Lucy has been having a bit of a rough time this summer.  First a bladder infection, now it appears she has ringworm and requires medicated baths twice a week AND a medication that will likely make her barf that I can’t even track down yet.  But most of all, she has been dragging.  Lucy has been running with us for the last two or three years.  In fact, if it wasn’t for Lucy I probably wouldn’t even be running at all.   Bored with walking her and getting my arm pulled out of the socket at the same time, I wondered what it would be like to run with her and that was that.  Since then, she has been our faithful companion on many runs.  We were always very careful-never taking her out when it was too hot, and never going more than 4-5 miles.

Lately, however, we cut that back significantly.  In April, we started noticing that after her initial crazy burst of energy for the first quarter mile or so, she would ease off quite a bit, and by the last half mile she’d be trailing 2 or 3 feet behind.  Since that started, we have only been taking her out for 3 miles maximum and cut down the number of times a week we run with her.  Still, she drags.  Maybe it’s just the summer heat?  Maybe she’s not a spring chicken anymore (she turned 4 this spring)? So, this week we decided to bench her for a little while.  No running for Lucy until the middle of September and in the meantime I’m going to try and give her some glucosamine just in case it is her joints bothering her.  She had an x-ray at the vet recently and nothing showed up, so hopefully that’s not the case.

For now we’re back to walking which, quite frankly, she’s perfectly happy with and since we’re scheduling it around our running days, Brian and I will get a little bit of mild cross training that we usually don’t get.  Hopefully, her spirits will pick up soon and maybe we can go back to running someday.   All I know is, I love that dog like crazy, so whatever makes her feel better, that’s what we’ll do.

Hiding from the vet at one of many recent visits.

Feel better, pups!

I started this celebration off with a 5 mile run in the morning, which felt less like celebrating and more like drilling a hole in my head with a dull pencil.  A truly miserable run, I’m hoping it was just the muggy weather.

After that, I assumed we would just hang out with Ashok until Brian’s mom arrived to babysit, but no, there was one more home improvement task to be tackled.  We are planning to put a few large trees in pots out in the backyard, since we have nowhere to plant (swimming pool=concrete) but have been struggling to find the perrrrfect large pots to put them.

Immediately after we took him out he said, “again!” even though he appeared to be completely confused as to why he was in there to begin with.  Anyway, that pot isn’t the one we bought but without providing too many boring details, we did finally settle on something.

Our real celebration began at 3:00 when we high-tailed it to a showing of The Dark Knight.   I liked the movie, it was definitely entertaining and intense but I have to say, the amount of violence was a little over the top.  It was particularly disturbing considering that the lady one row in front of us brought her young kids with her, they looked like they were about 10 and 7.  Nice.

Then, the part I was really excited about:  dinner at Osteria Mozza.  We came here for my sister’s 40th and had an incredible meal, so I was thrilled to go back.   This time around was no disappointment, we had an incredible meal and a fantastic server who recommended great wines. (If food talk bores you, you may want to stop reading here as I am about to give a grueling play by play of our whole meal, mostly so I can relive it and drool.)

Beverages: one thing I really enjoyed about their wine list was being able to order 250ml. servings of some of the wines, so we were able to try 3 different ones.  My favorite was the Sangiovese we had last-of course I was drunk by then, so who really knows.  Because I was a drunken idiot, I didn’t take note of any the names of the wines, so I can’t recount them here.

From the antipasti menu we had the Little Gem Lettuces with green beans, noci & pecorino.  The noci were actually just walnuts, but they were probably the most perfect walnuts I have ever seen.  And salty, which maked them even more perfect.  Then we ordered a few small plates from the Mozzarella Bar.  They were:

Bufala mozzarella with pesto, salsa romesco, tapenade & caperberry relish - a nice, big dollop of cheese with four spreads to choose from with crostini. I don’t know what a caperberry is but that relish was incredible.

Sheep’s milk ricotta, radicchio, spiced walnuts, honey & fried rosemary - probably my favorite part of the whole evening, the honey was unbelievably fresh and the combination of that with the spicy walnuts (more perfect walnuts!) was incredible.

Burrata with leeks vinaigrette & mustard breadcrumbs  - Burrata is a super-soft mozzarella made with cream.  The cheese was amazing, but the leeks were only ok.  Probably our least favorite thing of the night.

We are both great lovers of cheese, as you can tell.  But really, what’s not to like?

After that, I had the Maltagliati (a pappardelle type pasta) with wild boar ragu and Brian had the fresh gnocchi with tomato and basil.  They were both fantastic, the gnocchi were of the melt-in-your-mouth variety.  For dessert, we shared the Torta del Nonna with honey and pine nuts-more fresh honey and this time on cheescake!!- and a strawberry extravaganza that involved a berry sauce, crepes, gelato and sorbet, but honestly who knows?  I was pretty much delirious by this point.

Today, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck (probably a truck carrying cheese).   It was worth it, but I think I may just look at pictures of food for lunch today.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I need a sandwich.

This week, we had landscapers who had done some work for us at our old house tear out the old plants in the large planter, plant some low-water plants with colorful flowers and a few vines that we hope will eventually cover the walls. Hopefully, this will soften up all the hard edges out there eventually. Grow, plants, grow! I’m trying out a pictobrowser for the first time, so let’s hope this works:

There are some before pictures in there at the end as well, I couldn’t figure out how to re-order them. Things still look pretty cement-y out there, but hopefully these plants will soften things up over time. Among the plant choices were some things we can eat! Lemongrass, passionfruit, blueberries and oregano. My vegetable garden is coming next-stay tuned.

Brian’s car was on its last legs (wheels?) so we traded it in for something that sucks down a little less gas. Brian is totally in love, I think I’ve dropped to #3 on his list.

Speaking of gas, we’ve been trying to offset the cost of gas by walking as much as we can these days. It’s a tough thing to do in a city like L.A. where things are so spread out and public transportation isn’t terribly efficient. We took a nice 30 minute walk with Ashok in the stroller and Lucy pulling away on the leash to our favorite breakfast spot the other morning-I don’t feel nearly as guilty about inhaling sausage, eggs and cheese when I know I’m going to be walking a mile and a half home right afterwards. Tonight, we walked a slightly shorter distance with the same gang to a little Italian place, but the food pretty much sucked. Oh well, we tried.

I’m trying to get back into a regular running schedule this week. I’ve been in a pretty serious slump over the last few months and I need to shake myself out of it somehow. I also decided to do the One Hundred Push Ups program. I started last week, but don’t think I was doing my push-ups quite as well as I could, so I’m going to repeat week 1 this week and Brian’s going to start it as well. It will be much easier to stay on the schedule if we’re both doing it. We just have to stop laughing at each other while we’re doing them.

I have been on a bit of a cooking spree lately.  This may have been spurred on by the fact that our remodel plans were finally approved by the city last week (it took 4 months!) which means we could finally start construction soon.   This of course means we won’t have a kitchen for several months which may be why I’m cooking like a madwoman this week.  Having time off definitely contributes to this habit as well, and I did just have a blissful week off from work after our week up at Sequoia.  So, for the 4th I actually planned a menu.  Pretty fancy, eh?  For starters we had…

Caprese-on-a-stick: mozzarella ball, cherry tomato and basil on a toothpick, drizzled with olive oil and topped with a little fleur de sel.

Garlicky White Bean Dip and Pita Chips:  I wasn’t so sure about this dip right after I made it, but after it sat in the fridge for a couple of hours and soaked up some of that garlic flavor and I added the fresh oregano, it was really, really tasty.   At this point I started drinking and completely forgot to take any more pictures of food, but here was the rest of the menu:

Indian Grilled Chicken, my own recipe

These potatoes-so good!

 Herb-tossed Corn

Greek salad, courtesy of my mother-in-law, the Salad Queen

White chocolate chip Heath bar brownies, courtesy of my sister the Queen of all Baking

It was goooood.  If only I had the time to cook like this the rest of the year.

Ashok’s cousin was over for dinner so they had all sorts of fun.  Swimming…

…wagon rides…

…and  bubbles.

Or, maybe just bubble.

Today, there was some more excitement around here, but I haven’t uploaded the appropriate pictures yet, so all three of you reading will have to wait for my next post.  I promise it won’t be two weeks from now.

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. Shalini Goel - Abhinaya Example - 1, 2. Biriyani - India. Chicken Rissoto, 3. Winter Rhapsody Concert: Davis High School Combined Bands 2005, 4. Verde no Aquarius, 5. brad mehldau, 6. Maker’s Mark Manhattan, 7. Fiji Banded Iguana, 8. Ice cream afterwards. Mmmm, chocolate and peanut butter!, 9. Winkin’ Kitten ;o), 10. Family Portrait, 11. i am excitable., 12. The R Man

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

The heat has certainly not motivated me to run, nor has the 5 pounds of phlegm I feel like I’m carrying around in my sinuses and lungs from last week’s cold.  So today, for the first time this season, I swam.  And lo, it was pathetic.  I haven’t done laps in our pool since last fall and you would think that since I just ran a half marathon a month ago and am in possibly better shape than I ever have been that swimming would not be the gasping, splashing, flailing struggle that it was today.  But damn, swimming is hard.  I need to work on that.

The other big problem with the heat is the fact that we don’t have air conditioning.  And we live in a two-story house.  AND we sleep upstairs (for now).  Last year when we moved into this house, we didn’t bother trying to get the a/c fixed since we were planning on doing some major remodeling that would involve moving ducts and upgrading the current system.  Of course, we thought that would all be done by now but sadly, it has even started.   It just took much longer than we thought it would to get things in order before someone takes a sledgehammer to the walls.  We have plans now, drawn up by a great designer but they are still with the city, a process that we thought would only take 3 weeks and has now taken about 2 months.  We’re closer to finding a contractor, but still not sold on any one person.  Of course, once all of that gets sorted out and we actually start the whole process, we’re probably looking at 3-4 months of living in construction, but I’m really excited about our plans and am pretty sure it will all be worth it in the end.

Work has been hell for the last couple of weeks and although I get a bit of a break this week, next week is right back into the fire.  Luckily, once I hit June things will lighten up a lot and I’m hoping they’ll stay that way for most of the summer.  The hardest thing about working at night, which I did last week Sunday through Saturday, is not being around for Ashok’s evening activities.  Missing his dinner, bath and bedtime that many nights in a row really sucks after a while, especially since on many of those days I had some daytime work as well.  Brian and I agreed that this last week was particularly bad.  Obviously, it’s hard on him too since he has no one to help out at the crankiest time of the evening, and let’s face it we ALL start getting cranky as the day wears on, so I’m going to try and plan things out a bit better form now on.  This is the pain in the ass with freelancing-all the work comes at once or doesn’t come at all so it makes it hard to turn things down, but I would gladly turn down a few gigs to spend more time with these guys:

 At Hosmer Grove in Haleakala Park, Maui

Hopefully, this will be the last of the sickness for a while-I haven’t been able to run much at all in the last couple of weeks. I had plans to do a 10K on Memorial Day but I’ll have to see what kind of shape I’m in once this cold passes.  It is starting to get hot here, which means I’m going to have to start dragging my ass out of bed at an obscene hour to be able to run at all, something I’m not looking forward to.   Today though, I’m going to use sinus pain as an excuse to skip the run and eat a chocolate pop-tart instead.  I hear they have healing properties.