Wonderful Wednesday with Friends

Yesterday, I got to hang out with my friend Marie, whom I haven't seen in FOREVER. So long that she now has a little munchkin who is almost 5 months old. His name is Landon and he might be the cutest little dude I've ever seen. Hopefully I get to hang out with him more soon, but for now, I'd like you to meet Landon the Landosaur!!

The Landosaur says "RAWR I'M CUTE"

landosaur likes the giants.

Today was equally as awesome. My friends, Ping and Jon just adopted a new puppy from the shelter. His name is Denny and he is 2 years old (so not really a puppy). He is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen :) I was soooo excited to hang out with them. While the puppy ran around, Ping and I made cookies for her boyfriend Jon. If you remember from last week, I made those 3-ingredient pumpkin cookies. They were just as easy this time as last time. I recommend Betty Crocker Spice cake mix and the pumpkin puree from Trader Joe's...they make better cookies than the Duncan Hines Spice cake mix and whatever pumpkin puree we bought from Safeway. The cookies still turned out good, even though Denny tried to eat them. Unfortunately, I had to leave them, but maybe I'll get to dog sit for Denny soon!

Anyways, after I met Ping's dog, I met up with my friend David. I wanted to take him to this place by San Jose State called La Vic's for these awesome burritos. If you remember, the key to these burritos is the awesome orange sauce they give you. However, he didn't want burritos because he was getting them later that night. We decided to go to Armadillo Willy's, this local barbecue joint. We parked, ready to go into Armadillo's when we noticed a taco truck across the street. Having never eaten at a taco truck before, David agreed to eat there instead. But first he made me look it up on yelp because he doesn't like ghetto trucks. We crossed the street and ordered some AWESOME tacos. Actually, David got 2 carne asade quesadillas...which was a little expensive since it was 5 bucks per quesadilla. I got 3 tacos, 1 carne asade taco, one bbq pork taco, and 1 super chicken taco (with cheese and sour cream). Get this...I only spent 4 bucks!!!! The tacos were DELICIOUS! I LOVE THIS TRUCK. Next time Matt comes up (and Amber comes home), I'm taking both of them! PS. David and I sat on the curb eating our mexican food. It was a great time :)

and this is why i enjoy skyping with her

OPENING NIGHT!!!!!!!!

So as passionate as I am about the Giants, I must say that the Lakers will always have my heart. And I feel like I have been waiting foreverrrrr....but tonight is finally opening night!!!!! Thank God, it's been awhile and I've really been missing the purple and gold (granted I've been busy with the black and orange). In honor of tonight's game against the Rockets, and the RING CEREMONY!!!!! for our 2009/2010 championship, I wanted to do a special blog post to my favorite men!!! Last season was a great sports year for us, so let's go for a three-peat this year :)

the $30,000 beautiful and glorious championship ring

via http://www.lakers.com

PS. This is Kobe's 15th season with the Lakers. Some players just know where their heart and home belong.

PPS. MIAMI lost tonight!!!! So much for that multimillion dollar team.

PPPS. If you even so much shown a sliver of a sign of support for the Heat *ahem, Matt* there will no longer be a matt and margaret project :-P

PPPPS I'm digging Steve Blake. Get to know him cus he's doing big things. As a sidenote, the article does compare Fisher to Blake...a lot, but just know that I still have a lot of respect for Derek Fisher and he will always be one of my favorites.

spontaneous day trip to san fran with nicole!

The week after the giants beat the padres to clinch the NL West title, I found out that the San Francisco Chronicle released an extra edition of their paper on Sunday after the Giants' victory (thanks to Jonathan Sanchez ♥). After I found this out, I made it my goal to get several copies of this paper. Well after maybe about 10 phone calls to different departments of the Chronicle, I finally found out that I could pick up some copies at the main building in San Francisco. Seeing as how San Francisco is almost an hour away, I didn't want to just drive out there and then drive back by myself. So I enlisted the help of my friend Nicole. Nicole moved home from San Diego like me, and we both needed this trip to the city. So I drove to Nicole's place and she drove us out to San Francisco on a beautiful Friday morning. Well, by the time we got to the city, it was almost lunch time so we stopped by the Chronicle, where I marched to the front desk and they handed me 5 copies for 10 bucks (SOO WORTH IT!) Here is the glorious paper itself :)

brian wilson looks glorious

After I had the golden copies in my hand, I decided to take Nicole to this place I had seen a few weeks ago for lunch. It's called the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen. This may or may not be the best decision of my life (I'll let you guess..it's not the latter). As you know, I am a believer in grilled cheese and I am pretty sure this place has mastered it (I also love mac and cheese and want to try this glorious place in NYC someday). It's a little pricey, around 7-8 bucks for a sandwich, but I would definitely go back. It was pretty packed at lunch time, so I think it's pretty popular in the area. I also forgot to tell you that you can park in this adorable loop with a park in the center. If I could live in SF, I would want to live in this little circle. Did I mention this place is like a 2 minute walk to AT&T park (yes, Matt I did just say 2 minutes)? Anyways, this place might be one of my favorite places in San Francisco!! I'm also a little ashamed to admit it, but we did get beers with lunch just because they were 3 bucks during lunch time. Plus it sounded good with my grilled cheese. I got the Piglet sandwich (with ham and apple mustard) and Nicole got the Jalapeno Popper (with bacon and apricot-jalapeno relish). When Matt comes and visits, I am totally taking him here! He will probably die from how deliriously wonderfully amazing these sandwiches are (because he is the reason I love grill cheese).

meet nicole!

Anyways, afterward we wolfed down our yummy sandwiches, I decided that Nicole had to try the delicious watermelon beer from the 21st amendment bar, since it was right across the street. How many times do you get to try watermelon beer (twice for me so far). Trust me, we had no intention of getting beers with anything that day, but it kind of just happened. Nicole loved it! It's hard not to love...it's sweet, crisp, and very refreshing and you get a delicious slice of watermelon with it. I also decided to try a sample of their imperial espresso stout. Not really my cup of tea (or coffee)...but I could see Matt loving this. He loves coffee and he loves beer. It's the perfect combination. I'll have to take him back here to try it. This whole date with Nicole just became a redo list for Matt and I.

espresso stout

Nicole and I decided to do a little shopping at Union Square. We hit up Forever 21 (which might be the biggest one I've ever been in....no joke it's 3 FULL stories), Aldo (where Nicole bought two pairs of boots in different colors because they were only 20 bucks), Urban Outfitters (where I found the cutest book ever....called Other People's Love Letters), and just walked around the square. Did I mention how much I love San Francisco? It's beautiful and alive and crisp and sooooo wonderful there. I would love to find a job and settle down right there. Needless to say, Nicole and I wore ourselves out a little bit shopping and eating! However, next time I'm in SF, I'm going to try their hot dog vendor carts and close my eyes and pretend for a second that I'm in New York City. But that will have to wait til next time. I wish Matt could be here so we could take a spontaneous trip to San Francisco tomorrow :)

i love people who love the giants

PS. Macys in Union Square is ready for Christmas! I'll keep trying to wait til Nov 1 to celebrate and start watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas songs and changing my ringtone to "All I want For Christmas is You."

christmas!!!!

PPS. Did you figure out why I needed 5 copies? Well one for me, and one for matt, and one for my friend Lunani, and one for Matt's brother Josh and one for his parents :)

no joke

Apparently my joke while skyping was not very funny.  As you can
tell, non-hilarious jokes warrant a death stare

pumpkins at trader joe's!

Road Trip Part V: Reno

I'm sorry this posted didn't get posted earlier :( you will have to think way back to Matt and my roadtrip in September....

So I bet you thought we were done with the road trip...but we're not. There's our entire Reno adventure left. On Wednesday morning, Matt and I left Sunnyvale and headed out onto the open road. We made it to Reno in exactly 4 hours (with 20 chicken nuggets and some rockstars). Matt and I were going to meet his mom for lunch, but we ended up getting started a little because Matt forgot to turn in his big architecture project (the student lounge)....go figure haha. We drove straight to his house (except for the pit stop at Mickey D's) and hung out for a little bit, but we were both pretty anxious to get to the sushi restaurant, our favorite one, Yen Ching. 10 bucks for all-you-can-eat sushi during happy hour....AMAZING!!!! I think we should have passed on those chicken nuggets and really worked up an appetite. I only managed to get down maybe 2 rolls of sushi...it's a little depressing how out of sushi-shape we were :( However, we did manage to make friends with the sushi chef...I think his name is Kevin. He told us that the sushi is so cheap because it's frozen, and not because of the casino's leftovers (which Matt has been telling me since day 1). We were like the only ones there, since it was 3:30, not exactly ideal for all-you-can-eat sushi. But it was still delicious, as per usual! Later that night, we watched the Giants game with Matt's fam (as if there's anything else we would do at the Evans house). A bit of a bummer since the Giants lost to the Cubs that night :( We ended up going out towards the end of the game and meeting his brothers and sister-in-law at a bar called Flowing Tide and watching the end of the game and grabbing a few beers. The beer of the month was Sam Adams' Oktoberfest...perfect for the October theme (even though all of this happened in September). Matt ended up getting the "Poor Boy" shot and beer, which consisted of a shot of Tuaca (from a local distillery) and Budlight.

On Thursday, we went to Sand Harbor in Tahoe...where we paid 10 bucks for parking in the middle of September...thanks a lot Tahoe. We went up and I started a new book series about a FBI agent. The first book was called the Rook (and since then I have finished all the other 3 published novels). SOOO GOOD. I'M HOOKED! After reading on the beach and relaxing, we decided to go to my favorite burrito place in the entire world...T's Burritos! They are AMAZING, though this time was kind of a disappointment. I ordered my burrito without black beans and they ended up giving it to me with black beans and so Matt brought it back where they ended giving him the wrong burrito. It was a mess, but I ended up eating a burrito with black beans...but it was still delicious. When we got back from tahoe, we were beat and just hung around the house until Abby's (Matt's sister) volleyball game at his high school. Galena beat Wooster! Go Grizzlies. And we learned that Abby was a great rolly polly at some point in her previous life. Afterwards, we had a big family dinner (where his brother and sister-in-law came over) from Qdoba. This has this great two-fer deal where you can get tacos plus soup! Delicious. For those of you who don't know, Qdoba is like a Nevadan version of Chipotle.

my awesome T's burrito!!

On Friday night, we went to the Freight House District and got beers with his two older brothers to watch the UNR-CAL game and Giants game. They have the best Thai spice wings...check those out if you had that direction. Matt and I shared a buffalo chicken wrap...also delicious. But the best part was that we got to try the new silver bullet Coors Light cans. They are so cute...they look like rocket ships. Afterwards we went to Bully's, a local sports bar, to meet up with Brandon's friends and watch the rest of the games. Fortunately for Reno, UNR beat Cal (unfortunately for those of us from California).

On Saturday, we shopped for Basim's Dad's Birthday present for his 50th birthday party that night. Matt and I went to Wal-mart to pick up some cereal and pepsi...since that is Jamal's (Bas's dad) favorite breakfast...a little sugary for my taste, but it makes a good joke. Wal-mart was having an Oreo-stacking contest and after watching two 7-year olds try to beat each other, Matt and I decided to give it a shot. Matt stacked 22 mini oreos, while I only got 7 because my stack crumbled at the last minute. We found out the record at the moment was held by an 8-year old who stacked 34 oreos while second place belonged to an 80-year old man with 32 oreos. Apparently, Matt and I just don't have a knack for stacking oreos. We picked up a pink princess card for Jamal (which was supposed to be for a 5 year old, but we added a 0 to it to make it a 50...we are creative). When we got home, Matt and I glued the faces of Basim's family onto the princess bodies on the card. Maybe the best card I have ever seen. Later that night, we went to the birthday party, where Alene planned a big surprise party for Jamal. It was awesome and the food was yummy :) I got to meet a lot of Matt's friends' parents. The best part of Saturday night was going out gambling afterwards with Basim and Scott. We hit up the Cal Neva (of course) and played black jack pretty much all night. Matt ended up being up 90 bucks and I even won 20 bucks. I think we stole all of Basim's luck :( Overall a good night!

50th birthday with a pink card!

On Sunday, we went to church with Matt's family at SCF...which was fun because it was the church's 20th anniversary. His parents were part of the beginning of starting this church and it was awesome seeing how it has grown in 20 years...even though it was my first time there. Shout out to Scott (their pastor) because he is SUPER COOL (we met at Brian and Brandie's wedding...all pastors should be as cool as him)! It really seems like an awesome church and I'm really glad we got to go :) Afterwards, we went back to the Evans household and I helped Connie make grilled cheese sandwiches. It is incredible how many sandwiches (and soups) you have to make to feed this family. But I am a believer in grilled cheese and apparently so is the rest of the family because the lunch was a big hit! I really love hanging out at their house because their family is just so big and loves these spontaneous family dinners/lunches. Quite the change in scenery from my family. Plus it's nice that they all love the Giants (granted they are all probably the reason I love the Giants so much). Thanks for a great trip Evans family :)

Though the visit was short, it was definitely eventful and packed full of great memories. Again, sorry you're hearing about all of this now and hopefully you'll forgive us!!

PS. We got Port of Subs sandwiches....I LOVE PORT OF SUBS!!!!