Please, I beg you, not Centro's again.

I am so tired of Centro's. Even free Centro's. Even free Centro's potato burritos and free Centro's molcajetes of guac.

A quick wrap of today's unfortunate experience:
At work, when we go for a group lunch, we usually hit Centro's because we have a ton of gift certificates for the Paragary's chain and most everyone likes Mexican food. It's great to be able to eat for free, so you won't find me complaining too much about that. But here's where I'm going to need some cheese with my whine. It's that we've been there so many times this year. Hopefully this last time is enough to change our next outing to Bernardo.

Instead of the papas y rajas burrito I tried the enchiladas de hongos, which I hardly ever get anymore. Total mistake, the sauce was terrible! It was a nice red, which I like, but overly tomato-y and lacked any real depth of flavor, even with the mushrooms in the enchilada filling. I think they used shittake, but I think crimini would have been less chewy. Then our boss dude found a giant piece of glass in his verduras, so he sent it back. When the manager came to our table, he was pretty unsympathetic about the whole thing. "It's actually plastic." The entire incident was kind of tense and weird.

Winter weight

Amy took some fab photos of the bump it or dump it afterparty. I was looking at this picture of myself and thought, man, I'm looking a little porky lately. I couldn't really put my finger on what it was...is my face rounding out? Is it my thighs? My goiter? Then I took a closer look. Holy tamale dudes. It's my giant enchilada gut. I've eaten just way too many lately and it's starting to show.

Stuffed pig

I cooked too much. I ate too much. One night, I drank too much. My time off was much needed and I made good use of it by being as lazy as possible.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house again this year. My dad, nieces and sister came over. Mom couldn't make it over because of a dying cat and some funny business I'm hoping she'll get over. I cooked for two days and the whole meal was over and family was out in 2 hours. I guess I overcooked for the holiday, but had little trouble getting rid of the left overs. I tried a stuffing recipe that I found in the Bee a few weeks ago and it turned out delish...red bell pepper instead of celery, sourdough instead of cornbread, lots of chopped fresh sage and parsley.

Most of the weekend we spent on the couch watching the rest of Lost, season 1. I am completely drawn in to this series and have no shame about it. Also, we figured out that our other (freebie) dvd player is region free! Now we can watch the Brass Eye dvd we got earlier this year and finally buy our own copy of Look Around You, season 1.

If it's not raining when I get off work tonight, I'm going to make an effort to jog off the 40 or so helpings of mashed potatoes that I ate over the past 5 days.

Trip to LA in pictures.

We went to visit Amy in LA this weekend.


Chris caravaned with us down there. He was driving to Phoenix anyway.


We all ate lunch at Canter's on Fairfax.


And got some hammentachen to go.


Later, we got hungry again, so Amy whipped up this snack. Dates with goat cheese.


Leon savors a morsel.


Ella came to visit and fixed this really scary looking pilot light.


There were cute things all over Amy's place. Like these beads.


And this elegant unicorn tapestry.


Y, la tortuga.


Wine? Oui!!


The next day we went to walk around Santa Monica. We put on our shades and tried not to look like tourists.


Am I blending in?


We walked over the catwalk to the pier.


Address from a swanky home on the beach.


Elephant at the arcade on the pier.


Sign for a restaurant on the pier. "Eat here! I'm delicious."


I didn't want to ride any rides, so I got called a pussy.


Then we went for beers.


And had our only celebrity sighting.


We did a bunch of other stuff. Including going to Echo Park for some club. We got dinner first at the Brite Spot.


There were so many vegetarian choices on the menu, it took forever to decide what to get. Grilled cheese or salad?


So I got half sandwich, cup of soup. It was pretty good.


The club was kind of lame. The bands were boring and the drinks were too expensive, so we left. In the morning, we got bagels at a coffee place. They had great coffee, but terrible bagels. This one tasted like it had been soaking in some old dishwater.


We also squeezed in some quality time with relatives in Laguna Beach.


And caught some nature in action.


More nature, acting natural.


Before we left in the morning, we went to the farmer's market for breakfast. I had the fruit.


No, wait. I had a fierce, gastro-intestinal war with the fruit and won.


Uhh, this sauce doesn't look so appetizing.


We hit the road for a while, but made a point to hit Pea Soup Andersen's.


Ordered the Traveler's Special, which includes a bottomless bowl of soup, bread...


Spices...


And Flavor Magic.


I ate two bowls, but shouldn't have. This is the second one.

We came home today and pretty much crashed out from too many awesome times.

Bye bye, Lisa

You really, really shouldn't have peed in that diaper. Acting crazy can be funny, but only to people who like you. When you act crazy for people that don't like you, it kind of comes across the wrong way. Like, maybe you're really crazy and not pretending. And then people get scared of you.

So yeah! Top Model last night. Not too shocking, but I am dissapointed that I have to watch Jayla on at least one more episode. Even Kim is wearing on me now. I think that she was embarrassed for talking all that boo-boo about the other girls, but probably not really sorry about it. No discernable Soup moments.

Can anyone explain why Trading Spouses last night was only one episode long? I thought this show was supposed to be two episodes per swap. I guess maybe it was too boring?

Aside from TV, not much else is new. I've been pretty busy at work this week. In fact, dare I say...too busy to blog?! Sorry, I think that's only funny to Leon. This weekend we're going to LA and OC to visit some friends and families. I'm already listing out the places I want to eat at. Canter's here we come.

Bad case of the Mondays
I just can't get myself off the ground today. This power point presentation itsn't going to edit itself, so here's a joke for Leon: I'm too busy to blog today!

OK, but before I go, I came home for lunch to two fabulous things this afternoon:

Unicorn souvenier from Dan & Heather.


Riblet acting cute with fall leaves.

Holidays, eh.

I guess I'm too cheap to care about holiday decorations much. However, this Charlie Brown-style xmas tree is fun and kind of cheap enough to get excited about.

Aside from a jack-o-lantern (hey, you can get one under $5!), I don't really care that much for buying and putting up wreathy-things, trees, lights and other stuff for such a short time. It costs so much and you bring it out and put it up for what? One day to 3 weeks? Then you have to put it back. I guess I'm lazy, too. I always thought I'd save my energy for this kind of stuff for when I have kids. I'm not naming names, but it turns out that other people in the house want to decorate this year. OK, I'll give it my best shot. I'll try to get more into the spirit of things. Today at work, I drug out the old electric snowman and plugged it in. It's a start.

Every Clientele song is about London, rain or girls

Can't wait to see the Clientele tomorrow! Since they're headlining this time, I hope people won't be talking through their entire set while standing right in the front, like they did the last time they were in SF playing with Spoon.

Snoop Doggs

In case you are really dissapointed with the hot dogs available to you in stores, like, maybe they don't have enough street cred, or maybe they aren't pimp-a-licious enough for your severe case of the munchies, get a load of this. Soon you can buy your own Snoop Dogg hot dogs! Wonder if these links will be tall and lanky like Snoop. One can only hope.

Pack your bags...we're all going to London!

...wha?


You mean whatsherface didn't get kicked off?

Last night's Top Model was a strange one. Not only did my favorite crazy girl, Lisa totally gross everyone out (including yours truly) by peeing in a diaper, but Tyra also faked out the last two girls at the end. As they're both standing there in front of her, she tells them to both pack their bags. So everyone looks completely shocked because, while it's not rare to kick off two girls in one episode, they really only do that once a season and this season already had that happen. So then after a short silence, Tyra screamed "Because we're all going to London!!" But everyone still looked confused and kind of scared. Her delivery was so terrible that she had to explain it again after the balloons and confetti dropped. Eh. It was all kind of weird. So there you go. Leon said "that's going to be on the Soup."

Top Model is going to London. Hurrah!

Not good people

Since we scammed a good Tivo deal, I no longer have to miss Trading Spouses. This week's episode did not dissapoint! At the end, the crazy mom exploded in the scariest, religious freak out to ever be televised. And now I can watch it over and over and over and over and over again.

Schmooze fest 2005

Can't wait to crash this year's Best of Sacramento party. Seriously, best samples all year. Food, beers, wine, food, cheese, alcohol, food, stalking the cast of Good Day. You catch my drift. The whole idea of the party is pretty corny anyway. Come on, Best of Sacramento? More like...well, I'd rather not say lest I get fired (I'm working again this year). I just go to eat, drink, hand out swag bags, hang with the Harlow's crowd and if babies get saved by March of Dimes, all the better.

I flake for free beer

I was going to eat at Spataro last night but flaked at the last minute. Instead I met up with some co-workers to Centro. Some people were jumping ship and someone decided to throw a hit-the-road-jack party. They had free beers and quesadillas. It was way more low-key and I couldn't refuse. I wouldn't have paid for Spataro either, but after work I was feeling really tired of being on all day and didn't feel like I could've hacked my way through a business meal. Yeah, I pussed out.

I meant to go turn in my absentee ballot today on my lunch break but forgot. Wait, I know I'm not that spacey but I almost got pulled over by a lady cop on a motorcycle for making a California stop on my way to the polling place. I got kind of freaked out after that and ended up driving back to work. I was more than halfway there before I realized I forgot to go vote.

I confess

I am a looky-loo. When I see an open house in my neighborhood, I will go. Sometimes I pretend to be interested, sometimes not. This house (above) went up for sale a couple of days ago. The couple who lived there did quite a bit of work, so I wanted to check it out. Plus I have insatiable bungalow fever (note to editor: please consider this phrase for my forthcoming quotable quotes audioblog), so I had to scope it out. When we walked in, we ran into two other neighbors doing the same thing. Busted. Oh well. Before we left, I offered to buy the vintage, metal chairs from their front porch. Leon suggested I just steal them, but I figured someone would have caught me and thought better of it. So anyone got $325k laying around and want to be my neighbor? The asking price given the "boom" circumstances could be a lot worse, but isn't.