Our actual 7th Anniversary…!

So, another 4 years have zoomed by, and it was our actual 7th anniversary this weekend…on a Saturday, just like on 29/2/92…

We had a nice roof-top dinner at a friends on the Thu overlooking Balboa park, with great food and – although the sun had set – views of the city and planes coming in for landing… I made my hummus and the new recipe meatballs – turkey with pork, bread, stock, onion, masala & parmesan – which are coming out great, as well as butter-chicken which everyone loved.

Our friend Lynne had given us a bag of limes from her tree, so we made Lime Marmalade, lime pickles and a pineapple-lime chutney, and salted some cutup limes for another pickle. I’m on the lookout for wild fennel for a new infusion, and hit on the idea of using the iNaturist app to see where recent sightings have been but, so far, have only have old, dry plants…

Fri morning, we headed to Rachelles for lunch with the old ladies that D does her pastel art with – she’s their mascot, and probably the youngest person there (I was one of 2 guys…) Her house up by La Jolla is lovely & eclectic and has a hedge / wall of beautiful ficus trees all round. Then off to our favorite little walk off La Jolla Farms road, where the rabbit and hummingbirds didnt disappoint, and we took pics of D with her glamorous straight hair, posing with various backdrops, and then down to Blacks beach where lots of surfers were out (had to edit her hiking boots out of the pics!)

On Sat, I had laid out the new silver & copper rings I made in the lovely copper enamelled bowls for her to find in the morning, and she gave me a sumi-e painting of the many things we’ve done. She ended up pretty much ignoring the rings, and apparently chose to wear a crappy earlier version of the enameled initial earrings I’d made weeks ago…

We went to the fish market, which was packed, including some politician being filmed shaking hands with the locals… The catch looked great, but we were too chicken to try anything new or exotic… After her meltdown, I dropped her and went to my pottery, where my new pieces had all come out pretty well, and I trimmed the bottoms and also found the rounded vase from the most recent firing

On returning, she was still in a complaining mood, but had made lots of food, including prepping her biriyani… She didn’t know what we were going to be doing so, while helping, I coordinated the ‘surprise’ guests for the evening. Unfortunately the front desk wasn’t staffed well that day, so it made it difficult to arrange – I stashed a box with a bottle of wine, bottle of Rye, plates and forks on the 10th floor for our friends to set up the surprise. Thankfully, Steve and Lynne were game, and while Faisal and Karin came to the apt, the others managed to make their way in with me popping out under the guise of ‘looking for my Amazon delivery’… But, of course, D was too smart and suspected / expected something to be going on… Faisal was nudged into asking to ‘see the roof deck’ so we headed up with drinks.

D saw our guests as she walked around the outside of the building, and made knowing noises indicating she knew something was going on.. Thankfully, they were all very excited, so we took pics, grabbed everything and headed back down to the apt, to munch on D’s delicious samosas, eat hummus and Joe’s excellent rosy red lamb chops – he has been challenged to a ‘poke-off’ as he claimed his is the best…!

The gang liked my homemade gin & anise vodka, the red wine was a hit with Lisa & Steve & I polished off a good amount of the Rittenhouse 100 proof ‘bottled in bond’ Rye, which was excellent…Rajiv had made some delicious soup, and his little niece (?) had a nice time trying everything before he had to leave….

Needless to say, a fun time was had by all, and people were almost too stuffed to make a dent in the delicious biriyani… Lisa demonstrated her red-wine-cleaning-off-the-carpet technique and had lots of good notes to swap with Lynne on many subjects, including jewishness…!

Woke late and groggy the next cloudy day and headed off to the Del Dios Highlands walk.. It was beautful as usual, and the unrelenting steady steep slope had us huffing and puffing to the top. We spoke to our dear friend Ken near the top, eating into his time to check out the ladies at his yoga class. After a good look at the reservoir we headed back, marvelling at how mountain bikers could actually make it up *and* down the same slope we were having trouble walking…

Back to the apt, feeling lazy, had a quick nap and downloaded some movies for D to watch. While I plodded thru my Spanish homework D watched Parasite and announced it was very good…

So… we shall see what the next anniversary brings… Thanks if you managed to read this far! Leave a message…!