Family...

My family is here visiting and we are having the best time. We are hanging out and relaxing and cooking and eating and reading magazines and paperbacks and renting movies... and it has been just wonderful. We went to the Lake Shrine in The Palisades and walked the beautiful grounds of the Self Realization Fellowship. It is a retreat in the city for those of all faiths and walks of life founded by the late Paramahansa Yogananda, also known as the Yogi responsible for bringing Yoga to the West and the author of the infamous Autobiography of a Yogi. They had a museum with all these great old pictures of him and various Hollywood luminaries and also Gandhi, whom he initiated into Kriya Yoga. It is an amazing piece of history and the free grounds are a wonderful gift to the people of Los Angeles. After that we strolled the beach in Malibu, had dinner at a great Vegan restaurant called Fatty's in Eagle Rock. The next day we hit up the Farmers Market for fresh produce, window shopped at The Grove, Beverly Hills, La Brea and made dinner at home. There have been lots of sweet treats like cupcakes, Pinkberry and Kettle Corn, long walks, laughs, great conversations and the successful hanging of light fixtures!

My parents were determined to give us a housewarming gift, and so now I am the proud owner of a beautiful bamboo tray for our coffee table, water glasses and a brand new ridged skillet, which I am going to grill our veggies on for dinner tonight!

There is a certain kind of comfortable relaxing that I can only do with my family and my oldest and dearest friends. The kind of hanging out where we can all be doing your own thing together. And now that we have a much bigger apartment...we can all do our own thing a lot more comfortably...and our togetherness doesn't have to be... um...quite...so...literal.

We have one more day together and I am going to savor every minute of it. As of Thursday it's back to the office and self imposed writing deadlines!