Wilson's Wanderings

Party! Party! Party! Yay, college.

2009-09-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, so where did we leave off those long 2 months ago?

Yeah. Pretty much doing the same old stuff, who am I kidding.

Summer basically consisted of work, more work, visiting work when I wasn't working, hanging out with the people I work with, dealing with work stuff from my room, and... classes. Or something. This weekend is move-in weekend, so we've been dealing with ridiculous common sense questions like no other. I've officially decided the worst part of move-in is suffocating parents. Today's shining star was a mom who marched down to the housing office after they closed, made them open back up, so she could demand a room change for her daughter who "lived too close to the elevator". She was ADAMANT that we must get that complaint every year.

"No ma'am... actually, you're the first."

Ah. I can't wait til all the freshmen are moved in and figure things out. Geez, was I this bad 3 years ago?!

..Probably.

Anyway. The only big excitement was my birthday, which I survived, no worries mom! We got about 20 people together for Korean bbq, and then came back to school to throw a party.

All my deskers! Plus Alex. Her mom sent along a "gift" for me- a tequila flavored sucker with a worm in the middle. I really don't know what part of that disgusts me the most, to be honest.

We'll leave that as the only picture I put up. You know, the still classy one?

Anyhoo. A couple weeks ago we went with most of the deskers to a gay club in Hollywood, called Tigerheat. Every week there's a theme night, and that week was Whitney Houston night. It was perfect for all the divas in the room, but not exactly very good for dancing.

We'll leave out the guys' pictures. I dont think they want those floating around.

And since apparently all I do is work and go to parties, the girls at Rieber have the Pink Party tradition to uphold. This year is the party's third year of being hosted in the girls' lounge during the summer. It was created 3 years ago by the summer staff, so it'd be a huge letdown to let tradition die! We spent most of the day decorating the lounge, and all the guys and a few of the former deskers showed up later that night. We had individual pink hearts with our names and pictures on them, that we all took home after the party.

Some of the girls, re-enacting our faces from our hearts. Most of our food was pink too- one of the girls put some red food coloring in a pot of water for rice, so it ended up as pink sushi. We also had pink dyed dip, watermelon, cookies, and cupcakes.

the cupcakes were made by one of the Rieber deskers... she melted pink Laffy Taffy and then molded it into the shape of roses for each cupcake. She then spelled out pink in icing, and did a layer of sprinkles around the edge. I do NOT have the patience for that, so I made my spinach artichoke dip as per usual.

All of the ladies in our finest pink attire.

Also going on lately- we all moved into our new apartment on Tuesday. Everything's all settled in, with just a little bit of decorating left to do. Our apartment is REALLY nice- there's a ton of room and the furniture they provide is pretty nice. I'll eventually post pictures- check back in about 2 months or so.

At least I'm honest!

Hello? World? Are you still there?

2009-07-04T03:16:00.000-07:00

Despite popular belief, I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I've had to work over 40 hours for the past few weeks, and in between shifts I like to spend about 95% of my time sleeping. Yesterday we went out for the 4th of July weekend to Venice beach, and just walked around for a few hours looking at all the little stands and playing on the beach. I went with Jeraldy, Valentin, and Shahin, another of the deskers from Rieber. The last time I'd been in Venice was when I got my nose pierced 2 years ago, so it was fun to go back.

We stopped these police officers since we were so amused by the horses. :) The one we were petting was named Jimbo. Anyway, we watched some of the street performers and got some shaved ice, and headed out to play in the sand.

We didn't stay too long, since all the beaches were completely packed. We want to go back soon though, and rent some bikes for the path along the beach. On the way back, we went to Islands for dinner, and saw some fireworks on the way back to school.

Today, we did most of the celebrating, since yesterday a lot of people went out with their families. We went to one of the bbq pits on campus and had a barbeque with all of the deskers from Rieber. I didn't there til about 4 though, since I had work at 7 am and didn't have a chance to do much else. Everyone ended up playing a makeshift game of soccer, which ended in a few injuries on both sides, you know, the usual. To recuperate, we went swimming and had dinner back in the dorms. Pretty uneventful, but a little more exciting than my usual days of working and sleeping.

Lets see... going back a little farther in time, Casey came to visit the day after finals ended. He was planning to visit for a couple days, and see a couple other people in the area before flying out to Texas to see Anthony's graduation from air force basic training. It ended up that most of the people were actually out of town, so he ended up staying here on and off for a couple weeks, all said and done. I tried my very best to bore him to tears, since I had work nearly every day he was here. He ended up finding his own excitement, as it turns out...

Casey had just finished the fire academy a few weeks ago, and was coming for a vacation before he started back at Mt. Mike's this Monday. One of the days he was here, I had gone over to Jeraldy's apartment to talk to her for a little bit, and had accidentally left my phone in my car. While I was gone, my neighbor, Esmeralda, and her boyfriend were in their room when her boyfriend slipped and hit his head on a small table. Apparently, he had been in a car accident a few years ago and had a head injury, so when he hit his head this time, he had a convulsion. Esmeralda ran over to get me, but only Casey was in my room. He ran over to help, and had to hold down Rich's arms and legs to keep him from biting his arms and thrashing around. At one point, Rich seemed to stop breathing, and Casey had to give him CPR. They had called 911, but Casey doesn't know the area at all so was having trouble explaining how to get to the dorms. When Rich had been taken to the ER, I saw all the frantic missed calls, and rushed back to pick up Casey and meet them at the hospital. To sum up, Rich is completely fine now, but it was a pretty terrifying night. I realize this would likely work as a post of its own, but it actually happened a couple weeks ago, and I'm so used to seeing Rich around perfectly fine, that I'd almost forgotten about it. Since then, he's been kind of the hero around the Hedrick deskers, and my boss told me to give him a thank you "from the bottom of the Hedrick desk's heart." I doubt any of my other friends will make such a splash when they come to visit!

Golf and Guitars

2009-05-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went up to Davis to spend the weekend with Raquel, since it's easier to avoid studying when you drive 400 miles away from your school supplies. The plan was to go to a concert in Sacramento along with Shannon, so we headed out for that on Friday.

It was called Golf and Guitars, because you could either pay $250 and play golf with some semi-famous country singers in the blistering heat, or pay $20 to watch them play a small concert after. Difficult decision, obviously. There were about 14 artists, who all played for 15-20 minutes or so each. It was pretty good, and Chuck Wicks had one song during which he had one of the people he had played golf with earlier come up to "help him sing".

Steve's job was to chime in every time Chuck sang "That dress looks good on you for sure..." with "but even better on the floor" as a dedication to his wife. Pretty funny. The only bad part of the concert was the last act, a combination of John Michael Montgomery and Bucky Covington. The former was too drunk to remember the words to his own songs, and the latter seemed like a strung out meth addict with ADD. We were ready to leave.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching movie after movie, including Angels and Demons, the second National Treasure, and Star Trek (Raquel's 3rd time seeing it...), along with an all-day training meeting for the leadership conference she's been a part of since high school. I headed back home on Sunday... the 6 hour drive felt like a short jaunt compared with my normal trips home!

Other than that, I've just been working... we just found out that the three current supervisors all put in their two weeks notice at the same time, so we'll be the only ones... having only worked a couple shifts by ourselves, and still fresh out of training. So we'll just see how long it takes before the desk goes up in flames!

This picture is old... but it amuses me anyway. We had an upperclassman reunion at my friend's apartment across the street for RSS a while back, and everyone thought it'd be funny to take a "typical asian family photo". They had to explain to me what that meant... but we thought it'd be much better if I was the token white kid instead.

Peeeerfect!

Anyway, it's about time I pretend like I'm going to get anything accomplished today... or at least get ready for work.

...or something.

Me Too! Me Too!

2009-05-08T00:52:00.000-07:00

Since I'm the baby sister wanting to keep up with the big girls, let's look at MY garden.

...Yeah. That's all.

Meet my baby Thai basil. I don't know what makes Thai basil different, or whether it should be leaning over like that. Probably not, since I'm an unfit mother. That little guy survived the trip to nor cal and back, which basically means I forgot about him in my car for a week. But hey, there's still green, so I call it a job well done. This weekend, my friend wants me to drive her to a nursery so we can buy a tree. Apparently, she has a trashcan and an excess of potting soil laying around. I chose not to ask too many questions.

In other news, I started my "new" job this week. Basically, it's the exact same job I've had for over a year, but I got a promotion and transferred. For some reason, they transferred me to Hedrick, and the Hedrick applicant to Rieber. So basically, we have two angry desks and two confused/sad supervisors. All in all, a pretty good choice, I'd say. I've been spending the last few days getting to know a bunch of new names, as well as all the new stuff I'm allowed to do now. :)

When will I be going paintballing again, you ask? When the bruises fade. Which should be in another 6 months or so. This is how my leg is doing...

For those of you keeping track at home, this is day 19 of the healing process. Kind of annoying that they decided to heal from the inside out... the outlines still get a lot of "what the hell happened to YOU?!?"s.

We went shopping last weekend (For things I can only wear once the bruises heal) and I'm sure to Susan's relief, I bought some new nose rings. You can stop looking at me in disgust every time I come home now... Thanks. Also last weekend (Gold Nugget Days) was Jeraldy's birthday, so I raced (er... drove the speed limit) back to LA so we could go out to dinner. We went to BJ's, and the staff nearly fainted from how cute we are:

Actually, I think they almost fainted out of sheer terror, since Roxie (far left), one of my roommates for next year, brought her boyfriend Tom. Tom's 6'10", so obviously we sent him in to check when our table would be ready. Speed up the process a bit, you know?
For her birthday I got Jeraldy a photo frame (kind of like the ones you got me, Jessie) where each letter is a spot for a photo. Only upon bringing it home from good ol' Gold Nugget Days and showing it to Mom did I realize that instead of "Nuestra Familia" it says "Nuestro Familia". Right now, it's still in my car until I can think of an explanation suitable for the sheer "diversity" that is Paradise. This is what I get for trying to have a culture that isn't Nascar and huntin'.

Anyhoo, it's time to do some homework or something. And by "something", I mean sleep. Which is probably going to win out. But stay tuned for next week's edition of cheap rip-off... when I try my hand at making Jessie's magical muffins.

She's Alive!!!!

2009-04-22T02:07:00.000-07:00

And by she, I mean my laptop, Kylie. After a month-long hiatus in about every Best Buy in California, I finally got my baby back today. They managed to screw up almost every step along the way, but a new motherboard later, we're back in business.

The last month hasn't been too exciting anyway... so no worries. I have no backyard, so its not exactly like I'm trying to keep up with the Jones' (er.. Hartmans. and Freeses.) and build my own fence or anything. Hell, the most exciting thing I have to report doesn't even have anything to do with me.

Kelli had her baby Friday night, Noah Christopher Thomas Giden. I spent most of my chem lab getting text updates from Joan, and a picture message of my new "nephew", who I get to come home and meet this Thursday. (Who am I kidding. I'm only coming home for Gold Nugget Days.) In my own life, pretty much the most exciting thing was our paintballing trip on Sunday.

And by "exciting", I mean most recent event that made me look like I was clubbed to within an inch of my life.

Yeah. Looks like I was prepared, right? This was instants after being pelted repeatedly when my "cover" deflated. The gun up means I am basically crying for mercy.

On the less cry-baby side of the field, the guys had some brilliant plan to prove their manliness by going shirtless and wooing the ladies with their resultant battle wounds.

Stupidity gets all the girls, right?

Here're the happy campers once it was time to get the hell out of there.

I don't know how I got talked into doing this a second time. Memories of pain and near heatstroke fade, I guess. This time though, I'll have plenty of bruises that will likely fade long after the memories. Apparently, I bruise like a peach. And have the ninja skills of a sleeping elephant. So for now, I have 6 bruises (and counting) 4 of which have at least a 2 inch diameter. Pretty cute, if you ask me.

Food Coma

2009-03-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

I write this while hoping I don't explode. Today was our second big trip for Korean BBQ, so we loaded up a bunch of deskers and headed out to Koreatown. 11 of us went, and got a sweet private dining room. Which was good, since most of the guys aren't fit to be seen out in public. Anyway, we stuffed ourselves until it hurt to move, then ate a little bit more just to make sure we got our money's worth. We went to a different place than last time, so obviously we had to try everything just so we could compare the two, right?

Anyway, Howard asked at one point if we could get "all beef", which was heard as "can we get every single style of meat available"? They weren't kidding. Bring on the cow tongue! Being obnoxiously white, I was oblivious to what I was eating. Tongue is not a favorite food of mine, surprisingly. I kept faaaaaar away from that platter for the rest of the night. We rolled out of there three hours later, and I mean rolled. Good thing I found a parking spot nearby, cause I would have happily curled up on the curb for a nice after-dinner nap.

In other news, we have our apartment squared away for next year. We already had our plans set, but now we actually know our exact apartment number, so we can stalk the girls living there now and mentally feng shui the place. We've already started discussing ground rules, so that we won't kill each other in a passive-aggressive rage gone terribly wrong.

As Mom already knows, my boycott of Mountain Mike's has begun as of Friday. The owner and manager fired Jenny, after another employee completely made up a story about her giving out free food to one of the other supervisors. They couldn't find proof she DIDN'T do it (not that there was any possibility of proof she did do it, but who cares?), so out she went. Now that Janis is on her way out too, there's not anyone left there that has a half a brain or that I ever truly want to see again. Jenny worked her butt off there for three years, but apparently "loyalty" is too big a word for their vocabulary. From now on when I come home, Round Table it is.

Tu Carnaval

2009-02-28T02:57:00.000-08:00

I've been a little busy lately, getting destroyed by my chemistry class and all. I've had a little time to go out and do other things... but in reality I should just be getting cozy with my o-chem book every night.

Last night was another party hosted by LASA, since I am so into my Latin American roots and all. It was hosted at a club in Artesia and was called Tu Carnaval, and I got dragged into going by my future roommate and a few other friends.

I'm still ridiculously tired, since we got back at about 3 am and I had class at 10 the next morning. It was a long night of annoyingly loud music and crowded people... I think I'll make up a better excuse not to go next time!

The end. Supporting each other to make it up the hill. Luckily, I was the only one smart enough to not wear stilettos... I can still feel my feet today!

Reaching a little farther back, I organized a work potluck at Valentin's apartment last week, just for the hell of it. People brought some REALLY good food, and I contributed my spinach artichoke dip (someone begged that it be there, I was scared to disappoint) and also a pan of the lasagna florentine that Jessie gave me the recipe for. Other people brought enchiladas, chicken adobo, korean bbq chicken, and a whole bunch of sides. We hung out and watched the Lakers game (I think I did a pretty good job of tricking them into thinking I was interested!) and attempted to play pictionary before everyone's attention span ended.

Today, we went out to the mall to pick up a card at Hallmark. Our manager, Janet, is leaving Rieber front desk to work at Hedrick front desk, since apparently everyone working up there is a hot mess and can't handle doling out trash bags. We got a giant Snoopy card to put in her new office for her first day up there.

As for right now... I have to go pick up the roommates from a late night Denny's run.

Living in the Lap of Luxury

2009-02-06T22:14:00.001-08:00

Since we obviously get our money's worth at my apartment (you know, my rent for half a bedroom is almost as much as the rent on our old house. Cool.), we have super-responsive maintenance workers, just like you'd expect.

Our apartment even comes with a skylight.

That gaping piece of happiness used to just be a bulge in our ceiling, that we reported to the management right after we moved in about 7 months ago. It never really posed a problem, until it started raining like all hell had broke loose this week.

Then things got fun.

Two emergency maintenance calls, an angry email, and a note left in the manager's office later, we got someone (the next day) to come up, put a cat litter bucket (replacing our pot) under the leak. By then, the paint/stucco on the ceiling had completely ripped off. He said he'd be back later, cause he had to work on the roof. Cool.

The push pin in the picture is my attempt at at least some prevention- I tacked a piece of plastic completely over the hole so at least it would help a little if it got worse. We moved the TV and Tivo to the other side of the living room while we wait for our ceiling to be..... intact?

Thank goodness I'm moving into a University apartment next year.

Birthday Girl!

2009-02-03T20:43:00.000-08:00

Jehan turned 20 last week, so I threw her a birthday party at my apartment. Apparently the girl is ridiculously popular, so my apartment was PACKED! I dunno... maybe 40 or so people were there at a time, in our tiny apartment?

A bunch of my coworkers... they're out of control.
We made lots of goodies for the birthday girl, and one of our friends brought a cake. People from RSS showed up too, since Jehan works with me and is in RSS too.

Things are finally settled for housing next year, too. I'm going to move with Jehan, Jeraldy, and Jehan's current roommate Roxie into a furnished apartment owned by the university. My job at the desk gets me priority housing, which is why I can get into housing again after moving off campus. At least this year I won't have to find a subletter for the apartment!

Coming soon: I ordered a camera charger from Amazon, so I should be back in business soon. I've almost finished Kelli's baby shower gift, so pictures of that will be up soon. I'm coming home to give it to her next weekend (President's Day) so I'd better hurry and get it done!

Feelin' Kinda Classy

2009-01-22T06:35:00.001-08:00

I realized that a lot of my blogging silence is due to the fact that 99.9% of the time, my camera is either dead or too far out of my lazy reach. So enjoy my large boring block of text... cause I still cant find my camera charger.

Alright, let's see here:
School-wise, I went with RSS to a taping of America's Funniest Videos. We use it as a fundraiser, since they pay you to come watch. A little sad, but I'll go with it. This is the second time I've been, and hopefully the last... since they use the exact same jokes every time, and I get bored quickly of responding enthusiastically to the "applause" sign.

Raquel was down here this last weekend for a wedding, which was really exciting. I went to Disneyland with her family on Sunday (the first time I've been since living down here....) And on Monday, I drove to Anaheim again to pick her up and bring her to UCLA for a few hours, to see my apartment and meet a few of my friends. It was pretty late, so I had to give her the whirlwind tour- no more than about 5 minutes with each friend. Which probably was safer... that way she didn't have time to start telling stories.

In my kitchen... A friend of mine from work has been bugging me since last quarter to cook for him. When I asked what he wanted, I never got more than one word: "meat". And so I cooked him meat. As the title suggests, I was feelin pretty classy, so we rolled on over to Costco to pick up a few steaks, and I settled in my large platter of beef front and center on the fridge shelf I share with my vegetarian roomie. I really like irony. Anyway, I called Brent and told him I had never cooked any meat more complicated than hamburger, and he needed to take pity on me. A crash course in spices later (cumin? what?) I had a pretty sweet marinade: Worchestshire sauce, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, black pepper, and cumin. I also learned the broiler serves a purpose other than storage. Andrew didn't want anything green touching his steak, so I compromised and chose red potatoes- not a real veggie, right? (Susan, I promise I'll take a picture of our freezer. I buy veggies. Just not fresh ones... baby steps man, baby steps.) I'm still full.

Oh and I'm working... that's the only reason I'm up at this ungodly hour.

Middle of nowhere

2009-01-12T22:53:00.000-08:00

This last weekend was retreat for RSS, so about 40 people drove up to the middle of nowhere in the snow to "bond". Sad thing was.... it looked exactly like Magalia. So I wasn't quite as amazed as the others, but whatever. It was still a ton of fun, and we played a bunch of games and went "hiking", which just turned into an excuse for a snowball fight.

It was pretty amazing overall... We all want to go back pretty much every weekend. My mountain skills were put to use, too... Turns out I was the only one with the faintest clue how to get a car out that was stuck in ice.

On another note, my impulse buying strikes again... This is my newest toy. I got it Friday, and have been playing with it ever since.

The internet works really well, and it comes with some really cool applications, so I'm still figuring out how everything works on it.

I'm back!

2009-01-02T03:28:00.000-08:00

I'm back in the land of fast internet! Thankfully, Susan has been faithfully documenting all of my updates... car... tattoo... presents... I didn't miss anything! Here's some of the stuff we were up to over break that Susan was NOT around for...

We all went over to Raquel's house before Christmas to be cute and festive and bake cookies. Very few of said cookies actually looked good enough to eat... but that's beside the point.

We also trekked to Kory's house for an intense game of pictionary...

This would be one of the losing teams... not us.

But mostly, we just ate a ton of Hula's and watched a lot of movies. The usual.

Curses!!!

2008-12-09T00:21:00.000-08:00

Bank of America and I are not friends.

Jenny came into the apartment today, holding a note that had been taped to our door saying we had three days to pay rent or vacate. Seeing as we've paid rent on time every month... This was not a very welcome note.
As it turns out, B of A put a hold on our account without telling us, I guess because everyone's rent checks were such a large deposit, which made our rent check bounce. I called the bank today to see why it didn't clear, and that's when they told me about the hold. The lady on the phone though even said that she didn't know why our check didn't clear, since it was obvious we had the money. She ended up refunding us the returned check fee, and suggested we get a verification letter from the bank to tell our landlord that it wasn't our fault the check bounced. We had the added fun of running back and forth between here and the bank, since our rent would only now be accepted as a cashiers check, since it had already bounced once... So now we're just waiting for them to fax the oopsies letter to our branch, so we can show it to our landlord since she agreed to waive our late fees if we could show that B of A took responsibility. This was all hours before our final that we had planned to study all day for, mind you.

I hate to say it, but in comparison, our Christmas spirit is pretty non-existent. We have a super cute baby tree though! I think everyone's waiting to do the legit decorating when they go home. Which for me will be on Saturday... I'm stoked, and looking forward to shoveling Hula's in my face pretty much every day. That's what being home's all about, right?

Finals week

2008-12-06T00:20:00.000-08:00

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet... I just feel guilty going out and actually doing something exciting when finals are so close. My first one is in biochem on Sunday, followed by genetics Monday and physics Thursday. So ah... if I'm updating anything before then, it's because I'm not studying when I should be!

Fun-filled festivities

2008-11-24T03:47:00.001-08:00

This weekend was a great success... Friday's game night was awesome and we all got the chance to make complete fools of ourselves.

The girls.... and the guys. Clearly we are the refined half of the group. We played apples to apples, Taboo, Catch Phrase, and charades. About 15 deskers showed up, which meant a lot of yelling and at least one annoyed neighbor. Charades was possibly the best part... we had everything from Rosie O'Donnell to the Michelin man to MegaMan. Here is Valentin, in the middle of his rendition of Wall-E....

As a snack, I brought along some hot artichoke and spinach dip. It was really good, and went over really well! It was demolished pretty quickly, so I think I'll make another batch for the next time around.

In other news, my new department at the hospital is AMAZING. All of the staff is really friendly and helpful, and go out of their way to look for things for me to watch. They're used to having Care Extenders around, so there was always something for me to do. A nice change from the last 6 months of volunteering!

Boring as ever

2008-11-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

Highlight of my week: 2 midterms today. That's basically consumed my life this week, to the point where I'm not sure what to do with myself now...

Anyway, tomorrow I start volunteering in a new department at the hospital, the cardio-thoracic ICU. I've heard a lot of good things about this department, a friend of mine even said she got to see an open chest. We'll see how it goes.

The agenda for this weekend (other than thinking good thoughts for Marceau!): soccer game and co-worker game night Friday, cooking experiments and shopping trip Saturday, and endless possibilities for Sunday. Which probably means sleeping all day.

The soccer game is the first round of the NCAA tournament, since we've already won the Pac-10 Championship. Jeraldy and I have been going to a few of the games, when we have free time on the weekends. This one was right after work... or I really just love my uniform that much. You decide.

I also found out today my more or less finalized schedule for winter break; I'll only have to work at the very beginning and the very end, which was even better than I expected. At this rate, I'll only have to work two shifts over spring break.

This weekend I'm going to try out an alfredo sauce recipe I found online... it's much lower fat, so I'm interested to see how it'll come out without the 10 sticks of butter... hopefully my guinea pigs approve!

Crazy Week

2008-11-13T22:50:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness for the holiday on Tuesday!!! Since they couldn't hold some of the discussion sections for my larger classes but not others, I had classes cancelled on Monday and Wednesday too.

Monday was our bonfire for RSS, down at Dockweiller beach in Marina del Rey. I was driving, so naturally I got lost and ended up at LAX and made it into a fiasco. I eventually got all of my passengers to and from school safely, but not for lack of trying. We did the traditional hot dog roast and s'mores, and a few ridiculous games. We played Golden Cow, which is more of a prank than a game; you tell one person they're the golden cow, and someone is trying to guess who the golden cow is. You say their job is to moo louder than everyone else, and if the person guesses wrong 3 times, he and the golden cow are "out". Everyone else plays along for the first two times and moos as loud as possible, and the third, the "golden cow" moos at the top of his lungs while everyone else is silent... then immediately falls to the ground in embarrassment. We're a mature bunch.

The rest of the week has been spent working or studying for my genetics midterm today. It went..... well, let's not go there. We were studying the inheritance of colored hominy, which is more than I ever care to know about it.

On a positive note, I've basically found the coolest gift idea EVER for little boys. I need to look into it a bit more.... But right now I'm pretty sure I'll be the favorite aunt.

This weekend will probably be pretty boring... My friend is hopefully picking up some goodies for me from an Asian market nearby, since they still carry.....drumroll please..... CHICKEN SESAME RAMEN!!!! That's right. I almost cried with joy when I saw that sesame oil packet.

Other high point of my day: coworker bringing in some caramel apple suckers. Mmm... tastes like All the Best Video!! It's just a food blast from the past!

Culture clash

2008-11-08T21:23:00.000-08:00

The executive board of the Regent's Scholars Society went out last night for a "bonding dinner" at BCD Tofu House in Koreatown. This sounded like an awesome idea, until I walked in and realized I was the ONLY white person in the place. The rest of e-board offered to make me an Asian shield and order for me. I was excited since last time, Korean bbq was AMAZING, but I got a little scared when I saw jars for sale labeled "hidden flavor kimchi". Now, I don't know exactly what was hidden, but I was in NO hurry to find out.

These were our appetizers. I have no idea what anything is. I DO know that those fried fish were looking at me. And they did not look amused. I was advised to order a combo meal, which meant that I would get tofu soup and beef shortribs. Somehow during all of this, I inadvertently ordered the seafood tofu soup....

More stuff staring at me. I was stirring my soup, and things started clinking.... there were clam shells hidden in my soup. I have a strict policy not to eat anything that is looking at me, so the shrimp and I had a staring contest which I eventually lost. The trick is to put a raw egg in the soup while it's still hot, so it cooks in the middle. I now had scrambled eggs amidst unhappy shrimp and shells. I was done.

Next time e-board wants to bond, I'm refusing to go anywhere farther than In N Out.

A new twist

2008-11-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

Apparently, my blog has turned into little more than competing with Jessie for whose kitchen gets more action.

This time, I shamelessly display a COMPLETE rip-off... The exact same pasta Jessie already blogged about!!!!

That's right. I made the basil avocado pasta, just making a few changes. I added sundried tomatoes instead of bacon, and cheated by using pesto sauce instead of separate basil, garlic, and olive oil. Clearly that means I need to catch up... maybe soon I'll be planting my own basil too?

This is also yet another example of my stellar planning skills... This is a picture of my leftovers. After feeding six people. I decided I'd "cater" our weekly Grey's Anatomy viewing, since it's always a great source of willing Guinea pigs. The funniest part? When I was cooking, I left the front door open and a couple neighbors came by, commenting that they could smell good food from outside. Had I known how much I was gonna have, I would have sent them off with some!

On Sunday, I'm planning to attempt some enchiladas with my coworkers, although I'm a little intimidated after they informed me we could MAKE enchilada sauce... not from a can! Where's my La Comida?!

Mad Scientists

2008-11-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I had the CRAZIEST craving at work for stuffed mushrooms. I'm not really sure why, since I'm not entirely sure I've ever had one before... But anyway, One of my friends still lives on campus and always swipes me for free food in the dining hall, so I figured an apartment-cooked meal would be my form of repayment.

Jehan, during our delicious adventure... Just because I was providing dinner doesn't mean I didn't put her to work! Now, the only problem with my brilliant scheme was that I couldn't really find a recipe I liked, so I decided to just make it up. Here is our finished product:

For the stuffing, we used the stems of the mushrooms, spinach, artichoke hearts, garlic, rice, and mozzarella cheese. They turned out REALLY good!! For dessert, we bought some cupcake mix, funfetti of course! Combined with the rainbow chip frosting, I was in a diabetic coma just looking at them.

Not that that stopped me.
At all.

I took a few to my coworkers and sent Jehan home with some, in the hopes I wouldn't consume 10 cupcakes within the hour. There are still a lot left, so I'm trying to keep them out of sight and out of mind....

Trick or Treat!

2008-10-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

So keeping to the grandma lifestyle I've become accustomed to this year, Alex and I decided to stay in for Halloween. I passed by some pretty awesome costumes though on my way back from the gym; I saw Peter Pan driving the maintenance cart!

Our agenda for the night was a scary movie....

We're pretty freaked out, now. After a couple hours yelling at the screen, we have quite a few lights on and don't plan on going out anytime soon. If anything, we'll watch the parade of dressed up college students from our balcony...

And now, we'll probably drown our fear in Twix... which was bought under the guise of being for the trick or treaters we knew we wouldn't get...

A successful endeavor

2008-10-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

When we moved in, we decided we'd each buy our own food rather than try to pitch in for common goodies. Apparently, I need a LOT more practice, seeing as I choose to shop as though I am a family of five.

This is an awesome example of my attempts at grocery shopping... Stew for one person isn't quite the great idea you might think! (As a side note, the potatoes kind of obscure the "root beer" label... calm down, Mom!) I was a little nervous about trying stew by myself for the first time, especially using Mom's I-don't-know-which-seasoning-so-I-double-the-recipe-and-use-both approach. It actually turned out pretty awesome, and I strong-armed a few people into helping me eat my masterpiece.

Now, you might think this is my finished product. No no. This is my LEFTOVERS.... after feeding six people!!! Looks like I'll be swimming in stew for a few days...

Korean-style obesity

2008-10-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

During the summer, a bunch of my coworkers planned a trip to go get some Korean BBQ. Me being the silly fool I am, offered to drive. As usual, my car was dead and I had to miss out on that particular trip. Ever since sampling some of the food a friend smuggled back for me, I'd been dying to try it!

Today I finally got my chance... A big group of us from the desk drove out to LA to gorge ourselves on meat, meat... and more meat! I'd never been to this type of restaurant, so I didn't know they were gonna slap down some plates of raw meat, leaving us to cook for ourselves...

We ordered some beef brisket, BBQ beef, and short ribs. I left the cooking to the others, and just sat back and waited to be served like the princess I am.

Of course, being the genius of the group, I thought it'd be an AWESOME idea to try to keep up with the boys and get my money's worth. All you can eat beef with no veggies to get in the way? How much better does it get?!

...Yeah. I'm still pretty unwilling to move. My big plan was to come home and make stew, but I'm pretty sure that's gonna have to wait til next week, when I'm hungry again.

Tool Time

2008-10-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

As our first legitimate project in the new apartment, we decided to build a bar for our balcony after being inspired by an apartment below us. Keep in mind that when I say "we", I mean my roommates trailed behind me supportively in Home Depot as I wandered looking for the proper sheet of plywood. I drew up plans for what we wanted, and we bought all the supplies a few weeks ago. Our brilliant plan was foiled, however, when we realized that all of our guy friends are WORTHLESS, and no one we knew owned a drill. Thanks to Susan, this was resolved during my random weekend at home.

This is our SWEET finished product... we sawed a piece of plywood to fit the curve of our balcony, then attached some moulding to the back to be a kind of barrier so we don't send stuff plummeting down to pelt people 4 floors below. The whole thing is attached to the balcony with some U-bolts, so we didn't actually damage the balcony in the process. The coolest part? As we eat out in the fresh air, we can enjoy our perfect view of... the apartment complex across the street.

Totally worth it, right?

Sueltate

2008-10-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

For some strange reason, I allowed myself to be convinced by a coworker that it would be "fun" to go with her to a dance put on by the Latin American Student Association at UCLA as a fundraiser. She's a member of the committee, so she was selling tickets to a bunch of the deskers. Even after insisting multiple times that I was white, and my dancing skills followed accordingly, I still found myself boarding a bus to Beverly Hills to some club, "Leonardo's", which was decked out for the occasion.

Here I am with a few of my coworkers that were also bullied into coming... though they were far more willing than myself. Basically the night consisted of a lot of music in Spanish, which meant that all of my friends knew all the words... Although on a better note, in my role of Captain McWhitey, I sang along to a sweet Michael Jackson tune that my more cultured brethren had not heard before.

Another coworker, Valentin, took all of us dancing at some point during the night. I'm pretty sure this was right before some unknown Mexican dance... I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so he kept having to instruct me in between singing along. All in all it was a pretty fun night, even though I stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe I'll work on my Spanish a little bit, and try again at the next one.

A new addition to the family

2008-10-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm proud to announce that I have brought a new child into our household... A brand new Gateway T-series laptop. I apparently sleep walked right into Best Buy and made the biggest impulse buy of my life, even though I've been wanting a new one for a while. Here are a few pictures of my baby....

She's dark blue and has a webcam and microphone, so I can chat with all my homies around the world!

Humble Beginnings

2008-10-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

Alright... So due to popular request (read: fear of Susan) I've gotten my butt in gear and hopped on the bandwagon. For my opening act and your viewing pleasure, I have prepared a guided tour of our lovely apartment, dirty dishes and passed out bums artfully Photoshopped out.This is our living room. I have never quite understood why it is overseen by Bob Dylan, I hold fast to the claim that I was NOT home when that side was decorated. And yes, Susan, those are your sweet pumpkin lights being put to use right under him.

Another view of our living room plus the kitchen... Those are some pretty classy folding chairs, if I do say so myself. Those were bought out of our Top Ramen fund, mind you!

Here is mine and Maia's room. We're spoiled rotten and get the master bedroom with attached bath, while the other three girls are shoved comfortably in their cubicle across the way. For the extra $300 dollars a month, I haven't yet decided if the added extravagance is worth it... I mean, I could be buying real food for that price!

Our bathroom. Nothing really to shout about here... Although I gotta say, this is for sure a step up from the dorm bathrooms; sharing with Maia is definitely preferable to sharing with 30 other girls!

Hopefully soon I'll have some laughable attempts at cooking to show off... but for now, tonight is sushi night, and I wouldn't dream of saying no to that!