The Burrs' first open mic!

Hey Folks,

My new band "The Burrs" just played our first open mic last Friday at Cafe Racer!

We are: Anneclaire on fiddle, Brigid on banjo, Bronwyn on fiddle, Charmaine on guitar and flatfooting, Emily on bass, and Heather on mandolin. We had been playing as a collective for 6 days before this event!

Someone at the show captured a simple video of us playing Cotton-eye Joe. It was the third and final tune we played at the open mic. Below is the link for you to view it on you tube.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fyOyrGnIw4

Los Angeles, California

Traffic downtown Los Angeles. This isn't even during rush hour.

At the end of February I went to Los Angeles for my cousin Triana's wedding. I met my dad and siblings down there and we spent a few days together in the sun. In the sprawled city of 12 lane highways crowded with cars and 24-hour liquor stores every two blocks, I managed to relax for a week. My flight came into LAX at about 11am and it was overcast, but warm. I spent over an hour at the rental car place haggling over the quoted price. Renting a minivan was funny, it was also weird that it had a Washington license plate. They're such mama-mobiles.

So after driving for about an hour on one of the 20 expressways that go through LA, I saw the exit for the Getty Center and Museum. It's free to get in, but parking is $10, and it's virtually impossible to get there any other way besides driving. After i parked, a tram took me up this mountain to a beautifully landscaped museum grounds. A friend of mine suggested the art museum there. They did indeed have a great collection with rotating special exhibits. At first I scoped out the modern painting section and some photographs of the west coast from the early 20Th century.

It ended up being a gorgeous sunny afternoon, making it difficult for me to be inside the museum. I ended up laying out on the grass of this little hill overlooking the skyline of the San Fernando Valley and LA. For at least 2 hours my body was just soaking up the vitamin D. It was a lovely first afternoon in California.

I ended up meeting up with Maria and Tony, two of my friends that I met in Hawaii last year. They live far out of LA, in Rowland Heights. It took me about 2 hours to get there from where I was. Tony, being Chinese, took us out to a really great Chinese restaurant. Then we also went to an Asian SUPER market, it was HUGE.

Maria and I took the long way to the beach the next day, it took about 2 hours from their house. Anywhere you go in LA takes at least one hour to get there. Luckily the mini-van was very comfortable and had a great radio. We went to Huntington Beach, south of LA off the Pacific Coast Highway. It was really desolate and the backdrop was a bit industrial, but it was beautiful to be at the ocean and hear the waves. We did some yoga facing the water, it was so serene and beautiful. No, we did not coordinate our outfits, we just happen to be wearing the same colors.

After I dropped Maria off at work, I headed towards Malibu where the wedding was suppose to be. I wanted to check into the hotel and drop my stuff off. We stayed at a hotel in Aguora Hills, it was about 30 minutes by windy steep mountainous road to Zuma Beach. After seeing some of my aunts and uncles, I headed towards the beach. The photo above was the first one I took when I got to the beach, it was about 1/2 hour before sunset. I played a bit of banjo uke on the beach, but I mostly tried to get cool pictures of me, the beach, the sunset and the mountains in the background. Below are some of my favorites.

I think I was having too much fun taking pictures of myself.

After watching the sun go down on the beach, I headed south on the Pacific Coast Highway towards Santa Monica, heading into the city to meet Tony and Maria. Around 8:30pm we picked up Katie, my brother's girlfriend. We ended up going to get drinks and heading to IN-N-OUT for burgers, then we made two trips back to the airport, the first to pick up Brendan, coming from Dayton, OH. The second was to pick up Mags, Pete, Dad and Chris, whose flight was 2 hours late. It was 1:30am before we were en route to the hotel. It was a long day.

The next day was Triana and Tim's wedding. In the morning before the wedding we headed over to Zuma beach to go in the water. Dad and I did a 2 mile run in the sand along the shore and then jumped in the freezing cold water. At least the air was somewhat warm. We saw a sign for a polar plunge, which was laughable because it was nothing near polar outside.

After the beach we went back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. On the way back we stopped at this Canyon lookout to take pictures.

The wedding was held at a ranch type of country club between the hotel and the ocean. It was beautiful and secluded. The ceremony was outside even though it was a bit chilly. They had heating lamps set up. Below are some of the pictures I took at the ceremony

On Sunday night we went over to Aunt Dor's for dinner and took a large group photo of the family. It was so great to spend some time with my family.