Tag Archives: barbecue

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July! I went up to Vasquez Rocks recently for this photoshoot with Anela of her quite American dress.

I thought I’d share some of my favorites here.

The park seemed a nice place for hiking in the future, but we didn’t do much during the shoot. They apparently film a lot of TV and film here too – Star Trek, Bill & Ted’s, and the Flintstones to name a few.

For more of my photos from the shoot, you can check my Flickr.

Here’s a shot Raymond (Instagram: @raymond_g583) took of us with the little fireworks!

I like this one that Mike (Instagram: @dirty_caliboy_mike) took of me shooting.

There was also some sweet food eating as is an obvious Fourth of July tradition. We were quite lucky that gem had so many hats! Thanks for the selfie, Antonio.

Michelle was bringing a friend we didn’t know, and that friend ended up being Josh. It was a pretty funny surprise. Small world!

gem wore this cute Fourth of July outfit complete with blue wig! Coincidentally, her brother wore pretty much the same outfit (besides the wig). Her family has awesome fashion sense!

We also ate oh-so-much food – barbecue, meats, veggies, fruit, pizza, cheesecake, cake, ice cream, and more! This red, white, and blue ice cream was gem’s masterpiece. It was blueberry ice cream with swirls of strawberry jelly and marshmallow. It was all delicious!

What a fantastic celebration of America!

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was pretty packed. In fact, it started before the actual weekend. Duncan and I went to happy hour at Gina’s Pizza Wednesday, which turned into a fun night. While Thursday was a nice day, Friday was busy again. That was Anela’s graduation, which I already talked about in another post.

However, when I got home, I found that my roommates were enjoying some cocktails by the fire pit outside with music. We ran out of wood to burn, so eventually Duncan started finding wood to burn in the garage – a single plank, pieces of old furniture, etc. His sword also made an appearance in an attempt to cut some wood. Not only did that fail, but the sword got damaged.

Saturday night we had some people over to hang out. Alex came over, and while Haley didn’t make it, she did send a chocolate pecan pie with him. Delicious!

On Sunday I went to Melody’s yoga class, which was fantastic. Later that evening, I met up some friends. Matt, Katie, and Marc were in town from Fremont so we had dinner at Umami Burger and went bowling. I was not very good at bowling, but it was great seeing them! It’s too bad I don’t get to see them more often, but I’ll actually get to see them in a few days when I go up north and stay with them for the weekend!

Monday was Memorial Day, so of course we had a barbecue.

gem created the jalapeño bacon s’more. Besides being incredibly spicy with all the seeds, it was very good.

Did you see the piñata at the top of the post? Jessica brought a piñata. Heck yeah. We took turns swinging at it with my Anime Expo Yaoi Paddle without any of that spinning around or blindfolding nonsense. To make up for it, we had some rules about how to swing, and we also agreed to all take it easy for the first round so we could all get a chance to hit it.

When the loop ripped off his head, we had to attach him through his butt using the hole that’s for stuffing the candy in him.

When that tore too, we reattached him again with a sort of makeshift noose from duct tape.

gem earned first blood.

When the legs were torn from the rest of the body, we decided to burn them.

gem had to show off her spoils of war.

Jessica made the candy pour out, and then it was time to collect!

Once all the candy was bashed out of it, we roasted the carcass. I felt like a true Greek – a feast and a burning sacrifice.

Oh, but what about the head?

Our prize was mounted.

It’s quite fitting for Robot House.

Barbecue and pool party

Sunday my parents had a barbecue and pool party at their house. There was lots of delicious food, including chips, dips, hot dogs, ice cream, and brownies! I think it may have been an excuse for Pete to show off his Suds-O-Matic. It’s a retro washing machine that he gutted and now uses to hold cold beers. It works pretty well and looks awesome!

They invited some of my mom’s coworkers, their neighbors, Demian (a former Toshiba employee), and Demian’s wife Susan. There was an assortment of kids there as well. I invited gem and Anela.

When I went in my brother’s room to pet the cat, I saw a tiny lizard. Anela managed to catch it in a jar!

The only logical thing to do was to take a selfie with the three of us, Mulligan, and the lizard!

Barbecue and pool party

I went to a barbecue and pool party at Edward and Carries’ yesterday. The food was excellent, although I only actually took a picture of the one item above. We had chips, mango salsa, guacamole, chicken, shrimp, strawberries, pineapple, rice, mojito bars, and mojitos. The mojito bars are shown above and are similar to lemon bars but made with a mojito cocktail. Pretty tasty!

Everything tasted amazing with one caveat: the pineapple was too strong. See, a lot of the food was cooked with rum, and the pineapple was soaking in rum for a few days apparently. I could smell the alcohol just bringing the pineapple near my face. It was liking taking shots. Pineapple will never be the same!

After dinner we went swimming and in the hot tub! It was a lot of fun to see my friends and meet some new people!