in full-on feast mode

oh come on.  you think after ten years of posting all the random stuff we do i was gonna let a little storage space issue stop me from blogging?  heh.  i may find myself skipping mondays here and there because that's the old lady's day off and we often spend it doing something fun together, but for the most part you're stuck with my ramblings for a long time to come.

okay, so for thanksgiving this year, we decided to do something a little different.  well, a lot different.  instead of spending the day in the kitchen working on a full traditional spread, we decided to break bread at bouchon in beverly hills.  since the old lady was heading to her dad's and we were invited to a friend's house later on that evening, our reservations were at lunchtime.

the old lady and i started off the day with a kick ass barre class to get a head start on burning all those calories, and i still chuckle at the shirt i got to wear:

and then we headed home, showered and got ready to head out to the west side.  there was pretty much no traffic on that holiday afternoon, and we were in the elevator heading up to the restaurant right on time.

they were offering a set menu for the day, with several choices for three courses.

we ordered a charcuterie plate to start our meal, and it was hit and miss.  the sliced meats were delicious, but none of us were fans of that paté.  the old lady's special friend dubbed it "UNfancy feast," and it really was very cat food-ish.  blech.

the first courses arrived - the cabbage, ham and potato soup for the kids:

salad with goat cheese for the hub:

and...salmon tartare for me.  apparently i was on a roll with the cat food.

the bean and her sister had ordered steak frites as their main course:

and the rest of us shared a family-style traditional thanksgiving meal.  there was white and dark sliced turkey and gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans and stuffing.

the hub's plate looked much prettier than mine, so i swiped his picture.

we were all highly amused at the server who for some reason unknown to us kept coming over to randomly serve iced tea to everyone at the table except for the hub, who was the only one who had actually ordered any.

dessert options were simple:  pecan or apple pie and bouchons a la mode.

this location is set to close at the end of the year, and if this meal was any indication of the food - well, i guess it's probably a good thing.  we were all pretty disappointed with almost everything, which was a big bummer.  we managed a quick group photo before we left:

and downstairs in the courtyard, the bean took this for us:

later on, we headed to our friends' home down the street and got to partake in some extra delicious home cooked food - starting off with our friend's famous crock pot hot chocolate, thick and rich and creamy and totally worth that barre class i'd died at that morning.

and i got to spend some quality time with this sweet little munchkin, who i hadn't seen aside from pictures on social media in about a year.

all in all, it was a fun filled thanksgiving shared with people we love, and that's what matters anyway. right?

could this be goodbye?

a couple of months ago, i got texts from lilcee and dailygluttony about an upcoming exhibit at the broad museum that was to be an expanded version of yayoi kusama's infinity mirror room.  the girls and i had gotten to see that last year, and so i figured i might as well join in on the ticket presale for this new exhibit.

well, presale ended up being absolute madness.  all three of us were stuck in the online virtual waiting room for what seemed like eons, with a bazillion people ahead of us.  and of course, when it seemed like our turn was finally coming up...the tickets sold out completely.  bah.

a second chance at tickets about a month or so later ended up with the old lady managing to snag some for us to visit the museum during thanksgiving weekend.  and so a day after spending some time at the happy place, we found ourselves battling downtown l.a. traffic again to get to the broad museum.

we'd chosen a later entry time with the hopes of avoiding long lines and huge crowds of people, and since we'd arrived about ten minutes ahead of time we somehow found ourselves right at the front of the line for the 5:45 ticket holders.  score!

it didn't take long for the line to get pretty long behind us.

right at 5:45, we were then allowed to walk into the building and join the line to enter the same room that the girls and i had experienced before.  the giant pink polka-dotted balls were quite the attraction.

and of course, there was time for a couple of selfies as we waited.

as we neared the front of the line, we came across the rules for the exhibit.

since i'm not very good at this art thing, i stopped to peruse the explanations of each exhibit.

when you know that you only have a 30-second window to take as many pictures as you can in a room, it's kind of a lot of pressure!  most of mine ended up blurry, but i got at least one.  and then when the room went dark, i knew our time was almost up.

and then it was time to move into the next room...which required standing in another line.  at least it gave us time to read the description on the wall.

the next infinity room was inside this:

and was filled with more of those pink and black polka-dotted balloons, which we were instructed not to touch.

if 30 seconds inside that ball wasn't enough for you, there was a second, smaller ball near the exit that you could peek into for a look at a miniature version of what you'd just experienced.

this is what we saw next:

and then as we got into the next line, i spied this.  hmmm.

and in the room itself, this.

and outside, even more.

deep thoughts:

the next exhibit was not one to walk into, but to peek at through an opening on either side of it.  this is what we got to see:

 more pretty lights (and my standard dorky pose).

the next room didn't allow photos or video inside, and you had to leave your phones and cameras in this bin:

it was rather similar to the other rooms, though - bright orange neon pumpkins with black polka dots and mirrors and i admit that by this time my eyes were starting to glaze over.  the hub had completely lost interest by now and didn't even bother to go into this room.  heh.

although we were all pretty amused/bemused by this:

and the next room was filled with pieces like this.

and then finally, the last room.  i'd heard about this one, thanks to a post from sanrio that showed a tiny hello kitty figurine somewhere amongst the bright whiteness of the room.  when each visitor was handed a small sheet of colorful polka dot stickers and invited to place them anywhere in the room.

when the exhibit first opened, it was completely white - no color anywhere, just clean and crisp and bare.  but after what must have been thousands of visitors by the time we got there, it looked like this:

the bean had fun with those stickers, and the old lady managed to find poor little hello kitty hiding on a bookshelf, covered in stickers.

i think the hub was just happy to be at the end of the exhibit.  while he'd pooh-pooh'ed the lack of actual art at the happy place, it seemed that the real thing wasn't really his thing either.  and from the lack of actual explanations i provided in this post...it's also not mine.  ha!

i actually have a few more pictures that i wanted to share, but it seems that after ten years of blogging (!!!), i've reached my limit for uploading photos to the blogger site.  ack!  i'm trying to figure out how to fix it - i've actually purchased extra storage space and am adjusting settings to size down photos that i upload from here on out.  hopefully i can get it fixed in time for tomorrow's post.

or this could be my last hurrah.  who knows.
SaveSave