out-of-towners

we had so much fun when ramon & alexis came down to visit! not to mention that we actually got to see and hang out with saad. after a delicious dinner at the cheesecake factory, alexis & i got our nails done while the boys went home to wait and play video games.

strangely, i never want to go to the cheesecake factory; i'm not sure why. it just seems uber corporate for some reason (oh, wait, because it is). but every time we go, we are always surprised by 1) the huge and overwhelming menu and 2) how delicious the food actually tastes.

this was most likely the second time i've ever gotten a professional manicure, the first time being for my wedding. and damn that shit is expensive! in part due to the location of the international plaza, but still. i was a little shocked when i paid at the end - i didn't even look at the prices, figuring they'd be reasonable. *sigh* alas, they were not. however, i was able to get polka dots, after many, many attempts at reaching an understanding as to what i wanted. why go for normal?



honestly, at this point, i'm not even sure what happened each of these nights. it seems that when we hang out with ramon & alexis & saad, our wallets open up and empty out and we get super drunk (at least, as drunk as kim & anthony get, which does not involve serious hangovers nor barf).

one night we went out dancing at the castle where i had multiple delicious shots. johnny... something-or-other? it was sweet and was like lemonade.

i think.

i will also dance to anything with a beat, much to anthony's horror.



another night found us at the independent, where we hung out in their second indoor room off the main bar. the super sucky thing about this bar is that this second room has the most terrible acoustics. big, boomy, lots of concrete. and um... we are not quiet people. ramon, for one, has the voice of thor - the boy simply cannot speak in quiet tones. ever. which is one of the reasons we love him.

at one point, people at the table next to us leaned over a shushed us (i heard this from alexis later) and right after they shushed us, ramon bellowed out at a integral part of his storytelling (he didn't hear the shushing, because, well, he was talking), "BAAAAM, PUNCH IN THE VAGINA!!!"

while i missed the shushing, i totally saw them all get up and leave.

sad to say, and maybe i'm a bitch here, but it's a bar, with bad acoustics. you're really going to shush us?! gtfo. when someone's an ass at a bar, you move to another spot. that's just how it is, so they can just eat it.



one of these nights, we also went to the taco bus for delicious food for saad's belly (that's when these pics were taken). i barely remember going to the taco bus, but we do have fun pictures from the visit. how does alcohol totally destroy one's sense of time?

anyways, we also went to the rack, a sushi poolhall for great tasting, ridiculously priced sushi and the hyde park cafe, which on weekends, fills to the brim with douchebags and superficial women. it kind of sucks. we could have stayed longer, but felt the need to leave due to circumstances beyond our control. ant and i went home and relaxed on the couch instead.

oh, good times. and a visit to ramon & alexis in NM in the near future? oh yes. yes, indeed.

fresh, fresh, EXCITING (so exciting to me)

totally got the hookup for some organic free-range farm eggs from a co-worker's sister! haven't had them yet, but am looking forward to delicious eggs this weekend for breakfast. i love how they come in such fabulous colors; it totally makes me want to own chickens.



and here's an italian sweet pepper from my garden! it's freaking huge - the other one i ate was tiny. right now, i'm having a bit of a problem in the garden, mostly from the fact that i shouldn't have planted so many zucchini and cucumber plants so damn close together (4 plants in 4 sq ft). the lower leaves are getting mildew blight, or whatever, and so i had to destroy one of them. it was starting to look bad and take over my basil, which was just unacceptable.

also? worms. i'm getting these gross nasty worms in my cucumbers. they're like, riddled with holes. swiss cucumbers. did i already talk about the thick white and yellow mucus poop piles on the leaves? no idea what it is, but they're gross. additionally, big things that look like stink bugs, but i think they're aphid wrangler bugs. maybe some assassin bugs, but those are good, right?! as you can see, i have no idea what i'm doing.

*sigh* i'm considering yanking everything out and starting over, including re-potting my strawberry plant into something (or somewhere) more appropriate. plus, the dollarweed is seriously growing all over. the dirt is riddled with their thin white vines and i cannot keep them under control. argh! i'm sure it can't be good for the roots of the veggies i'm growing/trying to keep alive.

c'est la vie.

fancy schmancy

even though i've only taken a few photos and we're not quite done, i just couldn't wait to share our latest home excitement.

here are our old house numbers:



kind of meh, no? plus, scrunched all the way under the eaves and above the door... it wasn't the easiest thing to read from the street. at least it wasn't comic sans!

so the other week, ant went out to home depot and got exciting drill bits for our cheap-o drill and modern house numbers from home depot! only $5 a pop!



it thankfully came with instructions and so sunday evening, as the sun was setting and the heat was bearable, anthony set to work. (by the way, i am making a shit-ton of typos as i'm typing this... apologies if i miss any!)



first you get the layout right, make sure it's level, tape it up, punch holes in the wall, then drill with an 1/8" bit and then with a 1/4" bit to a depth of about 1". then you fill it will silicone caulk (my favorite part!) (except when, as i was caulking, a roach was crawling on the wall super close to me and i let loose 2 operatic bellows for the neighbors across the street). then shove the numbers in and tape them up until the caulk cures.



and then... ta da!!



so yes, as you can see, totally not done, as we need to pry off the old numbers and repaint the wall. but otherwise, we love it!! we may replace that outside light as well, in the future, but for now we're stoked.

3 stars

so last night i made homemade hot & sour soup! here it is, just after i put in the cornstarch and the veggies, but before i added the egg; it looked fabulous! later, not so much, since the green was cooked right out of the snow peas and it's all a kind of bland brown. overall, it's mostly tasty.

there are a lot of missing ingredients, like the black fungus and lotus root things. admittedly, i got it out of a heart-healthy cookbook, so it wasn't as fatty delicious as it probably is at t.c. choy's. (SO GOOD THERE.)

maybe i need to have my dad make me some next time i see him... and monitor his every move like a hawk.

ooooo!

we just got this totally rad hook for our kitchen! isn't it amazing? originally, i had wanted to get a bunch of cute cast iron vintage kitten hooks, but anthony laid the smack down and denied my inner kitsch. while i am not a full blown "crazy cat lady" - he said that kitten hooks would be my gateway drug purchase and my downfall. ... he may be right. (but you didn't hear that from me.) he also said that our kitchen is starting to look like a menagerie, not that an octopus really slows down our apparently inexorable drift.

seriously? i love it.



it's a little too high where it is in this picture, so we'll probably play with placement a little more. (was that not the most boring interior-design-y play by play sentence, ever?) (i mean, for real, like anyone cares if i move it 3 inches down? jesus h. christ.)

in any case, it was a splurge, but it was worth it. the only other octopus hook options looked like this.

she's a cutie

it's almost ridiculous how much attention and love we lavish on yammie.

thank you

blueberries, thank you.

thank you for being one of 3 fruits so far that don't make my mouth and lips and throat itch like crazy cakes.

fruits, of which i can only have 5 bites, total, before i feel like my throat might swell:

apples
cherries
lychee
mango
watermelon
peaches
bananas

fruits, of which i have been buying a metric fuckton, because i crave fruit:

strawberries
blueberries
raspberries (ish) (because they're a bit more expensive)


i'm going to attempt to try organic fruits, local fruits, etc, to see if there's any difference. eating local honey didn't seem to help much, unfortunately. for someone whose parents fed them fruit non-stop as a child, this really blows.

first cucumber from the garden? check!



this type starts out green and turns brown as it gets larger and it smells amazing. it can be eaten at either stage. let's hope we don't get sick of them. so far, we like to put them in summer rolls, make a spicy korean cucumber salad and.... ... that's it. i can already see that we're going to be seriously awash in cucumbers with just 2 plants. future plans include pickles, lots of pickles. (hear that, meaghan and nick? let me know which end up being your favorite recipes!) good thing i've been saving our pasta sauce jars for a few months.

if they don't win it's a shame

friday night saw me, anthony, ramon, alexis and saad at tropicana field, watching the rays get beat by the indians. i'm not going to lie, baseball is pretty boring to me, but mostly because, despite my amazing ability to zone out and watch every single pitch, i end up missing every exciting play the minute i turn my head or look down in order to nosh on my cotton candy. argh!! both times the hitters broke their bats? missed it.

i could see how some games might be exciting, unfortunately, this one was not it. *sigh* or perhaps, i need to be in one of those party boxes, drinking free $9 beers and eating delicious sushi.



me & ant, waiting in line to run out onto the field after the game to watch VANILLA ICE. yes, that vanilla ice. GO NINJA GO NINJA GO!

sadly, he only "played" his newer hip hop stuff - we left after 1.5 songs. but being out on the field was a really fun experience.



general milling about, waiting for the show to start.



alexis, groovin'.







next up? hockey!

bright lights!

saturday, i had to work from 9-6 at a nearby branch and anthony got bored.

so he meandered about home depot, bought a few items and replaced our carport light! here's the old one:



he tells me that there was a huge wasp nest inside of it (*big shudders*), but that otherwise the install went well. here's the new light:



it's like, 100 watts, or some insane amount of brightness, which is superb when doing laundry at night. it also helps to scare away the roaches. we are ---> <--- this close to hiring a pest company to take care of our bug situation. because finding 1.5" - 2" roaches in one's home is seriously distressing.

garden updates

i was wrong!

it wasn't a zucchini, it was a cucumber. we've got 2 cucumber plants with a TON of flowers and 1 golden zucchini squash plant.



more cukes at the top!



super teeny 1 inch zukes!



and here's the garden in the full sun - a little hard to see. pepper to the right in the container, super zingy arugula in the front, just a few plants, but more are coming up. maybe i'll try for better photos later, in better light.

scarlett, stylin'

bounty?

my tiny little garden is starting to produce!! the basil is looking big and fluffy and I HAVE A ZUCCHINI!



cute, no? i also learned that zucchini plants need 3 sq ft of growing space. ... ... big whoops on my part. i have given them one sq ft. ... each. right next to the basil. so, needless to say, i'm constantly out there attempting to train them to grow away from the basil. their tendrils are strong!

zucchini plants also have both male and female flowers, so you can perform elaborate squash sex to help them make baby zucchinis. adorable!! (you know what i was doing this past weekend! woohoo!)



here's one of my little baby carrots. to the left is an even babier carrot. carrots are apparently "notoriously" long germinators, which i am finding to be true. you can also see some dollarweed, which is constantly threatening to overtake my garden. it totally blows and i have no idea how to get rid of that shit.



and these are my surprise italian peppers! i didn't even think it was growing anything and then BAM, i saw these little suckers already 3 inches long, just hanging out. hurray for garden surprises! it's already needing to be repotted/put in the ground - hopefully the process isn't too stressful for it.

so hurray! my garden isn't large or overflowing, but hey! shit's still alive! AND i'm seeing some results. i'm crossing my fingers that the animals don't eat them before i do. like they did to my one lone cherry tomato.

pampered

alexis and i got manicures! and pedicures.

which... last time i got a manicure was for my wedding. two years ago. and even then, i was forced to go by my mom (and she was right!).

for real, it's expensive!! like crazy expensive! no wonder i don't go that often. not to mention, i have exceedingly steady hands. i'm ridica-good at doing manicures, even on myself. hell no i wasn't going to pay for just one color. i could do that shit blindfolded. ...of course, i could probably do polka dots, too. but it was for the company and the conversation - i miss alexis! hopefully we'll get to visit NM again soon.

oh, delicious NM breakfasts.... i swoon for you. buster's RIP.

mrow?

yammie was mightily confused by my voice, calling out from above.

and attics? scary. thankfully, it was drear and rainy when i went up, searching out rodents foul. it was also before 10 am, so it was nice and cool, not searingly steamy. no rodents to be found, nor easy entrance holes. i'm thinking a humane trap may just do the trick. we're really crossing our fingers here. the other day i hear serious wood gnawing above the kitchen vent; not good!! or perhaps i should just toss yammie up there to hunt the buggers down....

morning sunshine

morning sunshine, originally uploaded by gimchi.

oh, wait, no. it's raining cats and dogs!

unending rumbles of thunder

oh yes, the summer storms have begun. so far, every day this week, the sky has been just been teeming with clouds. i'm actually looking forward to my first drenching when i forget my umbrella.