Another month has passed. Are you the same? I'm not. I feel my roots shifting and it's exciting and scary. My jaw sometimes feels weird when I wake up in the morning and I know I have been clenching my teeth as I sleep. Change is good but it can wreak havoc. I have started to emerge from behind my desk, making forays into the world beyond just sending my words out to be read. There I am, above, serving cocktails at an event created by And North; read about it here and check out the cocktail recipes here. Saying yes to many things also entails saying no a lot. Does that make any sense? Redefining your life is a process and I feel like I am approaching a tipping point.

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It's blustery and cold in Los Angeles. Last week they were crowing about their perfect weather. Temperatures soared into the 80s. I set foot on the tarmac and it starts pissing with rain. But I'm sure it's not personal. LA and I have a longstanding affair. The delicious food and quirky star sightings will do for now. Lisa took me to a great restaurant for lunch on Abbot Kinney in Venice: Gjelina. It's new since I was last here and it was packed to the gills with lanky surfer types (probably working in graphic design) and impossibly thin girls in floaty cardigans and sandals. Gjelina embraces the current reclaimed aesthetic with vintage wood walls and light fixtures cobbled together from old bulbs and pipes. Very steampunk, very Billyburg. The food sits somewhere between AOC and Mozza, with lots of small plates and 14 types of pizza from the wood-burning oven. The menu reads like a who's who of the locavore ingredient elite: burrata, persimmon, sunchokes, housemade chorizo, anaheim chiles. We were hard-pressed to make up our minds. In the end, we started with a lovely, light salad of escarole and sunchokes with preserved lemon, smoked almonds and shaved parmesan.
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