Buffalo Wild Wings, Boxing, Cards Against Humanity

Posted on April 13, 2014 by TheUser

After Wayzgoose on Saturday, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings with some friends for Barcraft for lunch. I ate a bunch of wings, as you might expect, and brought some home with me to eat for dinner while watching the fight. Pacquiao was fighting Bradley again, and I was pretty excited to watch. I eventually learned that BWW was showing the fight, so in the evening I went again (but to a different location at least).

There was a $10 cover charge per person to watch the fight, but it was worth it. It was pretty full when we got there, but a guy had two extra seats at his table because two of his friends couldn’t make it, so we sat with them. It made watching the fight much more enjoyable. It was a pretty great fight. I think both Pacquiao and Bradley fought a bit differently. I was happy with the fighters and with the judging, which seems rare.

I ate 17 wings that day.

This afternoon I went to Kean Coffee to play Cards Against Humanity with gem, Jessica, and Erica. It was a lot of fun. We should have been doing this regularly.

I also got some sweet towels and a wetsuit from Jessica. Woo!

And then, for dinner – well, remember those wings I brought back from lunch that I was intending to eat for dinner? And then remember how I ended up going back to BWW? That means I still had more wings, so I had wings again. Ugh. No more chicken wings for a while I hope. I think 27 wings might be too much for a single weekend!

Celebrate UCI / Wayzgoose 2014

Posted on April 12, 2014 by TheUser

Today was Wayzgoose! I always really enjoy returning to UCI for Wayzgoose. It might be more fun now that I’ve graduated because there’s a novelty to looking around. There are campus tours, booths for all the organizations, performances, a car show, and in past years a small medieval showing (although I didn’t see any this year). While not part of the festivities, there are usually a lot of dogs on campus, which is a plus to me.

One booth didn’t seem to be setup yet, but it did have a guy playing his ukulele! gem joined him, and they played together for a little bit, teaching each other.

I had some spam musubi, lumpia, and chicken kabobs, which were all delicious. I was going to get a shawarma from the Muslim Student Union like I do every year, but I wasn’t hungry enough today. We also checked out the cars at the car show. I like looking at the Model As the best.

The medical center had a giant inflatable colon. In this photo, gem is poop.

We also ran into some Improv Revolution members inside the colon and discussed improv. It was fun!

I’m ready to begin the operation! This reminds of me of Trauma Center: Under the Knife.

We walked back to our car by passing through the courtyard between Engineering Tower and the ICS building. gem took my photo in front of Engineering Tower.

And I took one too.

gem stopped to play ukulele near Engineering Gateway too.

I still think UCI’s a really beautiful school. I can’t help but think, “I’d like to go to school here,” even though I already did.

Clowning around

Posted on April 12, 2014 by TheUser

I’ve blended in with their culture successfully. Despite our physical differences, the clowns don’t seem to notice I’m not one of them.

Or maybe I just got pulled on stage at April-o-ween: A Spooky Clown Show.

It’s a good thing Collin was there to take photos of me!

Pork chops for dinner

Posted on April 7, 2014 by TheUser

Delicious. Pork chops, potato, and Brussels sprout. The pork chops were super cheap too. I usually stick with beef because I don’t have to worry about undercooking it, but this worked wonderfully.

You can’t forget dessert. I put milk chocolate peanut butter bears (essentially peanut butter cups) in the sliced banana before baking it. I had some Albertsons butter pecan ice cream with it too.

Birthdays, Restaurant Week, and more

Posted on March 3, 2014 by TheUser

There were lots of things happening last week! Saturday the 22nd was gem’s birthday. I baked her a turtle cake, which I talked about previously. She and Edward came to my place for cake before we went out to celebrate. gem wasn’t sure what she wanted to do ahead of time, but she decided to go to Color Me Mine.

I painted a Horde (from World of Warcraft) plate to go with my Horde stein. I had actually painted the stein years ago, but it broke during the firing process and I never got around to fixing it. Luckily the people at Color Me Mine this time told me that if I brought it, they’d glue it together for me, which they did!

After painting, we wen to Gen Korean BBQ. We got there just before last call, so we were trying to order a bunch of food. The waiter was nice enough to just pick stuff for us, and he placed a big order. We were all stuffed, but we managed to get through it.

Sunday morning Collin and I went to Newport to eat at Zimzala. It was fairly empty, but that just meant that we got to hear some rocking tunes from Danny Maika and make a lot of requests.

Later that night, I went to Zenko Sushi with Anela and gem for the weekend’s second all-you-can-eat meal. We had a nice time!

By Monday I had gained 4.70 lbs since Friday. That was expected. Unfortunately, I felt a little sick, but I didn’t think much of it. Monday night Duncan treated Collin and me to Chipotle. It was fun eating with them. We brought it back to the house and watched… uh… Twitch Plays Pokemon on the living room TV.

I guess Chipotle was the last straw for my stomach. Something made me pretty sick, and I was up most of the night. I ended up calling out sick Tuesday and Wednesday. On the plus side, I lost all that weight I gained and much more! Tuesday morning I still tried to eat normally, but my stomach rejected everything. Even my mouth rejected normal foods! I chipped a tooth eating a protein bar. I should note that the protein bar isn’t crunchy in any way.

gem recommended I make soup, so I did just that. My stomach didn’t seem to hate it, so I ate it Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, and early on Thursday.

I was still incredibly bummed about Harold Ramis dying as well, so I decided to spend some of my limited waking time watching Ghostbusters. Let’s not dwell on this, because I’ll get depressed.

I was feeling a lot better although not perfect by Thursday. I finished the soup for my lunch that day. Late that night, gem came over because it was my birthday and she had a gift for me. She bought a cast iron skillet! I had been wanting one for a while, so that was pretty cool. We also decided to order pizza. It was a terrible idea since I was getting over food poisoning, but it was also my birthday and I love pizza. Luckily my stomach accepted it without complaint.

Friday I celebrated OC Restaurant Week by going to Marrakesh for Moroccan food with Collin, Duncan, and Mimi. The food was delicious, just like I remembered it. I had a tasty salad, lamb, baklava, and tea. I also had a Lebanese beer and some mixed drink called a Belly Dancer. It was tasty, but I can’t remember what was in it.

After dinner, we all headed back to our place to hang out, watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and have some wine. There might have been an extraordinary amount of Snapchatting as well.

On Saturday I went to The Melting Pot with gem and Edward to celebrate my birthday. I’d been there a couple years earlier for my birthday and really liked it. It didn’t let me down! First there was a tasty salad. Next there was a Wisconsin cheese trio with bread, veggies, and apples. For the main course there was a nice broth with chicken, steak, mushroom ravioli, shrimp, and lobster tail. There might have been a glass of wine and dirty martini in there too!

For dessert we had dark chocolate fondue with marshmallow cream and crumbled Oreos. We dipped Rice Krispy treats, brownies, pound cake, bananas, strawberries, cherries, and cheesecake. The cheesecake dipped in the chocolate was so amazing! Because it was my birthday, they also brought me a chocolate covered strawberry with a candle. The waiter told Edward to sing for me because he wasn’t going to do it. He mentioned something about how it’s too bad nobody had a ukulele. Unfortunately, we didn’t have gem’s ukulele with us.

So that was my week! Being sick was pretty miserable, but I had a nice birthday and enjoyed celebrating gem’s as well.

Blueberry brownies

Posted on February 28, 2014 by TheUser

Did I ever mention that I baked blueberry brownies a couple weeks ago? Nope, I forgot about them. I always like blueberries with my chocolate yogurt at Yogurtland, so it seemed like a natural progression. They’re ugly, but I swear they were good.

I also gave some to gem to ship along with her cookies to some friends for their birthdays. Sharing is caring.

Turtle cake for gem’s birthday

Posted on February 26, 2014 by TheUser

gem mentioned to me that she’d like me to bake a cake for her birthday a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if she was expecting me to really do it or not, but I’d been wanting to bake a cake so I went for it. She likes turtle cookies, so I decided to make her a turtle cake, which is chocolate with caramel and pecans. I based it off the recipe Turtle Cake II from AllRecipes.com. I took the recommendations from the comments and used 1/4 cup butter and 2/3 cup evaporated milk instead of 3/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup evaporated milk. I also used a German chocolate cake mix that included pudding rather than one without as specified for the recipe. I don’t really even know the difference, but I couldn’t find one without. However, I actually felt bad about using a mix anyways. It seems like cheating. Oh well.

Here’s a shot of the middle layer of caramel, toasted pecans, and caramel. It’s spread atop the first layer of cake. Thanks to my friend, Hal, for recommending I toast the pecans first! It smelled great as they toasted.

It looked pretty tasty to me before I even frosted it.

Nevertheless, I frosted it and added some caramel decoration to the top.

I wrote a birthday message on it, but in retrospect, I chose a bad color.

I should have chosen something with a higher contrast against the dark chocolate.

I also added a few pecans to the top to give a better indication of what’s in the cake.

Of course, it needed some star candles too!

It turned out delicious. More importantly, gem liked it too. Success!

Sandwich, sandwich

Posted on February 22, 2014 by TheUser

You see that?

That’s a delicious sandwich.

Also known as dinner.

Chicken breast. Sharp cheddar. Lettuce. Tomato. Avocado. Spicy mustard. Wheat bread.

I even came up with a theme song for it. It goes like this. “Sandwich, sandwich,” sung to the tune of the song about Angel. You know, the one that goes like this – “Angel, Angel.” She’s a good dog.

Valentine’s Day comics

Posted on February 14, 2014 by TheUser

Happy Valentine’s Day! My Valentine was Alakazam Comics! Okay, it actually had nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, but I went to check if I had anything to pick up. The clerk usually asks for my name, and I just give “A-N-A-R.” One in particular always asks in a way that implies he’s trying to remember even though I never expect them to know my name. However, today he said, “it starts with an ‘A’, right?”

I said, “yeah, and it’s a long one.”

He replied, “right, it’s… A-N-A-R… G-I-R-O-U?”

I was pretty surprised honestly.

And then I was more surprised because I didn’t realize that Serenity: Leaves on the Wind had released! It’s the first Serenity comic (or any media) to depict the events after the film. Sweet.

In unrelated news, I also reorganized my bookshelves. They fit a lot more books when the books aren’t placed all haphazardly.

Besides that, I also played some games, watched some TV, and watched Smokin’ Aces. Fun day.

Scalzi’s Redshirts will be an FX limited series

Posted on February 7, 2014 by TheUser

FX Adapting ‘Redshirts’ Scf-Fi Novel As Limited Series, Nellie Andreeva, Deadline, 2/7/14 via John Scalzi’s The Whatever.

Exciting news! John Scalzi’s novel, Redshirts, is set to become a series on FX. Redshirts is about a group of red shirt-wearing people on a spaceship that realize they’re always the ones to die and that their lives follow strange rules. Eventually they realize that a TV show from hundreds of years earlier seems to be ruling their lives. It was a very fun novel, and I’m looking forward to the TV show now!

Scalzi seems to have a lot happening. Old Man’s War, another of his novels, is being made into a movie. In addition, he did the writing for an upcoming iOS first-person shooter called Midnight Star and its interactive graphic novel tie-in, Midnight Rises. And we can’t forget that he’s one of my favorite authors and bloggers. There’re lots of Scalzi-related things about which to be excited!

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