The Xmas countdown

We are now counting down to Christmas and soon the end of the year. This year was a big year in that there were some significant changes.

I moved from Barcelona to Michigan to New York. Graduated from B-school and landed a gig in NYC. Got married, went on a honeymoon to Africa and started living the domestic life with the SO.

I gotta say I don't have a single complaint with how 2011 has turned out. I pretty much accomplished everything I ever wanted and 2012 is already looking good.What does bother me is that I'm not blogging as much. I don't know if it's that I'm not doing anything interesting or that I'd rather do other stuff aside from blogging but the posting frequency has dropped significantly.

Well in any case an early Merry Xmas folks.

Gobble Gobble in NYC

I've been blessed to have been able to spend Thanksgiving in different countries and different cities throughout my life. This first Thanksgiving in NYC made me feel so thankful for my life and those loved ones that surround me and could be my all-time favorite Thanksgiving.  

After three weeks of buying furniture, decorating and painting our apartment is finally close to feeling like our home. Because of that we decided to have my parents as our first guests to our apartment and to celebrate Thanksgiving. 

 

Before we even got to the turkey we spent half of Wednesday prepping for the big day. The SO tasked me with the turkey prep and cooking so I knew I couldn't screw this up. A bad turkey on Thanksgiving is like rain  on your wedding day, a free ride when you've already paid. That song never made sense to me. 

I had to flip the bird multiple times to get the sucker lubed up properly. 

Our selection of wines for the big feast. The top Primitui Priorat wine was what we drank and it was absolutely amazing. Thanks to my groomsmen DL for the wine. 

Giacomo may be the best impulse buy I've ever made. He doesn't mind having a hand stuck up his butt. Because he's a puppet you sick freaks. 

Our back wall. It's an "accent wall", according to the SO. That couch becomes a full size sleeper so all guests are welcome.

The wall color was called blue smoke. I was told not to call it purple. 

We have a small alcove which the SO is supposed to use as an office. She calls it the cave and pouts when I tell her to use it like we had set it up for. 

It's not Thanksgiving without the Lions on TV. 

The table all set and ready to go for the feasting. 

My dad checking out the living room. NYC living forces you to consolidate all social areas into about 100sq feet. 

I really like our place because it's good for entertaining. Most people end up hanging out in the kitchen. Now everyone can hang out in the kitchen, dining area and living room because it's all right on top of each other. 

Our first course was shrimp cocktail and fig/mascarpone in a filo dough pastry. 

 Salad and shrimp cocktail. Salad courtesy of the parents. 

Loved this wine. 

Awwww yeah. 

The full spread. From closest to farthest: Mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, string beans with bacon, turkey and honey glazed carrots, mac and cheese. 

Mmm..

I really tried to eat more but I was stuffed. We barely put a dent in all the sides and we had half a turkey left but that just means more leftovers for us. The fatties will feast for days!

After the main course it was time to set up the mood lighting for dessert. 

The sunset was beautiful. I love the view from our place. The tall lit up tower to the right is the Freedom Tower aka 1 World Trade Center.  

Fruit trifle that the SO made. Probably my favorite dessert of all time. I don't even like dessert and I loved this dish. My dad actually took some home and made a milkshake out of this. I wasn't sure if I should be appalled by his laziness and awed by his genius. 

That concluded the first annual Thanksgiving hosted by the SO and myself. I'd say it was a success but I can't take credit for anything. I just basted the turkey. Partly because I like saying basted. Master baster. 

 

Airborne toxic event

Tonight we witnessed the airborne toxic event. No it wasn't a case of bad flatulence but an indie rock band from Los Feliz. The SO is a rock music wannabe hipster so she's always trying to introduce me to new bands. Since my music taste ranges from pop to really bad pop I'm usually clueless to all these new bands hitting the scene.

The show was pretty interesting and the music fairly decent. They had an Asian guy in the band who played piano, guitar, and upright bass. I'm sure his parents would be proud of his musical ability but I'm sure they wouldn't approve of him screwing around in a band. Hello I bet even if he were in U2 they would rather have him be a doctor like the Kim's son across the street.

Anyways nyc is full of stuff to do and tonight was no different. In the city that never sleeps we saw an airborne toxic event. As I sit here and write this I think I just released my own version of such event. It did sound quite amazing. The smell was definitely not rock n' roll.

NYC weekend

After several weeks of furniture and household goods shopping, this weekend was spent doing NYC-y stuff. Whatever that means. For us that means stuffing our faces everywhere we go.

Friday evening was spent in a closet of a Japanese restaurant called Taisho. Great food for dirt cheap prices. Definitely recommend if you don't mind feeling like an underutilized broom. Saturday evening we hit up a place Luke's Lobsters. Lobster and other seafood imported straight from Maine and into our stomachs. I just have to occasionally beat my heart to get the blood flowing properly. Totally worth it. 

After a heavy meal of lobster rolls and clam chowder we decided to have a light dessert. The new desert craze in NYC is rice pudding. Rice to Riches offers a variety of rice pudding flavors and toppings at the laugh at recession price of $7 per single serving.   

Granted the single servings can easily serve two AND you get to keep the cool tupperware spoon, bowl and lid set but still, $7 for rice pudding makes you think twice about going there multiple times. I felt like the price was primarily to pay for the fancy store and the 8 employees working the counter. 

With any new fad place the place had ironic or snarky messages sprinkled throughout the store.  

Sunday was a wonderful Fall day and we had a long day of eating ahead of us again. Before that it was a nice stroll through our neighborhood. 

The SO got us tickets to the Chocolate festival so we met up with some friends to sample the delectable cocoa delights. 

The first booth we encountered after walking in was a spice booth so we got off to a bit of a Rocky Road here....Yup. Haven't lost it. 

I have more pics but of course my gmail mobile decides to act up. Sooo for now you get spices and a lion pic from our honeymoon. 

Mmm domesticity

The SO works from home. This benefits me immensely as personified by the image below. Dinner is always ready by the time.I'm home. No better sight than coming home to a wonderful meal. They say a road to a man's heart is through his stomach. Since we are married and technically she already has my heart then she must be trying to fatten me up.

What we do on weeknights

Instead of going out to the clubs we sit in our pjs listening to lmfao. Then our love for lmfao grew exponentially after watching this.



Everyday we're shufflin'

Day 2.5

It's day 2.5 of co-habitation with the SO.

We're not divorced. Yet.

Just kidding. It's been a fun couple of days as we've unpacked, settled into the new apartment and started buying furniture to complete the place. Unfortunately our movers destroyed a couple of dressers, a mirror and various other furniture so we'll have to buy those as well.

All in all it's coming together slowly but surely. We'll see how long blissful domestic life continues.

Blogging on hold

Sorry about the lack of posts but its been such a pain moving. It's just stacks and stacks of boxes. It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate over the years. Anyways once we are settled in ill resume posting on a more regular basis.

Honeymoon Post 1

Well the past 2 months have given me enough blogging material to keep this blog going for at least till the end of the year. A lot happened. Got married, went on a honeymoon, SO is moving to NYC. Craziness. I should have spread this all out a bit. 

Anyways, I was tasked with one thing for this wedding. Book the honeymoon. So, with such great responsibility, I decided to let the pros deal with it instead of potentially facing the wrath of the SO if I screwed up.

A couple we know used PremierTours to book their honeymoon and had a great experience so I thought why not. They did an amazing job and the itinerary they put together for us was everything we wanted.

After a 9 hour flight from LAX to LHR, we had a 4 hour layover, and then an 11 hour flight to Cape Town. Jacques, our driver/guide/bodyguard picked us up from the airport and drove us to our hotel, Kensington Palace located in the foothills of Table Mountain. Although we were a bit tired after such a long flight, we were refreshed after seeing the view from our balcony.

The room was quite large. Probably can fit our entire NYC apartment in this one room.

The weather on Table Mountain was supposed to be decent so Jacques rushed up to the base of the mountain. It was a 5 minute cable car ride up to the top. 

As one might expect, the view from the top overlooking Cape Town was impressive. You can see Robben Island in the distance. Given more time, I would've loved to check out the former prison site but our time in Cape Town was limited to 2 days and we had a lot to see. 

The top of Table Mountain was eerie. The cloud cover made this place look oddly desolate. 

Don't know why they built this hobbit house here. I guess I could look it up but I'm lazy. 

Jacques then drove us to the Bo-Kaap community in Cape Town. Originally settled by the freed slaves, Bo Kaap eventually became a huge Malay society (mixture of ethnic societies from Southeast Asia, blacks and whites). Cape Town kinda reminds of me Long Beach. A laid back coastal town with a lot of immigrants, its fair share of sketchy areas and lots of drugs. Throw in some Snoop Dogg and Cape Town is repping the CPT.  Anyways, the story Jacques told us is that one guy got sick of his boring walls and decided to paint his a bright color. Soon it became the hit of the neighborhood. I'm sure the rich folks down the street scoffed at the poor immigrants and laughed at their loud, poor colors. Well, take that rich folks, these houses are now a historical heritage. 

The next place we visited was the old fort. Jacques got us there just in time for the noon canon shot. Now I imagined the cannon to be somewhat large. It was about the size of flute. What a disappointment. 

The solider loading up his wussy cannon. 

Sucker went off like a M-1000. I shouldn't have judged the cannon by its size. Hehe. Yes, I turn 31 this year....

This was a corner of the dungeon. I was hoping to capture some paranormal activity. Hey what's that weird shape.....did you hear that? Was that tapping? It's coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!!

Lovely hook thingie. 

The obligatory artsy shot. I bought this camera about 3 hours before we got on our flight so4 this first day was trying to figure out all the functions of the camera. Or I could be like my dad who bought a $1000 camera with a $1000 lens only to use it shoot everything in auto.  

After the fort, we were hungry so Jacques took us down to Camps Bay for lunch and sightseeing. Kinda looks like my hometown, PV.  

I still remember when all this land was empty and there were no houses this side of PV. 

Anyways, after that it was off to the South Africa museum. Our final stop for the day. The SO was not very pleased to have to go on an educational tour especially since this would've been like hour 40 of travelling. 

Some early graffiti. 

Tagging about the mad hunt yo!

An African medicine/shaman. They had a picture of the pope next to it too. I guess it was just showing the different types of religion.  

The SO with Jacques. You can see why we called him our driver/guide/bodyguard. The man was massive. He said he actually lost about 50 pounds too. We saw him get mad and I was about to crap myself

I don't even know why I took a picture of this pot. What compelled me to think hey this would be a good picture. Probably so I could write this sentence in the blog and waste everyone's time. Lose-lose. 

I'm guessing another medicine man. Horrible Sean Connery movie btw. 

I rag on the SO for liking turtles. This was supposedly evidence that turtles can be cool too. I still think they're pretty boring and slow. 

Whale skeleton. I swear in every natural history museum they have a whale skeleton or a life-size whale model. Yes, I get it. They're big. I'd rather have them show me other animals where you're like wtf they're really that big or small? Like I never knew eagles were so damn big until I saw one in Alaska. 

That man is normal sized. 

Anyways, after a wondrous 8 hours of sleep, it was breakfast time at Kensington Palace. Fresh squeezed juices and an assortment of breakfast choices. I love being on vacation. 

First stop was Boulders Beach, a penguin preserve. 

The penguins had some nice digs. 

The middle penguin is a rebel. Fight the power, penguin! Don't let the man tell you that you need to face right. Occupy Penguin Street!!! I'm gonna have to link to an Occupy Wall street wiki so I remind myself later what the heck I was talking about. 

The adolescent penguin was losing its baby fur and heading into adulthood. Soon the penguin parents will look longingly while the mom cries "they grow up so fast" while the dad puts a reassuring arm around the mom penguin. I think I watch too much TV.  

Next post: Day 2 in Cape Town.