a day of (california) adventure

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My friends Ruby and Jason were in town a few weekends ago and where did we go? California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort.

🙂

The park is undergoing major construction right now (it’s scheduled to be finished 2010-2011) but we managed to keep ourselves busy for a few hours.

I’m not allowed to post pictures of Jason (hehe) so I’ll share random ones instead.



First we hit Toy Story Mania. I love this ride. Too bad I suck at it and only scored 91,600 to Rob’s 171,800.



The Food and Wine Festival was going on and while we didn’t attend any culinary demonstrations, we saw Food Network Star Guy Fieri. I love him! I could watch Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives all day long.



We stopped in the candy store at Greetings of California to drool over the treats. Look at those HUGE caramel apples. YUM!



If you’re familiar with my love for all things Disneyland resort, you know that Rob and I always go to the Animation Building to draw at the Animation Academy. This is one of our favorite attractions ever. This time we drew Mickey’s best friend, Pluto.



Since we were in the Animation Building, we thought we’d check out the Sorceror’s Workshop. Surprisingly, I’ve never been in there, hehe. In Beast’s library, you can find out what character you’re most like. First, you get your picture taken and then you answer a few random questions. It turns out I’m most like Mulan. Pffft. Just because I’m Asian. HAHAHA.



Here’s the picture Rob took.



Rob is most like Timon. BWAH.

We had fast passes to go on Tower of Terror but I just could not convince Ruby and Jason that a multiple drop thrill ride is fun. Hee. I’m always a little apprehensive before I get on the ride and I’m totally screaming and clutching at Rob for dear life during all the drop sequences but I just love it when it’s all over. I guess it’s the adrenaline kicking in.

At that point, we headed out of the park and continued our Disney day by watching Up (my review is below — highly recommended). All in all, we had a great day (no, great weekend) hanging out. Miss you guys and hope to see you again soon!

up

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The lazy stick hit me again.

I’ve been preoccupied with watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 marathons (they are totally separated; how sad), catching up with the show Life that my cousin got me addicted to (like I NEED another show to add to my TV viewing schedule), rooting for the LAKERS, hanging out with visiting friends, and even summer vacation planning.

Speaking of vacations, I just remembered a (maybe?) funny story from a few weekends ago. So Rob and I are tentatively planning an overseas vacation for our first anniversary this summer. While we haven’t officially booked anything yet (waiting and waiting for my vacation to be approved), I figured that I should go ahead and update my passport since I changed my name. Plus, I couldn’t wait to change my passport photo. It is THE WORST picture ever. It was raining in SF the day I took it and I didn’t think to take off my big wool coat or the scarf around my neck for the picture. So I look all huge and bulky. Not a good look. Since I can renew my passport by mail, all I have to do is fill out the application with my new name, write a check for the fee, and send a couple of 2×2 photos. I took my new passport photos at a local mail center and they are EVEN WORSE than the previous ones. My eyes are half closed so I look like I am sleeping standing up. UGH UGH UGH. I was so tempted to take them again but I’m cheap and didn’t want to spend another $10. I’ll just have to live with it for the next 10 years. GREAT.

ANYWAY.



I went to see Up this past weekend. (spoilers?)
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final tv upfronts

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I love 3-day weekends! Plus, I had a half day today so now I’m sitting here watching Bride Wars and surfing the net. Yay for multi-tasking.

So my last few comments on the upfronts…

CBS
I just realized that I don’t watch anything on CBS but CSI and CSI: Miami. They don’t have any interesting new shows either. Hmm… one day I’ll check out How I Met Your Mother. I always hear such good things about the show.

The CW
I am definitely more in the CW’s target demographic, which I guess is the reason why so many of their shows appeal to me. Ok, not really. I’m just a sucker for cheesy teen dramas.

Most of my shows made it to next season…
– Gossip Girl. I need to catch up. I’m behind by 5 episodes. Yikes.
– One Tree Hill. I haven’t watched since January but caught the final 2 episodes and thought that would have been a great series finale. I love Lucas and Peyton and the show just won’t be the same without them next season. Mia/Chase and Milly/Mouth can’t even come close.
– Supernatural. Yay for the Brothers Winchester!
– Smallville. But WHOA to it getting a new Friday time slot. It’ll probably do well, though. It made it 8 seasons already, which is FAR longer than I ever thought it would last.

The only show that I wish would have made the cut is Privileged. 🙁 Such a cute show! JoAnna Garcia was amazing (even though I didn’t love Megan that much) and was really looking forward to seeing how her relationship with Will and the twins progressed. Plus, Rina Mimoun! I’m such a fan of her work. She penned many of my very favorite episodes of Everwood and I wanted this show to do well for her.

As far as new shows, I’ll probably check out…
– Melrose Place. I’m not sure I like this “trend” of reviving old shows so we’ll see. I was really looking forward to the new 90210 and I managed to keep up for awhile but really, I realized that I just don’t care about any of the characters.
– Vampire Diaries. I bet this show only got picked up because the CW wants to capitalize on the Twilight craze. I, however, will watch it for IAN SOMERHALDER. Mmm. I’m still sad he got killed off on Lost. Too bad the sneak peeks I found on YouTube look terrible. Hopefully it’ll get better?
– The Beautiful Life. The sneak peeks for this show aren’t so great either but it’s about models. Like a fictionalized America’s Next Top Model!

I really wish they had picked up Body Politic with Jason Dohring (I miss him on TV!), Minka Kelly, and Gabrielle Union. It’s about young congressional staffers! Set on Capitol Hill! I’m hoping they’ll pick it up as a midseason replacement cause I’m almost positive one of the above shows will get axed.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

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tv upfronts again

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It’s TV upfronts time again!

I’m a dork and love the anticipation of show renewals and cancellations and the excitement for new series to come. So far, FOX, ABC, and NBC have announced their fall schedules. Nothing terribly exciting…

FOX
I don’t like So You Think You Can Dance moving to the fall. It’s my summer show! Humph. For the past few seasons, I’ve been looking forward to it as a “break” from the rest of my shows. Oh well.

Glad to see Fringe is back (which reminds me, I need to watch the season finale). But they moved it to Thursday at 9. THANKS A LOT. I watch 3 other shows in the same time slot.

Dollhouse was renewed. I don’t watch the show but maybe I will now. I read that the show got off to a slow start but built up to a solid season ending episode. Plus, I’ve always loved Joss Whedon’s shows. Hmmm.

The only new show I’m going to check out is Glee. I haven’t watched the pilot yet (it aired tonight after American Idol) but based on opinions from friends who saw it early, I think I’m going to like it. I mean, come on. It’s a show about a high school musical choir. Tell me that’s not TOTALLY UP MY ALLEY.

ABC
I don’t really watch much on ABC anymore besides Lost and Grey’s Anatomy and of course, those were easy renewals. I’ve long since given up on Private Practice, Ugly Betty, and Brothers and Sisters but I’m not surprised to see them on the fall schedule again.

As for their new shows, I’ve never been a huge sitcom fan so their Wednesday night comedy block doesn’t interest me at all. Eastwick looks promising though (based on the movie Witches of Eastwick) and it stars Rebecca Romijn and Lindsay Price. Love both of them.

NBC
PHEW. SO happy Chuck is back on NBC’s midseason schedule. Even if it’s only for 13 episodes. It’s such a good show! I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Heroes for the past few seasons but the finale definitely picked up so I have to admit I’m (cautiously) looking forward to season 4. I watched the premiere of Southland a few weeks ago but I guess Ben McKenzie isn’t as big of a draw as I thought because I never remember to watch this show. Too much going on Thursdays. Maybe Friday will be a better night for it? Although Friday seems to be the day where networks put shows TO DIE a slow death (recent example: Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles).

Are new medical dramas like Trauma and Mercy really necessary?

Also, it is VERY WEIRD to see The Jay Leno Show on the schedule EVERY NIGHT at 10pm. I like Jay Leno but he is taking away too many precious PRIMETIME slots. Couldn’t he have just conceded the Tonight Show to Conan and left it at that? Grrr.

san francisco treat

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A few random notes:

1. I want to see Angels and Demons this weekend. It’s already better than The DaVinci Code because it has Ewan MacGregor. LOVE HIM.

2. I just found out that stamps went up $0.02 again. WTF USPS. Didn’t you JUST raise the price last year? *sigh*

3. Last one… So You Think You Can Dance STARTS NEXT WEEK. (Yes, it really does deserve to be in CAPS). So excited. Seriously, this show is so much better than American Idol. I swear.

Anyway.

If you follow my Twitter, you’ll know that Rob and I were in San Francisco a few weekends ago. My sister-in-law Susie was graduating and we wanted to be there to celebrate with her. Too bad flying United made it such a pain to get in and out of SFO.

On the flight out of John Wayne/OC airport, I found out that United now charges to check-in bags. Originally we were going to pack 2 separate carry-on bags but decided at the last minute to combine our stuff into one check-in bag. Bad move that cost us $15 each way. Really. UGH. Then as we headed to our gate, we found out that our flight was delayed an hour due to rain in SF. Ok fine, so the delay wasn’t United’s fault… whatever. Luckily we were staying with Victor (Rob’s brother) and Susie and they had a really comfy Airbed for us to sleep on. I love those things. Although I discovered that on hardwood floors, it is REALLY LOUD. You move even slightly and it squeaks like crazy.

Saturday was Susie’s graduation on the USS Hornet. Yup, a ship! The ceremony started at 10am but since we were tagging along with the graduate, we had to be there at 8:30am. I think I woke up at about 6:30am to start getting ready, which is the earliest I’ve woken up in a loooong time now that I’m working from home. HEE. It was a good thing we had to be there early because there was already a long line waiting to get on the ship. I think they were doing security checks. You can see a tiny bit of the line on the left of this pic…



Just look at the ginormous ship! It was amazing.

The ceremony was 3+ hours long. !!! The beginning was filled with too many long and forgettable speeches so I played games on my iPhone. Don’t judge.



Finally, Susie was called and this is all we got to see of her! The stage was in the middle of the hangar deck (I think) with the graduates seated in front and all the guests seated to either side. Super awkward arrangement.



Victor and Susie!



After the ceremony, the chairs were cleared out quickly, which gave Rob the opportunity to give his own inspirational speech. Heh.



It finally stopped raining long enough for us to go outside. It was so overcast we could barely see the city across the bay. Boo.



Even more Rob silliness.



We were STARVING but had dinner reservations in just a few hours so opted to get Happy Meals from McDonald’s. YUM YUM chicken mcnuggets with sweet and sour sauce. But the best part was seeing Smush go crazy when he smelled the french fries. Hehehe.

Our day ended with dinner at Tsunami, watching the Pacquao fight at a local filipino restaurant/bar, and I even talked a couple of my good friends into coming into the city to hang out. 😀

Our flight back on Sunday was supposed to leave SFO at 12:45 but again, we get to the airport and find out it’s delayed 1.5 hours. They didn’t give us a reason. When it got close to boarding time, the flight was delayed yet another hour so we wouldn’t be leaving until close to 3:30. This time they said it was because the bathroom on the plane wasn’t functioning. I don’t know if that was the only reason. Still. It sucks. This was the fourth United flight in a row that I’ve taken that’s either been delayed or cancelled. GRRR. Rob called United to let them know about our experience and we managed to get a $200 credit. Hopefully we don’t have any problems when we try to fly United again.

It was great to see San Francisco again – I can’t wait to go back!

As for this weekend, I’ve got a whole lot of TV watching planned. AWESOME.

star trek

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I thought the release date for Star Trek was Friday, May 8 but for some reason, it was playing at our local movie theatre on Thursday night. So off we went!

The trailers shown before the movie totally got me excited for summer movies! I want to see…

G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra. Channing Tatum. 😛
Terminator Salvation. CHRISTIAN BALE. *drool*
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. No, not because of Shia LaBeouf. It’s all about Bumblebee! Oh, also Josh Duhamel.

YAY FOR FUN SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS WITH CUTE BOYS.

Back to Star Trek. Confession – I’m not a Trekkie. I might have seen 1 or 2 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (I thought Wil Wheaton was cool) but I never saw the original series or any of the previous movies. So my thoughts on the new movie might be totally off the mark. Oh well. 🙂

So I really, really liked it! I liked that it was accessible to non-fans like me. I’m sure there were lots of inside jokes and references but I never felt left out.

Spoilers? Maybe.

The cast was amazing. I absolutely LOVED Karl Urban as Bones. Chris Pine did a great job as Kirk too — he’s a cocky character but Pine managed to make him charming and likable. I’m a fan of Zachary Quinto’s so I naturally thought he was a great Spock. The weakest link was Zoe Saldana as Uhura but I’ve never really liked her acting. I always feel like she’s OVER-acting. The interaction between the whole cast felt natural and real — I particularly loved the friendships between Kirk/Bones (one of my favorite scenes was when Bones injected Kirk with a virus to get him on board Enterprise and Kirk kept saying “STOP IT” — lol-arious) and Kirk/Spock (they had a great push/pull relationship).

The movie started out strong with an amazing opening sequence. I only knew Kirk’s dad for a few minutes and my heart broke. After that, the movie took a while to get going again (although totally necessary to introduce the characters and their background) but once it did, the action was pretty much non-stop until the end. Like I said earlier, I know nothing about Star Trek canon so I thought the twist of the alternate reality was interesting. I have no idea how hard core fans will react but I like that this movie (and any of its possible sequels) now exists in a different “universe” from all the previous ones.

My only real complaint about the movie is that Nero is kinda boring and forgettable. THE VILLAIN of all characters. What a waste of Eric Bana!

Regardless, I would totally watch this again. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

kogi bbq on cinco de mayo

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First up… Happy Birthday Jimmy (aka roomie)!

Yesterday Rob and I celebrated Cinco de Mayo by checking out the famous LA Kogi BBQ truck. Seriously, it’s famous — even the NY Times has written about it! The heart of Kogi are their Korean-style tacos and burritos served with your choice of short ribs, spicy pork, chicken, or even tofu. The meat is covered with shredded cabbage and a chili salsa and cilantro-lime relish. Mmmm.

So the trucks are finally making their way down to Orange County and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try it out. I found out from their Twitter that one of the trucks was scheduled to be in Fullerton from 7pm – 10pm so armed with the knowledge that the line starts early and gets looooong, we left Irvine at 5:30. !!! We got there at 6:15 and there were 3 people in line. We killed about 20 minutes at the nearby Sports Authority then headed back. In that short amount of time, an actual line had started to form and we were about 20th in line. Not so bad. The truck arrived 10 minutes early and proceeded to park in the back parking lot. Uhhh… at first there was some confusion. Do we turn around? What about our places in line?! But everyone was feeling the Kogi love — and once we all turned around to walk to the truck, we got right back into the same order we started in.

It took longer than normal for the truck to get prepped and the grill to get going (the truck manager came out a few times to apologize and thank everyone for coming out) so they started taking orders at about 7:15 and the food started coming out about 5 minutes after that. We finally got our hands on all our grub at 7:45. Mmmm. A few pics…



Rob took this pic of me standing in line. You can BARELY see me. I’m wearing a black hoodie.



THE MENU.



Rob placing our order. !!! We ordered the following:

7 short rib tacos
3 spicy pork tacos
2 chicken tacos
1 short rib burrito
1 kimchi quesadilla

NO, all that food was NOT just for the two of us. Though that would be really funny if it was. We were ordering for 5 and bringing it all to a friend’s place.



And finally Rob posing with the Kogi truck. Hee.

I AM LAME and totally forgot to take pictures of the food before we devoured it. ARGH. Sorry. If you’re curious, the yumminess can be seen here on Kogi’s site and here on Yelp. Beware — don’t look at the pics on an empty stomach!

For the record, my favorites were the short rib taco and kimchi quesadilla. I had a couple of bites of the short rib burrito (which has scrambled eggs and hash browns in addition to the salsa and relish) and I’m totally getting that next time. YUMMERS.

chuck + heroes finales

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I can’t believe it’s already season finale time… Wowzers.

Chuck and Heroes ended their second and third seasons respectively so I wanted to write up some quick thoughts before I forget…

Let’s start with Heroes, shall we? (beware spoilers!)
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