Blessed Be the Wright Brothers

The weather here in Winlock last week was a soaking, chilly rain. Thank the stars that we had a little trip scheduled. Matt got called into the office for a few days and no way in hell was I planning on staying behind so on Wednesday we headed to PDX in a downpour, boarded a plane, and landed in Burbank to 95 degree sunshine and blue skies. Ahhhhhhhhhh.On approach looking at the smoke from the Santa Barbara fire with a husk of dead insect in the foreground. It was stuck between the window panes.

We picked up our rental car at the airport, drove to the North Hollywood park and ride and hopped on the Metro so we could get to 7th and Metro downtown.

We had dinner at Ciudad, one of our favorite spots.

Behold the beautiful colors on Matt's dish of black cod.

The most delicious thing I ate on the trip: Watermelon salad with baby watercress, oaxacan string cheese, pedro jimenez reduction, macadamia nuts, marash chile. Sigh. Heaven.

Then came Thursday. I dropped Matt off at work in Westlake Village at 8am and headed to Ikea Covina. See, about a year ago we picked the handles for our kitchen cabinets from Ikea but I didn't know how many to buy so I just kept checking to make sure they were still there whenever I would go in. A month ago when all the cabinets were designed and we knew exactly how many we needed, I went to Ikea Portland to buy them only to find they had been discontinued. Did Seattle still have any? Nope? How about Utah? Nope. What about anywhere in the Los Angeles area? Covina!! They held them for me for 3 weeks until I got there. So nice. Got to Covina at 10am and it took about an hour for the employee on duty to find the handles artfully hidden by the person I spoke with on the phone.

After Ikea Covina I went to Violet's Cakes in Pasadena (This should come as a surprise to no one), did a little shopping and then made a trip back out to Matt's office to drop off a dozen cupcakes for his coworkers.

I headed back to the Woodland Hills area near our hotel for a mani-pedi. It was stupefyingly easy for my nail tech to convince me to upgrade to the deluxe mani-pedi. My eyes rolled back as my arms and legs were massaged, scrubbed, oiled and lotioned. It felt sooo nice. I tried not to think about how soon my fingernails would be destroyed by the mail route and all the stain that still needs to be applied to various woods in the house.

Back to Westlake Village to pick Matt up, then back to Woodland Hills to dress for dinner at Campanile.

I don't know what to tell you about Campanile. They sat us at the crappiest table in the house. I spent the first hour of dinner wondering what it was about us that made the hostess decided to dump us in a walkway. I settled on two possibilites: 1. Braces are undignified and I look like a pimply faced know-nothing or 2. Our nearly two years in Winlock have rubbed off on us more than we are aware and we ooze country bumpkin. Did I ask to be reseated? I did not. Do I wish I had? Yes. Through dumb luck we ended up at Campanile on Thursday night and Campanile is famous for "Thursday Night Grilled Cheese Sandwiches". It's their thing. We were torn. Do we order something off the regular menu or have a grilled cheese to find out what all the fuss is about. We ended up each getting a version of the grilled cheese. Meh. I had fried green tomatoes as an appetizer and they were delicious - once I got them. See, I received sliced tomatoes with shrimp and when I sent it back, the waiter told me I ordered sliced, not fried. That bugged me. Matt thought his salad was much more exciting than his sandwich. Dessert was great but my overall impression of Campanile was weak.(No pics of the food here. It was too swanky to break out the camera. Matt would have died right there in his chair. The only thing worth shooting would have been the architecture and the dessert: honeycomb, hot fudge, and discs of sponge cake in a tower of tasty).

But that is all of no matter when there is blue sky overhead.

Friday morning I took Matt back to work and then crossed the hills over to Malibu for a drive down Hwy 1. I stopped at Zuma Beach and took these pictures.

Then I drove up Topanga Canyon, had a late breakfast at Pat's Grill, looped back up to Westlake Village, killed a few hours watching Rudo y Cursi, picked up Matt, drove back to the airport and flew home. We landed with just enough light left to see that the sky was clear. Whew.