LA Visit: Day 3

Woke up without any dogs jumping on us. Left the place the same time as our hostess, a little after 8am. Didn't get caught in too much LA traffic but the cars coming into LA on 405 South got to pass two accidents that weren't far apart from each other. Ugh.

We had such a smooth ride that we went outlet shopping in Gilroy before heading home. :) It was actually DH's suggestion - I hadn't even thought of it!! haha!

LA Visit: Day 2

[Omitted from the last entry: Our hostess has two very adorable Pomeranians that are both a year old. One is small and black and other is white, bigger, and loves to jump.]

This morning we were woken up by the bigger Pomeranian jumping on us. We quickly ducked under the covers to avoid a morning lick. She came back several times to try to wake us up. We were too tired to do much except hide. :p

Had brunch at Toast. I had their French toast with coffee cake crumbles - cinnamon-y goodness. We ordered cupcakes to go - red velvet, chocolate and vanilla, and lemon. Also got a couple for our host to try. I think they're much better than Sprinkles cupcakes - less frosting. I don't like thick layers of frosting.

Met up with a family friend to walk along 3rd St Promenade. Mainly we were just reminiscing and catching up while eating gelato. Definitely want to come back to Santa Monica sometime for a relaxing vacation. Since it was getting pretty cold, we went back to her place for tea.

That evening we had dinner at World Cafe, a moderately priced restaurant that gives you a lot of food. Good food when you don't want anything too fancy or over-priced. After dinner, we played some more Wii and went to bed early for the morning drive the next day.

LA Visit: Day 1

Met up with a friend at California Chicken Cafe. Such delicious rotisserie chicken! Then we both drove to UCLA to see our friend's PhD defense. We took a bunch of pictures before she actually started speaking. Her uncle filmed most of her hour-long presentation. The room was fully packed when she started her presentation. The defense was more of a formality so thankfully she passed!

After her celebration, we went to try out Pinkberry since people have been raving. It tastes like a certain Asian yogurt drink so it was lighter and more tangy than regular froyo. We got toppings of rice cakes, strawberry, and pineapple. The rice cakes tasted exactly like Botan rice candy. I think it was hyped for me so I didn't find it particularly amazing but it was quite good.

In the evening, we had dinner at Osteria Mozza with friends we hadn't seen in a long long time. (Since I've seen her, she's graduated from law school, passed the bar, and got married.) The food was a bit on the greasy side but the taste was amazing. For appetizer, we had the grilled octopus (very meaty) and burricotti (cheese with braised artichokes, pine nuts, currants & mint pesto on toast) If I had a bigger stomach, I would've ordered more from the mozza bar. For entrees, we had orecchiette with sausage & Swiss chard and tagliatelle with oxtail ragu. The orecchiette had a very strong taste and I thought it was better than the tagliatelle.

Early Thanksgiving in the OC

We headed to Orange County with minimal traffic (152 East was under construction which caused backup). Got there in time for an evening meal of chicken noodle soup and cookies without nuts.

Played mah-jong in the afternoon. We decided to go to a tree lighting at a local mall. What we didn't realize that there was to be an hour-long production by some local high schoolers before the lighting. Since the outdoor mall was extremely crowded and kids were crying because they couldn't see the show, we decided to leave without seeing the tree lit up. oh well. Went out for Thai food and came home to watch "The Painted Veil" which had beautiful shots of the Chinese countryside.

Next day we went swimming in the heated pool. Kind of cold but still awesome that you can swim in the winter. That night we had dinner with DH's visiting cousin from Taiwan. It was such a coincidence that he was in the area when we were. So we picked him up from his hotel and had a large dinner at Black Angus. Later, while DH and him discussed business, me and my in-laws had dessert at CPK. We ordered stuff that DH and I normally wouldn't order together - key lime pie and banana chocolate cake. They were both really yummy - we were all pleasantly surprised.

A weird thing on this visit was that my father-in-law won most of the mah-jong games while my mother-in-law, who normally wins a lot, didn't win a single game. So strange...maybe he's improved his game? Anyways, it was really strange.

Real life House

You know how a lot of things you see on House are probably really really rare cases? Well, something on an episode we watched a couple of weeks ago actually happened!

Girl born with 8 limbs

Parisitic twin...when your twin is still part of you.