miguel’s happy campers birthday trip

i think the pictures speak for themselves…

Sequoia National Forest/ Kern River

best weekend ever?

This all happened way back in March, but I swear it seemed like just a few weeks ago.

First of all my good friends Rebecca from Brooklyn and Jill from DC arrived on Friday afternoon while I was frantically baking a cake and making lemony custard. Rebecca and Jill, along with my friends Rosa and Kelly were my best friends in college, and they were in town to celebrate Camila’s birthday and baptism and most importantly to eat street fruit and banh mi. Yes! But first, we must eat sausage!

Had a lovely time at Wurstkurche downtown. We drank delicious beers, ate the sausages (I had bockwurst, reminds me of my childhood) and the fries with yummy dipping sauces and were very loud. However, I have no pictures of this delicious event, so just imagine 5 girls eating sausages and drinking beers. I like wurstkuche, it was a very lovely space inside and i like that there’s a second bar in the eating area. i really have to decide on whether to capitalize in this post. i’m going with no.

on to saturday! i woke up early to make the cake, but it was slip sliding all over the place since the custard was not setting up. so i had to start over with the assembly which would have to wait until after the baptism.

the first thing you have to do if you are going to baptize a baby is dress the baby in the cutest white clothes ever. we found this cute dress at a fancy kids dress shop in the fashion district downtown. it was pretty much the only one with out millions of ruffles, beads and lace and therefore camila was the best dressed kid at the church by far. also the most adorable!

 

then you must take a million pictures of camila with her ninos and her parents.

with padrino Miguel

with mama Rosa (ha ha, we used to call her Mama Rosa freshman year for some reason i forget!  i guess it was meant to be.)
 

then we headed to the La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles on olvera street for the mass baptism ceremony.

where we got in one line, then another line, then filed into the church, listened the the priest make jokes about christianity and then finally baptize the child. camila got tired after all of that!

ok, time for the fun stuff…the party!

rebecca’s new bangs are straight pimpin!! this picture came out so nicely!

miss camila and her first pinata

friends enjoying some beers

guess what we had for eating?

tacos were awesome

then camila opened some gifts like this adorable sheep hat.

the dress i made for camila. my first sewing project in ages. used the pillowcase dress pattern loosely, which means i totally made up my own shit which is how i roll, yo.

the adult party was later, says michael

and by adult, i mean shrimp salad!

i bounced in the bouncy castle. 

 

ok, the next day jill, rebecca and i headed over to our alma mater to walk around.  

starting at the greek theatre…

here are some funny things we happened upon

 

then we got some banh mi in the san gabriel valley on our way back to LA

back in echo park, we continued our street food binge with some fruta from the fruit man

and some perro caliente from the hot dog man

and obviously, elotes from the corn man

and we enjoyed it all at the park. got to love LA weather, man.

come back soon, mis amigas!

for rebecca, who couldn’t come

1/4th of the fabulous foursome of pomona class of 2004 was not able to make our 5th reunion this past weekend. i dedicate this post to you, rebecca.

i missed all the debauchery on friday night, and when i arrived on saturday morning it seemed that many of the reunioners from our class were sleeping it off. well, unfortunately they all missed the cute baby, camila!

this is from our lunch on marston quad.

then there was a really lame (and i do mean lame, as many of the participants had to be driven on golf carts) parade of the classes.

then we went into town (ie the claremont village which is now huge and has all kinds of fancy shops now and a museum of art in the converted orange factory which is a gorgeous building and a movie theater, etc. those things were not there when we were in college sadly.)

kelly and i bought new shoes. apparently she doesn’t remember giving me all sorts of shit for wearing birks in college. ha ha.

then there was some prepartying (aww, memories) before the wash party where we caught up with tons of people i haven’t talked to in ages. here’s a strange fact: they served pomona queen beer (that’s not the strange part) and also tortillas with guacamole, cheese and sour cream. doesn’t it seem like they were missing some meat or beans or something?

i forgot to take any pictures of that wash party or our class dinner with the in n out truck! there was some debate about why we were paying $10 for a dinner with only burgers (since in n out trucks do not do fries), but when juan reassured us there would be wine i shut my trap.

and now for the later “unauthorized” wash party thrown by juan.

here’s where the husbands/boyfriends all talk to each other because we were so busy catching up.

or taking a trip to wig basement.

sorry i’m too lazy to fix that photo cuz i fixed it once and that’s one more time than i usually do.

rosa and ryley wrote notes to the people who live in their old rooms.

then we tried to see if any of the stuff we left in the ceiling was still there. no. it was not. but we did manage to freak the froshmen out in the process.

and now for shits and giggles here’s me as lord voldemort in the one and only picture of me at this event (well, the only one i have so far, it’s from juan). this is me after boring mr. trevor about something. i have a feeling it was dentistry related.

note the red cup.

year of the ox

Happy Lunar New Year everybody.  This is the year of the ox, the year both my mom and my brother were born.  eggcellent.

first of all, check out this cutie apron my mom made for me for christmas. i love it! so retro!

also used my mom’s pork dumpling recipe. outstanding as always. i made dozens and dozens throughout the night.

and as the night grew longer, the stickers got more blurry!

rosa and hannah. love that red scarf.

scallion pancakes in the back. veggie dumplings and char siu bao in the steamer. i also made glutinous rice with chinese sausage and water chestnuts and some with mushrooms and baby corn. and some spicy ginger garlic peanuts.

big al, iggy and marie chillin’ on the couch.

who put karla in the corner?

sebastian is here.

well that’s about it. nothing better than dumplings and beer. gong hay fat choy!

flea market and greasy food

Anyone wanna go to the Pasadena City College Flea Market?

The last one was on a beautiful Sunday!  I’ve found amazing stuff here like African beads, a vendor who sells vintage designer sunglasses, and of course, vinyl records (the main attraction for Miguel and Sebastian!).

While they browsed the music section (4th floor of the parking garage), Rosa and I hung out with Camila and looked at things in miniature.

Rode the elevator. Looked at vintage clothes (I bought a wool cape. What the hell was I thinking? This is Los Angeles.) Checked out the massive amounts of cheap jewelry and other crap.

Then we went to the Hat for a greasefest!

Camila was hungry!

are you ready to LUUUUUUUUCHA???!!!???

Miguel won tickets to Lucha VaVoom, which I’ve always wanted to see, but was too cheap to shell out $33 for previously.  Amazing.  That’s about all I have to say.  I will probably go again and buy my own ticket next time…they’re starting a special Cinco de Mayo show!

no te metas con mi cucu – Chicos de Barrio
You may want to listen to this while reading the post. It kind of sets the mood.
 

It was a windy, cold and overcast night when we walked up to the Mayan Club on Hill St. downtown.  

We were passed by a bunch of guys in these old timey cars. I really like old timey things, but these cars were loud! They kept backfiring and scaring the bajeezus out of me. I kind of liked it.

Turns out, the performers were arriving in said old timey cars. Very dramatic and exciting. We saw some later arrivals when we were sitting inside as they were projected onto the wall.

The Mayan is very spectacular inside and out.

On to the luchadores!

The first fight featured Dirty Sanchez and 3 others who I don’t remember because clearly they were inferior to the DIRTY SANCHEZ!! (He’s the one wearing a mirkin, fyi.)

At one point during the match Dirty Sanchez started holding his butt and then one of the other luchadores pulled his pants down to reveal…a bunch of chocolate pudding!!! (I hope!) Then they mashed his teammate’s face into his dirty crack. OMG, it was awesome.

We are enjoying the luchadores and buxoticas! (all my pictures of the buxoticas, aka burlesque dancers, were crappy, sorry! but they weren’t as entertaining as the luchadores anyways.)

Next fight: Los Pollos Locos and El Presidente.

And the mini Secret Service and mini Chicken fight. Yes, those are midgets.

The best part of the evening was when the luchadores would fly out of the ring into the audience. Mostly on the right hand side of the stage. Kinda made me want to seat down there for all the extra excitement and danger. Of course, had I brought my nice camera I would have probably thought differently.

Ok, so this guy on the left, the one without a mask (don’t know why), was a huge crowd pleaser because everytime he did something interesting they played “No Te Metas Con Mi Cucu” and he danced. He would go over to his opponents and try to caress them and it would make them mad. Here’s another example of one of his “moves”.

Well, that was really fun. Can’t wait to go back for more!
LuchaVaVoom!!

apropos of nothing

just some fun pictures, yah know.

i sometimes think i’m lactose intolerant but really i just don’t like to drink milk very much.

i am a really good blimp spotter. “i always spot ‘em first.” that’s my motto.

dot loves you.

halloween was a long time ago

but not so long ago as 2007! these pictures were taken with my small pointandshoot digital camera that annoyingly inserts the date into the image and unfortunately is not quite up to speed regarding what year it is. of course, i’m not one to talk considering i’m talking about halloween 2008 when it’s now 7 days into 2009.

that’s me up there in the white dress with my friend marie dressed up as calaveras. we both decided on the same costumes totally independently of each other (which also happened to me in college with my roommate rebecca. we came back from separate shopping trips with cleopatra costumes. bizarre!). anyways, marie and i had different interpretations of the same costume, so i think we looked pretty fucking awesome as a pair.

here are miguel’s sister olga and her boyfriend jeremy as ghostbusters. they got the costumes because they had attended an 80s themed halloween party earlier in the week. way better than neon spandex, right?

here’s a lovely herb, bob villa (or al borland depending on whether your family watches pbs or the stations with commercials), and two lame-os who didn’t dress up.

this is dinka, the sweetest mastiff ever. she’s wearing a wifebeater that says “more qualified than sarah palin”. it’s more of a political commentary than a costume, but still better that the above lame-os.

marie and i were the only ones who managed to make the 2 mile trek to the west hollywood halloween carnival where we ran into mario (with luigi, not pictured), who looks disturbingly like an ex-boyfriend from high school. and yes, that’s a real mustache!

and here’s my favorite costume from the weho parade! bob’s big boy! it’s like he was born to play that role!

 

ok, this is a really sad blog post with some pretty bad pictures, but halloween is my favorite holiday.  also, i am planning on trying to convince miguel to wear his costume to the raggamuffins festival in long beach this year.  HA!

the murals of east los

i took a trip over the bridge to boyle heights for some good old fashioned mural hunting. my parents came along for the ride (actually they were the ones who wanted the tour as they had just watched La Misma Luna (highly recommended by yours truly; takes place in los angeles and features some murals in that neighborhood.)

sadly, many of the murals we saw were defaced by taggers. damn those taggers! if only we could keep the shitty taggers off the streets i think more people would embrace graffiti artists for brightening up our city.

walking in boyle heights is such a sensory experience compared to the sterile environment of beverly hills or brentwood. the buildings are painted bright colors, you smell delicious things from street vendors and taco trucks, you hear fun music blasted from stores. way more vibrant than over the river.

my parents, although born and raised in california, live in north carolina right now. while nc has its fair share of latino immigrants right now, it’s still nothing compared to walking down the street in boyle heights, which my mother described as feeling like actually visiting mexico. since they had planned on visiting oaxaca earlier this year but their plans fell through, miguel and i took them to guelegetza later for dinner.

so my mother was telling me about how some people in chapel hill are rethinking the free fare for all city buses program that has been in effect for several years. apparently crime has risen in parts of the city that were prior to this program relatively crime free. so they are blaming free buses. i told her that was just like people in beverly hills not wanting the subway going through there to the ocean because it will bring “unsavory” individuals into their neighborhood. even if the studies in chapel hill are correct, perhaps they should look into solving the problem of poverty and lack of jobs instead of taking away free bus fare.

boyle heights used to be a jewish neighborhood, and you’ll still see remnants of its history on the street from the old names of the avenues (brooklyn which is now cesar chavez ) at the bus stops to this old jewish synagogue. you can see pictures of the renovation (which looks to have stopped around 2006…who knows what’s going on now) here.

here’s a picture of dot for your pleasure.

a while back in san francisco

i love san francisco, it’s such a treat. last month i went to hang out with my grandpa while he was being honored for his service to a charity in chinatown. we found parking on the street (which in chinatown is kind of a feat of great proportions), but he made me wait with the car until the parking spot was legal. HA HA. thanks, grandpa.

anyways, my cousin, merri, and her boyfriend, alex, came by after a bit to hang out with me.

i was trying to describe my location on the street to her but all i could come up with was, um, i’m surrounded by electronics stores and cheap crap.

anyways, we went to the banquet. it was disco themed. i would have dressed the part if i had known ahead of time. as it were, you can see me here in my cute party dress.

guess who was sitting at the next table over? kim jong il.

here’s my grandpa with other honorees. he’s the one with the gold platters. my old boss is directly above him. he takes pictures of everyone he meets. literally. the best part of that job was working across the street from washington square park and watching the valet guys run around. literally run. but then i left my vintage (read: thrift shop) velveteen blazer on the bench one day. sad jams.

so anyways, that was friday. i forgot to tell you how i got to sfo from my house in la. i had to take two buses to get to union station (it’s about 2 miles from my house). then i had to take the flyaway bus to lax. then a flight to sfo. for the record, that’s 3 buses to get to the fucking airport. considering all of that and the lines for airport security, it might actually have taken me less time to drive to san francisco.

then on saturday, i hung out with merri and alex. have i mentioned how cool my cousin is? she lives in nopa. which means north of the panhandle…apparently this area is “ghetto” but “gentrifying”.  merri, alex and i walked around their neighborhood, alamo square and japantown taking stupid pictures.

in front of the full house house. ha ha, house house.

then we went back to their studio to eat korean sushi, drink beers and try the miracle berry which makes things taste funny. alex’s parents showed up and i felt like i was doing drugs in front of them. but then they partook as well. i ate lime, tangerine, grape and lemon. they were all as sweet as candy. so was the beer. they really should use that berry as a sugar substitute. so then we took the bus downtown where i got on the bart to go to my birthland, oakland. where my brother, david, now lives.

he and his house full of roommates had a great bbq party full of other pomona alums all younger than me. i am a loser. or just old and creepy!

anyways, as you can see in this blurry picture, the party featured the most delicious sausages of my life. and i’ve had a lot. i mean, one of my interests on myspace is “hot dogs and other processed meats in intestional packages” for god’s sake. those sausages rocked my socks off. ask david to tell you the story about how when they tried to order both the spicy italian sausage and the bbq sausage at this store in oakland, the sausage monger told them they were the same thing except black people call them bbq and white people call them spicy italian. well, that’s pretty much the whole story.

the party also featured homemade peach almond and mint chip ice cream to go along with michela’s birthday cake, of which i will only show you the candles.

i should have taken a picture of katie’s (david’s girlfriend) garden. she’s an awesome gardener. this party also featured david’s old roommate, jarrod, who used to wear harry potter glasses and he’s so great.

here’s a picture of katie with another party goer. she totally got katie’s digits before leaving the party. ha ha. katie is the blond one.  they’re kind of making the same face in this picture.  

sorry for the blurry pictures. i think i was drunk. cuz i then proceeded to spill an entire beer down my pants and on david’s chair. fortunately they got all their furniture for free on craigslist. maybe you’d like to see a picture of my brother. here he is in profile right before i spilled the beer.

so the next day i barted back over to sf in time for dim sum with grandpa before my flight back home. what a lovely weekend. too bad i didn’t get see my friend anya but she was too busy getting trampled at the great outside lands festival at golden gate park. and danielle and brutus, her chihuahua. i didn’t get to see them either. guess i’ll have to be back soon. by the way, in case you’re wondering why there’s no pictures of the banquet food, the korean sushi, or any of the other food i ate on this trip…so am i.