But I did not notice how pretty the weather was until late afternoon, when I was loaded down with reading material I had picked up at the Lifesavers Conference.
Disclosure: I am attending the conference devoted to improving highway safety as a guest of Toyota, which is picking up my expenses. They will not be compensating me in any other way. I will be reporting what I have learned over at AskPatty.com.
The automaker is treating its blogger guests like VIPs. We are staying at the Brown Palace Hotel, which has been the nicest place in town since it first opened in 1892.
It is a lovely historic hotel, and my room is large and comfortable. But I did not sleep well on Saturday night, and the result was that by the first afternoon session (on the future of graduated drivers licenses), I was nodding off. So at the break, I left the convention center in search of a Starbucks. The nearest one was closed. The air was cold and bracing, and it felt better to be out, so I kept on walking until I made it back to the Brown Palace, where I took a nap.
I had a better sleep last night and hope to make it through the entire second day of sessions. Besides, the weather outside looks kind of nasty (blustery winds and lots of snow, but not cold enough for it to stick, so it’s just icy and wet). So I think I will make it.
We were driving downtown last weekend, my husband recounted his latest conversation with his mum in the UK.
“They’ve opened a new tea shop down the road from her,” he said. “They’re charging an arm and a leg for crap like ‘artisan’ bread and ‘locally sourced food’…”
He shook his head, and repeated “… Artisan bread,” and shook his head. He’s not into the latest foodie trends. All he cares about is if it tastes good. And lately, if it is vegan.
Fortunately, our destination, the newest Mendocino Farms sandwich shop, has a pretty nice variety of vegan dishes. I refrained from telling him that it is known for locally sourced and artisan foods, especially freshly baked bread. I thought it better to keep that information to myself.
The firm that handles the restaurants’ PR has been sending me mouth-watering menu information for a while now. Saturday’s occasion was a mom blogger event in their newly-opened shop at 7th and Fig, and it allowed us to combine two of our favorite activities: eating and taking photos of the sights downtown.
I was greeted by Mario and Ellen Del Pero, the husband and wife team who created the upscale sandwich chain. Mario took me on a short tour of the joint:
You may have noticed in that I am wearing different clothes at the end of the above video. That’s because while I took still photographs of our lunch on Saturday, I neglected to do a wrap-up on video. So my only choice was to go back and order another sandwich.
It’s a tough job, you know.
The only problem I faced while writing this post is that just thinking about Mendocino Farms makes me HUNGRY. Their menu of gourmet takes on classic sandwiches combined with more adventurous fare (including dishes for vegans and vegetarians) hits a sweet spot for my family, which consists of three individuals who cannot agree on one thing we might all want to enjoy at a family meal.
And it’s a problem because as of this writing, there is no Mendocino Farms outlet in the San Fernando Valley. Co-owner Ellen Del Perio assures me that will change this summer, when the chain launches a new location in Sherman Oaks. I did my best to convince her that she would find a willing new market up here in Northridge/Granada Hills, but I don’t think I was persuasive enough. I will just have to keep trying.
DISCLOSURE: I was not compensated for this post, other than our free lunch.
Spring break for my daughter began Friday night with a friend’s birthday party: a sleepover at her family’s beach house out in Malibu. This meant driving out there Friday after school and then again to pick her up on Saturday morning – before my husband and I had to race to an appointment near downtown Los Angeles.
Needless to say, come Sunday morning I was a whirling dervish of Passover cooking and cleaning. And I somehow managed to get all the matzo balls, kugel, roast chicken and silver polishing done in time to sit down for our tiny little family Seder.
At the ritual’s midway point, when we break to enjoy the result of all that cooking, I realized I had never called my sister in Sacramento, to wish her a Happy Passover.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “Passover is tomorrow.”
Oops.
Entering the wrong dates in my calendar appears to be my thing now, as I have been doing that a lot.
I tried hard not to feel sheepish as we finished our meal. It was tough, as my husband and daughter were laughing so hard.
I decided to think of last night as our dress rehearsal – and for once, I am facing the first (actual) night of Passover relaxed, because the cooking and cleaning are all done.
My husband brought work home over the weekend, and it took up most of his time on both Saturday and Sunday. And with midterms this week, my daughter was pretty much in the same boat. This meant that I was pretty much on my own for the entire weekend. This allowed me to engage in “secret single behavior”: a phrase I first heard in that episode of Sex and the City where the gals talk about activities one indulges in only when alone.
For Carrie Bradshaw, it was standing in her kitchen and reading fashion magazines, while eating crackers with jelly.
For me, it’s getting into the car and taking a drive. As a teenager, I would borrow my mom’s car on a Saturday and just see where the roads took me. I wasn’t allowed to go on the freeway, which I figured was my parents’ way of keeping me close to home. But I soon discovered that there were roads that led out of the Valley and into the City; knowledge that served me well a few years later when I had to commute to work.
At the risk of sounding like that “Californians” sketch on SNL: A typical Saturday might start with a drive through Topanga Canyon down to Malibu, south on Pacific Coast Highway, east on Sunset and then back into the Valley through Sepulveda or Cahuenga pass or a trifecta of canyons (Benedict, Coldwater, Laurel) — with my radio blasting. It helped me work through whatever writing projects I had going on — or simply to clear my mind. And gas back then was cheap: just 60 cents a gallon.
Obviously, I don’t have that kind of time any longer — or the money to keep filling up the tank.
But I don’t mind an excuse to do some recreational driving. And on Saturday, I had an errand to run that took me into the city.
No, I’ve never indulged in street racing. But I did end up taking Sunset Boulevard on Saturday, and remembered how I cringed the first time I saw that clip — because I knew every single curve in that road. My date and I were sitting in the front row of the theater, which made that race scene even scarier.
I don’t think they could film that scene today without completely trashing the Porsche and the Ferrari — there are too many potholes on that road now, which meant that I had to take those curves even slower than I would do normally. This was OK, because it made the drive longer.
Remember that old advertising slogan? Well, substitute “email” for “orange juice” and you know how my weekend was: there was an issue with the mail server associated with the socalmom.net domain and I did not receive any work related email for about 48 hours.
And that changed the second half of the slogan, because without the usual continuing barrage of pitches, petitions and plain old spam — I had a rather nice weekend.
It’s true I missed some email I actually wanted and I am sorry about that. A few people let me know via other accounts that their messages to me were bouncing, and that’s when I realized that my main email account was down. If you were trying to reach me to let me know that you’ve got a high-paying job waiting for me, DO try sending the message again. I promise to respond promptly.
In the meantime, I think from now on, I’ll disable my work email from my iPad on weekends. That is, if I can avoid the urge to check for that message with the high-paying job.
“I don’t know why it takes you so long to get your taxes done,” my sister sniffed at me after I complained that I was still working on mine.
That was about three weeks ago. I don’t know why it takes me so long either — especially since I work with an enrolled agent, who prepares the actual tax returns. I just know it does.
I finally submitted all my information last week and breathed a sigh of relief. The following day, I experienced a bout of unaccustomed efficiency: I wrote, I updated websites, I interacted with people. It’s like this huge taxing weight had been lifted and I was able to focus on doing meaningful work.
One day later, I was back to my usual, drifting, unfocused self. But last week, I showed myself that I CAN cross things off my to-do list. And this week, dawggoneit, I’m going to do it again:
1. At 11:00 (Pacific) today, I’ll be joining my friends from The Mission List in a Mayors Against Illegal Guns Twitter party, #DemandAction. Feel free to join in!
2. And by the end of the day, I will have written a post for a blog carnival at MomsRising.org. The subject: Sheryl Sandberg’s new book of advice to working women, “Lean In.” Stay tuned to this spot for that.
3. My sister and I have created a lifestyle blog, In Quest Of… and we have been holding weekly Google Happy Hour hangouts every Monday at 5:00 (Pacific). Add inquestof@gmailcom to your circles and join us!
4. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a performance of Dream Girls, produced by L.A.’s, amazing DOMA Theatre group. A review is forthcoming.
5. And then there are my usual weekly projects over at MOMocrats: our podcast (which last month garnered almost as many listens as we had in November, at the height of the Presidential election).
6. There are a number of other commitments I have made over the last several months that I NEVER fulfilled. I want to make good on those.
Fresh & Easy Store in Clovis. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m not up yet. I wrote this on Friday, before Daylight Savings Time robbed me of a precious hour.
When I do get up, I will be tired — and probably unable to string more than a couple of thoughts together at a time.
My favorite day of the year is the day we Fall Back. Getting an extra hour puts me in a wonderful mood, because no matter how late I am running (and for some reason, I am always running late!), when I glance at the clock and discover the time, I can relax a little, even if I have slept in.
I look forward all year to the day we move the clock back an hour. It’s better than Christmas.
But: Losing that hour every Spring hits me like a ton of bricks. It’s like having jet lag without the pleasure of having traveled somewhere. And for some reason, it lasts about as long. It takes me the better part of a week to adjust.
So I was thrilled when I learned of this thoughtful promotion in an email from my friends at Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Market:
Dreading losing an hour of sleep this weekend? We sure are! To make that “spring forward” a bit easier we want you to have breakfast on us. Come into your favorite fresh&easy Neighborhood Market on Sunday the 10th or Monday the 11th and get a FREE six pack of freshly baked Plain or Everything Bagels.
Just bring in the coupon available at here to get your free bagels. (You can save a tree and scan it straight from your smart phone.) There’s no purchase necessary.
Feel free to share the coupon with your friends, family, readers, and followers. As always, our bagels are only made with ingredients you can pronounce.
#StillFighting for more sleep the good food fight,
The Fresh & Easy Team
The coupon is only good today and tomorrow, so if you are fortunate enough to live near a Fresh & Easy market, go ahead and download it NOW.
My local F&E opened just last year, in a building vacated at the beginning of the recession by HOWS Market. And as Joni Mitchell said, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone: I had no idea how often I ran to HOWS for “one last thing” until it wasn’t there any longer and I needed to drive 3-5 miles every time I realized I was out of things like onions or lemons.
Our little local shopping center suffered for a couple of years without a supermarket anchor. Fresh & Easy was a godsend — especially as it opened the same week we lost our Northridge Gelson’s.
Fresh & Easy is not the same as Gelson’s — but in some ways, it’s better. Our family loves their fresh Il Fornaio baked goods, their own branded snack foods, and their fresh ready-made meals. (My daughter’s favorites are the delicious chicken soup and Asian-style beef and broccoli.) I especially like their selection of deliciously inexpensive wine.
They’re doing a lot more advertising now, with more emphasis on low pricing than how fresh and easy their products are (I suppose that’s already stated in the company’s name). I want to see them succeed.
In the meantime, I’m going to walk over there and pick me up some free bagels. As soon as I wake up.
I received no compensation for this post. I just don’t want to lose another neighborhood grocery store.
Yesterday was awesome: I awoke early, I was able to get right to work and I managed to cross several items off my to-do list. I cannot remember the last time I had a day like that, and I expected to keep it up today.
It didn’t happen.
As is often the case, I got sidetracked. During the Wednesday MOMocrats podcast, my friend Karoli said something that begged to be quoted on a graphic. So I spent the next several hours tumbling down the rabbit hole that is Photoshop — and then ended up trying out different graphic services. You can see the final version here (although obviously, you’re going to like it a whole lot better if you are a Democrat).
By 1:30, the day was nearly all shot and I still had not written the political rant I’ve been aching to get to since yesterday morning, when Jeb Bush’s NPR interview got me all riled up. I also had not taken my daily walk — a habit I am trying really hard to re-cultivate. I decided to see if taking one right then would help me to regain my focus.
It almost worked. Unfortunately, the mail was delivered when I was out of the house and I made the mistake of looking at it.
It’s early in the month, so I was not surprised to find a mailbox full of advertising mailers and flyers. But buried within the pile was an invoice from the lab that took the X-rays of my broken thumb and toe last year. I was pretty sure I had paid them in full, so I was pretty annoyed. The invoice was stamped with the phrase FINAL NOTICE in big red letters. Perplexing, since I have not received any billing from them in months. You know, since I PAID them.
They say I still owe them $2.97. And since I don’t want a big bad mark on my credit history over a teeny tiny charge like that, I tried to call them to tell them (a) I did not receive any previous invoices for this, otherwise I would have paid them and (b) I would send a check tomorrow.
Of course, I got voice mail.
If this thing goes to collection, I will be royally pissed off.
There was one other piece of mail that came in a decorated envelope, addressed to me in a something that looks like handwriting. No return address. I opened that and found what appeared to be a newspaper clipping and a handwritten post-it note: “Donna, I read this and thought of you.” It was signed “J.”
The newspaper clipping was actually a full-page advertisement for a seminar on financing college. I get a lot of mailers for activities like this, and I have been tossing them directly into the trash. I think they’re all scams, giving you information you can easily find on your own while siphoning away your hard-earned money (money that you’re trying to save to send your kids to college). And after trying to figure out who “J” is (my friend Julie, who lives in Texas? No – the envelope is postmarked Los Angeles. My friend Jennifer? Doubtful), I concluded that the entire mailing was a scam, designed to trick me into thinking it was an actual letter from a friend.
My dad worked in direct mail advertising — what you and I refer to as “junk mail.” And he always said that the most important thing was figuring out how to get the recipient to actually open the package. And it slowly dawned on me that is what the people behind this “seminar” actually did.
So now that I’m thoroughly annoyed, I suppose I’m in the right frame of mind to write that rant at MOMocrats.
Quentin Tarentino at the 2010 Oscars. Photo copyright 2010 by Donna Schwartz Mills
I have not been writing much. I blame tax season: it is just one more big task I have to juggle between all the other big tasks on my to-do list. I could handle any one — or maybe two — and do them well. If only I could focus on one at a time.
These days, my biggest goal in life is to pare that list down to something I can reasonably manage.
In the meantime, I flit from one project to the next; never quite finishing and never quite getting it right. At least, that is how I feel.
Quentin Tarentino at the 2010 Oscars. Photo copyright 2010 by Donna Schwartz Mills
The Happy Hour
There have been some constants: Over on our InQuestOf site, my sister and I have been playing with Google Hangouts. We call it our Monday night Happy Hour, because we go on at 5:00 PM and pour ourselves some cocktails or wine.
It’s very much what we would be doing if we lived in the same town: hanging out in our kitchen and dishing about what’s on our minds.
Last night, we talked Oscars. Neither my sister nor I were all that offended by Seth MacFarlane’s performance — not as much as my friends. I can’t help but approach it from the viewpoint of a refugee from the TV writers room (as an assistant, never a writer). I understand the pressures of writing a joke, how hit and miss it is — and how one that kills with the dudes in the room doesn’t land with the female taking notes (which leads the dudes to conclude that she has no sense of humor).
I also remember how it was to work for immensely talented guys who were indulged by management despite engaging in immature, inappropriate behavior. Hollywood is a place where people with talent never have to grow up — as long as they are earning the studios money. I’m pretty sure that describes MacFarlane, who became TV’s youngest executive producer at the ripe old age of 24.
As for my sister: I think her views are colored by the fact that MacFarlane reminds her of her son. Me too, for that matter.
And then there was that awful misfired “joke” about adorable Quvenzhane Wallis, tweeted out by an Onion staffer. The word that person used is not one that should be applied to anyone, and even more offensive when used to describe a little girl. It is not a word any CEO would want to find in an official company Twitter stream, no matter the business. I was pleased to see the Onion apologize and promise to discipline the staffer. Without knowing who the person is, I stop short of advocating he or she be fired. Again, I think my experience working with comedy writers colors my reaction. Nine out of ten jokes fail — even those written by very funny and talented people. Putting them out live on Twitter is a high wire act. I want to believe that the person who used that word suffered from a brain fart. And I want to believe that the person has now learned that the word in question is NEVER OK, and if given a second chance, would not repeat the mistake.
Then again, if this is someone who persists in applying that word to women and little girls, they should fire his or her ass.
The sign is still on my lawn.
MOMocrats
There’s a municipal primary election next week, and I’ve been trying to finish a post about the LA Mayor’s race. Yes, I am supporting candidate Eric Garcetti, as you can see from the lawn sign in our front yard. This is a first for us! We live in a conservative neighborhood, and my husband has always been afraid that displaying my political views to the world around us will make us a target of vandals. The sign has been up for two weeks, and the only damage it has suffered has been from the birds who like to perch on it.
I hope to get to that post today.
In the meantime, I still produce and host our weekly podcast each Wednesday, which can be streamed at BlogTalkRadio here or on Stitcher or downloaded from iTunes here. Tomorrow we are featuring Lee Fournier-Reyes of CoupleDumb.com, who will talk about her visit to Congress earlier this month on behalf of the Shot@Life campaign, , which is working towards eradicating deadly diseases throughout the world via childhood vaccinations. I am also trying to get a MOMocrats newsletter out before the podcast airs tomorrow.
Additionally, I am also still co-curating the MOMocrats Facebook page daily, as well as keeping our SheVotes Tumblr updated (although not as often as I did during the Presidential election — another task that needs more of my attention).
Engender Media Group
Earlier this month, Cynthia Liu and I updated the website for our little social media agency. I think it’s starting to look nice — a good thing, as this kind of web work is really, really time consuming.
Other Stuff
Last week, I took on a brief VA assignment for my friend, Kim Moldofsky, who holds a monthly Twitter party on STEM education. It was one of those rare jobs where I got to learn something new and fascinating while I worked.
For the last few years, I’ve toyed with the idea of training for a 5K (as a walker! Please! I am not crazy). One obstacle has been the state of my feet, which suffered from twenty years of wearing five-inch heels. The result is a collection of calluses and corns and a tendency to blister; I cannot wear dress shoes for more than about ten minutes before the pain becomes insufferable. This is why you usually see me either barefoot or in cushion-y Skechers — but even those start to hurt after I’ve walked about a mile.
A friend who is a runner suggested getting fitted at the shop where she buys her shoes, and last week I took her up on that. She drove me to FleetFeet in Encino, where I met a nice salesperson who measured my sad little feet every which way and then made me walk so she could observe my gait. In addition to the corns, I appear to be compensating for last year’s broken toe, which now also flares up with arthritic pain in cold weather. This goes rather well with the arthritis I now feel in my knees.
Ech. Nothing says “I’m getting old” like complaining about your arthritic knees. Now that I have, I’ll shut up about it.
Anyway — I walked out of there with a new pair of grey Nikes plus inserts to counteract the problems with my gait. I also purchased three pairs of expensive, cushioned socks that promise to reduce the threat of blisters (“Cotton retains moisture,” I was told and these won’t).
So now that I have no excuse, I’ve begun taking a mid-morning break to walk. Only about a mile to begin with and will work my way up. That has to be a good thing, right?
