is it summer yet?

Many many things have happened since we were posting somewhat regularly. We may get around to writing them up for their very own posting, but in the recent past we have:

got ourselves some spectacles (only one of us)

went on a hike to enjoy the wonderful weather and scenery

went on a little road trip to see Christopher give his farewell talk before he shipped off to start his 2 year Church Mission

finished the biggest puzzle either of us have ever seen

hung up pictures

went to a Hollywood red carpet movie premier... kind of

volunteered for a yoga festival in Santa Monica (very new age, I know)

signed up to volunteer for a service project in Compton (one day before the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King Riots)

got some fancy jewelry

made a Pavlova

finished Kyle XY on netflix

got in touch with our inner Jew

got in touch with our inner South East Asian

spent a million-bajillion hours playing a game with friends on Conference Sunday when the internet went out while also eating a million-bajillion cookies (technically speaking, of course)

watched Jason Mraz play through a hole in a fence

wrote letters to Christopher after he left for Utah

went to a yelp event where we ate a grip of cookies and played video games

did family history

made Adobo (fully supervised)

watched some of Coachella online (saving us $400+ and a second hand high)

got to go into a much bigger room shown in the last half of this clip

and probably some other stuff I can't think of at the moment.

All that and the weather seems to have floated back from warming up to mildly chilly. I almost feel like we've been in a crazy spring semester of classes and we're in need of summer break so we can party all night and sleep all day. Maybe if we get a break we can get back to posting more than once every 3 months.

typical tuesday: addendum a

One is the loneliest number

Today was my first day holding down the fort while Andre went off to play grown-up.

I am so proud of my mister and excited for his first day, but I missed my sweetheart.

The day started off EARLY waking first at 7, falling back asleep, and getting up at 8.

I was able to wish him farewell and give him a smooch, but then what to do?!  Was I going to manage with the whole apartment to myself for a whole day????!?!?!

Well I figured breakfast was a good place to start, so I made myself a treat (that andre would not be as excited about) to cheer myself up - ALMOND JOY OATMEAL!!!

I started out making some good old fashioned oats, then added a splash of milk, a little brown sugar, a little mound of sweetened shredded coconut, some crushed dry roasted almonds, and a cut up dark chocolate truffle!

It was pretty good.  Next time I'd use less almonds and more chocolate though.  I spied some almond m&ms in the pantry that may be part of my next attempt.

Then I thought I would be really productive and show him I can be good and not just sit on my tush and eat treats all day so I went down to the leasing office to take care of some scary business.  We got a three day notice on our door last night (saying we were late on rent and we needed to pay within three days or leave).  It was confusing though b/c we signed up for auto-pay when we signed our lease and I had more than enough money in my account, so why would this happen to us?!?!  Also, the ratings for our complex/ office management are pretty horrible so even though I've never had a problem with them - I was scared to have to deal with them - hopefully they could at least appreciate that I'm going down there because I WANT to give them money, right?  Well, apparently they changed websites - so it ended up being a pretty easy fix and I'm happy to report the people I dealt with in the office were nice and helpful and even waived the late fee since I had assumed it was auto-payed. Whew!

What came next was a slight digression into naughtiness (catching up on all my ABC teen dramas).... BUT in my defense I'd been waiting to watch my stories ALL WEEK! 

I also managed to eat a somewhat balanced lunch (romaine with asian sesame dressing, pita chips, and roasted pine nut hummus).  Seriously, this dressing we got recently found at costco increased my salad intake astronomically and I recommend to anyone and everyone.  Right when I thought I'd found the perfect salad in the little artisan lettuces from costco, this dressing made me go back to romaine.

THEN I joined the 21st century and downloaded Firefox so hopefully I won't always accidentally close all my millions of tabs (I've been using chrome exclusively for the past few years).  I am not really looking forward to having to look up my saved passwords for the first time I go to all my sites, but I think it'll be for the best.

When the internet went out for a few mins (as it loves to do just to spite me) I cleaned up a bit. Cleaning always makes me feel better though, so jokes on you sucka!

I also got VERY exciting news today about a special trip for a certain interview next week.  I'm trying not to go into too many details or get my hopes up, but I want it REAL bad and am so excited to take this little interview trip even though I know I'm going to miss Andre like a crazy woman. Wish a wish for me and maybe I'll have some exciting new job/ new city news soon!

Finally on the docket for this evening is preparing a warm nice dinner for my sweetheart to come home to.  Jambalaya with cajun andouille sausage and chicken!  Ok so my time management skills were not at peak today and I was still working on it when he got home BUT that just meant I got a little help (wait, was this on purpose? he'll never know!)

typical tuesday

I don't know about most people, but Andrea and I had what seemed like a very ordinary day today.

I should start this all off by letting you know that our wonderful internet has decided not to work for most the day this past couple of week and we've been forced to walk all the way to the pool or visit Starbucks for the WiFi (and a chocolaty drink for somebody, of course).

Yesterday, because of our stupid internet, I had to run all the way down to the pool right before we went to an advanced screening of a movie (you know the usual). Luckily I HAD to check facebook while I was down there because Tiger Army posted that if we were in the LA area we could be in the audience while Nick 13, the lead singer, does an interview for "Complete Control Radio" (I know I normally go crazy with links, but their site is AWFUL), but we'd need to be quick because space was LIMITED. As you may remember, we JUST won tickets to see TA play, so this would be a pretty cool follow up.

'Well, why not' I said and fired off the appropriate e-mail and got the shortest response imaginable: street address, city, state (without any periods or commas of course, or even the zip code), the time to be there and directions to park on the street.

It was sent on a Blackberry, so I figured that's where we can attribute the brevity, but I was a little concerned that we may end up at the wrong place. Google Maps was showing that the address corresponded to a restaurant and I'm pretty sure they don't have radio interview at restaurants. Nevertheless we figured we'd go on a little adventure.

Fast forward to this afternoon when some ridiculous traffic got us parked along the street (a VERY busy street) about 10 minutes or so after we were supposed to get there (uh oh, they said space was limited...). Of course I had parked on the opposite side of the street from the address and of course it was so busy that we couldn't just jaywalk so we ended up getting to the restaurant (yup, it was a restaurant) about 16 minutes late.

Thankfully for us there was a guy who looked a little lost and appeared to me like the kind of guy who would be participating in this particular audience. Good sign, I thought :)

One guy we thought to ask about the radio show was a cook standing out in front of the restaurant quite officially under a huge umbrella with a table of food offering samples to passersby. When I asked if he knew about the interview supposedly going on at the address matching the restaurant he said 'I don't know about that. Do you want a sample?' It' looked good, but we were all on a mission!

We all went inside and asked the ladies behind the bar who said 'It's out back.'

...it's out back?...

At this point I was fairly certain this was either a trap or a joke. We weren't giving up this little adventure just yet, and luckily we didn't.

 Yup, we got in! And they weren't kidding about LIMITED SEATING - there were 8 audience members, including us. Of all the shows we've been to, this has been the most entertaining for me.

Added bonus:

 I wish I didn't look like a cancer patient, but we rushed out the door and I had to make a split decision: a chunk of hair sticking up, waiving hello, or wear a hat. I think I should have just let it stick up, it would have been more punk rock.

Since we were out and about and somewhat near a little eatery I REALLY wanted to try sometime I sweet talked Andrea into going with me and it was DELICIOUS!!!!!! I would have snapped a couple shots of our food (Asian Marinated Chicken tacos for me and Fish and Grape tacos for her MMMMMMMMMMMM!M!M!!M!!MM!!!!M!M!M).

Anyway, I thought I'd really sweeten Andrea up and we went to her FAVORITE cupcake place.

You know, all the stuff we do every Tuesday in La La Land.

I don't know why III: the revenge of the day

So we've got quite a bit of fun ahead of us that we're SUUUUUPER excited about.

First I'll let everyone in on what we did for our little Johnny Cash party:

• Walk the Line: the obvious guess is watch the movie Walk the Line, which we did, but Andrea and I also went on a fun little walk around the 'hood.
• Ring of Fire: made s'mores using the ring of fire produced by our gas stove.
• One Piece at a Time: played Ticket to Ride-Europe (or Zug um Zug Europa if that's what you're into).
• Man in Black: it was REALLY hard, but I was able to find all black clothes to wear.
• It was Jesus: went to church (it's a good thing this was on Sunday, otherwise this would have been a little more difficult)
• Ball & Chain: broke out the indoor bocce set Andrea won playing white elephant and got her big bad chain to mark the line we had to stand behind. I'm sure our neighbors below us loved that.

Back to the future fun!

Andrea and I have had some great job interviews, cool.

We got a couple pre-screening passes for Monday, double cool!

Tomorrow we're going to be in the audience for Jimmy Kimmel Live, triple cool!!

As the whipped cream AND the cherry on the top WE WON TICKETS TO SEE TIGER ARMY!!!!!! And only a few hours after I entered to win them, quintuple cool!!!!! Added bonus, they're VIP tickets- free shirts, food, backstage benefits and other junk. Come to think of it, the Tiger Army tickets are really the whipped cream, the cherry, sprinkles, hot fudge and the ice cream, plus the steak and potatoes, tall, ice-cold glasses of Dr. Pepper and the tasty rolls with butter. I would have just been happy with getting in to see them play, but I'll gladly take all the crap they want give me too.

This is going to be a great week!

Grandma's favorite Man in Black

Had he stuck around, today would have been Johnny Cash's 80th birthday. I first knew about him because he's my grandma's favorite and like most people I share the same interests as my grandma (all guys love the same things their grandmas do, right?!).

To celebrate the birthday of the pioneering rock star we have a couple of Cash themed activities planned, some of which we've already accomplished. Below is a list of song titles that served as the inspiration. I don't think you'll be able to figure out everything we did, but you could always give it the old college try.

• Walk the Line
• Ring of Fire
• One Piece at a Time
• Man in Black
• It Was Jesus
• Ball & Chain

The last song was actually by Social Distortion but they've kind of taken "Ring of Fire" and made it their own, and if anyone has a problem with me using it there's a picture of Johnny Cash that is very easy to find on google that sums up one response I hypothetically could make :)

When I get around to posting again I'll tell/show you what we did.

I should say thanks to my grandma for being so hip.

Should you really look before you leap?

Chapter 1: The search is on

Our new flatmate (and I just realized what a huge missed opportunity I had with an "our family just got bigger" post - if only this happened closer to April Fools!) recently wanted to get herself some wheels to get around.  A car or bike would not do for her; a skateboard was going to take her wherever she needed to go. The only problem - she doesn't know how to ride one. I guess that's one of two problems because first she didn't know which kind to get.

The second problem was solved after an evening on the search of a skate shop. Before we decided on needing to buy a skateboard we had to go to the semi-famous fabric store Mood (famous if you're into Project Runway or are really into fabric) which was in an area I'm not overly familiar. Luckily we had some handy dandy "smart" phones ("smart" because I doubt their intelligence from time to time) we could bust out and find a shop close by that April could browse.

We were informed there was an Alva shop close by which I thought could be cool for April so she could either get a cool board if they carried a variety of brands/styles/etc. or at the very least an awesome Alva board. Anywho, we wandered the streets of Los Angeles and walked right past the shop and ended walking through Little Ethiopia, not the prime spot for skateboard shopping.

After we circled back and found the shop and realized we missed it the first time because the windows were covered with Metallica posters because of an art show they were hosting which made the place look abandoned. At this point it was much too late for any real store to stay open, so we went to the one place we could rely on to stay open late - the mall.

The mall we went to is a fabulously ghetto mall but happens to contain within its walls the closest Target to our little abode, so we find ourselves there more often than not. Luckily there were not one but TWO skateboard shops right next to each other. The first shop, which I had never heard of before, was pretty big and pretty pricey. After a little help from the staff we went next door to Vans, which is a big deal as far as skate shoes go if you weren't aware, and to my surprise had much better prices on boards.  They were still a little more than April was thinking on dropping that particular evening so I suggested we head over to Target and see if they have any $20 kid's boards.

Bless Target's little soul, they not only kid's boards, they had one on clearance for SIX DOLLARS!!! It sure was someone's lucky day!

Chapter 2: Time to rock and roll

With board in hand we finally got out of the house today around 3 so April could have her first lessons on how to ride a skate board. Needless to say, her proclivity to prove Newton's law of gravity was strong.  To her credit, it didn't take her that long to get comfortable enough that she could make it part way down the street without falling off and hurting herself. I was so proud of our little semi-adopted kid! But it didn't come quick or easy.

It took us a while to travel along the sidewalk due to little boards inherent desire to remain stationary and resist rolling anywhere. Slowly but surely we ventured onward and we found a quite little sidewalk where Andrea and I could watch her try to go back and forth in front of us without falling down.

As with any skill perseverance is key and even though it was getting to be a frigid 50° she rode and rode like a little trooper!  After a while, however, we were getting hungry and April had to wrap up her first session.

Chapter 3: Pick your teachers wisely

With so many sources of information out there it's good to put a little time and effort into knowing where your information is coming from. A great example comes from a book I recently checked out from the library.  After I read "Much of the descriptive material is taken from Wikipedia." I stopped reading. I was a little embarrassed for the author, but then I thought about how much people rely on Wikipedia and how it's used as a source by college students and how this guy got paid for this book and had to start watching something on Netflix to get my mind off the whole matter.

Anyway, I definitely wouldn't consider myself anywhere near a competent skateboarder and wouldn't have minded if my brother could have been the teacher, but there is one thing that I've done that I suppose would allow me the right to teach another. I have ridden a skateboard off a roof a few times in high school, once while the board was en fuego (on fire for those that haven't been to a Mexican restaurant). Why was it on fire? Because that made it more... wait for it... AWESOME!

You may think this is a bit ridiculous, but these "stunts" were for school videos. I don't think I need to explain how much better these videos were than the other students' videos. I didn't realize the repercussions of the "off the roof on a flaming skateboard trick" at first, but without going into details it turned out to become a bit of an urban legend.

The moral of this whole story is if you don't want to be afraid to do something that isn't a very smart thing to do - act before you think.  If I actually thought about what I was doing, I might not have done it. This is who April has to teach her how to ride a skateboard. I hope she survives.

Friday the 13th (Jan 2012 edition)

We're not superstitious.  A little stitious maybe but only because I'm convinced no matter which lane I get into on the freeway becomes THE slow/stopped lane.  Other than that, though, we're not overly concerned about black cats, opening umbrellas in the house, or the dreaded Friday the 13^th.

Rather than fearing this most dreaded of all dates we celebrate it, and for good reason.  Lots of great things have happened on Friday the 13s:

• we got married
• I'm sure something else
• and a third thing, too

But besides all those things, I wrote up and published this very post all in a single day!  That usually doesn't happen. Normally I have an idea about a post, jot down an idea, spend time looking for pictures and getting way too many and need to whittle down the list, link a bunch of random words and finally publish. I'd say this usually takes around two or three days, but I still have drafts from months ago. So you see, great things happen when the 13th day of the month happens to fall on a Friday.

how we roll (in the new year)

While others seem content burning LA to the ground, Andrea and I partied like rock stars.  Well, if rock stars were cool, some are not.

We started it off low key, grilled cheese sandwich appetizers.

Next we got our cookies and milk on.

After we had a little fuel, we broke the games out (Andrea's fave, Mille Bornes).

Of course we had Andrea's playlist (which only took her seven hours to make).

The day before we stopped off at Costco to get some Martinelli's (a 4-pack for about the price of one) so we could all have our own bottles to drink out of to get crunked. I think the "original" flavor isn't as festive as the grape or cranberry variety, but that's all Costco had :( luckily we had our home teacher come to the rescue with a little treat to drop off! :D (in addition to this little beauty he gave us what became our new FAVORITE cookies: Carr's Lemon Ginger Cremes - DElicious. Who knew they made tasty crackers AND cookies?)

But as we only had one we busted out the fancy glassware so we wouldn't have to battle over who got to take a swig at any particular instance of the night.

In need of a little more sustenance we got our shrimpies (it looks there was one trying to escape).

They almost perfectly fit in our little bowl - it was meant to be.

Finally we brought in 2012 right - with Ligretto.

We're off to a good start.