Lines at the Polls

Long lines at the polling station down our street. They moved pretty fast. There were three precincts voting at this location.

Family Off to Polls

Heading out to our neighborhood polling station. Caro was dropping off her mail-in ballot. I needed to stand in line to vote. It was a beautiful morning and Henry was in a good mood, until he realized that he had to wait in line next to me while standing outside a playground. He went crazy wanting to play in the wet sand.

Turkey Burgers with Tomato Jam

From Epicurious.com, this recipe for Turkey Burgers with Tomato Jam is really awesome and easy to make. For sure the best turkey burger I've ever had, and Caro agreed, too.

Feta and olives (ingredients in and on top of the burger) came from the neighborhood Elat Market on Pico Boulevard. Grilling out on a Monday evening is a different way to start a great week.

My favorite short quote about Elat on Yelp: "Parking's a bitch and you will get manhandled by middle-aged ladies."

Expo Line New Aerial Station

The new Expo Line will now have its terminus even closer to my neighborhood, now ending at an aerial station spanning Venice at Robertson. According to an update on the BuildExpo.org web site, in April, the Metro Board adopted the Venice/Robertson aerial station and structure as part of the Expo Phase 1 project. The Board also increased the project budget by $54 million to a new project budget of $862.3 million.

They haven't updated the maps to reflect the new station location being further west than the originally planned Washington & National. Also, I think it still remains to be seen whether USC will have a station right next to Exposition Park. The maps still list it as optional.

News from Preuss Road

There's a new house going up on our street, which these days is a good sign for our corner of West L.A. There are a few tear-down worthy old stucco bungalows on the street, and frankly the more of them get torn down to build multi-million dollar homes, the better for us. The good news is this home already has the solar panel array being built on the roof, and the window installs are high quality. It's always interesting to see change happen, as it's been happening pretty slowly. Robertson Boulevard is getting cleaned up a little; the best news of late is the arrival of Dolce Isola, the Ivy's bakery that opened up this year. Hopefully we'll see some more upgrades on our rather disappointing offerings on Robertson.

Expo line

Sorry for the bad photo. I was trying to show early construction over by USC for the Expo Line light rail that the MTA is building from downtown to near my house. The line will run from downtown, by USC (including the Galen Center) and Exposition Park (home of the Natural History Museum, the Olympic Memorial Coliseum and the California Science Center) and then through kind of some rough territory to Culver City.

Carrrrrrrrr!

Hacky Sack in my street, February on a sunny L.A. afternoon. Sometimes I think my street feels a little crappy. I have to clean up bags of Del Taco thrown out of car windows sometimes and stray dog shit out of my yard, but my friend Wendy said recently that my street felt like a neighborhood. There are usually people grilling, walking their kids on bikes, walking to temple or their dogs. There are Sikhs (there's an ashram at the end of my street) jogging by my house, and the Mayor of Preuss Road, as Caro and I call him, standing at the end of the street and keeping an eye out for his little corner of L.A. These dudes playing hacky in front of our house in the warm winter sunshine, while I was out digging around in the garden, just reminded me how much I love this place sometimes.