We partied like we were 25, and damn, it was fun, but utterly exhausting. I highly recommend doing this maybe once or twice a year. Then go back to normal regular weekends. 🙂
Up first, we were invited to longtime friend Ken Basin’s wedding up at Saddlerock Ranch in the Malibu mountains. Many of my good friends were also attending as obviously Mila is going to be at her brother’s wedding, as well as many others that I love. We knew it would be a boozy affair, so we Uber’d there (and let’s just say, Uber drivers can be very good or very bad….), got promptly lost (Uber driver not so great today) as we got dropped off at the wrong location within the complex, and started walking around based on vague directions from staff who have no idea where weddings are held on the premises. The pictures here are of that random walk, which happily ended when a car driven by some other guests had the unlucky happenstance of going where we were – but lucky for us. We all found our way to the right place and we managed to get to seats just shortly before the ceremony began. D’oh!
The wedding itself was absolutely beautiful. The weather couldn’t have been better, what with it being mid-October. But it’s of course been a ridiculously hot week for us with temps in the 100s this week, so our trend of having very late LA summers continues on. Anyway, that wasn’t quite the case on Saturday, so it was great.
Highly recommend, if you can afford to, a wedding here. Beautiful vistas, gorgeous lighting in the trees, good food, and just a spectacular venue. It being a Jewish wedding, there was of course the hora to dance to, and of course, I did. I also managed to roll my ankle at the very end of the dance as it was a packed dance floor with 300 guests, a hardwood dance floor that I managed to find the end of with my right foot and landed poorly. Happily, it’s just rolled/sprained and not worse, because as of today, it’s mostly back to normal.
Lots to drink, lots of dancing with close friends and loved ones, some good food (not enough to keep me from getting hammered), and a great party all led to us not getting home until 1 in the morning. LOOK OUT YOUNG FOLK!
Saturday, Oct 21, 2017 – Ken & Lisa’s Wedding @ Saddlerock Ranch
We were primed to be hurting on Sunday, and while it certainly wasn’t as bad as it could have been (I’ve been WAY HUNGOVER before, believe me – this past Sunday was nothing like that), it was certainly one of those days that could have been spent sleeping in a lot more and then do something lazy. But we had more plans today, as we were going to celebrate Mom’s birthday with a lunch and then follow that up with a birthday celebration for Nicki & Carey in Silver Lake.
We got ourselves ready to go and off we went to Arcadia’s Westfield shopping center, which looks so freakin’ different than the Santa Anita Fashion Show mall I grew up with and had my first B Dalton Booksellers job at. Unrecognizable. Anyway, there’s a Cheesecake Factory there now so we met up with Mom, Stacie, and Trent for a good lunch. As much as I can sometimes look down on Cheesecake Factory for being ‘just a’ chain restaurant, they are always packed for a reason: the food is pretty damn good and it’s not a bad price. It was a nice lunch though catching up with everyone and slowly but surely feeling like a human again. Happy Birthday, Mom!
Sunday, Oct 22, 2017 – Birthday Lunch w/ Mom
Larry & I then had to figure out just what we were up for in terms of the Silver Lake birthday fun. We were both exhausted and the idea of wine at the time didn’t sound appealing, nor did the follow-up oysters restaurant. But there wasn’t an option of not going, so we stopped at home first to take a sanity break, and then it was time to call an Uber to take us to Silver Lake. God bless Uber – it makes going places where the parking is horrible not so awful. The flip side is that the hesitancy to drink evaporates as there’s no reason to be cautious. So while we didn’t just decide to get blitzed, we certainly did have rose while having a freakin’ blast at Silver Lake Wines. It’s a fun place as while it is a wine store, you can also have them open the wines and serve it to you while hanging out. And so yeah, we did that. A few hours later, we all then went over to L&E Oyster Bar for some follow-up food. I passed on oysters as ew, gross, but they did have cheese plates and bread and that was delicious. It wasn’t enough for dinner though, and by around 7pm, I was starting to need more. So with Nicki, Rekha, and Megan, we left the group and headed just a bit further south to Silver Lake Ramen, which OMG is so good. We had to wait for about an hour though, and happily a bar is next door, The Thirsty Crow, so yeah, more alcohol. Dude, we were rockstars this weekend. No idea how we made it through it, although Monday admittedly was a rough day to wake up to!
Birthday Wine with Nicki & Carey in Silver Lake
And that was our weekend. I’ve been remiss in showing the many pictures from our exciting other weekends…so I will endeavor to do that as well. Let’s see if I’m more successful this time than every other time I say that!