Browse Author: beakatude

Jes’ Fun Little Game

We have lots of cool neighbors. We even consider some of them our friends. Unfortunately, there is an older couple who haven’t been very friendly to us. In the past year and a half we’ve lived here, they’ve never waved “hi” or even cracked a smile. They live right across the street and we have to see them quite often when we walk Koa. No problem…it’s cool.
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Anyway, we have the X3 now and have to park the CL out on the street until we sell the RSX. When this started, Jes decided to park it right in front of the grumpy couple’s house for fun and left it there for a week. The poor wife couldn’t park her precious car in front and had to walk an extra few steps to her house each day. When we got back from Mammoth one day, we found a note on the windshield. It basically said to move our car because it was taking up a “premium space” used for their convenience. It was signed “Your Neighbor” but we know who it came from. These are people who have 3 cars, a 2-car garage, and park only 1 of them inside!! Boy, this made Jes’ blood boil and has created a little monster out of him. So since our little note incident, Jes has made an extra special effort to put the car in “their spot” as much as possible.
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Just this afternoon, I moved the CL to the driveway to give it a wash. The grumpy wife came home with her daughter, parked in the “premium spot”, and pointed me out to her. Now she thinks it’s me!! To make things worse, when I finished washing the car, Jes drove the CL away and parked it back in that spot as soon as the daughter left. Mind you, the street was completely empty *sigh*…so the game continues.

My Tour of LA

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had a pretty tiring weekend touring Southern California/LA. On Saturday, Jes and I went to Snow Summit for a half-day trip. The snow was nice and we finished by 1:00 to get a $15 voucher for our next trip. We got back to Irvine by 3 and packed up for the Bike Tour. With the bikes on our car, we drove up to the LA Convention Center to pick up our bibs. We were so late and I had to make a quick dash to the expo in heels. We later went to dinner in Beverly Hills. The place was called Mastro’s and was next door to Spago…your typical LA scene. The restaurant was voted “The Best Steakhouse in LA” so it was worth checking out. We even saw Warren Beatty as we waited for our table. The ambience was upscale casual and the dining room/bar was pretty boisterous. Overall, it was a cool experience but I probably won’t be going back any time soon. We didn’t get back to our motel room in the USC area until midnight where we stayed overnight with my cousin and his wife.
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With only 4 hours of sleep, Sunday started really early. We woke up at 4:45 am and the LA Bike Tour started at 5:45 am. Supposedly there were 17,000 riders this year! It’s no wonder why there were so many crashes. With lots of amateur riders weaving and cutting people off, I felt so lucky to not take part of any of the crashes. We rode through Crenshaw, Wilshire District, K-town, and parts of South Central. The 22-mile route was cool and very reminiscent of my LA Marathon experience in 2003. I was just glad to be on a bike this time. On our way back to Cerritos, Pish and Debbie followed our Acura CL with two bikes on top with their CL with 2 bikes on top. It must have been a funny thing to see on the road. The Acura LA Bike Tour should have given us some discount for the free advertisement today. When we got back to Cerritos, we took a nice 4-hour death nap before dinner…a good end to our Super Southern California Weekend.

He’s almost here!!

Jes and I went to dinner with Marie and Kenji last night and got a little update on her baby. Her due date is March 17th but we all have a feeling it may happen much earlier. When we were ordering dinner, Marie said that she wished she could have the Seared Tuna. Alas, with the recent reports about high levels of mercury in today’s tuna, she took that out of her diet for the last 8 months. I would be so sad not being able to have my favorite foods/drinks. No coffee. No sushi. No wine. *sigh* However, it’s neat to see how excited they are but I can’t help feeling anxious for them as well. It’s such a life-changing event…so much more than getting married. I see what it has done to Patti & Howard and cringe at the thought of not getting more than 4 hours of sleep at a time and all the worrying that comes along with it.

Photos courtesy of Beakatude

We went to Vegas this weekend for a little project. Jes’ friend Kevin wants to build a website for his restaurants so I had the opportunity to take some photos for him. Sounds fun, huh? Not really. Photography has always been a little hobby of mine but I’ve never had to actually do it well. With my Nikon and 6 rolls of black and white film in hand, I got free roam of the kitchens. The dim sum chef even made some dumplings for me so I could get some close-ups. It was sort of fun but I can’t help worrying how the prints will look. I also shot some digis and will hopefully be able to add some to my istockphoto.com portfolio. Stay tuned…

Let it snow…

Did I mention how awesome this season has been? Well, I’ll say it again, IT ROCKS! I went to Snow Summit this past long weekend and the conditions were really nice. Not too shabby for a local mountain. Anyway, we had plans of getting there by 8:30 when it opened and ski until 1:00 to get a $14 voucher to come back another day. Well, that didn’t happen…not even close. Instead, we got up late. Didn’t leave the house until about 7:30. We finally started up the mountain at 9:00 to find CHP checkpoint telling us that even though we had a 4WD car, we needed to carry chains in the car. Yikes! So we drove back down the mountain to buy chains. We checked Wal-Mart – no luck. We checked the Chevron that had a sign outside saying “WE HAVE CHAINS” – not for us. Before we gave up and went home, we checked a Shell station where we got gas earlier and they had chains for our tires!! WOOHOO! Back up the mountain we went. We got past the checkpoint with chains in hand, drove up the icy roads (pretty cool), and had lunch at Denny’s at 11:30. Hm…could we still have a fun-filled ski day?! The answer is yes-a-rootie! We got to Snow Summit just in time for the start of their half-day rate. Signed our lives away for a $10 discount and went up for only $29 each. Sweet! The snow was awesome; the runs were empty; and Jes had one of his strongest days!! On top of that, Koa had come with us and got to play in the snow after we put away our equipment at the end of the day. By the way, it was still dumping snow on our way home.

Plane – Incoming!

Happy 30th Birthday, Huy! Last night Jes and I went down to San Diego to celebrate Huy’s Big Three-O. Dinner was at Indigo Grill in Little Italy, which was not bad. The ambience was cool and we got a big oval table up front. The food had a southwestern flare and all had some “kick” to them. They also brought Huy and the rest of us 3 large platters of desserts on the house at the end of the night. The coconut creme brulee was very yummy. Afterwards we all went to Airport Lounge where Huy reserved two big booths and invited a bunch of people he worked with. He has a lot of friends! Anyway, if you were part of his “guest list” you had no cover and got to make your own vodka or rum drinks at the booth. The coolest part of the lounge was that it was right under the flight path of planes landing in San Diego airport. You can go out to the patio and watch the plane fly right over you. They flew so low that it seemed like you could reach up and touch each one. I thought it was cool…I sat there having an Autistic moment saying, “plane!” with a big grin on my face each time one flew by.