Tofu-isms

I realized I haven't had the chance to document Tofu's childhood "months" too much, so this post is dedicated to her. She will be hitting puberty very soon so we had her spayed on Monday. Here are some random notes on Tofu.

- She just loves to lick. I wonder if she'll ever grow out of it? Fingers, toes, faces, legs, anything she can stick her tongue out at, she will lick. The funniest is that when she first met Angel, she licked his face even though he clearly did not enjoy it.

- She is such a picky eater. She rarely ever finishes her meal if we only give her dry food. Only when we mix it with some wet food will she eat heartily. It is probably for this reason that she didn't grow that much and is still small.

- She has a funny bark. When we first got her, she had two distinct barks. One was extremely high pitched and annoying, the other was very low and sounded like a boy going through puberty. Now she kind of has a medium bark that combines the awkwardness of the first two. She often barks after Lulu does when a person walks down the hallway.

- Her peeing and pooing is unpredictable. Unlike Lulu who goes to the bathroom like clockwork, you never know if Tofu needs to go once, twice or three times. She's had more accidents in the house than my previous pups (I think?) and it's getting a little annoying.

- She will eat anything. Some of the more notorious items she has chewed up: two pairs of Havaianas flip-flops, the Apple remote control, my blue nail clipper holder, the entire COUCH, clothes, cat poop, cat litter, shoelaces... the list goes on.

- She comes more often if you call out "Lulu" than "Tofu".

- She only has tear stains on one eye, even after two full bottles of Angel Eyes.

When we leave her in the house to go to work, she tears it up. Literally. The following pictures are all from ONE INCIDENT, where we left her at home with Lulu for 2 hours.

So You Think You Can DANCE DANce dance...

We spent the last couple of days marathoning "So You Think You Can Dance" to catch up. This season I only have a couple of favorites, and many more unfavorites. These are the most memorable dance routines in my mind so far.



My favorite dancer throughout the season is Will. His power, grace and just the sheer beauty of his body is awe-inspiring. The Adam & Eve dance was one of my favorites, even though I thought Jessica was a little bit shaky in it.



The Bollywood dance was very surprising and almost pleasant. I don't like Joshua or Katee but even I have to admit this was a great routine and showed their versatility. Their accuracy in this routine was incredible also.



So I've disliked Katee ever since the "Top 20" auditions moment where she sold out her friend to be on the show. Ever since that scene on the stage where she couldn't stop crying, I just couldn't stand seeing her face. I didn't mind so much to focus on her body as she dances since she is such a technical and precise dancer, but something about that face... Only when she was paired up with Will did I start softening up to her.



This routing with Will and Katee was very cute and deceptingly difficult. Their fancy footwork in, on and around the boat was impressive.


Twitch is my second favorite (which bummed me out that both Will and Twitch were in the bottom two last week), and I really enjoyed this number between him and Katee. The dancing as spectacular, as always, but even moreso I enjoyed the theatrics of this one. I'm always a sucker for "passionate fight scenes" and this one translated into a contemporary dance was just stunning.



And lastly, my biggest unfavorite was Comfort. I felt that in all of her solos she was unoriginal and repeated the same 5 moves from her playbook over and over again. However, I did enjoy this performance with Twitch when she finally came out of her slump and delivered an exhilirating performance. This routine showcased both Twitch and Comfort's strengths and was really fun to watch.

I am so bummed that Will got kicked off the show so early, I was really rooting for him to win the whole thing. I am not motivated to watch the rest of the season. I am a little bit curious to see how far Katee makes it or to see who gets kicked off next. I really think Joshua or Mark should have taken Will's place last week to take the boot. Boo.

Weekend Recap: Family Time in the OC

This weekend started out like any other weekend, after eating a hearty breakfast of pancakes (tag-teamed with Yona), Steve and I headed out to the dog park to give the doggies some exercise. Lulu had been having stomach troubles, so we didn't stay too long. After a couple of "accidents" at the park, we rushed home to give her a bath.

After cleaning up the house a bit, S, Yona and I got ready to spend the rest of the day in the O.C. with Uncle R & Aunt L. We headed down to South Coast Plaza to pick up some goodies for R since she was still recovering from her surgery. We did a little bit of shopping and bought some baked goods at Vie de France. We were planning to get to G & R's by 5pm but smart little me left my credit card at Barney's so S had to run back to go get it.

We got to Rosanna's and presented her with some of her "feel better" gifts... two giant balloons from the carousel at SCP and a Korres skin brightening mask. Then we headed down to Irvine to try out some Taiwanese food at Chef Chen's, at R recommendation. G ordered like a pro, although after a couple of minutes I finally realized he had a cheat sheet -- a takeout menu with dishes circled by R. My favorite dish of the night was the roast beef sandwich... served kind of "burrito style" with a hot, fried wrap. The pork leg shank was really good too -- but I immediately felt guilty after eating some. S really liked the kung pao shrimp which tasted very fresh and Uncle R ate almost the entire steamed fish by himself.

After the restaurant, we all headed down to Laguna Niguel to catch the sunset. We drove to the Montage Hotel and walked around the outside gardens, looking out into the ocean. Even though we missed the sunset, it was still very beautiful outside. I was particularly impressed with the manicured gardens and sitting areas while S was preoccupied with the abundance of bunny rabbits hopping around the property. Uncle R took a series of pictures of everyone, as usual.

After the beach, we headed back up to Irvine to get some frozen yogurt at Yogurtland. I was surprised to hear that this yogurt hot spot is popping up all over the place. The cookies and cream yogurt is good with extra oreo on top, but I also really liked the Strawberry tart yogurt. The brownie bites were a little bit mushy, like the mochi, and I felt it wasn't the right texture to eat with frozen yogurt.

So we were all quite full when we headed back to G and R's place to hang out and chit chat for a bit. Finally we left at about 10:30PM and I slept all the way back to LA. It was kind of like being a kid and exhausted after a day at Disneyland and sleeping on the car ride back!

So today we woke up pretty late and S picked up some duck liver pate from Le Marmiton in Santa Monica. We ate it with the baguettes we picked up from South Coast Plaza -- it was so good! We also heated up some of the croissants from Vie de France. It was a great brunch. After stuffing ourselves silly, we headed to Beverly Hills to check out couches at Crate and Barrel. I think it's coming to the end of the life of our couch and it's time to buy a sofabed. After all, it seems familial company is neverending here at our house. :D

So after a few hours of shopping we came home and watched back-to-back episodes of Denise Richards' reality show, It's Complicated. We ordered Papa John's pizza for dinner and ate pretty much the whole order (two pizzas). After dinner, we headed out to Trader Joe's to do some grocery shopping for the week. We're going to aim to cook lunch/dinner every day next week -- we've been eating pretty unhealthily lately. After buying some "healthy" food and planning out these "healthy" meals, I felt the urge to go running and burn off some of that thick Papa John's pizza crust I dipped in the garlic butter sauce, so I did a lap around the country club. I can't believe how out of shape I am -- I was burning read and soaked in sweat by the time I was done, and I didn't even run that much! I started a "workout" journal again and I'm going to try to keep tabs on my exercise activity. I just realized that this past year I undid about 2 years of working out... if you add up my gym membership and private training sessions that's about $7,000 that went to waste. =/

It's time to go to bed... it's late and I am waking up early tomorrow to drop Tofu off at the vet to get spayed. Poor girl will have her surgery tomorrow and stay overnight so I won't see her again until really late on Tuesday.

Differences

Now that I've settled into my new neighborhood, I'm starting to notice the differences between the Beverly Hills and Brentwood environments.

- Although both neighborhoods have bad drivers, the drivers on this side of the 405 seem more rushed and are explicitly rude, while the ones in Beverly Hills were ignorant of traffic rules and just horrible drivers.

- People seem to be more active in Brentwood. Although I'd run into the occasional jogger in Beverly Hills, there was definitely a lack of "sporting equipment" lying around the old apartment building. There are a lot of professional cyclists in my neighborhood and all of our neighbors seem to be pretty active. Today I took a peek in our neighbor's SUV trunk and saw golf clubs, a football, a soccer ball and a boogie board.

- There are a lot of dogs in Brentwood. There are a lot of babies in Beverly Hills.

- It's hotter in Brentwood. Even though I now live on a shady, tree-lined street, the weather was still noticeably cooler in Beverly Hills.

Yona's New Room

My lunch.

I bought what I thought to be Hello Kitty Seaweed packets from Nijiya to sprinkle over rice, until Elaine schooled me. Instead of sprinkling over rice, you are supposed to poor green tea in your rice and mix. Now it's one of my favorite instant lunches at work.


Start with some microwavable rice and green tea mix.


Sprinkle the mix over the rice, and fill with hot green tea. Can you see the Hello Kitty shaped seaweed on the top right?


Mix and enjoy.

Lulu gets a good brush-down.

"Ah, it's just like a massage."

Scrapbooking

Starting a scrapbook to keep all of the knick-knacks Steve and I
collect from the various shows and events we go too.

I started with the most recent event, a page dedicated to the anime
expo.

Anime Expo 2008

For Steve's 29th birthday, we went to the Anime Expo at the LA Convention Center. It was... interesting.

We arrived a little after lunch and was amazed at the complexity of some peoples' outfits. Steve made a game out of guessing what everyone was dressed as. He played by himself.

I think the high point of the day was when he saw Optimus Prime posing with two Power Rangers. He was pretty darn excited.



I was pretty surprised a the whole experience, I was expecting something completely different. Just like an auto show has booth after booth of "look but don't touch", I thought that this was going to be similar where each exhibit would represent an anime/cartoon series and show scenes from upcoming episodes, feature artists or whatnot. Instead, it was like a huge anime swap meet. It was like Tokyo x 50, or even Sawtelle x 100.

We ran into a booth that had toys from the 80's, it was awesome! Most of them were used and selling at garage sale prices, but it was fun to see collections of my childhood. For example, there was a shelf full of My Little Ponies.



Some of them were in pretty bad shape. They did remind me of my own from 1987 with a scratch and sniff butt. At least I think I was seven, maybe I was a little older.



They also had a ton of Care Bears, from all different generations. You can tell which ones were the oldest -- they were the scariest looking. In addition to these childhood memories, I also saw Glowworms, Popples and little Playskool people. It's ironic to think that kids back then were so happy to watch these simple cartoons and yet this was in the midst of a huge expo of complicated anime cartoons which kids today are immersed in.

After walking around the main convention floor about 3 times looking for stuff to buy, we finally decided to take off, checking out some of the video/dance rooms on the way out. We ran into the Karaoke contest room. When we came in, they were in the middle of a transition and the judges were talking to the last contestant. Then they called up the next girl (mousy white chick, brunette) who got on the stage and started clapping/bouncing around to her intro music. Then she went on to bust out some anime/Japanese song, complete with hand movements and yelling parts! We were... less than impressed at her singing ability but completely blown by her... Japanese-ness? It was HILARIOUS. I mean, they were all so into it and they actually had 5 judges in the front judging everyone.

After a few minutes of off-tune karaoke, we headed towards the arcade. There were a lot of cool games, makes me wonder if some of these arcade games pre-date guitar hero and rock band. Some guy approached us and asked us to join the "Para Para Dancing" session later on, and to check out the Para Para game to see what it was about.



Our jaws dropped to the floor. This game was so complex and the girls (and guy) coming up to play were so good at it. It's basically a dancing game where you follow the hand movements, and there is a ring of sensors above you to sense your accuracy. The hand movements would put any cheerleader to shame as they comprised of poses as well as complex twisting movements and were really fast. There were also a bunch of white girls (and one guy) that memorized the routines pretty well... made me wonder where they learned it? Is this a pretty common arcade game? Did they youtube the song earlier and memorize it before the Anime Expo? Mind-boggling.



On our way out we hit up the Artists' Alley which were rows and rows of amateur artists selling their work. It was pretty awesome to see how much talent there is among "regular" people. There were a lot of cool drawings for sales and commissions were only $2-$3 whereas they were about $100 with a real artist. There were also cutesie other things like keychains and homemade things. My favorite was the Fuzz Academy (www.fuzzacademy.com), I kind of regret not buying a couple of prints to put up at work. Their polar bear (dry clean only) and gummi bear prints were super cute:

Must... Stop... Running...

Went for a jog with the dogs today... About halfway through Lulu
started to give up and lay in the shade every chance she got... Which
was about every 10 feet!

Tofu takes a bite out of reading.

Looks like she enjoyed Twilight as much as I did...

Eating Healthy for 4 Days Straight

I kicked off my July 4th weekend with an extremely unhealthy dinner at The Stand in Westwood last night. We actually wandered into Westwood in search of a refreshing sandwich when we decided to try out this new place.

Steve had a Spicy Polish Dog smothered in onions and mustard and I had a Tuna Melt Sandwich on Grilled Sourdough. Our meal was accompanied by freshly fried potato chips and also a Chili Cheese Knish which is some type of deep-fried potato pastry concoction. We washed down this greasy goodness with about 6 refills of diet coke.

We attempted to walk it off by walking around Aaah's and Urban Outfitters, and I came home to start playing my new Wii game... CSI: Hard Evidence. After about 5 minutes of CSI training, my body started to shut down and I immediately fell into a food coma. I fell asleep in our cool air-conditioned room and was not awakened until midnight, when Vina and Yusuke came over to surprise Steve for his birthday... with some strawberry cake. After a slice of cake, I tossed and turned in bed, with the worst stomachache ever.

Now that I've wakened to a new morning, I've vowed to completely disallow grease for the entire 4-day weekend. My stomach just can't take it anymore.

Yay 4th of July long weekend!

Lulu is excited to be leaving a long day of work.

My lunch.

Lulu is here so I can't sneak downstairs to eat. Instead, I have this
very yummy seaweed ramen. Japanese instant noodles are so much more
complex than any other -- this one came with 3 sauce packets.

Me and Vina's Trip to Indiana!

Wow! Just got back from Indy.... we had so much fun! Here are some pics and videos from our trip.

On the first night, we had dinner with Aai at a japanese restaurant. She ordered and ate so much food!


Lulu came too.


After dinner, we went to have dessert with Aai. She ordered a huge sundae. We were all smiles.


The next day, we went to the park to check out this famous "water fountain"


We had lots of laughs with Aai.


It got really hot, so we had some refreshments.


After Lulu chased birds for a few hours, we went back to the house. There was nothing to do so we just took pictures of the pets together.


Tofu and Timmy kept running away from each other.

I think that cat wanted to eat Lulu.

Timmy did not let Tofu past the stairs... that's his domain!

Before we left, we made sure to leave our mark. We did a little redecorating and planted a tree in front of the house.