My Trip to LA

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So the story is that I work with a bunch of wonderful people in LA. This past week I was lucky enough to travel there on business, right in to Hollywood. 

Here follows a pictorial journey of the fun stuff I did. 

We did the star walk. Naturally, the only star I took a picture of was the one I felt would get the biggest laugh from K. 


E and Sly, whom I was lucky enough to travel with, kindly didn't look away as I touristly took photos. Yes, touristly. 


Here is the famous Grauman's 







Clearly, this was also due to K's influence.....


I also almost missed the Kodak. It is hilariously surrounded by shopping malls and people dressed as spiderman crouching on trashcans. 


Have you ever seen Big? 



Yeah...


I was pretty excited too. 

This is Sly's fabulous view from her office window. I feel pretty jealous staring at psuedo carpet cube walls. Ah to be fabulous 


If you look closely you can spot the Beverly Wilshire  where we walked to a celebratory lunch one afternoon. I felt as though Richard Gere would sweep in to give me a giant cellphone and save my life.....or something :) 


It is a bit hazy, but you can see the Hollywood sign and all. 


Our first night we dined at La Loteria 

It was divine, fragrant rice, perfectly stewed beans, tender shrimp tacos. 


I felt pretty damn chic 


Alas, still not celebrities lurking in those dark corners. 



One afternoon we drove to Santa Monica, where the stars gather their Vitamin D. 


If only K were there to ride to beach-long board walk. 




We supped at the delicious Gladstones 

We are pretty happy sitting in the sunshine with Mojitos. 


However, we became much more deliriously happy when we got moved to a table next to the beach. We watched the sunset and basked in the glory of amazing food. 



I started with some New England chowder. Now, this was the one thing I didn't like so much, but that shows me for ordering this in CA. Duh R. 


Sly's Taco Salad. 


E's basil shrimp, goat cheese flat bread. 


Yes, it was a sandwich. But I swear, it was the best sandwich that has ever graced my mouth with its presence. Seared Ahi tuna with a house made Chile Harissa (i.e. delicious, crack sauce) with avacado, pickled red onion and spinach on a soft ciabatta roll. 




Seriously, even foodporn can't describe the magnitude of this sandwich. 


We even got a glimpse of a seal gamboling about in the water, I assume in joyous celebration of my sandwich. 

All in all, what a lovely trip to LA. 


Oh yeah, and I did work too :) 

Living Like Mavericks

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K here again.
I used to love to play hockey.  I was on several teams, and played for several years.  Ever since they announced there would be a hockey team coming to the Independence Event Center, I have been constantly wanting to go to a game.  About two years later, R finally made my dream come true.  We got tickets to a Missouri Mavericks game, and it was fun on a bun.  D and his lady, KT came to town for the weekend, and joined the "Orange Army" with us Saturday night.  We all had a blast.  The arena was small enough for every seat in the place to be a great view.  The crowd was riled up, and we had no problem fitting in.  The one downside was the "Maverick" cowbells everyone had.  R did not appreciate the 4 sitting right behind us.  I however did not mind them.



D and myself went exploring and got a little something for everyone... KT got the foam finger she'd been wanting, the boys got a couple "Chuck-a-Pucks" to throw out onto the ice in an attempt to win $600 and other sweet prizes (We won nothing... not even close... our puck chucking skills need some work) and for R, I tried to continue our streak of having her try the most ridiculous food sports arenas have to offer.  Of course there was the usual nachos, peanuts and such... but then I saw an item on the menu that had quotes around it... And if that doesn't say "GET THIS, GET THIS" I don't know what does
Today ladies and gentlemen, I present you the Missouri Maverick's food spectacular:
"The Mighty MO Dog"

It's basically a chilidog, but huge, doused in chili, onions, cheese, and topped with Fritos (but Fritos probably didn't want to endorse the mighty mo quite yet, so the menu describes them as corn chips)


R had about 2 bites before she felt like she had to pass on the ol' MO.  I kindly obliged to finishing it for her.




The game was fun, and tied up until the last few minutes when the visitors scored 2 unanswered goals to bring the Mavs a loss.  They're headed to the playoffs still though, and I hope we get to go to another game if not this year, then next.


We then went out with D and KT to Westport and had fun relaxing and getting the sound of cowbells out of our brains.



So all in all, a fun weekend!  OH YEAH, and we did get an actual weekend now that I'm officially a full time employee and have Friday/Saturday off!  Hopefully the first of many real weekends. 
Wahoo!


Also in wedding news, we have lined up our good friend, and D's father Mr. Fuchs as our "ordained minister" to do our wedding for us!

Loves it.
K

Fast Times at Dorky High

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We've been having some big fun this last week everyone. And by big fun, I mean the totally mundane things mostly only our families and a few bored friends care about (thanks for visiting everyone!)  

We got out on a bike ride the only nice day for the last couple weeks: 




We have not yet invested in our really dorky bike clothing, so we are only a little bit hilarious. Trust me though, K is in the works to buy a rear view mirror because he constantly wants to look back to make sure I am still there, so it will get worse. We will eventually be donning the seriously unattractive bike shorts, with their adult diaperish padding and sausage thigh design. We....are in this thing. 


In other news, K recently let me give him a haircut. The back story to this is he hates getting haircuts. He finds it awkward to sashay into a barber shop chair and be inundated with annoyingly chit chatty questions while he tries to articulate how much he does or doesn't care what this hair cut will eventually look like. Enter, me. I am, a little overconfident when it comes to things I've never done. I am one of those "give it I got it" people, who, after watching my mother give me haircuts, was feeling a little bravado that surely I could lick this hair thing in no time. So as not to leave you in suspense, K is doing fine. 


However, this process was much harder than I thought and our entire bathroom was covered in hair. Mad props Mom, because I'm pretty sure K squirmed way less than I did, yet it was challenging stuff. In the end, I think K will come back to the R's Cut and Mess, but probably not for as long as his hair allows. 

This weekend we got to do some wedding business with my savior of a sister, LP. She should clearly be in charge of this occasion and has been a great inspiration. We did a little thrift store hunting and made some progress on our DIY missions. We got a delicious lunch and great company out of the deal, which made for an awesome Saturday. 

Last but not least, here are some pictures of Nithi and her favorite person reading some books. 




Complete with video so you can all witness the cuteness, if only for a moment since the batteries were running low. 


Happy March everyone, who wants to buy me some galoshes:) 

Winter's end is in sight

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Hey everybody, K here. 
While winter has been fun, we're about done with it... These snow storms are getting to be a little tiresome.

 Thursday night, when we suddenly got another rain/sleet/snow storm, R and myself had to try multiple routes home, as cars were stuck on hills, or unable to make it through intersections... after a long long drive home, which at one point included getting stuck on a hill during a red light with about 12 other cars, and having throw down some trusty salt/sand mix I keep in my car. (R was not having such a good time at this point, but she held out like a champ, and we made it through the light without having an accident while others weren't so lucky) We finally made it home, but were unable to make it up our complex's huge hill they call a driveway.  So we ended up parking down by the garbage drop off, and walking home to our apartment, which was much more fun than trying to drive anyway.

Gotta have a snowball fight... right?

Saturday night I built a snowman on the roof of the TV station complete with a flower-pot hat, and ended up getting on the news a few times with a picture!

Saturday Night
Monday Night.  The rain and sunlight were not kind to him.

Needless to say the change in weather can not come soon enough for us, and that is escalated even more by the fact that we have new bicycles.  So far we've only gone on one ride, (on one of those magical 70 degree days we had a few weeks back) and it was GREAT!  So fun! Need moooree....

Thanks to Pappa Hatfield for generously donating his old ride to our cause, here it is on my test ride out in Shawnee-Mission Park.
 And here's R's brand new Trek Lexa






Here's a tiny look into R's awesome creativity!  These were a couple of Valentines she made at her craft circle from the last post.




I have the best Valentine E.V.E.R.

Here's another little example of how awesome R is to me... I came home from work, and found an entire tupperware FULL OF CUPCAKES!  Woo!  I didn't think to take a picture of it until they were almost gone though.
Also she had made a delicious BBQ meatloaf that I don't know anything about... other than it was delicious, and could have eaten it forever.  A photo was not taken of this, because it didn't last long....


WEDDING UPDATE:
If you haven't noticed yet, we have made a wedding web-site, and there's a link on the right of this page, above our "about me" section.  It's pretty fun, and I encourage you to sign the guest book over there. 
We may not be totally ready for the wedding yet, but at least there's a little flower girl we know who is now ready to dress her part!

Flower Girl Apparel


We'll post again soon and let you know how the Spring transition is going.  In the meantime everybody go wash off the winter salt, and let's do this Spring thing!

K

Craft Circle-Bonus Post!

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As a bonus post, here is the craft circle I hosted this weekend. I work with some very creative ladies and each month we get together and craft. We have done things like resin pendants, glass etchings and jewelry makings. As this was my month, it was not a very creative craft (Valentine card making), however, with some serious tricks of the crafting trade they rose to the challenge!....I provided lots of food:) 

Here is what I made: 



Delightfully delicious and pretty easy too. It felt a little like a science experiment when  I flash boiled them in the water and baking soda solution. Who knew these could come out like they do from the cart, I didn't. However, make sure you don't make gobs of them for a bunch of dieting ladies because they are best very fresh. Even within a couple hours they weren't as good, although I bet if you froze them and baked them again they would save well. 

I also made Turkey-Bacon Wrapped Dates *delicious* and some cream puffs and vegetable tray courtesy of Costco. 



Note: this is one significant reason for the R and K budget smack down. Costco, you are so cost saving, except for all those tempting and not so necessary options that we buy. Budget breakdown is so on. 

Here is what the ladies brought: 


Yep, it isn't even all unpacked. 


We made some pretty cool cards, with crafty supplies that I have never even seen. Do you know what embossing is? There is ink, powder and a special little blow dryer involved, it also felt pretty scientific. I made a couple of cards and K and I got to eat the conversation hearts we bought. A great event! 

This weekend was also an awesome super bowl party, which I should have remembered to take pictures at but I didn't. This is pretty unfortunate but the highlights included winning the bet that Christina would, in fact, hold the "brave" of the nation anthem more than 6 seconds and Nithi running around in her pigtails and feety pajama's cheering "Go Packers!" 

Things We Do When It Snows

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Back in January we took a little break. The snow was making all of us a little cooped up so when we got a generous invitation from our friends we jumped at the chance. It even got K to rearrange his work schedule, a very rare thing. 



 We went to the lake, yes the frigid lake, with our lovely friends and played many board games. It was refreshing in that, eat too much, sleep at the wrong time of night, laugh until you cry kind of way. 



We hung out with Odie and played the gloriously awesome and nerdy game Settlers of Catan. 


We all cooked delicious food and had a jolly time. 

Even though we did get to take a break, the winter doldrums banged on my pipe, or whatever, again. It must be why they put Valentine's day in the middle of all this miserable coldness, because I had to rearrange my living room to keep from feeling like I live in a closet. 

Don't get me wrong, I love my apartment. I love how it is warm and I am so very well provided for and loved. However, when I work from home and never get out of my pajamas for three days, it starts to feel a little stiffling despite all the "relaxing". 

How did I treat this malaise? 

Feng Shui.....sort of. 

I rearranged. 


And then I felt a little better. 

Here is to February. I'm going to celebrate my second love day with my love, work on getting our budget under control and kick this wedding planning into gear.