Contrary to my utter and complete lack of recent posts, stuff HAS been happening here since we got back.  In fact, it’s all the stuff happening that has kept me from actually writing about it.  However, now it’s 8:30 on a Sunday night and I’ve made dinner (roast chicken that Mike complained tasted too much like chicken- I have no idea how to take that), breakfast and lunch for tomorrow, so I actually have a bit of spare time.  (No such luck for Mike though- he’s been working all weekend and is still locked in his office.  I, of course, feel guilty.)

Speaking of Mike, I went with him to his new office last weekend while he picked something up.  Since he’s now back in Engineering, he changed buildings and now works in what they call “Dev-Land.”  Besides getting a sweet window office (which is basically the equivalent of winning the lottery in Microsoft-land), it also means he’s traded working amongst slightly delusional marketers for sharing a building with programmers.  When we ran in on Sunday, we found the common areas littered with the remnants of what a developer office party looks like.

Ain’t no party like a programmer party.

Speaking of slightly dorky gatherings, guess what I did last Thursday?

SOUP SWAP!

Barrie organized the swap again this year, and it was bigger and better than ever.  I showed up with my sweet potato-centric offerings- Sweet Potato and Chorizo Soup for carnivores, and a Sweet Potato Pumpkin Curry soup for vegetarians.  (The Chorizo soup was SOOOO good!  I highly recommend it.) We swapped soup while we ate snacks and drank wine (our friend Kevin even braved some of the Manischevitz Barrie has had open since early November and is STILL trying to pass off as drinkable.  We love Barrie).  I totally scored swap-wise, and now our freezer is stocked with soup varietals including Bacon Chard, Curried Butternut Squash, Carrot Ginger, Green Chile, Matzo Ball and Tomato Fennel Bisque.  Seriously, if you haven’t been to a soup swap, you need to get on that.  Everybody likes soup.

Also in the realm of food, I took a knife skills class with Dominic last week.  I’ve been talking about taking a cooking class for basically forever, so when Dominic picked this class I was instantly on board.  Evidently, it was very much needed, because when I told Mike about the class, he instantly perked up, stopped all electronic forms of communication he was currently engaged in (he’s been known to text, IM and send emails simultaneously with one hand behind his back) and very emphatically told me to sign up for that class.  NOW.

So I did.  Easy.

We watched.

We cried over onions.

And I smiled when I cut the butt off a pepper and it looked like a heart.  Or Mickey Mouse.  Or a tumor.

That’s all.

Our actual trip home was a far cry from what I had imagined- instead of leisurely exploring the coast, we ended up almost making a straight shot home.  We did make one teensy detour in San Francisco, a city which offered two major draws.

Attraction #1: This lovely lady:

I met Jenny last year when she joined Mary, Scott and I on our trip to the Bahamas.  It was pretty much love at first sight- Mary and I  agreed that we liked her even better than Scott.  And not only is she a total blast to party with on a tropical island, she was also able to immediately engage MIKE in conversation once we arrived at her place.  Yeah, Jenny is pretty much a rockstar.

The next morning, we showered and re-packed our stuff, ready to hit the road again- with one last scheduled stop.

Attraction #2: The California Academy of Sciences

If you haven’t noticed before, Mike’s go-to activity when we go pretty much anywhere is to head to the nearest science museum.  It’s kind of ironic, considering that he boycotted field trips as a child (he thought 6th grade science camp was dumb so he never gave his mom the permission slip to sign- what kind of kid does that?), but now that he’s almost 30, we go to a lot of museums that elementary schoolers would totally be jealous of.

So when we woke up Saturday morning, knowing full well that we had about 13 hours of driving ahead of us, we still decided that it would be a good idea to make a pit stop at the California Academy of Sciences.  Mike had been talking about this place since we first decided to make this drive, so I didn’t have the heart to argue with him.  This turned out to be a good decision, because this place was freaking amazing.

As soon as we walked in and I saw this, I knew that Mike was in love.  He immediately started taking pictures to archive under “future house/aquarium integration project.”

There is an entire aquarium INSIDE the museum.

There are few things that make my husband happier than fish tanks.  When he was 11, he found an octopus at the beach and kept it alive for 3 years in a tank he maintained by himself.  Our first apartment was 800 square feet and the only furniture we had was a mattress on the floor, a 4th-hand futon, a computer desk and a 200 gallon coral reef tank.  The first bit of renovation we did on our house in Anaheim was to knock a hole in a wall in preparation for a fish tank.  (We moved before the fish tank could actually get set up, but the wall still has a sweet hole in it.

The aquarium featured fresh water creatures too, like these adorable wax frogs!

Love.

But what was my very favorite animal?  If you know me, you can probably guess it was an albino.

Albino anythings hold a special place in my heart.

The museum had sections dedicated to all kinds of cool places.

There was even an entire rainforest!

So dope.

And just when we thought we were done, there was the roof.  Yeah, the freaking ROOF was an exhibit.

It’s called a living roof.  It regulates temperature, makes the most of solar energy, and does all kinds of other cool hippie earth-friendly stuff.

Also, it makes you feel like you’re a hobbit.  I want one.

We spent more than 4 hours at the museum.  And this wasn’t like our day-long trek through the Museum of Flight- this was super engaging and totally devoid of planes.  I was super happy that we had taken the time to explore.

However, once I realized that we weren’t going to make it back home until about 2 am, I was less happy.

See, I don’t even have to put on theatrical make-up to look like a zombie.  I just have to go on a road trip.

I often joke about suffering from “yellow fever.”  Mike thinks it has something to do with my dad filling multiple fish tanks inside our house with arawonas (as he says, I basically grew up in a Chinese restaurant).  Well, whatever the subconscious motivation, I must admit that I have a major fascination with all things FOB.  Last Sunday afternoon, a trip to Diamond Jamboree Plaza in Irvine allowed me to indulge this love in a big way.

We started with lunch at 85 degrees, a Taiwanese bakery that serves coffee, various desserts and bread.

And when I say they serve bread, I mean it.  You walk in, grab a tray and tongs, and put as many refined carbohydrates on your tray as possible.

They have plain breads, sweet breads and savory breads.  And about 30% of the offerings also incorporate hot dogs.  This is probably why Mike loves it so much.

I also enjoyed a Sea Salt Coffee.  I ordered it out of a sick curiosity, but was surprised at how non-gross it was.

After we were satiated, we wandered around the glory that is Diamond Jamboree Plaza.  It’s seriously a festival of FOB- very similar to Diamond Plaza in Rowland Heights, housing a Capitol Seafood, several sushi joints, Mike’s favorite Korean fried chicken restaurant (called, very originally, BBQ Chicken), about 30 places to get boba, a cosmetic surgery center and 2 math tutoring centers.  It’s a place where the FOB flag flies high and proud.

We were just about to leave and go back to the car when we passed a storefront that caught my eye.

I looked inside.

And then my eyes lit up, my hear began to dance and the following conversation took place:

Me:  “OH.  MY.  GAWD.  Is that…  is that…  is that what I think it is?”

Mike: “A sticker picture booth store?”

Me: (at this point you could distinctly hear the hope in my voice) “YES!”

Mike: (sighing, eyes rolling) You want to go in there, don’t you?

Now, Mike and I are not exactly the world’s most publicly affectionate couple.  We don’t get very touchy in public, we are more likely to mock one another in a crowd than say something mushy, and Mike’s pet names for me have included, over the years, “monster,” “shrek,” “quasimoto” and “booger.”  He has even tried to convince me that our secret code for “I love you” should be “I hate your guts.”  Well, if there was ever a time that I was unsure that he really, really loved me, all of my fears were instantly alleviated when he walked into Sticki Picki with me and proceded to take the GREATEST PICTURES EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

Dear god I love this man.  Especially when he looks like an Asian pop singer.

The title of this post pretty much summarizes how I was feeling last Saturday.  Thanks to Mike losing the wheel to his car, I had no idea how or when we were going to get home.  If you know me at all, you probably know that I don’t do too well with this kind of spontaneity- in my old age, I find myself getting more and more anxious when plans suddenly change.  I’m not proud of the fact that I get grumpy when something as insignificant as dinner plans suddenly change, and it’s something I’ve put on my official “very long list of things I need to work on” list, but with no idea of the method or date of our departure, by Saturday I was starting to freak out a bit.  Or a lot.  Like, so much so that I woke up with a popped blood vessel in my eye.  This is the face of stress.

I don’t know if Mike was genuinely concerned for my mental well-being or just getting stir-crazy in Anaheim himself, but on Saturday morning we decided to ditch Orange County and head to LA.  Mike was in charge of choosing our activity, so our first destination was California Science Center in Exposition Park.

I’ve been to this place before for the BodyWorks exhibit (and once in the 4th grade when my mom sent me to Science Camp with my best friend Shannon, where we both wore flip-up sunglasses a la Dwayne Wayne from A Different World, snuck off to the gift shop and spent all of the money we had on astronaut ice cream, which we ate so much of that we both barfed on the bus ride back).  The actual museum isn’t really my thing- it’s a little too kid-centric- but a) it’s donation-based, and therefore cheap, and b) it also has this really cool place called The Annenberg Building that you can rent for private functions.  I’m kind of obsessed with it- I really wanted to have our wedding there before I found out how expensive it was.  Therefore, now I just really want SOMEBODY I know to have their wedding or some other awesome party there so I can live vicariously through you.

Seriously, somebody please get married there.

Anyway, we spent about an hour reveling in the wonders of science.

Then we got bored, walked around Exposition Park for a bit, and left to go meet Mary and wander around Venice Beach for a bit.  (With one small detour to three car dealerships in between.  Typical Saturday.)

Venice Beach is one of my favorite neighborhoods in LA- it’s a good mix of artists and hippies with a healthy sprinkle of shallow bourgeoisie thrown in for good measure.  It’s a mix that is both familiar and entertaining.

We walked down Abbot-Kinney toward the boardwalk, visiting whichever boutiques and bookstores caught our eyes.

Mary had never seen a T-Rex before.  Thankfully, Mike not only knew what it was, but also how awesome it would be to take a road trip in one.  (He can do that without me.)

We saw the Grilled Cheese Truck!  We didn’t eat there though since we already had dinner plans.

We made it to the beach just as the sun was setting.  I LOVE Venice Beach.  Growing up, my dad would take us there on weekend mornings just for people watching- the body builders, the protesters gathering signatures to legalize marijuana, the freaks walking on glass- nothing says “Sunday morning with the family” like mocking crazy people.

And then we saw it…  the drum circle.

There are no words to describe the 80 year old man, dressed in a full suit, dancing in the middle.

After the sun set we met our friend Noelle for lunch at my new favorite restaurant, Lemonade.

Seriously- it’s so good.  Their salads made my tummy sing with joy and Mike’s pot roast/macaroni and cheese sandwich won raves as well.  And they have parsnip soup- parsnips are basically my favorite vegetable in the entire world this week.

After dinner we bid adieu to Mary and Noelle and headed back to Anaheim.  I still had no idea how we were going to get home, but the combination of sunny skies, dancing hippies and parsnips had definitely improved my overall mental health.

Whenever I have time to update this blog, I have absolutely nothing to write about.  However, whenever I have a crapload of stuff to actually share, I have absolutely no time.  Figures.

I promise that I’ll make real updates  this weekend.  Trust me, I’ve got loads of good stuff coming- drum circles, aquariums, and how the heck we actually made it back to Seattle.  But right now I’m exhausted and need to sleep, so instead of a real post, you get this- a couple of things that made me giggle during the last two weeks.

After about 10 days, I started to feel like Mike may have been spending a little too much time around my dad.

We spent New Years Eve at a Brazilian Barbecue restaurant eating meat off swords with some of my favorite knitters:

Eating quail makes me feel like a giant.

After literally jumping up and down cheering “Meat! Meat! Meat!” Gigi went into a carnivore’s coma:

Earlier in the week, Derek showed me how a real man eats a 3 pound burrito.

Mike and Muneeb had passionate conversations about everything from the Lakers (Muneeb is not a fan) to a list of reasons why Mike should really stop working on his own car.  Over yogurt.

Outside of a bank, we found baby emo kids in the wild!  Just check out how tight these kids’ jeans are.  (We saw these kids go into a bank with their mom while we were stopping to use an ATM.  So yes, in order to take this picture Mike and I had to sit in my dad’s giant truck, complete with heavily tinted windows, and wait 20 minutes for them to come back outside.  Mike said it was the most creepster thing we’ve ever done.)

Jimmy liked his belated birthday present, courtesy of my mad knitting skillz.  (Amy got one too!)

Okay, off to bed now.

when they wear these.

I have probably already sent this to 90% of the people who actually read this blog, but when I read that American Apparel is now offering shiny metallic leggings for kids, I actually felt myself ovulate.  Yeah, I’m not exactly the most kid-friendly person in the world, but if having a kid means I could dress it up in all the clothes that I really want to wear but know that I can’t actually get away with due to age and a too-vigorous love of food, like GOLD LEGGINGS, then hell, that may be worth the stretch marks.

Ok, so the kid thing isn’t exactly imminent, but I am tempted to pick up a couple (dozen) of these because I highly doubt that skin tight sparkly toddler wear will still be in production when I actually am ready to start spitting out tiny Bachs.  (And maybe I’ll get an extra pair and send them to my friend Zona.  Her daughter, Gigi, could and would happily rock these with pride.  Is it sad that I want to live vicariously through a 6-year-old?)

I actually have REAL stuff to blog about, like the awesome garden that Barrie and I planted in her backyard yesterday (home-grown strawberries here we come!), but shiny gold kid leggings took priority for today.

(Special thanks to my Google Reader for keeping me abreast of really important news like this as it becomes available.)

The guest train keeps on truckin’.  I LOVE friends and family coming up to visit us, but it does create one slight problem: when we have guests for 3 weeks straight, the definitely cuts down on my blogging time.  Thus this delayed recap.  But here I am, back and better than ever.

Anne came up last week for some grand explorations in the Pacific Northwest.  She spent Thursday and Friday exploring the city, unfortunately, mostly on her own during the day because I had to work.  Bah! to work.  However, we did get to get some good times in- Anne was able to explore some local yarn shops, meet my super awesome knitting group (or at least the girls who made it that night), meet me for lunch at The Other Coast (by the way, I am stupidly in love with their new extra small sandwhiches, which, for $5 are a total rip-off – a regular 6″ would only be $2 more for twice the sandwhich, but I don’t have the self control to save the other half, PLUS small food is cuter), wander around the Market Friday afternoon and then go to Black Bottle with Mike, where we had some good wine and THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WHOLE FREAKING WORLD OMFG, which was even weirder because MIKE picked it out.  (Mike hates chocolate and cake but highly recommended this choice, and dear god was he right.)

Saturday morning(ish) we left for a weekend in Portland.  Portland is basically the knitting capitol of the universe, so we had to make sure to check it out.  We stayed at the Ace Hotel, which is basically a fancy hostel- I was a little wary of the shared bathroom idea but my fears were quickly alleviated.  Everything was so clean that I think my mom would be comfortable wandering around the showers barefoot.

During our trip, we visited some fabulous yarn stores, including Twisted, which was highly recommended by my friend Kate, and Knit/Purl, which houses the amazing Sandy of ShiBui Yarns.  We spent nearly two hours with Sandy catching up on the latest knitting gossip and news.  I am totally bummed that we forgot to take a picture with her- I basically want to be her when I grow up.

We also hung out with Anne’s friend Sherri, who acted as our tour guide and took us to some really cool restaurants and events.  We started out the night with cocktails, where I introduced Anne and Sherri to the liquid glory that is sparkling sake, and then checked out a Fashion Show featuring some really cool independent designers followed by Steven Adler’s long lost cousin’s band.  Ok, the lead singer was of no relation to Steven Adler, but he had that same 1987 style shaggy ‘do and he was way the freak too skinny with bulgy veins.  And he wore bedazzled jeans.  This was by far the whitest show I’ve been to in a LONG time (yeah, totally whiter than when we saw the Stars with Amy and Derek), and I realized that I had completely forgotten that white crowds don’t dance.  At all.  Ever.  I really don’t get it.

At least the lights made funny pictures.

The next day Sherri invited us to a special crab boil dinner at Kenny & Zuke’s.  Attending it meant that we wouldn’t get home til midnight and I had to be up early the next morning for work, but I am totally happy to sacrifice sleep for crab.

Yeah, you would give up sleep for that big bowl o’ goodness too.  Anne was particularly enthusiastic:

Much to my delight, the dinner proved to be pretty healthy, but only because of my mayo-phobia.  Thank god the crab was so fresh and sweet that it was good enough to eat on my own, because here were the accompaniments :

A giant tub of coleslaw swimming in mayo and a gallon of mayo-based dipping sauces.  UGH mayo.  And normally I don’t shy away from butter, but looking at that much of it kind of took some of the joy away.

Don’t worry- I didn’t go away hungry.  Between the pounds of crab, the yummy grilled asparagus, some fantastic clam chowder and the free-flowing wine, I was definitely a happy camper.  Well, specifically, I was a happy camper sucking down chowder and wearing a bib:

All in all, it was a good, but exhausting, weekend.  It was definitely good times to see Anne and embark on a mini roadtrip adventure.

Derek just sent me this video, and I have to share:

One of the bright spots in my journey last week was the fact that after my meeting in Portland, I had about an hour and a half to kill until I had to be at the airport- just enough time to make a pit stop at Powell’s!

Powell’s is a gigantic bookstore in Portland specializing in used, rare and out of print books- basically, a West Coast version of The Strand.  I have heard more about Powell’s than anything else in Portland- whether it was excessively dramatic sighs of glee from my friend Elizabeth, who made weekly treks there while she was a student in Oregon, or my dad, who I’ve NEVER heard get excited about a bookstore.  I was pretty excited to go, even if I just had an hour to explore.

Obviously, I wanted to wander around and buy everything.  However, since Mike and I put ourselves on a bit of a book diet recently, I was good and only bought two things- Travels in Hyperreality, an out of print book of essays by Umberto Eco (love), and a calendar featuring old pictures of people in lines.

However, while I wandered I took pictures of books that reminded me of friends and family.  So, I present you with crappy iPhone pictures of books I didn’t buy but would if I had an unlimited budget (and my own library).  (Disclaimer: this list is not in order of importance, so don’t feel left out if I didn’t include you, these were just books that jumped out at me during my 75 minutes of bliss.)

For Nugget, who also took way too many classes centered around this book (and others like it) in college:

For Rita, who wishes she was somewhere that looked like this:

For Derek, who loves a Famous Star almost too much:

For Anne, because, well, she is:

For my mom, who made me do way too many book reports on this book because somebody we’re related to was friends with Ishi:

For me, because it’s still my favorite:

For Jimmy, because honestly, wtf?

For Mary, because this is such an apt description of us:

And this last one isn’t for anybody in particular, but I squeed a little when I saw that it was in the “Historical/Rare” Collection:

I’m feeling kind of ancient and rickety right now.  A couple of reasons:

• We had a date at a food court last Friday.  And I was amused.
• On Saturday, we went to see Video Games Live.  Our biggest complaint?  a) The douchebag announcer who kept hogging the stage with his multiple costume changes for no reason (seriously- he came out at one point wearing Bedazzled jeans.  Vomit) and b) Mike didn’t even recognize a bunch of the songs they played- Mike, who has slept outside for multiple video games and consoles.  God of War?  What are they talking about?  Just play the Tetris theme song and make me happy.  (The Video Game Pianist playing live was pretty badass though.)

• Mike rode the bus for the first time!  Yay Mike!

• Tonight’s Good Eats episode was about Brussel Sprouts, and I was so excited that I emailed Scott (who has started a really badass blog himself) about it.
• I was bragging to Mike tonight that I get to sleep in tomorrow- til 7:30 AM.
• It’s about 10:30 PM and I’m totally ready for bed.  Nighty nite!