I was hoping to buy a poster of a Hockney work, but no such luck. They had no posters whatsoever in the gift shop, can you believe it? The did have some fairly bizarre things, including a sloppily sewn felt handbag for $210! I bought a bumper sticker that says "Don't Be a Jerk."
After the Museum, Karen and I went to Chinatown and had a very nice meal at the Golden Dragon and then windowshopped for a while. We decided that the Los Angeles Chinatown is so much nicer than San Francisco's because it's not a tourist trap. (surprise!) I bought a package of plastic turtles for Atticus and a pack of ginseng gum. I couldn't get Karen to try the gum.
Rachel's flight got in after 9 p.m., but they had lost her luggage in Houston and put it on a later flight so we didn't get away from the airport until almost 11, which put us home at 1 a.m. Karen fell asleep on the way home, but when I opened the sunroof to get some air she jerked into wakefullness and tried to pretend she hadn't been.
Today I opened a new bank account, bought some groceries, and worked on the fishpond. The thing that has been holding the fishpond project up is the partially dead Chinese elm tree, wound with dead grapevines, that leans over it. It was a real job to untangle that mess, clip the dead branches and vines, and drag everything out of the yard. As I suspected, the pond excavation was filled with litter and leaves by the time I was finished. I cleaned it out, laid the underliner and liner and filled it, but I have a little leak somewhere so I will have to investigate tomorrow when it is light. Hooked up the spitter to aquarium tubing using little teeny radiator hose clamps I got from Pioneer Hardware to repair the front porch fountain. It works well, but now another trip to Pioneer Hardware will be necessary.
In the interest of our new and improved financial austerity program I decided to try to freeze fruit juice in ice cube trays and make smoothies in the blender. The pina colada smoothies I made tonight turned out really delicious, so hopefully I'll get Rachel out of the Jamba Juice habit. I meant to buy some tofu to blend into them, but I forgot, so they were perhaps better than future smoothies will be.
Thu Aug 02 2001 23:20:
Yesterday I spent most of the day on a trip to Los Angeles. Karen Nations went with me and we went to the David Hockney retrospective at LAMOCA. We didn't have time to see much of the rest before it closed and they threw us out, but I was amazed to see an old Jackson Pollack canvas. It is the same painting I bought Dad a jigsaw puzzle of for Christmas one year when I was a little girl-- streaks of every color splashed onto a black background. He never forgave me for buying him the puzzle and muttered the whole time he was putting it together.