Magic Castle Visit

Monday night Aimee and I made a visit to the Magic Castle, a private magic club in Hollywood that is typically open only to members and their guests. We are lucky to know a guy who performs there occasionally and he was kind enough to put us on his guest list for the night.

The 'castle' is actually an old Victorian-style mansion built over a hundred years ago and now serves as a performance venue for magicians and as an Academy of Magic. There are a number of different rooms and theatres of different sizes inside the mansion that feature various performers throughout the night.

In this picture above, Aimee was selected to be seated in a prime spot for a show in the close-up gallery. That was a lot of fun as she got to participate in the act that involved some coin tricks.

(My trick was getting the picture taken without being noticed - there's no photography allowed in the club beyond the lobby. I think my experience taking photos at Pebble Beach, where it's also not allowed, helped out here.)

We took a picture in the lobby before we left. It was a fun night and we'll look forward to going back for another visit someday.

Early Christmas

Santa came a little early to our house this weekend.

He had to squeeze a queen size mattress down the chimney.

Now we are sleeping on a new bed for the first time in almost 15 years!

Aimee's Day in Court

Last week Aimee fulfilled her civic duty by serving as a juror on a criminal trial.

She called in for duty each day the week before and was told not to report. But on Friday she was summoned to the juror pool and ended up getting selected for a case that was set to begin the following Monday.

The trial lasted just two days, a simple assault case with no witnesses other than the two drunks who were involved. In the end there wasn't enough convincing evidence to convict and the jury voted to acquit.

Aimee was Juror #10 and she was selected by her fellow jurors to be the foreman. Naturally, she did a great job and yesterday she got her reward:  a check from the county for $36!

A Win is a Win

Saturday Aimee and I got to watch the ND-Va. Tech game and it was a tough one to watch at times.

Not as bad as the Michigan game, that one was a disaster. At least then there was a World Series game we could switch to.

But this one sure looked like it was not going to work out - even on the final drive when they needed to convert multiple 4th downs to keep going. It was a real nail-biter and we're glad they won but such a close game against a 17-point underdog is not what you hope for.

They may win the rest of their games (and we hope they do) but it's clear they're not ready to take on the big guys again anytime soon.

Morning Fire

Good thing I left the house very early this morning. This was the view heading south on the 405 with a fire that had just started near the Getty Center in Brentwood.

The wind started howling last night before we went to bed and we're expecting fire conditions all week. We've already been keeping an eye on nearby fires that have left us with some very smoky air.

These two  pictures I took from the house last Thursday. The first is smoke from a fire in Santa Clarita and the second from another fire that broke out much closer to home but was handled pretty quickly fortunately.

We're lucky that so far the winds and flames are not nearly on the scale that they are in Northern California right now but as long as the wind is blowing there's always concern.

Aimee's boss called her before she left the house and advised her to work from home today.

Driveway Sale

A few weeks ago Aimee and I partnered with a couple of the neighbors to put on a garage sale.

We had been meaning for some time to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we didn't need or never used. We talked to the lady across the street (whose house is in the picture above, behind Aimee) and the people next door to us and we collaborated on a multi-driveway sale.

Aimee made some signs and we put a note on Nextdoor about the sale to take place on a Saturday morning at 8am. When I opened the garage door at 6:45 to start putting everything out there was already a guy waiting for us who wanted to buy some of our stuff.

Before long a whole bunch of other people showed up and by 8am we had already sold about half of the items! People continued to arrive through the morning and continued to keep buying stuff. I was surprised that anybody wanted some of these things. Amazing what people will buy. It certainly made for a lot less stuff to take down to Goodwill later than I anticipated.

Each of us got rid of a bunch of stuff and we know that if we ever do it again we'll have to be ready to go before 7am!

Grapefruit

We planted some citrus trees a few years ago and they are starting to mature and produce fruit for us.

Last year was the first time getting grapefruit and they were really good. This year the grapefruit tree is producing again. Not quite as many as last year but the fruit are huge - and very tasty.

Also, an orange tree we planted at the same time seemed to be lagging behind the others and we thought maybe it was going to be a runt. Well, that tree had a growth spurt in the last year and caught up to the others. This season we got our first oranges off that tree and they were very sweet and juicy.

This picture below is part of our bounty from last year off a mature orange tree that was here already when we moved in. We had so many last year I had to give away dozens of them.