On Friday after work, I had planned to run, but I had some stuff to finish at work and quickly lost my window of light [on a side note, my getting to work early and running while there is still light in the afternoon is working out pretty well- except for days like this]. After work, we were going to go to a beer tasting event at Blue Palms, but ended up just going for drinks at Lola’s instead. Then we decided it was finally time we tried Oki Dog, a hot dog stand on Fairfax near us. And it was exactly as expected, haha.

On Saturday morning, we hiked Solstice Canyon [6 miles or so]. We found ourselves reminiscing about Boston on the trail, and then we randomly ran into someone that G went to high school with- It’s a small world sometimes. Anyway, it is probably one of the most interesting hiking trails I’ve been on in LA. There are ruins of an abandoned house tucked into the canyon that was mostly consumed by fire in 1982, but you can still see many parts of it- the fireplaces, oven, some walls. It’s definitely fun to imagine what the floor plan was based on the ruins- it kind of felt like stepping into Pompeii again. The best part was the waterfall that ran through the site, and a perfectly-intact Virgin Mary statue. We probably spent about an hour there exploring before hiking back out. The rest of Saturday was pretty lazy- watched the thrilling Oregon game [go ducks!], worked on a gift, tried to do some online xmas/birthday shopping [unsuccessfully].

On Sunday, I went to the farmers market for some Thanksgiving shopping, then came home and planned the menu with Jackie. Note to self: do not plan a Thanksgiving menu while hungry. Ha! Our problem this year was that we didn’t want to give up on the dishes we loved from last year, but still wanted to make new dishes, too. Which means that we ended up with an even bigger menu than last year! [George and Nathan started to make some comments from the couch but then decided better of it.]

After that I went to Michael Levine, a huge fabric store in the fashion district downtown. Unfortunately I was really hoping to go to the Loft store above it [which sells fabric by the pound] but I found out they aren’t open on Sundays. So I ended up in the main store instead… so huge and amazing, I could spend hours in there. Since they close early, I ended up not having enough time to pick buttons and snaps AND fabric, but I got a few yards to start some projects and will definitely be going back. They have good yarn too, ah!

Came home and made a shopping list for the rest of Thanksgiving, then went to the store. Between the two of us dividing the list and tag teaming, we hammered it out in less than 30 minutes. Just need a few items from WF, but we’re mostly ready to go. After making some dinner/lunch, I sewed on the buttons/knitted button holes for my mom’s cowl. I was initially going to seam it together and just make the buttons decorative, but then I realized my mom would hate to put it over her head and decided to make them functional. I’m totally pleased with the result, especially for such an on-the-fly quick knit- I’ll show you photos soon! [Photo editing/posting is one thing I did not do this weekend… I at least wanted to get through the rest of my Seattle batch!]

Looking forward to two four-day weeks coming up… though I definitely wish they were shorter.