Pig's New Office

Today is the first day in our new office for Pig and me. Moved yesterday into a much larger office, so this might very well be the end of the Pig-moaning-to-leave audio clips. We'll see. I think she likes the balcony, which runs the full length of my office, and is shared with three of the other offices, so basically she has a lot of space to roam.

Incidentally, I found while packing up my old office - a black bra, socks, and a huge stack of papers I was supposed to file back when I was an assistant - in 2000.

A TMI Post

Really, I don't know why I feel inclined to share this, but seriously I have not stopped sweating in the last 14 hours. Is that normal?

First there was the very awesome Body Works Plus Abs weight lifting class at the gym last night. My first weight lifting class ever. And it was really really good. I highly recommend it. I was a puddle by the end of the class.

Then I think it had to have been about 80 degrees in my apartment for the whole night. I could barely sleep.

Back to the gym this morning for cardio. Sweaty, obviously.

Decided to blow dry my desperately-needs-to-be-cut long hair, which took about 20 minutes under the hot heat, melting all the make-up I had just applied.

Walked Pig to work. Checked myself out in the mirror once I got to the office, and discovered I looked like Whitney Houston at an awards show.

Seriously, I'm contemplating rolling on the anti-persperant over my entire body. Except that might kill me, right? Like Goldfinger or something...?

Weekend Recap

Monday again.

Friday night, Benjamin, Jessi and I went and saw 40 year old virgin. Very funny, I highly recommend it. Am I the only one who thinks that it's gross and not to mention unsafe that the woman who's waxing the bloody chest of Steve Carrell is not wearing latex gloves? You can bet that if that happened to me, I'd be at the Free AIDS Testing clinic the next day, and back again in six months. Of course, if my chest looked like that, well...let's not even think about that.

After a long hard day of cleaning my apartment Saturday, I managed to be convinced by three very persuasive friends to go out to Red Rock. I was already in my pajamas, watching my 2nd I Love Lucy dvd from Netflix, but I was flattered by their determination (they like me, they really like me!) and am a push-over so soon I found myself shaking my booty on the dance floor. Which, of course, was much fun. We came back to my place afterwards and stayed up far too late just sitting around chatting and drinking, of all things, cheap champagne. I gave sloshy love advice to this poor girl who's several years younger than me - hopefully she doesn't remember much of it.

Sunday morning, dear Kate was kind enough to drive us to Montclair (an hour away) to check out the rvs for the upcoming RV Rampage we're planning. It's going to be awesome.

Hmm. Boring post for a rather fun weekend. Oh well.

Bad Dog Mom

I made Pig cry last night.

A few days ago, I threw away all her unsafely mangled stuffed chew toys aka "Wilburs." One of them was a pig, and we called it "Wilbur" and now she just thinks all stuffed chew toys are called "Wilbur." Anyway, I ordered her some new toys, which still haven't come so I'm beginning to feel like I got scammed, but just to see what she'd do I said, "Pig, where's Wilbur? Go get Wilbur! Go get him!!"

And she looked around the living room. No Wilbur. Then went over to her toy box. No Wilbur.

And then she cried. Seriously. She made this whimpering crying noise - this is a poor explanation, but it sounds like a sea lion grunting - like "mwa mwa mwa mwa mwa." She also makes this noise whenever she knows our neighbor Weiner Dog is in his front lawn, waiting to pounce on her as soon she walks by his gate. Incidentally, her new tactic, when she hears Weiner Dog in his yard, is to run as fast as possible by him.

Anyway, to relieve the guilt, I will obviously have to make a stop at Petco tonight on my way home from work.

Ipoo

Today, I dropped my Ipod in dog poo.

:(

Creepy or No? Part 2

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Funny thing is I googled this quote to make sure I got it right, and the first ten links that came up were about the war in Iraq.

So yesterday night while standing in a ridiculously long line at the grocery store, I ran into this guy again. Like last time, he recognized me, and asked me where my dog was. I told him she was at home guarding the apartment. In hindsight, this would have been the perfect opportunity to have said, "She's at home with my big hunky 300 lb 8 ft tall boyfriend who's a convicted killer but got off on a legal technicality" but that just didn't come to me. Then he asked me where I lived and of course, at first, I couldn't really remember what I told him before, so I gave him the true answer but then I remembered my lie so I tried to incorporate it. If you go back to the old post, I basically told him I lived on X street, but right up close to Y street. He said, Oh by the gas station? and I said, not far from it. Which is kind of true. Then he asked if I lived in the front or back, which really creeped me out (hence, creepy or not??? I open the debate again) so I said in the middle because what if he was trying to figure out which apartment I lived in???? He said he lived in the back, so the street noise was not too bad, but that he could hear the fire station. He muttered something about living 4 or 5 building north of the fire station (which puts him practically directly across the street from me) but the CREEPY thing is, I'm pretty sure he told me he lived one building south of the firestation the last time I talked to him.

Anyway, that was the end of the conversation, and for once, I was somewhat glad that the guy in front of me in line had some crazy double coupon that wasn't ringing up properly so I didn't get out of the store for another fifteen minutes. So I felt safer as it was unlikely that Creepy Guy would wait for me and try to follow me home. Incidentally, Double Coupon guy actually saved $44 dollars, and I watched his $50 grocery bill go down to $6. Impressive.

Yes, I know I'm a total paranoid freak. It runs in the family. Both my sister and mom found my first Creepy or Not? story very creepy.

Hump Day

Back on the blog saddle again. Hope you guys didn't miss me too much ;)

So let's see. I think I'm going to skip my usual weekend recap, as it is Wednesday now, and last weekend seems oh so far away. Just to be consistent though, I'll run through the highlights. I'm totally drawing a blank on what I did on Friday night, which annoys me because if I ever get accused of a crime and asked where I was on Friday Aug 19th, 2005 I wouldn't have an answer and would end up in jail. Saturday was a good day. Some clients of mine took me out to a really really nice restaurant for dinner. Later I went to bar called Vermont for a birthday party, danced a bit, and then ate terrible Thai food at 2:00 a.m., which was accompanied by pseudo-karaoke. I say pseudo because it was just really this one guy, the mc and possibly the owner of the restaurant, who sang for most of the time, and "played" his guitar along with the karaoke music. Weird. Oh, now I remember what I did Friday night - I went to a karaoke bar (again!) called Gas Lite with Jessi, Erin and a herd of recently college graduated boys. All babyfaced at the tender age of about 22, so I hated them for their wrinkle-free-ness immediately. Not really, of course. On a side note, I've been hanging out recently with a lot of younger peeps and I think I need to put a stop to it because it makes me feel OLD. Anyway, I think the Gas Lite can honestly boast of having the worst karaokers of any bar in Los Angeles. Definitely check it out if you're shy about singing. Even I was tempted and almost gave it a try, and as you all know, I'm a private room kind of gal. On Sunday I went dim sum with Julia, her brother and Reggi, which was very good and made up for the slightly unsatisfying dim sum experience I had the weekend before. Afterwards, I went to Target and spent an unmentionable amount of money buying things like pajamas and socks. Target - the place where you'll always drop an unmentionable amount of money...

So, after Target, I met up with my fellow dimsumers who were kind enough to take me to the gym where they have memberships. AND THEN, I SIGNED UP FOR A MEMBERSHIP!! That's right folks. Back to the gym I go. This whole tree trunk shaped, no-waist body has got to go. The six months of not working out was really really lovely, but has turned me into a 36A from shoulders to mid thigh. So far I've really enjoyed going to the gym. My new thing is yoga - man, I love that stuff! I'm also excited about taking a "Latin Impact" aerobics class with Kate, who also has a membership with this chain of gyms. I think it'll be really fun..ny.

Anyway, after signing up for the gym, I went to Amol's place for his weekly Sunday night bbq, which neither he nor his roommate Paul actually ever want to throw, but are always forced to by our friends. They have a sweet hot tub and pool, so it's the perfect thing to do on a Sunday night. Poker afterwards, and then I went home, cleaned the apartment and passed out.

So. Hmm. I guess this did turn out to be a weekend recap.

Another Friday, Another Pig Clip

Because I will never ever get bored of recording her...

As usual, turn up the volume if you can't hear us.

Double Poop

My desire to live life on the edge, to gamble with fate, caught up with me today. Had used my one and only plastic bag to pick up the first batch of poop that Pig left on Santa Monica Blvd, right near some restaurants. Unfortunately, she must have eaten some of my hair (again) and as soon as I had thrown the bag of poop away, I saw her squatting there in middle of the sidewalk, trying to get rid of the hair and pendulum of poop dangling from out of her ass. It's not like it was that big, maybe the size of a mini Reeses peanut butter cup. (I have no idea why I'm being this graphic).

Anyway, I was embarassed and flustered, and pulled her along thinking, "GODDAMN THE DOUBLE POOP, I wonder if we can get away with this" when a BITCHY WOMAN stopped me and asked me,

"Are you just going to leave that there???"

And I replied crossly "No, I have to go find a plastic bag now. She double pooped." I probably said this pretty loudly since I had my headphones on and couldn't hear myself very well. She kind of backed away from me, a little sheepish, and I glared at her and continued with,

"You know, I had a bag. I ALREADY PICKED UP HER SHIT ONCE, JUST NOW. SO DON'T GO AROUND JUDGING PEOPLE!!!" And then she sort of hurried away.

What I would have liked to have said to her, in hindsight, was "Are you going to just leave YOUR FACE like that, bitch?" Or even better, "No, I'm going to pick that shit up and rub it on you, bitch."

So I tied Pig to a tree and marched into the nearest store I could find, which was a pharmacy. Unfortunately, I had stepped on a big wad of gum, and proceeded to trail big stringy pieces just inside the pharmacy entrance. I wiped my feet hard on the doormat, spreading even more gum around, and hoped that no one was looking. Unfortunately, as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the store, I saw the owner/pharmacist glaring at me from the back. Not only had he witnessed the confrontation with the Bitchy Woman, but also the crazed "GODDAMN THIS F-ING GUM" desperately-trying-to-scrape-it-off-my-shoe-and-smear-it-all-over-your-floor-dance that I did. At this point, I lost any nerve I had left to ask for just a plastic bag, and ended up buying the first thing I could think of - Advil.

Incidentally, gum got stuck on Pig's tail too and for a few minutes, I thought she had broken her tail because it stuck out, all erect, very unnaturally. Imagine her head pointing north - her tail stuck out perfectly facing east. Like a big long L. Turns out the gum was bothering her and she finally stopped to nibble it off.

The gum. Not her tail.

Close Call

Whew - just escaped from potential total disaster. I had gone to shut the glass sliding door on my balcony and noticed half of it had slipped off the track and it wasn't really sliding. I stepped outside and tried lifting the door back on to the track. I pulled a bit, and then pulled up a bit, and pushed, and rocked, and this and that until I noticed the door was practically closed - but still only half on the track. Worst of all, it was jammed and I couldn't open it again and I was stuck outside on the balcony. At 10:30 p.m.!! I could see Pig napping blissfully on her bed through the door but she was obviously of no help. The lights were out in the apartments on either side of me, and the nearest building was a whole house away - and their lights were off too. After 15 minutes of frantic pulling, I managed to yank the 300 lb glass door entirely off the track. Which was good, because it meant I could at least get back inside, but bad because now I had no door. And of course, with no door, mice and serial killers would be able to run in during the middle of the night so that was a problem. Even if I could make it through the night, I was still not looking forward to asking the apartment manager to fix the door, as we had a bit of a misunderstading earlier this week and I'd rather avoid him. I tried for another several minutes, to no avail. And then I started worrying that even if I gave up and just propped the glass door somewhere, it could fall down and crash and kill Pig. Finally, just when I was about to burst into big baby tears and call Max and yell at him for being in Denver since putting the sliding door back on track is his job, I managed to fit the glass door back on to the track. And all was good again.

Hump Day Again

Had a fun time last night. Met up with Paul at Formosa for Happy Hour drinks (had to sacrifice the 6:30 airing of Golden Palace, but at least I caught it at 11 p.m.) and appetizers. Then we met up with Grayling AJ to see Julia and Reggie's show, which was really funny and awesome. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Nice hump day too, so far. Business lunch at Morton's Steakhouse - thank god for expense accounts. I had dreaded it somewhat, thinking that it might be unpleasant, having had a rather yucky conversation with my lunch date a few weeks earlier, but it turned out fine. As I walked into the restaurant, I reminded myself the worst that could happen is that I'd get yelled at while eating a free filet mignon steak and drinking a glass of Pellegrino, and decided, hell, that ain't too bad.

So, there will be an office pool party in about three weeks at the home/mansion of one of the owners of the company. This gives me the perfect motivation to start exercising again. Or to buy a one-piece bathing suit. The red bikini that I purchased back in the days when I still had a gym membership does not cover the unfortunate burgeoning mid-section of my body, which seems to have taken a mind of it's own and decided to expand sideways. Maybe I am carrying an alien baby. A fat alien baby. A fat, lazy alien baby that doesn't want to free itself and rip through my stomach, but would rather just lay there quietly and grow sideways. Like a mini-Jabba the Hut. Hmm..

Bored at work. Suspecting it's kind of obvious....

Balut

I'm biased of course, but I'd definitely rather eat a 1000 year old preserved duck egg (which of course has not been preserved for a 1000 years), then balut. Which looks scarier?


 

Weekend Recap

Hmm...

Somehow, I can never remember what I've done over the weekend by Monday afternoon.

Oh, okay. Friday night I stayed home and watched five straight hours of tv. It was wonderful! I so could not bring myself to turn off the tv, and by the end of the night, I found myself watching a ProActive Solution infomercial, which featured P. Diddy, Alicia Keyes, Jessica Simpson and of course, Vanessa Williams. That would be considered an all-star cast for an awards show, much less an infomercial. Incidentally, my other new favorite thing to watch is the Jewelry version of the Home Shopping Network where it seems all they sell is jewelry. Oh and sometimes you can bid on them, so the items have a low starting price and you can get good deals. Not that I've done that yet, I just like to watch. Me and jewelry. What can I say? I could windowshop for hours. On my first date with Max, I told him, truthfully, that I'd like to be a gemologist. Or a diamond buyer for Tiffany's. Of course, that was before I discovered that it took a surprisingly large chunk of money to get a diploma from the Gemological Institute of America. And that with it, I'd probably end up standing around at a jewelery store at the local mall for the rest of my life.

Saturday night a whole bunch of us went to see Wedding Crashers, which was really funny. Afterwards, we went to Dell's Saloon, which is this karaoke bar. Being the private room kind of gal that I am, I declined to sing, but as it turns out, no one really got to. The list was super long - our friend Tony was the one to close the bar, with, appropriately, "Friends in Low Places." Everyone in the bar sang along and raised their glasses, and I felt vaguely like I was in a movie for a bit. Then we went over to Jessi's and hung around, before finally getting back home at around 3:30 a.m. Yikes. I am getting old - 3:30 a.m. seems like an ungodly hour to stay up. Me, I'm done by 1:30, maybe 2 at the latest.

Sunday morning I met a bunch of friends for dim sum over in Monterrey Park. I am so the Dim Sum Diva, and was a little disappointed that the rest of the crew was not more enthusiastic about trying different things. I love going with my family, and even Max is a good sport, but the group that I went with was more about the "ha gows" (shrimp dumplings) and the egg tarts, which we ordered several dishes of. Oh well. This is a typical snippet of our conversation, as I was the translator:

Me: "spinach dumplings"
Everyone else: (*crickets*)
Me: "chive dumplings"
Everyone else: (*crickets*)
Me: "Chicken buns"
Everyone else: (*crickets*)
Me: "um, shrimp dumplings"
Everyone else: "OH LET'S GET FIVE ORDERS OF THOSE"

The irony is that I was with 3 1/2 chinese people (one girl is only 1/2 chinese) so I found the silence really bizarre. Actually, one of the best dim sum times I've had was when Max and I took his mom and sister (Lala). Since they had never really had it before, it gave us an excuse to order nearly everything. Hm... now I'm hungry for dim sum.

Afterwards, the girls and Amol went to Ranch 99. I bought lots of easy-to-make Chinese dishes and the ingredients for what Max calls the "1000 year old duck egg SOUP," but it's really more of a rice porridge. Bless his lil heart - Max is one of the few non-Asians I know who's willing to eat preserved duck eggs. I've included a picture, just to show you how brave my man is. You know, they actually had them on Fear Factor.



 

Negotiating w/ Pig, on a Friday Afternoon at the Office

Anti-Dentite

Just came back from the dentist. Sometimes I wonder if I really do have cavities - seems like it could be a pretty good scam to me. At this rate, and because he keeps giving me silver (gray) fillings, I'm going to look like an orc from LOTR before I turn 30.

Dentist visit was okay. He made me quite nervous actually. Nice guy, but I dunno. Here are some things he said to me that made me uncomfortable:

"Don't ask so many questions now, I need to concentrate."

"Does this hurt?

"Let me know if this hurts"

"Does this hurt? Because the anesthetic only lasts a short period of time and sometimes people feel pain."

"Ugh, this one is tricky. Way in the back."

"Yeah, this one's tricky, especially since you have a small mouth." Which is true. Oddly, I have deceivingly big gummy smile - too big and too gummy, as my grandma never fails to mention during family picture time (thanks, love you too!)- that masks an apparently small mouth. Once during family picture time, I decided to smile with my mouth totally closed, lips pressed together, in an attempt to avoid the inevitable comment from grandma, but instead she said "Why are you smiling so unnaturally like that???" It's a lose-lose situation. Don't worry though, my gummy smile and bra size are things I've accepted long ago.

I really really hate getting my cavities filled. I think the worst part is the smell of ground teeth. Is it just me, or does it totally smell like a fly burnt on a halogen lamp? That's all I can think about. Last time I almost threw up, which would have been something legitimate to blog about. He had told me to "go ahead and spit" and I didn't know that he meant I could use water to rinse my mouth, so I tried to spit out bits of teeth that had dropped down to the back of my throat, but my mouth was totally dry on account of the suction hose thing that had been in there, and I honest to god gagged and nearly threw up in the little mouth rinse sink.

I also think they should give me goggles or something. All these little bits of ground teeth flying around, getting into my eyes. Of course I could just close my eyes, but I'm too terrified to so I spend the whole time there, rigid in the chair, staring at some stupid windchime thing hanging from the ceiling, getting nauseaus from the burnt fly smell.

Anyway. Nearly got into a car accident driving to the office as I was checking out my filling in the rearview mirror. I'm hungry but I'm not supposed to eat for another hour. And of course, I have terrible craving for caramel.

Hump Day

Ever try a free sample of perfume and HATE IT??? I smell so vile right now. I've already spent 20 minutes in the bathroom trying to scrub the stench off and it's not going away. I smell like the elevators in the Santa Monica parking structures. If you live in LA, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't - well imagine a mixture of citrusy pine sole deodorizer with notes of cheap gas station soap, and an undertone of PISS. Can you tell by my fancy description that I've been hanging out at Sephora?? Anyway, that's what I smell like. Eau de Homeless.

See, I'm so irritated about this perfume that now, I'm just being mean...I bet I'm going to get a big zit on my nose for it.

Weekend in Denver - Part 3

Have I mentioned what a great time I had in Denver?

After my last post, we went out to a bar that made mojitos with real pieces of sugar cane. Sugar cane is great in a drink, but not so great to actually eat, as I discovered the hard way and had to pick the fibers out of my teeth in the bathroom. I expect to be Metamucil regular for at least a week. Nick's friend Julia was very cool and funny - personally, the girl got immediate props in my book for wearing these really cute high heels even after apparently pulling her calf muscles in an aerobics class that day. Now there's a fellow woman who loves shoes.

Afterwards, Max humored me and listened to me expound on the merits and shortcomings of the Harry Potter movies versus the Harry Potter books. For over an hour. Even though it was like 2:00 a.m. in the morning and he had to go to work early this morning.

And to end my perfect weekend, we went to the Cracker Barrel for lunch today!!! I LOVE CRACKER BARREL!!! It's one of my favorite restaurants, and as there are none in all of California, I try to eat there whenever I do come across one. One time I had a terrible craving for it and Max and I looked up and discovered the nearest CB was in the Phoenix area. We considered getting in the car and driving the six hours right away, but decided not to. Several months later, he planned a surprise weekend trip for us to Phoenix, where we ate there two days in a row. So yeah, I'm not joking when I say I LOVE CRACKER BARREL!!! I going to make a t-shirt that says that.

The flight back was uneventful, except for the three hour layover in Vegas, where I lost an unmentionable amount of money playing video poker. I know, it's terrible. But the thing is, it's really really hard to kill three hours at an airport.

Something did happen to me there that I thought was pretty bizarre. I was walking past a guy pushing his friend in one of those airport wheelchairs when they suddenly stopped me and asked if I would take a picture WITH them. I agreed, thinking that they had asked if I would take a picture OF them, but no, they wanted me to be in a picture WITH the guy in the wheelchair. The other guy would be the one to take the picture.

Now, this was definitely a very strange request. For starters, the guy in the wheelchair did not look like he needed a wheelchair. I'm not saying you need to have stumps to justify using a wheelchair, but this guy didn't even have a cast on. And he looked suspiciously high. Oh and they were both college aged. I asked why they wanted me to pose with the wheelchair guy, and the non-wheelchair guy said oh they had a few pictures left on the disposable camera and that they wanted to finish the roll. Hmm. That didn't make sense to me at all. I vaguely started to wonder if this could lead to some weird sex thing where all of the sudden my head gets photo-shopped on to some naked body on the Internet, holding carry-on luggage in one hand and a bottle of Diet Coke in another (airport porn??? is there a market???), but that seemed ridiculously unlikely, and frankly I was looking pretty gross and couldn't imagine why they'd chose me for that. They could tell I was hesistant, but then the wheelchair guy won me over when he said, "because we're in Vegas." And all of the sudden, I flash backed to the numerous times Julia (LA Julia, not, obviously the Denver Julia mentioned above) and I have been in Vegas and have taken ridiculous pictures of each other - spanking stuffed gorillas in front of toy shops...making lewd gestures behind Vegas showgirls...pretending to be beat up by life-size Star Trek statues and so on. And I caved.

In hindsight I started thinking that maybe they were on a scavenger hunt. Maybe first they had to steal an airport wheelchair. Then they had to find a tired looking Asian girl with limp hair and dirty flipflops to take a picture with.

And then I decided, next time I go to Vegas, I'm definitely planning a scavenger hunt.

Weekend in Denver - Part 2

Well, let's see.

Shortly after my last post, Max and I decided to head down the street towards a lovely microbrewery Nick had recommended called Wynkoop's Brewery. The food was very good; unfortunately my fried chicken was a bit cold so I had to send it back. So my luck with Denver food has not been great, but my luck with getting free items has been awesome! For my inconvenience, the manager bought me a beer. I could really get used to this...

Afterwards we headed to a bar called Herb's, where a $5 cover fee gets you a free draught beer. Nice. The place itself was pretty divey and I actually felt a bit like I was back in Grayling at the Red Barn, which made it pretty awesome. The band covered some Janis Joplin songs (can't go wrong there) and in between the sets, the bartender headed to the jukebox and put on some Billy Joel. Um, okay. I love Billy Joel as much as the next girl, but it was a bit strange to hear The Piano Man coming out of the jukebox. The place made for good people watching - I was particularly intrigued by the bouncer with the small head yet enormous body who kept making out with some brunette at the bar.

This morning Nick took us to El Dorado Canyon near Boulder for some hiking. I had warned him beforehand that as I had quit my gym membership several months ago and got out of breath walking up one flight of stairs, I was in no condition to hike but he assured us that it was quite an easy trail. It was truly beautiful and I had a lovely time. I thought I might feel uneasy about running into rodents out in the wild but as it turns out, the place was surprisingly rodent-free. Rodent-free on account of the RATTLESNAKES that live there. There was a park ranger directing traffic away from a rattler who had decided to hang out by the trail and was quite resistant to moving. It was a bit scary, but no where near as scary at the 80 year old woman who was washing her feet in the sink in the bathroom. Yikes.

After our hike, we headed into Boulder for lunch. We were torn between wasting our burnt calories on mojitos and cuban food or beer and burgers, and finally settled on the latter. We each ordered a buffalo burger and a beer at the Boulder Cafe. Now see, you would think that Nick's fancy law degree would help him distinguish between a bottle of Budweiser and a bottle of Heinz ketchup - but it didn't. I had just finished cutting my burger in half when I looked up to find that Nick had doused his burger with beer. Sadly, you can't really send back your burger and get one for free on account of accidentally dousing it with beer...

For dinner, Max took me to a restaurant called Vesta, which specializes in different grilled food with various dipping sauces. Yum. I highly recommend it. Right now, we're watching Zoolander for the umpteenth time and waiting for Nick and his friend Julia to pick us up and head on out to check out some of the Denver bar night life...on a Sunday.

More to come...

Weekend in Denver - Part 1

Well, my weekend began yesterday, shortly after dropping Pig off at Thode's (check her blog for the Adventures of Punk & Pig). Thode had kindly offered to take Pig so Pig has been spared a trip to Krazy Karen's this weekend. Like a true fellow dog mom, Thode not only sent me, unprompted, a text message telling me things were going great, but also let me "talk" to Pig on the phone this morning. She is awesome.

So the flight to Denver was fairly uneventful. I won $10 playing video poker at the Las Vegas airport, which the pilot oh-so-cleverly refered to as the Lost Wages Airport. As we pulled away from the runway, I noticed a beautiful rainbow that ended not at a pot of gold, but at a large Hooters private plane. Ahh...Vegas.

Max picked me up from the airport and brought me back to the apartment where he's been put up. Holy mother of god. This apartment is amazing!!! I'm really tempted to just quit my job and hang out here for the rest of his stay. It's a loft apartment located in downtown Denver - wooden floors, king size bed, marble counters, 1 1/2 baths, flat screen HD tv's, Crate & Barrel decor and luxury sheets. I feel like I'm in a Romantic Comedy Movie and I've just entered the apartment of the architect/doctor/advertising exec/businessman Boyfriend. And Max is playing the role perfectly. He surprised me with a present - an Ipod, to replace the mp3 player I broke a few months ago. But he didn't just give me an Ipod - he downloaded songs that he knew I liked, and the audiobook for MUST LOVE DOGS. Then he wrapped everything back up again, so it all fit nicely in the packaging for me to open. Can I get a collective, "awwwww"???? All I brought for him was his mail and his Sports Illustrated mags.

Anyway, Nick (Max's best friend and Grayling AJ's brother)came over in the evening and we all went out to a restaurant, which I later discovered was called Wazee's Lounge & Supper Club. I've never been to a Lounge & Supper Club, but neither has the owner of this restaurant. When I think of "supper club" I guess I think of a place with a piano and maybe some woman in a shimmery dress singing My Funny Valentine or something. This place offered buckets of beer. The food was awesome, but it was essentially a pizza parlor. No complaints here though. I don't really care what they call themselves. Max, who's become quite the epicurian, ordered us a Bianca style pizza with roasted peppers, feta cheese, sundried tomatoes, and chicken, and all I can say is, I'll be going back again the next time I come to Denver.

After a late start this morning, Max and I headed out to check out the downtown area. We stopped a restaurant called Marlowe's which can proudly boast of serving the worst Italian Chopped Salad Ever. I actually tried to take a picture of it (imagine non-chopped iceberg lettuce drenched in Italian dressing with 3 olives, strange slivers of turkey, one sliced piece of pepperoni, and some oddly chopped pepperocinis) but the server came by before I had a chance to. Luckily, he was a good server and didn't charge me for it. Max and I continued down the 16th Street Mall, which is very cute and looks a bit like Downtown Disneyland. Afterwards, we went to another mall and shopped around.

So, so far so good. Really like Denver, it reminds me a lot of Ann Arbor, but bigger. Max is watching the NFL network, and I'm about to take a nap so it's almost like we're in LA. Except,of course, for the fact that he's watching it on a flat screen HD tv and I'm about to nap on a suede Pottery Barn couch.

RV Rampage

So I think it's going to happen. At least I'm going to try damn hard to make it happen.

For a long time now, I've inexplicably had the urge to ride around in a RV, while wearing daisy dukes, a scrunchy, and opening bottles of beer with my teeth. In this fantasy, I also have bleached blond hair and fake nails...and frankly, look like the wife of Dog the Bounty Hunter. I grill hot dogs by the RV, burp the alphabet and make friends with the other RV'ers in the park, which makes no sense at all because I have a suspicious nature and fear strangers (thanks Mom) and would never make random friends with other RV'ers in the park. But then again, I've never wanted to bleach my hair blond (except for maybe 2 weeks in college when it was super short), and I've gotten fake nails before and hated them...Anyway, you get the point - I've wanted to live the white trash RV life. At least for a few days.

And I think it's going to happen. Because apparently other people want it too. Actually, I think they more want to live the MTV Road Rules life but I don't care. We're getting a RV and going on a camping trip at the end of September!!!! Whoo hoo!!!!

I've already sent out a feeler evite and I think we'll definitely have a group of people willing to go - the question will be how many. Followed by where. Where sort of depends on everyone's pocket books, I think. The further we go, the more mileage and gas. I'd love to go to Denver, for obvious reasons, but that would probably take way too long. I think good choices would be Yosemite, Grand Canyon and even Mexico. Except for the fact that I hate Mexico. So maybe not Mexico. Anyway, hopefully Max might be able to join us. We're looking at the weekend of Oct 1st, so there's a chance he might be free.

The only other things we'll have to work out is who'll drive and who's on sewer hose duty. I figure probably best for us to draw sticks or something. Oh please please please don't let me get stuck with sewer hose duty! I don't think I'd feel comfortable on sewer hose duty unless I was in a full length bio hazard suit. Maybe it should just go by who uses the bathroom the most. In that case, I'm getting a catheter installed. Inserted. Whatever.

Kate, Sareet & Pig's Runyon Canyon Adventure

Check it out on Kate's blog.

Golden Palace

Okay, I really wasn't going to go on and on about Golden Palace, but even though it is NOWHERE near as good as Golden Girls, I love it!!! You have to understand - I've seen every episode of GG multiple times, and I still continue to watch the reruns over and over again, so the fact that I'm watching something new with the same characters is just ridiculously awesome!!! The first episode was on yesterday and I managed to catch it twice, right after work and at 11 p.m. again. I even set a reminder on my calendar at work - I HAVE NO SHAME.

Yes, I watched the same episode of Golden Palace twice. And I plan to stick with that schedule.

"Poggles" for Pig

I think Boris in Doggles might very well be cuter, but Pig in Doggles sure does give him a run for his money. Boris looks like Howard Hughes/Lenny Kravitz. Pig looks like...well, I don't know - Whitney Houston?

They don't seem to fit her that well, and she hates them, so we're off to return them to Petco. But not without a photo shoot first.

The irony is that I can't find goggles that fit me either. Max and I once spent 45 minutes in the goggles department of Target trying to find a pair that would fit my face. Finally, jokingly, he handed me a pair of kid ones...and sadly, they were a perfect fit.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille... 

Dahhhling, how do I look? 

Where is that pool boy - I need a raspberry mojito

(*sigh*) I give up. 

Weekend Recap

I had a very excellent weekend.

Friday Happy Hour at Chaya's with Jessi, Andrea and Kate. Sushi was very good but it was the raspberry mojitos that I was really impressed with. Yum. Best ones I've ever had. Then we went to see Matt's show, which was, as expected, very funny. Later, Jessie, Kate & I went to Dan's place for what became Pokeraoke, phrase coined by Amol. There was whole bunch of us playing poker, and then Dan's brother walked in with 3 girls who decided they wanted to karaoke. So soon, we were pokeraoking - we'd pass the mic around the table while playing poker and sang whichever song came up next. Sadly, I was stuck doing a 15 minute version of Close to You. I think I lost that hand, which seemed a just punishment for what I was putting everyone else through. But I won the second game, so, whoo hoo!

Saturday, I woke up surprisingly refreshed and energetic and decided to clean the carpet. It looks really nice now, and I'm not having people over again, ever. Not unless they take off their feet (not shoes, feet) at the door. I should get all old school Chinese and give everyone guest slippers to wear in my apartment. Problem is, I always found it slightly gross, since the slippers are reused over and over again, and you end up wearing the pair that Aunty Whatever or Uncle Whatever wore the weekend before. Maybe I'll magic marker everyone's name to the bottom of their slippers and keep them in the closet.

Anyway, at some point between cleaning the living room carpet and working on the bathtub, Thode called and invited me out with Laura and her fiance Brad. I couldn't make dinner but met them up at The Brig, which is this very cool bar in Venice. It was nice to get to hang out with Laura, who's super busy with work nearly all the time. And I had never really chatted with Brad before so that was cool. Anyway, a few others showed up, and a great time was had by all. Except for this brief OCD momentary panic I had when I realized the bottom of my jeans were wet from - ew- the bathroom floor and but Thode reassured me that no, nothing was going to travel up my jeans and give me crabs.

Anyway, Sunday was a lazy around day. Pig and I went out to Runyon Canyon late in the afternoon, which was the perfect time for her. Normally she just sort of plods around and I get sad thinking about how she's getting old but apparently she plods around because I stupidly take her out during the middle of the day when it's HOT. Yesterday was fairly cool and Pig spent nearly all the time there running up and down the hill like a crazy dog. Later, Amol called and I proceeded to be difficult (not intentionally) by insisting that I was up for doing anything yet consistently vetoing everything he suggested, which included:

-Bowling
-Go-carting
-Putput golfing
-Going to LACMA
-Going to the driving range
-Going to a batting cage
-Going to Medieval Times (which I normally would have loved, and he suggested it because I had mentioned it before, but it was far far too late to really drive two hours to Anaheim)
-Eating dinner at a pizza place where each pizza is over 8000 calories
-Eating dinner at Pinks (overrated, imo)
-Eating dinner at Lawry's Prime Rib
-Eating dinner at Hop Li

So finally, after much discussion, we settled for dinner at Kabuki. It was sort of a dinner of the Lonely Hearts Club, as Dan joined us and we realized that all three of us had significant others living out of state.

Incidentally, how much sushi is too much sushi because this is what I had this week:

Wednesday - Sushi lunch from Mishima
Thursday - Ghetto sushi from Pavillions
Friday - Sushi at Chaya
Sunday - Sushi at Kabuki

I'm getting nauseous just thinking about sushi.