The Other Side of The Times

My friend, Erik, has the nastiest job. He was an auditor before he came to work with us a few years ago. Yuck. Because of him I now know that all auditors are not total dweebs. It may just be him, but there could be other non-dweebs in the profession. He just had to leave us to go back to the Tribune. He must have a bff stuffed in a corner back there. Why else would he leave LA, The Times and us?

The nice thing is that he comes back to visit now again to help us prepare for audits and other harassment by the Tribune and the SOX patrol. And I get to visit and laugh with him. Considering how seldom I get up to the 3rd floor and this side of the building, it's almost like he never left.

When I do get up there, I'm most often visiting Bill. I can't do this very often because I always end up staring out his window. Yes, this is the view from his window. They tore down an old government building and opened up his view to Disney Hall. You can see that on the left. And besides, there are big machines moving old concrete and dirt around. Love to watch all this hard labor going on. I don't know how Bill and Harriet get anything done. They both have great views of all the activity. Harriet also gets to watch the myriad of strange people who come out of the court house and mosey down Broadway. They are very interesting. Instead, I'm in the black hole on the first floor, hard at work plotting my exit strategy.

Or plotting where I'm going to buy my next tomatoes, now that the season is over. I've become absolutely addicted to slow roasting these little things. They have so many uses once you do that and they keep fairly well for a week or so. I think. They don't seem to last that long. You can eat them with broiled meats or mushed up with pasta or... Here they are, neatly grouped by type, waiting to go into my very slow oven. I leave the peels on the garlic or it browns too much. Lovely.

Cooking and Reading

What a great weekend. Cooking and reading. I had gone to Old Town to watch the movie, Outsourced. I'd forgotten that UCLA was playing Notre Dame at the Rose Bowl. The city was jammed early on a Saturday morning. It was also a gorgeous day. All of Southern California seemed to be in the city. So I turned around and went to Bristol Farms instead to pick up some more Wasa crackers and tomatoes. And left with half the store. I could have sworn I was being good.

I've stopped going to the farmer's market on Saturday because I buy a lot of stuff and we can't eat it all that quickly. I have been determined to use up everything I bought at the Thursday market at City Hall and now I have to use the produce I bought at Bristol.

Saturday night we had a beautiful piece of salmon, slow roasted with fresh ginger, garlic and curry powder. Great. I made a salad of Persian cucumber, mint, green onions and heirloom tomato. I say too much green onion, Adrian says too much mint. We had this with orchiette. It was all pretty good.

On Sunday I cooked a pork shoulder butt in my favorite 7 hour cooking method. I stuffed the beautiful scalloped squash and baked those in the little oven. They are for Adrian. For me, I'm making a savory bread pudding with roasted tomatoes and garlic and with roasted garlic bread. Can't wait to taste that. Karen asked if I'd ever had that before. I told her no, that I've just been Jonesing for it since I roasted some tomatoes earlier in the week. Go figure. If it is good, I'm going to share it with the guys at work.

Love that I can read and cook at the same time. First I finished The Art of Aging. Well, if I'm going to be an old lady, I'm going to have to figure out how to do it with gusto. It seems that I may be okay on the gusto front, but it will take constant vigilance. I just really can't recommend this book. I think he had a good pamphlet and tried to expand it into something bigger. Here are the things to remember: get plenty of exercise (yea, sure), don't overeat, maintain close relationships, take calcium supplements, be creative.

The most important thing is to adjust what you consider to be old lady behavior. Understand that the body won't work as well as it used to. Make plans to do things and not just sit and write your blog while listening to books. Do, plan, love, create. And take calcium.

Then I finished The Wheel of Darkness, an Aloysius Pendergast book. They are always a little supernatural, always thrillers. Rene Aubergenois read it. Pendergast is from New Orleans originally, so the ability to be charming and syrupy is an important ability. This starts in a Tibetan Monastary. The Wheel of Life is a popular Buddhist symbol. The writers have perverted this into an uber-menacing symbol. I'm not sure why I read these thrillers. It struck me as I was about 2/3 of the way through that I used to just turn to the end of the book or put in the last tape or CD to make sure everyone is okay. Of course, everyone is always okay, but you have to read enough to learn how they got to that state. I don't love to read about un-natural deaths or deaths in detail, no matter how natural.

So, yes, I skipped a huge part of this. Huge to me, maybe 1/6 of the ending. I was happy. I did go back to find out a couple of things, but I didn't have to read about all that turmoil to enjoy the book. And I really did enjoy it.

Today I read Power Play. This is not part of a series, but I didn't know until the end that I had read quite a few books by this author. He writes about different businesses and puts the protagonist into peril. This industry is aerospace. But, really, they are interchangeable. I'll have to recommend this to my brothers. They like the genre. This type of book is easy to read while moving around, cooking. It doesn't matter if I miss a sentence or two. In fact, I woke up early to watch Sunday Morning on CBS and then continued to read the book while lying abed. Yes, I may have dozed just a bit when they were having dinner. That could have been an interesting part, I may need to go back to listen to that. It did not hurt in figuring out what was happening in the rest of the book.

I think this type of listening is much harder for non-fiction; especially non-thriller-fiction. The suspense may be taut and the writing might be, too, but you don't miss out on the enlightenment that comes with hearing every word of most non-fiction books. My next one is This is Your Brain on Music. What if I find that music is vital? Will I have to stop reading as much and start listening to music?

Around The Times

The new police station is being built across the street from The Times. It is amazing how fast this building is going up. All pictures were taken from the parking garage across 2nd street.

When I was in India, I liked to watch the construction because it was mostly done by hand. The floors were held up by an intricate weaving of thin poles until the concrete had set. It was pretty scary to think that when they were done, they became the apartment I was living in. Or one just like it. The apartment complex seemed to take forever to build. We would pass one every day on the way to work. I was so anxious to see the exterior of just one of the apartment blocks with the roof on. It was just not to be. I often didn't see anyone working on the exterior. I hope they were inside putting up wall board.

The top picture was taken September 20. Look at the pretty fluffy clouds. What a beautiful place to work. This fall is beginning to look like a keeper. The middle picture was taken a week later. Look how big that crane is. I have to be on the 5th floor of the parking structure to get the whole thing. When you are in the cafeteria on the first floor of The Times building, the crane looks like a sky hook.

This last picture was taken this evening. The sun is setting earlier. I'll have to go out at lunch to get a good picture. The building has grown a lot in two weeks. Now they have the elevator on the right running up the side of the building. We'll see how big it is in two more weeks.

Clif and I have become enamored of the Farmer's Market in front of City Hall. That's the pointy building in the background of my pictures. They have lovely produce closest to The Times. There are lots of food booths closer to City Hall. Clif has been hitting the Greek barbeque place. I like that, but this week I just stopped at the ice cream vendor (I've had spiced strawberry and mint chocolate nubs in recent weeks) and picked up some gorgeous produce.

Clif is standing just outside my officle. Do you see the cut out on the door? There is a long window in the door that people used to stare through. I found this cutout advertisment of an old friend. We put him in the window so he could look back and keep them away. I don't know if it's scared anybody yet.

With a Shoehorn

Did I say I was anal about keeping my Ipod full? I just finished half of a book and my podcast of the New Yorker, and jammed in one more book to take their place. I now have 6.8 MB left on my 2 GB drive. And all my books in the library have been downloaded. Will I be happy with the 11.5 books there until 10/22 when I can order new books? I certainly hope so, but that little devil on my shoulder has already started to whisper.