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Another year, another BBQ

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:48:18 GMT

Saturday marked Charlie and Ernie's annual bday BBQ, with Ernie turning dirty thirty, and Charlie just a slightly less dirty 29.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Needless to say, much fun was had by all. Thanks again for always throwing a great party!

A more substantial travel update

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:46:15 GMT

So it's not been about 8 days out here in Scottsdale, and I think that in the past few years, we've done just about everything there is to do out here. We capped it off yesterday with a day trip to Sedona, which I've been told to go to for years as the place where the "red rocks" are. I've always been pretty whatever about it. I mean, red rocks, whatever, right?

Wrong. Once we really hit Sedona, we were both completely blown away by the beauty of the rock formations. We set out from Scottsdale pretty early in the morning, with plans to stop at Out of Africa, an African wildlife park, as well as Montezuma's Castle and Montezuma's Well, a couple of historical landmarks. Out of Africa was great - we got to feed a giraffe by hand (which is safe, by the way, because giraffes don't have top teeth) as well as see a bunch of other hooved animals up close from our safari bus. We also got to see bears and tigers being fed as well as hear a hyena laugh, which is a really, really creepy experience (they only laugh when they're scared, trying to protect something, or hunting I think). Montezuma's Castle and Well were, well, OK. The castle wasn't so impressive live, but still looked kind of neat. The Well, on the other hand, was pretty neat, a HUGE hole in the ground filled with water. Made me want to leap into it, but as Jenin mentioned, we've probably been watching a little too much Planet Earth.

Once we hit Sedona we drove around in one of the residential neighborhoods to get a better view of the red rocks and spent about an hour at a local coffee shop catching up our travel journal - just killing some time until our sunset ATV ride. I haven't been on an ATV or done anything similar to it, but oh man, it was awesome. Even on the gimped Yamaha Bruin we were on, I had a huge huge blast just driving slowly until the other ATV's were ahead of us and then blasting off at full throttle. I think we probably were close to the 35mph max speed! To add to the thrill of the ride, it started POURING on the way home, which was nice at first, but it lasted all the way until we got back to the van. It was only a 90 minute ride, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Oh well, I'm pretty homesick now, I'll be glad to finish my work early this week and get home on Wednesday night or something.

Hope you're all having great weekends out there. Pics to come after we get home.

Post-vacation update!

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:39:03 GMT

I think Jenin hit on everything that we did during our trip up to the Pacific Northwest, but I'd like to say that we really loved how green it was (figuratively and literally)! As much as I love my car and just driving places, I think if I was somewhere with a decent public transportation system, life would be so much easier. I'm sure that being in public accounting doesn't help much, but hey, any little bit that I can do will help the environment.

Maybe that means getting a hybrid RX at some point, haha.

Other stuff:
- Seeing tons of movies this summer, enjoying them all, even Harry Potter 5
- Helped Giang buy a car today! Woohoo! She was able to practically steal a well-loved IS 300 AND get rid of her junker (well-loved and frequently repaired though it may also have been) at the same time!
- Sitting around at home sucks... Come home soon, baby!

Oh my God, shut up! You're so annoying!

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:50:29 GMT

A very eventful past weekend (and mostly hinged around Hollywood, no less)!

- Pre-kicked it off with dinner at Houston's with Benda and Knocked Up at Century City. The dinner was good, and the movie was freakin' hilarious. I highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't seen it yet... As Charlie put it, just enough wrong comedy to be just right, with a good plot, too.
- Kicked it off with happy hour at El Torito with Jenin and her co-workers. Mojitos, Bohemia, and half price appetizers for all! Oh yeah, we saw Ocean's 13, too. Pretty disappointing, actually. No trick to the execution of the "caper," no leaving the audience guessing as to what was going on... Jenin was really disappointed by it.
- Had dim sum on Saturday with my Mom and Jenin to celebrate Jenin's graduation. No violence ensued. Good sign of things to come, I hope.
- Went to Jenin's co-worker's niece's birthday party in the Valley. They had a beautiful house just off of Ventura, which was filled with lots of small children and perhaps an ass of a brother-in-law.
- Saw John Mayer at the Hollywood Bowl Saturday night... He didn't play Comfortable or Covered In Rain, but it was still a pretty great show. He extended almost every one of his songs with great guitar solos or extended intros. The Bowl was really cold that night, though, so Jenin and I got a little bit sick.
- Saw Pirates 3 again at the El Capitan for my cousin's birthday and had ice cream at the Disney soda fountain next door afterwards. Black Pearl Sundae (2 scoops of chocolate ice cream, waffle pieces shaped like a ship's mast, AND a free bowl! Now Jenin can eat cereal and gaze at Johnny and Orlando... *vomit*) FTW. Great movie the second time around, and it wasn't spoiled by a cheesy live show prior to the movie, as the El Capitan is known for.
- Got home, slept about 10 hours, and hooray, back to work.

Happy Hump Day!

EDIT: Oh, and I got 2 toys! Optimash Prime and My First Barrel of Monkeys! Haha, all I need now is that Executive Barrel of Monkeys and I'll have all of them. Oh yeah, we also had Toi on Sunset, which was actually quite tasty. Yes, Charlie, I had the Pad Thai. :)

Also, photos from my phone via Splashblog.

...for how long?

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:39:01 GMT

Owwie. I'm bummin' it at home today because I strained my back last week at the gym and aggrevated it a little bit last night. Oh well. Guess I'm relegated to jogging for the next month or so...

Finally landed the Matrix trilogy in HD (I watched revolutions via on-demand just to get perspective, and wow, the HD versions are awesome) thanks to amazon's aggressive pricing and free amazon prime trial. I'm looking for more stuff that I can get cheaper online. Currently I'm just shopping for some graphic novels to get me caught up on my reading. I've actually got a bunch of stuff on my plate, though, including the entire Bone graphic novel, several Chuck Palahniuk books, and of course, the last Harry Potter book when it comes out next month.

Not much else to report. One of the mystery snails in one of my fish tanks always crawls out at night, and yesterday Jenin found him about 5 feet away from the tank, the furthest he's ever made it. I swear he's headed for Minnesota or something, but to appease him, I'm going to start dropping some algae wafers in his(?) tank.

Pirates!

Fri, 25 May 2007 14:58:14 GMT

Pirates 3 was awesome. The trailer did a good job of highlighting what was going to be in the movie without giving away too much of the good stuff. I'd recommend having seen the second movie within a reasonable amount of time of when you see this one, though, just as a refresher.

We caught an 8PM show at Century City (courtesy of discount Gold passes from Costco) which was surprisingly not SUPER crowded and relatively devoid of teeny boppers. In contrast, the line for the midnight show as we walked out was brimming with what looked like hundreds of 14-year olds reading their Naruto mangas while waiting in line. OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but yes, there were lots of kiddies. Interestingly enough, I'm going to be watching it again on the 10th at the El Capitan for my cousin's 13th birthday party... It'll only be the second time I've been to the El Capitan, though, and from what I remember, it was a pretty rad theater.

Please, please, please go see Pirates! If a relative piece of cinematic trash (even for a popcorn flick) like Spidey 3 can make that much money, surely Pirates can make more!

Brief Update

Sat, 05 May 2007 07:26:20 GMT

Spiderman 3 - so tragically terrible.

Leaving Las Vegas!

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:54:09 GMT

So we've modified our Vegas itinerary since we weren't able to get tickets to either La Reve or O, and really, I'm a little bored here.

Breakfast at Bouchon
Guggenheim exhibits
Bellagio Shops
Caesars Shops
Tableau for Lunch

And then the long drive home!

BTW, Border Grill freakin' delivered yet again last night. Guacamole and tortilla soup to start, along with the traditional 3 salsa dish. Charlie, you have to special request the habanero salsa, which you will LOVE. Beef brisket taquitos for Jenin, chicken enchiladas verdes for myself. Coffee and 2 monster half-slices of tres leches cake and Mexican chocolate creme pie for dessert (comped by our gracious host, as we are super duper return customers!!!). Pictures to come.

Viva Las Vegas!

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:54:36 GMT

I'm basically on vacation for the rest of the year, so Jenin and I drove out to Las Vegas this morning. We're staying for 4 days and 3 nights at Paris. We found a pretty good deal for $90/night, and we're right in the middle of the strip, so we're happy. Drove out at about 10AM, made it here in 4 hours... One pretty remarkable sight was all of the snow in the mountains and the side of the freeway about 100 miles or so outside of Vegas. Per Stella's external thermometer, it was 31 degrees. (Charlie, make sure you pack something warm next week!) We hit up the Wynn buffet for an early dinner, and it was pretty good. The prime rib was great, as were a few other non-high value buffet items, such as the sauteed carrots, mashed potatoes, and Wynn Caesar salad. Creme brulee and eggnog ice cream w/coffee topped off our meal. On a disgustingly sick/stereotypical note, we witnessed a Chinese family collectively down probably three dozen king crab legs. The father was eating like a champ, long after his wife and son had finished and were drumming their hands on the table waiting. Haha, eating all of the high-value buffet items is sooooo typically Asian. King crab legs, shrimp cocktail, prime rib, and all the dessert you can get your hands on. I think Jenin and I were pretty full w/two loaded plates and dessert. Afterwards, we hit up the Fashion Show, where Jenin bought these so awesome pens w/character shakers on the top of them. As Jenin is writing up the invitations for her coworker's baby shower, I can hear that pen shaking away...

We also stopped off at the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, which we walked through all too quickly without finding anything interesting, and stopped off at the casino there to play a little bit. Jenin won $5.45 playing Monopoly slots and I went down $60 pretty quick at the roulette table. I should have just colored out after I went up a little bit, but you know how it goes when you're sitting at a table in Vegas. It left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I think I'm pretty much done with gambling. The rush is great, but I'm at a place in my life where there are a lot better things that I could be throwing my money at. Went back to Paris and bought one of those ceramic balloon drinks w/a strawberry margarita for a night cap.

For the rest of the week, shopping and lots of good eats(!!!):
- Outlet shopping north of the Strip
- Border Grill for dinner
- Bouchon for brunch
- Battista's for dinner (I'm still iffy about this one, we'll see... I'm reading good stuff about Alex)
- Mon Ami Gabi for brunch
- Something else for brunch (anyone that has any recommendations, please comment!)
- Desert Passage for shopping (we usually score good stuff here)
- Forums Shops at Caesar's
- Guggenheim
- Bellagio Conservatory

Have a fantastic week, everyone!

Fight on!!!

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:07:20 GMT

I totally forgot to talk about this. (sorry, babe) We weren't listening on the radio until the second quarter, but OMFG, what's wrong with these stupid 'SC song girls?!?!?! I wish I had seen this live. Did the ABC guys comment on this? Hahahahaha

Fight on!!!