Manhattan Beach

I can't believe that my old employer, Knight Ridder, has just been sold to media lightweight the McClatchy Company. Wow. Now they're thinking of combining some of the dailies in close-lying metropolitan areas. I should've seen it coming. During my time there, they were lowering our per-mile mileage reimbursements and telling us to turn off office lights whenever possible to save energy. Still, it comes as a shock to me, but I can kind of understand why they wanted to keep their business "in the business" and out of corporatemongering hands, so to speak.

In other news, I saw my dear old friend S. in Manhattan Beach this weekend, where, by random coincidence, her fiance was both celebrating her birthday and proposing to her. N. and I also got to see her adorable 5-month-old A., who is a very, very, very big baby boy. He let me hold him for quite a while, but as soon as he was transferred back to his dad's hands, some white milky fluid dribbled out of his mouth. It was similar to the white fluid that came out of the mouth of those people who got impregnated by aliens in Aliens. S. and her now-fiance J. are such warm, caring and fun people. It is truly good for high-strung people like me to get some perspective on how life can sometimes turn out well even when you don't intend for it to do so. *wink*

We also checked out LACMA's 40th anniversary exhibit. It was my first time at the LACMA. I had no idea there were active excavations and "ancient" tar pits in downtown L.A.! The artwork was nothing to write home about, with the usual suspects of Motherwell, Picasso, Calder, Renoir, etc. etc., but the Ettore Sottsass retrospective was particularly arresting. This guy created the most fucked-up furniture, clearly from decades of mainlining crack. It's worth looking at for a good laugh. Also the weather in L.A. was absolutely icelandic. I was wearing my Thinsulate 3/4-length wool coat and just barely squeaking by.