought a bunch of groceries so they could eat in instead of eating out. She had done all the things someone does when they have someone special coming from out of town to visit.

So, she did what any rational human being would do and she booked a flight to LA. :) It just happened to work out that Aaron and I were planning on going down to SD this weekend because Aaron had a film in the San Diego Film Festival. So we brought Sharon with us and she got to see our parents and spend quality time with people who actually love her.

I picked Sharon up on Thursday night. She wanted the opportunity to slap Tony across the face in person, so she emailed him to see where he was (without telling him that she was in town). He claimed that he still wasn't back - that he was so upset about the whole thing, he got drunk and arrested for disorderly conduct. Several emails went back and forth between them over the course of the weekend. He said he was back, but not home, etc. until Sharon finally told him she was in town. Then he told her that he had rented a car and "just started driving." On Sunday, he finally told her that he was 19 hours away and that he would do his best to be back by Monday night, but he wasn't promising anything. Meanwhile, he told his roommate that he would be home on Tuesday night.

Sharon knew then that she would not get the opportunity to confront the cowardly Tony in person. So she wrote him a 5 page hand-written scathing letter. Joey let her into their apartment on Monday morning so that she could leave the letter on his bed and take back any items of hers that Tony still had. Then she sat down and talked to Joey to get as much of the real story as is known at this time. Joey told her that Tony was definitely still seeing the 18 year old - in fact, she's there almost every night. The 18 year old drives Tony everywhere because he does not have a car of his own.

Speaking of the car - (this is the one that gets me the most) - Tony told Sharon that labor day weekend he had gone camping with his friends and forgot to tell her, which is why he didn't call her that weekend. On the way back from camping, he said he got into a car accident and totalled his car. He said he was in the hospital getting his cuts and bruises taken care of and he couldn't call her bc he couldn't remember her phone number. Sharon was so worried about him that she had our parents call Tony to make sure he was ok. In reality, Tony spent the entire labor day weekend sitting on his couch with the 18 year old. What happened to his car? He got too many parking tickets and the car has now been impounded.

That's about where we're at. Aaron and I had Joey over for dinner last night and we all talked about the situation and about Tony's inability to face confrontation and how he lies to avoid even the most minor of confrontations and how that just makes everything 5 million times worse because it has now snowballed into this monstrosity of a situation. I really think Tony has lied so much that he now has no idea what is real and what he made up in his head. Joey promised to keep us informed when he finds out where Tony really was - none of us think he ever intended to actually go to NYC.

Tony used to be my friend - we danced together in Mehtropolis for a long time. But at the moment, I don't ever want to speak to him again. Not with the way he treated my sister, and not with the way he lied to everyone who has ever cared about him.

Really, Sharon is sooo much better off. She is way too smart, pretty and mature for him. I knew that before all this went down. But seriously, this is just so crazy that it feels kind of like we're in the middle of a tv show or some other work of fiction - not real life!

Pepperdine and Prop 8

2008-10-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

This was an email I received from a dear friend who went to Pepperdine Law School with me:

Dear Friends,

By now many of you have seen the first ad for Yes on Prop 8 (to ban same-sex marriage). It's been running since yesterday, and it features Prof. Richard Peterson, one of the professors at Pepperdine University School of Law. I've attached the link so you can view the ad for yourself. This email is meant to be informational, and to show that Pepperdine's reputation has been hurt by the stupidity of a professor being involved in a campaign television ad, and to ask you to do something to make it known that this is inappropriate.

https://www.icontribute.us/protectmarriage/initiative/firstadweb (Yes on Prop 8 ad)

Like many of you, I am disgusted and disappointed that one of our professors would take such a position in any sort of political ad, especially a television ad on a controversial proposition and link the law school to his name. I am all for professors having the freedom to discuss controversial propositions and the merits for and against such propositions. But engaging in campaign ads crosses the line of academic freedom when it associates the entire law school (and frankly the University) with a political position. No one doubts it would be just as inappropriate for a professor to be in an ad for No on Prop 8.

To date, many alumni have already written letters and called about the ad in opposition to the fact that a professor would take part in something like this and link the law school to it. Ken Starr has reportedly asked that Pepperdine's name be removed from the ad or that the ad be removed. No word yet on whether this has occurred but the ad is still on the website with Pepperdine's name. However, to date, no formal public statement that I'm aware of has been issued by the University or law school regarding this.

The problem is the ad has already been made public, and articles have already been written about the ad. I was not that surprised to see that Christian News Wire had picked up the press release about the ad being launched (http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/566698029.html) (press release details).

What surprised me was that Reuters had it (full article with Pepperdine reference)

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS199095+29-Sep-2008+PRN20080929

As well as the following news outlets:

Yahoo News (full article including Pepperdine reference)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20080929/pl_usnw/protect_marriage_yes_on_prop8_campaign_releases_first_television_commercial___whether_you_like_it_or_not

Forbes.com (press release details) (http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2008/09/26/prnewswire200809261909PR_NEWS_USPR_____DC35580.html)

Lexisnexis (full artlcle with Pepperdine reference) (http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007116&docId=l:859706963&start=2),

Breitbart.com (full article including Pepperdine reference)

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=prnw.20080929.DC35729&show_article=1&catnum=3

Boston.com

http://finance.boston.com/boston?GUID=6703358&Page=MediaViewer&ChannelID=3197

The press release mentioned above also includes this statement: "Additionally, Professor Richard Peterson of the Pepperdine University School of Law, who appears in the ad, and Mr. Andrew Pugno, counsel to ProtectMarriage.com, will be available to answer questions." What is a law professor doing at a press release for a political campaign that uses the affiliation Pepperdine University School of Law? And how did this not get vetted by Pepperdine's PR people?

The San Diego Union Tribune blog notes that Professor Peterson at the news conference unveiling the ad stated that there are broader potential implications, and directly quotes him as saying, "It's not just about tolerance and discrimination anymore." (http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/ut_polblog/index.html) http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/news/breaking/2008/09/gay_marriage_foes_supporters_t_1.html). Actually that's exactly what this is about!

The only reference to someone at Pepperdine PR is in the San Francisco Weekly blog (http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2008/09/prop_8_ad_wars_the_counteratta.php). It poetically states that the Yes on Prop 8 ad "unleashes Pepperdine University School of Law professor Richard Peterson, who makes a complete ass out of himself and the school." It further cites Jerry Derloshon, the University PR Director as saying in his 10 years at the University, he can't recall another Pepperdine professor lending expert opinions to a campaign ad, and quotes him as saying, "The ad is not part of a Pepperdine University endorsed position. Pepperdine does not advocate for or against political candidates or ballot measures." However, as noted no official formal statement has been issued by the University yet, to my knowledge.)

Most humiliating is the article written by the San Jose Mercury News (http://www.mercurynews.com/samesexmarriage/ci_10593943). In the article, Dean and Professor Erwin Chemerinsky calls the arguments by Peterson "preposterous" and outlines why each of the fear-based arguments for Proposition 8 do not carry much legal weight (of all the articles to read, this one would be the most important).

When the most well respected constitutional scholar is now weighing in on this television commercial and basically states that the legal claims made by one of Pepperdine's professors is baseless, we have a real issue regarding Pepperdine's reputation being permanently damaged.

I would urge each and every one of you to write a letter, email, or make a phone call to Pepperdine in opposition. Even a quick call reiterating that "I just want to let you know I find this inappropriate" means a lot. The list of articles above was compiled last night, and numerous other blogs (including large ones like DailyKos, LAWeekly, LAist, and Rough & Tumble) have articles mentioning Pepperdine and the ad as well, so undoubtedly there will be more sources that have picked this story up.

I and others would like to see Pepperdine issue a formal public statement disaffiliating itself from the ad and that actions will be taken to ensure this doesn't happen again. To an extent, the damage to the school's reputation has been done, but it's important to voice concern as alumni. I will be writing my own letter with much of the same information outlined above later today, and will be placing a call to the Dean's office, but I wanted to get this information out to all of you as soon as possible. Please forward this information to other friends who might be interested as I don't have email addresses for everyone.

Alumni Affairs Office info is below. Other alums have contacted the Deans directly.

I. Mailing Address

Pepperdine University School of Law
24255 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, CA 90263

II. Phone: Alumni Affairs

(310) 506-4492
(310) 506-6567
FAX: (310) 506-7467

III. Contact Emails

Brad Benham, Director of Alumni Affairs, Bradley.Benham@pepperdine.edu

Best,

Ted