Birthday Weekend
Since Monday birthdays are stupid, Julie and I celebrated over the preceding weekend, and it went down something like this: After work on Friday I sped home and changed and then we headed downtown to check into the Standard Hotel where Julie had booked a swanky room for the night as my birthday present. Even though it was all of 7 miles away from our Hollywood home, it felt like we were on vacation (and we even got to test-out the new luggage that we bought for our upcoming Fall road trip.) After some brief relaxing in the room we decided to hit the Daily Grill for dinner since it was literally across the street (our room actually overlooked it.) Dinner was tasty and I had a damn fine Manhattan to start off the evening. Unfortunately we were unable to save stomach real-estate for the hot-fudge cheesecake, so we just had some espresso and then headed top the kick-ass rooftop bar for drinks. The DJ was kinda sucky, and all the make-out “pods” were occupied, but we snagged a couch and settled in for a while.

Saturday the plan was to hit the Olivera Street market, but first we needed coffee so we walked down a black to starbucks and on the way back to the hotel decide to explore the Central Library which was very, very big and very cool. So after taking some pictures of the grounds and getting new library cards we retrieved the car and headed to the oldest street in LA. Olivera Street was cool, if a little “touristy” and I had the best churro EVER. We finished up a lot sooner that we had planed on so ended up driving around the fashion/jewelry/toy districs for a bit before eating lunch at Philipes for the OG French dips then headed back to Hollywood for a nap. My mom came up that evening and we headed to El Cholo, one of LA’s oldest Mexican restaurants (open since the 20s!) where I attempted to consume the “Taste of History” (Enchilada + Tamale + rolled taco + chile relleno + rice and beans.) I think I started to hallucinate about 2/3 of the way through it, but it was DAMN good.

Sunday was very low-key: sleep late, get coffee, drive to Burbank and try to find new shoes (I failed, but I did get a kick ass shirt that I’m looking forward to wearing tonight.) And speaking of tonight, I’ll be gathering a posse to go to an as of yet undecided restaurant for food and libations!