SoCal Checklist: Native Foods (Bonus: St. Pat's)

I LOVE Native Foods and would pretty much kill for a local one in South Carolina. But in the meantime, you can bet anytime I make out to SoCal, I'm going to Native Foods. I lucked out in that not only did I have some willing non-vegetarian friends come along, but Native Foods had St. Pat's special: "corned beef" sandwiches. Color me thrilled to pieces!

When I came back, a good-natured friend left a surprise dessert for me on my desk in honor of my St. Pat's Day adventure last year:

And in the evening, I celebrated St. Pat's at the Auld Dubliner with some lovely friends, like this lovely couple, who let me crash with them and their family:

And this good buddy (who I discovered was the one who surprised me with the Shamrock Shake):

Another awesome guy--great at the office AND the dance floor.  Plus he's a total sweetheart to boot.  Great sense of humor and game for a fun time, whether it's face painting or pranking.  And again, taking a page from Linda's blog: PS, he's single.  We all had a great discussion on "dealbreakers", though my friend here, would often counter with "game savers".  Sigh.  What can I say?  I have to respect that he finds a bright side.  No wonder we get along so well.

Unfortunately, St. Pat's came to a close for me soon after a round of Jameson was presented.  Oh my funking goodness.  Downing a shot of Jameson is the closest I will come to knowing what it must feel like to turn into a werewolf.  When my eyes opened, I fully expected a hairy paw to be clutching my empty crushed cup.

Though what really ended St. Pat's for me was watching the MSU Spartans getting kicked out in the FIRST ROUND of the NCAA tourney through a Jameson/werewolf haze.  Who bets against Izzo in the first round?  Nobody, especially this werewolf.  Only I expected them to go to the Sweet Sixteen and as one of a dozen people with the Ohio State as the final champion, this totally busted my brackets.  Serious Spartan heartbreak on so many levels.

Still I cannot complain too much--another awesome day spent with good people.

SoCal Checklist: Get Banksy-ish

As I've expressed before, I'm a huge fan of Banksy and have attempted projects with his clever twist (plus an added dose of sweetness). This time around, I thought I'd try something along the lines of this piece that Banksy did on the Palestine segregation wall:

I just had to find an office with a dry-erase wall where the occupant had the day off:

Unfortunately, since I lack realistic artist skills, I had to improvise with my lame drawing skills:

Errrggg. Unfortunately, the bricks didn't translate, and well, anthropomorphic cupcakes and toast didn't convey that sense of paradise "through the wall" as I hoped. And since I spent a lot of time scrubbing the wall (man, dried dry-erase markers is really, really hard to remove), this was as good as it got.

Well, not all attempts can be successes. Sometimes trying and failing is an important part of the journey, don't you think?

BTW, P, you'll want to wipe this down soon. I mean it, those dry-erase markers really set in hard.

SoCal Checklist: Which Wich

Another stop on the food checklist with Linda was Which Wich, where you get to specify how you want your sandwich on these cute paper bags (which took me a while-LOTS of choices):

The sandwich was tasty and their house chips were delicious as well:

 

Definitely fun and tasty - I definitely recommend trying this place if you're near one, you lucky duck. 

Cute Kid Alert!  Got to hang with Oli, who's birthday party is this week:  the Big 2!

Love that he shows off the "meow-meow" that his mom draws on his cute tummy:

For dinner, had a delicious homemade Vietnamese summer roll feast (argh, no pictures!) and then met up with friends for an evening drink. I limited myself to one cocktail and I even shared it:

SoCal Checklist: Tampopo, Shin Se Gumi

On this trip out, I allotted myself more day time to spend with my friend Linda, and we had a mini-checklist of our own. One, which I wasn't that hardcore about, was the oatmeal at McDonald's, which she swears is better (and cheaper) than Starbucks:

I was really skeptical but it's not bad at all. It's on the sweeter side and kind of has this brown sugar flavor infused throughout that gets you hooked. Though I missed the nuts that Starbucks has, I really liked the fresh apples. The only trick is, if I'm going to McDonald's, I would lean towards the hash browns at breakfast as evidenced by the way I kept telling Oli "you want to give Auntie Frances a bite of your hash brown, don't you?". At Starbucks, their other hot food options blow, so their oatmeal seems fantastic in comparison there. Bottom line, though the cheap bastard in me balks at the price I'm paying for instant oatmeal at both places, both oatmeals are pretty darn good.

The place that Linda really raved about was Shin Sen Gumi's ramen. She had been raving about the place and said we HAD to go there. Of course, I love fresh ramen and I told her we should watch one of my favorite movies of all time, Tampopo, before we go. The movie has a main story line of a widow struggling with her ramen shop, so there are all these scenes about the best noodles, stock, etc. And by the end of the movie, you are dying to eat ramen. The movie is also interweaved with other vignettes about food relationships with other aspects of Japanese life, which I love. Because it's not on NetFlix and as a foreign film from over 20 years ago, Tampopo is really hard to get your hands on--fortunately, I was gifted (THANK YOU T!) with a DVD last year and was able to bring it so we could watch it.

We watched it and though Linda wasn't enamored by the non-ramen scenes, we both acknowledged it made you want to respect ramen a bit more. We headed out to Shin Sen Gumi and in some ways it was like in the movie--they only made one type of soup--but here they allowed some slight variations, like extra toppings, firmness of noodles, amount of oil, soup base strength, or if you found onions or ginger "Un desire able":

Aaahhh. Just like the movie:

Unfortunately, they offered only a pork-based soup (though I gave the actual meat to Linda) so I spent a lot of time distracted at how porky the soup was, but overall, delicious. I recommend it, especially after watching Tampopo.

Though it wasn't on the checklist, a number of us went out for karaoke in the evening:

This is my fellow East Coast remote co-worker--we've come to appreciate SoCal now that both of us have moved away from it, so every time we're out here, we fill our calendar with as much SoCal as we can. He's accomplished (played Lacrosse for Syracuse AND got a masters there as well) with a sense of adventure and wanderlust. We were the only remote employees that got dressed for Halloween--and he went all out as Tim the Enchanter. Plus he appreciates the ladies that are smart with a fierce sense of self. Is it any wonder we get along? And, taking a page from Linda's blog:  PS, he's single. 

Did I mention he's not afraid to get on the mike?  Uh, no, he's not a singer:

On a different note: CUTE KID ALERT! Did I mention I'm crashing with this adorable one? Well him, and his beautiful parents:

A great start to the week here in SoCal.

SoCal checklist: O La La

Unfortunately I totally spaced on pictures but I totally got to hit O La La as soon as I arrived into SoCal. The best part was that six awesome people joined me--some for the first time! It was heavenly. Unfortunately Vy Da was closed (as they are every Monday) but it remains on the list...

Crafty Sunday

The girl had some friends over and the best part (besides feeding them pizza and totally getting dissed when offered my microphone skills in RockBand)? A lot of them totally dug the cleaned up spare room/craft room:

Though I spent more time sharing supplies and demonstrating how to use the big Dymo labeler than making stuff myself, I loved that crafting was being done!

The girl had a plucking awesome day

The girl's orchestra teacher uses the word "plucking" as one would use another famous verb-cum-adverb, e.g., "you better believe I am dead plucking serious." Clever man--tip of the cap.

Anyhoo, the County Honors Orchestra proved a new experience and challenge for the middle schoolers. After auditioning singly with music previously handed out, the kids come from various middle schools and play together for the first time in a strenuous day and a half rehearsal session before this afternoon's concert. On top of that, even the conductor is a guest conductor who has never worked with any of these kids before. The guest conductor was a Honduran native currently pursuing a DMA in Orchestral Conducting here at USC. Apparently the high expectations he had threw some of the kids for a loop, especially when he reassigned a boy to a lower chair in the orchestra that morning, but it all came together beautifully:


Unfortunately for the girl, I had frugally glossed over the black and white dress requirement and pulled stuff from my closet rather than buy new clothes that she'd outgrow too soon. Until I saw her in the first chair I realized that the black skirt I lent her looked so much shorter on her longer legs and well, among a bunch of kids in black pants.


But overall, it was a great experience for the girl:


Afterward, she went to a birthday sleepover that featured a campout in their backyard. I lent our tent and they built a campfire and had s'mores:

Plucking lucky girl.