Happy Valentines Day!

It's freezing and raining hard today but it's still Valentine's Day. Our red velvet cake. Parts were given away of course.


Muffy.


My (new to me) futon sofa.


The tv I'm borrowing from my brother. The speaker in the background I don't own. Little stuffed leopard given to me.

Nice weather again

I went on a mini-hike yesterday, I found the most beautiful trail in the entire universe. Trailhead starts right in the middle of multimillion dollar homes, not the fake land rich ones but homes that actually look nice. The first 10 feet of the trail are also padded with a thick carpet of fragrant pine needles. Your view throughout the walk is the ocean, the lagoon, or other expensive homes. It's a different hike from my usual walk up and down the coastline, which in itself is also a scenic walk.

Went to the mall today. It's a shopping addiction afflicting 90% of women, but it's a socially acceptable addiction. You don't just go to the mall, you dress up, gather your friends, and you have a social outing at the mall while avoiding the creepy single men preying in the underwear aisle. I always forget these elements. Part of it can't be helped . . . my name brand purse doesn't have the name brand logo prominently displayed nor do my name brand jeans include fancy stitching in the back. Oh, and I don't wear false eyelashes. So I went where people like me belonged. I went into JC Penney. And my god that store is complete chaos. So then I thought, where else do poor people with poor sense of style but love glitter and glitz get clothes? Oh that's right, Old Navy. Well, their line was too long for me. I must admit I did venture into Macy's, but so did the rest of the city. So no new things for me. At least for another week.

Hopefully the beach next weekend. I saw a picture of someplace in New York where it's blowing snow. Sucks to be them.

Airports & Cats

The Airport's terminal 2 is relatively new, I think 10 years old or so. It's very airy and clean feeling.

Far side of terminal 2:


Looking down terminal from upstairs, to baggage claim:


And Muffy in her tree.

Sexual harassment training video I was forced to watch:

(in the office)

Guy: Hey Cindy, it's getting late, how about we go grab a bite to eat and some beers?
Cindy: Umm, no thanks I have to go home to feed my cat.

(next day)

Cindy: Why did you take me off the project?

Guy: You better watch it, you're starting to develop an attitude, kinda like a cat.

Me: I wish my life was that exciting. Let's see, incredibly awesome things that happened today . . . well I wore my pants that don't fit in a really obvious way along with my $10 Hong Kong shoes and don't look good in general, of course we had to have a meeting today and I had to show up looking like a frumpy bunny. Also instead of doing my assignment in a legal manner, I produced an excel spreadsheet full of estimated and actual values of litigation, handicapped by risk. I'll turn it in, enjoy the shock value, and then have to redo it in a less efficient harder to comprehend legal format. I sat through an hour long meeting today and came away with one note of interest: there's an Ivy in San Diego?? I was forced to eat Panera food and drink a soda without a straw (bad day in my book). My coworkers luv their babies. I put up a picture of the cat but it's not getting quite the same response. Tonight I "look forward" to reading more hopefully good but often disappointingly not so good articles written by fellow students. And oh ya, I have to feed my cat.

update on me

I haven't blogged in a while . . . a few reasons for this. Mostly I have a weird schedule this semester between work and class and others, a schedule that blurs the distinction between weekdays and weekends. All I know is I get up and I've got stuff to do and usually it's not 'fun.' I guess the fact that it's rained or greyed-out straight since January 1 doesn't help things, every day looks the same. There's also a lot of stuff going on but none of it is stuff I can share on the intertubes, you know I can't talk much about work or how I hate people!

One exciting thing this weekend, I got a free plasma tv* and a free futon sofa! Of course I'm much more excited about the sofa. It's a huge improvement over my icky sweat stained no armrest ikea sofa. The plasma tv will be great for my Xbox, since that's in HD.

*So the tv's not really free, it's my brother's, but I get to keep it until he comes reclaim it..

Edit: Question of the day: more grease on hair = more charisma? or more grease on hair = higher chance of making partner? or more grease on hair = bigger asshole? or ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Ice Lodge Jeero

Remember how I bought a Jeero at Comic Con 2 years ago? Back then he was yellow like Muffy.

"Jeero just wants to sit on the couch with you and eat some snacks. Don't ask him too many questions (he doesn't know anything). He loves to exercise."


Well, Jeero went to Michigan, grew up, and froze. Now he's ice lodge jeero.
" . . . Ugly dolls decide to go on a little vacation and stay at the Ice Lodge . . . Ice means FROZEN right? As in freezing? 2 cold to move? The bright side is Jeero won't have to do a lot of moving around."

Massive Pix Post

A quick summary of my holiday break . . .

A few weeks ago, a ship from China crashed into a bridge and spilled oil all over the bay. It would look a little like this:


Tiger reflected on the kitchen floor.

Christmas dinner azn style: Mongolian hot pot @ Little Lamb Mongolian Hot Pot. There's a joint in San Diego too. The broth is very flavorful in a thick and dark type of way, and spicy is way spicy. Good if you like strong flavors.


In LA I went to see the Murakami exhibition. He likes bright colors, eyes, mushrooms and daisies. He's also the designer for a line of LV purses.

Staples Center for Kings v Flames (hockey game). It's my first visit to the Staples center.


The anthem in Canadian and American.

Opening faceoff! Kings lost 6-4.


Now: Chargers v Titans
Tomorrow: School starts

My Wii

I owned a Wii today. I had it for three whole hours. I offered it around for market price, but nobody wanted it and nobody thought I could sell it. I never even opened it.

So then I sold it on craigslist. I priced it at $80 over market to pay for my shipping and for my new game, and that's how you sell a Wii in 3 hours. And the buyer didn't murder me (yet - he could track me down). And I converted those profits into:

This game was the whole reason why I bought my xbox way back in April. The game was delayed for six months. It was supposed to be awesome, game of the year awesome. But you know what? Super Mario Galaxy >> Mass Effect, but Super Mario Galaxy requires a Wii.

Fancy fish and chips and some reindeer

Typical LA trip for me, some shopping, some Japanese food, visit Giant Robot store, stuck in traffic at Carlsbad, back home to feed Muffy.

This time we checked out another mall, The Grove. They took this 80 ft tree, killed it, stuffed its skeleton with ornaments and set up lights and stars and reindeer overhead. But don't worry, it's ok because it's probably beautiful at night and they've got all this fancy lighting and the children will be fascinated and maybe children > 80ft tall trees.

Since we couldn't eat at the Grove b/c it was absolutely packed with shoppers (they've got Fashion Valley traffic x2 but everywhere within a 50min radius), we headed off for Little Tokyo-but not the one that's downtown, the one that I can locate. If I'm ever lost in LA, I'm probably at the corner of Olympic and Sawtelle.

I really wanted to get a waffle. There's this great waffle shop in Ginza in Tokyo. The waffles are eaten like hot cookies there without any toppings or syrup. I think that shop is populated by all the gaijin + me but it does good enough business for at least 2 years. Anyhow, I thought this waffle shop would be like that . . . but it wasn't. First, they emphasized toppings. Second, it's soft and has a lot of egg in it rather than the harder texture. And worst of all, they lacked the vital ALMOND flavor, I had to get cinnamon and it's not even close.


Came back and fashioned fancy-ass fish and chips from Trader Joes frozen items. This costs about $4-5/person and you could add in veggies for almost nothing more. It takes about 20min to make b/c of the garlic fries. Can't say its particularly healthy though...

Rotting Tropical Fruit

Yesterday the school decided to give me money, because I satisfied the dual criteria of "generally good resume" and "lousy future job prospects." Approximately 50% of the school satisfies those categories, but I'm not going to say I don't deserve it because for once in my life I think I do. So now that we're going to possibly maybe but not really break even next semester provided we don't go on a massive shopping spree, we had to celebrate. And I celebrated by making TANGERINE BAVARIAN. I don't know why it's two colors...but it is...

I made the cake with the sauce and I actually did it correctly and the free trade sugar acted almost like normal sugar* but the dish was really disappointing! The recipe itself is just a glorified version of orange jello garnished with whipped cream only it's not deconstructed (Anthony Boudain tells me deconstructed food is in now). Tangerines are great by themselves but here with the cream and eggs emphasizing its flavor, it takes on that flavor of rotting tropical fruit. Now, I don't know if tangerines are tropical, but it's got a flavor a little bit like durian. In fact I'd call it durian light, it's even the same color and if you added in vanilla extract... It's light and creamy for about 1second, then the 8 eggs kick in and the aftertaste is sick sweet.

I think it's better with cranberry or pomegranate juice, skip the eggs, put in a crust, cut into little squares, top it off with rum. The sauce is gold though, but that's just orange flavored caramel. Oh another thing, the recipe takes longer than 25min if you skip the ice bath. And you need good kitchen gear. That's my experience with melting sugars - you need good kitchen gear or the sugar'll burn.

*Whole Foods free trade organic sugar. It tells me it's just sugar, nothing else, but it's sweeter than normal sugar. And when I heat it up it tastes just like high fructose corn syrup, it coats your tongue and stays in your mouth even after you brush your teeth. I may go back to mass market kill gorillas and small towns sugar.

*Free trade coffee on the other hand . . . store brand free trade organic coffee > Tully's > dunkin donuts > starbucks.

Tomorrow => attempt at roast beef w/ port sauce after 36hrs of dry brining.