Vino and brithdays

We followed up a stressful day of revelations with the next best thing...cupcakes and vino. Day began when I picked up the mother at her hotel and we ventured up to the Sprinkles cupcakes shop in Beverly Hills. Mom has been talking about her desire to give Sprinkles a try since they debuted a few years ago. We arrive and fortunately the line wasn't long. Mostly tourists with cameras. No...all tourists with cameras. Mom asks if we can get a picture. I say no. We get inside and the special of the week is raspberry. Yum. We order two of those and I get the obligatory red velvet. Mom gets a dark chocolate (at least I think that's what it was). Then we leave we leave with our four boxed and bagged treats. As we walk out we see a couple other tourists taking pix in front of the sprinkles window. Mom just hands me her camera. I take her picture.

From Beverly Hills we head towards Malibu. Mom had wanted to see some nice houses so we take the scenic route to the scenic coast via Sunset through the Palisades. For lunch we hit up Dukes. Bar mitzvah in the private room when we arrive. Is 1PM a normal time for a bar mitzvah? Seemed very early to me. I didn't have close Jewish friends until I was all grows up, so I have no idea. (Yea! Sheltered life!) We grab a table in the barefoot bar and enjoy a tasty lunch outside by the waves. The sun is a little hot, but the fish tacos were tasty so all was good. Mom orders a Mahi Mahi sandwich. Yes, that's two consecutive days of Mahi Mahi.

Wine tasting at Rosenthal and Semlar follow. It's silly how much they charge for tastings in Malibu just because the options are limited. Fortunately Liz and I have 2 Rosenthal glasses that knock most of the cost for that one off when you recycle. Despite the cost it's nice to do the easy local tastings and it's gorgeous up in the hills near Semlar. Mom liked it up there.

After all the fun wineventures we did some curvy road driving and toured the Topanga Canyon hippyland before heading back to the abode.

Mom knew I wanted to go to Eve's birthday party that night so she dropped me off in Hollywood after we spent some time at The Grove. (We were going to get dinner at the Farmer's Market but neither of us had an appetite.) Thank God I have a GPS, so mom got back to her hotel safely without traffic or incident.

I met up with Darrin and Steve and we headed over to the Blue Goose for Eve's 32nd birthday extravaganza. Great to see her and a few others I haven't seen as much of this summer as in past years. Drank a bunch of vodka tonic that Darrin declared watered down and ate a VERY tasty korean BBQ taco before Steve taxi drove me home.