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.

It’s actually a really good thing that so much crap happened over the holidays, because ever since we got back we’ve both been so slammed at work that we haven’t had much to write about happen and I haven’t had much time to write about it.  So that’s a good thing, I guess.

But anyhow, the fact that I’m here in Seattle writing about our time in California means that we did in fact successfully get home somehow.  As of Sunday, Jan 3rd, at 3:30 pm, I had no idea how or when that was going to happen.  12 hours later, we were on the road.

How does that happen when the car we drove down is still minus one wheel and hasn’t even begun to be worked on?

Easy.  You get another car.

My beloved old Mini had been starting to show it’s age and we’d been talking about retiring it eventually, and thanks to the craptastic economy and a promotional APR, we got a pretty sweet deal (even my dad was impressed, which is hard to do, as he’s a master car negotiator- as a child I watched as he made a car salesman cry over the deal he secured on our first minivan).

I know that it sounds a bit weird to buy a car while you’re on vacation.  In fact, I only know of one other person who’s ever done it (again, that would be my dad, who bought the afore-mentioned minivan while we were on a camping trip).  But, as my dear friend Scott said, “Only you and Mike would buy a new car for a drive up the West coast.  And rationalize it as sane.  I think that’s why I love you guys.”  (This coming from the guy who flew to Munich for 3 hours so he could retain Executive Platinum status with American Airlines.  We really are soulmates.)

So anyways, we picked up the car Monday at noon and packed it up.  Few things are more entertaining in life than an overstuffed Mini:

And we were off to San Francisco!

With one last stop at In n Out on the way.

(Don’t be alarmed- that’s an iced tea in my cup.  Not that I ever closed my eyes and WISHED it was a Diet Coke.  ::le sigh::)

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.

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.