Clipper's game!

After a completely random turn of events that involve a Clipper's cheerleader who is a friend of Aaron's, lunch with one of my friends, and a Deloitte partner who is in Korea.... we ended up with 4 free 10th row center court Clipper's tickets! My friends Joe and Iman were able to join us. This photo was taken in the Staples Center lobby as a promotion by AT&T before the game. Good times!

McCabe's Guitar Shop

This weekend we got together with our good friends Kelley, Rosemary, Zach, and Andy. It was so warm outside that we bbq'd and ate dinner in the back - never mind the small bits of ash from the wildfires that fell as we ate. After dinner we explored a Santa Monica institution and went for a concert at McCabe's Guitar Shop. For the past 50 years, this shop on Pico Ave (blocks from our place) has been selling guitars and hosting concerts in it's back room. Such a fun spot!

U-C-L-A!

This weekend Aaron and I were treated to a UCLA football game by my friend Nancy. She works there so with the annual faculty/staff appreciation day she scored a huge group of her friends free tickets and food. We were three rows from the field at about the 20 yard line - Aaron was in heaven! I had a great time too, though a little disappointed with the 1/2 time show. They had alumni band members join them on the field, which meant for pretty much no movement. It was cool though that they honored the UCLA students/grads who competed in the Olympics this year; some were wearing medals that they won.

Tom's Shoes

One of the nice things about working for Deloitte is that they are pretty big on volunteerism and community involvement. In addition to cash donations they give time as well. One example was yesterday's internal networking evening where the guest speakers were from United Way, Community Coalition for South LA, and the founder of Toms Shoes.

Though rather than writing about the impact these guys are making (each are doing great things - check out their websites) I really wanted to show off my free shoes! We were meant to decorate them to reflect something about ourselves. I had some fabric with stylized images of plants and flowers and got some special fabric glue to put it on. Voila!

PS - Happy Halloween!

Fall crops at the Schneider farm

This weekend Aaron and I finally got around to taking out the corn from our raised garden bed which made room for some new crops. We went to the Yamaguchi nursery for the first time and it's now officially our nursery of choice. They had a great selection, everything was in great condition, amazingly low prices, and best part of all.... owned by our neighbor across the street! I can't believe we've been pumping money into the chain store Armstrong's this whole time when we could have been supporting our neighbor.

Rather than planting from seed like we had done with our summer crops, we went with starter plants since we have waited until pretty late in the fall season to get going. We chose broccoli, sugar snap peas, lettuce, and green onions. With temperatures expected to be in the 90's this week you could have fooled me that it's actually fall here. So I'm hopeful that we have a long growing season ahead of us.

Also, say hello to our squirrel friend who watched us work today. He and his buddies hang out in our backyard with Alex. Alex certainly notices when they are around, but they must have worked out some sort of agreement because Alex doesn't chase them away. They try to help us with our planting, too - today when I was digging to put in the broccoli I found a fruit item clearly "planted" by the squirrel. It had his teeth marks in it and we matched it to the fruit that came from neighbor Dave's tree. I've found loads of peanuts throughout the yard, too. Someone on the street must be giving them peanuts.

Visit from Lisa

One of my very best friends, Lisa, has recently taken a new job and had some time in between. Since we live on opposite coasts we don't get to see each other as often as we like, so she took advantage of the free time and came to visit for a week!

I took the day off Friday and we planted some sweet peas in the backyard, relaxed for a while, went shopping, stopped at LACMA for a jazz show, and then had dinner at home with Aaron.

Saturday we met up with my in-laws for brunch, walked the Venice Canals, shopped Abbott Kinney, had dinner with our friend Darren, and bon-fired in our backyard.

Sunday we ventured down to Orange County and hung out with my friends Kelley & Rosemary and then to Lisa's family friend's Tim & Janie.

The rest of Lisa's visit included a little bit more downtime for her since Aaron and I both worked. I worked from home a little and also took Lisa downtown to see my office. She ventured by bus to see more of Santa Monica during the day and we all just hung out at night.

It was *such* a pleasure to have her here for the week! Check out more of the beautiful photos Lisa took while she was here.

Halfway to Halloween^2 (Aaron)

We haven't had a house party in a while, so we scrubbed the place down and invited everyone over. I'm a big fan of giving people a theme for parties, so we recycled an old idea we had a few years ago called Halfway to Halloween. From the invite time to the party is approximately halfway to Halloween, so the idea is to ask people to wear half of a costume. It's a great ice breaker to get the conversation going.

Everyone who came really put in a lot of work in their costumes and made the evening very fun. Julie and I went all out - if you're not going to do it right for a party at your own house, when will you? We were the best of both worlds, and split the girl and guy right down the middle. :) Darren, of course, bucked the trend and had a real half-assed costume, and Shac, who flew down from NorCal, was definitely in costume - he had hair!

I also enjoyed Shagma and Velgy (Scooby Doo's Shaggy and Velma, but Kelley and Zach mixed up the bottoms and Zach wore a mini skirt all night!), the Rock Band characters in real life (emo all the way!), the sign twirlers, Princess Peach and Mario, the referees, the half army guy, 60's girl, the football and basketball players, Minnie Mouse, the porn stars, and the people in various stages of undress (nice!).

Hope to see everyone again soon.