Archive: on the run

Randall asked what I wanted for dinner and I said I could go for indian food or pizza, or better yet indian food on pizza. He said oh there's a place down this street that does indian food pizza. Yay! So we went to a place called amber cafe in mountain view. I've ordered a chicken '65, that's curry chicken on a pizza. yum! update: that was posted before i tasted the food. it ended up being more fusion than necessary. the added bell peppers and onions were totally unnecessary. and the curry was fast food indian style. good but not amazing. but how many times can you say "i want to eat X" for dinner, where X is a little deviated from the norm, and have it be right there?

So we have no furniture here, but we do have four different kinds of basil (lime, sweet, thai & purple). That's gotta count for something, no?

Our new place is pretty empty right now, but don't worry, our fridge is filled with the neccessities: chocolate, cheese & strawberries.

We picked up the keys today. I am so thrilled, I'd been having the worst anxiety over it. This place is pretty perfect for us, it's a full house with a garage, a yard, 2 bedrooms, a living room, dining room and bonus! it totally has darkroom space! And double bonus the landlords are cute and nice! Randar and I are living in the same town for the first time in five years. Here begins a wacky new adventure...

Randall and I went to the city today to look at a few places (we're moving there by the way and we also no longer live in sac). We found the best place and it's really set the bar high. I mean hello this place even had built in darkroom space! Luckily we were the first to hand in the application, and the landlady seemed to really like us, but unfortunately they really want to run a background/ credit check first. So now we have to wait. Since it's a long weekend we won't hear anything until wednesday at the earliest. Ugh friggin ulcer is building. I rarely stress out but lately I can't sleep (toss & turn all night) and I have even been dreaming about housing. and everytime I think about it I want to vomit. seriously. gah. Wednesday is forever away. Wish us luck, I rearry want this place.

Today is my last day in lametown. I've been here 4 years, it's really weird to be going. Last night we went out and partied too hard. Today we are all zombie-ish. Jeff gave me this shirt. It is the best thing ever ever ever. I am going to miss them too.

last week I had to put the spare tire on the car. Today randall got another flat only total awesome! the spare tire is now the flat one. So gwah gwah drive around town looking for another tire. They are a weird "we can order it" size. Luckily we just left home so it was in a safe spot. Sadly it took so long we're now going to be late for the bbq. Gwah gwah!

Jeff gave me a coke blak today. It is sorta weird/good. It tastes like coffee candy. Also I don't know how much caffeine is in here, but I feel crazy. My eyes won't focus or something. (also I hardly ever drink caffeine any more, so maybe that's why). Anyways, give it a try.

On friday I went to the rivers to hang out with bao before taking him to the airport. Morm made us psuedo-cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner. They were pretty tasty except when I was eating one it went CRUNCH. And it wansn't normal. I totally busted a tooth. so this morning I went to the dentist and they're going to do this outlay thing on two of my teeth and it's going to cost me $1300. Yay. $1300 will get you 2 partial teeth. Stupid tasty sandwiches.

tonight deathcab & franz ferdinand are playing here in sacramento. I was going to cash in a workperk for tickets, but never got around to it. Yesterday I regretted not asking but figured oh well. Then this afternoon camille mentioned that she had extra tickets. So whaddya know? Here I am. Deathcab was decent, the sound got a bit murky and bassheavy but they had a cute set with tree shillouttes and quirky houses. How big of a band do you need to be before you get a set budget? Also at one point I said to myself, ohhhh, they're the "next coldplay"...then franz came on full of energy, even the olds are dancing (as camille says their kids are being punished...i mean really how embarassing). It's pretty much what I expected. Maybe if I was on the floor in the dancepit area it would be more fun. But the venue's too big, the pit has no view and I'm not fan enough to get up in that (& too old). sidenote: franz always makes me think of jorn so I called him during the matinee song. He hung up on me pretty quick like.

Last night I went to the lair for guphy's book club. This time around we read a series of short stories. I sent them grimble because he is the best most awesome story. It's by clement freud and was recently re-published in the mcsweeny's children's anthology (which is also pretty great & I would recommend it). The other stories were brokeback mountain (who knew they got it on so quickly!), jamaica by david schickler and chapter 1 of the club of queer trades (can't remember the name of the author, but it's also great). We talked about the stories, drank some cider and bullshitted bullshitted. afterwards katy arrived around 10:15 and we sat and chatted some more (no book talk). It was a nice conversation (go japan) and I stayed out too late. Then I went home and watched lost (next week better be awesome) and top model (why did gina not get kicked out what??) and then I went to sleep. Zzzzz. P.s. Don't ask about the jackals

right now i'm in a meeting about the [insider]. There are 16 people in this meeting (see two tiers around this table) and everyone is talking over everyone. And people are saying things totally not making sense. And they're all giving advice on areas they have no expertise in. one person who I normally enjoy the comments of is pissing me off and now he is officially on my "i hate you" list. Also, see the person on the far left, that's jeff, I don't know if you can tell, but he's pissoff looking. I think he is going to snap sometime soon. Good thing we're pals. Maybe this means I will be spared. Or perhaps i'll go first because he'll think he's saving me. Gwah gwah...

This afternoon kim and I were talking about eggs for lunch. So she went home and had eggs and I was going to settle for dinner leftovers. That's when camille showed up & asked if I wanted to eat lunch. I said sure and so we headed downtown and went to mason's. mason's is nice & doesn't look like they try too hard, but they act like it. They spread your napkin out on your lap (which as camille says puts their hands too close to your crotch), offer the sparkle water and have fancy scrapers to clean the tables. See? fancy. For eating I had open face bacon sandwich on ciabatta with avacado, tomato, lettuce, cheese and (damn was this tasty) a fried egg on top. Yum! It also came with tiny french fries. Camille had the caesar. I questioned her choice because caesar seems so boooring. Although it did look simple and tasty, so I guess I won't question too much. Oh and also, I had an ice tea, they brought a tray of items to go with it. The tray had lemon wrapped with cheesecloth, simple syrup, sugar cubes and more.

Apparently when you get old you hang out with your pals and you cook food, karaoke and do sweet yoga moves in the living room.

yesterday randall told us about this donut place he heard about. it's called lou's donuts and living museum (or something like that), so this morning (almost afternoon) we thought we'd go check it out.

when we got there (around 1pm) there was just one kid making donuts and few boxes of donuts sitting in the display case. it felt pretty odd and we weren't sure exactly what to do. we ended up deciding on a dozen donuts and the kid came and put them into a box for us. when we were ringing up he said, "you guys came at the right time..." i totally thought he was going to hook us up with discounted donuts, but then he finished his statement with "...usually there's blaring 50s music playing, but he left [we had no idea who "he" was] and the cd ended and i've "forgotten" to start it up again." then he went on to tell us about how his music tastes and how he's going to this show on tuesday. i'm also going to this show, when he heard that he seemed pretty excited. but he still didn't give us a discount.

sidenote: also we still didn't really see what the museum was.

last night we decided we should go out and celebrate st. patrick's day by getting our drink on. only we weren't sure where we wanted to go. that's when i remembered the elegant pub (only i thought it was called the evergreen pub). it's a local pub stuffed into a corner of a strip mall. i expected it to be full of old people celebrating st. pat's, but it wasn't. there were a few younger people playing pool and then one really drunk old lady at the bar. she was decked out in all green, green beads and a green paper hat. she played a lot of older music on the jukebox and at one point came around insisting everyone in the place clap along with the music. then she was going to make jorn dance, but somehow he got out of it. when we left she made us all give her a hug goodbye.

the other day samshrew told me about this conversation she had with morm. apparently she keeps seeing these "creatures" in her backyard. she told samshrew that "they look so much like a mini horse"

from what i understand this is pretty much how the conversation went. wtf? a mini-horse?? okaaay...

well actually "like a mini horse but also like a tiger"

a tiger? what a horse tiger? a mini-higer? a mini-torse?

"you know like a mini horse but also a TIGER. and they run SIDE BY SIDE"

"SIDE BY SIDE! isn't that crazy? SIDE BY SIDE!"

morm, what are you talking about..."YOU KNOW it is big like a mini-horse...or maybe like a very very big cat. but you know like a tiger. but the size of a big cat."

oh a big cat. in your backyard (which is a huge backyard btw). do you mean a raccoon?

"what's a raccoon look like anyway? pepper says raccoons are slow and that i can hit them with sticks. these are fast and they run SIDE by SIDE! raccoons don't do that!"

um...okay.

"but you know. it looks like a mini horse"

i showed her a picture of a raccoon the next day. she guesses that's what she saw.

Ever since the nugget market opened I have been bread crazy. I mean look at this spread. Wouldn't you go gaga for this? How could you not. On tuesday I fell under the spell of the nugget bread. I had a tasty salad that was "built" just for me and chased that with nearly an entire loaf garlic-cheese piccalo (about have the size of a baguette). So taste!

on monday my dad called me at 11:45am to see what i was doing for lunch. i said that i didn't have any plans and so he invited me over for BLTs. i hadn't had a blt in a really long time. and i haven't had lunch with my parents in a long time either (which apparently makes me a really bad daughter considering they sorta live near my work, or so i've been told).

so i went over and had BLTs.
when i got there i was surprised to see my morm there also. my parents have a funny relationship and don't always get along. right now there are two houses but they're not separated. they're also barely acknowledging the others existence. i've stopped asking questions and can only be there for support. either way the whole thing felt awkward. so we sat in tensionfilled air and munched down on our BLTs.

mmm. bacon.

on sunday some of the eaters got together to try out l'orchid. i'd been there before with alice and really recommended it to everyone. it was a rainy stormy day turned night and our party was at first small, then decent in size. in attendance was juju, wes, carolyn (in a special guest crossover appearance), chris, alan (i think that was his name), katy, randall and i.

randall and i were the first to arrive (although i guess wes & juju were downstairs in the party store waiting as to not be the first to arrive) and started with the ginger tea. i enjoyed it as it had a bit of a bite, but also wanted to add a bit of lemon to it. once juju, wes & carolyn arrived we began with the mushroom soup (which eduardo told me was to die for, or perfect meal, or something sing-song praising like that), the standard spring rolls (with shrimp & pork) and the veggie tofu crepe.

once the appetizers were served katy, chris & alan arrived (30 minutes late). we all went to town on the apps. the mushroom soup was light and refreshing, very lemongrass heavy (in a good way) and i would also give it some sing-song praise and say you gotta try this. the spring rolls were standard but tasty. the veggie crepe man, that was delicious. it had some faux meat in it, and some tofu and the whole thing was super crisp. a great meal alone would be the mushroom soup and the tofu crepe and hello, i'm not even a vegetarian.

for the main course i ordered the lemongrass chicken. it wasn't flavorful enough, and as juju (who had the tofu version that i really liked) put it, "it had too much stuff on it". randall had the shaking beef (which were lucious cubes of beef that just about melted in your mouth). carolyn who wanted ocean & farm had the claypot, she said it was tasty but needed more ocean. but wes scored with the 5 spice chicken. man that tasted good.

oh and did i mention the menu is divided into "ocean" "farm" and "garden" ?! so cute!

the atmosphere is nice, sorta romanty, but maybe too quiet. also it is on the 2nd floor of this shopping centre and maybe it was the rain causing the outside lights to smear, but it felt like we were in another city.

sidenote: while there katy mentioned this tshirt she saw and we all wondered outloud, "how would jesus roll?"

this morning we met my family at the rice bowl for dim sum. my mom's friend teresa and her husband diego were in town visiting, so they joined us as well. i always enjoy seeing them because they have to be some of the cutest people i've ever met. he calls her mommy, she calls him daddy, only they don't have any children together. just dogs.

dim sum was tasty, but maybe not as tasty as i wanted. i think i wanted more round dumpling items and less starchy breaded/rice items. when i was a kid i used to eat the char siu bao (white steamed bbq pork buns) exclusively. now i don't even want those. who wants to get filled up on bread only?!

while at the restaurant randall got a call from work. his expertise was required and so we had to leave. he was pretty piss off to get a call from work during the weekend. apparently he'd told them he'd be checking email all weekend (some big project is winding down so it's grind time) but he never said they could give out his cell number to random co-workers. they called yesterday too, so actually it was double piss off.

this afternoon niki was going to get her scandinavian lunch items on. i figured what the hill, why not join her. so i tagged along for the trip to ikea (it is about 5 minutes from our work, if even that far). when we got to the freeway exit we saw that the parking lot (visible from freeway) was PACKED and that there was a line just to get into the parking lot. we decided that we weren't that brave and didn't have that much time and kept on driving. we ended up at nugget market instead. i was going to get the soup (i was feeling soupy) or a sandwich (old standby), but the soup area smelled really fish (salmon chowder was an option) and really just put me off of soup. niki was getting a salad and we noticed that the salad area was newly arranged. the broccoli enticed me and i decided to join the salad bandwagon. i had one with mixed greens & spinach, broccoli, snap peas, walnuts, egg, green raisins, grapes, cherry tomatoes and parmesan cheese - drizzled with just a bit of balsamic vinegar. i like them there because they don't stick to their 7 items only and also they're a lot cheaper than jacks. oh i also had some pumpkin seed sage bread, which wasnt very sagey.

Someone tell me why I decided to come here? okay, so they just opened up a new ikea in our area. i mean just opened (as in yesterday). i drive by it every day on my way to work and i've seen it go from empty field to giant blue box with lots of signs and a plane that flies around all day advertising that it is FINALLY HERE!

so for the last few weeks that's all anyone's talked about. ikea ikea ikea. and holycrap the traffic is going to suck and so is the parking and hell no i am not going to go for at least 2 weeks.

only i heard that they didn't have nearly as many people as they thought they would have. and there's been no excess in traffic. seems like all the hype has scared everyone away (although hell if i'm going near it on its first saturday/sunday).

and today i drove past it. and juju had sorta put this bug in my ear. and well i turned right instead of going straight and the next thing i knew i was in the parking lot (which was very easy to find parking in) and heading into the store.

there were clowns and cops and allsorts of families about.
i started to walk around but got a bit bored and headed straight to the marketplace.

while there i saw the most awesome interaction between this middle aged chinese guy and his wife (it was in chinese). she was leading and he was following her around. she was doing the normal lady style shopping. and the guy he was AMAZED. everytime he'd walk past something he'd pick it up and get her attention like. hey look, look! and she'd turn sorta disgusted after the 3rd or 4th time and look and he'd be like, let's get it. and she'd say we don't need it. i don't want that. or it's ugly. and he just kept saying, 'but it's so cheap!' and she'd say no and again he'd say 'so cheap' i think he must've done this about 5 times in the few minutes i was near them. and i don't know why but it was awesome.

oh and the best part about this ikea.
SELF FRIGGIN CHECKOUT.
i thought perhaps i'd encounter a line at the checkout, but no, i waited exactly 0 seconds to purchase my items (towels for the gym, a funnel, straws, napkins, and i fell for the popsicle molds all for around 10 bucks). everywhere needs self checkout.

This evening rosemary stopped by for a dinner swap. I made potstickers, egg drop soup (which, due to my overwhipping, was more like egg scramble soup), some wacky tofu salad (which might make great potsticker filling) and homemade ginger ale. Afterwards we had fresh pineapple & kiwi with strawberry sorbet. The evening was pretty fun, i'd never really hung out with rosemary before so it was nice to get to know her. we discovered that we have a lot in common. She wants to open an art gallery, so do I. She plays bass, me too. She's got ties to 'dova, me too. she does concert photos, me too. Her birthday is coming up, so is mine (hers is only 2 days after mine). so wacky! here's the ginger ale recipe. I really liked it. in a sauce pan bring 1 cup sugar, 2 cups of water, and a big piece of ginger (chopped) to a boil. once it boils lower heat & simmer for about 10 minutes. let fully cool. strain. now you have ginger syrup. pour some (to taste) in a glass over ice. add sparkle water and slices of lemon. Yum!

yesterday was a boring..ohwaitWTFhowdidIgetsobusy sort of day at work. it started off sort of run of the mill, if not dull. then david called to say that the art. department was going to go to zokku for his birthday lunch and hey, would i like to join them. so i went to zokku where 13 bucks got me the salmon terriyaki lunch plate with sashimi, tempura, salad, miso soup and rice. it was so much food. and surprisingly tasty. i say surprising because i remembered it being only just decent food. maybe it was because this time it was mostly hot food and not specialty rolls.

during lunch me and the art department talked about work. you always try to talk about something else, but when the main thing you all have in common is your workplace, you end up talking what you know. it's sort of depressing really. right now our two sides of the campus are warring. it's assinine really. and all of us worker bees are just in the middle. it made me feel like i was there spying on them or something....

which leads us to the rest of the work day.
the war is built on an internal territory grab and right now poor camille is stuck in the most awkward situation. and really, so am i. and i was pretty pissed off that everyone had been jockeying to be the team to get this thing done, but not taking into consideration that once you figure out who claims it, you still have to actually DO IT. and also not taking into consideration that HELLO. i am the one who is going to be doing it. so WHY ON EARTH are you dragging me into this at 2pm on a friday afternoon when it needs to be done before going home that night? and why did no one figure to include me until i decided HELLO. if this is going to get done let's have a conversation get it figured out.

f'ers.

i didn't get out of there until 7pm. 7pm on a FRIDAY.
on a friday when i actually got in at a normal (9am) time.
sidenote: i suppose it's moments like this when i'm like oh, okay i guess i am an alright employee.

afterwards camille IM'd me and said that after all this cheese sounded good. i agreed and so we met up at her house for an afterwork cheese. we ended up talking for too long first and then decided to move the conversation to somewhere over food. on a mission for cheese we got into the car and drove up and down a few streets. after a while we ended up at kasbah, only because i remembered they had a breaded flaming cheese (the bright blip in the photo here). our service there was terrible. the cheese took forever to prepare and the one dish was over lemoned. i decided then that i'd go there for some sort of special occassion (like someone has a birthday) but that i wasn't going to suggest it again.

afterwards we headed back to her house and ended up at the bonn lair. we were there chatting until last call (around 12:30? they have an early last call). we stayed there for a bit longer until camille said i looked exhausted. i did. i was. it was nice to hang out with her. i'm surprised we hung out for so long and now i'm really wondering yo camille, why haven't we really hung out much before?

yesterday I had to run to the rivers to help my dad clean up his car. my morm is having a rodent problem at her house. one rodent in particular and she's too stubborn to call up an exterminator. it's like a bad cartoon. she puts out the bait, the rodent gets it and gets away with it. leaving it's calling card behind.

this time the calling card was eaten up car wires and chewed up car interior. score: rodent 1 - morm 0.

at anyrate. she had an appointment to drive some clients around today, so she asked to borrow my dad's car. she called saying he didn't answer his phone and could i go over and see if he's there and help him clean the car. i had to go over there anywhere to pick up parts to our lawnmower (dad borrowed it when his broke and forgot to return a piece), so i figured why not.

afterwards i was going to see if my dad wanted to go to lunch and we'd meet up with randar somewhere, but then a realtor called and i had to run home to help randar get the house ready for show. after that it was starving time and we both demanded lunch.

so we got in the car and headed downtown, figuring we'd sort it out during the 8 minute drive to get there. eventually we settled on ma jong's (the relatively new oh so cleverly titled (i must admit i think it's kindofa cute name) fancy pants "asian diner"). neither of us had been there and randall wanted chinese food. so we found a parking spot and headed for the door.

about a block away from our destination i noticed that jeff was about 100 yards in front of us walking in the same direction. i was going to call out a "yo!" but didn't really feel it was necessary. he looked like he had a destination to get to.

strangely, that destination was our destination too. we watched as he went in to the restaurant. we followed closely behind.

since the place is an order at the counter, take your number and sit down sort of place we ended up catching up with jeff. he said he recommended the orange peel chicken, but i was feeling the spice, so i ordered the "general jong's chicken" and randall had the "orange peel beef". the food was tasty, but slightly dissapointing. for almost $10 each i expected a little bit more. also the general chicken wasn't hot at all. like not even remotely spicy and it had a pepper next to it on the menu. so if that is spicy, what is bland? i did, however like the fact that there was a brown rice option. i should be eating more brown rice.

oh and this place has crazy bathrooms. the sink area is separate from the toilet area. and you think you're looking into an all mirrored area, but woah ho ho. that's not a mirror. that's a replica. you're looking into the men's bathroom. no joke.

and there's also a fancy outside area, which maybe given the nice weather we should have sat at. then we also could have sat next to these awesome dudes (they must be chefs or something, they just looked awesome, i wish this photo showed it) but we sat next to jeff and 1) it was awkward to be like oh we'll sit somewhere else but 2) it was awkard to also sit next to him. i acknowledged this.

in yuba city randall and I ended up at this kitchen supply store (go figure) called harpers ferry. It was pretty cute because it looked like it had once been a bank. While there we found this item. A plastic red a white item with a tiny hole on top of the white part. The only label on the package says kitchen gadget. So yah this is a kitchen gadget.. Duh. btw, I think it's an egg piercer. I only say that because it was near other egg piercers. Now can you tell me why we even need an egg piercer? I want to say it's something to do with hardboiled eggs?

This morning randall and I decided to go on an adventure. We were gonna get in the car and drive and stop in some small town somewhere and have a picnic lunch, but that didn't happen. We had a few distractions and ended up leaving much later than we meant to. When we finally left the house we didn't know which way to go, so we randomly chose north. After a while we ended up in yuba city (about 30 min away). We weren't anywhere cute yet, but we were starving, so we stopped at sonic. This is the only sonic in the area and we had never been, but there are always commercials and others have told me it's great, so we decided to give it a try. I had the toaster bacon cheeseburger and randall had popcorn chicken. I wanted to try one of their ice cream or freeze or slush things but wasn't in the mood. Maybe it would've made the difference because I didn't think sonic was that amazing. Although a hamburger on texas toast was pretty awesome. Oh and the fact that they have carhops on roller skates is pretty fun too.

Last night was an eating extravaganza at Neon's house. vegan-hardcorepunkrock travelling chef Joshua Ploeg (pictured here, formerly of Behead the Prophet NLSL & The Mukilteo Fairies) called neon's house a stop on his current food tour.

What's a food tour?
oh like only the most amazing thing ever.
pretty much thru word of mouth, etc. etc. he travels across the country creating amazing (and vegan) meals in people's houses. he's like a travelling one-man catering company. i asked niki if we could keep him. wouldn't it be amazing to have your own chef? wow. especially a talented one.

put it this way. randall, the infamous vegetable hater, even ate the food. WOAH.

the whole meal had a mediterranean feel. it started off with a ciabatta bread with roasted (all day) tomatoes with a balsamic vinegar and rosemary oil. this was also accompanied with a super great salad with apples, walnuts and...were those prunes???

after the starters we all had a bowl of soup. a very mild flavor with tomatoes, some sort of pickle family item and rice noodles.

once we slurped the soup down it was on to the main course. we lined up single file and traipsed into the kitchen to load up our plates. fried chickpea patties with a tomato and pepper and carmelized onion accompanyment. a "chicken" dish with more vegetables and a strong cognac sauce. grilled asparagus (which i normally don't like but yum yum) and then roasted beets. i was totally afraid of the beets, i didn't think i'd like them one bit, but they were really savory and great. oh and then risotto with lemon and some sort of buttered herb.

it was a food heaven. camille and i went back for seconds on the chickpea patty (we were served first so only took a small amount to make sure everyone would have some).

after the food eating i was FULL.

but wait! there was more. don't forget the cheesecake.
okay, i just remembered he said it was a vegan meal, but wait a minute marscapone isn't vegan. cheesecake isn't vegan (unless he fooled me with the vegan cheese). maybe it's in one of his cookbooks.

it was amazing. it had a strange texture, not lumpy, but with little bits. also the crust was made from pistachio cookies or something like that. and the sauce on it was pomegranate. alice and i wanted to eat another piece afterwards but we were so full. but i really wanted to eat it. it was really great. i'm drooling right now just thinking about it.

mmmmm....

so yah if you ever have the opportunity to have a travelling chef come cater a dinner party at your house, i would highly highly recommend it. and thanks neon for doing so!

update: niki says the entire meal was vegetarian and not vegan. she says the whole thing was lousy (in an good way) with butter (i thought it might have been, but was under the impression it was magic vegan butter) and that the cheesecake was the real deal. and speaking of the cheesecake. man i still wants to shove more in my face.

Today was bowling day at work. At around 2 we piled into our cars and drove over to the local bowling alley. We played 2 games and I bowled horribly. Like around 75 each time. To change it up a bit we decided to bowl the next game with our left hand. Amazingly and somewhat sadly I am kicking ass. Sadly because i'm actually playing better than I did with my right. I ended up bowling a 91 with my left. Maybe I should play that way always.

Ate lunch with the boys today. This is mc, he's been promoted to the new head bossman. I think it's cool that he still hangs out and eats lunch with us. Makes it more personable. You know, the more I think about it, working here is like working at a startup. Long hours, lots of work, small staff, passion to succeed, burnout, etc. Only it's more like a startup that's held by a large corporation who won't give you any funds and sucks you dry. Gwah gwah.

this evening alice and i had a blingo date. a few months ago alice won us movie tickets on blingo and so we decided we'd go see something together. it just took a lot longer than we anticipated to get our schedules to mesh.

now that our schedules finally jived, we were having a hard time determining what to go see. everything she wanted to see, i had already seen and everything i wanted to see she'd seen. in the end we decided between match point, king kong or that new teen horror flick.

king kong, as it turned out, didn't start until almost 9. which meant it would end at almost midnight. being old ladies, we opted out of that one. then it was a toss up between match point (which i was leaning towards) and the teen flick (which alice has a soft spot for). since she won the blingo i told her it was her call. in the end because of the hoopla over the vanity fair cover (where a certain miss scarlett bares her bottom) alice chose match point.

the movie was at 7:50, so we decided we'd grab a bite to eat first. since the only theatre in the area showing match point was at arden/ethan we decided to try l'orchid. it's a relatively new (i want to say less than 6 months, maybe more like 3) and above ulta. i've seen it but hadn't been there.

the place was a lot larger than i thought it would be. it was also a lot emptier than i wanted it to be. alice and i agreed, its alway sad when restaurants are empty. especially since the food here was great. the bee gave it 4 stars and i can see why. we had the salmon spring rolls (fresh vietnamese style rolls with cooked salmon inside. the hot/cold tempature pairing really did it for me) and the crispy lemongrass tofu with lotus root salad. yum yum! alice also tried the artichoke tea, which definitely tasted like artichoke, but strangely smelled like chocolate. if you're ever in that area and need a bite to eat, check it out.

after dinner we had some time to kill so we popped into the rack and then headed to the theatre. we decided that blingo tickets are obviously meant to be used on films with british actors. the movie was surprisingly good. it wasn't at all what i expected. and since it was woody allen, i expected it to be a lot of neurotic people but instead of having new york cityscapes as a the backdrop, they'd have london ones.

but it wasn't like that at all. and i didn't really know much about it, but it ended up going a totally different route than i thought it would. definitely much darker than anticipated. and i really enjoyed the ending. alisha (who had already seen it) told alice it was "clever" - i would have to agree.

also i used to really like scarlett johannson (whenever she was on screen i would end up staring at her) but lately i find her really frustrating. perhaps it's her blondehair hollywood look. i'm not really sure, also alice said she's not convinced of her ability to act, and i would really have to agree with that statement. her job here didn't really do much to convince me.

however, it doesn't deter me from recommending match point. it drags in the middle a bit (i got really aware that i was watching a movie and i didn't really know where it was taking me), and gets somewhat unbelievable, but overall it was clever (especially the last 20 minutes or so) and jonathan rhys-meyers is superb. and is it just me or does he kinda look like an irish joaquin pheonix, just a little bit anyway?

and oh yah. i want that flat that they move into with the view. seriously can someone hook me up with that flat?

--

ps. the chairman put in his notice. his last day is friday. as someone else said it makes them feel relief, anger and jealousy all at once.

pps. jeff and i went to sellands for lunch. i had the turkey and brie sandwich and we went halfsies on a fudge brownie and lemon square. overall it was a good day for food.

Today's musical guest is athlete. You know one of the "next coldplay"s only a little glitchier. I think randall will like them.

update: randall listened to the cd i brought home and he does not like them.

I met this lady in a really awkward situation on friday and yesterday (sunday) randall and I headed to the city to see michael showalter & david wain (of the state & stella). It's at cobb's comedy club, no assigned seats, so when you arrived the usher took you the best possible seats. And guess what? We were sat at her table. total awkward. Small world.

Here we are getting she wants revenge autographs. wacky!

This evening randall and I went to hana tsubaki for dinner. we'd never been there before, but kept meaning to. we had a tiger roll, which came with mango and was pretty awesome. although randall felt cheated because even though he said to get the tiger roll instead of the other one with mango, he failed to realize it had tamago (sweetish omlette) in it. i laughed him.

the tables at hana tsubaki seem too close together. i felt like i was part of the people next to us's conversation. that or they were pretty loud. i couldn't help but listen to them. also they intrigued me because the guy looked way casual and laid back, but she looked really made up and proper. and by made up i mean she had too much makeup on, but not really in a bad way, just in a too much way. like you know, someone who's on tv. like you know a tv anchor.

when we left randall asked if she was a tv anchor. i said i didn't know, but now that he mentioned it, i did overhear the dude ask her why jennifer smith (that's another local anchor) didn't go to some event. so when we got home we looked up jennifer smith's station and what do you know. i'm pretty sure this is lady we saw. also she mentioned something about when she was in redding. and according to this bio, she was in redding. so by total scientific means i declare that we saw marcey brightwell at hana tsubaki tonight. too bad my camera phone sucks and it's all blurry.

okay i just need to share my favorite new flavoring sensation. toasted bread with a light layer of cream cheese, small amout of apricot preserves and all topped with freshly cracked black pepper! the way the sweet and pepper meld and melt into my mouth, it's the perfect combo. SO TASTE! it is the new favorite and i don't even like apricot preserves very much, i just had them from a leftover appletart glaze i'd made.

yesterday i ended up going to macy's after work. i'm looking for some new pants. i wandered around for way too long, i found new pants, but i don't know if i have anything to wear with them, so what's the point?

afterwards i ended up going to a taste of thai to pick up some dinner. i got pineapple fried rice (i don't know why, but i've been had craving it) but had them make it spicy. they made it almost too spicy. i also got an order of tom kha soup (that's the one with coconut milk, i prefer the tom yum, but randall wanted tom kha. since i got to choose the rice, i let him have that one).

when i went to pick up the food i noticed they still had their christmas decorations up. fiberglass beard santa was hanging out with lady buddha. it was pretty magical.

Stacey brought in a pastry from casablanca today. It was part of her reward for babysitting kari's baby last night. It's a appetizer and we're not sure what it's called. It's made of layers of flakey pastry dough with almond/nut paste (which ended up being very meaty, kari told stace it vegetarian, but i'm not so sure...) and also a layer of something that was probably flavored with tumeric, as it had that was bright yellow hue. The whole thing was then sprinkled with cinnamon and powdered sugar. A great combo of sweet and savory. And oh so tasty! Jeff said the flavor reminded him of baby jesus's tears.

yesterday was a waste of a morning and afternoon. i pretty much did a project runway season 1 marathon all afternoon long. stacey got the dvd at work from the vendor, she knew i started watching season 2 so she gave it to me. i can't believe how many episodes i watched. at around 4 i broke the spell, took a shower and started working on a redesign project. that's when niki txt'd me.

she and leon were making two soups and hey would we like to eat them? of course we would! it was such a pleasant surprise. so i pulled myself away from my project (i think randall was worried about that, i had to finish it tonite) and we went to neon's house for tasty eating.

when we got there alice greeted us at the door, she was also there for the soup. walking inside was like an aroma extravaganza. leon had made a white bean chili soup (with fresh cilantro and avacado for on top) and niki was making a green bean potato chowder item. both of them were delicious and i think i went in for seconds of both! i think i need the recipes kids...

after having my bellied filled with soup and my heart warmed by puppy love (randall got the bonus face covered with puppy licks and kisses) we said thanks and farewell and went home. i was up really late working on the project, btw. only because i kept getting distracted.

sidenote: i someday want to be in a position to be able to make soup and just call people over to come eat. sad thing is we only have 2 bowls right now and no table and no chairs. boo. someday.

sidenote2: niki's soup serving dish is so cute!

we woke up late on new year's day and stayed indoors for most of the day. the rain had stopped and it was starting to look pretty nice outside, but we decided to stay indoors. then it got really windy and stormy again, so it was okay.

those kids called to say that the power was out at their house, so they came over for video gamerz. then we all met up at my dad's house for a new year's dinner. he made a roast beast (that was soooo tasty, done just perfectly so) and a small ham. for sides we had mashed potatoes, corn and a salad.

after dinner we played a full round of mahjong and then scarfed down some cheesecake. since randall doesn't eat cheesecake, he brought a ginger chewie cookie instead. then we went home and video gamered some more. i hope the rest of the year is this relaxuma and lazy!

on new year's eve day i ended up at the rivers house hanging out with bao, samshrew and dad. morm was mia, only we were pretty sure we knew where she was, so does that mean she was really mia?

i had made these marble swirl cookies from the big fat cookie book, only something went wrong and they ended up being big thin cookie pancakes. i'm not sure what happened - i think the oven wasn't hot enough.

we hung out for a while (morm & dad are hit a unfixable rough spot, so us siblings headed over for support) and then went up to the levee area (which the river is RIDICULOUS FULL right now. you can see it from the street, and normally it's a jillion feet below street level. good thing the levee's shorter on the other side, otherwise i'd really worry about the rivers house being in flood area) for a view of old town's firework display. they do them at 9pm (and midnight) on new year's eve. after the fireworks we headed back to the house to go our separate ways.

before we left bao busted out his box of holiday jones soda. i got it for him for his birthday, i thought it was a funny har har joke. apparently it's the diet soda version, but i didn't know that, i didn't realize there were two versions. this one contained smoked salmon pate, broccoli casserole, corn on the cob, turkey & gravy and pecan pie.

MY GOD IT WAS HORRID.
anything flavored "smoked salmon pate" that is not actually smoked salmon pate should be avoided. especially if it's carbonated and sugar-free. the worst part was actually the smell. we drank out cups instead of the bottles and that means your nose is near the liquid the entire drinking time.

salmon - the worst - too smokey and the smell was awful - like drinking smoked cat food
broccoli - it tasted and looked like fishtank water
corn on the cob - the nicest of the bunch with an artificially sweetened candy corn
pecan pie - very chemically but at least bareable like super sweet sugar free watered down cream soda
turkey and gravy - foul and i'm not even trying to make bad puns

after the tasting i headed home to ring in the new year's with randall. we didn't have any plans, we thought we'd end up somewhere, but the weather and the traffic (couldn't go to the city or the snow due to flooding and mudslides) just made us want to stay in. around 10:15 we called up wes & juju to see what they were doing. they didn't have any plans either (seems a lot of people i talked to said the same) so we decided we'd go to mel's with them sometime after midnight (it's their tradition), but 15 minutes later they called back and said why don't we go now. so we went to mel's and rang in the new year with them there.

on friday night katy txt'd me to see if i wanted to go out for drinks. randall and i were pretty much going to do nothing so i said sure why not. she said it might end up being all ladies, so i told her maybe randar would don a wig. sadly we don't have any full wigs in our house. which doesn't seem that strange, but i found it weird that we don't have at least one.

when we left the house the rain started POURING DOWN CRAZY. halfway downtown i wondered exactly why we left our cozy house to go into a torrential downpour. first stop was katy & alice's house. then we went to K bar, only it was closed, so we drove back towards the black pearl. tonite was shee-shee fancy bar night. i'd never been there before it seemed like a pretty "chill out" sort of place. we sat upstairs where there was a fireplace projected onto the brick wall stairway. it sounds tacky, but i thought it looked sort of neat. we had a few drinks (vodka tonic for me) and were joined by katy's cousin & her friend. after a little while there we decided ah F it and headed to the streets of london, which was totally packed when we got there. there was one table left and it was being rained (leaky roof) upon. after a little wait we ended up getting a table in the back corner. randall was pretty sad that food was no longer being served, but we did enjoy a tasty raspberry lambic.

after the streets, katy & alice were heading to the bonn lair. it was already 1 something, so randall and i decided to go home. when we got there (driving through the downpour was not fun and we were soaked just from the 5 feet walk from the streets to the car) we got a txt message from katy saying that they were at neon's house instead. oh boo. we wanted to go, but were tired and the rain downpour made us say, nah let's stay home instead.

when we went to bed, we halfjoked/half serioused about how we should pick stuff off the floor in case it flooded. but we didn't. lucky for us we didn't flood, although parts of sacramento did. i tell you, it was RAIN TIME.

Happy new year!

after dinner it was too cold to stand around in the street deciding what to do, so we went our separate ways. randall came home and played katamari2 while i ended up making cookies. this is the fourth batch in the last week (2 types of biscotti for gifts, chocolate chip for santa and these).

for xmas jeff ended up giving me the book big fat cookies. i'd eyeballed it a few times at the store, but always passed, just couldn't justify another dessert book. so i was pretty thrilled to receive it. to say thanks i figured i'd make a batch and bring them in to work. there were a lot of taste looking recipes, but in the end i decided on "super size ginger chewies."

these just might be my new favorites.
they're chewie on the inside, crisp on the outside and flavorful throughout. although i think the cinnamon i used is on the way out. like it's way out of date and is starting to be a bit flavorless.

at anyrate, if the rest of the recipes are as taste as this one, man oh man, there goes the new year's resolution of getting in shape.

but, well, like i told juju earlier, i'm just eating cookies to maintain my shape. if i lose weight again, all those new clothes won't fit. see. total justified...

right?

tonite we met wes and juju at sakurabana. it's another japanese restaurant downtown. i've seen it a few times but never made it there before. they had a roll that was called the macadamia nut. it's pretty much an eel/avacado roll covered in macadamia nuts. actually i take that back, it wasn't covered it was smothered. i liked it though. now if they added mango to that roll it would be amazing like the beforetime shogun.

after we ordered we all exchanged christmas presents. we also noted that last year's xmas exchange was over a sushi dinner. maybe this is a new tradition of ours.

i ended up getting a vase for knitting needles, which sounds funny, but is actually really awesome. it's made of rubber so it won't ruin the ends of the needles and then you can have a place to put them. it actually looks pretty cute all filled with needles. almost like one of those frangance diffuser vases with all the sticks sticking out of it.

sidenote: we gave wes a box of corn on the cob flavored microwave popcorn. he's told us that he hearts sweet corn flavored microwave popcorn, but that he ends up getting it from people who go to canada. i found it at the grocery outlet and thought it was weird enough that perhaps it was the american version. anyone know?

Why all the posts tonite? when I got home from work randall wanted to know what I felt like eating. I wasn't sure so I turned to the news & review for some inspiration. While flipping thru I saw a bunch of ads in the nightclub section and said "oh hey mellowdrone is playing in sacramento" (randall is a fan) and then I noticed that they were playing tonight at the library (a venue). So we decided to go. The opening acts were persephone's bees (which I almost liked but ended up being irritated somewhat) and marjorie fair (who were nice but on the edge of coldplay...well a slower droney version. I got a lot of old posts updated during them though. And don't get me wrong, it was nice sounding just a bit boring, but hey randall thinks the drummer looks like jean reno and you know, he sort of did). Before the show we ended up grabbing a bite at rokku (or is it zokku? The sign said one thing, the menus another). It's a new japanese restaurant on j st. It was decent but not amaze. Our service was a bit slow too.

I saw this little dude when I was at the pet store last week (see good will post below). Pet stores are odd to me. They smell weird, they're noisy and they kinda make me sad. This particular pet store had quite a few birds including those creepy macaw guys. Birds like that weird me out. They seem menancing and mean. They're gonna eat your crackers and your hand and probably your whole face too. See? Creepy. Kind of like this guy. Albino bunnies really bother me if I look at them too long. That beady little red eye. Total can't trust it.

Oh last week I went to katy & alice's house for a round of apples to apples. Camille (who lives downstairs now) ended up winning. Alice almost had it though, but I think she gave up at the end because it was her bed time. She said she was feeling run down and tied and therefore wanted to call it an early night. I'm amazed by her ability to take care of herself. Me, I would just say i'm calling it an early night, but then i'm sure i'd have some stupid reason to stay up until 1am.

This is lew. We met him at frog pond knits, they were having an open house party last friday. He's been lace knitting for years and years. Such delicate stuff it was unbelievable. Esther hearts him. He was pretty cute. At the open house none of us won door prizes, but I did have a good time and bought some awesome yarn. I'm going to crochet a scarf like the one I got in japan, only I don't have a pattern and I can't really crochet. on the way there the juju's car got hit by a giant meteor (okay so it was just a rock, we think anyway, no one actually saw what hit us). It made a crazy massive pow and a big old almost hole (with lots of rings around it) in the windshield. Total sadsors.

last thursday afternoon I had a lunch date with niki and camille. We had planned to go to the goodwill that's in west sac. While ther I found this amazing wall of scissors. Afterwards we went to the pet store and then to dollar tree. Speaking of dollar tree camille I gots a present for you. If you're lucky i'll bring it to your desk next week.

wednesday night was our department holiday party. Tasty food at the rio city cafe (i had the pork medallions with the tastiest little carrots). Our ceo didn't want us to have this party (Mostly because he seems like a funhater jerkface), but our managers said we're going to have it and dammit we're going to have fun. So we went and funny thing happened. We did have fun. All of our office politics went away for a few hours and we were just people. There was even an almost breakdance dance off contest. and that was laughs and ha-harhars. next i propose that in the summer we have office olympics a la the office (us version which btw, is surprisingly damn funny)

Yesterday jeff, stacey & I went to the canned food outlet down the road. We're having a canned food drive at work and wanted to pick up some items. While there I stumbled across some fun items. This was my favorite. It's Nutrifun Pepperoni Pasta Pillows. What??

Went to nugget with killa (new boss) today. he walked over to our area and said "anyone wanna go to the nugget?" I was going to go anyway so I said sure. No one else wanted to go though so it was just me and killa. Then he more or less salivated and joked about driving my car. He reminded me of scottel then. Come to think of it, he does remind me of scottel often. When we got to the nugget we ran into jeff who was out for a nibble. I ordered a lamb sandwich, it needed fresh basil. After we got the sandwiches killa and I headed to the wall of soda. He asked if I ever had a faygo rock & rye. I said no and he said what? You have to try it. So he bought me one. It cost 96cents. I guess he grew up in detroit (where they're made) and thought it went out of business. So now everyone needs to drink them. It's a cream soda. Red colored. But the flavor is unidentifiable. Vanilla is there. also a cola. I want to say cherry cola cream soda. But maybe the cherry is just because it's red.

down at temple for knitting. Everytime we're here it seems like there's an event going on. Today's event is a parade. Latino themed of some sort. From what I understand it's in honor of someone who died a few years ago and they're trying to get him made a saint. So out come the mariachi players and the trotty horses!

this year my morm is the president of her organization and so she's placed our mandatory attendance on every event they hold. Tonight is the winter party thing. It's bland chinese food and a crazy program that was just above a local talent show. This is F4. it stands for the four friends. It's pretty much a chinese karaoke boy band, only they're in the 50s and so are their rabid dancing fans. I think their act never gets old, but randall says it do. also, I swear bao wants to study film, but he should stop and come home with a camera instead. These events are the best documentary never filmed. It would be like best in show only better because it's real.

Is it baby? Or is it bear!??either way it's cuteness!

camille made cupcakes! Confetti kind with vanilla frosting. It was tasty moist.

Introducing baby ahmed thomas! kari had her baby on saturday. at lunch stace, sue and I went to see him. he's hanging at the icu right now, but should be home soon. Yay! He's so cute and pudgy!

This is virginia's band. virginia went to ucsc when I did, but she and I were never really friends, not because I didn't want to, but because I never had the ocassion to. Not sure why. But tonite her band is playing here in sacramento. karen r. forwarded a myspace message announcing the show so I checked out virginia's profile and what? What? What? Is that leon who has posted a testimonial? What a small world. Turns out virginia was amy's (neon's old bandmate) housemate in sf. Wacky. Before the show we went to neon's house for pumpkin beers and look around you... Sidenote: virginia's band has a good sound, but i'm not really sure I Iike the singer's voice. She's the drummer and she's so smiley, it was pretty cute.

This morning my mom called to ask a favor. She was hoping I could take a photo of uncle bui's store for her. He's selling it ans she's listing it for him and needs a photo. So I said sure and we headed out to take a photo. Afterwards we were going to get a vietnamese sandwich, but I spent all of our cash on ridiculous fabric, so we had to go somewhere else. I remembered that there was a lollicup down the street so we went there, but they only took cash too. So we went to the store to get cash back. I got one thing, got rang up, but then gwah gwah you had to spend 5 bucks to use a card, so we thru a few more things in there got rang up and gwah gwah need to spend 10 bucks for cash back. So we shopped some more (a bag of rice brought us to our mark) and got cash back. Then we headed to lollicup for some milk coffee tea and some spicy azn style popcorn chicken. Yum yum yum.

samshrew gave me an almost expired blingo ticket, I had to use it by tomorrow, so juju and I ended up having chickflick night tonight. For some reason I wanted to see pride and predjudice. I think it's because my britspy MI-5 boyfriend is in it. Okay, so I know that's why...Anyway I sms'd juju to see if she wanted to go. We met up at my house at 7. I had tossed a few cookies in the oven (pays to freeze the dough for future use), so we waited for those and then we went and grabbed a coffee (i had my second dissapointing pumpkin flavored thing this week). then we went to the theatre with our knitting and blankets in one hand and coffee and cookie pouch (they were hot so I wrapped them in foil) in the other.we are going to be ridiculous old ladies someday. Sidenote: my britspy boyfriend is sometimes goofy looking but man that cliche scene in the rain.....oh and the movie was decent but a bit too cute for my taste. Total chickflick party.

Gwah gwah. boys and girls we are officially NOT moving to shanghai. Waaah.

for lunch I was going to eat leftovers (randall made an awesome, if not too salty rice porridge with shrimp and cilantro last night), but am sooooo cold today that soup sounded like a better option. A week or two ago I bought a few campbell's "soup on hand" they were on sale and it's always nice to have a few lunch options in reserve. Today I tried my first one "creamy tomato". it tastes like spaghetti o's. well like a thinner more drinkable version anyway. It's a neat concept, but it's almost gross. Should have gone with the porridge instead.

Oh, here's the cake I ended up making. Head to cookinglight.com for the recipe (it's in the current issue). oh and the code is cinnamon. And if I was to make it again i'd add more pumpkin, I could barely taste it. Also, I didn't use pumpkin spice. I made that spice mixture myself. Cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, allspice, clove and ginger. Yum! Oh and the cake ends up being supermoist and taste.

Knitting season is in full swing. Everyone is working on holiday projects and presents. Today we've tried a new place. Temple on j street. It's new and it's cozy and it doesn't feel like sacramento. I had a vietnamese coffee, which was good, but all pre-mixed. I was hoping for the little espresso and drip coffee like at the vietnamese restaurants. So, I think we'll be back next time too. And the time after that... I mean they have window nook!

This afternoon randall and I drove to his sister's house. They've only been there for a few months and this is thier first thanksgiving as a family. When we got there they were busy cooking, we asked if we could help, but there were lots of chefs. for dinner we had turkey (that had been cooked on the bbq), stuffing, mash potaoes, gravy, green bean cassarole, cranberry, and more. Then we had cake or pie or sweet potato cheesecake. yum taste! After dinner randall's niece and I colored and then I taught her the doodle game. Now we're headed to the rivers house and I can barely stay awake. Oh and when dinner started grumpa (akq randall's dad) spilled milk on the table. It leaked between the table leaves of table and on to the carpet. It wouldn't be a holiday celebration without at least one spill, right?.

Today we got a halfday at work. Sadly I was one of the last to leave. I guess that's okay since I was probably the last to arrive. Afterwards I ended up running some errands and do some shopping. Then I went home to figure out what dessert to make for tomorrow. Randall and I are going to his sister's house for thanksgiving. This is our first thanksgiving with them. I decided on a pumpkin pie cake, but I needed to get eggs and flour, so I went to the store. MY GOD what a zoo. Why did I go at 6??? I mean look at the baking aisle. Wiped out. Good thing I already had most of my ingredients.

After knitting I went to katy's house. We were gonna grab a bite to eat somewhere. At first we decided to go to sushi, but then we decided to go to kasbah. Kasbah is this hookah bar/restaurant/bar with bellydancing. I want to call it morrocaan fusion style. We ended up ordering a salad, these chicken rolls that were coated in cinnamon (that's a good thing), and a honestly flaming (as in on fire) ball of cheese. The waitress turned out to be a girl that katy knew, she ended up giving us a hookah (green apple) for free. Props to bao, (he knows what I mean). While we were outside, this girl erin (katy's co-worker's girlfriend) walked by, saw us and wanted to know why people don't yell. Then she sat down with us and talked about her weird ordeal with her boyfriend. She was something else.

Tonite I went to knitting at the fox n goose. This is amanda and the dude drinking is maya's new roomate eric. sidenote: before knitting I talked to scottel. Thoughts yo.

This is the office. It looks nice and all, but sometimes, and these days most of the time, you just gotta get out. So jeff and I went to the taqueria on jefferson where I had my third taqueria meal in three days. This time it was a carnitas taco and a plain small quesadilla washed down with a guava jarritos.

Shortly after lunch jeff and I ran to starbucks. we were both in serious danger of falling into food coma. it only helped a little. He had a coffee and I had an iced tea. Sidenote: at starbucks I saw one of my old chinese classmates. I don't know his name, but he spoke fluently and really made the rest of us look bad.

this afternoon was our traditional (if you can call 2nd annual a tradition) thanksgiving employee thank you lunch. only this year people are a little happier so we actually mingled (well a little bit). same cliques still formed and still no one wanted to sit with the weird guy and it all felt a little bit like high school, but hey free turkey and starches and pie!!!

okay now is it just me, or is it stupid to feed employees tryptophan laced turkey and starch items? i am trying soooo hard not to lapse into a food coma.

but yah, they are winning us over with food. i think it might even be working. at least it was until the holiday season started. now we are so overworked and frustrated. maybe they are feeding us so that we get so fat we can never leave the building...

from yesterday: right now i'm in ed's car on a secret mission with sue and ed. It's got something to do with turkeys. Gobble gobble. Let's just say someone found a better home for theirs. sidenote: on our way to the place we saw a lee's sandwiches! grand opening! who knew they were all the way out in sacramento!

Bossman bill promised us turkeys for thanksgiving. They arrived today on a big ol pallette. This is new bossman in the foreground and matt in the background. They're divvying up turkeys. Gobble gobble.

around 5 my mom called and wanted to know if i could bring my old phone to the rivers house. my dad lost his and needs a new one...long story short he's getting my old one. it's a sony erricson with small buttons though, so maybe it's not the best idea...you know as those parents get older...

at anyrate, i told her i'd stop by on my way home from work (it's on the way). i figured i'd go, drop the phone off, head home and then head out (going to niki's at 7:30 for some tivo'd tv viewing). only i didn't get out of work until after 6:30. so i headed straight to the rivers house to drop off the phone. only i forgot to clean off the phone before hand, so i had to delete all the photos and phone numbers from it first. so i didn't get to go home first. at 7:15 i left for niki's house.

when i got to niki's house her, alisha and i watched last week's trading spouses. i didn't see it and everyone at work, etc. was talking about the crazy lady. i wanted to see it so niki said she'd save it for me. what a crazy lady...

afterwards niki forced leon to pull out the laptop so we could watch a british region 2 dvd called "Look around you." It is a modern spoof of old 1970s classroom science reels. it is total fantastic. but really i want to say HELLO PEOPLE?!?! How come no one has told me about this show before??? genius.

For dinner we had lambchops and tomatoes stuffed with tabouli (sadly slightly undercooked tabouli). Yum.

This afternoon our group headed over to bayside for a meeting and a tour. We're gearing up for the holiday season and our bossguy wants our ideas and input. Also he wants to know what we should do with all of the excess overstock product in the warehouse. On our way back we went thru the starbucksa drive thru. We ordered 3 black iced teas, but they only had enough for two. I ended up getting the unsweetened passion iced tea instead. It was okay, but a little bitter.

This evening my morm stopped by to pick up some stuff. when she arrived i invited her in and asked if she wanted anything to drink. she said she'd take some apple juice. so i poured her some apple juice and followed her upstairs.

whenever she visits she has this weird habit of walking around the whole house and checking out each room. i have no idea what she's looking for, but it's what she does. when i got upstairs i remembered that i had to move my laundry, so i stayed while she went back downstairs. a few minutes later randall said that my morm wanted a pizza, so i told her to make one.

when i got back downstairs the oven was open, an avacado had been eaten, a bowl of pasta with sauce was being reheated (leftovers from our dinner), trailmix was being devoured and a pizza was halfway unwrapped waiting to go in the oven.

at first i thought about cutting the frozen pizza in half and cooking half of it now and half of it in the future, but then i decided i'd cook the whole thing and just take the rest as leftovers tomorrow. but that's not going to happen now. someone ate the whole thing.

it was a super thin crust pizza, so each pizza was probably really like half a piece, but still, i wasn't expecting her to eat the whole thing. after she devoured all of the food, she fell asleep.

when she woke up (30 minutes later) she ate a banana, and then we played with her new phone (she just got a new razr, and she has no clue on the fancy features) until she more or less said she was bored by us.

so yah to recap, my morm ate:
- 2/3 an avacado
- a bowl of fetuccini with red sauce
- a glass of sparkling apple juice
- several handfuls of trailmix
- an entire small pizza (spinach & cheese)
- a banana

she probably didn't eat all day, so i guess that's like breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once.

it's been a while since i've hung out with my dad, so this evening randall and i decided we'd take him out to bbq. originally we thought we'd go to the bbq place near our house or the barbary coast one downtown, but i kinda wanted to try someplace new. i knew there was one that was always voted "best in sacramento" but i couldn't remember what it was called. eventually (after a bit of research) we discovered that it was called J.R.'s texas bbq and that it was sort of on the southside of town.

so we got in our car, picked up my dad, programmed the address into the GPS and off we went.

we followed the directions exactly and ended up in some weird industrial part of town. you know the part of town with shady towing companies, tile outlets and barely-lit streetlamps. we started to wonder if it was the right address, or if perhaps the GPS lady was confused. that's when i noticed a few windows lit in one of the buildings, and also a neon "open" sign. we drove closer and saw a few cars out front and an unlit sign that read "J.R.'s Texas Bar B Que"

so we parked the car, got out and went inside.

the place was nothing like i was expecting. it was pretty much a large converted warehouse building with a few rows of tables, a pool table, and giant ceilings...but the smell was amazing. it was like walking into your very own barbecue pit. randall and i ended up splitting the combo plate, which was 2 beef ribs, 2 pork ribs and 2 pieces of beef brisket. we also had sides of coleslaw, french fries, potato salad and cornbread.

the meat was amaze.
it was bbq texas style, which is mostly based on the rub and it was soft and falloffthebonelike. also there were 4 tubs of bbq sauce to choose from: original, sweet, spicy and spicy/sweet. i ended up falling in love with the spicy sweet.

while we ate my dad and i made sure to save some room for the sweet potato pie. tasty tasty!

This afternoon juju and wes called. They wanted to know if we wanted to go to the winshield fix place near our house (at the safeway) and then to fry's. We said sure, so we met them at safeway, but sadly the winshield guy wasn't there (go figure, i've been saying i'm going to get it fixed for months now) . so we went to fry's. they're looking for backup harddrives. We've been here a long time now. I think it's time for this fry's doubledate to end.

Today they brought in some pizza for us worker bees. Then there were holiday decorations everywhere. We got to decorate the place for the holidays. It's funny how some white lights and tasteful ornaments can brighten the place up. I suppose that would be called CHEER. And all cynicism set aside, it is kind of nice. The other buildings in our company don't seem to have this commradarie (that looks spelled wrong...but you get the idea). So yay team.

Tonight I went to karen's house after work. She lives in oakland (which really isn't that far so i'm not sure why we don't hang out more often) and we were going to see U2. . They were playing at the oakland arena. First we ate pizza at her house and then shin took us to the bart station. it cost $2.50 to get to the arena and back. at the arena we met randall, bridget and her two friends. our seats were right behind the stage, but close. and then behind the stage doesn't really matter for this show. so really, we had great seats. It was fun to go with karen and bridget, they're my U2 gals.... After the show karen and I went back to her place. I was then going to go home, but the sleeps have taken over, so i'm spending the night and i'm falling asleep now...

This afternoon randall, jorn, samshrew and I went to the computer history museum. Randall wanted to check out the vintage computer festival 8.0. It turned out to be tour the computer storage display (awesome giant 10 mb dics) and a vintage computer swap meet. It was pretty great in a nerdsor way. I got to play some of epxy's impossible mission, so that was awesome. If you know that game then hurray for you, you're a nerdsor too (sidenote: that game used to be one of my favorites). Samshrew and I were one of the few girls there. Good thing I wasn't wearing my commodore shirt, I think I would have been totally hit on if I was. Oh and also there was this dude on our tour who actually restored a few of the machines on display, so he interjected and told stories a lot. I think this pissed the docent off, because he was so passive/aggresive about it. in a "oh that's interesting, but that machine is boring anyway, let's look at this one..." it was pretty funny...

Yesterday my morm called to see if I could come over and help with her computer, but I had plans so I arranged to come over today. I swear it was "helpa me fixing this computer", but when I arrived she was sitting on the chair in front of the computer watching a dvd (wrong region, it wouldn't play on her tv). I asked her what was wrong with her computer and she looked at me like I was crazy. "nothing isa wrong" ... So I asked her why she needed me to come over. She was mostly transfixed to her computer soap opera and barely responded. After a few minutes it ended and she needed a refresher course on how to download photos off the digital camera I got her last xmas. Once we got that sorted I helped her make a flyer and then she went on and on about her dvds and how bao needed to see these movies and then she wanted to know how people pirate movies. Tsk tsk.

Today was a free sandwich/dessert potluck at work. There were so many tasty treats and a bunch of people dressed up. I always joke about how work is trying to win us over with food, but in all honesty it's a nice gesture and sort of builds a fun comradery. Yay team. At least that's what we say when we eats too much sugar. YAY TEAM.

Tonight is halloween. I strangely like handing candy out to the tykes. And since it's a weeknight we stayed in and passed out candy. We ended up eating a frozen pizza (our stone needs to be replaced pretty soon) and watching bad tv. Then I remembered that randall said we should make a pineapple-o-lantern. So we did. It strangely fit the evening as I was dressed as a bad hawaiian tourist.

How you could say no to this face?

UPDATE: oops. i meant to mms this to juju, not to the interwebs. that's because juju and wes were gonna come over and do nothings with us, eat cupcakes, watch a movie, pass out candy and then wes said they weren't. but wes just called (randall's on the phone with him now) and now they are coming over. yay!

see? who could say no to this face.

also, good thing they called because once we ran out of candy we were gonna take cupcakes over to their house and how sad/funny would that be if they were coming over to our house while we were on our way to theirs....

Okay so I like halloween. I don't love it and don't go all crazy, but I like it. I like to get a pumpkin and let it find a personality (i found these 3 tonight, aren't they cute?). And I like to see kids looking dumb in costumes. although I am so bored of princess, fairy princess, devil, witch, ghost, and painted face. Boring. If I end up with kids they don't get to be one of those. costumes should be more fun. although at least those boring kids have costumes. this year we again have no costumes and went to no parties. Mostly because of that no costume thing. I can't handle going to a halloween party without a costume. And I stress out to much to figure it out. This year (and last year) I wanted to be katamari damacy cousins, but I ran out of time and also was partly lazy. Next year though we'll have costumes. No lazying out. I swear.

Tomorrow we're having a halloween party like thing in our building. Management is bringing lunch in and then we're having a dessert/side dish potluck. I signed up for spoooooky cupcakes, so tonight I spent a little time decorating cupcakes (which I baked yesterday lazy style from a box). There were mummies, skeletons, monsters and more. I had too much ridiculous fun. I heart dumb stuff like this and I heart cupcakes. sidenote: I didn't come up with this idea on my own. I was inspired by october's kids magazine. I also heart that magazine, but never buy it because I feel weird since I don't have/want kids...but I always looky-loo.

This afternoon randall and I went to the pumpkin patch down the road. It's really neat, it's a pretty good sized patch stuck right at the edge of the suburbs. I think next year it will be next to a movie theater (and the owner says there is a next year and that it's going to be better than this year). That's pretty wacky. This was our first choice pumpkin. He's pretty cute, no? He doesn't have a name yet, that will happen once he gets a face. We also got two other smaller cuties (one orange with a weird stem and one lopsided white one) and a few red and a few green tomatoes.

This morning randall and I actually managed to sleep in, which was great as i've been exhausted all week. We woke up around 10:50 and were just lazing about in bed when the phone rang. An agent wanted to show the house and could she show it between 11:15 and 11:30. As in a few minutes. CRAP. We hopped out of bed and brushed teeth, swept the floor, did the dishes, made the bed, got dressed, tidied up and febreezed the house. We were out of there by 11:14. Now we're getting bagels and coffee, because we still haven't woken up yet. I got the spinach-parmesan with cream cheese and tomatoes (their sesame is good, but the toasted cheese is the best).

Went to lunch with niki and camille. We ended up going to vien tien in west sac. They had never been there before and it was part of the west sac eaters club. Camille ordered the grilled quail. I had the usual tom kha with chicken. Niki had the spicy veggies. Afterwards we could barely figure out the moneys. Seems we all owed each other so it got headachey. Oh! While there we tried to figure out the difference between chowder, porridge, bisque and stew... More on that later...

Last night katy, alice, leon, matt, joel and I headed out to woodland for the aMAZEing corn maze. It was pretty dark but a little less spooky than I thought it would be (niki there were no bugs). We went in two separate cars, but apparently each car had the same conversation (what are you scared of?). Spooky isn't it? When we got there the guy checking our hand stamps was totally like napoleon dynamite (well a casually dressed napoleon with relaxed big hair). He told us in a total deadpan voice "too bad you missed friday or saturday's haunted night. I chased people with a chainsaw." Then off into the maze we went. There were actually two mazes, but we went in #1 and exited in #2. What?? When we finally made it out, we went in #2 and came out the entrance of #1. We never did find the exit for #1. Weird. sidenote: I accidently erased my first drawing. booooo.

Sitting at nnnnn's desk walking thru the style of our new release. It's something that needs to be done, i'm just getting really frustrated because there is so much to do and I don't really have time to sit around and watch him code.

This is a pumpkin burger. They're an old hensley family treat. Katy's aunt would make them and stick them in the young hensley children's pockets on halloween. This way they had some snax to eat that weren't candy. What is a pumpkin burger? Well it's a biscuit filled with ground meat (we had 2 kinds, turkeyburger or veggieburger) and cheese. The top of the biscuit has a face cut out of it (like a jack o' lantern) and that's why it's a pumpkin burger. Katy made these for us and spiced apple cider. It was snax joy before heading out to woodland for the corn maze.

This is kristine. I haven't seen her in 10 years. Tonite is our high school 10 year reunion. wes, joanna, michelle w. , kristine and I met at il forniao for dinner. Now we're headed to the reunion. Eep.

during sushi randall and I decided that we might need to walk about after sushi. We mentioned it to wes & juju and they decided they'd join us to the coffeeshop. we tried to go to infusion but when we drove by, it was ridiculously crowded. So we headed to the naked lounge instead. While there we ordered coffee (tea for me) and played rummy. Juju total won. Wes says its because she was skimming cards off the top. I'm sure!

This evening randall and I wanted to eat some sushi. He suggested we try zen toro. We pass it almost every time we come home from downtown and we always say "we should try that place someday" so today we did. On our way there we called juju & wes to see if they wanted to join us. They said sure, so we made a date. We ordered a spicy super hot roll, a few tuna rolls, a rainbow, something called a dizzy, some sake from a squid shaped bottle and some edamame. We split everything and PIGGED OUT. Juju had some veggie rolls, including this one called the "firenze." It was mozarella, cucumber, sprouts and sun dried tomatoes. It was a little weird beard.

Right now I'm at tonevendor. Juju's working two jobs right now, so she has to take care of the tv stuff during the evening. So I stopped by after work to say hello hello. Before I did I stopped by target to pick up a few things. while there I noticed this new line of candy called "choxie." it's a high-end chocolate. I got the "hot chocolate" flavored truffle bar. It says it has a bit of chipotle chili in it, but I didn't really taste the chili. Juju says she thinks she may have in the end.

this afternoon i met the art dept at tres hermanas for lunch. carolyn was in town for a dr. appt and thought it would be nice to see us all. funny how i haven't even seen the art. dept. since carolyn left.

when we got there i ordered the carnitas tacos. it was mostly a large taco of carnitas and a whole lot of rice and beans. i don't understand why this cost 8.95. especially because the rice and beans tasted yucky to me. luckily i washed it down with a glass of horchata. i don't know why, but i think i'm starting to become addicted to that stuff.

Last night i picked up drooly after work. steph was going on some work thing and she didn't want to stay home with her unwanted houseguest. so i picked her up and we headed over to the taqueria.

i had a carnitas taco, a fish taco and a non-alcoholic (they don't got the real stuff there) sangria. my total was under 6 bucks. i heart that and i heart their carnitas.

afterwards we went on a waste time expedition to kohl's and marshall's. drooly ended up finding this shirt to go under a blazer and i bought a way too expensive skirt that probably doesn't fit as well as i think it does.

then i dropped her off at home and went to my house to watch lost.

i heart that show.

Yesterday for lunch i NEEDED a sandwich. so jeff and i ran thru all the possible options. the natural sandwich place these days is the nugget market, but we were needing offsite lunch as well. so we thought about it and thought about it some more. i thought of bountiful and dad's. i'd never been to either, neither had jeff, so we looked them up. dad's had a menu online and jeff said the opa sandwich sounded good to him, so we rounded up the troops and headed over to dad's.

when we got there we saw it was a smaller hole in the wall type of shop, but the sandwich choices were plentiful. i ended up deciding on the day after, which was turkey cranberry. unfortunately, i didn't realize it was dried cranberry and not cranberry sauce (also there was too much cream cheese), but it was still tasty. also, we used that menu page and printed out coupons for free ice tea. so drinks were free and bonus! every dad's sandwich comes with a bag of chips or a piece of fruit. so i had a (not fully ripe) persimmon. jeff thought it was a tomato.

i want to go back to dad's. i want to try the veggie sandwich. it looked taste.

Tonite was the wea 4th quarter party. And by party they mean a presentation of 4th quarter releases in the evening in this weird room above pyramid brewhouse. They gave us free beer and dinner though. and free cds. Then they started the presentation. it all seems really weird and sad. The flourescent lights make everything feel dreary (niki's word and I would have to agree). But hey, can't really complain...free food, free beer and pirate patches is pretty awesome. Sidenote: this is chris, he works at wea, he wants to know who eats mounds bars when there are almond joys.

Lynn the candy lady has this new candy dish on her desk. She's had it for a few weeks now, it's shaped like tweedledum legs where the candy goes in the belly area. I noticed that it had a sticker in it that says "wrapped candy only." I don't usually take the candy if I can help it, so I didn't think much about it. (although why you make a candy dish that is harmful?) and also, all the candy has been wrapped, so no big deal. However, today it was filled with UNWRAPPED peanut butter m&ms. people ate them all day long. That is until they ate down to wear the sticker started showing... Why would you do that? It's a big sticker too.

For dinner last night, randall and I finally settled on fish tacos. It took a long time to get to that point and I was starving by then so there was no time to make our own. They just opened a taco del mar in our neighborhood and i've never been to one so we decided to try it. They took a long time (they had to make more fish) and it wasn't worth it. I figure they're called "taco del mar" meaning tacos of the sea then surely their fish taco must be good. But no. It was not. It was like a fish stick wrapped in a soggy tortilla with salsa smeared all over it. Should never had trusted a place whose mascot is a mustachioed fish.

Tonite juju, wes, randall and I went to the sacramento philharmonic. Tonight is their season opener (tilson thomas' agnegram, beethoven's violin concerto in d major, op 61 & prokofiev's sym. #5), but we didn't buy tickets until today so we're back in the nosebleed $15 seats (which we got as students for $7.50m which is so cheap so no excuses, more people should go). Right now we're at intermission and the show is pretty nice. However it would be better if I didn't hate people so much. The guy behind us has a problem with eating and breathing. By that I mean he won't stop eating and I wish he would stop breathing. Granted his heavy breathing is probabaly because he's a heavier set guy (& being a gal who struggles with weight herself I feel bad), however maybe he wouldn't be so big if he could go to the fucking symphony without eating (& crinkling) an entire bag of m&ms. Also he was with a girl who had fleas or something, she just would not stop scratching really loudly. Gah. I guess that's what u get for $7.

This is simon. He's a friend of summer's from england. Right now he's discussing the toys r us song. Apparently the british version of song is totally different. Who knew? Oh and simon says our version is "rinky-dink." boo, he just wishes he was a toys r' us kids.

Today was a bleh kind of friday at work, so we took a group lunch to emma's. I had the snapper. Afterwards we went back to work and then went to marble slab. I had frozen yogurt with graham crackers. Taste.

at katy & camille's house for a party. Niki ended up sending me this via ir beam. Heylove so cutester!

My morm drives me crazy. She asks for help on stuff so you have to go all the way over to her house and then when you get there she gets on the phone and you have no idea what it is she needs you to do. So she talks on the phone and you get irritated because there's so much to do at your own house and what she needs your help on should only take 40 minutes an hour tops but somehow you arrived at 7:45 and now it's 11:30 and you're still not done. And this happens just about everytime you go over and you get really piss off but then she starts telling stories and makes you dinner and packs your lunch for tomorrow and it's hard to stay mad at that face.

Last night I called juju after work. I wanted to know if they wanted to eat yogurt, but juju told me I had to be good and eat dinner first. So we went to shangai garden. I've never been there before but i've seen it next to pulp papery. We ended up ordering szechuan green beans, pan fried tofu, general chicken and kungpao fakechicken. The dishes were pretty tasty but they were all very sauce heavy. See all that sauce? We ended up using all the rice just trying to sop up some of the sauce. We needed more rice and they charged us $1 for more rice. Which was lame because there wasn't very much rice to begin with. Also the service was ridiculous. There was this one hostess/busboy dude who was probably the owners son and he looked like he hated it there. It took forever to take our order, I never got a water or tea refill or chopsticks, we had to flag him down for the rice, the box and the bill. Good thing that the food was tasty. Also juju treated yay! Oh and afterwards wes declared we were to full for yogurt.

Last night randall and I went to the tower theatre to see thumbsucker. Jeff told me that it wqs the best movie he'd seen all year, so I was really looking forward to it. Besides I love looking at tilda swinton she's so odd looking. And randall loves vincent d'nofrio, that's his boyfriend. As for the movie...it was good, but not as amazing I wanted it to be.

On saturday night randall and I decided to go for a bike ride. We decided that a good plan would be to bike to borders, read a recipe and then go to the store and get all the ingredients needed to make it. We ended up perusing the new issue of cook's country (cook's illustrated's new baby sister mag...i'm not sure who her audience is...) and found a tasty looking recipe. So off to the store where we put all our items into the backpack (the bagger was really nice and totally helped me smartly distribute the items) and then biked back. When we got home we donned aprons and made a mess. Sloppy joes! So taste! The secret was bbq sauce & tomato puree and total sloppy chefs.

At tequila's grill I ordered the carnitas quesadilla. It was kinda greasy and really covered in a lot of sour cream. I was a bit underwhelmed and wished i'd ordered a buritto instead. Afterwards I felt really sick, but that could have been from the excess sour cream (me and dairy don't always get along). I've decided I'll go back one more time and try the buritto, and then if that's no good, tequila's is off the list.

This a key. Sadly it's not the key to our house. That's inside our house right now. And we're outside of it. And the door is locked. oops. ...so yah, a realtor called and wanted to see the house, so we went on a bike ride when they arrived and forgot to take our house key. then when they left they locked everything up. Oops... So we called my mom&dad to get the spare. My mom was way on ther side of town with a client and my dad was pretty sure she had the spare key on her, but that he had a bunch of other keys and one of them might be ours. So he came over, but that wasn't quick enough for randall, so he figured out a way to break in. Let's just say it made me really nervous and slightly unhappy. But it ended up working, which was good because my dad didn't have a key... After we got in I took them to tequila's grill (a new place that just opened up a few weeks ago) for dinner.

Just to give you an idea of what we're doing tonight. Slideshow of objects. The host is this cute accented german guy. I wish it had started on time, but it's very interesting.

Tonite juju, her niece, wes, randall and I went over to atmosphere for an alessi presentation/slideshow. It was supposed to start at 6, but it didn't start until a little after 7. So for about an hour we milled around eating snacks (pesto sundried tomato tastyness and choco truffle torte!) and looking at the pretty modern furniture. While there randall and wes befriended this little old man. He was a photographer who had works around the store and so he explained them to wes and randall.

Yesterday was the dine for america day and the paragary restaurants (a sacto restaurant empire) were donating 100% of all their profits to the relief. So at 7 i was supposed to meet katy and neon at cafe bernardo. Leon (of neon) ended up not being able to make it, but camille took his place at the last minute.

We stood in line for forever, which was good and bad, bad because lines suck, good because i'm indecisive and take forever to choose what i want to eat. Camille and I ended up going halfsies, we ordered the quesadilla and the pizza. I love that I have a meat-eating friend. We rejoiced in our meat eating and love of halfsies. I also ordered a pomegranate cider (taste!).

When the food arrived we were a little underwhelmed. The quesadilla was mostly beans and not enough cheese. Also, I am pretty sure there was chicken in it, and I recall it saying there was chicken in it, but I don't know if i tasted any chicken. I think i may have seen a piece. Also it looked too pretty to be quesadilla (that's it in the photo). Then our pizza arrived and it was chicken and goat cheese, and again, not enough cheese.

boo.
luckily the profits go to a good cause. also on subject of profits, how cheap is it for some places to be all "all employee tips go to cause and donations" or "5% of profits" or "10% of profits". it's one day, and it's profits, not everything. how cheap are you organizations anyway?

afterwards i invited myself over to neon's house to watch america's next top model. niki's obsessed with the show...and well i don't let myself watch it at home, but that doesn't mean i won't go out of my way to watch it at a friend's house instead (considering i've seen every episode this season). I mean, it's more fun to squeal and ridicule when there's someone else around, so why watch it at home alone? i don't know why i think that show is so fascinating. i don't even have a favorite girl yet.

sidenote: Mark your calendars as I was the first to arrive and I was not late to the restaurant, and that is definite noteworthy.

For lunch kari, stacey and I ended up running to pulp papery. Kari wanted to go there, she's planning some baby shower invitations and wanted to see what they had there. Afterwards we were going to get lunch but then decided to get yogurt instead. Pulp papery is nearish to big spoon so we went there. Vanilla bean yogurt with hot fudge and caramel for lunch. I was trying not to be a pig, so I didn't get that much. But now I want more. Sidenote: that place was busy for a wednesday afternoon.

Now we are eating pie! juju had a craving for pie the other day and wes bought her one! So tonite we watch the office and eat choco pie. ps. i hate that this cameraphone camera makes everything all green in some lighting. boo on the tungsten gren lighting.

This afternoon juju called me up to see what I was up to. I told her just barely working and then we planned to do something later. Like go out dancing or something. Then after work she called me to say that she was going to stay in and hey did I want to make it a craft night instead? So I said sure and went over there for dinner. She made me (and wes) alfredo pasta with brocolli and corn. Afterwards wes ran away and crafting began. I ended up making juju's double (pronounced doo-ble) a little kerchief to cover her head. She's been getting chemo treatments and is a little self-concious. She's a sweetie so I thought it would make her smile. The edges came out a little funky (i don't know how to sew and this might be the first sewing project i've ever finished) so now i'm a little worried. Double is totally a perfectionist so hopefully she won't hates it...

The chairman is talking to mario. Ed drinks to that... Kari and I ran to the nugget for sandwiches. When we got back kari had to run to a meeting, so I sat with the boys in the breakroom and devoured my tuna panini sandwich. It was a little sad, the sandwich tasted different than I remember and the bread wasn't crispy enough. Also I dropped some on my skirt. So so sad. Now I sit here with sad tuna skirt listening to the chairman (of the bored) argue with ed and mario about conspiracy theory survivalist issues.

This was boysenberry pie. This weekend Ben's sister brought him two pies. A boysenberry and a cherry, but apparently he's not a boysenberry or a cherry pie kind of a guy, so he brought them in to the office. I had a small slice of the boysenberry. The crust was flaky and crunchy, but it was covered in sugar crystals. It was like the top crust layer was made of sugar cookie. The inside was sweet, but not too jamlike. In a way the whole thing was like a homerun pie, and that didn't stop me from eating it... *sigh*

This morning we woke up and jorn was making us waffos. We had banana waffos and strawberry/kiwi/peach tea. Sam and jorn are on this crazy tea kick right now. They bought $40 in tea at this tea store at valley fair. I was suprised to heat that. These kids are something else, I mean they is normally so cheap. They won't pay full price for anything.

Yesterday we were at grant's house from 4:30 until 11. I didn't expect to be there that long, but we had fun so it was alrite. I used to get really nervous and awkward around them, but not anymore. The birthday party turned into an eating and drinking celebration. I don't think I stopped eating the entire time. First heidi fed us mini weenies and lots of appetizers. Then we played imaginiff (which was pretty fun) and ordered food from pf chang's. When the food arrived (grant and costas went to pick it up) it was total cold and sads. After dinner heidi put baby abigail to bed and then we played apples to apples. Margo ended up winning pretty quickly. Grant even gave her the winning card and he was really trying hard not too.

today is grant's birthday and the party is in an hour. We don't have a gift yet, so we're at fry's trying to find something, but what do you get the guy with everthing? while there randall got attacked by a pack of wild dogs. I totally had to save his life.

I am piss off. Remember a month ago when I went to fill my prescription and it cost me $50? Well today I went back to get a refill and the girl behind the counter was a billion times nicer but it still sucks. Apparently the generic is $10 the non-generic is $30, but that's only if the prescription was written by a kaiser doctor. If it's not written by a kaiser doctor than it's $18 for a generic and $51 for non-generic. I just had an annual physical the month before we switched insurance at work, and we're moving soon, so I don't feel the need to get a new doctor for just a few months. So this is total sucks. At my old insurance, I got the brandname for $10. This is lamers. Kaiser is lamers.

On tuesday night I stopped by target on the way home from work. When I pulled into the parking lot I saw juju's car, so I called her. Unfortunately target has these super cellphone blocking walls, so she didn't get my call. But as soon as she left the building she got my voicemail, so I met her outside (i was checking out when she called). We chatted in the parker lot for a little while and I told her about C-ah-2 (that would be pretty wacky). Then I went over to their house for a little while and ate some of juju's homemade banana bread. She says it's horrible, but I really liked it. It was cakey and yum. She's crazy. Oh and while there I got to hear some new pa muz. You know you're jealous (especially you scottel)!

This evening I ended up staying in and working on my applications. Wanna give me a fancy job? Especially one in another country? That would be pretty awesome... At anyrate I stayed in and ended up having a trader joe's pear and gorgonzola topped with heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil. so taste! I cooked it on our ghetto pizza stone (a tile from the garden center) and it cracked the tile. Boooo... for papa bear: an heirloom tomato is a type of tomato that's not common. It's organic and is not mass produced. They're called heirloom because they're old varieties of tomatoes usually dating back to the 1900s. they're usually strange colored and are oh so tasty! Hope that helps. Oh and somehow emeril's name is attached to some farm's heirloom tomatoes, I don't get it...

This afternoon our group went to lunch at this new chinese restaurant. We've been calling it the "secret chinese place" because it's got these big huge windows that you can't see in to. We always joke about how it's got to be a front for the mob or something. but it's not. i ended up ordering the general chicken. it was pretty decent and inexpensive. I only wish I had requested steamed rice. it was served with chow mein and fried rice. I'm not really a fan of either. oh and sidenote: no mobsters, but maybe they're there at night. yah, I bet they're there at night.

This afternoon was the end of the summer. The rain came through and so did the thunder and the lightning. Then it cleared up and the sky looked awesome. Although it kind of looked like a thomas kincade painter of light painting. Funny how in real life it's awesome, but on a painting... Lamers.

This evening I managed to get a lot of stuff done. After hanging out with carolyn I stopped by the co-op and grabbed a tasty veggie sandwich (with shredded carrots!). Then I stopped by the rivers house and hung out with my dad for a bit.. Then I went home and mowed the lawn & washed my car (that's impressive for me, I never wash my car). Then I went to wal-mart (yah yah yah...i know I know) to do the one thing that was on my to do list for today. I am jumping on the disaster preparedness badwagon and wanted to get some of the survival/evacuation supplies today. And yay for self-checkout! My 9pm purchase was making me look pretty crazy, but I think it will just make my paranoid brain feel more secure and better safe than sorry, right? sidenote: I ate the sandwich too fast so no photographs. Checkout this awesome flashlight instead. It runs on D, C or AA. I am ridiculously impressed by it. Such a nerdzor. Sidenote2: randall's out of town for work and look how much I got done... Coincidence? hrmm... Maybe?

After knitting I met carolyn at cafe bernardo. Neither of us were hungry, so we were going to grab a light lunch. However when we got there they were still serving breakfast so we decided to head over to cafe milazzo instead. Only when we got there it was closed. So we said to hell with food and went to tupelo for coffee instead. I had the "kerouac" which was more or less a shaken sweetened ice coffee served in a martini glass. I felt pretty awesome and pretty ridiculous to be drinking from a martini glass at 2 in the afternoon.

Went to knitting at the naked lounge this morning. This great dane showed up and stole the attention from this little ewok dog. So cute there was a big dog small dog war!

One of the items on the hunt list was a hostess chocodile (mostly because niki mentioned them a few weeks ago and us judges wanted to try one..).. What is it you ask? It's a described on the packet as "a chocolated coated sponge cake with creamy filling," but really that just means a chocolate coated twinkie. And when they say chocolate coating, they definitely mean coating. It's that shiny plasticy waxy choco coating like a ding dong or ho-ho. I guess really a chocodile is pretty much the lovechild of a twinkie and a ho-ho. Mmm. Tasty plastic. So bad for you too!

So yesterday was the 3rd annual sacto scavenger hunt. Camille, Katy and I hosted it this year. Usually it's put on by heather&dan tv, but they're moving back to florida so we decided to treat them to one last hunt. There was a big list of items to find, photos to take or recreate, questions and a slew of performances. The highlight to the evening was the parkinglot dance off. Each team had to nominate a dancer and they had to recreate the napoleon dynamite dance. Another neat moment was when each team had to create an ode to dan&heather. Here's d&h in the foreground and the winning team in the background (neon & matt&heather).

Today is the scavenger hunt, but we can't play because I helped make it. So randall, juju and I went to tres hermanas for lunch. We needed to count flags at mixed bag (one of the hunt questions) and that's across the street, so we thought we'd eat first. Sidenote: there were 29 flags at mixed bag. None of the teams got it right. Two had 28 and one had 36. What? I wanna know what they were counting...

I'm at the rivers house right now, morm is having a board meeting/dinner party. She called me last night and asked if i'd stop by and help on my way home from work. So after work I rolled up and have more or less stood around trying not to get in the way. I tried to answer her phone to tell people how to get here and what the gate code was only I don't know the street names around here and for some reason I can never remember the gate code. So now i'm just waiting for the food...

Yesterday I ran some errands and ended up grabbing panda express for lunch. I had some bland and rubbery beef with green beans and orange chicken with 2/3 steamed rice and 1/3 fried rice. I ended up having a ton of rice leftover. So that's what was for lunch today. Only rice by itself is not really a meal. So I ended up heating it up (btw the trick is to add some water to your rice when reheating then it comes out okay and not so stale) and eating with formosa brand shredded pork stuff (we lovingly call it hairy pork) and a can of eel. Yah I know I know some of you are total grossed out, but I heart it. It's bbq eel and it comes in a container that is like a sardine container and it's reminiscent of the eel you would get inside of sushi. I would totally make sushi with this stuff... Anyways after I was almost finished with lunch when I spilled a bunch of it on the floor. Yay. I'm awesome.

speaking of moons...Saturday was another taiwanese festival in the park. It was for the harvest moon festival. Randall and I were supposed to cook the shrimp, but i'm sick so we've been banned from cooking duty. We were, however asked to bring aprons. When we got there my mom said she didn't need or want them, but then I told her how cute she would look so then suddenly she did need an apron.... While there I ate shrimp, bubble tea and some riceygooey thing that i've never learned the name of. Sadly though, there were no moon cakes at this festival...weird huh? This is the holiday mooncakes are for.

Last week I also met katy at her & camille's house. We did most of the hunt planning then and then camille fed us a moonpie. She has to buy them at a service station because they're hard to fin in sacramento. She's really looking for an orange mini one, but they're nowhere to be found.

This evening I went to katy & camille's house to finish up the scavenger hunt preparations. Before we started planning we stopped by this new yogurt place across the street from their place. It's called big spoon yogurt. It's this weird sterile yogurt shop. You serve the yogurt yourself and add your own toppings. Then it's weighed by the ounce. Right now it's 31cents an ounce. Sadly they were out of vanilla. I had to settle for capucinno flavor with brownie bits. I wanna live across the street from yogurt.

After work I went to the farmer's market. Sadly I only had $5 dollars on me so I didn't get to get all the tasty veggies I wanted. I did however stop by my favorite farmer and bought a bag of grape tomatoes. I'm gonna miss them (there's only one week left at this location).

Msi in the house tonite. We met them at the esquire grill. I'd never been there before, but it's part of the sacramento paragary empire. It was sort of old school meat and potatoes kind of a place. I felt like we were in an oldman's club. There was a fire place even...anyways, I ended up ordering the glazed pork chops with this spiced applesauce stuff, baked red potatoes and a side of heirloom tomatoes.

Some people shouldn't be allowed to join a group lunch conversation until they can learn how to chew with their mouth closed.

Oops. Came into work today (I was out sick friday) and sitting on my desk was a formerly nice and now slowly rotting peach. i had brought it in to eat on thursday, but didn't get around to it, so i left it on my desk to eat on friday. it was really ripe. it needed to be eaten on thursday. it would have lasted til friday.

sadly it did not last until monday.

what a waste.
what a mess.
thankfully jeff must have some slight germ phobia and he has method cleaning wipes at his desk. so at least it's no longer a mess.

still a waste though.

Somehow I have gotten total sick. And there's no juice in the house and my runny nose kept me up all night and now I'm gonna stay home from work but I can't fall back asleep, so now i'm bored. the tv is too big to carry upstairs and we no longer have any furniture downstairs and my brain can't focus on reading and i've already flipped thru every magazine. boo. and besides, Who gets sick on a friday? Now the whole weekend is ruined because I can't really do much because even if I feel better by sunday I run the risk of running into work people who will say.. "right. Sick."

Today john (the new guy), jeff and I went to lunch. John ended up paying and he kept opening doors and shutting doors and really very nice but total old school and I don't know anyone like that, so I was total weirded out. We ended up going to red square or creperie or whatever it's called on alhambra. I ordered a #6: mozarella, basil, tomatoes & avacado all rolled up into a tasty square of melted goodness. Being that it was such a nice day, we decided to sit outside. Halfway thru a bee started buzzing about. It wouldn't leave us alone so john asked if we'd mind if he killed it. I quickly thought about that last episode of starved (an fx show which is decent, but not as good as the new philadelphia one) and said go ahead. He stood up grabbed for the bee, caught it, opened his hands and the bee flew out. John the shrugged and said, "well it stung me so it'll die soon." and then sat back down to enjoy lunch. It was weird, cool & slightly awful all at once. Like the crocodile hunter meets mr. miyagi. Crikey!

There's a tomato guy at the farmer's market and he's got some yummy looking produce. Last time I was there I picked up a large heirloom called mr. stripey. I sliced it into thick slices and put it between toasted dark rye bread and a little salt and pepper. Super tasty. okay now speaking of heirloom tomatoes I saw one of the dopiest things the other day. I was at the produce section at safeway and took a look at their heirloom tomatoes and was flabbergasted. On each of the tomatoes was an emerill (as in the chef) sticker. Next to them were packs of cherry tomatoes with emerill's face on them. What? I don't understand how produce can have a sponsor...what?

The other day lynn at work brought in a kajillion grapes. They grew too many this year so I grabbed a bagful. They were wine grapes and randall and I jokingly said we'd make wine. Only when we looked up how to make wine we decided we would have to get too many supplies and implement science, so we said bah, some other time. But we still had all those grqpes so we decided to make grape juice instead. We have to wait a while for it to strain so I don't know what the taste is like...

Uncle bobby's family all have birthdays near each other. So in celebration, they throw one giant party. There's always bbq and chinese food (one tradition from each side of the family) to gorge yourself on. That was followed this year by peach pie and vanilla cheesecake. After we eat we force the kids (8th grade "baby" james & 2nd grade sena) to wait 30 minutes before getting in the pool. I know that's a myth, but they don't so shhhh....

This evening randall & I thought it would be fun to go out & get a drink. Only once we got ready we remembered why we never go for drinks. Neither of us want to be the driver. So we said ok, is there a bar nearby where we can walk to? Answer: no. So I sucked it up and said i'd be the driver, but when we got outside we realized that a) it was really nice outside & b) we were too full from dinner (breakfast for dinner bacon, yogurt, cereal). Those 2 things combined made us remember our "we're going to start taking walks" pact. You know, the one we've broken every day for the past 47 days... So we decided hey, we really don't need beer calories & a walk sounds nice now, so we got out of the car and walked to the newish cafe about 5 blocks from our house. I had a plain ice tea (no sugar, it's more refreshing that way) & randall had a plain coffee. We brought cards to play, but they have a small selection of games there so we played yahtzee. We each ended up rolling several yahtzees, but I total kicked his butt.

So at our little outdoor bbq, I decided I would entertain the masses with a little music. I was parked right next to the area so I rolled down the windows and turned on the radio. Jeff told me that i'd drain my battery, but I was all "pshaw. That won't happen" so guess what? It happened. so eduardo, matt and john (the new guy hero with jumper cables) saved the day. I felt like such a girl. apparently i'd also left the air on. Oops. once we got the car started heather, jeff and I ran to 7-11 to get some slurpees. I had the "frawg" flavored one which was a semi-bland green apple. I like the old non-frawg green apple better. that one tasted like jolly ranchers.

As a thanky thanky work is feeding us bbq. Matt made us hamburgers, hot dogs, veg burgers and veg hotdogs. now we're sitting around chatting and sticking labels onto postcards. Weee.

OH MY OH MY OH MY. okay, so the other day katy and i were talking about kit kat dark and how fantastic they are. she said she hadn't seen them but she told me how she saw kit kat COFFEE at the target on broadway.

KIT KAT COFFEE???
WHAT!!? HOW COME I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS!?!

so naturally, as soon as i got the chance, i ran straight to target and bought two (one to eat and one to share, i didn't want to get more in case it was disgusting). it came in a shiny foil-like wrapper and had the now too familiar hershey's "limited edition" printed in the top left corner. on the outside it says "Crisp Wafers in Artificially Flavored Coffee Milk Chocolate."

i brought it to work today and decided i would eat it after lunch. i was totally full from lunch, but i kept staring at it. after about an eternity, i couldn't wait any longer and ripped the shiny foil open and plunged part of a stick into my mouth.

HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN.

the hershey's chocolate (which i don't usually like even though i totally love kit kats) is infused with "artificial" coffee flavor and it's quite strong. overly sweet. and reminds me of something i would be able to buy at the asian grocery store. only there it would be called like "coffee kiss kiss blocky", "coffee derish" or something like that.

i devoured all four sticks, i barely even had time to disect one of the bars savoring it layer by layer (which is how i usually eat at least one of the sticks).

after work i am rushing back out to the store to stock up. if it doesn't catch on and succeeds it will be a very dark day...

oooh, speaking of dark. just think if they made it with the dark chocolate! omg. i probably would have died.

----
okay now for some kit kat awareness. we are not so lucky here in a america. we are stuck with regular, big kat and white chocolate. we were teased with dark chocolate (still found as minatures), mint and orange. but look at the lucky japanese. look at how many varieties they get. pineapple, green tea, strawberry (which is taste!), berry, melon, milk and more. check out this list of all varieties

Last night I went to wes & juju's house. I thought it would be nice to see them and also there was promise of q-cup and I total wanted the q-pop chicken. So I got to their house and we wnet to q-cup. I ate almost the entire sweet potato french fries & qpop chicken combo washed down with a grape black tea (no pearls). I ate soooooo much. I felt so sick afterwards, my stomach was a bloated mess. I thought wes & juju were gonna have to roll me home, but somehow I managed to get in the car. we stopped by raley's on the way back. Juju needed ice and punch fixins for her recital. She teaches piano and 6 of her students are coming over wed to perform and play games. Once we got back I (barely) helped to hang streamers. It was pretty darn cutestervitch. I would be pretty thrilled if I was one of these tykes. sidenote: if u live in the sacramento area, have a way to practice, and want to learn piano, juju's yer gal.

Jeff and I went to new edokko for lunch today. We were both feeling the need for raw fish. So we hopped in the car and decided to get some eats. i ended up ordering the salmon and sashimi lunch combo. The salmon was salted (forget the ...yaki name) flavor instead of the terriyaki. I hearted it. while there the company founder and some pals came in and sat at the table next to us (the guy in yellow). It made me feel a little uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to stop talking about how I want a new job.

in a meeting right now, the outside vendor brought us swag even. Now I have this sweet hat. Go nerd go! Hey, maybe I should be nice to them and they'll give me a job.

last night neon (niki + leon) invited us to pizza monday. it's a new tradition that they've started. yesterday we went to zelda's for some 'gourmet' deep dish chicago-style pizza. randall's never been there before (still don't understand why that is) so it was a special adventure.

zelda's is this oldschool pizza joint with no windows and very low lighting. we ended up ordering three pizzas for 9 of us (alice, suresh, heather & dan tv and becky joined us). we had the pesto, a garlic/olives/mushrooms and a garlic/tomatoes. it was pretty much garlic city. we're going to be able to fight off vampires for the rest of the week.

oh and i wanted to sneak fresh basil in to put on the garlic/tomato pizza (my fave pizza combo), but i think they may have banned me for life.

sidenote: i think we left the largest tip the usually non-helpful zelda's waitstaff has ever seen. the bill was 90, we left 108. and something felt wrong. i couldn't figure out what, i didn't actually look at the bill. only now that i think about it, zelda's automatically add a grautity to parties over 8. so yah i think we left a 35 dollar tip.

oops.
well, at least she smiled more than once.

today I ate my lunch in the breakroom. That means I ate lunch with the all male nerd herd. We talked about cars. Eduardo said I was the only one cool enough to join them. I told him I didn't realize there was a high demand to hang out with them. Then he said he meant that I was the only one who would actually hang out with them and that that was pretty cool. They should award me a medal. For lunch I had thai food leftovers. this makes it 3 straight days of thai food (randall and I went on mon and yesterday I went with work). I am so over it. also with lunch I had a pirate's keg rootbeer. it was okay. had a slight bitterness to it with a tiny bite and mildly sweet aftertaste. it was, however, not very carbonated, almost flat.

I have found a new favorite yogurt. The organic lowfat yogurt from trader joe's is so light and creamy, it's practically drinkable. Today's flavor was orange passionfruit. Too bad there's not a trader joe's on my side of town. I'll have to stock up next time i'm there.

Somehow i've been suckered into helping out at this oca event. What is oca? Hell if know. Rungfung aiyi called me a few weeks ago and asked if I could help. I (thinking it was for a different organization) said sure. Then I found out it wasn't what I thought. Totally suckered. right now i'm helping people sign in for this reception at the capitol and i'm about ready to go. I'm manning this booth with kids a lot younger than me while peers signing in are treating me like a kid. Boo. And the food smells bad like bad wedding reception gravy. Oh and there are assemblymen running around eating free food and taking pictures with people. Am I the only one who finds pictures with poiticians you don't know and maybe don't even agree with politically a little weird?

The other day randall and I went shopping for camping gear. We're going camping next weekend and needed things like sleeping bags (neither of us have been in forever so it's like we're newbies). While out we found these mosquito net hats. I thought it would be funny to get them for working on the front yard. Oh and I bought a fishin pole. I have never been fisihing before. City girl meets fishies! Oh boy!

This morning I decided that it would be nice to go to knitting. I was pretty confident that it was at cafe melange this week, so I didn't check to confirm. Besides melange serves breakfast and that sounded tasty. So randall and I hopped into the car and drove to melange. We arrived around 11:30, knitting starts around 10, but they're usually there til post 12. I can't seem to leave the house (even if I wake up early) before 11 on the weekend. When we got there I didn't see any of the knitters. Either I missed them, or I got the venues mixed up. Oops. Since we were there already I decided to order the eggs benedict with fresh fruit. Knitters where are you?

The other day bao said he had to go to an event, but not to worry, I didn't have to go, soi didn't get any details. Then yesterday samshrew told me that morm wanted to make sure I didn't forget about the event. Uh event? As in the one I don't have to go to that I know nothing about? Including what time or day or where? Turns out the event is today, 7pm at the confucious temple. Normally i'd be pissed off by the lack of communication, but I decided it was moot. Besides turns out the event was some sort of chinese dance troupe performance & I secretly enjoy (most) of them. So I figured why not. i arrived at the temple at 6:35. turns out it was a children's (6-18) dance troupe. Too bad I didn't know about it before hand. I think juju's nieces would have liked it. It was very much like chinese ballet. Which is exactly why randall stayed home. during intermission we went outside & were slammed in the face by a tasty aroma. The restaurant next door is cooking a feast for the performers & volunteers. lucky.

okay, so tell me what's the deal with this. every month work buys a cake to celebrate the birthdays that happen in that month. we used to say "happy birthday to X, Y, Z" but i guess someone complained that they didn't like having their birthdays announced. so now it's celebrate all august birthdays!

anyways, that's not what i want to know about.
what i want to know about is the "first cut" thing. does anyone else do this? there is a full sheet cake sitting on the table for about 30 minutes. an email has gone out to say "happy august birthday! cake in the break room! enjoy!" but the cake just sits there. no one wants to cut it open. no one wants to be the little piggy to take the first piece.

why is that?
i'm totally guilty of it myself. stacey and i walked to the breakroom specifically for cake, we see that it's not open yet, so she makes a beeline for the bathroom and i head for the water cooler.

why? does anyone else do this?

but the better question here is why am i even eating this cake? i don't like this particular supermarket's sheet cakes. they're not horrible, but they're not worth the calories either. this one is decorated harry potter style (those green things are trees i think). is a "chocolate" cake (and buy chocolate they just mean brown colored) and has a giant layer of gritty frosting.

why am i eating this??

Randall and I just met wes at the sacto japanese bazaar (juju is on her way). Right now i'm standing in a really long line for fresh tempura. They went to get sushi, the line is not nearly as long. Probably because they're not making it to order, it's way too hot to have fish outside. This place is packed with people. The mix is sort of strange, a lot of tourists (dead giveaway is bad safari sun hats, fanny packs and cameras), a lot of japanese people, a lot of old people, young people, and a lot of people who, like me, just came for the food.

so today was the bossman's furreals last day. he's been with the company for a little over 20 years (he's only 40 and it's pretty much been the only job he's ever had).

f. 20 years? that's crazy. 20 years ago i was only 7. we made bossman feel old when we said that. then he felt older when jeff said he was only 4. and he felt even older when ivan said he was only 2 and he must have felt super ancient when this guy in the callcenter said, "i wasn't even born."

it's a little sad when i think about it.
but it must be really sad for him.
or really exciting.
i can't even imagine doing the same thing for 20 years. that is crazy.

anyway, good luck kertell.
hope you packed your warm clothes, you're gonna need them.

at lunch i had to run to the bank to deposit some checks. i am notoriously bad at getting to the bank, it's because my bank is retarded, there are only like 2 branches and they're both far away. the only upside is that it's very near to trader joe's. and i like trader joe's. they have good snacks.

so i drove to the bank, deposited my money and went to trader joe's.

i didn't know what i was in the mood for, but when i walked in i saw the bread/pita/naan section, and i remembered, oh yah! reader monica suggested whole-wheat pita with an accompaniment of my choice. (thanks for the suggestion!)

so i got some whole-wheat pitas and i (finally) decided on the cilantro jalapeno hummus.

first i ate part of the whole-wheat pita by itself. it tasted chewier than i expected and i wonder if that's the whole-wheat flour doing it's magic, or if it's just not that fresh of a package. it was also a bit nuttier than a regular pita. i should have bought those too, just so i could do a taste-test-comparison. i should have (at the very least) looked at the nutrition facts of the two, just to see the differences there. I imagine it has higher fiber and more nutrients, but since I didn't look i couldn't say for sure.

next i dipped it into the cilantro jalapeno hummus. the cilantro flavor is definitely very prominent (if not overwhelming) and i definitely detect a roasted pepper thing going on (checking the ingredients, there were dehydrated red bell peppers in here). i do not, however, detect a strong jalapeno flavor. in fact, after eating an entire pita with it, i had to double check the label to remember what kind of hummus i was eating. i thought for a minute that it was cilantro lime (which is weird as there is no lime...but there is "concentrated lemon juice"). to be fair i have a really high tolerance for spice, so if something is mild i often find it as nothing. Although I do think this could be crafted better, for example, my last bite definitely had jalapeno it, but the three before that did not.

now i have 5 more pitas to go. anyone got good recipes?

At around 9pm juju came over, she said she felt like cookies so I told her to come over and i'd make her some. She worked on an awesome scarf and I baked cookies and chatted. Mostly chatting and not paying enough attention to the recipe, so it took longer than it should have. Also I was following the america's test kitchen thin and crispy. Ha ha, randall's going to be so jealous. Sidenote: the oven sure is getting a work out this past week. Sidenote: juju got me the cutest dopeiest bracelet with deers on it. Thanks juju!

This week is carolyn's last week. So a few of us met up for drinks at ink. Her bossman was picking up the tab so I had some fruity drinks. He didn't remember who I was. He thought I was some other gal who has tatoos all over her arms. But I was in short sleeves, so clearly no tats. Oh well, I called him on it and i'd say he felt bad, but I don't think he's capable. He seems rather android like. Afterwards we went to icon for some eats. I ended up partaking in the appetizers, but I didn't stay long. I think we'll have a celebrating later.

Last night randall and I met at the store to figure out what was for dinner. Randall wanted a slab of meat, but we decided against it because it would make the house smell too much. Normally, we'd just open the windows to air the house out, but they're spraying the whole area with some nasty westnile carrying mosquito killing spray. So we were advised to keep the windows closed and the air conditioner off. So naturally, we decided to make home made pizza. You know the kind you make in 500 degree ovens. Yah hot house with hot oven. Total smard. Oh and the pizza was nice and crisp (well mostly) with tomatoes, garlic and basil.

got back from a meeting and there was this cd propped up in my keyboard. Where it came from no one knows. Maybe someone thoguht i'd like it. I don't see why, the back says "they've been called AC/DC on acid, Pink Floyd on uppers" that sounds horribly unappealing to me. where did it come from???

This afternoon I called up bao to see what they were up to. They were headed to the tu's house for some bbq pool party fun. They told us to come along. So we met them there. Randall went off the diving board a few times. This is him doing what we dubbed "the cartoon fall." He runs off the board and runs halfway across the pool sorta looks down and then falls. We're not sure how he does it, and it happens so fast, but its awesome.

Randall and I just finished eating dinner. Chicken tortilla soup with homemade chips. Randall made the soup and I was in charge of the important stuff, you know the salsa and the drinks. I made homemade salsa and pineapple/guava/tequila drinks.

Working on some projects right now. It's too hot to go outside so indoor computer projects it is. Got thirsty and needed something to drink so I grabbed this "yeo's justtea apple flavore bubble green tea drink" you know, the kind that "contains no apple juice." Also, it contains no bubbles. At least not the tapioca kind (that I assumed it would contain). It is carbonated, maybe that's what they mean by bubbles. It also barely contains tea. It tastes like apple soda. I guess that would be the "artificial flavors." would I try it again? Yah, look how cute he is! Sidenote: randall FINALLY finished the new harry potter. I've been dying to talk to him about it for weeks, now I can't remember all the things I wanted to say about it.

This morning I woke up and ate a piece of biscotti. It came out better than the last time and that's probably because I actually followed the recipe instead of making things up. I'll post a link to the recipe later, but speaking of link I finally finished the last zelda game this morning. It only took 2 years. I hearts it. This one had such fantastic animation style. I know i'll be sad with the new upcoming one.

Work is having a bake sale to raise money for casey on monday. I don't know if i'll have time to bake stuff later this weekend, so I decided to bake some this evening. I made a batch of citrus biscotti, but i'm dumb and I cut the slices way too big. Instead of "makes 3 dozen," I got just a little over one dozen. Oh well, I guess I could make more...I also made these peanut butter squares from nigella lawson's domestic goddess book. The picture looked really great so I rounded up the ingredients. I don't know how they taste yet (still setting up), but man oh man they look fatty. They're pretty much peanut butter and sugar covered in chocolate frosting. I think it's kinda like fudge and a peanut butter cup had a baby.

Wasn't that hungry this evening and we were feeling a bit lazed and just sat around all night. Around 9 we realized we needed to eat and so we were going to the store to get something. While I was getting ready to go I said "hey, want some chinese food?" so we started to drive to the nearby chinese food place. Half way there I said, "or we could do thai" randall said he preferred thai, so I said okay and then we drove to thai place where he ordere fried rice. Not exactly a totally thai specific dish, so I called him on it. He said it's because he doesn't like the lettuce they put on their food, even though the food tastes good. So basically he vetoed a place because of their garnish. also while there I ended up paying by credit card. now comes the question of the day. when you order to go do you tip? randall says no. I say someone had to box it. he says but no one had to serve it. what do you say?

sitting in the living room watching the news when I hear this high pitched squeal. I have sensitive ears, but couldn't figure out what it was, so I paused the tivo (hurray tivo) to investigate further. The sound was coming from the kitchen and I thought maybe it was randall's espresso machine. It's happened before where the frother thing hadn't been emptied of the steam and it lets out this squeal. So I went to look, but it wasn't the machine. I couldn't figure it out, it sounded like it was coming from...The Pineapple?? i looked over at the pineapple and sure enough it was squealing AND bubbling. BUBBLING. last I knew, fruit didn't bubble. so I cut it open and it bubbled some more. it had started to ferment! we looked it up on the internet and apparently pineapple will start to ferment after a few days. I tried to eat it, but it wasn't that taste. it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. I asked randall to look up whether or not I could eat it. he said it was ok but probably not my best idea ever..

right now we're in the conference room and josh kelley is here performing for us. he's a singer songwriter dude. I can see where the ladies in the world could like him (maybe not some of the jaded ladies I know, but you get what I mean) He's "charming" and is telling dopey anecdotes and jokes between and during his songs (including two references and one impersonation of ron burgandy). watch out ladies he'll steal your heart. One of the anecdotes was about this song he wrote his first year in college. Which made me think, huh he was one of those guys? You know that sensitive dude sitting in the quad "impressing" all the ladies with his acoustic skills. We had lots of those at porter, including what's his name that pretty much went crazy later, he would woo the ladies in the bathroom because "the acoustics were better." sidenote: we were promised refreshments. Where are they? update: the pizza arrived and it was way more comfortable to eat afterwards instead of during.

last night i was up way too late. the other day jean-marie taught me how to crochet in the round and i found this pattern for a big holed string bag. but i didn't have any string. so i used curling ribbon instead. this is my first crochet project ever and i'm surprised by how easy it was and how (relatively) even my chains are. also the curling ribbon is really very sturdy once it's been pulled into chains.

the bag came out a little bit smaller than i thought it would be. it's sort of squat, like a basket. and since i've used orange curling ribbon it reminds me of a pumpkin. originally i thought i'd be able to take it to the grocery store and use it for a grocery bag, but after i finished i realized it was much much smaller than anticipated (i didn't gauge it, i never do, i'm way too lazy for that) and i didn't have the size hook the pattern called for. besides i'm much too stubborn and lazy for reading directions.

anyway, it's much to small to take to the store, but it happens to fit a baby round watermelon (which is sort of the size of a large honeydew or cantaloupe). you can see that in the photo. i think perhaps i'll take it to the farmers market with me.

or you know, if i ever need to bring a watermelon with me, i'm totally set.

sidenote: they just started a farmer's market nearish to my neighborhood. now i have no excuses.

Stuck in awful traffic. No joke I have travelled 20 yards in the last 7 minutes. I have seen this light change 4 times so far. I think it will probably take at least two more. No freaking joke.

i'm only down here because I wanted to go to mixed bag to get lorelei a birthday gift. I figured that store has tons of weird stuff so surely there would be something there. Too bad there wasn't. Now i have to think about what i want to get her.

At anyrate, while i was in the area, i figured i'd stop at la fiesta for a buritto to go. then I could take it back to work and get back to work in a reasonable amount of time. only it didn't happen like that. all this traffic made my lunch really really long. i guess i should just be thankful that my lunch break is untimed. it would suck if i had to punch in. also, i don't think anyone noticed so that's good. once we get a new bossman i'm going to have be so on task, that is going to sucks.

once i got to work i ate my burrito. about 1/3 the way thru i realized my burrito/mexican food craving was over. also, i don't like the rice or the beans they use, so i should have stuck to my initial thought and gotten tacos instead. the carnitas were tasty. a nice fried crunchy texture in places. just the right amount of fried grease mmmm...

and now, now i'm going to vomit. i ate the whole f'ing thing. i only meant to eat half. and the best part is, i washed it down with a glass of horchata. because you know milk and i get along real well.

ugh.

sidenote: this photo is of the street they're digging up and driving little trucks into! i guess that is why there was so much traffic. it looks like they are building a parking garage for bumper cars!

Last night i met alisha, esther and alice at dragonfly. alisha's roomate works there and she tipped us off to the informal sake tasting that happens there once a month.

when we arrived we discovered it was very informal and in the back of the restaurant. we decided that we would sit down and have a bite to eat as well. so we took our seats, glanced thru the overpriced menu (10 for one sushi roll, i dunno it was good and all, but 10 dollars good...dunno) and ordered a few bites. alice and i ended up ordering the same thing, the mango madness roll. i was pretty excited, i love it when fresh fruit is put into rolls. especially mango or pineapple. but the roll ended up being too sweet, sort of like dessert and it was covered with the sauce. the sauce was good, but i think i would have liked it on ice cream, or shave ice.

speaking of sauce, alisha went on to scare us about how spicy tuna rolls are usually just the icky parts of the fish, or kind of fish on the way out that is covered in the spicy sauce to mask the irregularity. i know this, but i don't like to think about it. throw the rooster sauce on it, and i'll be fine. besides the spice is so good.

after we ordered our food we went over to the sake tasting table. there were 4 types of sake and they were ordered in least expensive to most. the first one was a sake from a can! i don't know why that thrilled me so much, but it did. he opened the lid and popped it open like a mini soda pop. i kept thinking how fantastic these would be for a picnic or camping or any sort of event. and, bonus, it was surprisingly good. a sweeter sake, but very smooth.

next (how i wish i didn't misplace the sheet that had the names of the sake on it) was a very crisp, very "fresh" (alice said cucumbers, and the sake guy just about flipped out going WHAT?!?!) almost appley flavor. then there was a gorgeous blue bottle that was very smooth and almost flavorless, but in a good way. and then finally a normally 11 dollars a glass one. and it definitely lived up to its 11 dollar a glass name. it was smooth and crisp, with a hint of sweet (like asian pears), very pure. i wanted to drink the whole bottle. and i didn't ask, but i wonder, is 11 dollars a glass, just a tiny sake cup glass or is it a glass glass? because if it's $11 for a sake cup, wow.

oh and while we were there we found out about an inaugural sake festival/event happening at the sacramento hyatt hotel on some evening (6-9pm) in october (i also misplaced that flyer). it's $55 a person, but there are 100+ sakes to taste and supposedly all you can eat food. when i find out the date i'll let you know. that was the only detail i didn't remember.

and i don't care if i am living in san jose then.
sake and sushi eating and drinking!?!
i'm so there.

Received a pocketpig.com food request yesterday. someone named JP requested that i try fresh pineapple marinated in lime juice lightly dusted in chili powder. he read a book that once had a character snacking on that.

a few hours before i read the request I happened to cut open a fresh pineapple. I had a few pieces saved, so i put them into some lime juice. they marinated for a few hours and then when i was ready to eat it, i sprinkled it with chili powder.

the result was surprisingly tasty. i thought it might be (after all, pineapple is one of the best foods ever and i heart it in salsa, and that's sort of similar flavors, right) but for some reason, i wasn't expecting it to be. it sorta tasted like mexican candy, only without the gross tamarind thing that most mexican candy has going on. you know, sweet (the pineapple started off really really sweet) tart followed by a spice. or actually i guess that was chili spice kick, tart followed by a super sweet. at anyrate, it was taste.

after i ate it, i wondered if it was a real snack, but i couldn't find anything about it on the interenets. the closest thing i could find was stuff about adding cinnamon, and a million other spices as well as chili powder, but then grilling it all up. that might also be tasty. but i think making it a marinade for other foods might be tastier still.

at anyrate, thanks jp for the suggestion.

Went to lunch with carolyn. I think we're celebrating. She just gave her notice. Lucky. She's taking a job in berkeley working for publishers west. It sounds total up her alley. Hurray for her! For celebrations-sake, we went to black cat cafe where we split crepes. We had a savory with mole chicken and a sweet with caramel apples. oh and we also had izze sparkling juice. She had blackberry and I had pomegranate. Afterwards we dily-daly-ed around and went to pulp papery for shopping fun because eh, who wants to work anyway?

last night i ended up going to the rivers house for dinner. i guess i was bored and lonelys. and also procrastinating.

i owe dan & heather some work and i wanted to do that all day today, but being kicked out of the house every weekend due to realtor showings doesn't really help any. i should have worked on it when i got home in the evening (6ish), but i was just unmotivated. i have a hard time working with the sun is at a certain point in the sky and the lighting is in your eye. that time is sleep time. i work much better at night.

i was having a hard time getting started, i kept falling asleep in front of the computer. so i figured i'd go eat dinner with the family and then come home and it would be the right motivation time to work on the project.

only it didn't happen that way.

and i should have known better.
when was the last time i went to my family's house and i stayed for only an hour or two? it always ends up being hours. usually increments of two.

anyways, we ate dinner and chatted a bit.
and then the time was dissappeared and it was 11:30 when i left.

sidenote: i swear i am going to work on that project tonite. if anyone sees me out and about tonite, please scold me, okay?

sidenote2: this camera phone drives me crazy, why is it sometimes the photos are all yellow?

sidenote3: bao swears there is a cat in the neighborhood that sits on his windowsill and says hello (meowroh) to him all night long.

Randall left this morning to go to san jose. He was supposed to meet jeremy for the san jose grand prix (the inaugural champ car race in the streets of san jose - actually in the streets!), but sadly jeremy couldn't make it (his car was broken into last night. Boo!). Looks like randall decided to go anyway. This is a photo he sent me.

Kicked out of the house all morning. Realtors are showing the house to prospective buyers (I hope someone likes it) and we shouldn't be there. So I went down to the naked lounge to meet up with the knitting gals. I haven't been to knitting in months, I forgot how nice it is to sit around and chat. Afterwards I still had an hour or so to kill, so alisha and I went to the sf market. She wanted to go and it sounded like it could be fun so I tagged along. We stopped at HL bakery for lunch. I had a fresh (non-fried) spring roll and alisha had a vietnamese style veggie sandwich. We ended up getting ice tea at this azn cafe/bookstore. Outside there was a huge gaggle of azn dudes playing a chesslike game. After eating we stopped at the market. It made me think, dang, that would suck to not have azn market nearby.

11pm and there's still time for cake. Randall and I went to the tower cafe for chococake. It is good cake, but not amazing. Nothing really worth mentioning. Sorta dry, but taste. sidenote: no this is not my second dessert of the evening, i missed out on mattie's puff pastry. Sidenote 2: I wish I lived within walking/biking distance. It is really nice out right now.

This is mattie (?), he's jean-marie's roomate. Right now he's making an apple pastry puff thing for maya's birthday bbq. I'd take a picture of maya, but it's too dark out right now. She's opening her presents in the backyard (which is very cute for a rental with a grapevine patio cover even). Jean-marie was sweet enough to have a bbq birthday for maya at her house. I got here around 6:45 and only meant to stay for a little while but it's now 3 hours later. Who knew?

Right now we're at the rancho cordova library being total nerds. harry & the potters is rocking the library (nerd band from massachusetts that tours the nation playing libraries singing songs about harry potter)! It's pretty dopey and I feel like i'm at least 10 years too old to be here, but really it's more like 20. But it is still kinda fun. Especially if you're a nerdsor. I mean, where else am I gonna go and see a band sing about voldemort not stopping the rock?

I've been on this unbelievable mexican food kick lately and really wanted a burrito for lunch. So we headed downtown and ended up at los jarritos. I've never been here before, but i've driven past it a lot lately, so we decided to give it a try. We ordered two guava jarritos, but they didn't have any, so we got the EXCITING new flavors of mango and watermelon. They're crazy sweet like candy. For lunch I had the carnitas burrito, it's not amazing, but it's good. Solid 3 outta 5 stars. It's sorta too mushy inside and the carnitas texture is more boiled than fried.

Tonite I called up juju and asked her what was for dinner. She ended up saying sushi so we said we'd meet them at new eddoko. That's my new favorite place (food is good and atmosphere even better). I still can't believe I had never been there until recently. When you walk in they greet you and the waitresses are so cute japanese it hurts.

Wes and randall shared a giant boat. Juju had the veggie sushi plate and I had the volcano roll and an order of amaebi (sweet shrimp). When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised, the heads had been tempura fried. I secretly love it, but I am never quite sure what is the right ettiquitte, or how one is supposed to eat it. I mean, how much is even edible?

Growing up chinese i've seen many a plate of shrimp served with heads on and i've seen patrons (myself included) rip the head off, put the end in their mouth and suck all the bits out. But I also know that when we were in japan rika thought I was weird for eating the heads. But here we were in a japanese restaurant and I was being served the heads (which were much larger than normal shrimp). And no, it wasn't decoration, it came with the tempura dipping sauce.

during dinner my shoe broke (cheap as all hell $1 flip-flops from target that i am still baffled by a) how long they've lasted and b) my ability to wear them to work, that is how much i don't care), so afterwards the four of us went to target.

going to the store with a group of people is always kind of fun to me. as long as there's no agenda and no one is in a hurry. it is, in my opinion, not done often enough. i mean, who meets up to hang out at a store? people meet up to hang out at the mall, but rarely will they go everyday shopping together. i ridiculously enjoyed myself.

sadly, it is (according to the national economic time clock) no longer summer and is now back to school time. so there are no more fun flip flops. just clearance on the leftovers. i managed to find a decent pair. although not nearly as good as the ones i got for a dollar. i knew i should have stocked up.

also on a related note: does anyone else find it weird that it wasn't even the end of july and you couldn't get a) barbecue equipment or b) flip-flops or c) shorts ??? isn't it a little odd that all that stuff gets pushed out of the stores mid-july in order for them to fit the back to school fall stuff in????

today we have another office show. Sony brought in their new darling band augustana (from san diego). They have a pleasant, non-offensive, safe and boring sound. Lots of keyboards, emotional vocals, and psuedo-epic wails. I can see where people could like them. Jeff says he's willing to bet good money that there press release/sellsheet has the word "coldplay" on it somewhere. I wouldn't doubt it, only they've got more of the OC fan visual aesthetic (in fact, when it was over jeff leaned over to say "Next week on the OC..."). Also 3 out of 4 of these guys look like they weigh 100 pounds each. I wonder if the healthy looking one ever feels fat? also they're last song was called "boston" and the end lyric is "i want to go where no one knows my name" clever clever nod to cheers, no?

girl band is kaput. Tonight is our last night in the loft. And it's actually too hot to practice. so we're sitting around gossip gossip. It's actually the last night ever. My boyfriend's band is over. Maybe nme will start speculating on when we'll get back together.

Went to z kabob with camille and niki. It's this new place on west capitol. Sort of a hole in the wall that just appeared a little while ago. It's got a hole in the wall feel, but sadly doesn't have hole in the wall prices. I just ordered the kobede kabob plate (lamb). It took forever and ever for the food to arrive and when it finally arrived it was a little underwhelming. Actually camille says it was heartwrenching and devastatingly sad. We wanted it to be an amazing west sac oasis...sadly it was a no go. As in i'm NOt GOing again. Oh and poor niki had no veggie options. French fries and garden salad for her. Oh and I think there was an eyelash in my food. I really hope it was one of mine...

Like me, this kid is bored to death at this track event. He started off the afternoon relatively well mannered, but has now resorted to grabbing, pouting, crying and at one point even yelled "why is my life so horrible?!" Right now he is entertaining himself by watching ice melt. Sad thing is, I totally joined him. sidenote: jorn totally stole the cards. F you jorn F you.

Went to grab a root beer shaved ice (which was more like a brown snow cone) and some q-poplike (but not as tasty) chicken from the food vendors. I passed this sign on the way there.

This morning we're at san jose city college. It's the taiwanese chinese american athletic tournament of san francisco bay area. Pretty much there are like a million taiwanese americans in this stadium and they're having an olympics. My morm is president of her organization, so we are all here to represent. Their group is responsible for judging the track & field events (aka most of them), so we're not competing. It's really hot and we're sitting in the shade trying not to be bored to death. At the end of the day we may need to be in a big relay event (real reason why we're here). Everyone would run a 100 meters, but my morm keeps calling it the 100 millimeter.

Randall's company picnic was today. It was too hot to be outside. We ended up winning a membership to the tech yay! . Grant won a sony psp. lucky!

We went to hukilau for lunch. I ordered the mahimahi sandwich. I got my food and ate it. I kept wondering what kind of mahi mahi was the color and texture of salmon. I assumed they messed up and I got the salmon instead. Oh well. once I was finished jeff commented on how the salmon in his sandwich was white and spicy. I said "oh. like mahi mahi." oops. Also it was so not worth the price.

after work i headed out to the city. samshrew is a billy corgan fan but she had forgotten to buy tickets for the show tonite and it sold out, so i pulled a few strings and managed to get a pair of tickets.

that meant i had the tickets so we'd have to meet up before the show. unfortunately she was coming from south bay and i was coming from sacramento. also, i had no interest in seeing the opening bands. so we ended up meeting up before the show and i gave her her ticket and told her i'd meet her later (no i didn't just leave her there by herself, she had two friends with her). then cindy and i went to meet jeremy and his friend (amanda? aka "puff") at papalote for some dinner.

at papalote i ended up having the chicken mole quesadilla. i should've had it as a burrito instead. the mole sauce was tasty, but it overpowered the quesadilla and i barely tasted the cheese. the mole in the burrito would have been great, as the rice could have soaked in all that sauce.

sidenote: on my way to cindy's house i ran into suresh. uncanny huh?

after dinner i dropped cindy and jeremy off at their house and headed over to the fillmore. i parked around the corner (the 4th most amazing parking spot i'd found that evening) and was headed over when samshrew called. apparently the opening bands had just ended. talk about great timing.

the show itself was just alright. the crowd seems to love it, but it felt way too polished. the giant video screen tiles were pretty cool, but it was sorta too u2 like. but really i think the inspiration was the new order crystal video.

after the show, samshrew said goodbye to her jealous friends and we took our coveted VIP passes and went upstairs (thanks debbie for the passes!). there was going to be a meet and greet and samshrew was total star struck. there ended up being a lot of people back there, i didn't really say anything to billy as there were lots of people who just "wanted to shake his hand". i wanted to ask him what was up with his album cover and say "honestly, no one told you it might be a bad idea? hrmmm.." but decided not to be the rude girl.

there was an open bar at the after party but i was driving so was sadly not partaking. however, samshrew and i went to the bar so i could get a water. while there we met richard, some self-employed promoter dude. he was total into samshrew. talked her into a drink and kept asking why she wasn't having more and hey did we want to go to the after after party? we ended up talking to him for a while, samshrew total giving the "so not into you vibe" and me doing all the talking. or actually, that should probably be listening. this richard dude was too much. we ended up getting bored and not going to the after after party.

Samshrew and I are having a fun night. Right now she's peeing in the bushes. Yes ladies and gentlemen, it's come to that.

yesterday camille sent out an email saying "THEY HAVE FRESH PEACH SHAKES AT WHITEY'S NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" so we booked a meeting (we all work together, can book meetings together) for today at noon. it ended up being niki, camille, myself and eli. apparently he invited himself along. i don't know what i think of him. i used to think he was alrite, then i thought he was a brown-noser/corporate climber, now i think he's kind of sad. i don't really know him that well. he sits in the other building and our jobs don't overlap much anymore.

at anyrate, camille had the brains to order the food beforehand. i had a peach shake and a regular cheeseburger. the peach shake was good, but not as peachy as i wanted it to be. maybe camille and niki hyped it up too much or maybe we just got a weak batch. we sat at whitey's and ate the food. it was too freaking hot (i saw on the news that it was heat wave ~~~~~~ those are the wave lines on the map.) high could be 107. yippee boo hoo hoo. and the flies were buzzing around.

across the street was this awesome dude with a beer belly and a sunburn wearing board shorts with FLAMES! his friend and he were tinkering inside a uhaul truck with a shittylooking jeep attached to the back. at one point he was leaning in the driver's door and his friend was under the back wheel. it just looked danger. and i'm not talking just the flames and beer belly.

sidenote: i vaguely recall something about how we were supposed to call katy, but the heat melted my memory and we forgot. if we were even supposed to do it. i can't remember.

here are a few things worth mentioning about yesterday and today. (you have to click the link below for details) 1- we have no food, but for some reason we have 1 plantain 2- i hate walmart 3- i heart randall 4- no basil for me

tonite was girl band nite. at least it was supposed to be, but it was too damn hot. originally we were supposed to meet at the loft at 9:30, but around 8:45 niki txt'd me to more or less say too damn hot for practice. she also mentioned how the loft would be like a hot box of festering bandsweat as no one would have been there all day because well, you know, too damn hot.

i was a little sad, i kinda wanted to practice, it's sorta been a while since we have. but i also agree with her, the loft is usually hot when we get there. i can't imagine what it would be like on a 105 degree day (see, too damn hot). so we decided to hang out instead. actually we were going to make katy make that decision, but she didn't, so we did.

at 9:30 i txt'd niki to say "is it hot enough for ice cream?"
we decided to go to q-cup. they had never been there.
we couldn't get a hold of katy, but i decided to drive to niki's anyway. when i got there leon was there (he lives there), as was alice and suresh. i guess they were also supposed to have band practice, but well you know....too damn hot.

so the 4 of us piled into the cars, picked up camille and headed to q-cup. on the way katy called back and said she'd meet us there and also on the way there we passed wes & juju on the road. we called them to tell them to come to q-cup, but i guess juju wasn't up for it (wes dropped her off at home and then met us there).

i ended up having the "scoop o mango" drink (which wasn't really a drink, even though it's served in a cup). it consisted of a layer of mango "pudding" (quotes because it is the asian flan style pudding), topped by a layer of "cream snow" (which is like a finely shaved sugar ice), a large scoop of mango ice cream and topped with some sort of sweet mango sauce syrup (like you'd find on an ice cream sundae). camille got the same thing, i think she was scared of the pudding.

overall it was sort of the perfect treat to end the hot summer day.
oh and on our way there i totally cut off a cop, he flashed his super bright lights at me.
awesome, huh?

yah. awesome....

Today kertell bought pizza for everyone (win our love with food). I decided to partake in the pizza eating and I decided not to take it back to my desk. So I crashed the boy party (all the developers tend to eat lunch together) in the break room. Just going back to my computer geek roots I suppose.

yesterday morning i sent joanna an email asking if she wanted to hang out. we made plans to meet at the bali wine bar downtown at 7:30. we both wanted to go to the gym beforehand (unfortunately, we go to different gyms). i was running a little late, so opted for a short work out and had no time for a shower afterwards (hey, it was so freakin' hot outside, what's a little more sweat?).

on my way to the restaurant joanna called. her car had exploded antifreeze allover the parking lot and needed help. i offered to pick her up, help her out, etc. but she said she'd called her sister since she would need to borrow her car for the next day. i told her to call me if she needed anything else and we postponed our dinner to next week.

earlier in the day i had received a sad sounding email from juju. so i decided to call her up. i thought she could use some cheering. also, downtown is halfway to her house, so i figured i'd see if she was home. turns out she was just leaving the rack. she was on a hunt for a wedding present and didn't find anything there. so we decided to meet up at cost plus, where she eventually settled on a cute green bamboo bowl and serving utensils.

while there juju asked if i was hungry and did i want to go get a burrito. i said sure sounds good and she suggested chipotle. that sounded okay, but taqueria garibaldi is in the cost plus parking lot and i remembered it being tasty. she ordered the veggie burrito and i had a carnitas one. she had the mandarin jarittos and i had the non-alcoholic sangria. we sat and chatted for quite a long time.

it was dark when we left, and it expected it to be cool outside (as it was sticky hot inside), but it was still hotter outside than inside. sucks (sidenote: they expect record highs today).

sidenote: at the gym i tried out the new treadclimber machine (which is something like this). i heart it. too bad there are only 4 of them.

as i was leaving work yesterday, i got a phone call from a realtor. he wanted to know if he could bring some clients by in a half an hour to see the house. i told him sure and then let randall know we had to tidy up. on my way home another realtor called and asked if he could bring clients by in an hour. i said sure and realized we'd have to be out of the house for even longer.

i got home and randall was cleaning up. the house smelled like garlic, so we had to lysol it out. then the house smelled like lysol. i don't know which is worse. maybe we can't cook in the house anymore. while we were tidying up and trying to figure out what to do, a third realtor called asking if he could come by in 10 minutes. i said sure and then threw some stuff into the dishwasher (to hide it) where it accompanied all the other non-dishwasher safe pans randall put in there to hide them. (mental note: don't run the dishes).

we left a few minutes later and decided to head down to new edokko downtown. we've been meaning to go for a while, and a write up in the news and review put the idea into action. cold soba noodles (like the ones mentioned in the article) sounded so amazing.

so we went and i had cold soba noodles with a sauce and tempura (the shrimps, so good!) and a "crazy killer" roll (i think that's what it was called). which was a shrimp tempura with tuna on top, sliced green chili and rooster sauce. randall had some warm soba noodle soup. it was pretty much thinly sliced beef, onions and green onions. the onion (which was very sweet) made the sauce taste very sweet, but in a good way.

why have we never been there before?!?!
thanks realtors for kicking us out of the house.
now make one of your clients buy our house!

sidenote: is it weird to anyone else that more people came to look at the house on monday evening, than the entire prior weekend?

Jeff and I just ran to 7-11. Today (being 7/11) is free slurpee day. Catch is it's a 7.11 oz baby cup. We went to the one a few blocks away. They had 6 flavors. Two of which are banana and none of which were coke. Whaaat? how do you not have coke? Anyways go get yer free 7.11oz cup. It's mighty refreshing.

Randall made dinner tonite. Filet mignon wrapped in bacon, thin cut baked potato steak fries and goat cheese wilted spinach salad. I should keep him, huh? Sidenote: there was almost a kitchen disaster. Mr chef sliced his finger open on our jank knives.

Say goodbye to the orange wall.... Painting it back to "bone china" for better burb selling... Boo hoo.

This morning randall made us pancakes. That mini one is for me. The ugly one is for him.

We're back at the show in davis. Randall is such a trooper, I think he's bored out of his skull. The 2nd band also wasn't fantastic. Too rockin not enough "weird" I suppose. Juju says that "weird is the new indie" ... perhaps she's right. That's a little discouraging. Music in general has been kind of crap lately. I hope it's weird for real and not for weird's sake. This last band is called Hello astronaut, goodbye television.. Or something like that. I heard them on myspace and it sounded knda neat. I hope they live up to it. Otherwise I guess we'll be leaving with a score of 0 for 3.

Katy called me this evening to see what we were up to. It's second saturday and there are a bunch of shows going on as well. I told her I didn't know what we up to and she asked if I wanted to go to some show in davis. We checked out the bands on the internets and decided that we'd go check them out. There were 3 total and I didn't like one of them (abe vigoda, even if their name is neat). They were playing first so we cut out to return later. I hadn't eaten so we went to mishka's and ordered a cheese plate and ice tea. Three cheeses and warm bread: brie, a spanish drunken goat and a primosale sheep. Total hit the spot. Oh and frank sinatra is playing. It all feels slightly perfect.

Today is morm's birthday. At lunch I ran to the freeport bakery to pick her up a cake. Originally I was going to go after work, but thought it closed at 6 and decided i better do it while i could. I was then going to come back to work and leave it in the fridge here. But then i had this vision of someone thinking it was a treat for the office and eating half of it. so i ran it home.

I had them write on it "Happy Birthday Mom" in hindsight it should have said "morm" or at least "momy" that would have been best. but i didn't. it cost money to get it written on too. that's so ridiculous. a 23 dollar cake should come with a free line of chocolate writing. if it was my business i would. i mean, i know they use grade fantastic! chocolate & ingredients there, but still, is it really $1.25 expensive?

I wanted to get the beehive cake, honey flavor yummyyum. but i ended up getting the fruit basket instead. it is a tasty treat i think she will love.

sidnote: happy birthday to grandma too. isn't that wacky her and my morm (mother & daughter-in-law) have same birthday.

It's 3:30 am and I should be in bed, but we're at neon's house for nacho party.

The frenchmen played tonite at the distillery. they look like they were having so much fun. Afterwards we went to scott's house on g street for the afterparty. I don't know him, but his house is awesome. I wished we owned this house. Apparently the asking price was 650,000 or something like that. Isn't it pathetic that I think that's a steal? This is practically a mansion. A mansion where you drink pabst.

around 1pm stacey said she was going to taco bell. i mentioned that i hadn't been there in forever (i told randall it had been like 5 years, but i realized that was a lie, i know for a fact i went with kari and stacey at least once as i vaguely recall a taco shell salad bowl, still that was at least 2 years ago). so she invited me along. i initially said no, but then decided, hell i forgot to bring lunch, might as well go to taco bell.

so we got in the car and drove over to taco bell. it's about a 2 minute drive. when we got there the line was wrapped around the building there were seriously like 10 cars in line. so we decided to go to carl's jr instead. i had the famous star, fries and an iced tea. i should have said no fries. i don't really like them, so why spend money on them?

overall it was a slightly dis-satisfying lunch. i'm not much for fast food during lunch. i dunno why. i think fastfood should be a guilty treat. not something just for everyday lunch. i prefer to eat my famous star at home when no one is watching.

Some dude just got blasted off of his motorcycle....

Work severely pissed me off. I had to leave for a little while just to cool down. Now I keepp hitting every red ligght. Grrrrr.

stacey asked me if i wanted to go to nugget to pick up a sandwich for lunch. but i had leftover crepes/potatoes to eat, so i told her no. she egged me on so i caved and told her i would come along for the ride. besides, who am i to turn down an opportunity to leave the office?

i decided that i would get some fruit and a drink to accompany my leftovers. i settled on a white peach and some kagome purple roots and fruits (which as an aside is pretty tasty and i think even randall might like it...maybe). i also wandered over to the popsicles. (IT IS HOT TODAY - supposedly going to be 102 degrees) i ended up buying two boxes of popsicles. they were on sale 24 count for 2 bucks. jeff told me i only needed one box, he said he had a hard time getting rid of them when he bought popsicles last time. i said, nah, i'll get two. but i think he might have been right. oh well, now we have popsicles for next week.

sidenote: each stick has a bad joke on it. mine: What has a bed but never sleeps. A: a river. Drooly's: What has two banks but no money? A: A river. What? we both got river?!?! I wonder if they all have river as the answer.

Michelle and alistair from msi florida came out to have a meeting tomorrow. So tonight they took our team out for eating. We ended up at pf chang and ate way too much. Including the great wall of chocolate. Afterwards we headed back to their hotel bar. michelle is seen here with the tequila sampler. three elegant glasses in a holder. Kinda looks like a candleabra.

Tons of homemade sushi for dinner equals enough homemade sushi for breakfast! Also the sweetness of the pineapple has melded overnight with the fish in a way that says YUM YUM YUM!

At streetlight right now. JS and his band the cloud room are playing an instore. He and I weren't really that good of friends, he was more of a bridget friend, but I thought i'd come out and show some support. In-stores are always really weird. Right now they're rocking the summer sing along song of 2005 and J (the denim clad one) is barely recognizable to me. New york does something to people. It ages them and builds up a grime barrier. Their eyes get a cold glaze and california is only a distant faded memory tucked away, but if you look closely you can see it there glimmering like a lighthouse a million miles away. Sidenote: they have a pretty great new song which is not on the album. It's darker, california's nowhere to be found.

Santa cruz flashback time. It's the swirl courtesy of peet's coffee. Wow this thing is crazy. I think there's too much choco on this thing. But i'l drink it all anyway and then go crazy.

Tell me why oh why did I take the day off just so that I could walk aimlessly around wasting money? Money, which I might mention i'm not making because I took the day off. So far i've scored pants (ones I wanted but the sacramento store didn't have, also they fit amazingly) and some earrings. I don't know where this shopping bug has come from, but I kinda hate it and also it seems to be insatiable (sp?). But I usually hate the mall, but valley fair is big and it's a weekday. The only people here wasting money are silicon valley housewives. Hrrrmmm, maybe I should be using randall's credit card....

That's all. Eep! Eep!

This has been the week of team lunches. Today we went to whitey's. I had a deluxe cheeseburger (which was mostly just bun), french fries and a root beer freeze/shake. That (the shake) was perfect. It's like a trillion degrees outside and it hit the spot just so. sidenote: while there jeff had a grilled cheese and a corndog. I hope he doesn't have a grease-artery-clogging induced heart attack.

friday was an interesting day at work. when i left the house randall wanted to know if i wanted to go get all i could eat sushi in davis. i told him i probably wouldn't be able to, i was having a one-on-one with kari (my boss). we've had bad morale lately (we took a survey that said so), so she wanted to see how everything was, talk with all of us one-on-one... so i decided i'd take the time to drop the news.

i'm moving.

today is drooly's birthday. i found her this ridiculous card with a beast cat on it. i should've saved it to send to scottel. or karenreuel. at lunch we went to nugget for panini sandwiches. we stayed there and ate. it was hard to come back to work. and now it's hard to focus. i guess what else is new?

last night alice came over around 7pm. i'd invited her over for dinner in march, but we'd been playing scheduling games ever since. i wanted to say sorry for practically puking in her car.

i wanted to have everything prepped when she arrived. it took a lot less time than i thought and made me wonder why i don't make sushi on a regular basis. cutting the veggies took the longest and that didn't really take that long at all. i was ready to start making rolls when i realized i didn't have any nori. which is pretty stupid considering we were at the grocery store the night before and randall asked me "do you have nori?" and i said, "no i better get some."

last night i FINALLY got a new tire for my bike. it's a weird size tire (i got the bike when i lived in england) and i couldn't find it. finally went to a (duh, why didn't i go there first? learn from losing) bike shop and they had it. got the slime kind self-healing even. hurray. it's only been on the "to do list" since about march.

afterwards randall and i went to the store to get dinner ingredients. we'd ended up deciding on a southwest-ish flavored baked chicken with a cornmeal coating and some zuchinni-corn-onion veggies to go with it. naturally we rounded out the meal with some super-flat cornbread.

Spent the afternoon sorting thru photos and such. The computer has gotten too fat with photos and won't take anymore. Since we were inside all day (with the AC on), we didn't know how hot it was. When we got outside, we knew we had to Jamba Juice in order to survive. we would have melted otherwise. see look at all these people melting. oh and looky-look. the phone camera updates are working again!

One more weird drink before we go. An aloe vera yogurt drink with orange. I was a little hesitant, but it ended up being realy tasty. Although i do have the urge to smear it allover my body.

Time for one last trip into town for coffee and fresh kleiner (a donut-ish croissant-ish shaped pastry). Tasty tasty. I can't believe we have to go back today. Boooo.

It's good to know (or sad to know) that after a night of drinking anywhere in the world you can come home and find law & order on tv.

Last day in reykjavik. Time for a beer and tasty fish, some shopping, a coffee and super relaxuma.

So there was no service, so no posts, but we had amazing adventures and i will have to share them later. Including snowdogs, puffins, lavafields, sheep, glaciers, beaches, drinking, 24 hour light and more. I never want to return to normal life.

This morning we went to kaffitar (an icelandic coffeechain with world champion baristas). Randall just bought this amazing drink called eldur azteca. At first we thought it might be weird (it has espresso, lime, tabasco and ginger syrup), but we were wrong. It was absolutely amazing. I want to learn how to make it... On the other side of the spectrum, i ordered what was probably the grossest drink i´ve ever tasted. i´m not even sure what was in it, but it was coffee and it had lots of vanilla bean and also pulp. i kept trying to drink it, but it was just not happening. i ended up throwing it out.

So there are two phone networks here in iceland. vodafone and is siminn. unfortunately 99.9% of the time, i am on vodafone and for some reason cannot send posts, check voicemail or anything. however .01% of the time i am on is simmins and can send posts (still can´t check voicemail). sadly, it´s really sporadic and only for minutes at a time. so i have bought a siminn sim and we're off. Hopefully there will be more posts now.

scottel goes in for surgery on monday. he was going to go on this trip with us but sadly broke his collarcone. he´s getting all metal bone fusion instead. sucks that he can´t be here, but on the plus side he will now be a cyborg and that´s pretty awesome. man machine like luke skywalker, or robocop. either way send him well wishes, okay? oh and scottel i was gonna call you but no signal. hope it went well.

Today was jeremy´s birthday. We decided that since we´re on an island, the fish must be fresh, so we decided to splurge & eat sushi. My god what a splurge. It tasted great, but we spent $100 on what should have been $40. ahhh, such spolied life back in california. afterwards we went back to the room for cake & drinks. earlier in the day randall & i bought a cake for celebrating and cindy & jeremy were smart and bought duty-free alcohol just before we got on the plane (did i mention that it´s expensive here?) around 12am we left to see the nightlife. cindy & jeremy (who had brought drinks hobo style in a bag) walked around. randall & i decided to go to kaffibarrin where we had some beers & watched the place go from busy to busier. and even though it got better, here´s another example of how today was botch: before dinner we decided to hop in the jacuzzi. When we lifted the cover we were completely shocked. what had been an amazingly full jacuzzi was now completely empty. so sads.

Today has been a total botch. We woke up early to take a boat into the bay for whales & puffins, but when we got to the harbor we found out that the seas were too choppy. Total sucks. So we went back to the apartment and slept. Nothing opens until 11 anyways. We grogily woke up at noon and went to the art museum. It took forever to find, the map we were using had it on the wrong street. I was really cranky and tired and pissed off. Afterwards we tried to find the flea market and failed, it will have to wait until tomorrow (we figured it out once we were far away). Again pissed off. So we went back "home" and made a better plan, studied the map and were on our way again. This time we went the other way, visted a bunch of galleries and became less pissed off. Now we've stopped for a bagel/pastry snack. Refueling when your day is 20 hours long is proving quite necessary. sidenote: it's been barely snowing (but sunny) all afternoon.

Finally got a phone signal. It´s been a long 36 hours but day 1 in reykjavik was jammed pack. We walked around, saw some art, shopped, bought some iclandic records, ate some food, drank some beer, went in a jacuzzi, saw an icelandic band and then saw star wars (we are nerds, we know). Now it´s a little after 3am. I need to go to sleep in order to wake up in time for our whalewatching/puffin adventure tomorrow, but look at the sky. That is an undoctored photo of the sky. In fact i think it looks darker than it does in real life. How are you supposed to sleep in that? sidenote: iceland is sooo expensive. I think we're bleeding money. Also it is cold and windy. But also it is nice here and this apartment is fantastic (room with a view, google it and you'll see). okay, hopefully i get signal again later...

We've arrived!...now where are our bags?

When we bought our tickets, we also reserved our seats. Or so we thought. Turns out that for some reason they were lost and we got different seats. I freaked out a little, when i was younger i had this weird dream (the night before a flight) where the plane crashed and the only reason i was okay was because of the leftside. Crazy huh? But i think i'll be okay. Bon voyage charlie brown and don't come back!

I am going to enjoy every drop of this water. Wanna know why? It cost me $3.75 that's why. Airport prices. Booo. I guess it's official. From here on out we bleed money.

After work I went home to pack my bags and double check my lists. That's when I realized that I didn't have a case or a cover for the camera lens I bought yesterday. So I headed to the camera store and got a case and some other non-necessary items.

Afterwards I decided that I would head to girl night karaoke afterall. I mean, i was downtown afterall and also mostly packed. so i met alice, katy, caroline and summer at the pine cove. they have a pretty good selection of tunes. i ended up warming up with "don't know much" (good ol' aaron neville & linda r.) with alice. i took neville's part and i'm sad. the impersonation i used to be able to do when i was much younger is gone.

later in the evening i did bobby darin's beyond the sea. but it was totally in the wrong key. i could not hit those notes, which was dissapointing (and slightly blush worthy). and i don't know enough about karaoke to say can you turn the key up or down. which was too bad.

oh and while there i think i devoured an entire pound of (free) popcorn.

Good morning. check out the time. I was in the office a little after 8. That's an amazing feat in my standards. But getting here so early definitely means eating breakfast here. Today I had some trader joe cheddar cheese, some peppered salami, orange juice and a tiny blueberry muffin (from heather aka drooly). sidenote: this drawing program doesn't have the color orange in it.

The books just started and it's not quite what I was expecting. The live strings and acoustic guitar paired with the pre-recorded bleeps and blips sounds way more organic than I would have expected. Also I never knew what they looked like and seeing them together I can't help but wonder how they met and how this project came about. Also this whole thing sounds way more "world-essque" than I would have expected. More college performing arts (or whole foods customer, either one) and less hipster, but I like it. I just wish the seats were more comfy like going to the orchestra. Also that I could take a nap. Then it would be best. sidenote: i'd take a real picture of them for you, but the screen on my canon s400 decided to die right now. Go figure. I'm about to go on a trip and the camera goes and busts. And no time to take it in to see what's wrong. So sucks. Waaaaah.

Okay so mia d-something todd is performing right now and I am total bored. Her voice isn't bad, it's just the same monotone thing over and over again. I wasn't even going to mention her, but one of her lyrics just caught my ear. She just said "there are eggs for the omlette if you're hungry." well, i'm hungers, where's my omlette? also apparently i'm not the only bored one. A good portion of the audience (some pictured) are talking pretty loudly. This mia girl is a folk chick with an acoustic guitar, so the crowd talking is probably louder than she is. Sucks to be her. That must be nerve wracking, embarrassing and frusting to hear the crowd over your performance. Maybe she could learn to be less boring...man that sounds bitchy, but I can't help it if it's true...

Standing in the UC davis coffeeshop with juju, niki, camille & katy. We're here to see the books. They're playing free along with mia todd and casiotone for the painfully alone (he's filling in for hella who cancelled their west coast tour dates). Juju noticed that casio looked really different. I told her that it was because of his shorter hair, his facial hair and oh yah, it's been over five years, maybe even six. After I said that outloud I felt a little funny. Has it really been that long? That long since I saw casio on my own college campus? I don't think I belong here on a college campus with a bunch of kids who are closer to bao's age than mine. Looking around I see bright faces with no direction but lots of hope. Look at my reflection and I just see no direction. What's next? Is this really all there is? *sigh* I can't believe I feel like this right now. Way to go casio. I think you've achieved your goal. Someone in the audience is feeling bittersweet & melancholic. Me.

3rd day in a row that i've been to fool's foundation. This time it's for a park avenue music show. They were supposed to perform with daedelus and montag, but montag couldn't get into the country or something. But the show must go on. PAM, as always sounded nice and loverly. I guess they made it up on the fly. Right now daedelus is performing and he's sampled the cure and some other stuff. It sounds nice, but I don't know about watching him. These kind of artists I dunno about live shows. He should be dj-ing a club/party instead. I just don't find the thrill in watching a guy bob his head and play on the computer. If I wanted to do that, i'd just hang out with randall instead (who as a sidenote couldn't make it because he had to be in san jose). Now i'm not saying daedelus isn't talented, I really like the way this sounds, I just think I should have a martini in my right hand and good conversation on the other. Sidenote: daedelus does have this neat control box and that looks fun and not just laptop boringers

After a bland meal at the factory (which again I don't get the appeal, but all the boys seem to love it, they should start a fanclub) I talked to my mom to see if she'd heard from my dad. Apparently he had just come home from the emergency room. Saomething about "his lens fell again." I couldn't really understand her, but my dad's had eye surgery in the past and has had some problems related to the lens, so I assume that's what she meant. I'll have to call him later to see what's up. Before hanging up I asked her if there was anything I could do. She said, "Sure, go mow the lawn at the rivers tomorrow." I figured sure why not it's not that big of a lawn, it can't take that long...wrong answer. The grass is crazy tall I kept having to stop every 3 feet and empty the bag. Also i've mowed it 3 times (grass is total going into shock) and filled a jillion bags. Almost done just gotta finish the cleanup. But 1st a zhongzit (sticky rice bun) break. My mom swung by on her way to an appointment and dropped some off.

Saturday afternoon was workerbee time. I did the dishes, all the laundry, I vacuumed (least favorite chore), filed all my paperwork, started packing for our trip. Allsorts. During that time randall slept. For four hours. Afterwards we called up wes & juju to see what they were up to. They were getting ready to practice, but it was too hot. So we all met up at fool's foundation to see the art show. Afterwards we put our name on the list for the trolleycar in the old spaghetti factory. I totally don't get the appeal there. $10 gets you a meal, a drink & dessert. That's nice, but I can make better at home for $2. While we were waiting my mom called to see if we'd heard from my dad. He hadn't come home after going to mow the grass at the rivers house. We hadn't, but we were closer so we said we'd go check. So we left the factory and went to the rivers, it was ghostville, no one there & the grass only had two strips mowed. Weird... We didn't really have anything we could do, so we went back to the factory to eat.

After tonevendor randall and I were contemplating heading home and grabbing a bite to eat, grabbing my camera and grabbing some cards to play, but we didn't. We ended up going with neon (niki & leon), dan & heather and emperor X to taco loco. I've never actually eaten there, it's always closed whenever I see it (at night after 10). I had the mini carnitas taco. Tasty but not amazing, also the chips were stale. Boo. after eating the lot of us walked over to fool's foundation for the "secret show". When we turned the corner there were a bajillion hipsters mingling in the parking lot, all of them trying to out hip the other. I felt like we entered a vice magazine photoshoot or something. I dunno I must be getting old, my hips aren't what they used to be. Also, so much for 'secret" show. oh and what's the secret? LCD soundsystem. here in sacramento. I love how if it was in san francisco I wouldn't give a shit, but here it's something to do...

After work randall and I decided to swing by tonevendor. There was a show at 7. Some band called Emperor X that dan knows from the florida days. I hadn't plan on coming out to see them but right near the end of the day camille sent a link to an mp3. I kinda liked what I heard so I thought it might be cool to check it out. i mostly like their sound, but i'm not 100% sold on his voice. it reminds me of someone else but I can't place who. I bet jeff could tell me, he knows all that pop culture who's who of who. like matt pinfield only less annoying, but maybe just as self-depricating. only with jeff i'm pretty sure it's just an act....anyways, i've come to the realization that my brain just doesn't hold the this band did this, this one that sort of of pop culture information. so much for my career as a rock journalist. I can't even tell you what this band sounds like...

They just turned the lights off. This was maybe a bad idea. I'm about to go into a food coma... Around noon one of the companies we're working with stopped by with lunch. They brought us bbq from sandra dee's. We had hot links, bbq roast beast, bbq chicken, ribs (i ate 3), spicy corn, greens, salad, potato salad, cornbread and sweet potato pie. I ate so much food. Like soooo much food. Food coma sort of sooo much food. Zzzzzzz...

I found another flavor that is special and has a fancy name. For you see, this yogurt I am eating is not just "peach" it is "harvest peach." Does this mean that there were marketers who tested the names? Or did someone just decide that "harvest peach" sounds more enticing than "peach"? also if they changed the name to boost peach sales, what does this mean for poor vanilla. Don't they think "harvest peach" cuts into the vanilla (or strawberry) markets?

Last night was girl band night. Originally we were gonna meet up to grab a bite to eat at hot rod's (this burger joint) at 7:30, but then we changed it to 7:40 at the loft and then (because somewhere along the way I forgot how to tell time and also got over involved in "just beating this one level" on mercury (this game randall has for the PSP) and also I was total out of gas and had to fill up) I showed up at around 7:50. We met at the loft and then walked over to hot rod's (around the corner).

Summer was waiting for us across the street. I guess she arrived at 7:30. We didn't know she was joining us for eating, so she didn't get notified of the time/place meeting change. oops.

for dinner I ended up ordering a root beer float and a swisscheeseburger. I also split some fries with camille. Our food took FOREVER to get to us. The root beer float arrived first (15 min) and it was soft serve vanilla with root beer. There was no scooping involved how come it took so freaking long. Then niki got her food (she ordered after me) and then I got my food (i ordered after camille) and then camille got hers. i thought perhaps they have a stack style queue. you know first in last out. i mean it was ridiculous and took forever. but plus side it was decent tasty (although my cheese seemed slightly crusty on the edges) and it's open until 2am on weekdays, 3am on weekends. i guess for a 3am place, what can you expect?

would i go there again? probably.
will i go out of my way to go there again? probably not.

Today I ended up having a hot pocket for lunch. I haven't had one of those in years, but I say a commercial for them the other day. It was tastier than I remembered. Sidenote: this built in mms drawing program is total limited and sucks.

Today's yogurt flavor is "blueberry patch". I don't understand why it gets the word "patch" in its title. Strawberry isn't called strawberry fields. Peach isn't peach grove. Blackberry isn't blackberry patch, so what's the deal with "blueberry patch"? Some one tell me why. Please.

Once I realized nothing interesting was going to happen this evening I sighed and decided to start doing the chores I'd been putting off all night. I cleaned out the bedless guest bedroom and put all the sewing stuff into boxes. We have so much junk it's pathetic... While I was cleaning I came across an old box of papers. There were receipts, ticket stubs and other sentimental-ish papers from when I lived in england. I started going thru them all, but it was making me all sentimental and sighsors. So I shoved them back in the box to deal with some other time. afterwards I realized that I hadn't yet eaten so I went downstairs to make dinner. Nothing sounded great and effortless, so I had a bowl of cereal and watched law & order. Absolutely exciting. Just like the rest of the evening.

I ended up coming home. Every other scenario I envisioned was just going to end with me wasting money. So I went home and was about to slip into a boredom enduced coma when I heard what sounded like police bullhorn talking. My first thought was awesome, someone in my neighborhood is getting arrested. Maybe evev those kids across the street! So I looked out the window to see what was going on only to find all the neighbors looking up at the sky. So I went outside to see what was going on. When I got out there I saw that there was a hellicoptor circling the sky. I guess they found some 3 year old wandering around and they didn't know where he lived exactly, so they were broadcasting the info hoping people could help. I guess he was being babysat by his brother. I wonder how old that kid is. I wonder if he's old enough to be babysitting. I wonder if he'll get in trouble when the parents find out. I wonder where he is...

Just got out of the dentist's office (no cavities, no problems and even no floss lecture, hurray!). Now i'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm bored, there's not enough time to go back to work and I don't want to go home (i have got to clean and get ready for the trip). What's a gal to do?

A week or so ago I was shopping at raley's when I passed this strangely elegant looking soda display. The cans (shown here) look so strangely "fancy" (you know in that generic, oh i'm sure this is going to cost too much, you're obviously catering to a tax bracket or two higher than mine, why would I pay this much for soda sort of way) and then I saw the big 99 cents sign. 99 cents! Oh I know, they're trying to get me hooked on fancy soda...and then I looked closely. What?? This is raley's brand generic soda? what? Who are they catering to? Why was fooled by the ugly fancy? Anyways, I naturally had to try it even though i'm not a huge soda drinker (but I do like me a diet dr. pepper every now and again). So I opted for the best sounding flavor, which happened to also be the funniest, and took home a six pack of diet dr. tremor for only 99 cents! and that, along with leftover orange chicken, was what I had for lunch.

Ed and I share a cube wall. He just threw a tea bag over it. I think he must've read how much I enjoyed my last cup. Now I will enjoy another. Thanks ed!

This morning marked the end of my early bird streak. I'd been getting to the office around 8-8:30 for over a week. Today I woke up at 8:30 and got in at 9:15. So much for new early bird leaf. However, I shouldn't complain too much, last night also marked the first night of uninterrupted sleep since thursday. Coincidentally, that was the first night since thursday where randall wasn't there (he's in san jose right now)....hrrrmm, maybe it's his fault... Anyways yogurt for breakfast again. Mmmm, bring on the milk phlem goodness. I'm sure it's helping this cold (or is it awful allergies again).

I've been craving dim sum lately, especially little shrimp dumplings. On wednesday I was going to have dinner with alice, but we ended up postponing until after I get back from vacation. But before we postponed our dinner I had decided I was going to make some sort of potstickers or dumplings or something like that. I had potstickers on the brain, especially shrimp ones. So after work I went to the store and got some shrimp. Unfortunately when I was mixing the filling I over processed the shrimp. So instead of being a chunky mixture it was more of a fluffy paste. So the insides were more like processed fish caje and less like shu mai. Oh well.

at lunch time niki, camille and i went to carol's in west sac. we've decided to start a west sac branch of the eaters club. that and we've all worked at the same company for several years and have been to about 5 restaurants in the area, so why not try some new (to us) ones?

Counter intuitive. I'm sick and i'm eating yogurt. Like I need more milky residue in my system...to counteract the yogurt I am also drinking a cup of the good earth tea (the one camille recommended). I used to drink this tea all the time in high school, then I stopped for some reason. I don't know why, it's really nice tea (it tastes like sucking on a cinnamon stick)...now for the strange part, i'm looking at the tea packet and this stuff is made in santa cruz. What? So strangely I drank this tea for years, moved to santa cruz and stopped drinking it? How ridiculous is that? I think i need to start up again. Thanks to Ed for giving me this packet.

For breakfast: honey bear, lemon and hot water. It's like a homemade tea. Also it makes me feel better. I woke up this morning feeling better, except my throat kinda hurts/is scratchy. Now I gotta get ready for work. Booooooo.

When randall finished work he ran to the store to get some food for dinner. He came home with chicken and spinach (shhhh, don't let his mom know he's eating vegetables). We ended up making orange chicken and sesame spinach with rice. Thanks to mr. yan we can cook and had a tasty meal. Oh and I squeezed a fresh orange for the juice in the orange chicken. I've had so much vitamin C today, I better feel better tomorrow.

I just got out of the shower and i'm feeling a little bit better. I definitely feel less sweatynasty and the hot water total opened up my sinuses a bit. Now it's time for snacking I had an orange in the fridge that I bought a few weeks ago.. Inside he's orange and red, but mostly red (like a pomegranate). He has a funny name, but I forget what it is. He stains pretty nicely too. Oh and I know it's not a blood orange. It's name was different than that. Got any ideas? update: thanks to camille's handy article (see comment below), i can now say i'm pretty sure it was a 'Sanguinelli' blood orange. it just wasn't marketed as a blood orange and i didn't know there was more than one kind.

I woke up a little after noon. Randall was making pennette pasta (baby penne) and he offered to make me some too. I also drank some chicken broth. I thought I had some of the tea that camille mentioned (see last post comment), but I guess I dranks it all. Now that lunch is done, I think maybe it's nap time again.

This year's allergy season is pretty crap. We had early rain sun blooming flowers and lots of them. Lately I've been feeling pretty blech. But yesterday I was pretty sure it wasn't allergies. Today i'm positive of it. I'm achey body, sore throat, runny nose and (a new symptom as of this morning) coughing. when I woke up, i debated whether or not I should call in sick. we're going on vacation next week and i've got a lot of work to get done before I leave. also I have this terrible work ethic that demands I go in. but on the other hand if I stay home and take care of myself, hopefully I will get better sooner and then not be sick while on vacation. in the end I fought against the work ethic and told work I would not be able to make it. now i'm sitting at home drinking airborne (maybe it is too late for me, but I made randall one just to be safe). now I think I might lie down for a nap. I woke up at 4:30 and didn't get back to sleep until 6 something. that is the 3rd night in a row of interrupted sleep...

Tomato soup and randall specialty grilled cheese sandwich. It's special because there's cheese on the outside. But according to randall I "ruined" it by adding sliced tomates to my sandwich.

Randall and gramps are practically family. And since that's the case they can ask each other to do random favors. Like, you know drive 35 miles to pick up something the other bought on ebay. Yep this morning we got up and drove out to newcastle to do some shady cash exchange for a stereo receiver. We didn't have time to eat before we left so I grabbed some peanut butter health bar (i doubt it's really healthy) and ate it in the car. Randall's new car mind you, i'm surprised he let me eat in there. sidenote: the hot seats in the car are amazing. they go all the way to 6.

Today was that baby's birthday party. So randall and I had to wake up early and drive to fremont for the celebration. It was a one year baby birthday tea party. Randall is like that baby's uncle, so we had to go. while we were there randall said it was his first tea party too (just like that baby). come to think of it, it was probably my first real tea party too. we had cucumber sandwiches, ham&cheese roll, sausage rolls, petit fours, graham cracker biscuits, trifle and a million other delicate tasty bites. afterwards we drove back to sacramento for the banquet party. I have retarded bad allergies this year and had the worst sinus pressure headache so I miserably slept during the ride home.

"Cheesecake is the best cake." That's what the waitress just said to me. I don't know if I totally agree, but I guess it is right up there. And for a mass reception dinner this is a pretty decent cheesecake.

I'm at this award banquet/dragonboat festival ceremony for the sacramento area Organizationn of Chinese Americans. Samshrew is receiving an award and I am accepting it on her behalf. That's a long story but shortened version, I hate not getting details until 3 minutes before an event and samshrew totally owes me. now since it's a chinese event I figured it would be chinese food, but it's not. it's total "white" food. grilled chicken with spinach and asparagus. talk about weird. I bet there are so many asian people here going wtf is this food all about? this whole event is so cheesey. The food, the local, the presentation. I feel like i'm at "you paid too much for this" wedding reception. also the twins just did an honest rendition of "we are family". I don't know if I can get behind that idea. also I just got up on stage to accept samshrew's award. the presenter wasn't told that there would be a switcharoo so he saw my nametag and called me on it. so I had to adlib some stuff, samshrew totally owes me.

a few weeks ago guf told the chic list about this great mexican taqueria in west sac. last week camille decided to get the location and details (via the list). she wanted to celebrate cinco de mayo with her department. since i'm on the list and work at the same company i more or less invited myself along.

then i kinda felt funny about it.

so i univited myself.

then they reinvited me.

and i wasn't sure what to do and i decided to go. then not go. then go.

i ended up going.
i don't know why i was so retarded about it.

at lunch heather (who i'm going to refer to has droolyard from now on) had to run an errand at the mall, so i decided to invite myself along (see a running theme here) and join her. the errand, which we thought would take quite some time, ended up taking 3 seconds. so we had a lot of time to kill. and neither of us wanted to go back to work. so we hung out at the mall.

sadly, there was nothing really worth hanging out at the mall for. i went to banana, but i really don't like their spring line because a) it's meant mostly for the skinnys, b)linen & me don't really get a long, i'm wrinkled enough thanks, c)my wardrobe probably needs less pink and d) i'm sick of falling for their marketing schemes. all this personalized direct mail is working way too well. sabs = sucker.

so we left without buying anything and then we stopped at a few other stores, sighed and decided to go.

on our way out we passed two maternity stores, that's when i remembered a few weeks ago i saw this shirt in the window that caught my eye. it's not anything i would wear, but that's okay, i'm not the one that's preggers. it is however, something i think kari would wear, and what a great coincidence, she's the one who's preggers.

the shirt is a plain white tank top with glittery "baby rocks" across the front. i don't know why it made me think of kari but it did. she's about 2.5 months along now. it was a total surprise (to us and to her). but this kid is going to be super loved and have a bajillion aunties who spoil it rotten.

tonight I met joanna at ernesto's for tres de mayo celebrations. Okay actually we didn't really have a celebration, we had an excuse to get together and drink. i had the carnitas quesadilla and enchilada. it was pretty decent. i think i'm on a crazy carnitas kick right now.

i also ended up ordering a mojito. i pointed out to joanna that everytime we get together i order one of those. i normally only drink vodka tonics. i think because normally i go out for drinks later in the evening, when it's drinking time for the sake of drinking time. not having a drink because we're catching up drinking.

jo's got herself a new job, btw. lucky.
sometimes i think i could use one of those.

sidenote: i'm trying to remember where i had the greatest carnitas (recently-ish) and sadly it's not coming to my memory.

written: 5-5-05 2:30pm

Sitting in the audi dealer right now. Randall dragged me out of bed early on a saturday to go get his new car. It's finally arrived from it's worldwide boat voyage. He's trading in his old car so they're appraising it or something and so we just sit and wait. His new car is going to be fun. It's a shiny bright blue (sprint blue to be exact) audi s4. Too bad he already got a ticket this year because this car is a speed trap. zoom zoom. randall's filling out the credit ap stuff now and when asked for two people he's known for at least a year I totally took second place to grant. what??? oh and the best part is I get to take over the mini. wee! that's a crazy improvement over the ford contour. and also so much fine. sidenote: do you think i'll ever make enough money to get my own brand new new car? *sigh* probably not...

Sidenote: I figured out how the chemical brother sound different live. They are way too damn loud. Also if the cd gets put on at home I don't usually have to fight the urge to fall asleep. Nor do I have to keep randall from falling out of seat due to boredom.

p.s. we found brad.

oh and I want to say, this venue is total lamers. It's like a cross between a high school gym and a security bunker.

After work randall and I drove to oakland. We're at the henry j kaiser to see new order (randall's favorite). The ticket said doors at 6, show at 7. We got here at 8 and the chemical brothers (opening act) were just starting. Originally I thought we'd end up standing all night, but when we went in I realized that there was an entire seated area (looks like amy could've made it afterall). So we took a seat with a center stage view. That's where we are right now, listening to the chemical brothers, watching there video screens, being mesmorized by lasers and feeling my ears bleed. i asked randall if they sounded any different live. he said a little, but i'm not buying it. also they just played out of control (the song that bernard sumner sings on) and they used a pre-recorded voice trak. um hello? is he not just backstage? what's that all about? total copout. oh and obviously, i'm not high enough, nor do I have enough personal flashy glow bracelets for this show. sidenote: brad where are you?

Right now the art dept. and I are at tower cafe celebrating ed's birthday (which was actually on march 17). We had a reservationfor 10 so they put us in the back room. After we had been seated for a little while another party came in to the back room. Coincidentally, it was the marketing dept from work. Zany. i ordered the cuban pork sandwich. it's good, but a little lacking. maybe it the lack of vegetables or green on this plate in general.

So the strippers are about to go on stage (11:30) but it's actually amateur night (both men and women). We tried to convince alice to participate but I don't think she's quite drunk enough. Although she is drunk enough to chant "Tits! Tits! Tits!"....here we go.

Tonite was girl band night, we think we might have a bamd name finally. How does "my boyfriend's band" sound to you? after practice, which we learned pulp's "ansaphone" btw, we walked half a block to faces for alice's birthday. faces is a predominantly gay club with strippers on thursday nights. for some reason we thought it would be fun/funny for a bunch of gals to go watch gay men strip. i've never been to a boy strip club, let alone a gay one. should be interesting. the strippers don't come on until later, so right now alice is dancing with some shirtless cowboy. yeeehaw!

okay i've been meaning to tell this anecdote for a few weeks now. looks like cingular is working again, so finally i can send this photo. okay so the other day i went into the bathroom at work. i walked into the first stall (for some reason it's the one i always use. i dunno i feel like it's cleaner, most people go for the large stall). anyways i walked in, turned around, sat down and then looked at the floor. there was a lone cheerio hanging out. just hanging out there perfectly centered to the floor. now the reason this got to me is. WHO IS EATING IN THE BATHROOM STALL? why would you eat there, and how did this one lone guy escape? or perhaps it was stuck to someone's leg and when they pulled their pants down, *plink* cheerio hits the ground. or perhaps it was in their pants? stuck in their pant cuff? what was the deal? anyways, it perplexed me, so i came back and took a photo of it. and a few hours later it was cheerio dust. someone had squished him. mystery will never be solved now.

Have you been watching the new american version of the office? It's surprising me because it's actually quite good. Maybe america will become obsessed with funny office culture now. I hope so because I have great idea. While the obsession with reality tv is still riding high I say come to my office and videotape us. This place is a ridiculous slew of hijinx, miscommunication and meetings. I think millions would watch us eat pizza, argue over search refinements, talk shit about one another and avoid eye contact with some of the weird ones. it would be awesome. we could vote on who gets laid off and who gets promted. i'd totally watch it. right now we're in a checkout redesign meeting. release one-oh-nine. And guess what? We're arguing again. Go figure. and kertell is whiteboarding again. I don't think i've ever been in a meeting where he doesn't whiteboard. but the best thing in this meeting was that I accidently stabbed kertell (who is the bossman btw) with my pencil & then I spilled water on him. oops.

This morning randall and I were woken up by the doorbell. We had an appointment with the gardener at 11am, but he showed up at 9:30. We're trying to figure out what to do with the tumbleweed and weed filled backyard. Afterwards we got dressed and decided to go to the stonepavertile place that the contractor-gardener told us about. But before we went there we stopped at the bagel place that we love. when we got there the funny sign was sitting on the ground. I wondered if it had fallen...i ordered the original pocketpig breakfast - sesame bagel with cream cheese and sliced tomatoes, salt and pepper - only the girl who works there totally skimped on the cream cheese. She put cream cheese on one side, then the (unripe) tomatoes and then the other half of the bagel. So there was nothing on that side. I had to take the tomatoes off and squish the two sides together in order to get cream cheese on both sides. Lamers. Oh but hey isn't that sign amazing?

So i've been wanting to get back into an art groove for a while now. You know going to galleries, visiting museums, paying attention to the trends, etc. So today randall and I went to the san jose museum of art. I think it's my favorite museum. It's small, but not too small, it's all modern art and it's free. Right now there's an exhibit called blobjects. It's kind of interesting, everydayish items (such as the method soap on my kitchen counter) objectified, well lit and on a pedastal. It was interesting, but not amazing. However the exhibit upstairs from artist laurie long was pretty cool. afterwards randall and I grabbed lunch at this taqueria downtown. I had the super buritto and it was a little dissatifying. the rice wasn't that great. now we're headed to crate and barrel to look at more well lit objectified objects on pedastals. oh and yes i know, this drawing is terrible i did it really fast because i had to send before we went into a no signal area...

At 111 minna in the city tonight. Bridget's talked about this place a lot, but it's not what I pictured it to be like at all. At anyrate we're here for the ultramega show with hearts&horses (a parkavenuemusic side project). Ultramega is a sacramento art collective (that's skinners work in the background). What I want to know is how does one become part of such a collective? I'm pretty freakin jealous. Maybe if I wasn't so lazy it would be better. Maybe if I actually had a body of work worth showing...*sigh* I guess if you have to ask how to be in an art collective, then you're not ready to be in one. Or worthy for that matter...

Tonite I went over to juju's house to take more photos of juju. She won the critic's choice for best female vocalist (at least that's why they're telling her to give them a solo photo). We took some fun photos, nothing too amazing, I really need to learn how to pose people. anyways afterwards we went to the crepeville where I had the "basil" crepe. I should have made my own with just basil and garlic. Oh and when we parked the car, juju accidently hit the car next to her with her car door. The car was fine, but there was a girl in the car who was not so happy. She came out of the car and was rather bitchy, but her car was new (dealer plates) so I guess it was understandable.

Two hours later and i'm still at my mom's new house. And I don't know if you can tell by the photo, but i'm watching my mom sew stuffed bears to her new curtains. That's right stuffed bears...This is her reasoning: when she went to taiwan last fall, she picked up a bunch of things for her new house. You know things like curtains, wall decorations and chair feet covers (to protect your floors) shaped like little bears. But she only got enough to cover six chairs...her new dining set is eight and the feet are too big to fit anyway. So, as she says, what else is she gonna do with the bears? She had to figure out something. And apparently, sewing them to the curtain was the obvious choice. When I asked her if she was gonna name them, she made a face and then told me I could. Then she immeditely named them 1-8 (in chinese). So far her favorite is #2 because "he looks the best," but I think #5 is giving him a run for his money.

My mom is a time warp. I'm not exactly sure how she does it, but she is unbelievable. At 6 she called me to see what I was doing. I told her I was still at work and she said "oh. Do you want to come see how i'm decorating my new house?" I figured, sure why not it's on the way home (sort of) so I left work and stopped by her new house. I was about ready to leave when her neighbor (and baby) walked by. It's a new neighborhood, so they're making friends. We also met enrique, who was checking the mail. He was more urban than suburban and I thought he looked like he came out of a magazine or high-end catalog. Then I thought he might be gay, but he pointed out (twice) that his fiance was a newscaster on channel 3. Aftewards my mom & I ended up going into the walking lady's house to see her hard wood floors. I however was more interested in her dog. It's too cute (chow & lab mix amazing!). Then we went baack to my mom's new place where I am patiently waiting for her to get off the phone. Bah. Some 40min detour...

Today randall and I headed out to san francisco to see the dears. Originally we were supposed to meet up with cindy and jeremy beforehand, but that didn't happen. initially I thought we'd leave at around 2:30 and then the four of us could grab dinner and talk about our upcoming trip. Around 2 cindy called and said she couldn't meet up until 5:30, so we figured we'd leave around 4. Big mistake. Between the shit weather and the return from the snow people, traffic was shit. It took us almost 3 hours to get there. It normally takes 75-90 minutes. So we ended up eating dinner at one of the 4 jillion thai places nearby and meeting jeremy and cindy at the venue. Which was mostly for the best as they had forgotten about daylight savings... At anyrate we're now at the venue and there's some band with too much hair opening for the dears (who are opening for TSOOL) and it's irritating because we got here early thinking the dears were on first. the opening band isn't the worst or anything, I just don't care about them.

Work's sponsoring a cpr class (totally optional), so I decided to take advantage of it. Someone died a few months ago, iit was pretty tragic. I wasn't there, but I guess no one who was new cpr.... The class was 4 hours, butt now I got life saving skills.

Bao stopped by the office today. He's trying to keep his bridges tended to. I think he needs a letter of recommendation or something. So we decided to go to Emma's for the burrito pillow. Actually it took a while to decide because we had to stay local because I needed to be back by 12:30. Bao had the giant burrito pillow, but I opted for the carnitas taco. Now i'm so full...

Tonite I headed over to wes and juju's house to snap some photos. They're nominated for a sammie again this year and need a new photo for the news and review. So after work I went home and grabbed my camera. We took a thousand billion photos, but I don't think we think the results are that great. I'm not very good at posing people...i'm more of an action action spur of the moment photographer. Or a one person at a time...anyway while there they fed me candy and chocolate caramel cheesecake for dinner. Oink oink oink.

Just got some intra-office mail. Graham coxon did an in store in chicago and heather asked miguel (the regional event coordinator) if he could get me a little sumpthin sumpthin. And he's so sweet he totally did! I opened this big envelope and inside was an autographed record flat surprise. Hurray! Thanks miguel!

Free pizza at work today. They're trying to buy our love again. Heather says me cynicism makes me an ungrateful bitch and that I should appreciate the gesture. She's probably right but it's not like she has room to talk. She's normally the queen of the cynics.

At around 4:30 my mom dropped bao off at my office. The bravery are playing at the boardwalk tonite and I told bao i'd take him, but I told him I wouldn't pick him up. So my mom dropped him off and he chatted with kari until I was ready to leave. After work we stopped by the store for milk and other things then we came home where randall was making steak fajitas for dinner. Bao said they tasted AH good. we said glad you enjoyed it and then made him take out the trash, clean the dishes and sweep the floor. Hope it was worth it.

Today is wes's birthday. Since it's also easter, juju decided to have a surprise birthday easter egg hunt. They live across the street from a big field so juju and her niece hid a bunch of plastic eggs. I only found four (out of like a thousand). Oh well. Then we came in for cake, kites and presents. Sucess!

Tonite samshrew, jorn and bao came over. Whenever they come over I end up cleaning the pantry. These kids will eat anything and we always seem to have these weird odds and ends. You know a bag of chips without about six chips, 1/5 a bag of soy nuts, one blueberry, that kind of stuff. The stuff no one ever seems to want to eat. Except those kids. Jorn is too cheap to throw anything out and sam & bao are related to me, so they'll eat anything. So far it's been true. Anyways they came over to "hang out" but really they just wanted to DDR. I know, they're using us, but I don't mind, it's usually fun (until we start bickering, bao thinks i'm a bitch and I think he's a jerkface) and besides i'm using them too. My pantry is totally clean. Time for new snacks.

A few minutes ago our boss's boss came around with a box of donuts. You know letting people see his face and thanking us for our work by feeding us. "hi i'm bill, thanks for your hard work, wanna donut?" god, we're so easily bought off, but not me buddy. It's gonna take more than a powdered fluffy donut from raley's to buy my love.

At 11:55 I got an email saying that there was a meeting noon. So jeff and I walked over to the meeting where they fed us. And then they had technical diificulties and then we all sat around and chatted and jeff said it was an ice cream social. At 12:30 they finally started the meeting and it was a little embarrassing because there were a million people there and jeff and I had to leave to go to another meeting at 1. So we dined, got some promos and dashed. And now we're in a search results meeting. And people are not remembering what we agreed on on friday so we are talking in circles. It is almost the same meeting. I swear no wonder things like the office and dilbrt are so freaking popular. It's all true.

So lipstick was a bust. It was waaaay too crowded and there was no room for dancing. We couldn't figure out why, but then katy remembered it was spring break! so we left early (disappionted that they never played our new favorite dance song). Then I dropped niki off and katy and I sat in the car talking. Not wanting to just hang out in niki's driveway katy and I went back to her place for potstickers.

It's puppy time at niki and leon's! Us girls are going to lipstick but first let's play with the puppy! We love heylove!

Tonite was shoe shopping time with niki and katy. I ended up getting two pairs, a pink pair of flats with a brown tweed bow and a pair of cutey purple and red patent leather heels. Afterwards we went to ross (which sucked) and then to jimboys wher I had churros yum yum yum. Oh and niki just told me about how to text google to get addresses and phone numbers. How come I didn't know about that???

Roght now there are five of us girls left and we're drunk and dancing in the living room and we want to go to the hot tub but we'rw so drunk and bvlogging under the inflluence. Oh and camille juust showed us her boobies in a bra.

It's sushi party and i'm drunk as shit. Katy and ccamille are having sushiparty and I helpedd make the sushi. But now i'm shit faced and ican't type and randall better pick me up because there's mo way i'm driving tonite.

right now we're at wes & juju's house. it's a mp3 party with brownies. hot out of the oven and tasty tasty goodness type of brownies. see, wes looks pretty happy to be eating the brownies. oh and they're plain brownies. not the crazy kind, i mean come on, we're hanging out with the wholesome kids here. puhleeze. oh and also, i didn't take an allergy pill or anything and i'm almost wishing i did. harrison (the beast cat) is making me sneeze. and now he's sniffing randall's shoes. what a beastly. oh and also, we tried to call scottel. apparently he shattered his collarbone or something and i keep meaning to call and say, WTF happened to you? this is supposed to be the year of the happy, but his year is not going so well. i guess the year of the happy doesn't extend across oregon borders. maybe he should come back. no, i know he should.

Yesterday, at the asian grocery store katy's total was a few cents short of $50 bucks. They have this point system there, for every $10 you spend you get a point. You can then trade points in for items. Sort of like skeeball tickets at the skating rink when you were a kid. Only now instead of butterfly rings and jelly bracelets, you can trade points in for various household sundries. Anyway I told katy to toss in a pack of gum (i had meant to grab a pack but forgot) to push her over $50. I didn't know which kind I wanted, I was looking for an apple gum, when the cashier went over to another aisle to get me a recommended one. He picked out the xylitol "cool herb" flavor. I don't know what that is, but it sounds medicinally so i've always avoided it (i now know that it's a sugar substitute used in gum and mints and is supposed to be pretty good for your teeth). The gum is pretty good (and strong, just opening the pack cleared my sinuses) and it's just a little "herby". It's neat, not just mint, perhaps a hint of basil? Or perhaps I just want it to be.

Tonite after work katy and I headed over to the korean market. She's having people over for sushi on saturday and needed some help buying stuff. We ended up getting more snacks than we did stuff for sushi. Now we're at her house making edamame shumai (which she thought tasted terrible and I thought were just okay), noodles and potstickers with soy vey. A nice and simple meal. Sidenote: everytime I see soy vey stuff I can't help but think of my old hosemate melanie. I wonder what she's up to these days.

Okay, I really need to invest in a fastrak pass. Right now there are 50 bajillion cars crossing this bridge and only two toll lanes (out of twelve ) open. Lame.

Long live the monkey king!

For my birthday cindy got me the rough guide to san francisco restaurants. I think it's because eveytime we come to the city we end up eating at the same places. Anyways tonite randall and I are seeing ian brown at the great american, so we decided to use the book to find a place to eat. We ended up settling on thai house express. The book calls it "borderline chic," randall calls it yummyily delicious.. I was impressed by 1-how fast the food arrived, 2- the yummy yummy chive cakes 3- the tenderness of the beef and 4-the clean bathroom. Oh and it was relatively inexpensive. I'd recommend it. Now, enough talk, there's ian brown to be seen!

So I forgot to call my prescription in, and i'm out of pills and need to take one tomorrow. Luckily I remembered in time and they were able to fill it in 20 minutes. I get my prescription filled at a grocery store, so this meant I spent 20 minutes walking around the grocery store putting things I didn't need into my shopping cart. You know things liked deep sea salted soy nuts and diet canada dry ginger ale. Gah, no wonder I can never manage to save any money.

After i learned about the security breach, i went home to call all the credit card companies. then i went to the bank to deal with that. what a pain. creditcardless sounds like it's going to suck too. at least the bank was nice. i just recently found a bank branch that i didn't know existed. they were way nicer than the other two branches i know of, so i guess it's my new branch.

anyways, on my way back to work (which i didn't want to go back to), i stopped by the co-op to grab something for lunch. actually i was craving inari and i figured co-op inari would be a little less scary than grocery store inari, but when i got there, they didn't actually have any, so it was a bit of a let down. i ended up getting some chipotle red pepper hummus wrap instead. but i didn't notice it said "with black beans" and wasn't really craving the blackbeans...

i hardly ever go to the co-op. mostly because it's not nearby and secondly because i tend to forget about it and thirdly it reminds me of santa cruz too much. and sometimes it's the parts i want to forget (like when i walk by the guy with nasty patchouli covering up the fact that he hasn't bathed in 2 weeks and his feet are about seven shades darker than his skin because they are covered in grime because his little hemp shoes are falling apart probably from the patchouli smell alone and all i can think of is a former housemate's boyfriend and how much he smelled and how i was so glad their relationship only lasted two weeks).

and i don't think i've ever been there during the daytime during the work week. the clientele was a bit different than i expected. there were a few bohemian youths, a bunch of stay-at-home-moms pushing strollers and perusing the organic makeup aisles, some neighborhood locals, a few business type there for sandwiches at the deli, but mostly, mostly it was full of old people!

everytime i turned the corner it was old people city.
little old men shuffling their feet 1 inch at a time, little old ladies groping the mangoes, old people reading the tea choices, harrassing the shelf-stocker. they were everywhere! an old people health food coalition.

sidenote: i wonder if my grocery store is that way during the day too.

sidenote2: niki's been telling me about the beemster cheese. it's an aged gouda that she likes better than amsterdam reserve (one of my favorites) so i picked some up today. it's good, a bit saltier, but now i want to taste them back to back. now we have an excuse for an aged gouda blind taste test.

After work on tuesday, I swung by my neighborhood to vote. There was a special election going on in sacramento, but I think no one cares. I voted at 6:30 and was only the 56th person to vote. Talk about pathetic (but come on, we all knew mrs. matsui was gonna win anyway). after voting I ate snax and then headed to the bonn lair for a pint of blackthorn, some fish & chips (maya I owe you $) and some knitting love. Juju was supposed to join us but never showed... at around 8pm katy called me and we headed over to fry's. Her parents gave her an mp3 player and she was thinking about exchanging it. Unfortunately her receipt had expired so she's stuck with it. I live pretty close to fry's so we went over to my house afterwards. We were going to fill her mp3 player up and send her on her way, but it didn't work out. We couldn't get the thing to play nicely. It showed up as a drive, but it wouldn't copy files. So we ended up staying up late eating quesadillas and chatting. sidenote: katy drew this.

I got into the office this morning at around 9:15. That's pretty much my normal time. I sat down, started up my programs and checked my email. I noticed that I had a 9am meeting for wednesday, but didn't give it much thought. I started to respond to my email when I realized that everyone else was missing. So I looked at the calendar again. Ohhhh. Wednesday as in today. As in 9am 25 minutes ago. Shit. so I went to the meeting late. but really, who sends out a 9am meeting invite with less than 12 hours notice? also i'm pissed off. this meeting is freekin long. it's already noon and we're only half way there. who sends out an all day meeting invite at 10pm the night before??? also, I set aside today to do all this stuff that's due tomorrow and now I don't know when i'm going to get it done. sidenote: this lady (from another company) is waaaay to hyper. she reminds me off sheri o'teri's cheerleader character. jeff, however, does not agree. but what does he know?

So the new guy got laid off today. I've known for over a week that he's going to get laid off. I couldn't look him in the eye, it was like dead man walking. I've never been in that situation before. Talk about alkward, especially because I never really liked him much...anyways he left without saying adieu. He just quietly left. And he strangely left a bunch of posters behind...

Today the art department went out to celebrate david's birthday. It was a few weeks ago, but like i've said before, they're a little behind. we ended up going to tres hermanos. I had the carne asada plate and ended up eating the entire thing. I only meant to eat half, but we kept sitting there and my pig mouth kept on eating. afterwards we stood on the street corner trying to decide what to do next. it's a really amazing day out today, and no one wants to go back to work. we ended up going to rick's for cake (it's right next door) but I was waaaaaaaay too full for cake. woah, someone better make a note of that. it may be a first for me. sidenote: now I always think of arrested development whenever I hear the word "hermano".

Right now we're signing some shady paperwork. Finances in my family have always been a bit muddled. Your name on this account, her name on that account, sign this paper, sign that paper. It's a little frustrating at times. I think t drives randall crazier than it drives me...can you imagine? He's willingly marrying into this crazy family finance game... Anyways this guy in the photo is acting the jerkface and is being really shady (not to mention that I think he's rude and keeps answering his godfather ringtone telephone). so, we're leaving without signing all the papers. Sidenote: i'm flippin' starving today. Even after eating froozen meal lunch and some popcorn. I knew I should have grabbed the stpid granola bars this morning.

After a day on the slopes we regrouped back at the lodge (Janet's brother has a time share at a resort at the base of heavenly so we got a really great deal on several suites). First it was relaxing muscles in the hot tub, then a nap and then some cards (we taught sam & jorn how to play rummy). After that we all headed over to the suite next door for some dinner. janet was cooking a million pounds of chicken parmesan for dinner (okay so maybe it wasn't a million pounds, but it was a lot). we ate like pigs and liquored up too, then we decided to play apples to apples. well actually I demanded that we play. I won the first round and dave said I must have rigged the game. we played three rounds. laura won the last one, she and dave were both at 4 cards (they needed 5 to win) when dave awarded her the last point. again, he said the game was rigged. sidenote: the treo is not as easy to draw on. the pictures look a bit funny, this is supposed to be dave & laura. I guess it'll just take some getting used to.

this is the ever so timely (and i mean that sincerely) guy from welcome towing. he´s breaking into our rental car and that makes us happy. sidenote: it´s so amazing how easy it is to break into a car. i mean it´s pretty much unbelievable.

We're skiing today at heavenly. Actually i took a stab at snowboarding attempt number two. It mostly went pretty well, i'm still in one piece, but i can only go down the hill backwards. overall everyone seems to be having a good time, except for one little hitch. jorn and samshrew went to the car at lunchtime to shed some layers (the weather is amazing today, if not too warm) and guess what? they locked the keys in the car! this is a photo of samshrew looking totally piss off. see? her hands are on her hips. that means business. oh and if you click you can see that jorn is cheesy smiling big time. i think this sums it all up.

We're waiting for the stupid rental car. It seems like the computer is stuck. So now we'te waiting and this totally sucks. The lady behind the counter looks like martha stewart. Maybe martha has escaped from house arrest and is here to cause havoc at hertz rental car. oh and check it out. PIG DRAWINGS have returned thanks to grant and his hand me down treo.

We're on our way out of town and we're picking up a rental car. This poor girl is apparently not old enough to rent a car, only she didn't know it until just now. Sucks to be her.

So, i really shouldn't be allowed to go to asian grocery stores by myself. I think i'm about to buy a crapload of junk. Including a dopey apron and a bunch of snax. samshrew's in town, so i decided to stop by my mom's house for dinner. on my way over i stopped by this korean store. They had such amazing stuff. i could barely control myself. oh, i ended up buying that apron smock with cartoon dogheads for pockets. i'm ready to cook up a storm now....or teach kindergarten, i can't decide.

at work we sometimes do these promotions. free junk with purchase, you know the drill. a few weeks ago we had one that went really well. almost too well. now there are 1400 tshirts that need to be folded, labelled, shoved into envelopes and mailed off. so we started an assembly line. i'm the folder. why am i the folder? it's because i have MASTERED this amazing shirt folding technique. MASTERED.

jeff and i took a trip to the nugget market for lunch today. ed had never been there before so we dragged him along too. actually he may have invited himself along, but that was okay. the more the merrier. when we got there he was IMPRESSED. he usually goes to the other grocery store at lunch time to pick up a sandwich. after today i don't think he'll be going there again. the sandwiches they make you at nugget are the best. i had a focaccia bread with basil aioli, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, roast beast (and they put a huge gob YUM!) tomatoes, leafy greens, cucumber, swiss and smoked gouda cheese, salt and fresh ground pepper. usually i worry about the build your own sandwich bar. i usually end up putting something in there that throws the flavor off. or forgetting something that throws the flavor off. but not this time. this sandwich was AMAZE.

after practice in n´ out burger dinner. funny how all in n´ out burgers look all the same.

Girl band strikes again. Tonite we've busted out the cello, the groovebox and the cheese. Now if we could just play something.

Today's musical guest is kenny wayne shepard and the "the guys." it's a big crowd today. I guess the folks like the blues. Camille said her pops likes them, i bet my pops would like them too... sidenote: this is the environment the bands play, weird isn't it?

right now randall and i are running errands on the east side of town. we´re on a wild goosechase for a gift (that i should just order on the internet), some ski poles and a coat. so far we´re 0 for 3. so we decied to make a pitstop for some lunch. sticking to the new restaurants only diet, we ended up at taqueria garibaldi on howe. i got the super quesadilla with carnitas. it was pretty good and reminded me of taqueria santa cruz. close but not quite. i´d definetly eat here again. sidenote: i also ordered a jarritos, but they didn´t have guava, so i got strawberry instead.

This is mike. He's a car dealer at audi. this afternoon randall dragged me out to have a look at new cars. i guess he´s serious about getting a new car afterall. he wants the new s4, but they haven´t arrived yet so he test drove last year´s model. i always wonder if car dealers ever get scared when they´re on test drives. randall likes to push cars hard (mike even had to tell him to slow for cops) and i can´t imagine he´s the only one. sidenote: i´ve decided that car shopping is my fabric store. boringers. i mean come on, i drive a ford contour. not even a taurus.

it´s been puppy party tonite at the red square. niki and leon brought heylove (pictured here with niki) and heather h. and matt brought marbles (a big old boxer 8times the size of heylove). we´ve been shoegazing and rockin´ out. the bands: sway, astral (whom i was fond of, they sounded like early cure or u2 with a bit of post-rock thrown in for good measure. apparently this sound is right up my alley) and electro-group (local boys whom everyone is here to see). sidenote: the venue is a coffeeshop that also serves frozen yogurt. if it wasn´t for the fact that it´s like 5 degrees out here i would totally get some. i wantses it.

tonite we´re joining wes, juju and tuttle to see some shoegaze bands at the red square. i´ve never been there, but it sounds like it should be fun. but before we head over we decided to stop at crepeville for some eating. i decided to be a piggypig and ordered a dessert crepe for dinner. i got the apple cheddar crepe with cinnamon. right now we´re talking about ipods. juju doesn´t have one, so tuttle is going to whittle her one out of wood. ain´t that sweet? p.s. wes got himself a new haircut, he´s no longer jesus, but juju thinks it´s too short.

Working out right now. These two little old ladies work out here sometimes. They are so ridiculously cute. I hope to be this cute someday. confidential to cho-cho: this could be us someday, no?

when randall came home today he decided to park in the garage. about an hour later we were eating dinner when the front door opened. it was my mama. she's got a spare key for emergencies, but she likes to stop by when she's in the neighborhood. (although she's pretty good at respecting privacy, and rarely comes over when we're actually here. she sorta just uses our house as a peestop.)

when she opened the door she looked surprised to see randall there. she forgot that we have the space to park in the garage. she was having dinner at a friend's house a few blocks away and stopped by before heading back to her neighborhood. i think she needed to go pee. and then she wanted to eat snacks.

while she was there we started talking about cars. randall's thinking about trading his in for a new one (he wants an audi S4). so we showed her the model. she thinks it's okay. she's says it'll probably be good enough for her to borrow. but only if the color is classy enough. you know, so she doesn't look like an old lady in a kid's toy car.

then we spent a billion years talking about cars in a surprisingly fun conversation.

a parade of japanese people just walked thru our office taking photos. i don´t really know what it´s all about, but it was more than just a little surreal.

This is jeff, he's become that wacky guy (but in a good way, i think). here he's modeling work schwag. That's a doogie howser labcoat, a greatest american hero cape and a specials mask. Lucky bastard. I totally covet that labcoat.

tonite is knitting night at the fox and goose. once a month we get together to knit and drink beer. (usually it's a weekly knit and drink coffees). right now we´re talking about blogging. it´s funny to me how commonplace it's become. i suppose this site is a blog, or at least it´s turned into one, but i don't like to consider it that way. maybe it's because this site's been here since before blogging was a verb. but then again, i didn't update during the blogolution, so i guessed i missed out on something. i dunno. maybe this is beer talking. yah. it's probably beer. sidenote: this is a (once again too dark blurry camera phone photo) of maya and amanda. i just met amanda tonite.

at work we sometimes have bands come play our funny little confrence room. it's usually really awkward and surreal. today's musical guest is Low Millions, i guess you can see their video on vh1 --- or live in my office, i still think that's funny. addendum: oh and also, i wanted to mention that while they were playing, i couldn't stop thinking how much the guy reminded me of jimmy fallon. like jimmy fallon if his career doesn't go anywhere (and after seeing taxi, which i saw for free and it wasn't even worth that, i think that's what it's doing, going nowhere). i wasn't the only one to think this either. later jeff told me that the whole thing looked like a bad jimmy fallon snl skit too.

I arrived a few minutes late to the "process" meeting, so i didn't get a seat at the table. This means i'm getting a slightly detached version of the meeting. Holy crap we use a jillion acronyms. Here's a list of ones we've used today, enjoy! DTC, PM/BA, QA, TIP, SC, SPOC, ROI, NP, SR, CR, IT, NIX, ETA, SVP and this is just the first hour!

Driving back to sac for work. It's too early, and i'm starving. Stopped at stupid starbucks for a single soy chai and a pumpkin scone. Healthy huh?

after dim sum, those kids dropped me off at the santa clara convention center for stitches west (a big knitting/yarn convention). they (obviously) didn´t want to go so we planned to meet up later. i wasn´t taking any classes, i was just there to shop. but man i spent too much stupid money. okay not that much (i showed a lot of restraint) but more than i meant to spend. however i walked away with some good stuff and good deals (50% off)! while i was there i saw this guy (in photo) he was knitting some giant item. whatever it was, he looked cool.

yesterday samshrew mentioned that she "been had craving" dim sum. after my dim sum attempt with dani & luc, i also "been had craving me" some dim sum. so we decided to go to the mayflower in milpitas. when we got there it was unlike any dim sum experience i´ve ever had, they literally swarmed our table with food. "shu mai? chao shao bao?" actually that´s a slight lie, they never asked if we wanted shu mai (shrimp dumplings) even though the cart with the chao shao bao (pork steambuns) is the cart with the shrimp dumplings. they took one look at us (2 white guys and 2 barely asians) and decided we´d want steambuns, not dumplings. i´d be more irritated except it was pretty good dimsum. but poor jorn, he doesn´t really like seafood (i.e. he won´t eat it) so he mostly didn´t eat. maybe we should have told him the restaurant´s full name was mayflower seafood restaurant.

After dinner we walked around the streets of santa cruz, it's changed a lot and yet some things never change. For example, pacific cookie company cookies. Those things are always good. I used to work by the outlet and that was good stuff (for the lips not the hips). My favorite is either the chocolate chip or the macchunk. I always try to make cookies like that at home, but they never seem to turn out the same. If anyone's managed to sneak the recipe out, can you send it to me? Please? Pretty please?

today randall and i decided to head over to santa cruz to visit amy and brad. we also thoght it was time to try dinnerat shogun, it´s been a while since we´ve been there, i hope it´s still good eats. oh and as a sidenote randall says that santa cruz has become a giant restaurant to him.

Saw this at the store the other day. Awesome huh?

Tonite i met katy and niki at the loft. we're starting a girl band. it's been a while and i'm totally rusty. camille was supposed to be in our band too, but she flaked. oh i'm playing bass. poorly. oh and we don't have a name yet.

sitting in a marketing meeting right now, it's pretty interesting stuff, segment marketing and the like. however we are seriously throwing around the phrases "new kids on the block" and "one hit wonders" as legitimate marketing phrases. also, the lady who is giving the presentation seems really smart and knowledgable, but i swear to god she's totally lost and is talking in circles not making any sense...

Todays process meeting is veering dangerously close to becoming a bad episode of the office. Actually it would probably be more like a bad american version of the office... Today matt and paul are twins in their light blue jeans and long sleeved white button up shirts and embroidered navy blue insignias. Oh and we've also used the phrases "wimp", "bad ass" and believe it or not "my comment was a preamble to a suggestion." help! Get me out of here.

Dani & luc were just here for dinner. More on that later...

so i´ve finally made a new year´s resolution i can stick to. this time it involves eating instead of not eating. go figure. this year i´ve resolved to try a new restaurant every time i eat out. so far, so good. tonight randall and i headed to katana for sushi. actually we didn´t head out ther on purpose, we just kinda ended up there. before we went in, we had already decided on sushi, but apparently they also have teppanyaki there. at least that's what i think it's called. you know, where they have the hot grill plate in the middle, chairs all around and a crazy chef cooking all sorts of food in the middle. we debated for about 2 seconds on whether or not to do that instead, but we stuck with our sushi idea instead. i had a spicy salmon hand roll and a few other rolls. i also had an amazing japanese melon soda (pictured). the rolls were pretty decent. the fish was really fresh, the sauce wasn't overbearing, but they were rolled really loose. kinda amatuerstyle. i thought the rice wasn't flavorful enough, but randall liked it. we'll go back again, but next time we'll have the teppanyaki. i think randall wished we had it this time. food: B- atmosphere: B+ overall: B

today is carmen´s birthday, but we went out to celebrate jeff´s birthday. the art dept. is running a little behind on the celebrations. we left around 11:45am. it´s now 1:45. oh well, i guess it beats working. we ended up going to symposium out in davis where we ate tasty tasty pizza. i really enjoyed the spinach and three cheese. now i have to go to a dumb meeting. boo boo. boo hoo.

This guy smells bad. Like really bad. Juju says it's the guy from pets (local hipster band). hrmm...I didn't realize hygiene wasn't hip.

juju and i are crafty night tonight. i tried to teach her the crochet stitches that jean-marie showed me on sunday, but i´m not so sure that i´m a very good teacher. after a while i got hungry so we went to the store for snax and cash back for qcup (where we went after the store). i had their new pork katsudon. he was okay, sort of soggy. now we´re headed to lipstick for shaking butt. god i ate too much food though, it´s gonna be a slow shake.

Stopped by my parent's house this evening. They've fallen out of love, it's pretty depressing. I think my mom is broken. I come to listen, but i don't know what to say. You think i'd learn, it's always the same story, but i can just listen and sometimes i cry. Now she's making me lunch for tomorrow, i didn't ask her to, she just did it. God i love her to pieces...

Jean-marie just taught me how to crochet. Sunday is the knitter day at the naked lounge. I think they hate us here. Maybe it's because esther keeps breaking things or maybe it's because there are like a million of us here...

Randall has taken me to an empty restaurant for dinner. it better be good. update: it was. it's in the financial-ish district, so there's not a lot of places to live there, but i bet this place is retarded busy at lunch time. i had some chicken curry and he had some lamb curry (i forget which kind). and then we split the bread basket, and my god there was so much bread. garlic naan, onion naan, something else naan, plain naan and then some. oh and i had a mango lassi, that tasted salty on first sip, but then turned out to be quite tasty. oh and the place was called shalimar, and we used a coupon even. sidenote: i just read a bad review of the place, but i didn't have experience with cold food or anything like this person said. the wait staff was prompt and kept checking on us, the food was warm and tasty, and perhaps my brain is too heavily swayed by all the delicious naan, but i thought the food was pretty good, not the best i've ever tasted, but definitely above just pallatable. the atmosphere, however, was cold (did mention i was freezing the entire time) but i just figured it was because the place was totally empty and big. atmosphere: B- (because it was cold and empty) food: B+ (they received bonus points for the staff: B (she was really prompt, but not necessarily "nice") overall: good solid B (now let's see if randall disagrees...)

Meet nnnnn. He used to drive me absolutely crazy. I may have even hated him. No, i'm pretty sure i hated him. But now he's not so bad. I think we may have reached an understanding...at anyrate, he fell asleep at his desk today (total snorlax even) and ed was kind enough to take this photo for me. I think it's hysterically awesome.

Stacey just got this today. It was waiting for her at her desk. It's thd new mr. Rogers dvd. I just think it's fantastic that it comes in a zipable sweater. But where are its slippers? related note: did lady elaine ever scare the shit out of anybody else? She was so scary looking...

Yet another boring thursday meeting. Today we are discussing the process of the process. Yah you read that right. The process of the process. It is wonderfully icky today as everyone is sick and it sounds like a bronchitis ward in a hospital, if such a thing exists... sidenote: dannon light 'n fit smoothie mixed berry flavor for breakfast. Actually pretty yummy.

Every tues & thur we have these meetings @ 9am. We're creating a new "process" for everything and there are a lot of us in here. So the bossman has created a set of rules. Rule #2 "Please be on time."...i have a hard time with this one. i also have a hard time with #3 "Please raise your hand." i just always feel so silly., today's meeting is exceptionally excrutiating for some reason. And obviously i'm not the only who thinks this. There are yawns abound and i know it's a little hard to see, but this is a photo of lorelei. If you look closely you can see that there is a magazine in her lap! See, i'm not the only one...

this is vanessa. i don´t know who the lady in the awesome boot is though. i only know that this is vanessa because the other lady kept saying "vanessa! woman you gotsta seeze these boots!" my gut reaction is to make fun of them, but i should note, they were really good boots. i was really jealous that they only had 3 pairs left (and none in my size). vanessa, however, was not very impressed and kept mumbling about how the other lady would have nothing to wear with it. the other lady told her not to worry. she had something to wear with it, only she hadn´t bought it yet. sidenote: while at this store i bought a pair of shoes for $12. they´re pretty cute and remind me of something else. i hope it´s this pair of shoes i saw with samshrew and not the pair i saw on juju´s feet...juju has good taste and all but they´re kinda unique shoes and it would be sad if i stole her look.

speaking of too much ugly, can anyone tell me why the tablecloths at the stores are soooo ugly? can anyone tell me where i can get a plain but cute tablecloth? hell, i should just make my own.

for some reason i have today off of work, & i decided to spend it looking for a tablecloth and some other home things. i spent part of yesterday rearranging & undecorating, & i want more/different junk, so i decided to head to this store on the other side of town. no luck, everything was ugly. then i remembered that the burlington coat factory was out there and that i had some store credit. so i wasted too much time there trying to spend as much as i had in store credit. i think i got it pretty exact, but when i went to check out the stupid store credit/gift card system was down. and the lady at the register was useless. so was her manager. she said i could pay in cash or credit card instead. i was too pissed off. i had spent waaay too much time there. i left without buying anything on principal alone. which is a little sad, i really wanted these earrings. sidenote: afterwards i went to the sf market to pick up carrots for bao. i got these cookies there. what the hell is an eggnut?

the rain was coming down pretty hard this morning. i really didn´t feel like doing anything this morning or afternoon. it was a stay inside and curl up sort of day. sadly, we had some errands to run. that and it's probably bad to sit in the house doing nothing all day. so we decided to make snack/lunch plans and then head to target. we weren't sure what we wanted to eat and then randall suggest q-cup. so we called up wes & juju (their house is right near there) and said, "hey! we're going to q-cup, you should join us!" but they had just eaten and were busy getting ready to dj on kdvs, so they declined. that's when randall remembered the new chinese boba-tea looking place that opened a few blocks from there.

so it´s new year´s eve and we didn´t have any plans. i thought maybe we´d go to a party or we´d hang out with a few friends. i definitely did not think i would end up at my parents house playing boardgames with my family...sometimes things are complicated. emotions are one of those dumb things. i´ll just leave it at that. happy new year to you and yours. i hope 2005 sees you well. x´s and o´s to you. special understanding to wes & juju. we´ll gamers later.

don´t adjust your monitor, that sweater really looks like that. and the craziest part of it is that i bought it. it nearly broke me to do so. but randall´s worth it. when i first met randall he had the world´s ugliest sweater. i´ll photograph it sometime, it´s really something else. and like all overbearing girlfriends, i wouldn´t let him wear it anymore. that was almost five years ago. i still won´t let him wear it. but i thought that maybe i wouldn´t be so mean and i´d get him a new ugly sweater. he was pretty surprised and admittedly, so am i. but he better not get so hopeful, one ugly sweater in five years is about all i can handle.

we just got back from jack´s. samshrew and jorn fought to save our table from a bunch of fatties. i ended up having a salad with tri tip, but the tri tip was a bit too underdone and a little cold. james had the bbq chicken sandwich and wouldn´t let me pay. he told me that his dad said he had to pay for something while he stayed with us. i´m sure someone is going to yell at me for that. james didn´t eat his entire meal so we boxed it up. he didn´t understand why because he didn´t want it, but we have a hard time wasting food, especially jorn. jorn ended up eating it while we were still there.

today jeff and i went to davis for sushi. they have this all you can eat lunch place. it's not amazing, but it was good. especially for an all you can eat place. usually i associate all you can eat sushi with nasty buffet boats. you know the stuff that has been circling around and around for hours? that's what i think of when i think all you can eat sushi. but this place, they're on to something. in lieu of a boat there is a small limited menu (a few rolls, but mostly just fish on rice). and then you order it and they make it right then. none of this fish on boats going round and round! made fresh in front of me! the place, btw is called nobu. it's not amazing, but all you can eat for $9. now my skirt is too tight.

Right now heather and i are headed back to work. We've been out shoe shopping. Heather is going to the people's choice award and she wants to look fabulous! Which meant she needed to try on every pair of shoes in the store. I didn't realize that was part of the deal. We were there forever.

today we celebrated xmas in san jose with randall´s family. i was a little nervous, even though randall and i have been dating for about 5 years, i´d never spent a holiday with randall´s family before...let alone one at our house. everyone arrived at around 10am, we started with xmas stockings full of candy (randall has a 7 year old niece so xmas is still a big fun ordeal) and then moved to presents. i received a blanket that isn´t really visually my cup of tea, but it is nice and warm and the gesture was nice. the afternoon went by quickly. randall and i ended up cooking everyone brunch. we had waffles and bacon, scrambled eggs (with cheese!), cinnamon sugar apples (which is my new favorite obsession) and hashbrowns. it was a feast. sidenote: randall´s sister´s fiancé also got a similar blanket, i thought that was sorta funny.

last night randall dropped his keys between the stairs in the garage and a giant giant wine cellar (we´re storing it for grant because his newish house has no room for it...it is giant). randall ended up having to use a broom to rescue his keys. it wasn´t as big of an ordeal as i thought it would be, which i suppose was a good thing. although i was secretly hoping it would be a funnier anecdote than it really was...

every year jay and his wife don santa caps and jingle bells and pass out gift-wrapped plates of cookies. it´s a really sweet gesture, but there´s a catch, jay´s hygeine is sketchy. office legend has it that he doesn´t wash his hands after taking care of business, if you know what i mean...and that is just the tip of the iceberg...so what do you do? do you brave itand eat them? do you leave them behind for someone else? do you toss them out (which is just so ridiculously wasteful)? what would you do? got any ideas?

kari is obsessed with napoleon dynamite, so today is napoleon dynamite day at work. kari made like an infinity of tots and we put the movie on. beer dogs and tots. it´s time to eat yer food tina.

tonite randall and i made chicken teriyaki with baby bokchoy. afterwards we tried to play clue, but forgot that you need to have at least three people to play. rats. sucksoes. come play clue with us.

I hadn't been bowling in forever, but this weekend had me bowling twice. on sunday we went to a white elephant gift swap bowling with the indiechics. i ate too many french fries and beer (which i swear improved my game). randall was determined to get his money´s worth, so we played until the time ran out. sidenote my gift was a bart simpson xmas ornament.

on saturday randall and i were getting our xmas shopping on. but before we set out we headed to jack´s urban eats, they just opened one up near our house. i guess that means it´s now suburban eats. randall asked if he could have the carnitas sandwich, this guy told him "heck yes you can!"

Yesterday i had a total craving for sushi. Jeff went at lunch, but i wasn´t at my desk when he left, so i missed the sushi boat. so today i had to have it. randall and i went to taka´s downtown. when we got there they sat us in the corner, a few minutes later dan & heather walked in, they ended up sitting right next to us. it was kind of strange, it was like we went to dinner with them, only we didn´t. we talked about travel and books. serindipidous good time. sidenote: is that spelled right, is it even a word? oh and also, the sushi wasn´t as good as i remembered it.

See? We are all going to get fat this xmas. Note the giant birthday cake as well. *sigh*

Tomorrow is the work holiday fatty goodie cookie potluck. I was going to make chocolate truffles but decided that they would take too long to make. So i made a french apple tart instead.

Meet guero. We found him running around the neighborhood blocking all the traffic. Luckily he had updated tags and we were able to take him home.

What are these? We don't know, but it is tasty and hot. Although it is a bit artificial tasting.

while i was at the nugget market i bought two new cheeses. comte and esrom. i was going to wait and have a taste test later tonite, but i was feeling snacky just now. so i decided to have the taste test here at work. only everyone else has left, so you'll have to trust my opinion on these ones. cheese 1: esrom the esrom appealed to me because he was a- on sale, and b- looked spongey like havarti. it's a semi-soft cow's milk cheese, with BIG aroma (translated: he's a bit stinky), but it doesn't TASTE stinky. it's light in color, but full in flavor, kinda buttery and has all these tiny little holes in it. i bet it would be great with crackers and maybe some beer too. cheese 2: comte this cheese was in the gruyere section of the cheese wall. (which ranks #2 in my favorite cheese section, right behind gouda). this cheese is firm in texture, lacking of smell but mildly sweet/nutty to the taste. when eaten in chunks it is slightly dry, definitely has that good swiss cheese texture (but no holes, and not rubbery swiss cheese), although i think it is technically a french cheese. it's also a cow's milk cheese (raw cow's milk if i'm not mistaken). i bet it would be amazing in fondue. winner: cheese #2 - comte! (but i am biased for this flavor)

this afternoon i headed to the gym for lunch. yesterday was the first day i'd been to the gym in AGES. i need to get back into a routine. i almost didn't go today, but decided that if i didn't go back today, i wouldn't go again until after the holidays. and holiday food eating weight gain is better if you're working out everyday. at least this is my theory. after the gym i decided to head out to the nugget market to grab some food. i wasn't sure what i wanted, but i like that market so i knew i could find something. when i got there i couldn't decide between bread and cheese, a spinach cranberry walnut salad or inari. so i got them all. i figure i can eat the cheese later and i can have half the salad and half the inari for lunch today and the rest tomorrow. at least this is what i'm telling myself. sometimes you just need to justify it to yourself. maybe it's lying, but if i stick to that plan, then it won't be right? sidenote: this nugget market is amazing. it is a little higher priced, but god the cheese....the cheese!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, these last few weeks have been pretty drama-city. my family is imploding and somehow i have become the help hotline, which is not the greatest thing as i somehow have also become the family crybaby mushface. Today i'm trying to hide, so randall and i are at chucha relaxing, reading and eating tasty sandwiches.

Right now randall and i are heading home from hella drunken game night. we played 6 games and i drank enough to almost forget my shoes.

randall just bought beef from a meatman in a truck. it better be good.

right now me and the introvert are at daphne´s greek food. i can´t believe how busy it is. they opened a few weeks ago and it is packed. poor pita pita (the other greek place in the same shopping center), i´ve never seen it this busy. oh and sidenote: the introvert is chatty. i love it.

My mom's gone crazy and we're looking for her brain at denny's. I hope we find it.

right now randall, wes and i are at the mondavi center in davis waiting to see matmos, for free. well parking was $6 bucks, but the show is free. the show starts at 8, doors were at 7, but the house doors are at 7:30 so we´re just waiting. woah they actually just threw some guy out. i think they found him in the ladies room. creep.

Today's amanda's last day. So we're at the elephant bar. Getting over here was a nightmare, traffic was a nightmare. And now the wait for a table is a nightmare too.

i left work at 3:50 today. i had a dentist appointment and decided that i wasn´t going to come back. after my appointment (no cavities hurray!) i realized that i should take the time to study for my chinese test tonite. but i didn´t want to go home, i would just end up watching tv instead. so i decided to go to chucha. chucha is a new bubble tea place in town. it opened a week or so ago and i thought i´d try it. i ended up having the red bean milk tea and a "saigon" grilled pork sandwich. it was so good. real pieces of grilled pork (not just some processed stuff) and it was only $2.99! i definitely will come back again. only next time i won´t try to study. they have these big flat screen tvs and try as i might i cannot stop watcing vh1´s behind the music. dammit. but if you live in the sacramento area, be sure to give chucha a try. so tasty! and so cute. the little old people behind the counter are adorable....okay now i´m just procrastinating, i really should get some studying done.

this is maya, she´s pretty upset because she believes john kerry is losing. i hope she´s wrong.

Happy halloween!

thurdsay night i really felt like fish tacos. i couldn´t explain where the urge was coming from and i didn´t know how to satiate it either. randall suggested rubio´s. but i was sure it was closed already. we decided to drive by anyway. it looked open so we went in. it was 9:28, they closed at 9:30. we just made it and my fish taco wish was fullfilled.

today our department is having a halloween potluck. work potlucks always weird me out because you are eating food brought by people you don´t even really like. but you always eat it anyway (at least i do). and the food is usually good, but the combinations are bad. right now i´m wondering why i ate deviled eggs, enchiladas and spinach dip all at the same time...and then topped it off with spice cake. the cake wasn´t as spicey as i wanted it to be, but i guess that´s my own fault, i made it. and it´s visually fun no? that´s what i did last night. pumpkin shaped spice cake with homemade cream cheese frosting (orange colored) and marzipan leaves!

there are alot of crazy things going on at work these days. and so naturally there are a lot of meetings to discuss all the crazy things going on. because you know why get anything done when you can just sit around and meet about it all day? this was our weekly digital meeting, it always runs past noon and so i never make it to the gym. not that i have time for it these days or anything. i also don´t have time for lunch. today i sat at my desk and worked while i drank some instant noo-noo hot and sour cup of soup.

Right now i'm standing around waiting for secret machines to play (they're opening for interpol, more on that later) and this girl is probably the most annoying person i've heard in a while. She's here with some guy named paul miller. I know this because she's said his name like a hundred times. If you know him tell him to run while he still can. Sidenote: the secret machines are seriously boring me to death. Completely unexpected.

this evening cindy and jeremy came over. there´s a ski equipmint expo in town tomorrow that they´re going to, so we invited them over for sushi (actually they invited themselves over, but sushi was our idea). so we made a million sushi rolls (including the soon to be famous taffy roll). while we were clearing the table someone mentioned chocolate cake and we all thought it was a good idea. so we decided to go to rick´s, but first we stopped by the flatspot for jay´s book release. it turned out to be the who´s who of sacramento hipsters. while there we ran into wes and tuttle. we told them about the cake plan and they decided to join us. i ended up having the apple caramel spice cake. it was good, but i was really hoping they had carrot cake. sidenote: while at flatspot skinner gave me a hug. i was pretty surprised because i don´t really know him very well. i guess he just wanted to thank me for going to his show the other day.

this morning i had to go take pictures of this house for my mom (she´s a real estate broker in serious need of her own digital camera). afterwards randall and i had to run a few errands, but i made him stop at the rack first (it was on the way anyway). but when we got there i didn´t actually feel like trying on clothes. so i looked thru the shoes and decided it was time to go. next stop was whole foods market. it is my favorite market. not just whole foods but this particular one. when we got there randall wanted to get a coffee, but he didn´t have any cash, so i had to pay. since i was paying i decided i wanted something too and ordered a soy chai. i´d never had one from whole foods and was pretty excited when she asked if i wanted plain or vanilla soy milk. i completely hate vanilla soy, but i prefer hot chai with soy so i usually just deal. so when she asked plain or vanilla i was totally amazed. then i walked around the store and filled up on samples.

woah. this dog just won us 6 dollars! way to go pup. way to go.

there´s nothing wrong with this photo. it´s the parking lot at my work. it´s dark and empty because it´s 8pm. 8 freakin pm. didn´t i say i was going to quit? what am i still doing here? stupid work ethic. bah. i totally didn´t mean to be here this late, matt even offered to buy everyone dinner but i said i wouldn´t be staying that late and turned it down. then i ended up being one of the last ones there. bah.

i´m about to eat a yogurt that expired yesterday. if the posts stop after this one, you´ll know why. especially because for lunch i had sushi from the grocery store. that wasn´t the best idea i´ve ever had. the shrimp sushi totally tasted shrimpy.

right now i am about ready to quit my job. this stupid computer is so slow and cannot handle the files. i am about ready to march into my boss´s office and say SHOVE IT.

Earlier today bao IMed a thai food menu to me. He wanted to know what he should order. I guess he never had thai food before. I told him to get the tom kha or the panang. He said he was going to order the pad thai. I told him that i thought pad thai is to thai food like kung pao chicken is to chinese food, if you know what i mean. All the talk of thai food made me really crave it. So after work i called up wes and juju to see if they wanted to go to dinner. We ended up going to the brown one on broadway. I had the tom yum, they had the pad thai...

Right now the internet is going sucky slow. I guess that means yesterday's and today's updates will have to wait. Sox.

Zhe shi liu laoshi. Ta hen you yisi. Wo xihaun ta. Ta jiao women zhongwen yufa, fayin he shengci.

See, i'm not making this up. It really is called life-choice. Who was the marketing genius behind that one?

This morning we didn't wake up until noon. I haven't slept in that in forever. The first thing on today's agenda was the backyard. We are the worst, we have been living there for almost a year and it's nothing but weeds. Literally. So we decided to get in gear and accomplish something. We ended up pulling weeds for three hours. Not exactly my idea of a fun sunday afternoon.

Right now randall is kicking my ass at rummy. I'm not sure how, but i'm sure he's cheating.

After sitting in the house all day (lazy bummers), randall and i headed to infusion for coffee. When we got there we realized we should've gone earlier. They have a good atmosphere, a chill dj and free wi-fi. But, i don't think i'll be ordering the bubble tea again, too chewy.

Today we've sat around and done pretty much nothing. well i cleaned the house and vacuumed the floor (which is probably my least favorite chore in the world) while randall made pocketpig magic. that's right boys and girls, from now on i'll have the ability to post on the go. the image to the left is a picture of his screen. he's been working hard and he needs those katamari cows for support. so from now on, we'll have regular posts, posts from wherever my cellphone has signal and whatever else i can dream up. it's about time i returned... it's about time.