LA Musings

Interesting day yesterday. We started out meeting with a client at her home which happens to be in Malibu. The guy who is working with us told us that she (the client lived in a trailer home. Trailer home in Malibu? This trailer living of a whole different class. The place is on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific. Most of these ‘trailer homes’ have been worked on and added to so they are essentially full houses. Our client’s was beautiful. In addition to being a business woman, she is also an artist. And her house was decorated in a very attractive fashion. In the bathroom she used this very different jade colored marble. Mrs de-I I think would have been knocked out by it. From her front porch You can see the Pacific and if you look to the North you can see Barbara Streisand’s place. Trailer home next to the Stars. Only in LA. Oh one other thing. Nobody owns the land their on in this place, they have long term land rent agreements. These ‘trailer homes’ without land are being sold for $1-2 million each.

In the evening we had our second Westlake Wine and History Symposium. Two of our compatriots had to beg out. One had just gotten back from a three week trip to Egypt and said he had work to catch up on and thought being with his wife would be politically correct. No guts. The other had to go to his Mother-in-Laws 40th anniversary or something and he didn’t want to go 50 miles out of his way to stop in and have a drink. Talk about your priorities. Jeepers.

Any way we were in a wine bar in Camarillo (Camarillo is heading north from the LA are towards Oxnard and Santa Barbara) called Shirley’s which believe it or not doesn’t have a web site. We tried two wines a Syrah from Paso Robles and a Shiraz from Australia but I forgot to check out the region. These are essentially the same grape so we were trying to see the difference. Everyone thought the Paso Robles wine was superior. We had a couple of appetizers – cheese with olives and a carpaccio (thin sliced raw beef) with arugula, shaved Parmesan and just a touch of vinaigrette. The arugula/raw meat combo worked really well. I think we talked about history for 7.33 minutes.

My partner and I were heading home and I was still hungry. We passed an In-n-Out Burger getting back on the highway and I suddenly had this incredible urge for a hamburger. Last time I ate a burger was last summer at a cookout at said partner’s house. Burgers have not on the diet. In-n-Out Burger is also something of a cult fast food place in California (think Lotaburger with fast service AinA). So I asked partner and he agreed that the natural follow-on to wine and carpaccio would be an In-n-Out burger. In-n-Out Burger literally only serves three types of burgers (regular, cheese, and double versions of both), fries and drinks. That’s it – the whole menu. We picked some for partner’s wife as well.

In their home we scarfed them down. I told partner and wife that after all the careful calorie counting I’d been doing, I felt like I was having an illicit affair.

This morning I woke up, rolled over and saw the receipt of what I’d been with last night and was filled with remorse.