25 is O.K. (L.A.H.O.M.A.)!

Laura came in town for my birthday this weekend! She flew in Thursday night, we spent Friday at the beach and then cooked dinner with Chuck. On Saturday we went to the Getty Villa, then did some wine tasting and played horseshoes up in Malibu, we finished up the day by going to see the musical Oklahoma! at our local playhouse - it was awesome! It was a quick trip (she flew back to Atlanta this morning) but we had so much fun, thanks for coming out Laura!

"My Tock A" Shrooms

Maitake Mushroom

Other common name(s): maitake D-fraction, maitake, maitake extract, beta-glucan, Scientific/medical name(s): Grifola frondosa

Maitake Mushrooms have magical healing powers and sell for upwards of $20 an ounce. We just happened to find about 20 pounds of these amazingly sparse fungi on our property today. They were growing amongst the oaks and we happened upon them while walking the trails with Carly and Cody Ryder. As always, Rob was only a phone call away to verify our amazing find.

Friday Night Lights

When Paige invited me to visit Redfield Manor for a weekend of fresh eggs, kayaking, high fashion and dancing, I really thought I had made it. But her inviting me to post on the blog has taken it to another level.

I recently took Paige along to one of my "supervision duties" at the high school that employs me (name withheld so that no student happens upon this quaint family blog). No, I did not take her to the homecoming dance, but we did attend a football game. Friday night lights are pretty big this year as our team went into this game ranked 17 in the nation.

Now I don't know about you, but my own high school's football team drew about 300 fans a week for 48 minutes of bad handoffs, holding penalties and sprained ankles. In California they do it a little bit differently. We drew about 10,000 fans to the college stadium at which we compete and the game was broadcast live in HD. The players came through for Paige, running away to a 31-0 halftime lead and eventually winning 38-28. The team finishes each game with the famous "Hut Drill," which we taped for your enjoyment. Also featured is one of Paige's favorite cheers done by our very creative, very hormonal, student section.

Harry Stonefield dives with the big boys!

Steve, Dan & I had an awesome adventure to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico last week. We saw lots of sharks, mostly the feared great whites, plus a couple makos. Kinda strange thinking that we were offering ourselves up as human sushi! This was a super trip, all of which was made possible by "Horizon Charters" out of San Diego.

Love Dad

I Love Me Some Oboe

Chuck has never been to the Hollywood Bowl so this past weekend I convinced him to come with me to 'Blame it on Rio' which was a night of Brazilian music! He said he knew I had reached the correct level of tipsy when I stopped shimmying long enough to lean over and tell him "I love me some oboe." I would also like to point out that at this moment in time the sky was full of fireworks and the stage was filled with dancers wearing head pieces similar to what elephants wear at the circus - can you blame me?

Tomato Harvest

Mom came to visit me in July and had just finished reading a book I sent her called Animal Vegetable Miracle. It is a great book that will inspire you to start a garden, unless of course you live in a tiny apartment in the middle of Los Angeles (or New York City for that matter, Katie you are officially exempt) so I had been hounding mom to plant something in her yard. She kept making the excuse that gardens are difficult to plan and time/energy consuming to maintain, which I did not fully believe and which resulted in a trip to Target and this:That is mom planting me my very own tomato plant. Now she had her doubts about my abilities to care for the plant (due to my earlier statements about the ease of gardening) and so she left plenty of these scattered around my apartment:So for the past month, with the exception of a few weeks here and there spent out of town, I have made my way out to the only forgotten patch of earth for miles around with my blender full of fresh water (it was the only container large enough) to hydrate my little tomato plant. After a month of this I walk out this morning to find this: Whats that you say? You are having difficulty spotting the fruits (or should I say fruit) of my labour? Well lets have a closer look: No, you are not mistaken, there is only one tomato on my plant, but surely you reason that after an entire bag of miracle grow and a swimming pool worth of water (toted out one blender full at a time) this must be the most giant tomato the world has ever seen... well lets put it in a shot with some perspective:Perhaps I will have better luck next year.

Camp on Catalina

After getting home from NY, I was in lockdown mode for two weeks as I tried to cram in some last minute studying for the GRE. The GRE is basically the grad school version of the SAT, meaning that it covers the same basic math and verbal skills, the only problem is that it was a lot easier to test on things you learned in high school when you were a high school senior as opposed to about six years out (six years that included turning 21 mind you) when you have finally managed to forget just about all of it. So that was pretty painful, but I soldiered through and as a reward I got to spend a week on Catalina! I actually spent the week volunteering at a summer camp for kids with heart disease. They were very strict with us about posting photos of the kids and information about the camp online so I won't go into much detail but suffice it to say that it was a very fun week filled with climbing walls, snorkeling, archery, campfires and just about every other camp activity you can imagine. It made me miss Illahee but I was happy to put my nursing skills to use in such a fun way. You know I couldn't resist taking a couple pictures, so here is one that I think is pretty safe:This little guy is in our Island Survival activity and he is demonstrating to the group how to use "The Target". The Target is for disposing of #2 on highly traveled trails where leaving it behind would be detrimental to the environment :)

Knives

I have been lost in the abyss of work and life since getting home from Julie's birthday party but since my family is so blog friendly you have already heard about that! So what have I been up to in the last month? Well after the visit with dad and Julie, Chuck quickly became disenchanted with his current knife situation and decided to upgrade to a set by Victorinox, which happens to be Julie's new employer! This is the same company that makes Swiss army knives... needless to say, they know a thing or two about knives and after a week of cutting with them, Chuck could not seem to go back home to anything less. So the new set has arrived and we have been cooking up a storm including some pineapple on the grill last week - thanks Julie!One more thing, take a look at our party favors (from Julie's birthday party). Thats right, a Redfield Manor swiss army knife.