Last weekend H and I celebrated ten years together, and some compassionate friends took the kindern off our hands for 32 hours to give us the space to enjoy ourselves. Friday night after depositing kids, we went to a nice tapas bar nearby and ate good things. After that we went home. We like our home. We just don’t get to be in it alone very often. It’s full of things we’d like to enjoy if we weren’t too tired or distracted to do so. Anyway, we finished up the season of Freaks and Geeks that we’d been working through for a few months. We also read the first chapter of Dream Hunters out loud.

The next morning we had planned to go out to West Hollywood for breakfast, but we stumbled aimlessly about for a few minutes when we should have been in the car already, reeling from the unaccustomed freedom/vertigo of being unencumbered of children. It felt like there were a whole lot of things that needed doing, we just couldn’t figure out what they were. It was difficult to absorb the idea that we could just simply walk out the door. Eventually we attained something approximating that dearth of cares that our yet-childless friends operate in and were able to get underway.

We had breakfast at Le Conversation, a bakery/cafe near Sunset and Doheny. H had eggs benedict with filet mignon and was in desayuno heaven. I had huevos rancheros, which I always like, and two or three cups of coffee. Yup. First coffee of the year, and it was kind to me. The bakery specialized in some moist macaroon-like cakes made from macademia-nut flour, and we finished things off with a couple of those.

Next we went to the Schindler House, a historical landmark home that H had been wanting me to see. Now it’s one thing to have someone want you to see a place because they liked it so much, another when that person says you’ve got to see it because they know you would like it. Gosh, you think to yourself, what do I like?

Is it an underground house? No.

Does it have lots of built-ins? No. None, actually.

Fireman’s pole? No.

Is it made of car tires, hay bales or glass bottles? No.

Underwater with glass-cleaning snails? No.

Is it a 4-story tower with a small footprint? No.

Is it a series of connected yurts? No.

Is it all schmancy? No, it’s pretty run-down. I don’t think it was ever schmancy.

Good.

Here’s a picture from the front/side.

I should state now that this is the second time writing all this out. The first time I was quite a bit past this point and managed to close the browser tab that this was on. So at this point I’ll just paste in the architect’s description of what he was shooting for, rather than use my unpracticed architectural vocabulary:

Each room in the house represents a variation on the constructive architectural theme. This theme corresponds to the principle requirements for protecting a tent: a protected back, an open front, an open fireplace and a roof. Each room has a concrete wall at the rear and a large front opening onto the garden with sliding doors. The shape of the rooms and their relationship to the patios and various roof levels creates a totally new spatial concept between the interior and the garden.

This picture shows part of the back of the building.

Here are some good pictures of the place.
And a 360-degree panopticon tour of the garden patio.

After the Schindler House we went to Amoeba Music. Very large music store where all the true believers shop. Hardcore tweed in the jazz section, severe 40-to-50-something-ness in the folk music section (where we did spend some time looking at Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span albums), committed hairstyles in the punk section, etc. We spent the bulk of our couple hours there in the European music section looking for things that we’d like as much as Warsaw Village (whose music is described as “a powerful and melodic screaming”) and Nordisk Sang. The thing about Amoeba is that it’s the size of a superstore, like walking into a Fry’s Electronics just for music. But the place is also personable, with a lot of people who know a whole lot about music happy to talk to you. And again, the sheer volume of what they have blew me away. Do I like Palestinian pop music? Choose from 30+ albums. Looking for old KCRW compilations? Went home with two of them. And their used section is as large as their new section.

You know, it’s not always easy to keep having fun together when you’re trying to manage all these areas of life, family and work, but we managed to that day. Thanks go out to those who helped make it happen.