October - Birthdays, Bicycling and Beards

October is always a hectic month since ALL of my friends decided to be born during this time.  Thankfully they were all creative and all had separate fun events which made this month pretty entertaining.

Erik's Birthday - Sushi Stop, UCB Comedy and some Bear

We spent the Friday night in Franklin Village enjoying a really cheap sushi dinner at Sushi Stop in a private back room.  Following this was an improv comedy show about Fucked Up families and scenes improv'd from random music from various iPods.  Went to the bar next door where the upstairs sitting area sat vacant waiting for us.  Ern is trying to sneak a blow on Erik's candle.


Irene's Birthday - Harry Potter Themed in the Park

I've known Irene since high school through Key Club and she was thrilled when I was able to attend her Harry Potter themed party in a park in Culver City.  She went ALL out setting up a legit game of Quidditch and breaking up the groups into houses using an electronic sorting hat.  There was a guy/girl combo who kicked my team's ass at Quidditch.  I was so out of breath but we managed to get a great picture.  I also slammed myself into JV trying to take another jumping picture - Ouch.  One of the games was put the 8 pictures of the Harry Potter characters in order by release/age.  We got Harry, so it was easy.  Hermione was impossible!  I also reused the costume for halloween.. how convenient!

Jlo and Brian's Birthday - Food Bank Volunteering 

Jlo and Brian went the giving back route and had their birthdays early in the morning at the LA food bank.  People usually mix of these volunteer opportunities with food kitchens where you serve food, but we were all tasked to put together care packages full of juices and cereal.

Jlo and Brian provided a wonderful Filipino breakfast to get the day going right!

Back breaking work!  And all about the assembly line!  The factory was huge with tons of volunteers and at the end they tell us how many meals we've provided.  It was pretty amazing.


Steve and Sam - Dim Sum and Shaved Ice

I tried to surprise Steve and Sam by lighting a candle in a piece of dim sum, but I almost burnt myself so we pretended.  After Dim Sum at King Hua and yummy shaved ice at Salju Desserts.  They have an amazing Vietnamese Iced Coffee shaved ice that I fell in love with.

Other Steve, Steve and Ed's Surprise

These video game nerds are united by some foreign language that I don't quite understand, but we had a nice green cake with some funny looking cartoon things coming out of it.  One of them was missing so they facetimed.  I played with the guinea pig.


Steve and Ed's Birthday - WeHo

Not very surprising.  WeHo is the simplest way to celebrate a gay birthday.  We danced and did the run way walk at Eleven Lounge.  Find the light and dance!

Sean's Birthday - Senor Fish

Sean celebrated his birthday at Senor Fish in Little Tokyo.  Mad Asian Americaness with #swag oozing from the bars.  Sean made these cute thank you cards with taxi numbers in case we all get out of control.  I was feeling the patio space... and Jimmy photobombed me and Andrew.

Ciclavia - Heart of LA

Downtown LA shuts down for CicLAvia.  It's definitely an adventure to ride bikes in a city dependent car culture.  It was particularly pretty to see the downtown skyline from the East LA.  I had left over kids sunglasses from Jimmy's birthday that I left at the information booth.  Those were snatched up SO quickly.  In the top left photo, you can see Erik learning how to mount a bike on a bus.  This is actually really useful.

Facial Hair

My boss was on vacation in Europe and he posted a picture of his long hair don't care beard on facebook.  I went ahead and printed that out and send him these pictures to show that we miss him.   I tried out facial hair in October - my coworker things I look rugged, but it's too sparse to have that true affect.... so here are more selfies with me and an animals.

Thanks October for being an eventful month.

Halloween Festivities - Keep up the Spirit!

To continue the tradition of going to haunted houses and mazes, we checked out the Queen Mary's Haunted Harbor event and I was 100% impressed.  Everything was elaborate and terrifying.

I enjoyed the newest circus themed maze - there was so much detail.  The maze on the ship that was embellished to be sort of a virus containment unit was terrifying.  We systematically asked to wait a few minutes before going in so that there was a large gap between our groups of maximum effects.  I felt like I was in a movie.

I believe the ship is haunted for sure.  My phone stopped working and we had to take this picture 7 times to get it to show up.  The cast member was a great sport.

When these pictures came out I was so thrilled.  What a fun night and worth coming early to avoid lines.

Halloween at work was a bit silly.  I just reused my tiger costume from Bay to Breakers.  My coworkers called out a huge alcohol stain on front of the outfit.  I was slightly embarassed.  My animal rights activist coworker didn't have a costume so I made her wear Bien's chicken costume I had laying in my car trunk and hold a sign "do I look like a nugget to you?"  We had a conference call that day so other offices could see our festivities.  Sadly we were really the only office to car to dress up.  I love the spirit.  It makes life that much more pleasant. 

Jimmy and I made it to the Yelp! Halloween event at Lock and Key.  I stole sushi chef outfits from the work's marketing closet for the evening.  It was a nice quick cheat.


Pumpkin Carving

Since we throw a huge Christmas party, we usually depend on others to throw a Halloween event.  But we do have pumpkin carving during a random weekday.  I buy everyone $2 small CVS pumpkins to carve.  Except Charles, he's a size queen and bought his own monster of a pumpkin.

 So FALL! I was impressed at the pop references.

Hipster Trap

Sometimes in July we were victims of a Hipster Trap in DTLA.  Sometimes I'm really confused at what a hipster is... are they rich are they poor?  Do they shop at Urban Outfitters or thrift stores?  Do they like food trucks, brunch or tacos? Do they work?  I... I just don't know anymore.  So I'm making up my own definition.

Hipster:  A group of people that you are judging due to their life choices, but then you find yourself behaving like them two hours later...  I think that's fair.

Anyway - I found about this event thing and decided to check it out and it was a hipster trap because...

What is that thing hanging from the ceiling?  And what is that music he's playing?

...and what is that "Art?"  and why is that PBR Free?

And... why do they look like that?

Runnnnnnn Charles the Hipsters are coming!

September 14 - Exxopolis

This is the story of Saturday, September 14, 2013.  I wanted to do a "day in the life of me" sort of entry starting when I woke up to going to bed.  Lucky for me there was an exciting art exhibit so there was something to blog about.  September 14 started off at 9AM where my body clock woke me up.  I pulled up my tablet and read about the gentrification happening across the street from my house.  69 new units in what is marketed as "South Silverlake" because Echo Park still has a ghetto connotation.  I signed a petition against this sort of development where I met someone who described this as a spaceship landing in victorian house town.  Which is exactly what's happening.  Parking is my biggest concern.  5 people live in my house and we each have our own car.  This 69 unit complex is going to make the after work part of life miserable.  Sigh.

Jimmy was still sleeping.  It takes him a bit to wake up on the weekends.  If I want him to wake up I make him breakfast or coffee and place it next to his face so that his tummy would rumble and he would wake up.  Otherwise he just hisses and goes back to sleep until 11AM at least.  But today we booked tickets to Exxopolis!  It was only in town for two weekends!

We came too early and we were able to smuggle an extra ticket, but this thing was so popular that the normal wait was up to two hours.  So we walked around downtown and grabbed a burger from Chego in Chinatown which also is seeing hundreds? of new units popping up.  Mmm this burger is so good.

And we're in!  This giant labyrinth is lit by the sun.  The plastic is hand crafted by "Architects of Air."  Really trippy.  And worth the wait?  MMM yes.  I wasn't disappointed when I finally entered.  No shoes because they don't anything to be punctured.

Jimmy in color heaven.

Because the Music Center was sponsoring this exhibit in Grand Park, they had performances throughout the day.  We were able to enjoy some hawaiian dance and later an elaborate story telling with masks of different emotions.

The wait and heat exhausted us so this was all we really did that day.  Jimmy went home to see his parents and I attended a birthday party at a rooftop in downtown LA.

Made small talk with straight people all of which had their lives together.  I think I met pharmacy students, someone who words for a hedge fund, someone who was doing their residency in family medicine.  Like these were Asian Yuppies. Like for real.

I met this teacher who loves to travel and we hit it off really well.  I thought I was getting hit on by the birthday boy's sister, but apparently she was giving her business card out to everyone that night.  One can only pretend to get hit on I suppose.

I observed these bros get drunker and drunker until death.  It was amusing.

Grabbed my friend and escaped to Thai Town at 1AM.  Beef Jerky and Morning Glory from Ruen Pair  - goodness to absorb the whiskey that I was sipping on from the yuppy party.

Quick face time with Jimmy and off to dream land around 2:30AM.  Jimmy goes home to spend time with his family 1 hour away.  Takes the opportunity to get away from LA life and my demands for attention.

The End.

Urban Jungle

Jimmy's birthday is the first of a billion libra celebrations in October.  For some reason a good handful of my friends are born in October and everyone battles for the weekends.  Jimmy's kept the tradition of having an outdoor picnic and this year it was prints and patterns themed at the LACMA; which was inspired by one of his favorite high fashion label Kenzo.  I bought jungle print snap bracelets as party favors.

2012 - Malibu Wine
2011 - Getty Picnic

Jimmy is trying to eat better so he demanded that I don't get him cupcakes this year.  So I got a little creative.

Let's zoom in....

That's right!  Fruity Pebbles and Maple Bacon Donut Holes from Cafe Dolce.  It's only fitting since it's the year of the donut apparently.

I was pretty impressed with the patterns that folks owned in their closets, but Ern wins with his cat print.

I asked folks to write what they were going to bring on the event page to prevent duplicates, but instead 5 separate people brought a bucket of fried chicken!!!  Couldn't let that go to waste, it was a painful week eating leftovers.  And it was also the day I realized that my skin color is fried chicken.

I wanted to sit near the Urban Lights installation, but Jimmy preferred to be further from the crowd so that we can drink without worry.  Which worked out - Charles and I made mojitos and stored them in cute mason jars I got from Target.

Me, Jon and Alysia.  We've known each other since high school.  Steve, Erik and Jimmy the Indonesians and Hannah and Cindy our favorite lesbian couple.  You can see the mason jar in Jimmy's hand.  I didn't get a chance to take a pretty picture of it.

We decided to take a class photo.  These kids represent our core group of friends which we've made in Los Angeles.  The first shot is Sorority, Second is 90's pointing to the same direction which I messed up and the last was a gang sign.

Jimmy wanted simple, easy and fun for his birthday.  And potluck picnics are always successful.
Happy 27th Birthday Jimmy!

Still Alive

Hello neglected blog.  Just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and doing well.  September was the first month where I didn't write anything at all.  I guess I've just let myself be consumed with work and food and recapping everything stopped becoming so necessary.

Work
I'm happy with my current salary, but all of a sudden I feel like should be paid more for putting in more hours than anyone else in my office with the same roll.  Work is really testing me because of my self proclaimed adaptability I've been paired with a handful of challenging colleagues.  "Make it work," I'm flexible - but my patience is wearing thin.

Home
Jimmy and I rearranged our room and it feels refreshing.  There's a better working space and better use of the floor.  I'm thrilled about it.  I'm not thrilled about random visitors in our bedroom.  We live in an attic space and 3 times this year we've heard scratching in the walls.  This forced us to create elaborate traps.  Eventually we take our captured guest to a near by dumpster.  I'll let your imagination run wild.  But it's nothing you wouldn't find in an attic of any suburban home.

Communication
I sat down with Jimmy and told him that I needed to feel appreciated.  That I know that he appreciates everything I do for him, but I just need to hear it more often because I'm crazy.  It's a reassurance feeling that I need to not feel as if I'm being taken advantage of.  He completely understands and was glad that we talked about it.  I rationalized because it was how I was raised - "thank yous" and "you shouldn't have" and "you're so wonderful" were toss around when I grew up.  Though there is power in silence and actions... I need words.  Which is why I hate house music.

Vacation
Heading to New York on November 7th to just take another trip.  Why not?

And that's it.  I've become vastly boring.

Eating Out September and September Antics

I feel like I've blogged about these places before, but I can't find the entry.  Oh well! I'm too lazy to link these places, but ya'll know how to google things.

Homemade Chickpea soup!  Alysia gave me the recipe, it was super tastey
Jerky Beef - Ruen Pair - This is fun to eat as you wrap it in sticky bamboo rice and dip in fish sauce, for for some reason it was chewy that night
Chashu Hash Skillet - Jist Cafe in Little Tokyo - amazing.  Though Andrew didn't like this very much, I was sold by the fact that it was a "family recipe."
Indian Salad - Agra on the West Side... I'm sure you know where this is going.  It was okay.
Nem Nuong - Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa - Very hole in the wall, but it's fun to do family still Vietnamese pork DIY Spring Rolls
Samosa House - Okay, this place is amazing.  Great price, great flavors I loved it so much
Strange Noodle Soup Thing - Indo. pop up in Venice.  It was shit.  Don't eat it.
Family Night at Ernestos!  Yum pasta dish with Andy stopping by

Friends were amused at melting Snowman Jelly Window Cling.  It's time to take this down.

Alright, not really a great month for food, but lots of antics.

At work, clothes is optional.... but if you do wear clothes, blend into a couple of objects.





Keeping my desk entertaining and watching my coworker do abs between emails.

At home I found great satisfaction in filling my Soy Sauce bottle with Soy Sauce packets.  The struggle is "too real" commented a Facebook friend.  And this is what we do about air conditioner in September in the house... Yes frozen OtterPop fan.