Tricia

Last night we celebrated the birthdays of Aly & AJ with a big bash at Les Deux in Hollywood. My girlfriend fiancée and her cohorts planned the whole thing and it was pretty rad. The girls made a grand entrance on a caravan of roaring motorcycles, the Plain White T’s performed, and I spent most of the time eating sushi from the Geisha House and visiting with Frankie and Becky. MTV was there filming for “SuperSweet 16: The Movie” (debuts July 8 on MTV), so the paparazzi was out in full force. (I posted some photos to my flickr account, but there are a ton more at wireimage.)

At the top of a tall, round building casting a shadow on the highway — right where Sunset meets the 405 — is a restaurant called West. I ate there Friday night with my girlfriend fiancée and her mom. The view of the city is just incredible and the bone-in New York strip was one of the top ten steaks I’ve ever had.

Last night on my way home from work I stopped at La Bruschetta to pick up some of their excellent vegetable soup for my sick girlfriend fiancée. We’ve eaten at La Bruschetta a few dozen times over the years. It’s on Westwood Blvd, just on the other side of Santa Monica from my house. When I attempted to pay, the waiter — who is the owner’s son — wouldn’t let me. He said he could tell that Tricia was sick when she called to order and it was on the house. How great is that?

Unfortunately the chef accidentally gave me a bowl of some other soup. I didn’t realize it until I got home and she told me it was the wrong one. We called them and they apologized profusely. I jumped in the truck and returned to grab the correct soup. Since I was already there, I asked if they could make me some penne arrabiata, too. I forgot that the arrabiata is no longer on the menu there. Not only did he have the chef make me an order and add some breadsticks, but he also refused to let me pay and insisted that I take home two great bottles of wine. Now that is how you earn a good reputation.

I am sure that there are still plenty of people in the world that don’t know this yet, so I have a bit of an announcement to make. I am now officially off the market.

It feels a bit awkward to write about it here, which is strange because I have used this site to talk about almost everything else that’s happened to me in the last seven years. And getting engaged is certainly a biggie. Most everyone knows that Tricia and I have been dating for about six years now.

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The PicoPad® is pure genius. It’s a pad of sticky notes — with a tiny pen — in a case the size of a credit card that you can easily slip it into your wallet. The PicoPad and its refills are also incredibly inexpensive. I am always scribbling notes on the backs of business cards and receipts in my wallet, so this is a product near and dear to my heart. My girlfriend gave me one last week and I’ve already used it several times.

I love books, for example, and can’t enter a bookstore without finding more than a few that I am dying to read. Instead of spending megabucks at the brick and mortar, though, here’s what I do: I jot down the ISBN and then, when I get home, find the title at Amazon. If I simply must have it, I’ll grab a used copy there for much, much less. Otherwise I add it to my wishlist for a rainy day.

The first thing I did after crossing the marathon finish line was call my girlfriend so she could come get me. It was the last call I would make with my trusty RAZR. My hands were slick with sweat and the phone was coated with the salt and grime that had evaporated from my body during the 26.2 mile run. When it smashed to the ground it shattered as if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. The stomping feet of dozens of runners crushed what was left of it into the asphalt. I would have laughed if I’d had the strength. Instead I just sort of stared at it and made a sort of grunted smirk.

On Monday morning I went to the Cingular store near my office and bought a new RAZR. I got the same model for $100 (with a $50 mail-in rebate). It took me a few minutes of trudging through the Motorola site, but eventually I found the instructions to pair my Bluetooth headset to the phone.

For Valentine’s Day this year I enrolled my girlfriend and myself for a class at Los Angeles’ coolest cooking class: hipcooks. Our class was “The Surprise Guest”, the only one available when I registered. We made an endive appetizer, roasted honey pear salad with tarragon dressing, pistachio-crusted swordfish with a light curry sauce, herbed couscous, and for dessert a chocolate bark with poached pear decorated with raspberry coulis. Our instructor, Alison, was wildly perky and made the experience incredibly bouncy. We had a deliciously good time and I would gladly do it again.

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On Saturday morning I ran a quick 7 miles at 6 am, came home, and told my girlfriend to get ready for an adventure. We packed the truck and headed for wine country (photos). The President’s Day traffic was brutal so it took us almost 3 hours to go what should have only taken an hour and a half. We had a terrific time, though. The Santa Barbara vineyards — of Sideways fame — are just as much fun as going to Napa and they’re only a short drive from Los Angeles. First we hit the Firestone Winery and its sister vineyard, Curtis Winery. Tastings are rough for me because I don’t like any reds, but Firestone had some wonderful whites. I bought a delicious chardonnay and two awesome sauvignon blancs for less than $50 total.

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I keep meaning to write about how great my new notebook toy is. My girlfriend gave me a Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 4000 for Christmas this year and I love it. It’s got an omni-directional scroll wheel (which is also a button) and a side-button, so it has all the functionality of my normal mouse. The slate-grey toy has a USB dongle which fits into a slot on its bottom so you don’t lose it. The dongle also serves as the power switch; when it’s plugged into your laptop the mouse is “on”, when it’s fitted into the bottom of the mouse it’s “off”. The mouse is powered by a single AA battery and mine has been chugging along for more than a month now. It’s small enough to toss into my laptop briefcase and — of course — you don’t have to worry about a 2′ wire getting tangled with all your pens and the random stuff in your bag.

Last week my girlfriend and I had dinner at Cucina Paradiso. It’s a great little Italian restaurant that shares a building with The Palmer Room on Motor Ave. The Palmer Room is a bar / club with a tiny stage for live music; Their website is fairly bland, but the bar itself is quite cozy and a perfect spot to catch a show. We were there to see Landon Band perform. We got to the bar a bit late and only managed to catch the last three or four songs, but I liked what I heard. The lead singer has definitely got some pipes and she put on a helluva good show even though there were only maybe a dozen other people in the audience. It’s tricky because the whole thing is done in Flash, but if you work at it you can download three of the seven songs from their debut album from the official band website.

We found yet another fabulous restaurant last night: Memphis. (map). This “Southern Style Dining” establishment is located in Hollywood in “the last remaining residential house … left on this highly commercialized street.” It’s quirky and fun to eat in a restaurant that used to be a house. The lighting is very romantic and the food was excellent. I had the jambalaya appetizer and the fried chicken and ribs combo and — I have to tell you — it was the best piece of chicken I’ve ever had. Dinner for four, including appetizers, plenty of libations, and a nice gratuity, came to about $300, which is really not that bad for a good place in LA. The service was only so-so, but I think the place was a bit understaffed; it was a slow Wednesday night. If you have a hankering for a taste of N’awlins and you’re stuck in SoCal, I highly recommend it.

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Last night my girlfriend and her stepmother went to a wine-tasting class at The Wine House in Westwood. They recruited me as a designated driver and after I picked them up we went to Pastina Trattoria for a late dinner. Pastina has quickly become my favorite Italian place in Los Angeles. It is almost sacrilegiously inexpensive for this city and the food is fabulous. I had the Penne Arrabiata for the third time in a row and couldn’t have asked for a better meal. If you’re ever near UCLA and dying for a delicious pasta dish, this is the place to go.

To celebrate straight As on her report card, I took my girlfriend to Robert De Niro’s Ago Restaurant Friday night. This lovely little Italian eatery is on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. We didn’t have reservations, but after a few glasses of wine at the very crowded bar, the maître d’ managed to squeeze us into a table near the back. The food was absolutely fabulous and the atmosphere in the place was just terrific. The service was fast and friendly and my only regret is that we were both too stuffed to sample any of the tremendous desserts on display. If you’re looking for a good place to eat in Los Angeles, I highly recommend it.

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Last night Tricia and I saw Von Cotton perform at Molly Malone’s. They are an awesome new country act playing in Los Angeles. We saw them the first time at some dive honky-tonk just south of Marina Del Rey a year or so ago. Back then they mostly were doing classic country covers. Now they’ve got a slew of original songs and they’re really fantastic. The lead singer has an amazing voice and their stuff is seriously good.