"Driver? Driver? What's this on my hand?"

My studiomate and best friend Arabella went to TNNA with me. As someone who used to live in Los Angeles, she finds Rachel Zoe hilarious. We’ve got a long-running joke about the RZ parody below, and referenced it frequently while we were in town.

I thought it was that bird again.
So imagine our surprise when we happened upon RZ’s apartment building on our way from a friend’s house to something else! Then the “what’s this on my hand?” jokes just kept on going…
What a week. I can’t sum it up any other way!
Jedimom took this photo of my birthday cake. You see, the lovely lovelies of Unwind in Burbank got me a cake for my birthday since it happened to be the same day as their Ravelry party. The cake was from Porto’s, an out-of-this-world bakery with deep-fried potato balls in addition to dangerously delicious cakes. Imagine something tasty. Now wrap that something in mashed potatoes. Now deep-fry it. You’ve got potato balls from Porto’s.

Right around 4:40 in this video you get to see Stephanie, the owner of Unwind, announce my birthday — and yes, everyone sang. It was awesome. Thank you all. The classes I taught there were so incredibly fun, and everyone did an amazing job. I am waiting to see how all the yarn from the dyeing classes turned out, because there were a few skeins that just blew me away while they were still damp.
I had over thirty students in my social media class at TNNA, and a sizeable number in my publishing class, too (but not too big to really dig deep and discuss things in detail, which I always love to do). I managed to cover the entire showfloor in one day, a small miracle in itself, and catch up with a lot of friends and colleagues, the best part of any show.
What else did we do while we were in town? A short list of food and drink: Saints & Sinners, The Bigfoot Lodge, Good Luck Bar, La Provence, a restaurant located in infamous actor Fatty Arbuckle‘s former house, the crow bar in Corona del Mar (glorious food there!), Pepe’s with former Yarn Forward colleague Alex, Chronic Tacos in Dana Point, Canaletto at Fashion Island, and In-and-Out Burger, the most glorious burger of all.
We also went looking for David Lynch on Mulholland Drive, found Crispin Glover’s house in Silverlake (with ridiculous photos to prove it, and countless references to this and this, and singing “Clowny Clown Clown” to each other).
One of the last times I was in Los Angeles for TNNA, I specifically stayed in Torrance so I could find the exteriors they used to shoot Buffy’s house and school in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yes, I am a nerd), and this time we got to see the exterior of the building used for Angel’s hotel (double nerd).
On my birthday we ended up in Thai Town late at night — so late we nearly talked ourselves into getting tattoos (don’t worry, we didn’t). We also went to a great gallery show at La Luz de Jesus. I came home to a new garbage disposal and faucet (yay!) and a lot of snow (boo!), and that was that.
Let’s put it this way, I was glad to have a day to recuperate at Arabella’s mom’s house after the show without having to teach. I was totally zonked! Given that I taught classes 8-10, 1-4 and 5-8 on Sunday, you can hardly blame me…

Tagged with: Events, TNNA