Food Coma

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

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

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!

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

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

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!

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.