today meghan and josh hosted a fantastic super bowl party – fried food included:
for more fried shenanigans, please see LA county fair.
…and it’s kind of weird. i mean – i parked next to what i guess is a giant water tank? but this is just a regular office building. and now we’re going to go eat in the commissary or something. so it’s exciting but not, at the same time. weird.
[mirrored from miscellany…eventually i’ll figure out how to integrate these or something.
i spent a few hours playing it last night and it is SO much fun. i want a wii so bad.
this weekend was pretty great! first off, friday night jim was in town, so jim, meghan, josh, cameron, will, pat and i went to the fabled wokcano for dinner and drinks. wokcano is fabled because when i first moved to burbank, meghan, josh, clayton, my mom and i went to dinner and i didn’t tell meghan and josh where we were going. after parking josh saw the giant flaming wokcano sign and got excited that maybe that was the place we were going to eat. unfortunately no, but it’s been raised to mythic levels ever since. did wokcano live up to our expectations? well, no, because there’s no ‘wokcano special’ or ‘wokcano drink’ involving dry ice and maybe actual lava. and that was basically the agreed-upon benchmark for the restaurant. the food was good though, and my pear martini was soooo good.
after dinner we went across the street to gordon biersch. the beer and scotch flowed and kevin met up with us a little later on. i played with jim’s iphone, we talked about comics, i got some good jim hugs and all was right in the world. post-drinks, will wanted to play rock band i so did i, but driving down to his place when my building was literally a few hundred feet away did not sound like a good plan. so, we parted ways and pat and i got another drink at the burbank bar & grill before we called it a night.
saturday – …well nothing really happened on saturday. i was tired and kind of hung over, so i spent the day cleaning my room, doing laundry, flipping my mattress, watching ‘willow’ and playing carcassonne with maria (who is totally obsessed with it now – oh god, what have i done?). maria took down the christmas tree (*sob*) and made some awesome korean food for dinner and then i went to bed early and finished ‘superman: red son‘ (OMG AMAZING – the end is INCREDIBLE).
sunday meghan and josh had us over for brunch (maria, pat and i – clayton was working and thus did not get to enjoy meghan’s homemade almond biscotti, although meghan sent some home with us) and it was so good! josh made french toast stuffed with bananas and walnut (? almond?) butter, there were circus waffles (josh agreed to eat all the clown-shaped ones), the aforementioned biscotti, mimosas and bellinis, coffee, tea, oj, bacon and a happy puppy to keep our feet warm under the table. brunch was incredible, and afterwards meghan, josh and i had our christmas (i will eventually post photos of the ADORABLE tshirt i received – three words: robots in love) then meghan showed me legoland star wars which totally makes me want to get a wii.
sunday afternoon maria and i napped on the couch while watching ‘planet earth’ (borrowed from josh and meghan) and taking turns cuddling with chloe, who was even more interested in licking my pants than usual, since they smelled of watson. after catching the first half hour or so of the abbreviated golden globes – which i found to be incredibly refreshing, btw – i drove to west hollywood. after a failed attempt to hit golden apple for my missing issue #1 of doktor sleepless, i went to pat’s and he, asa and i watched the premiere of the new terminator series. omg. it was. *sigh* it was not good. it wasn’t awful, but asa put it best – “did the writers of this show even SEE the other movies??” also, there was not nearly enough summer glau ass-kicking. afterwards we watched ‘casshern’, which i’d rented in lieu of ‘sunshine’ which was nowhere to be found in the valley. my original review of ‘casshern’ which is amusing because i feel the same way about it, except now that i understand the dialogue, i understand the movie as a whole more and less.
this week is a busy one – ‘there will be blood’ tonight, ‘i am legend’ tomorrow, another work design-y thing on wednesday, pub trivia on thursday and ‘cloverfield’, the murakami exhibit and a road trip to solvang this weekend.
i went to the dentist this morning and it was awesome. i’ll never understand why people don’t want to go there and get nice clean teeth and see cool x-rays and photos of their insides. i have lots of theories about why most people hate the dentist – guilt about not taking care of their teeth, genetically bad teeth and thus a lot of dental work needed on a consistent basis (or at least at a young age when phobias are easily formed), low oral pain tolerance and/or never had orthodontic work and don’t understand the heights oral pain can reach. then again, maybe i just had an awesome pediatric dentist. we got to pick a toy from the treasure chest at the end of every exam, the ceiling was plastered with awesome posters and the x-ray machine had a cover that made it look like a giraffe.
yesterday morning maria and i drove to santa monica for a much-needed change of pace. we climbed the famous (infamous?) santa monica steps and walked for almost an hour down the coast and back. we hit the promenade for lunch (bloody marys, homemade chicken sausage, almond-crusted french toast) and at REI i bought some under armour for the snowshoeing trip in february. we spent the rest of the day watching movies and trying not to fall asleep after all that walking and stair-climbing.
last night will had a party at his apartment and it was an excellent time. he fried up homemade mozzarella sticks (fresh cheese! panko!) and his special recipe chicken wings. these were the good kind of wings, the kind that force your sinuses open right before you take a bite – they were sooooo good.
will also made delicious mojitos and a variation on a white russian (no kahlua – had to use the godiva chocolate liqueur instead) that tasted like chocolate milk and jack dubbed ‘the nabokov’. steve brought a pumpkin pie, i brought scotch, cameron brought two kinds of fudge and jack brought drinko.
after we watched will mix the wing sauce (he has a special jar, purchased specifically for wing-sauce mixing) we played rock band (ed, an actual drummer was pretty awesome on the drum set) and celebrity. for celebrity we had to make new rules: no physicists (jack is an astrophysicist) and no cinematographers (a lot of afi cinematographers in attendance). one round, steve and i put in the same celebrity – starbuck – and it goes without saying that we both meant kara thrace and not frank.
at around 3am half of the partygoers had left, and a second round showed up. the deep-fryer was fired up again and more mojitos were muddled. i held out for another half an hour then i left and drove jack back to pasadena before i could fall asleep on will’s couch. it was a really fun new year’s eve and totally TOTALLY nerdy which made it even better.
…is one of the best books i’ve ever read. i feel the same sort of excitement as when i read the ‘his dark materials’ trilogy for the first time…and also the same sort of outrage and vague betrayal that no one had ever told me these books existed and that i should read them. if you haven’t read ‘ender’s game’ yet (or phillip pullman’s ‘his dark materials’) you should do so immediately.
i just worked for 15 hours straight with only bathroom breaks and 15 minutes each for lunch and dinner. i’m sleepy. but. but! this will not keep me from finishing ‘the ultimates’ vol. 1 tonight. a girl’s gotta have her priorities.
today i got up early and clayton, maria and i met meghan, josh and watson at runyon canyon. it was fantastic! we hiked up a pretty steep hill (a good training area to get into shape for snowshoeing in january) and got a really great view of los angeles. between panting for air. and gulping water. there were a lot of cute dogs (and i’m think this dog’s owner who we stopped to talk to was aya sumika from ‘numbers’. if it wasn’t her this woman looked a lot like her). on our way out of the park we helped a family look for their dog (it was found all the way back at the top of the crest). post-hiking we went to panera for lunch. an all-around great morning and i can’t wait to go back there!
today ‘the lake house’ was on cable and i was teary all the way through it. not because of the story (which, admittedly, did make me cry the first time i saw it) but because it made me ache for chicago. the el, the metra, daley plaza, the lake, the architecture, lake shore drive…sigh. i miss my home.
title quote from the arrah and the ferns song ‘tokyo, tokyo’