Category Archives: Journal

My 29th birthday weekend!

I had a super awesome 29th birthday weekend! My birthday was Friday, and I worked from home. After work, I took Alice’s yoga class, which was really great. Anela was covering someone’s shift, so I got to see her while I was there too. After yoga, I met with gem for dinner. She gave me these guns that might or might not have been bananas. She’s good at Snapchat edits.

We went to Sake 2 Me and ate way too much sushi.

I don’t remember exactly what the one on the left is called, but it has fried onions on top and is tasty. The one on the right is the Green Goblin. It’s amazing; sorry people who don’t like cilantro!

For dessert, I got a cherry pie from Polly’s Pies. gem lit this candle for me and sang to me!

Mmmmm.

On Saturday, gem and I had lunch with our friends Matt and Katie. They were in town from the Bay area to go to Disneyland! We ate at the Anaheim Packing House. I forgot to get a picture of us, but I did get a picture of the crepe we split. I guess we know my priorities 🙁

Later that night, Jonathan came to the house. He joined me and the other roommates in a game of Power Grid. It was pretty fun!

Sunday was a day for Huntington Beach! This mailbox looked pretty cool.

Looks beautiful, huh? It was actually pretty chilly and overcast most of the day, but it was still fun.

Anela and Edward ended up meeting gem and me there. We had some tacos at Sancho’s Tacos. They pretty much make the best tacos ever.

I also tried their nachos for the first time. The nachos were good, but I still wouldn’t dare order something without getting the O.G. tacos.

After we finished eating, we decided to go to a restaurant and get more food. Don’t worry, it makes perfect sense. This was some sort of tangerine ice cream with a chocolate chip cookie from Zimzala.

And ganache! So rich!

I tried an apple blossom cocktail with apple brandy, apple juice, lemon, and cinnamon syrup; a cucumber cooler cocktail with Grey Goose pear vodka, agave, cucumber, lime, and soda; and tequila shots. The apple blossom was good, and the tequila shot was surprisingly smooth, but the cucumber cooler was absolutely delicious and quite refreshing and crisp!

The main reason I wanted to go Sunday instead of Saturday was because Danny Maika performs on Sunday. I requested some Sublime.

gem asked for some ukulele music. It’s no surprise that this was one of the songs he played!

gem also asked him to sing me “Happy Birthday!” Yay, thanks gem and Danny!

There was a Connect Four board out, so we had to play some games. Edward had left by this time, but the three of us had fun playing. Anela is better than gem or me!

The Shorebreak Hotel also had these neat little fires outside. gem noticed they look like sunflowers!

On the way back to our cars, we also two cats. One didn’t want to hang out with us, but one was super friendly. We got to pet him a bunch!

From left to right, here’s Anela, gem, Danny, and myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to get a photo until after Edward left. It was a rad day and a super fun weekend! Thanks to everyone that made it great!

Happy birthday, gem!

Happy birthday, gem! We celebrated by painting at Color Me Mine! The woman who worked there even recognized gem because we spent her last birthday there. How cool is that? She even made something based on gem’s design because she liked it so much.

Woo, painting party!

I painted this mug. I hope it looks good when it’s fired. It’s Jake. You knew that, right? I hope so.

Wait, look at the other side! It’s Jake! Woo!

Full disclosure time! I stole this idea from /u/Corrupt_Core on Reddit.

We went to the Anaheim Packing District dinner, and this tip jar at the Kroft made me laugh.

I had a sandwich and the pot pie poutine. So good!

For dessert, I got a PopBar.

Eating made me happy and sad at the same time.

In the end, I was quite sad.

Anyways, happy birthday, gem! Yay!

Niki’s birthday

Yesterday was Niki’s birthday! At first she didn’t want to drink, but we convinced her. Chocolate syrup and peppermint schnapps tastes a lot like Thin Mints, you know.

Niki performed the traditional birthday rites of her people by anointing her feet.

No, she was actually just washing her feet in the sink.

Oh, that’s not any less weird? No, no it is not.

But she made a delicious pound cake…

…and a carrot cake! This is just the trimmings; I didn’t photograph the actual cake.

Highlights of the night include all of us playing board games, me kissing Collin’s head, Angel biting (or at least pressing her teeth against) Niki’s face, me biting Angel’s ear in retaliation, and Collin trying to bite Angel’s face in retaliation before Angel did it right back to him.

Not a bad night.

Action-packed Super Bowl Sunday

Sunday morning I went to Quail Hill for a hike!

gem used her nice camera while I took pictures with my phone.

It was a really beautiful day. We didn’t hike for very long, but it was nice to get out. The sky seemed especially blue against the greenery.

After our hike, Anela suggested tea. It was a great idea! Roasting Water was serving their drinks in cute glass bottles with corks. The tea was tasty, and I got to keep a neat bottle.

When we were finished with our tea, we headed to Boiling Crab for lunch. It’s a Super Bowl tradition. The plan is usually to eat during the Super Bowl to avoid the rush, but this year we went before the Super Bowl. It was still relatively empty. I didn’t take any photos, but it was delicious. You’ll have to trust me.

With food out of the way, I went to hang out my friend Aiya.

We also trapped this baby. Henley didn’t seem to mind.

Actually, I went to spend time with Alex, Darnell, and Henley, three of my very favorite people in the world. It was wonderful seeing them. Every day I get to spend with them is always one of my favorite days.

It was a excellent and action-packed day!

Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox

This weekend I saw Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. I’ve loved them since gem introduced me to them, so I was excited to see them. It was also great that this was the first show I’d seen in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall despite having seen many shows at the Segerstrom Center. I didn’t tell gem what we were seeing, and she got surprised that they were playing Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox from the speakers outside the concert hall. I acted surprised until the usher confirmed with us that we were there for Postmodern Jukebox, and then I think she was happy.

Scott Bradless & Postmodern Jukebox performs covers of modern, popular music in various other, older styles. Die Young in a “bluegrass / country western / saloon-style” is one of my favorites.

I’m also a fan of their motown cover of Shake It Off!

We had a half hour before the show started, so we took some photos inside the hall.

It was pretty!

Here’s gem with a swirly background.

We asked someone to take our photo. Trying to hide the program behind my back just made it look worse. Whoops.

They had chalkboard speech bubbles and the OFf Center Festival backdrop for photographs. I think it was supposed to be for feedback.

gem decided to do a knock, knock joke. We ran low on time, but this is what we did!

Here they are performing! They were super entertaining! Besides great music, there were some burlesque dancers and even retro, radio advertisements. For example, we learned about the newspaper feature for finding good, conservative men – Tinder – as well as a service to experience horseless carriages with semi-professionals – Uber!

I didn’t recognize every song, but I knew many of them; there were a huge variety of styles too. The tambourine man went crazy with energy, and I totally loved him for it. In my photo, you can see man in a white shirt reaching toward the stage. He seemed totally into it, constantly reaching up at them. At one point the tambourine man invited him onto the stage and gave him a tambourine. Pretty cool!

Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox ended the night with Shake It Off!

After the show, we went back to finish our knock, knock joke.

Let’s end this post with their rendition of Call Me Maybe!

What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas

What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, but I’m going to talk about food anyways.

Okay, this wasn’t even actually Vegas. Before leaving Orange County, we stopped for breakfast at Xa – Sweet & Savory Cafe. It was really delicious, but what makes me especially like it is how simple and clean (not the song) the food was. There weren’t a lot of mysteries. You get what you order, unlike places to add a bunch of sauces and fat and bacon to everything.

For dinner that first night we ate at Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill. The shepherd’s pie was hot, tasty, and filling.

We had brunch the next day at Hash House A Go Go. As usual, portions were humungous. I got a pancake.

Back in the hotel room, three of us played Spaceteam while Duncan napped. Sorry, Windows phone.

We wanted to have a buffet for dinner, but brunch was too filling. Instead, we ate at Gordon Ramsay’s BurGR. The “GR” are his initials. Get it? Okay.

Somehow we ended up a Gordon Ramsay restaurant both nights in a row. First, the drinks and appetizers were great. Those jalapeno poppers were pretty good (although I prefer my own), and the “Honey-Pig Bao Buns” were tasty as well.

Neither of those really compare to the burger. This is the Farm Burger cooked medium with duck breast bacon, English sharp cheddar, and a fried egg. Wow. As it turns out, a place named BurGR makes good burgers.

I spent five dollars in the Ghostbusters and the Plants vs. Zombies slot machines. Yay.

On the way out of town, we had lunch at SkinnyFATS. This was a neat restaurant that had the menu divided into two sections – happy and healthy. I ate something off the healthy side, Naked Chix, which consists of seared chicken breast, mango basil sauce, brown rice, and cilantro yogurt. It was only $7.50 as well, which is pretty great. I wish SkinnyFATS was in Irvine.

It was a weekend full of food.

No snow play!

Last weekend gem, Anela, Daniel, and I went to play in the snow near Mountain High! Well, Anela wanted to go for a photo shoot, Daniel was photographing her, and gem and I just wanted to see snow. Neither of us had ever been in the snow, and I was pretty excited to go.

Photo credit on the above photo to Daniel Baker!

We spent a bit of time scoping out the snow and deciding where to shoot.

Pretty much everywhere had signs that said “No snow play” or the equivalent in Spanish. It was actually harder to find a English sign than a Spanish sign.

That didn’t stop us from making snowballs anyways!

Daniel taking photos.

Where’d he go? OoOOo it’s a photographer-ghost!

What’s it feel like to lie in the snow? Pretty damn cold.

Oh, and wet. I was wet for a while. gem had these sweet Tokidoki rain boots that worked to keep her feet dry from the snow. My feet were wet for the rest of the day, and my shoes were wet for a day or so after.

Here’s Anela posing, but Daniel’s will look much better of course. gem and I were basically her attendants. We took her a coat off her and fanned out her dress when it was time to shoot. It was fun!

gem kick!

When we were about to leave, it actually started snowing. Up until then, it was just raining.

I think gem was excited about this fact.

Here’s gem in the snow!

We ended the day with sushi from Sake 2 Me. Delicious!

Photo credit on this one to Daniel Baker as well. Thanks for the fun day guys!

Hello, 2015

Last year was a pretty fun year. I was pulled on stage during a clown show, went stand-up paddleboarding, and went wakeboarding. I attended Katie and Matt’s wedding. I started doing yoga this summer and have stuck with it consistently. I switched to a bodyweight workout routine and have been doing that regularly. San Diego Comic-Con was a lot of fun, and for the first time, the roles were reversed; people asked me for pictures. (I was in my Aquabats costume.)

I attended a ton of concerts, including but not limited to Reel Big Fish, The Maxies, The Originalites, The Aquabats, Koo Koo Kangaroo, GOGO13, Half Past Two, Sugar Stems, The Interrupters, The Holophonics, The Skatalites, Suburban Legends, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Los SuperSpies, and so many more. I watched a bunch of improv, mostly at ImprovCity and Spectacles. I attended some Risk! Live. I went to a Teenage Mutant Pizza Party and the Scott Pilgrim Picture Show with CinemAttack! There was Dapper Day, Walking with Dinosaurs, a Civil War reenactment, The Great Gatsby party, the OC Fair, and LA Kiss. There was some Yadi Presents burlesque, a performance of Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Big River – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Man of La Mancha, and other performances. Lots of fun stuff.

Edit: Oh, man, how can I forget the Tall Ships Festival or being a guest on the Twisted Nether Blogcast?!

Work continues to go well. I cleaned out my closet. And yes, that’s worth mentioning. I attended Henley’s first birthday party and gave him a big smile with his present. I finished off Mists of Pandaria and started Warlords of Draenor. Sorry, but a little video games had to leak into this too. I got my backlog (my list of games, books, movies, etc.) that were purchased but never finished down to 340, which is pretty good. When I started counting in April, I had 471 items that needed to be beat/watched/read. I got rear-ended while driving for the first time. That’s not really much of an accomplishment, but I handled it at least. It was my 10-year high school reunion a few months back, and that was a lot of fun. I also cooked a bunch – stuffed bell peppers, pizzas, calzones, salads, salami wraps, pork chops, steaks, a cake, lemon bars, brownies, and more delicious things. I, a straight man, went out for a drink with a man I met on a dating site. I got stung by way too many bees.

It was a cool year.

2015 started with a party with close friends. Just a minute or two into the year I got to witness a friend propose to his girlfriend.

We’re off to a good start.

Ska Luau V!

Last night was the fifth annual Ska Luau at the House of Blues Anaheim, and it was an awesome show! I was ready to go with a new (or at least never worn to a concert) Half Past Two shirt, and despite it being 42 degrees outside, it was nice inside!

The show opened with the Magnolia Polynesian Dance Troupe. They did dances from a bunch of a different countries and had both men and women, but I didn’t record very much.

The first band to perform was Failed to Victory. I’ve seen them before, and they’re great.

I’d never heard Skadonna, but they were really fun. You might guess that they perform Madonna covers. I’ll admit, the songs that I didn’t know weren’t as cool, but I really enjoyed hearing the covers.

Los SuperSpies graced us with their debut! Not all of their songs were new to me though. Here they’re playing The World is New. If you’re a fan of Save Ferris or Starpool, you’ll probably become a fan of Los SuperSpies too!

Half Past Two is one of my favorite bands, so it was awesome that they performed as well.

Hey, look what I just found.

Sorry, that has nothing to do with the Ska Luau, but it came up as a recommended video at the end of the one I recorded. I didn’t know they covered this, and I like Vampire Weekend.

Back to the Ska Luau! Here some friends joined Half Past Two on stage.

Suburban Legends! Another one of my favorite bands! I love their awesome choreography (and music of course).

This little guy was rocking out too! Well, honestly, he was mostly napping. But his parents were enjoying the show.

There might have been a surfing contest too. Competition is fierce when a prized pineapple is on the line.

It was such a terrific show with a truly amazing line up. Spending the 30th with excellent ska and the 31st, tonight, with friends is a great way to end 2014.