It Started with a Journal

I'm now in LA. Just a few items of note:

1) Plane ride was one of the best I've had in recent times, in terms of not feeling sick/claustrophobic. Yay for that. I think it's because I finally learned to put movies/TV shows on my iPod, so I was watching S2 of Dexter the whole time. The flight was going to take off early except Talis wasn't on the plane yet. So the whole flight had to wait for Mr. Talis to be on board, lol. Considering his 'seat' probably cost more than anyone else's on the plane, I don't feel too bad about this. Right outside the Alaska pet pick-up area at LAX they have this little fenced-off grassy area (the ONLY bit of green anywhere near LAX haha) with a big refillable water bowl, a fake fire hydrant, and poopy bags! Talis made good use of the facilities, which was frankly awesome that they even provided.

2) It's in the 70s here. Yeah. Lameass Pacific NW. -.- If only my parents didn't live in the high desert, I could appreciate it even more. As it is I really only get to bask in the heat when we drive out (about an hour). This has actually been a fairly mild December considering last year Seattle was totally snowed in, and even here my mom couldn't pick me up from the airport due to snow.

3) You can get SUCH good Chinese food here. So very yum.

4) Found Mexican Coca-Cola at the Costco here and bought a case. :D It tastes exactly like Coke to me, except for a slightly different finish, which isn't bad, just different. However the Costcos here don't carry the San Pellegrino sodas, which are superior to just about every other soda I've ever had. So Seattle totally wins in terms of SP soda. Since this Coke is basically just Coke, I'm just leaving the bottles for my dad/brother to drink, since I'm not really that enamored of Coke (or sodas with the exception of SP) in general. Both Mexican Coke and SP sodas are more costly than regular sodas though -- about $20/case.

5) Bought myself a down jacket from Patagonia. It's super light and warm -- I love it! In fact I've ordered 2 more jackets from them (on sale so it's OK right?). Also finished my Christmas shopping today. Woot!

Today I finally got an Xbox 360. It was one of Walmart's doorbuster deals. ( The story. )

I finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and loooooved it. I was crying so hard toward the end, which kind of took me by surprise. I didn't think I was that emotionally invested. Now I'm going to make my cousin and mom read it.

Tomorrow I am planning to make Benihana fried rice and Panda Express orange chicken. :)) Benihana has an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet during lunch on the weekdays. S. and I are planning to go check it out at some point, especially if I can use my discount card to get bogo, which works for their regular teppan menu.

So I watched the pilot of V on Hulu. Thought it was decent, but not super compelling... yet. I never saw the original so at least I don't have to work past the "no remakes of things I love!" bias. I like Morena Baccarin and Elizabeth Mitchell, and of course Alan Tudyk, whose fate I guessed immediately as soon as I saw him in the credits. :))

Things to do before I die: Crawl into a trash can.

Check.

( You know you want to ask. )

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Saw my friend J. today. Funny story (okay, not really), she moved away 3 years ago then moved back 2 years ago except she emailed an old account of mine and so I never knew, and she never pursued it because she thought I didn't want to be in touch or moved or some such. I never bothered to try and contact her again after she moved away. Flimsy excuses on both our parts, but at least we're on the same wavelength: we care just enough to try and be friends while we're both living in the same city, as long as we don't have to put too much effort into it.

Every time we see each other we inevitably go shopping. We don't know why; neither of us are actually avid shoppers. Just turns out that way. I ended up buying some cute and inexpensive things from J. Crew and Old Navy (a friend of a friend has this rule for buying clothing: You can buy it if you think you will wear it as many times as it costs, in dollars. So, you can buy a $15 top if you think you will wear it at least 15 times. It's a pretty good rule of thumb to go by). At J. Crew I got a pair of salmon-colored pants that I will only be able to wear for another few weeks, during the last waning moments of summer. The length actually FIT me. You know why? Because they're capris. So they're supposed to be short on "normal" women. On me they fall past my ankles. At Old Navy I got a number of tops and a couple of skirts. I need to lose weight (that old mantra) so the waist won't fit so snugly. I tried on the next size up, but the skirt length increases also, making it look frumpy instead of cute, so obviously I couldn't get it.

We also saw Julie & Julia, which was a cute book and a cute movie as well. Y'all know I just adore Meryl Streep, but really, she's awesome in it. She perfected the Voice. I mean, yes, everyone can do an exaggerated Julia Child impression, by just using a falsetto, but JC's real voice is more subtle than that, and Meryl totally got it. Color me impressed (as usual).

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Before seeing J. I tried to get my driver's license renewed at the DMV. They were on #93 when I arrived; my number was #112 and I had an hour to go before an appointment at my car dealership where I was going to take my car in for service. I hoped, futilely, that they would get to me quickly, that maybe a bunch of people before me had gotten fed up and left already. When they got to #96, the number sign went away entirely. Possibly they went to lunch? I waited around for 10 minutes after that, then gave up and left; no way were they going to get to me in the time I had left. I went to get lunch instead.

As for the car ... well, I know I brought it on myself for getting a high-end vehicle in the first place, but -- come on. When I had my Corolla it cost $30 for an oil change. Now? $171. WTF. Seriously, what are they doing, coating my brake pedals with gold? Actually, if they were doing that it might be worth the cost. BUT THEY'RE NOT. Anyway, that's why I brought it in on a Saturday; I requested a loaner vehicle (it's one of their 2010 model SUVs and it is nice -- the GPS has a built-in MOUSE, for pete's sake. In my car it's a touch screen, which is always covered in fingerprints), and because they're not really open on Sundays, I get to keep it for 2 days. Sure, I'm still paying way too much for a simple service (plus a latte and bottle of water), but at least I get something back.

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Public Service Announcement re: PayPal personal accounts. If you have a business account at PayPal, they take a cut of whatever money you're sent. It's been that way for awhile, so it should come as no surprise to anyone. However, it used to be that if you had a personal account, you could receive money up to a certain amount (like $500?) without them taking a percentage. Apparently that is no longer the case, the greedy bastards. Now they take a cut even from personal accounts, unless the transaction is marked as a "personal transaction." So if you're ever collecting money for a good cause, or paying a friend back for something, make sure those transactions are marked as personal, otherwise PayPal will take some of that money. There. Now you know. You're now one step ahead of where I was 30 minutes ago.

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Tomorrow I am going to Kohl's and buying myself a Magic Bullet. I went to a dinner party Friday night where the hostess made a yummy Caesar salad dressing with it, and now I must have one. I've wanted one since I saw jade_okelani make whipped cream in a MB in like, 1 minute, but now that there are TWO things I have a lot of use for, I've decided it's a reasonable purchase. Why Kohl's? Because I have coupons that will take $15 off. I just hope the price for the MB in the store is the same as what they list online...

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OMG, ropo is going to be here in just over a week! I can't believe it's that soon! Eeee! I am so excited. We are going to go around and take pictures. I really, really, REALLY hope the sun comes back while she's here; pictures with cloud cover just don't look as good. If the trend at weather.com is to be believed, we're looking at sunny, mid-high 70s. Yay! We are going to go see Wicked, as the touring cast will be here during that time, and also HP:HBP on IMAX. We MAY do a day trip or something to a neighboring island, but preferably not Vashon, which is cute but kind of boring, or Bainbridge, which we've already been to. If any Seattlites have suggestions for islands or really, anything else, give a shout. ropo loves photography so we're open to anything fun or that would at least yield good pictures. <g>

So, it's snowing. Again. What a complete and total pain. Not to mention cold. When I was younger, I loved snow. Well, the idea of snow. I lived in Southern California so I never really experienced it myself. The first time I ever encountered snow was when I was in New York with my dad for some reason, I was probably about 6, and the memory is vague. After that it was when I went skiing for the first time, with my uncle. So to me, snow happens in places you go to, not where you live. The first time it ever snowed where I actually lived was when I was in Virginia/D.C. Boy was that not fun -- I didn't have a car so I took the Metro everywhere (though even if you do have a car there, it's still probably better to take the Metro under usual circumstances). And even though I lived close to a station, a 15-min walk, tromping through snow to and fro wasn't a blast.

Anyway, on Thursday afternoon I went back to Circuit City, hoping to find that they had lowered their prices further and to see if the open box D90 I was looking at last time was still there. They had lowered prices on more things -- TVs and video games now included -- but get this: the D90 was MORE than the last time I saw it!! It was now priced at exactly the same as a new, untouched D90! I talked to one of the sales reps and he was very cool, he explained that the liquidation was now entirely responsible for prices, and CC didn't have a say in it at all even though they were trying to get the liquidation company to lower the prices on the open box items, as it was completely ridiculous to charge people the same amount for an open box item as for a new, untouched item. Seriously... liquidation company, you fail. I really have to laugh that during a going-out-of-business liquidation the one item I was interested in went UP in price.

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year. I'm having lunch with my cousin at a Chinese restaurant neither of us has been to. It's got mixed reviews, and being that it's Seattle, this is iffy indeed. But oh well. Occasionally my mom, who is of a superstitious nature, has me do random things for the new year. There was the year she called me up and said that she wanted me to do something: wear jade for a year, as it would fend off the bad forces and bring me good luck or whatever. So I sighed and agreed; that's when she was like, "Oh, and it has to be in the shape of a cow." !!! This year, I have been tasked to buy a chunk of meat, and lightly whack at it with a knife 33 times (the age I'll be this year on the lunar calendar). Compared to wearing a piece of jade in the shape of a cow for a whole year, this is actually fairly easy. No, I don't know why. Jade asked, but I explained that the less I know, the better. The superstitious reasoning always gets me irritated, and this way my mom and I are both happy.

I have been fairly productive on the cooking front this weekend. Yesterday I sliced up 10 onions to make about 2 cups of caramelized onions spread, as per this article/recipe at the LA Times. I've made white fish stock today for a cream of scallop soup (which I will be making after posting this). I got the fish head/frames for the stock from Whole Foods, which reserved it for me when I called them in the morning the other day. They charged me $0.99/lb, which is not a lot, but if it was stuff they were going to throw away anyway, kind of short sighted of them. If they'd given it to me free, it would have been a gesture of good will -- I'd been there just the day before, I would have felt good about them, and it probably would have forced me to buy something else when I picked it up. But since they charged me for it, I gave them their $1.31 and left. And on Friday Jade and I both made salmon steaks with pinot noir sauce, and I also made an apple tart cake, which I am enjoying a lot. I've made apple cake before, and I've made apple tart before, but this was the first time I ever made a tart cake ... there's really no other way to describe it because the texture cannot really be pinned to one or the other.

The one thing I meant to make this weekend but didn't was January's Daring Bakers challenge. I'm still undecided on whether or not I'm going to participate this month.

Just a quick update of my trip so far, for those interested as well as posterity (it's kind of neat to be able to go back in time and find out what I was doing on xx date).

( Traveling is a bitch. )

( Behind this cut, some random pictures from my trip so far. )

I was at Nordstrom's today. It was a harrowing experience for my wallet. I now have another handbag, a matching wallet, and two pairs of shoes that I didn't have before. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??? I'm turning into that stupid bitch from the Shopaholic books. Someone needs to do an intervention with me and my credit cards like they did for Rachel in Friends. This is getting ridiculous. I have a sickness. The handbag/wallet were totally my fault, but I'm putting the blame for the shoes on Julie. She spent far too long at the Clinique counter, which left me to wander and get into dangerous situations.

We also went and saw Coach Carter. We both must have cried about six different times. Coming out of the theater, we looked it, too. It wasn't the most unique sports movie I've ever seen, but was well done for all the predictability. Plus Samuel L. Jackson rocks. And it doesn't hurt that there were so many cute boys running around on screen. <g>

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What I thought about last week's Alias: ( Détente spoilers )

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You have one week left to vote in the Oscars poll. There are the movies/people I think should win, the movies/people I want to win, and the movies/people I think will win. My final votes reflect all of them, and that's probably why I never win stuff like this. :D

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Gacked from various peeps on my friends list...

Baby stable after second head removed: 10-month-old girl suffered from 'parasitic' twin birth defect -- That is so sad.

The most amusing meme I've seen in awhile: You name three people. I have to pick one to push off a cliff, one to marry, and one to shag.

Do your worst!

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

:))

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( I've been spending WAY too much money lately, and now there are shoes to add to the carnage. )

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Jade has been emailing lots of lovely Lex/Lana tidbits. HEE! There are apparently a bunch of L/L scenes that were cut, which will be available on the S3 DVDs. Why did they cut them?? That makes me :-l. We'll so be using this as part of our evidence for the manifesto, oh yes.

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A pox upon those who advertise "avocado" in their sandwiches, charge a premium, and then provide you with some kind of imitation fake-ass spread.

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If you haven't already watched Band of Brothers, I highly recommend that you do so at your earliest available opportunity. There aren't words to describe how well done and moving it is. I've just finished the series for probably the 5th time, and by the end I'm always bawling like a baby. And the talent of the actors involved cannot be gushed about enough. And the writing!! The purity of the Nixon/Winters love cannot be denied. Yeah, this is one of those things that I love beyond the telling of it. (I am admittedly somewhat of a WWII buff, however, so my views may be colored.)

( Here's part of the summary from the book; isn't it so moving? )