faboo mama

Yes, we went to the LA Greekfest earlier, but we were hungry see and couldn’t decide on what to eat. I wanted kebabs, he wanted lamb chops…by all rights, that means we were destined for Middle Eastern food. Then I said, “You know…the Pasadena Greekfest is nearby and it’s cheaper to get in than the LA one.” The rest is history. We plopped down our $3 a head and entered.

This one was smaller than the LA Greekfest, but still nice. We pulled some cash out the ATM and headed inside the church for some home-cooking. Let’s see…we got that casserole sorta dish with the pasta tubes and ground beef (yum!), rice, chicken and mousaka. It was good, if a tad salty. I was stuffed, but Adrian didn’t like his food.

After lunch, we headed outside, and strolled a bit. Unfortunately, all the vendors were the same exact one from the week before, so we didn’t have much to look at. Ah, but there’s the beer garden. It’s Hillas time! Oh, but wait…what is that guy cooking over next to the stage?

Oh…it’s a wine booth. 4 tasters for $10 and he was cooking saganaki.

I had never heard of it and it looked interesting. Despite being stuffed, I decided we needed wine and cheese. We had 4 Greek wines–I had all reds–that were pretty okay. They all tasted like variances of Egri Bikavér, which is to say that they’re palatable, but nothing to right home about. The first wine I tasted was actually kinda crappy. It was too vinegary for me. But then I took my first bite of saganaki, and sipped the wine afterwards and it was delish! The wine actually tasted a bit sweeter. Each wine was a perfect match with the saganaki. The only thing that could have made it more delectable is some apple slices, maybe some Gala apples.

While eating, I noticed that some of the people there looked familiar. I had seen them at the LA Greekfest. I asked the wine guy, if he noticed the same people and he said, “Yeah, Greekfest groupies.” Ha! What killed me, was that many of them were wearing the same exact clothes they had on the week before. Strange.

Anyway, we went to watch the people dancing. The guys behind us struck up conversation, asking me about my shirt (the first one) and we come to learn that they had attended the Greekfest in Cardiff the week before. I told them what the wine guy said and they laughed. We split and went to get some cotton candy. Let me tell you, a baby and cotton candy don’t exactly mix. Alton had no idea what to do with and all 3 of us were pantomiming eating it. He finally got it and, naturally, liked it. We walked around again and wound up in the beer garden and got our Hillas.

We pretty much spent the next 3 hours sitting there and watching the people go by. I spent most of that time obsessing over the cheese, desperate to get another, unwilling to share it and unable to justify an extra $7 for it. I actually spent most of last week, calling cheese shops around the area to see who had some. I plan on making it for our dinner party in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I’ll share it with my guests. ;P

We moved to Los Angeles (West Covina, to be exact) in ‘81. We would come out to the city almost every weekend, when I was a kid. My mother would take us exploring around town and we’d see all kinds of stuff. One place she had never taken us was Chinatown…maybe because we could get great Chinese food in our area or just hop over to Rosemead. I didn’t even know there was a Chinatown in LA until about ‘93. That was the first time I went to a karaoke bar (actually, we went in Little Tokyo and then drove over to Chinatown). Anyway, around ‘03 I heard of this place in LA that you can get great French dip sandwiches. Phillipe’s. Everyone was just floored I had never heard of this place, because 1) I’ve lived here for so long and 2) I’m the Queen of All Things Roast Beef. Apparently, this place is and “LA Institution” and claims to be the originator of the French dip sandwich.

At any rate, for the last 4 years, I’ve been saying, “We gotta go to Phillipe’s!” and nothing. When we moved, I was like, “All right! We’re definitely going to hit up Phillipe’s.” and still nothing. Until last week.

Last Thursday, we walked around downtown looking at fabric. On the way back home, we drove past Phillipe’s and thought, “Well, let’s try it!”. Going in there was pretty nifty. The sawdust on the floor reminded me of how Farmers Market used to be before it got Rodeoed. I hit up the ATM (cash only) and we ordered. We both got the beef sandwich. I wanted onions on mine, but the cashier seemed extremely resistant to that idea. She compromised with saying she’d put some on the side, but she didn’t.

That’s our meal. Adrian got the custard and I got an apple pie. For the record, the apple pie only sucked because it was freezing cold. Who ever heard of cold apple pie? When I order apple pie, I want it roof-of-the-mouth scalding hot. Two degrees warmer than an ice cube is not how apple pie should be served. But the sandwiches were perfect. The bread wasn’t too soggy, the meat wasn’t too dry and when we added Phillipe’s hot mustard to it, it was a party explosion. Yum. The other bonus was the pickle. Remember back when Canter’s didn’t totally suck (pre-’99), when they used to have pickle’s with snap? Phillipe’s got ‘em. I think those were the best deli pickle’s I’ve had next to a sandwich in years.

I highly suggest you go if you’ve never been. The food is cheap and the decor is interesting. We sat upstairs and the walls are completly covered in graffiti.

We met a lady who was sitting up there, facing the LA skyline. She told us that she always goes there and sits there to see the skyline. Liked it so much, she had it tatted on her right shoulder.

LA.

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Baby’s eye view of grocery shopping, originally uploaded by fabooj.

This is what happens when you give a baby a camera to shut them up. We went grocery shopping after picking the kids up from school. Alton was screaming his head off, I think because there was a toy in the car he wanted. The only thing more annoying than a screaming kid in a grocery store, is when it’s your screaming kid. We had all kinds of old ladies coming up to help come him down. It was a toss up between the phone, GPS or camera. He loved it, though Ilia kept trying to take it from him. He took some interesting pictures, including the 11 he got of his fingertip.

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Bank West building, originally uploaded by fabooj.

This building off the 5 freeway absolutely annoys me. Why? Because it’s the only tall structure around and it looks a prison. I hope that whoever designed this building was never be allowed to design another building again.

I’m hooked. Last week, we went to the beach and our friends were talking about the show. Adrian decided to find a copy and started watching them. I walked in one like the 12th episode of the first season and was hooked. We’ve been watching 3 - 6 episodes a night for the past week. Last Friday, we stayed up until 4am watching this show. Damn. I almost feel bad for missing out these past few years. Now, I’m trying to get back story, by watching those first few episodes I missed.

The show, though, is a serious head game. I had some freaky dreams involving the show, Sudoku and Carrion Comfort. The other night, I had a dream that the button sounded like alarm clocks and all the alarm clocks on the island would go off every 4 minutes. I pressed my snooze alarm for 90 min., completely oversleeping.

Now that we’re into the show, we keep trying to figure out the puzzle. If it is a puzzle. The thing that sucks is that we still need to finish season 2 and start season 3. We found out that season 4 isn’t going to start until Feb. ‘08, so we got time. Our main goal now is to avoid spoilers. Considering the internet, that’s pretty funny and difficult. Just reading the cast list on IMDB, you can see who dies and such.

What we do find amusing are the fan pages devoted to the site and we found this hilarious write-up in Spin.com. There’s a wiki (actually, there’s two), sites devoted to the plane crash “victims”, and all kinds of other sites out there focusing specifically on characters or peripherals in the show.

As soon as I finish here, I’m going to head to the sofa to watch a few episodes before the kids get home. I really want to know what that thing is. Where did Desmond go? What happened to Russo? Why do they keep letting people just run away? How did that brand new washer/dryer set get there? And WTF with the polar bear?

No…don’t tell me!

I should put this out there…The fact that the goosesteppers introduced a resolution to condemn a fucking newspaper ad incenses me. I find it highly offensive that they could grandstand, hold Congress hostage and commit faux outrage over nothing. Not a damn thing. I find it even more offensive that there are Democrats in Congress who voted for the resolution.

The thing that kills me though, is that I guarantee you that those idiot representatives who voted for this slippery slope resolution probably have maybe 100 constituents who actually knew the ad ran, and I guarantee you that 70 of those people were probably MoveOn members anyway.

And for the record, I still haven’t seen the ad.

As noted previously, we went to the LA County Fair. The Fair ends on the 30th, so there is still time to visit and I highly suggest you go. We went on a Thursday afternoon and it was pure, uncrowded bliss.

Just to note, everything I mentioned in my previous post, we visited. We started the day off by paying $25 for valet parking. Considering how broke we are, that probably wasn’t fiscally brilliant, but by the end of the day, it was totally worth it.

We met our friends Lisa and Poppy there and immediately grabbed some food. BBQ. Curse those BBQ places. They smell so good, that you kinda don’t want anything else. So we wolfed that down and took off the Winter Wonderland. I gotta tell ya, that’s disturbing. It seriously looked like Christmas threw-up in an exhibit hall. I’ve always wondered about the type of person who’d purchase a sweater with a basset hound in a Santa hat embroidered on it. I think I can safely say that that person is a middle-aged white woman with bad skin and a fat ass.

Here is the ice skating rink.

Off to the left behind the trees was a box of “snow”. Now the snow was pretty much ice. The box was about 2′ off the ground and let’s say about 40′ x 15′. There were easily 50 kids on there. Slipping around on the ice snow. Dangerous. Even more disturbing, were the little brats that were actually trying to have a snowball fight. When Ilia and I got to the box, a large hunk of space debris flew at my head. If I had cocked my head a little to the right, it would have knocked my glasses off. Geez, you’d think their parents would suggest they be careful. Oh wait, this is LA and parenting is so passe.

Behind the rink, you can see the toboggan run. That looked pretty cool, but the line was too damn long. Over on that side, it “snowed” every half hour. Some gross pervy type guy was hanging around the snow box and decided to hit on Poppy. He was like, “Hey aren’t you that Olympic ice skater?” and she said “Yes.”. Funny.

Poppy decided she needed some farm-fresh milk, so we went to visit our food sources. I don’t care how cute, furry, feathery or cuddly they look, when I get to the ag section of the fair, I just want a steak, some roasted duck, chicken skewers and maybe some lamb chops and goat cheese. Food.

This chicken has way too many feathers on it’s legs. I’m sure there’s a reason it’s bred like that, but then I think of breaded chicken breasts.

My future steak dinner.

Sheep.

They had a little Charlotte’s Web set up there too. It was actually kinda of cute and reminded me I must by that book for the kids. There were other animals, small and large. The baby goats were ridiculously cute and the strangest animal there was the watusi. I’m still unclear as to why they were included in the fair. There was a bug section, that freaked me out because I had no idea millipedes were like 6″ long and 1/2″ wide. Freaky.

Anyway, then we headed over the EcoNow section. Pretty interesting and like so much of the half-assed green bandwagon jumpers, quite disappointing. I think LA County and the Fairplex could have done something impressive and gone green with the fair. Not just recycling, but requiring vendors to use biodegradable or reusable items, using solar power, and offering eco-tips in various areas of the fair. But that’s just me.

Toyota was there with it’s Prius.

I still hate Prius drivers…except for Al Gore III, he actually drove his faster than 50 mph.

Here’s a house that shows what the average family of 4 tosses in a year. It was interesting, predictable and somehow off-base, but those things always are. I did find it interesting because my family of 4 seems to generate a ton of trash a week. In our old place, it seemed we would take out the trash 4 - 6 times a day. Now that we live in this house and can recycle and compost a lot of stuff, our trash is drastically reduced. Of course, we’re also not tossing old stuff and unpacking new. It also helps that the baby is reducing the number of diapers he goes through and since he’s not home during the day the number drops more.

Uh-oh…don’t tell that to those SUV hybrid people…especially the single ones who don’t really need all that cargo space.

Next, we headed over to the wine garden. Wowsers! They put a patio out front with padded chairs and such. Nice. We sat under the bungee tower and watch girl after girl jump from the platform. The wine garden is attached to the Gardens and this year’s theme was Tuscany. I don’t have pics of that for two reasons, 1) the ones I tried to take came our blurry and 2) so many of those plants are serious water wasters.

One of the only reasons to attend any county fair is to eat fair food. I mean, fair food is like one of the major food groups and thus extremely important to the diet of the American people. I seriously regret not getting a turkey leg. I regret it so much, that I’m thinking of maybe going to the fair tonight or tomorrow morning.

As you well know, there’s a trend at the fair to fry the living hell out of anything edible (if it can be put on a stick, it’s like the triple word score of fair food). It started with “deep-fried ice cream” (Ice cream with corn flakes), and
that became deep-friend Twinkies and deep-friend Snickers. Then there was double deep-fried Twinkies and I knew people have lost their damn minds.

See…there’s even deep-fried corn on the cob. I also saw deep-fried asparagus on a stick. But the big thing this year was deep-friend Coke.

What it is, is Coke syrup mixed into waffly-crepe type batter, cooked, then crunched up. They stick that in a Coke cup, top it off with whipped cream and a cherry and you’re $7 lighter. People were buying that crap up.

We wound up staying until 10pm, and somehow completely missed the fireworks. We did see a ton of rides, there’s even a water ride there. I don’t know how I missed this all this year, but the big Ferris wheel has gondolas that look to seat 8 people. Wow. That thing was HUGE. Ilia really want to go on some rides, but neither of us like going on fair rides, nor could we justify the ridiculous costs of the rides, so we just looked and told her that when she’s older.

You can check out more photos here, but they’re not all that impressive.

I know I haven’t posted in awhile, but it’s been stressful here. Besides, I got lazy with downloading my pics, which would have constituted the bulk of my postings and finally got to it. We’ve been busy though, going to the Fair, Greekfests and the beach. We finally got some rain here and I spent those days out in the garden doing some maintenance while I didn’t have to water (cheap!). So, stay tuned for some pics.

For the last three days, I’ve been seeing/scanning comments, diaries and blog posts about MoveOn, an ad and Gen. Petraeus. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that MoveOn took out an ad on Gen. Petraeus. Now here’s what’s funny, I’m sure there is a post or diary that links to the ad, but I’m completely in the dark about this thing. So, I read titles like, “MoveOn Stepped Over the Line” or “The Ad Was Right” and I’m blissfully unaware of this drama unfolding on DailyKos. It must be pretty big for 3 days of hand-wringing and whining (granted some of those people can beat a dead horse’s great-great grandkids forever), but I simply don’t give a fuck.

Sigh.

Our neighbors changed their garage to be a back house. It was like that when we moved in and it didn’t bother me. Until last week. Last week, they decided to add a window on the garage. A window that is 14″ from my backyard. Now, I feel like they’re watching me whenever I’m back there. I have plants along that side of the yard and need to trim/prune and water them every 2 days. I feel like a voyeur. To make it even worse, now when we’re in the backyard, we can hear them yelling in the garage AND their TV was blasting yesterday.

My plan is to pull one of the cape honeysuckles from along my garage and plant it right in front of their window. Right now, it it’s about 7′ tall and maybe 5′ or 6′ wide. I was thinking of letting it go a little longer and then pruning it into a tree like shape. The downside is that this means, I’ll have to move my Mexican feather grass and blackberry plants and I have no idea what will be a good place for them as they both need full sun. Perhaps the front yard?

I could talk to them, but with winter coming up, I know we’ll spend less time back there. We were talking about putting in some bamboo panel fencing, but that’s really pricey for the kind we want.

Or, I could go my other route and put up the curtains around the perimeter I was thinking about. The neighbors in the back have an exceedingly whiny little brat for a kid and he will literally just sit back there and watch us for hours. It’s freaky. I put a wisteria right where he usually sits and I’m just praying for the bamboo over there to grow big this winter.