Holidays are never simple.  That would be silly.  This year, we did 4.

Thanksgiving #1: Thanksgiving del sol.

The place: The Beach House, Laguna Beach, CA.

The family: Aubrey’s.

the ugliest mannequin in the world

Thanksgiving #2: Just missed ya’

The place: our old house

The family: what was left of the Bach siblings by 3 pm.  Mike’s mom left before we got there. Kind of relaxing.

Thanksgiving #3: Back to Laguna

Where: Mike’s stepdad’s sister’s house in Laguna

Who: Mike’s stepfamily and mom.  A turkey and a lot of Persian food.  I mostly ate a LOT of pomegranate seeds.

Thanksgiving #4: Tran-tastic

Where: Phong’s house.

Who: Mike’s dad’s family.

Note: I didn’t actually go to this one because I was being forced to attend our 10 year high school reunion.  As a result, Mike only took one picture the entire night- the temporary tattoos his 11 year old cousin gave him

Mad Steez.

More fascinating California pictures to come.

(I’m totally singing the crap Celine Dione song right now.  Wasn’t Meatloaf in that video?)

But yeah, I’ve been in California for 15 hours.  And, like always, I immediately feel like I never left.  Trust me, I dig Seattle, but there are some things you can’t get up there.

Like this being the first text message you see when you turn your phone on:

Or this greeting you at the airport:

Or going HERE straight from said airport:

And eating this for dinner:

Yeah, some things about California are just GOOD.

Note: I am not technically on vacation until about 5:00 today, and am just staring at the warm sunshine bitterly while having a rather hellish work from home day.  On the bright side, thanks to my trusty Google Reader, I was alerted to the existence of THIS today:

Dude.  It’s $250 worth of the BEST eyeliner known to mankind.  And it’s a collector’s set- which means that somewhere, somebody is a PROFESSIONAL EYELINER COLLECTOR.  They go to eyeliner galas and auctions and buy eyeliner that appreciates in value.  THIS is obviously what I was meant to do with my life.  People, if you love me, pool your money together, email other readers, buy me this and start my new life as a freaking true eyeliner afficionado.  Trust me, I would be REALLY good at it.  I promise.

Warning: this post is insanely lame and bordering on emo.  But there is a picture of a baby at the end.

We’ll be back in California in 13 hours!  I do have to work a few days from home, but somewhere in there I have 5 days off in a row.  In the meantime, the following things are going through my mind:

• I really hate packing.
• I don’t like any of my clothes today.
• I have no desire to work tomorrow.  I will, however, make a valiant effort to be somewhat productive.  Somewhat.
• I am THIS close to finishing my only knitted Christmas gift this weekend.
• I want to see about 100 people while we’re in town, but I have yet to set any actual dates besides Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and dinner at Animal with Mary, Scott and Derrik.  This could result in either a) an extremely relaxed, easy-going trip home or b) me running around like a maniac for a solid week.  We’ll see which happens.
• Mary tried to tell me that I am required to attend our 10-year reunion on Saturday.  Current forecast: slight dread with a high probability of making an ass out of myself.
• Instead of successfully packing for a trip to Orange County I am watching last week’s epidsode of The Real Housewives of Orange County.  I wonder if this is a modern-day pathetic fallacy?
• Slade Smiley is the king of all douchebags.
• I organized my yarn today.  This was a MAJOR accomplishment.
• Last week I had a check-up and managed to fall off the exam table.  I’m still limping and I have a giant bruise on my left arm.  It’s a good look.
• And the happy news of the week- my friend Brooke had her baby on Thursday and we went to visit them today.  I successfully held the baby and didn’t even drop her. ( This is a MAJOR accomplishment.)  Check out how cute she is.  Also, check out how cute her hat is.  It’s cute because I made it:

Here is Seattle, we are in full-on winter mode.  It’s rainy.  It’s gray.  And it’s COLD.  The local ski resorts are already open, which is evidently kind of unheard of around here.  We’ve turned on our heater and we’ll eventually learn how to program the piece of crap thermostat.  I’ve whipped out the Northface jacket and Mike has started talking about finding a warm jacket FOR REALS this year.  (We even made a shopping trip on Sunday, and Mike got a bright blue vintage Lacoste windbreaker instead.)

I’m not going to lie, winter up here is not easy for me.  I don’t have much to compare it to, except for the great Snowpocalypse of 2008, which resulted in us being stranded on top of our hill and spending Christmas sans any family.  But it’s really not the threat of massive snowfall that freaks me out- it’s the fact that I’m going to be drinking hot Americanos until May, that I need to buy some special running hear so I can run outside and not get frostbite and the fact that no matter how many pairs of socks I wear, my toes will go numb whenever I am wearing cute shoes outside for more than 15 minutes.  (Okay, that last one isn’t COMPLETELY Seattle’s fault- I do have the worst circulation ever.  I suffer from Raynaud’s Phenomenon.  Or at least I self-diagnosed myself with it.)  It probably doesn’t help that work has been crazytown the past couple of weeks and doesn’t promise to lighten up any time soon, plus I’m staring down the barrel of my 29th birthday in a couple of weeks, which sounds terribly ominous to me right now.

So when I get down, I usually find it’s best to focus on the happy things.  Thankfully I am very easily entertained, so it doesn’t take too much to break me out of a funk for a few moments.  Here are some of the things that have de-funkified me in recent days:

• I found the world’s best sweater tights on sale at Nordstrom’s Rack yesterday.  Seriously- I wore them today and felt like a stuffed animal was hugging my legs.  So happy.  I really want to go buy an argyle pair, but I’m not sure I can pull those off.
• My co-worker’s twins, who were born 7 weeks early, are doing really well and rocking the awesome elf hats I made them.  Talk about swagga’:

• I absolutely love the boots I got last week.  What’s better winter therapy than boots?  I certainly don’t know.

• Even though I have to bundle up when I go outside, I can still wear awesome headbands with giant rosettes:

• The holidays are coming, which means that I can start theoretical shopping for friends and family.  We haven’t actually budgeted out Christmas presents yet, but I think I already found the best gift ever for a certain bovine-loving domestic goddess:

• The holidays also mean trips back home!  We’ll be in Socal Nov 23-30 for Thanksgiving.  It actually proves to be fairly calm, with both of Mike’s parents out of town this year.  I’m still trying to find out a way to for the Bach family to gather and bond at some point- maybe we’ll actually have a tension-free meal for once.
• Speaking of the Bachs, Amy sent me this picture today and it absolutely made my freaking day:

I cannot think of a better note to end on.  Good night.

I just realized that I never blogged about the pie-stravaganza a few weeks ago.  Considering how much I talked about it beforehand, and how much shit I talked on facebook the day of, I am kind of surprised that I haven’t posted pictures yet.  But here they are.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll backtrack.  A couple of months ago Barrie decided that it would be an awesome idea to have a pie contest.  So five minutes later, she sent out a mass email detailing rules, judging criteria, entry fees, prize structures and location.  The stage was set.  The pie contest was born.

I signed up to bake.  Now, I don’t claim to be a good baker.  In fact, while I love to cook, I fully recognize that I am rather poor at baking.  For one, it’s too exact.  You have to measure things and think about chemical reactions and lots of other crappy details.  The other issue is the CONSUMPTION of the finished products.  I love dessert.  I have a huge sweet tooth and a distinct lack of self-control.  I am not the kind of person who can eat half a piece of some awesome cake and say, “hmmm…  I think that was enough for now” and put the rest in the fridge.  I am more of the “holy crap this is delicious and I want to put it in my mouth NOW” personality type.  And since Mike DOESN’T have a distinct sweet tooth, if I started baking a lot, we would end up with a massive excess of pastries and those pastries would end up in my belly.  And ON my belly. And my ass.  You get the idea.

But since it was a contest, and I had never actually had an excuse to attempt a pie crust before, I signed up to bake.  And I signed Mike up to judge.  Because while he doesn’t really like pie, he DOES like to judge things.  (This explains why we spend so much time watching dance-themed reality tv competitions.)

The contest was held at a bakery here in Seattle called Curio Confections.  If you live in Seattle and haven’t been here, you need to go now.  If is THE cutest bakery in the world- it’s cute, it’s quaint, it serves a rotating menu of mouth-watering cakes, candies, pies, tarts and cookies, plus a sprinkling of savory options like quiches and pot pies, and they have wine.  Sugar AND wine- is there anything better?

But we didn’t come to eat THEIR pie.  We came to eat OUR pie.  (But we did drink their wine.)

First, Barrie greeted us.

Actually that’s not a picture of Barrie greeting us.  I don’t know what the hell she’s doing in this picture.  I took this picture sometime after she realized that her boyfriend Dominic hadn’t remembered to bring the pie prizes and Mike volunteered to drive him to retrieve said valuables.  I later found out that they stopped at Taco Bell on the way back to the bakery.  Who decides they need a chicken soft taco before they have to go eat 12 pieces of pie?  My husband does.

Once they got back, the judging began.

This was my pie.  Apple and Peanut Butter- it tasted really good (I thought), but let’s just say that I definitely lost points for presentation.  Honestly, it’s a miracle that I even finished the pie in time and in one piece.  Basically, my ugly-on-the-outside-but-yummy-on-the-inside pie had a really, really nice personality.

I didn’t place, but I didn’t have very high hopes.  I mean, look at what some of the other entrants turned out:

Now those are pies.

This shot features the winner right in the middle- amazing, melt-in-your-mouth delicious peanut butter mousse tartlettes.  Seriously, these were so good that I continue to dream of them.

The judging was intense.

Okay, so the only person who thought that the judging was intense was Mike, who, in hopes that the judging sheets would be given to the entrants after the contest (so that everybody could learn from their mistakes), decided to write a 250 word essay about each pie.  He took so long and go so into it that Barrie had to eventually tell him to hurry the eff up because the bakery was about to close.  Like I said, he really was hoping to “help” each contestant.  ::eye roll::

While the judging went on, Ange and I discussed our baking technique.  Or talked about knitting.  Or just gossiped.  Whatever.

But eventually, the winner was announced.  Yay Mary Jane!  And yay for the picture that looks like Barrie is copping a feel!

ps- not only is Mary Jane an AMAZING baker, she is also my mom-hero.  Seriously, if I ever have kids I hope that I am half as awesome as she is.  Plus she is a ridiculously fast knitter.  I am jealous on many levels.

And this is what I look like after having pie and wine for dinner:

Thank you Barrie for organizing the best pie contest EVAH.

It’s normal for couples to split up responsibilities.  One person cooks, one does the dishes (sometimes).  One person takes out the trash and the other vacuums (actually, in our case, Mike does both of these).  In our case, Mike is in charge of things like having an iota of common sense, while I generally handle important things like scheduling social activities and forcing him to leave his cave/office.

Well, it’s good to switch it up sometimes.  So the weekend before last, we switched things up and had HIS friends over for dinner.  YAY!  Mike has friends.

Unfortunately, now that I’ve actually looked at the pictures we took that night, we didn’t really take any pictures OF these friends.  Instead, I only have a picture of half of his friend Anees, a bunch of pictures of the food I made, several shots of his friend Scott’s freaking adorable kids, and one picture of me that is so horrific that I am going to post it just because it makes me laugh.

Mike, Scott and Anees met each other while working in the same group at Microsoft.  They became friends because they are all a bit… brutally honest with their opinions.  Vocal + blunt = instant friends.

Our awesome table with ORANGE placemats, yummy samosas that Anees and Tricia brought us and half of Anees.  We did get a picture of his wife though- I totally love this photo.

The food:

I made a LOT of food.  Brussel sprouts with figs and bacon (awesome, but only Scott’s wife Belinda and I ate them), a big ass salad, 2 racks of Alton Brown’s oven-braised ribs, garlicky mashed potatoes, Ina’s mac and cheese, and a roast chicken that you can’t see because of the angle.  Why so much food?  Well, Mike asked me to make ribs several days before the dinner, but then told me that Anees and his wife didn’t eat pork at about 8:00 pm the night before.  Considering that even the vegetables had bacon in them, I had to sprint to the store to get a chicken.

This is Scott and Belinda’s son, Corey.  Corey is awesome for several reasons: a) I LOVE kids with glasses; b) he (like the rest of his family, duh) is Australian and therefore has an awesome accent- especially when you tell him you’ll sneak him ice cream if he repeats “It tastes like it’s got buttah’ inside” over and over again; and c) he SHOVELED down at least 3 full bowls of my mac and cheese.  If you EVER want to get on my good side, tell me you like my food.

While Corey is a carb fiend, their daughter Emily is obviously partial to pork.  I was endlessly amused watching her eat ribs bigger than her head.  And then I was even more enchanted when she settled down to watch some Tinkerbell movie wrapped up in my ancient rainbow blanket, which I’ve had since I was a baby.  My mom claims she sewed it.  I refuse to believe that- my mom is totally lacking the craft gene.

So effing cute.

Considerably less cute is this picture of me- I swear to god, I only had 2 glasses of wine that night.  But you take one exhausted hostess (me), one photographer who loves candid shots a little too much (mike), and somebody who favors overly dramatic facial expressions (me), and you get this:

Hehehe.  This amuses me to no end.

So in my last post, I stuck to the high points of Mary and Scott’s trip to Seattle- good food, a beautiful hike,mike’s leggins and super happy friend love crap.  In an effort to keep the post more Hemmingway than Tolstoy, I decided to skip on their visit’s definite low point.

But then Scott bitched about it in the comments section so I decided that I had to tell you about the worst 30 minutes of last weekend.  And it was all Scott’s fault.

On the way to Wallace Falls State Park, we passed a sign that read “Washington State Salmon Hatchery.”  Scott, who had previously been singing along to the Miley Cyrus’ opus “Party in the USA” (thank you KISS and your 3 XM stations that played the song 4 times during our one hour drive), suddenly started shrieking like a woman possessed and insisted that we stop there on the way back.  Well, actually, he wanted to cancel the hike and just go look at salmon, but I told him to shut it and we hiked anyway.

But we did indulge him on the way home.

And it was horrific.  Or, as Scott would say, “horrif.”

As soon as we parked, we were greeted by this sign:

I really don’t know what to say about these visual fun facts, except that I really hope that this is a popular spot for elementary school field trips.  And I really hope that it prompts lots of interesting dinner table conversation afterwards.  “Mommy, why does the boy salmon get squeezed and pee on the bucket of salmon eggs?”

Evidently, late October is the time of year when the adult salmon have already made it back to their spawning grounds, let their goodies loose and are basically just waiting to die.  We went down to look at the live fish, and they were big.  And fat.  And barely alive.  It was really just depressing.

If you look closely, you can see nasty dead salmon carcasses piling up on the bottom of the holding pen.  This was so depressing that I took a big step back…  right into a giant pile of dog poo.  Nice.  And then I saw this:

Yeah, that’s a dead salmon.  Filled with maggots.  Evidently the salmon here are so half dead that just about any hungry animal thinks of this holding pen of their own Vegas buffet during this time of year.  The entire lawn was filled with nasty rotting carcasses.  Between that and the dog poo, I wanted to cry.

Meanwhile, Scott pranced around, explored the hatchery, and learned about his favorite fish.  I sat in the car and complained.

The rest of the day went well- we celebrated our friend Shaun’s birthday, where Mary and Scott met my Seattle friends and we ate his pulled pork, followed by an after dinner snack of rillette, duck confit and sparkling wine at Bastille.  I honestly don’t know how the hell we ate that much after seeing the dead salmon fiesta.  Scott really brings out the best in me.

Thank you so much, Scott, for adding this side trip into our day.  I’ll never forget it.

Oh, if you aren’t familiar with the amazing musical achievement that is “Party in the USA,” I think the best way to acquaint yourself with it is via this epic rendition:

There are certain people in the world who are more than just people- they’re home.  For me, it’s Mary and Scott:

I know it’s odd to describe people as “home,” but it really is the only word that really makes sense.  It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since we last talked, it doesn’t matter where we meet up, nor does it matter what we’re doing when we’re together- as soon as I see Scott and Mary, I’m instantly happy.

And when you’re that comfortable with people, you can find sheer bliss in spending a Friday evening drinking cheap pinot, eating whatever hors devours you can find in the nearest refrigerator (in this case it was a salami of questionable age and raw almonds) and finding Scott the GREATEST GOOGLE VOICE NUMBER in the history of the world.  Obviously he wouldn’t appreciate me giving out the number here, but trust me, it’s awesome.  Just look at his excitement when he found it was available:

Love.

On Friday night we had dinner at Poppy, a really great restaurant in Capitol Hill that does platters of vaguely Indian-inspired platters of small plates called thalis.

The steak was cooked perfectly (everyone said).  Everything comes with naan.  They have little pots of pickled burdock root, which immediately made Scott squeal with joy because it reminded him of his grandma.  Evidently, it also makes you very gassy.  Yum.

The next day, I decided to give them another taste of the Pacific Northwest and took them hiking.  But not before I made an overly ambitious pre-hike breakfast.

After getting some nourishment, we drove to Wallace Falls State Park for the hike.

Scott was a big fan of the mushrooms, but chickened out when it came to actually sampling any.  He did, however, take 3,000 pictures of mushrooms with Mary’s camera.  This was my favorite.

We saw crazy trees.

And then we hid behind them.

And in them.

Oh, and there were waterfalls too.

And some amazing views.

But most importantly, this hike really demonstrates what it’s like when Californians go hiking.

First of all, the outfits: giant sunglasses, neon green pashminas, and white jackets (which are GREAT for hiding dirt and grass stains).

Mike didn’t want to commit to wearing jeans even though it was freezing outside, so he rocked the bodysuit he normally wears under his race leathers with cargo shorts.  The result was effectively leggings.  My heart was literally swollen with pride.

Have you noticed how unusually happy Mike has looked in all of these pictures?  I mean, he’s outside, it’s cold, he’s being forced to walk uphill and there are people around him talking constantly.  What could possibly put him in such a good mood?

There was cell phone reception throughout the entire hike.  While we communed with nature, Scott changed his flight reservation and Mike checked his email every 15 minutes.  And every time I bitched about it, all three of them told me to shut up.

This is how I stay my version of grounded, people.

This is the place where a normal person would post a picture of themselves in costume.  Or, at least something Halloween-y- a pumpkin, a big bowl of candy or a skeleton- something that really says “boo!”  Well, we didn’t technically dress up this year.  Sadly, we missed the ONE FREAKING YEAR that a asian-guy-white-girl couple are hot topics in popular culture.  (I’m obviously referring to Jon and Kate Gosselin, which I had really wanted to dress up as this year because it’s so freakin’ easy.  But SOMEBODY wouldn’t fork out the money for a douchey Ed Hardy shirt and ruined all of my dreams and aspirations.)  So instead of me wearing a reverse mullet wig and carrying around a bunch of Asian babies, we spent the day dressing up our living room instead- we got a dining table!  Woop!

Yeah, we’ve lived in Seattle for 15 months and today is the first day we’ve had an actual dining table.  It’s a big event.  Historically, we just kind of suck at committing to dining tables.  In 6 years of cohabitation, we’ve only had a dining table for a sum total of 19 months.  What can I say?  We’re slow to commit.

But today, all that changed.  Today, Mike woke up and was possessed by a strange urge to go out and get a dining table.  This may or may not have something to do with the fact that we are having two of his friends over tomorrow for dinner and he he doesn’t want them to have to sit on the floor and eat at our coffee table (I like to refer to this as “Moroccan style”) like all of our previous guests.  But whatever.  I don’t really care.  I am ECSTATIC that we have a dining table.  A dining table means that people can stop by your house any time at all and you have a place to give them food.  A dining table means that you don’t eat dinner in front of the television every day, but you take 15 minutes to stop and talk about what happened during the day.  A dining table means home.  And while I have no idea how long this place will be our home, I like the illusion that we have a home in the meantime.  It makes me happy.

Plus, it was kind of entertaining watching Mike spend 3 hours putting the table together.

soup break!

Hehehe.  Don’t worry, I did more than just take pictures of him cursing all non-Ikea furniture.  I spent the evening brining and marinating 2 racks of ribs and an entire chicken for dinner tomorrow.  Because I’m a good wife who strives to impress his co-workers and friends.  And because I was really freaking excited to put that table to use tomorrow.

I’ll share pictures of our dinner party, but not until after I tell you about my incredibly awesome visit from my very best friends in the world last weekend.  Dear god, I have a lot of catching up to do.