leftovers

Elene came and met me for lunch today in Hollywood so we went over to Kabuki, which is one of my favorite restaurants. It’s an Asian place that has really great sushi and lunch combinations, soups, etc. We had a nice lunch and talked about a lot of stuff. After work, I stopped by the grocery store to get what I needed to make my dish for dinner club. Tonight it was at Robin and Michelle’s and I hadn’t been there for a long time. They have a new puppy named Lucy who is so adorable! We spent a lot of time petting her or oogling over her. Aaron came, but Mark was feeling sick so he couldn’t make it, and then Jim from boot camp and his partner were there. The food was delicious - Robin and Michelle made these healthy pizzas, Aaron and Jim and his partner brought bruscetta and toppings and other appetizers, and I made sauteed spinach (Elene’s suggestion) with Portobello mushrooms and garlic. Dylan made desert, which was fruit and yogurt parfaits.

Marc and I met out on Romaine St. so he could hand over Princessa, Viktor’s chihuahua, who I would be dog sitting the next few days while they are all up in San Francisco at Folsom Street Fair. It ended up being a really hot day in Los Angeles, so I decided not to do the steam cleaning today. I thought maybe I’d just do it tomorrow. I ended up working on my song, “Dancing on my Obsession,” which is the mash-up of “Dancing on my Own” by Robyn and “Obsession” by Animotion (commonly mistaken for a Human League song) which I had started to work up for Blender. I finished it and sent it to Cindy for tonight. I met Brad at Hamburger Mary’s around 9:30 so that we could get a good table and have dinner first. I hadn’t even told Brad I was performing, but Cindy got there later and came and told me what order we’d be performing in so that’s when Brad found out. Later, our friend Brent came and joined us. The show started shortly after 10pm and the Boofont Sisters did severa...

Today was payday, and not a moment too soon! I went to Amoeba on my lunch break, and had the Kylie 7" in my hand, but I couldn't find anything else I wanted so I ended up just putting it back. I ate lunch at Jack in the Box, which I immediately regretted - not only is the food the epitome of greasy fast food, but they now have a "robot" (really just a kiosk) that will take your order - I stuck with the real 'human' order-taker. Worst of all though, this particular Jack in the Box is just always filled with disgusting homeless people, many with deformities or open wounds, who come harass you for money while you eat. As if I'd be eating at Jack in the Box if I had money to spare. After work, I went to Madame Tussauds for a going away party for the manager there, who was also on our board at HED although I never really got to know him. It was fun, and I got to meet Kerry's husband there, Mike. I had to run out of there before it was over because I wa...

The first day of my birthday month. Yay! I was a little sad since it was our last full day in Kansas, but I could tell Dylan was getting sort of bored and homesick, which he hardly ever gets. We hadn't really been going out at all by ourselves but when I asked him he hadn't wanted to. Royal came up to sleep with us in the morning after mom and dad left for work, since as Dylan said he had "no better options." We got up in time to get ready and meet mom out front when she came to get us on her lunch break so we could meet dad at Long John Silver's for lunch. When we got there, it was warm and cloudy but once we got inside it started raining really hard. It wasn't the best Long Johns; the quality really has gone down since they started combining them all with other restaurants - this one was also an A&W. Dylan ordered of the Fresh Grille menu which he had done before and liked, but this one was so clearly a microwaved TV dinner in a plastic plate. He ...

Adrienne drove us over to Katie's parent's house so we could go swimming in their pool. It was a gorgeous day and I pointed out to Dylan how nice a Kansas City afternoon could be poolside! Katie's parents had several dogs who all enjoyed swimming, and so did Katie and Dan's dog Cuzco, so we wanted Maddie to swim too. It took her quite a while to warm up to the idea but she was a natural at it. At first we would have to sort of push her in, and then she would just start swimming as fast as she could to the other side, so we would have to turn her around so she could go back to the steps so that she could get out. But eventually we would be in the pool and Adrienne would call to her and she would just jump in on her own and swim out to Adrienne! It was so cute. I felt so happy to be there for her first swim just as if I was watching a kid take his or her first steps. For now the Strecker family is content with dogs in lieu of children! We swam there for most the a...

I thought my intern was arriving this morning, so I hurried and got to work a little early despite staying out late at the wedding last night. I didn't hear anything for awhile and then I got an e-mail from the intern saying he was still in Singapore waiting for administrative matters to be resolved. I had the most intense craving for A&W food for lunch, but unfortunately (or actually, probably fortunately) the nearest location is so far away as to be ridiculous. Then, my new conference table was delivered so I ended up setting the table up and then I went to get Panda for lunch. Amy's cat Henry got out over the weekend while she was away, because her roommate left the door open, so she is really worried about finding him. I designed a flyer for her so she could put them around the neighborhood, but luckily he showed up soon after that when some construction workers found him in the back of her building in the dumpster (alive). My table didn't fit in the small roo...

The dogs woke me up a few times in the morning, as Daisy tried to get up on the bed with Forrest and I a couple of times, but she was very good about getting down when I would yell "no!" Finally, around 11am, I did roll out of bed. I hung out for a little while petting the dogs out back by the pool but then I wanted to get home. On the drive back over Laurel Canyon, I stopped first at CVS to get some household stuff and called Dylan to see if there was anything we needed that I was forgetting about. When I got home, I proudly told Dylan how I had driven right by Weinerschnitzel, a hot dog chain that has become a guilty pleasure of mine. Instead, I cooked brunch. I was going to make this recipe I've done before, Baked Eggs with Creamy Leeks, but it turned out I didn't have any leeks leftover like I thought I did. What I did have was kale, so I used that instead. And, I didn't have any cream, but I did have a can of evaporated milk. So, they ended up being OK...

Today at work, a few people from a theatre company came to pick up my old desk. This is not the huge desk that I had the whole saga with a couple of weeks ago, but rather a smaller, but still really enormous and heavy, desk which used to be mine back when I first started working for the Media District, but for the past five years has just sat in the smaller room of my office suite. Things were hectic here on the lot, so we had to move the desk downstairs and then have them pull their van in, and then load it in the van. While we were loading it in the van, I pulled something in my back which then made it very painful to sit down or to bend over. I was pretty worthless after that for most of the workday, since I couldn't really sit at my desk, so I tried to go through the plastic boxes of files and put stuff back but I could do that either since I couldn't bend at the waist. On my lunch break, I walked over to Pavilions and go the ingredients for the stew I was going to make ...