my long absence, some news, and grilled cheese sandwiches.

There's a lot to catch up on since my last post a hundred years ago. A lot happened. I kept meaning to post. And, I didn't. I guess I have writer's block. Lately, I have been feeling like I don't have anything interesting to post and am unsure the purpose this blog really serves. But, I guess for now, I've resolved to not caring if it's purposeless.

So, with that, on with today.

To kick off the three-day weekend, Josh and I decided to have date night on Thursday night. I have been craving grilled cheese forever, so we thought we'd check out Grilled Cheese Night at Campanille. I snapped a couple pics with my iPhone.

I ordered the Croquet Madame, a grilled ham and Gruyere cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top. It was delicious! The crunchy bread with the velvety egg yolk -- so good! That plus a stellar glass of red wine, I was a happy camper.


Josh ordered the regular grilled cheese with the onions and mustard. He was a little hesitant about adding the onions and mustard to a perfectly good grilled cheese sandwich, but after the first bite, he was converted.


Our sandwiches came with fries. Perfect texture and salty. Very good.


For dessert, we ordered a fruit cobbler. The ice cream was so creamy. It reminded me of the ice cream my Aunt in England used to buy that was all cream -- so rich and good.


Overall, we gave our experience at Campanille a big thumbs up.

In other news, I am on some sort of weird sewing kick all of a sudden. I have been learning to sew and have completed a few small projects. I may not seem like the domestic type (although, you may know that I love to knit), so I was as surprised as anyone with this new hobby. But, it's so fun! It's nice to be creative and make something that's actually useful! So, now you are prepared for some possible sewing posts in the near future.

Saving the best for last, the most exciting news as of lately is that my little sister, Bug, is engaged! Ajax popped the question last week, and my sis is already planning her spring wedding. I'm so thrilled for her and cannot wait for the big day!

With that, I'm out for now. I'll try not to disappear again for so long. ;)

Strollin' through the Strawberry Festival.

After sleeping in and vegging out until the early afternoon, Josh and I decided to get our butts in gear and go do something. Josh suggested the California Strawberry Festival. I haven't been since I was little, and it sounded like fun, so off we went.

It was crowded. And dusty. Lots of little kids. And strawberries.


I was hungry. We weighed our options.

Strawberry pizza?


Strawberry nachos?


Hmm. I decided on a tri-tip sandwich.


While getting food, we saw an old friend of mine -- Strawberry Shortcake. Man, I loved her back in the day.


Also saw clowns on tricycles.


There was some live music in the form of a washed-up 70s cover band. Dude was into it.


We decided we couldn't come all the way to the strawberry festival and not eat strawberries. Behold, our delish dessert.


Mmmm...funnel cake...


We wandered around a little more, checking out some of the craft booths. Overall, it was a good event, although the admission ticket price was pretty steep considering it was essentially a strawberry-themed street fair on steroids. Still. It was a nice day.

(Grand)Mother's Day 2009

We spent the morning of Josh's actual birthday having brunch with my grandma for Mother's Day. Sadly, both of our moms live far north (Josh's mom in Olympia, mine in Alaska), but luckily my grandma is close by, so we got to celebrate with her.

My grandma loves the brunch at the Embassy Suites by her house. No idea why. I thought the food was mediocre, at best. But, I kept my mouth shut. Whatever Grandma wants, right?


One plus -- lots of champagne.
Since it was his birthday, Josh was triple-fisting it.


My sis and Uncle Frank.


Bug and Ajax.




My grandma and grandpa. So cute.


Happy (belated) Mother's Day to my grandma, our moms, and all the other moms out there!

Craft Beer Fest L.A. + Chaya Happy Hour

Josh's 29h birthday is Sunday, so to celebrate, he wanted to check out Craft Beer Fest L.A. happening in Echo Park this weekend and then maybe go out for some drinks. (I really feel like "Beerfest" should be one word ... anyone with me?)

Jackie and PJ were awesome and arrived to Beerfest (that's it, I'm making it one word) early. All of the tickets were sold out earlier this week, so we decided to take our chances at the door. Josh, Bug, Ajax, and I met up with Jackie and PJ in line.


Thankfully, because of Jackie and PJ, we were at the very front of the line, so it wasn't long before they let us in.


Beerfest was held in the Echoplex, a concert venue. Once inside, we were handed tasting glasses and 15 drink tickets each.


It was crowded and dark inside, so none of my pictures turned out -- everything was fuzzy like this.


(Any tips for taking pics in low lighting? The auto setting always makes everything in the background black.)

The inside had two bars set up for tasting and a bunch of food, including gourmet cheeses, pizza, burritos, and beer-flavored ice cream from Scoops (Guinness chocolate and Hefeweizen infused banana). Yum!

Some of the best beer we tried, in my humble opinion, was the Pizza Port Hefeweizen (tasted like coconut!), the Crafstman Scottish Isle, and some of the beers from Bruery. PJ loved the special release Pale Ale from Stone Brewing, and Josh was pretty much in heaven.

A (blurry) pic of my glass.


Josh and PJ -- who loves Beerfest? :)


Group pics (sans Jackie and me)


Next stop was Chaya downtown for their awesome Happy Hour.

Josh and PJ with chopsticks. I swear, I can never get a nice, not goofy picture of these two!


We ordered some apps and a few more drinks (Jackie and I stuck with water since we were the DDs). Chaya is delicious -- I occasionally will eat lunch here with co-workers -- and their Happy Hour is a terrific value for the quality of food. We ordered hummus, some sushi, the lamb and gorgonzola sliders, and the calamari (which was salty and scrumptious). Luckily, Chaya was a little dead, given that the rest of the kids had that loud, I-just-drank-a-bunch-of-beer-at-Beerfest-and-can't-control-my-volume thing going on. We were having fun, and luckily, we didn't spoil anyone's dinner! :)

After some beer, Josh decided to switch to sake. Speaking of trying to get a nice picture of Josh and PJ, sake and drunkenness sure did not help my cause. The next three pictures crack me up.







Sigh. :)

Josh's 29th Birthday is tomorrow! One more year until the big 3-0! Happy Birthday, sweetheart!

Wine tasting with Moos.

My dear, dear friend, Moos, was in town this weekend visiting from DC. Moos was my law school war buddy. I swear, I would have never made it through those three years without her. After spending almost every waking minute together studying, procrastinating, or drinking wine, she became one of my very dear friends. (You may recall she was the friend with the beautiful Portland wedding.) Sadly, we now live on opposite coasts and don't get to see each other nearly enough. Lucky for me, she came to visit us this weekend!

After spending a summer studying in Paris and sampling French wines with our favorite oenophile, Maggie, Moos, Maggie, and I took a semester-long wine class with a few other friends. We then spent a lot of weekends 3L visiting wineries around the Finger Lakes.

So ... when Margaret suggested taking a day trip to Santa Barbara County to go wine tasting, I couldn't think of a more brilliant idea!!

Our first stop Sunday morning was the Summerland Beach Cafe for breakfast (Jackie's fave and the spot we took the Italians when they visited in the fall).




Mmmmm...omelette...


After breakfast, we hit the wine trail. Our first winery was Firestone Vineyard.




We showed up just in time to take a guided, historical tour of the winery.

Our group met by the cork tree. I touched it. It was squishy.


I was loitering in the back of the group, taking pictures and poking the squishy tree. Josh hollered for me to catch up!


More vines.


Big kegs. Just kidding. This is where the wine starts fermenting.


The owner's private tasting room, where a bottle of every wine the winery has ever produced is kept. Our guide informed us that it was uber-VIP. (The last person allowed in was Reagan when he was president.) Too bad.


Barrels and barrels of wine. Yum.




Next stop was Fess Parker. It was about this point in the trip we started talking about how we are starting our own winery after we win the lotto this weekend. Who wouldn't want to live surrounded by the beautiful hills and vineyards?


(The free wine wouldn't be so bad either.)




Inside Fess Parker.




Our wine pourer guy was extra nice and allowed us to sample a few more pinot noirs. Really delish. But the winner was definitely the Syrah. It was like butta.

Fess Parker was also premiering a wine called "The Last Frontier." Moos decided to channel Davy Crocket and try on some of the promo hats.

(She will love me for posting this, I'm sure.)




More pictures of Fess Parker's gorgeous vineyards.




Then, it was back on the road.




Our third winery was Foxen Winery. By far the cutest, most rustic winery we visited.






At this point, Josh started pouring all of his wine into Margaret's and my glasses (he was the DD), which caused us to be extra chatty with the girls behind the counter. Good times.

We thought we'd stop there, but Josh suggested we stop at one last winery, Tres Hermanas. Luckily for us, they had a special wine and food pairing deal. Food was an excellent idea.




Sadly, the pairing and the wine were somewhat underwhelming. They did give us Kit Kat bars at the end, which made up for the lackluster wine. But who are we kidding, I would have drunk anything by winery #4.

Four wineries. Time for dinner.

We decided to try the Hitching Post, made famous by that one wine movie.




Roasted garlic for appetizer. Delicious.


Blurry but tasty shrimp cocktail.


Salad.


My entree: filet mignon. The Hitching Post sprinkles what they call magic dust (more salt than psychedelic from what I could tell) which was delicious. (Moos had the ostrich which was also quite good.)




After a delicious meal, Josh piled two full and slightly tipsy girls into the car to head back home.


After a long drive home and a quick nap, we saw Moos off at LAX and then headed to bed. Despite being a little tired this morning, I couldn't help but be in a good mood. It was a wonderful weekend!

Another Saturday, Another BBQ.

What can I say, we are not very exciting around here these days. This is the first day since mid-March I haven't worked, and the thought of doing anything other than vegging out was definitely not appealing. So, when Bug called and suggested we BBQ some salmon, I was more than game.

I slept in and woke up with no alarm (which was glorious) and then helped Josh clean our house before Bug and her med school pals arrived. My dad and Cathy also came over, and we cooked up a delicious meal of salmon (caught by my mom in Alaska), asparagus, and salad.


Bug's dog, Pazzi, contemplating taking a plunge. In the background, you can see our roses are starting to bloom. It's amazing to me they have managed to survive living with Josh and me. Scrappy little things.


Other than this, there's really not much to report. God, I have been terrible about keeping this blog up. I just feel like nothing "blogworthy" has happened over here in awhile. Too much work leads to not enough fun, I guess.

Actually, one exciting thing has happened since I posted last: Josh and I found amazing flight fares roundtrip from LAX to Paris for $500, so we booked tickets for a week over New Year's Eve! So exciting -- wish it weren't so far away and we could leave right now! But, alas, I am stuck going back to the grindstone tomorrow morning. However ... since it still IS Saturday, so I am going to go make myself a margarita and sit in the hot tub!

Bug's 26th Birthday.

I cannot believe my little baby sister is 26. Holy Lord.

To celebrate, she had a get together with her med school friends on Friday night. Josh and I drove out there after work and hung out with a bunch of her pals. There were a ton of people (duh, everyone loves Bug!), and my sis was mouthy and bouncy as ever.

Saturday, we had a family bbq to celebrate her birthday. The weather was beautiful. That, plus family and a fridge full of beer and wine, what more could we ask for?

Grandma making her famous stuffed mushrooms.


Grandpa, drinking a beer by the pool.


My little cousins came along with my aunt and uncle. They didn't leave the pool from 1pm until 8pm. They are so darn cute.

Hailey in her pink wayfarer knockoffs. So hip. :)




Vegging by the pool.


My dad and Uncle Frank were all over the bbq. They cooked up tri-tip and Italian sausage, which were so delicious.


Jackie and PJ.


Some excellent pool action shots by Jackie (featuring Josh in Hailey's glasses)






My grandpa and Ella, taking a break from the excitement.


Josh and PJ goofing off, as usual.


The Birthday Girl!




Grandma and Ella.


After dinner and birthday cake, the fam started packing up and heading back to their respective homes. Bug decided that she wanted to karaoke once the fam had left, so we loaded up in Jackie's minivan and headed to the best place we know of for karaoke.

Unfortunately, there was a cover band there instead. Boo. After a few more unsuccessful attempts, we finally found karaoke at the cheesiest dive bar (if you can even call it a bar) in the Valley: Canoga Bowl. Luckily (?) we were some of the only people, so Josh and Bug got to sing their hearts out. A few more drinks led to stellar performances by both. :)



We got home late and did a little night swimming before hitting the sack.

Today, I woke up and went to Connie's baby shower (I'm sure there will be a fabulous photo post from either Wan or WeeMo who were snapping away) and then to the mall with Bug and Josh. I have a little work to do tonight, and then time to turn in early -- it has been an action-packed weekend!

Happy Birthday to my fabulous baby sister -- I love you!