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 c