Remember that long, scenic drive back up we were supposed to have?  The one that was supposed to involve lots of curvy roads and gorgeous ocean views and delicious food?  The one that involved us leaving January 1st?

Well, considering it’s January 2nd and I’m still in Anaheim, that is obviously not happening.

See, one of Mike’s ongoing goals has been to learn how to work on his own car.  In theory, this is a good thing.  However, when Mike called me from a payphone on Saturday asking me to come pick him up on the corner of Lincoln and Sunkist, I had a terrible feeling that his handiwork may have gone wrong.

And I was right.  One of his wheels had fallen off.  Evidently this causes some fairly expensive damage to the car.

So instead of arriving in San Francisco and seeking out a giant Mission burrito, I’m chillin’ in my parents guest house watching epidsodes of Psych on OnDemand.  Right now, we think we have 3 options to get home by Wednesday night:

a) wait and pray that the car gets fixed Monday night and hightail it out of here, hopefully leaving room for a couple hours of hanging out in Portland so Mike can finally see Powells and eat fish sauce chicken wings at Pok Pok.

b) find out that the car won’t be ready by first thing Tuesday morning and buy last minute plane tickets to fly home that day.  Leave the car here until somebody drives it up.

c) put the car up for sale and drive home in a new car.  At least one tiny part of Mike thinks that this may just be fate telling him that he is really meant to drive the GTR.  Or an M3 with paddle shifters.  Or a C300.

So that’s where we are.  Considering that total spontaneity pretty much sends me into tremors, I’m feeling a little stressed right now, and my body is obviously in agreement.  Check out the creepy burst blood vessel in my left eye:

That’s hot, right?

Thankfully, we have had good people down here with us, so we still have plenty of ways to keep busy.  In fact, the same day that Mike lost his wheel, we went to have a belated Christmas celebration with his mom and her AWESOME pho.

Of course, as soon as Mary and Scott heard that there would be homemade pho, they made sure they would be “accidentally stopping by.”

Mary and I took the opportunity to give Scott his Christmas present, which he promptly modeled.

Um, it was a little tight.  Thankfully, Scott didn’t collapse into a pile of hysterical tears like I would have, and instead danced around, buttons agape, for our entertainment.  This is why I love Scott.

Jimmy also came up with some especially awesome shirts for Tony and Amy:

Amy’s was the best.

Oh, and I got a pretty sweet present from Mike’s mom too-

Yeah, as much as I LOVE eyelashes- the trannier the better- I’m a little too scared to actually use this stuff.  But somehow, just the idea of Catherine giving me pharmaceuticals for Christmas feels right.

With a buttload of families to see during the holidays, Christmas can be complicated.  Thankfully, it starts out simply, just the way it should.  With cinnamon rolls.

That’s the wreckage of what was left over from my annual Christmas Cinnabun.  Some families leave homemade cookies out for Santa and wake up to the smell of homemade pastries wafting through the house.  My family makes a Christmas Eve run to the mall for white flour and trans fats.  Deeee-licious.  (This year we did supplement with some hippie cinnamon rolls that I brought from home- Sin Dawgs by Dave’s Killer Bread.  With their organic whole wheat flour and hefty dose of flax seeds, they may look healthy, but holy crap are they delicious.  Cinnabuns still hold a sentimental place in my heart, but if you have any way to get a hold of Sin Dawgs, do it.)\

Once we had ingested enough sugar, we moved on to presents. My mom definitely made out the best this year, scoring a swanky TAG watch from my dad.  Of course, she was even happier to open OUR presents-

A head scarf for her upcoming trip to Egypt.

And a Bumpit!

Okay, so she still has to master the art of the Bumpit- we’ll work on that.  My dad, however, totally dug it and has asked her to where it basically every time they leave the house.  This is ENDLESSLY amusing for me.

After we opened presents, my lazy family watched The Hangover while I slaved away in the kitchen.

Jimmy and Amy joined us.

Trust me, the food was better than their faces imply.  I’m just a horrific photographer.

After we ate, we were supposed to go visit Mike’s mom for a Christmas gift exchange.  Unfortunately, her father-in-law ended up having to go to the hospital.  He’s a nice guy, so Mike and Amy and I headed over to say hi.

They had their own Christmas feast.

We hung out, chatted, and I made some progress on Amy’s already-belated-birthday-knitting gift:

And that was Christmas Day.

One more celebration to go!

Traditionally, we spend Christmas Eve with Mike’s dad’s family.  They have their holiday celebrations down to a science- lots of kids, lots of pretty wrapped boxes, and lots and lots of food.  But it definitely has it’s own special spin on the process.

Dumplings, spring rolls, green papaya salad, noodles and mac n cheese.  Guess who contributed that?

aunts and orchids.

We ate.  A lot.

Highly competitive ping-pong tournaments.

Presents.

LOTS of presents.  Hey, when you have 28 people in one house, the wrapping paper really adds up.

Mike and I had a total of 2 presents wrapped before we arrived and about 20 to give out, so we did what any good older cousins do- we made the younger ones do all the wrapping.  (There is a culturally insensitive sweatshop joke that should go here, but I’m not feeling very clever.)

Passing out gifts.

Giving and receiving.

The best part of Christmas- happy kids.  (We know that kids take Christmas seriously- when we first walked in the door, a herd of boy cousins came up to Mike and said “We know you work at Microsoft and get a discount on Xbox stuff, so we have big expectations for you guys this year.”  Thankfully, Mike was able to score some cheap games and we had some happy campers. For the girls, the Wacom Bambu tablets we gave CK and Havanah were big hits.)

I seriously love these two kids.  They were both flower girls at our wedding and I still dig them.  Then again, I am a sucker for kids who can make a fort out of anything, even Christmas presents.

This is Emily, the other girl cousin.  Equally adorable.

Andrew and Phong are a little too old to be adorable, but I dig them too- especially Andrew’s little mohawk.

Older kids (ok, Tony and Amy don’t even count as kids anymore) are way less cute, but deserve good Christmas nonetheless.

This photo doesn’t really fit anywhere, but it makes me laugh.

Merry Christmas!

Between working from home, visiting friends and family and celebrating the holidays, I am WAY behind on blogging.  I will get around to doing a full recap of all 3 of our Christmas adventures, but not tonight.  Tonight I’m tired and slightly nauseous.

I’m tired because I’ve been running non-stop since a 9:00 am spin class led by an instructor who broke out into a full Rockettes-style high kick number in the middle of class  (that’s what happens when you go tot he 24 Hour Fitness across the street from the Disneyland Cast Member Parking lot) followed by brunch, knitting, yogurt and catching up with a couple of particularly fantastic friends.  I’m nauseous because Jimmy, Mike and I joined Mike’s dad and grandparents for dinner at a very fobby Chinese restaurant.

Mike’s dad ordered a feast for the six of us- shell-on prawns, sauteed pea sprouts, a whole fried fish, steamed clams, fried tofu and seafood hot pot.

The clams went fast and furious.

Yes, that’s ice in the beer glass.

The real star of the show was the hot pot.

Swimming in that broth you’ll find shrimp, lobster, squid, fish, mushrooms, sea sponge and some weird balls.  I still don’t know what those balls were.  Jimmy told me they were lychee (wrong), Mike said he thought they were either fish stomachs or “poop holders” (I don’t even want to know), and his dad just called them “fish balls.”  Mike’s grandparents, who don’t speak English, just stared at me disapprovingly and probably wished Mike had married a nice quiet fertile Asian girl with a graduate degree.

Naturally, Mike, Jimmy and I decided to keep things mature and appropriate and started daring each other to eat the stuff in the soup.  Jimmy volunteered to go first and ate a mushroom.  In case you’re wondering how eating a mushroom counts as adventure, you should know that 2 years ago, Jimmy called all vegetables “salad” (as in “I want a cheeseburger, no salad”) and would only eat Romaine lettuce drenched in ranch dressing.  So a mushroom is a big step.

He liked it!  Well, he didn’t exactly like it, but he survived.

Mike went next.  He tried to eat a fish ball.

He failed.

Even though Mike had failed, I soldiered on and went face to face with the sea sponge.

That shit is nasty.

The taste wasn’t terrible- it really just tasted like sea water.  The texture… well, that was a whole different story.  That’s where the face comes from.

I did it though- I swallowed the sponge and kept it down (even if the oil in the food made me fairly sick later.)  And just as we finished dinner, the entire restaurant was suddenly serenaded by the most random musical trio I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life, let alone in the middle of a Vietnamese-owned Chinese seafood restaurant.

I have no idea what they were doing there.  But somehow, it was a fitting end to the night.

Last week was simply too busy and too long ago to do a full recap, so I’ve decided to post some random pictures and write haikus instead.

at last my mom learned

how to take a self-portrait

soon she’ll forget how.

After years of hype

I went to the Wine and Cheese

Shop with Mary.  Yum.

High School Reunion

Tony came even though he

is 2 years younger.

Mike showed up too

and laughed at my class photo

I hate Scott for that.

These are probably

my 3 favorite people

in the whole wide world.

I look like crap at

7:30 am when

I am hungover.

Amy and I ate pho

after the Korean spa

where they scrubbed our skin.

Our moms came too but

they don’t like pictures where they

don’t have makeup on.

Pho makes the pain of

over-exfoliated skin

go away real fast.

Why can’t Seattle

have awesome fruit stores like this

one in Lil’ Saigon.

I would eat this

every day if they were here

(it’s a mangosteen)

Plates like this would be

strewn across my house and I

would sparkle with joy.

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.

No trip home is complete without getting some quality time in with Mike’s family.  The Bachs are a strange group- they are at once incredibly tight-knit but simultaneously possibly the worst group of communicators in the history of mankind.  They are hard to pin down and nearly impossible to get to commit to social engagements more than a few hours in advance, and you often have to drive across city and county lines to find them, but i absolutely adore them, each and every one.

On Friday I stopped by the surgery center to visit Mike’s mom.  I wish I had brought my good camera so you could see the serious eyelash action she was rocking that day.  It was tranny-tastic.  Oh, and the foil container in front of her?  That’s a giant pan of meat she’d been marinating all day in her office.  The meat will make another appearance later.

That night we bbq-ed at Amy’s apartment.  Again, the pictures were pretty lacking, but Amy and I slapped together a feast that included scallop skewers, bacon wrapped dates, figs stuffed with goat cheese, quinoa tabbouleh and a heaping platter of grilled veggies.

But honestly, none of that really mattered.  Whenever you barbeque with a Bach, there is one undeniable star of the show:

Remember the meat marinating in Mike’s mom’s office?  This is it- her world famous Korean bbq.  I’ve never had the stuff (being a beef virgin and all), but I’ve seen our friends drop EVERYTHING and drive 30 miles if they find out that somebody is grilling this stuff somewhere.  And it doesn’t matter how busy Mike’s mom is or what else she has going on, if you ask her for meat, she will deliver.

And sometimes she’ll even show up to the party and do the grilling for you.  Which is what she did that night.

Awesome.

We rendezvoused with the other half of the Bach clan (well, I guess technically this would be the Tran clan, since it was Mike’s dad) on Monday night in Long Beach.  We had a rather unremarkable dinner at some Pan-asian Pf-Chang’s style eatery under Chat’s apartment, but what was remarkable was that I got a picture of ALL 4 Bach siblings with their dad.  This is a pretty remarkable occurence:

amy, jimmy, tony, mike, chat

Yeah, it’s a crap picture.  And yes, it’s in an ugly parking garage, as opposed to outside with pretty scenery.  But still, it makes me smile.  I love these weirdos.

I was really thinking that I would get at least 3 or 4 posts up this week.  I mean, I have a ton of back-logged material- I still have pictures from the fair to share with you, not to mention all the rest of the California goodness.  I mean, you should check out my flickr.  There is all kinds of (really poor pictures of) good stuff- fried things!  barnyard animals!  backyard bbqs!  weddings!  last minute trips to gas stations during weddings while wearing 4 inch hooker shoes!  I even got a picture of all 4 Bach siblings in one place at one time!

But three things have slowed me down this week- first, I came down with a wicked bug the last day we were in California (thanks Mom!) and have been housebound since we got back.  Second, this week was pure hell at work and I got stuck working late (from home) every day.  And third, and most dangerous, Mike then took my sick power and triple compounded it.  I’m actually starting to feel better, but him…  not so much.

This is what he looked like when he went to the doctor’s office and pharmacy today:

the walking dead

contagion alert!

deathbed

waiting for relief

So yeah, he’s not doing so hot.  The doctor thinks he has a nasty flu (possibly swine, but it’s probably too late for Tamiflu anyway) and even ordered a chest x-ray to make sure it wasn’t pneumonia (it’s not- test came back negative).  Unfortunately, the doctor also told him that it could take a month until he feels normal again, so now he’s convinced he’s really about to die.  Thanks.

Now he’s pumped full of sleepy meds and fluids and tea and going into hibernation mode.  Wish him luck for a speedy recovery (and wish me luck that I keep recovering).  Hopefully I’ll be sensible and stay inside this weekend and get some blogging updates, along with some knitting, serious soup making and house cleaning, accomplished.

Oh, and if you think it’s cruel to post pictures of him looking so miserable, I have 3 things to say to you: 1) I do most of the writing on this blog, so I get to decide who gets embarrassing pictures of themselves posted; 2) I kind of love his outfit and wanted to share- who wears that much pink when they’re sick?; 3) Who do you think is pumping him full of said fluids and medicine and is generally comforting him?  Me, the best freaking wife EVER, of course.

Well, Jimmy isn’t the only video star in the Bach family.  Just yesterday, Mike sent me this:

If you are a friend of the Bachs, you may recognize the skinny guy with the hipster glasses-

Yeah, the one making the creepy sexy face.

That’s Tony!  My middle brother in law.

Sexy?  Ummmm… I’m not the right person to pass judgement on that.  I still picture Tony as a quiet 16 year old who made stop-motion movies with his Lord of the Rings action figures in the family room and wore the same pair of blue sweatpants for the entirety of his junior year.

I love the Bachs.  Random stuff like this is why I’m so happy to be seeing everybody again next weekend.

Last weekend, Mike’s dad, Chat, came to visit us.

chat!

Hehehe.  This makes me laugh.

Prior to his arrival, we were both kind of stressing about what we could do to entertain him.  Mike and his dad don’t really excel at verbal communication- they try, but when the subject strays from real estate or investment ideas, the conversation tends to lag a little.  Since both Mike and his dad are pretty cut and dry introverts, they are okay with this.  I, on the other hand, am really only satisfied when people are holding hands and singing to each other about how much they love one another, so I wanted to try and fill the conversation gaps with as many activities as possible.

So we packed in the tourism goodness.

We went to the market, where I didn’t take any pictures, but we ate croissants.  Happy.

It was POURING rain- monsoon style- that day, so we did what Bachs do best- we headed to the aquarium.

coral

a cool starfish. i forgot it's real name though.

this is the face mike made after i told him he should talk to his dad more

giant coral

father and son, bonding at last

Post Aquarium, we headed to Bainbridge Island to look at the pretty-ness.  Too bad it was such a crap day.  Driftwood beaches are always pretty though.

That night, after dinner, Mike’s dad wanted to go dancing.  Since Mike and I aren’t big on the Vietnamese dance scene up here, we didn’t have any good suggestions and had to let Chat inquire in a local noodle shop for dance suggestions.  He went dancing, we caught up on some television watching.  (Note to my readers: if you are ever in Seattle and want to hit up the Viet dance scene, Mike’s dad gave Maxim a big thumbs down.  Evidently Yelp agreed.)

The next day, we hit up The Museum of Flight.  THIS was a big success- Mike and his dad both fed their engineer souls.  We spent 6 hours there.

planes!

more planes!

a flying car! (that doesn't work)

yeah you are, big boy

kind-of a plane

OMGwe'vebeenherefor5hoursalreadyandi'mkindofoverplanes

plane.

I should clarify- the Museum of Flight was actually really badass and I was entertained (for the first 4 hours).  And I will be eternally thankful to the Museum of Flight for occupying a sizable chunk of Chat’s visit.

After the museum, we had a delicious lunch at Tamarind Tree.  We didn’t have dinner together, because Chat did some research this time and had heard that Muckleshoot Casino was a good place to get your groove on, even if it was a 30 mile drive from our house.  Evidently, this was good advice because he stayed out way past my bedtime.

It’s a weird moment in life when you tell your father-in-law that he can borrow your car so he can go out dancing and to call you if he gets lost or will be home late.

Chat left the next day while I was at work, but it was nice to have him visit.  We’ll see him again when we’re back in California for our friend Ryan and Moina’s wedding, and hopefully we’ll have much better weather there.