Then, on to Dad's cemetery. We placed rocks on the gravestone taken from our yard...it just seemed right to leave something from our place there. We talked a bit about how life is going, and then left.
We followed that with a meal at some restaurant off the I-405 at Nordhoff. It was Argentinean cuisine. The food was very good, but the service was abyssmal, and then, to top it off, they had the chutzpah to log the tip on the bill at 15% before we even were handed it. I'd planned on giving more like 8% because of the terrible service, but I just had to laugh. Still, the food WAS very good.
Then, up the Sepulveda pass to go to the Skirball Cultural Center. We took in the various displays, including the delightful Noah's Ark piece, but I went there purposefully, as my father had gifted the Center with materials from his father's pharmacy in a display relating what the immigrant Jews had done when they arrived in America. There's also a photo of my Dad on a bicycle in front of Grandpa's pharmacy in the 1930s. I was on something of a spiritual and ancestral quest, you see.
We wandered into Santa Monica, and then finally got in touch with friends who directed us to a going away party for
sewyrn and his fiance, Mika (sp?). We had a pleasant time, and it was nice to see them again. I admit that we gave sewyrn something of a roasting, but it seemed all in fun.Then, it was off home; I zombied in front of the TV, clearing several shows off the DVR. Before bed, I came up to the computer room to try to do a better job of loading the Reader, while catching up on emails, which today seemed to be primarily birthday greetings, unsurprisingly enough. I'm just about done, now, but gosh, it's gotten late!
And that was my birthday.