Category Archives: Animals

Reggae and the Toshiba Tall Ships Festival

I did two interesting things this weekend, but I don’t have enough to say about each of them to make individual posts! First, I went The Point Restaurant and Bar in Dana Point with Anela and gem. Our friend Sean invited us to watch his dad’s reggae band. It was also Sean’s dad’s birthday! He seemed pretty popular!

The band was fun, playing a variety of reggae and classic rock covers. The venue was pretty cool too. It’s a bit far to go just for drinks, but if I was in the area or there was something happening there, I’d definitely go again.

The 30th annual Toshiba Tall Ships Festival was also in Dana Point! It was a beautiful day.

gem and I watched some pirates learn about Pirate High Tea from their admiral. It was an amusing performance in which the pirates struggle to understand the delicacies of having tea.

They also had dancers!

We met an adorable rat named Izzy the Pyrat! He had a little pirate’s hat and everything.

This blacksmith was making dice. He was pretty interesting and answered many of gem’s blacksmith questions.

He even made this rose.

Aboard one of the ships was a band playing amusing songs about being pirates. They’re called The Boo Hoo Crew. Despite claiming to be a children’s band, I liked them. “Old McPirate had a ship. / E-I-E yo ho!”

Then it was snack time. gem wanted to get corn, and it was buy two items, get a third free. I bought a corn dog with the corn so I could get an Arnold Palmer for free. They didn’t have any corn dogs ready unless I was willing to accept one with a split in the breading. Because I was okay with it, they even threw in an extra corn dog for free!

We got our corn all lathered up in mayo with a variety of delicious toppings.

gem was hungry!

While watching a weapons demonstration, we met the most adorable dog. His owner didn’t mind, so we showered him with attention.

Oh, right. Here’s the weapons demonstration itself.

And then we had dinner!

Sumo and Angel love Labor Day

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

On Labor Day, I had ribs, which means Sumo and Angel get to enjoy ribs everyday for a while! Thursday was the first day I got around to giving them any, and I think they enjoyed them.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows them, but Angel ate her rib faster.

Walking with Dinosaurs

Last night I saw Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular at the Honda Center! It was pretty great and could definitely be enjoyed by people of all ages. While they taught a lot of information that I (and most other adults) already knew, there were still pieces of new information.

The dinosaurs looked pretty real – except for the extra pairs of human legs on some of the dinosaurs that is. The show went through the various periods, discussing the world, the environment, evolution, and the current dominate species. To be honest, the end felt kind of sad even though I obviously knew that the dinosaurs didn’t leave happily ever after.

Strangely, they forgot to mention the Dinosaurs TV show.

gem was excited! And no, of course she didn’t bring a dino.

Edit: I wanted to add a couple more photos!

It’s a good thing he has those spikes.

Look how big they are! Everything was to scale too, so it was pretty cool. I don’t know how realistic they would have looked close, but from where we were sitting, they definitely looked great! At least, I think they did. I’ve never seen a real dinosaur.

Santa Cruz weekend: Redwoods and the Boardwalk

Sunday was Katie and Matt’s wedding in Ben Lomond. To make a weekend out of it, gem and I decided to spend Friday through Monday in Northern California. After a late start on Friday, I drove to Ben Lomond in Santa Cruz County. Here’s a photo of our hotel, the Quality Inn & Suites Santa Cruz Mountains. The drive was relatively uneventful but fun given that I enjoy talking! We didn’t actually reach the hotel until about 11 o’clock, so this photo is from Saturday morning. It was quite beautiful. Unfortunately, there was an odd smell that caused us to keep our clothes in the car, but let’s not dwell on the negative.

Saturday morning we went to the Henry Cowell Redwood State Park for a hike. It was absolutely gorgeous! Southern Californian hikes are terrible by comparison.

It was about 10 when we got there, which felt like a late start. It wasn’t really. I’m just used to hiking in direct sunlight down here. It wasn’t hot at all, and I probably didn’t even need sunblock.

gem and I discussed wanting to see wildlife, and when we heard a train, our conversation segued into the idea of “wild trains” being native to the Santa Cruz area. You see, they spend their whole lives growing tracks and migrating across the lands. When they die, their offspring can use the tracks grown by the previous generations.

Look what else we found while hiking! What could that be?

It was a geocache! I fail at geocaching most of the time, so I was pretty happy to find this one in a tree stump.

gem and I signed the log.

After hiking, we went to the Best Western Plus Inn in Scotts Valley to meet with Marc and one of his friends. He drove us to the beach to meet his other friends, only running one red on the way. Okay, he caught it half way into the intersection and backed up. No harm done.

By the time we got to the beach, his friends were leaving to go back to the hotel. We walked around a little in attempt to get to the lighthouse, but after realizing we were on the wrong side of something, we just decided to leave.

We headed toward to Santa Cruz Boardwalk and strolled along the wharf after getting some delicious ice cream. Looking down through the pier, we saw some adorable sea lions! They were pretty cute. One kept trying to jump out of the water but couldn’t quite make it.

As the time approached that Matt and Katie were going to arrive at the hotel, we went back to meet with them and the rest of their friends. Here I am holding Katie’s wedding dress trying with all my might not to drop the dress. It wasn’t heavy or anything, but I couldn’t help but think about how horrible it would be if something were to happen. Everything was fine though!

We all went back to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Anela had recommended we check it out, and I know I went there as a kid but don’t really remember it. I’m glad Matt wanted to go; it was a lot of fun. I love taking pictures of colored lights, fairs, and the like, but for some reason I didn’t really take any pictures. I guess I was too busy having fun and meeting new people. Their friends are super awesome! gem did get this picture of me in line for the Giant Dipper rollercoaster though!

We ended the night at the arcade. How did the happy couple spend their last evening before getting married? They played some classic arcade games obviously.

After some air hockey, gem and I played Tetris against each other. I’d never played this version. She kicked my butt. I also played some Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac-Man, my favorites!

Last year gem and I met with Katie, Matt, and Marc for the first time while we were in San Francisco. We took a few photos, but none turned out well. This time we had much better luck! From left to right that’s gem, Marc, me, Matt, and Katie. It was so, so good seeing them. My eyes are about to tear up just thinking about the wedding, and I wasn’t even planning on talking about the wedding itself until the next post.

You can view more photos in my Flickr album aptly named Matt and Katie’s Wedding.

You can read about the wedding itself here: Santa Cruz weekend: Matt and Katie’s wedding!

Sandwich, sandwich

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.

Christmas time!

Christmas time is always great! I hadn’t really talked about it yet at all, so I’ll mention everything briefly in this post! Even though I was taking my family’s presents to my aunt’s house, I kept them under my tree. I like having a lot of wrapped gifts under the tree.

I went to two Christmas shows. The first was the Aquabats holiday show, which I talked about previously. They played with Emily’s Army and Kepi Ghouli; it was a great show.

After I posted some photos of the show on Instagram, user gogo13band liked some of my photos. The user’s description says they’re the “literal brother band” of the Aquabats. I looked into them, and it turns out that the lead singer of the Aquabats’ brother is the lead singer of a ska band called GOGO13. They played with the Vandals and Knock-Out at “The Vandals 18th Annual Christmas Formal.” It was a great show too! The Vandals played music from their album Oi to the World!

Alex and Darnell were in Brea at her parents’ house, so I came to visit too. Devin and Lorena gave me a bottle Beet that they infused themselves! It came with recipes for two mixed drinks. That photo is of a drink called The Beet Goes On, which was great!

Alex and Darnell gave me cranberry orange bread and homemade lemon curd. Wow, it was all so delicious! I put blueberries in the lemon curd a couple times, but it was so flavorful and tasty that I definitely ate a lot without anything extra!

gem gave me a Snuggie and The Geek’s Guide to Dating. While I haven’t read much of the book yet, it’s pretty interesting and funny too. gem knew I wanted a Snuggie and called a bunch of stores trying to find one. She could only find one store that had any in stock, and when she got there, she could only find a single Snuggie. She told me I could exchange it because of the print, but I definitely wanted to keep it. It’s very comfy 🙂

I spent Christmas Eve at my aunt’s house and Christmas day at my parents’. Here’s my cousin, Mitch, collecting all the gifts to him in one place so he could open them quickly.

I got all my cousins board games. I gave Apples to Apples, The Logo Board Game, and Munchkin Legends. On the subject of board games, I also bought Edward Arkham Horror. My brother got a video game from me instead – Super Mario 3D Land. I gave gem a Tokidoki x Sanrio clutch.

I also took gem to see Cirque du Soleil’s Totem. I talked about that yesterday, but it was excellent!

Edward gave me a new leather jacket! I was very surprised, and it’s pretty great. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a leather jacket.

On the subject of unexpected gifts, my brother got me a Harman/Kardon soundbar and subwoofer. I was pretty amazed. It’s connected to my TV, and I’m listening to it right now. When it put it on top of the TV stand in front of the TV, it blocked the IR receiver on the TV. I moved it to the shelf underneath, which looks a little odd but works. It’s a great sound system! Notice the bow on the present? My mom added that.

Duncan moved the bow to Sumo. He’s quite festive with it.

We tried to turn the box into a dog house, but Angel and Sumo really didn’t want to hang out in it. We’ve put their beds in it, hoping that would entice them to enter. Well, they’re not really going for it.

Anyways, that was my Christmas time! Yay!

Thanksgiving cozy Tommy

Tommy likes getting cozy under his USC blanket! This is my aunt and uncle’s dog. I went to their house for Thanksgiving where I had a turkey dinner, watched The Internship and The Hunger Games, and chatted with family. It was a very nice evening.

Apparently Tommy doesn’t like to get cold. When he gets on the couch, he likes to be covered by the blanket – and I mean covered. He usually prefers his head to be covered too, but sometimes he’ll push his head out later, presumably because he gets hot. You know what? I do this too when it gets cold.

I also found out that my cousin is considering going to UCI. That’d be pretty cool in my opinion, but I’m not sure he’d really care that I’d be in the area.

Hopefully everyone else had a happy Thanksgiving (or a good Thursday for my friends outside the US).

Jonah’s birthday, seeing Shaun, and Father’s Day

Today we went to a birthday party for gem’s newphew, Jonah. It was a lot of fun, but as usual at her family parties, I ate way too much. Cooking skill must run in the family!

We also got to play with this awesome dog. I believe her name was Nala. At one point she got in the house, and when they tried to get her to leave, she flattened out and refused to budge. Adorable.

After the party I stopped by Shaun’s place. He’s moving to Australia soon and was giving away some of this belongings. He gave me some dumbbells and the collector’s edition of The Burning Crusade. We stayed for a while and chatted, which was nice since I hadn’t seen him in a while. It takes a lot of courage and initiative to make such a big life-changing choice like moving to a new country. I hope it works out well for him!

After Shaun’s it was off to my dad’s house. He seems to be doing well, and I’m glad I got to talk to him on Father’s Day. We almost always argue about huge personal philosophies, politics, and the economy, but it’s nice that he gives me a point of view that’s often hard to see. On the way back to the car, I met a woman who asked for help a box out of her truck. She and another woman had purchased a new shed and needed to carry into the backyard. I helped them get it moved and talked for a bit. They were both very nice and offered me a ride if I needed and money for my help, both of which I declined. I didn’t want to take their money, and I didn’t actually need the ride.

Although I feel exhausted right now for some reason, it was a very nice day.

Lost hamsters

After dinner earlier this week, look what I found in the parking lot. On the base of a lamppost in the parking lot was a cage with five hamsters. They were adorable. I watched them for a couple minutes, unsure of what to do.

I didn’t really want to just leave them, but what would I do with hamsters? Plus, what if it was an accident and there was a family rushing back to the parking lot while I stood there? In the end, I didn’t do anything. I sure hope they’re okay though.

gem named them Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, and Tiger.

Waving Bear

this bear rules. via Jake Nickell on Facebook