I've returned

Made it back safely from the great white north. Will post the pictures, the best ones, in some form over the next week.

It's 80 degrees inside my apartment with 80% humidity. It's sick. And the mailman lost (?) my mail.

It's Monday so I went to the beach

After cooking, post bar, next on my list is a visit to the beach. I'm going to show you a typical relaxing Yellowcat beach day.

First, have to stop by in Hillcrest to get my cheese sandwich from Breads & Cie. It's the default san diego bakery, has a complete monopoly, stocks the shelves in the Von's and Trader Joe's alike. Anyhow, their best sandwich is this cheese/pesto mix which sounds disgusting but is actually super good and a good small size.

San Diego puts up these crazy signs in all its districts. I kind of like it, it's a remnant of the 1970s and gives the city character.

Below - Mo's is a gay hamburger place. It's across the street from the anti-prop 8 headquarters, which is HUGE.

Then I drive across the Coronado bridge, which is 2 lanes/way, 3 lanes/other, and unlike bay area bridges, completely FREE. I took a walk all the way under the bridge, but then turned because the 9/11 bridge watch guy was there.

Finally made it to the beach. No beach trip is complete without a tour of the Hotel Del, wishing I was rich enough to stay there.

They've torn up the ballroom floor. You know what else got torn up? The floor of the convention center after Comic-Con. Wouldn't it be awesome if comic con was at the hotel?

Two hours of sun, back home. That's the good beach trip. The bad ones end up at Mission Beach, or even worse, Mission Bay =(

Post bar

I spent 3 nights in downtown taking the bar exam. Suffered through an earthquake, bad-mediocre downtown food, and took a total of 18 hours of testing. And ya, I'm worried I failed, worried a lot. You can't help it because you think you did well on some things, but then so did everyone else. Most people fail by only a few points. But I had a good time there.

My friend and I shared a room at the Hard Rock, it's a new hotel that opened just a year ago, right across from Petco Park. Ultra hip and modern. Rates aren't so bad because Comic Con just happened, and the exam's in the middle of the week. Here's a shot of the bathroom.

My bed.


Post-bar, after worrying about failing, I made a salad nicoise. I don't even have a plate enough to contain it all. The green beans are under the tuna. The best salad nicoise I ever had was in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. In this one I used canned tuna and added butter lettuce, unlike the recipe. It's very simple but very time consuming.


For dinner, my usual meal of fish, veggies, and crazy good wild basmti rice. Dessert's on the right, apple crisp. It's apple pie for those of us who can't do crusts.


So I'm still worried about failing, most people I spoke with are absolutely confident they passed. I think I did better on the essays than everyone else, and did well on 1 of the two performance tests, but I'm sure I failed the MBE. And from what I've seen, you have to pass the MBE to pass the exam =( I may be back in February, alone...

Things I do during study breaks

At this point in the game, it's very difficult to study more than six hours a day. I get these terrible killer headaches and backaches and stomachaches. If I fail the test, it's going to be a direct result of the headaches, it's a physical negative reaction to practicing law. So I take a lot of study breaks now. More than before in May or June.

Sometimes I read the New York Times. But yesterday, I watched their video about poor people/foreclosed homes. I'm a sucker for those stories. Anyhow, in the video the lady said she had a super headache unlike any ever (sounds like mine every day), and then she had a stroke. And now she's losing her home.

Sometimes I cook. I made the Ratatouille Tart at the bottom of this SF gate article. I looked at their pictures and thought, gee they just have a bad set director and bad photographer, the recipe looks alright. Actually the tart is mediocre at best and I apologize to the photographer. I think whoever contributed the article and set up the pictures should be removed, because a store bought pie crust does not in any way mimic a tart crust. I don't believe the contributor is a regular either...but I could be wrong on this.

Today I read xkcd archives. And this one strip reminded me of myself and all the reasons why I shouldn't be a lawyer. They don't creative commons their stuff, its share for non-profit use.



Comic Con starts at the end of the week. Guess who doesn't get to go.

Berkeley; Santa Clara

Classic Berkeley: the druggie trainstop



Classic Berkeley II: Vic's Chaat House



Classic Santa Clara: HOT



A giant cat



One awesome leaf that's just a little bit flawed.

San Francisco part III; Return of the Fog

More beautiful shots of the city...we just start wandering around, we've been there so many times it's all the same and Ive got multiple copies of every shot now at all times of year...


The blueprints of the ferry building.


Ferry building @ closing time.


Reason why we didn't stay for the fireworks...the fog...

San Francisco Part II

Also I got engaged. We had a picnic in the botanical gardens in stereotypical san francisco mist.



C got me a non-blood diamond. Actually it could be super blood because it's "vintage" which means they coulda killed a lot more people/environment when they first made it. Sorry about you don't get a picture of the ring...at least not now.

San Francisco Part I

I got back from a weekend in the bay area last night. C gave me the tour of the bay area.

SF China town, see the happy tourist family in the window?
The trinkets they sell in town. Somehow my camera singled out the nekos!

And glimmering crawfish, oh I want one.

another well deserved break

I took at walk with my camera at Mission Bay in the evening as a break from studying. Also I live 15min from the beach and this is a lot closer. I'm gonna be like this lady in the future...she doesn't even have chairs.


Wide angle close crop showing the density. Some pple have TENTS out. Others were grilling entire steaks on these tiny hibachi grills. It was crazy.

Some guy was like, you shouldn't shoot in that direction because of the sun's glare. I was like, sometimes I like pictures that are a little flawed, the ones you can't buy in stores and that you know you took and everyone knows you took even though you aren't in the picture. Thats what differentiates amateurs from professionals and you gotta know your place in the world. Anyhow this is my rendition of summer in San Diego...

Next time....going to the beach.

I took a 6 hour practice exam in barbri class today. It sucked. The next two days -> all day review. That's going to suck. Thursday would be awesome except I'm outta town Fri-Sun so I'm doing all that work on Thursday. So that sucks too.

You know in three years, I've seen the seaworld fireworks exactly once? And I can hear them from my place, 950pm every night....reminding me of what I'm missing.

County Fair

I took a four hour studying break today to go look at some farm animals. Yes, here in the city you have to pay money to go look at the farm animals.

I saw some sheeps in sheep cages:

I saw some sheeps get sheared:

There were exhibits teaching us about fruits, vegetables, honey and wine. In the way background you can see (barely) the chicken cages. The chickens shared a room with the vegetables.


Lots of combinations of deep-fried + various products. Also note how a wide angle lens gets kind of crazy when its vertical! No, I didn't try deep fried oreos. I did get an apple funnel cake. Tastes disturbingly like apple pie.

Didn't have the tickets to play the carnival games so I just took a lot of pictures of the prizes. It was a busy day but not busy by evening or weekend standards, most of the day-goers are poor mommies who can't afford games.

And then I played a game where I pretended I worked here. The fair's held at the Del Mar Racetrack. If I was a day worker, it would be like this:


Here's the view from the club seats - the best seats in the house. Notice the signboard has the etching of a giant whale, and there's an actual elephant under the red tents. Now you gotta remove the elephant from your mind, light up the scoreboard, put in the people in the stands chatting on their cellphones and not really paying attention, the horses on the track, and it should probably be at night. Voila, you've got a horserace.

And here's the actual track. It seems like today they're racing ambulances instead of horses. Just kidding. I think someone heatstroked.



And that was my day at the County Fair.