Year-End Entertainment Round-Up

I feel as though I should make some sort of "the year that was" post for this New Year's Eve. Since we went to see The Hobbit last night, I thought I would look back on the movies, tv, and books that entertained me this year.

First of all, Home Performance Matters, the company that did our house's energy retrofit, invited all its clients and staff and their families to see The Hobbit at the Laemmle all together last night. We started out with hot drinks and cookies on the Plaza (it was cold!), and then we trooped into theater 4 (the big one), nearly filling all 250 seats.

I agree with all the reviews I heard - too long, too much gore, but also great cgi, costumes, good acting, and fun for Tolkien fans. I can't believe there will be two more movies to finish this book.

The Hobbit brings our movies-in-the-theater number to 8 for this year. That number seems high and low. High, because we used to see about 2 movies in the theater every year before the Laemmle came to Claremont, but low compared to past years at the Laemmle. We need to remedy that.

As for television, we watched through 4 full series thanks mostly to the public library. We are waiting to watch more of Treme, Downton Abbey and The Good Wife.

This year I read 43 books. Two books were the second go-round, two were audio books, and I gave seven of them stars. That number is a little lower for me than usual, but some of the books were quite long.

Here's to a new year of stories!

Wedding

Most of the weddings I attend these days involve my participation on some level. Usually I am playing in a string trio or something, and this summer I got to be the mother of the bride. This year I attended two weddings where I was a mere guest, and that was pretty fun. Last night was one of these two. I love how each wedding is so different and reflects the personalities of the couple. I've known Brian, the groom, since we moved to Claremont when he was just two. His wedding was at Padua Hills Theatre which is a lovely venue. Thank goodness it was inside since last night was pretty chilly.

Dearie

You might think that with all the talk I give to food in this blog that I would be a big fan of the Food Network. Not so much. Although I love to eat and try different kinds of food, I am not so much a kitchen enthusiast.  Besides, I don't think it's fun to watch people make something that I cannot eat - please pass that to me right through the tv.

So, although I knew who Julia Child was, I don't think I'd ever really watched any of her shows. I did see her kitchen at the Smithsonian, but I really didn't know anything about her. I take that back, I had seen the movie Julie & Julia, so I knew a little bit about her.

Next month our book club is discussing Bob Spitz's biography of Julia which I just finished reading. It is not quite as long as her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (684 pages), but it comes close.

At first I wasn't sure how I was going to get through the book. It starts out very slowly with lots and lots of details that I will never recall with some main points that are repeated throughout the book too much. Julia loved to eat. She loved, loved, loved to eat. Julia had great disagreements with her father. They never saw eye to eye on many issues. They had a hard time talking about issues with each other. Etc.

However, by the time I got to the part where she was writing her first book, living in Paris and other European places, I slowed down and enjoyed the story. I also liked learning about how she put together her first cooking show for WGBH. She got $50 per show for The French Chef, and I think I remember reading that she had to buy the groceries herself. I found her marriage to Paul Child interesting, too.

At this point in the story, I checked out Julie & Julia from the library to rewatch, and I started looking online to see if I could see any of her early shows. For a book I was trudging through at the beginning, I seemed to have become engulfed during the process.

However, after that middle third of the book, I once again started skimming parts. I do not remember how many different iterations of her tv shows that she went through, but they were numerous and all seemed to run together for me.

This book, though comprehensive, needs a great deal more editing. It took Julia years to get her first book right, and she might have been the best editor for this one. Read the 3 star reviews on Amazon which mirror my feelings about the book.

Taking Time to Play

For his birthday last month, I gave H a Star Wars Lego set. He knew that he would have time to put it together over Winter Break, so here we are, and the building has begun this afternoon. I think we need to take more time to just play.

The Getty Villa

Yesterday we took a little field trip to the Getty Villa in Malibu. B is writing his dissertation and one of his chapters has a small section about this museum, but he had never been, so it was a perfect opportunity to go.  We left the cloudy, rainy, cold weather of Claremont and had a perfectly sunny time in Malibu. Of course I was happy to try out my new camera lens. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the museum.

Christmas 2012 Wrap-Up

Reading over my past years' posts on Christmas, I see how helpful it has been to make note of what we did to celebrate since we are entering the years of new traditions, or no tradition at all. This blog post is purely for my own benefit, and I thank you your indulgence.

When I woke up and checked Facebook, I was not surprised to see so many posts about what people had already done - kids with presents, stockings, etc. Now that we have no one in our family under the age of 24, we can take a very leisurely approach to the day. H and I went to the gym and saw about 2 people the whole time. By the time we had returned and showered, it was time for C and B to arrive with muffins, and by 11:30 we had finally managed to open the stocking and gifts as well as have a nice Skype chat with L and C in Oregon.

It was time, then, to have a light lunch of cheese from the Cheese Cave and other delightful nibbles, and then we were not hungry, so we put off working on the turkey to later. We chatted with the family in Iowa, played some Words with Friends, heard that our Colorado family had been stricken with intestinal flu and were lying low for the day.

One thing we enjoyed about the day were looking at old photos from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Here are a few gems from Christmases past.

Santa brought me a new 50 mm lens for my camera, so I had fun taking pictures of the food. C and B really worked on the turkey, hacking at it to "butterfly" it, and when it was all done (in just a few hours), it was quite delicious. 

All in all, I was just happy to have a relaxed day with people I love so very much.

Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

Christmas Eve in the Kitchen

After a rousing yoga class this morning (27 people in one small room! - that's what you get for offering a free class...), daughter C and I put aside the afternoon for baking for tomorrow. We tried to use every baking dish or bowl at least twice. I think we succeeded. First we started with the zwiebach (pictured here), making only a half batch since there will be only four for Christmas dinner tomorrow. We also made our favorite company potatoes (dairy products with some potatoes thrown in for good measure) and started the pumpkin pie. Tomorrow will be the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and brussell sprouts.

If it sounds a lot like Thanksgiving, then you get the idea of what we like around here....

Small Town Life

Having raised our girls and lived in Claremont for over 25 years, it has been fun to see our daughters' friends and peers grow up and become their own people. There's nothing like Christmas to see all these young adults come home (if they aren't here already) and to check in with them.

This weekend I talked to friends whose daughter I knew as a child who is now a new mother herself. I will soon be attending a wedding of a friend who I've known since he was 4. Two of my daughters' very good friends are living in Claremont and singing in the women's choir at church with me. I spoke tonight with one young woman who is in her second year of a PhD program in chemistry and her brother who is living in France doing physics research. Etc.

In church this morning we were treated to the singing of Devon Guthrie, who I've known since her childhood. She is a recent graduate of Julliard and is now a professional opera singer who is happy to be back in Claremont with her family for the holidays.

Holiday P.O.

This is the scene I found when I drove by the post office just now. I believe the reason the people were taking so long to deposit their mail was that each of the four boxes was stuffed to the gills. Note that on Dec. 24 and Dec. 31 the last time for pick up will be 3:00, not 5:00.