Category: Daily Life

Dinner with Luke

Luke and his girlfriend, Yuka, are in Los Angeles for the week, so some of my friends decided have dinner out with them at La Cabaña in Venice on Friday night. The restaurant had a live mariachi (I think, but there were no horns, just guitars) band that would wander around to different tables to serenade. I ordered a dish that had beef in a mole sauce. It was alright. I thought mole was exclusive to Oaxaca, Mexico, but I was wrong. (Wiki check confirmed this.)

The night before, I had dinner with Luke and Yuka for the first time since they arrived. I gave them a tour of Treyarch, which I don’t think I was a very good host of. I showed them the game that I was working on and such. And of course, I apologized for my messy area. >_<;; For dinner we went to Bossa Nova on Pico in Los Angeles. It was Brazilian food. Very good. We got an appetizer of french fries with blue cheese and another type of cheese. It tasted faintly of apples. Yuka said the same thing.

Luke forgot to bring my toothpaste. I discovered that they sell them in the US now, so I might just order it from Amazon instead. When I requested this from him a few weeks ago, I was very vague about it. I couldn’t remember what it was called and I was intending to research it before he came, but every time I talked with Luke it was when I was going to go to bed. Oh, well!

Luke and Yuka are returning to Japan on tomorrow. They came to Los Angeles for Yuka to take an accounting test. I hope they come again. ^^ Or at least, I hope I get to go to Japan again soon.

Soba for Dinner

Tonight’s dinner was tororo soba with nira natto as a side.

Obviously, dinner is not complete with me messing up somewhere.

Mistake 1. I forgot the spinach. I failed to even think of quail egg.

Mistake 2. Using too much water/menmi.

Mistake 3. Pouring in ALL of the tororo into my soba.

It all made for too much salt, too much food. Although the nira natto was a good portion… if I had less soba/tsuyu.

Ku…ru…shii…. >.<;

Elviss Simmons and the Memphis Strutters Rehersal

One of my friends invited me to check out the rehearsal to Elviss Simmons and the Memphis Strutters today. I thought it’d be a good practice in photography, so off I went to Hollywood. I probably would have done better with a tripod, but the one I have is a pain to set up and put away. It stayed home since it got to play yesterday in Irvine.

Anyway, the group sounded awesome. I definitely can’t wait till their first gig. Spread the word!

Ratatouille

I made the French dish ratatouille as my contribution to the potluck tomorrow. I got it from the Nintendo DS “game” I bought a while back. Cooking from the DS is actually a lot easier to do than looking at a book. I just have to hit next or say, “continue!” and the DS will read it out loud to me. My only worry was that I would accidentally splash water (or something worse) onto my DS, or the strap would catch on fire.

Crazy Diet…

Right around my birthday, I discovered that I fell into the overweight category according to the BMI. I’ve never been overweight before, so I decided that I’m going to go on a diet and lose weight.

So far I’ve lost 4 lbs. In about a week and a half.

I could be wrong, but it’s not exactly healthy to lose that much weight so quickly. It could just be water weight. I usually weigh myself before I eat breakfast, but after I use the restroom. Dunno. Next week should tell what I’m losing, I hope.

Speaking of which, it’s time for a late lunch. Then around 4 PM, I’m going to eat 3 mikans. Portion control.

Los Angeles Sights

So living in Los Angeles county, you’d think that I would have visited a lot of the tourist spots. You’d think, but I haven’t.

Some places I haven’t been to (at least as an adult):
Queen Mary
Angels Walk
Catalina Island
Mulholland Drive
Olvera Street
Original Farmers Market (I think I might have been there when I was younger with my parents, but I’m not sure.)
A buttload of museums…

I’m going to have to go to all these places. More as I think of them up (or see on TV, hopefully not as a new report of a beating or murder, etc.).

Moonlight DVDs

I got the Moonlight DVDs I preordered a few months back. It reawakened the fangirl in me. So far I’ve recreated my Moonlight playlist on my iPod, purchased a few more songs from iTMS. I’m watching the TV series again. I’ve watched all the episodes at least once. The later ones are a bit more painful for me to watch because I know it’s going to end. None of the story lines are going to be tied up. Cliffhangers and no resolutions. Ugh.

Stupid writer’s strike. Personally, I don’t blame the writers. I put more blame in the studios and their execs. This show certainly isn’t the only show that suffered.

A Vigil for Shawn

Last week, one of my high school friends past away. When I found out, I was quite in shock and in disbelief. Of all the ways to find out, it was through Facebook when Bobby, his younger brother, posted a R.I.P. in his status update.

Tonight was Shawn’s vigil. Chai and Laura accompanied me. There were quite a number of THS band members present as well.

During the vigil, I remembered how back in high school, how some of us were in Shawn’s car when the brakes gave away while on Sepulveda Blvd. Shawn’s quick thinking got us safely alive to a parking lot where he did donuts until the car came to a complete stop. I also thought of the time Shawn cleaned out his trumpet with the cleaning snake in the band room’s sink, and a slug (not a real one) came out. I also remembered the times I would see him working at fast food restaurants here and there after high school.

My only regret right now is that I didn’t stay in touch with him. At least I know that Shawn was a wonderful person even after high school.

Tomorrow is Shawn’s Mass.

Sukiyaki-tastic!

I made sukiyaki for dinner tonight. It came out good, although far from perfect. I got a bit lazy when it came to reading the instructions… Oops.

Once again, I took tonight’s dinner from November 2008 of Kyou no Ryouri. Yellowtail and scallops something… Well, that’s not what it says in Japanese… ぶりと帆立の沖すき. I don’t know what an “oki suki” is. Neither do my parents. I imagine it’s short for “oki sukiyaki”, but that “oki” part is what I don’t know. I messed up pretty well when it came to making the plum sauce. I failed to read the part that says to boil the konbu dashi and use pickled plum paste. If we all get food poisoning from that goof-up, oops. >_>;

The leftovers are going to be my lunch for tomorrow. :3 I also remade the plum sauce correctly this time.