Tales of a Host

My most artistic of friends, Mr. Jason Pietrucha (the "Patroosh"), came to visit me after a stint in L.A. with Steve. Jason is one of those amazing types that was smart enough to be any of those professional occupations (and was well on his way to medical school), but eventually chose to follow his natural artistic genius and go the artsy design route. I'm slightly jealous at all the awesome projects he gets to work on in school, and it's made me think a bit more seriously about starting a design oriented degree program around here. Part time, for the hell of it, with no motivation other than to do it.

Every time someone visits, I get to do something touristy that I should have already done. Jason and I went to Moma over the weekend and well, I was unimpressed. Admittedly, I've never bought into modern art. A blank canvas with one neon light is not art. It's a blank canvas. And a light. Oh well, we gave it a shot. On the positive note, their book store is amazing. I could sit in there all day and look at the gorgeous art books and trinkets. They have some especially impressive pop-up books.

A week later, my mom visited. Our excursion of note was to Sonoma, which was just lovely. On top of the winery hopping, we did a few circles around the town and stopped by the famous cheese and fudge factory (free tastings!), had lunch in an outdoor garden at a perfect little cafe, and found one of the best thrift stores I've ever been to. It was so clean and organized and had great prices (e.g. I bought a perfect quality free form wine rack originally sold for about $75 for just $10). I'd return to Sonoma just for the thrift store.