hungry again

Mama made meatloaf for dinner last night, but I wasn't around, so I made a meatloaf sandwich for lunch today. My, that seems like a long time ago, haha.

they say great minds think alike

I bought "The Medium is the Massage" (the white one) last summer, and my sister swiped the black copy from the coffee house on campus. Neither of us had any idea that the other owned a copy of this book until today. So weird/cool!

insalata caprese omelette

This morning my mom started throwing together Trader Joe's marinated fresh mozzarella and grape tomatoes for her breakfast. She stepped out to get some basil from the garden, and when she came back I had an idea: "Mom, why don't you put that all in an omelette!" So she whipped up some eggs, threw in the cheese, tomatoes and basil, flipped it together, and gave me half of it. It was delicious. There was an excess of marinated oil (from the cheese) but the cheese was heated just so it softened up a little, the tomatoes were hot and burst when I bit into them, and the basil added an amazing freshness to the entire thing. Insalata caprese in a warm egg wrapper. Mmm.

I made slapped together lunch

I don't know why, but every night is the same - hours after I'd last eaten dinner, when I am ready to go to sleep, I will read a cooking/recipe blog or look at decadent, detailed shots of food and will get hungry all over again. So bad. Tonight I was just looking at this so-so photo of lunch from a few days ago - just a tiny bit of a Porterhouse steak I'd had for dinner the night before that I sliced up with a few dashes of pepper, atop a nice thick bed of mozzarella cheese between two slices of toasted sheepherder's bread, with a squeeze of mustard inside. Nothing special, it just kept me going at midday, but right now it's really doing it for me. So at least instead of indulging in food at less-than-ideal times, I'll just...blog about it.

Clearly I am in need of more adventure in my life - food adventures that is!

mmm books...

I've read maybe ten out of all the titles shown.

I spent Sunday morning perusing books & such with Tommy after an interesting (but still delicious!) breakfast at Swingers. The angles of these shots are strange because I'm still getting used to shooting with the new 50mm prime lens I got. No more luxury of zoom, haha. I also had a mini-spree at Hennessey & Ingalls and came home with a new chunk of architecture books to read/devour/add to my bookshelf. I hope it rains HARD tomorrow so I can spend all day reading miles of other peoples' thoughts, analyses, opinions and stories.

Also I had a headache all day until I started typing this out, I guess I found my release for today.

old friends, bookends.

Maybe the stars were lined up just right tonight or something, because earlier this evening while on facebook a friend of mine from KL starts chatting with me and our ease of making conversation made me wish I had hung out with her more while I was overseas. Then a pop from a peer from school whom I haven't had a serious conversation with in ages, greets me with a morose "hana, why are people lame?" which then leads to about an hour of catching up and talking about our respective significant others. Another pop and it's my best friend from middle/high school that I roomed with last year, talking about her boy situation, and discussing other tricky matters along that vein. Pop, it's one of my closer buddies from school and we start up a videochat and we yell and complain and laugh and make idiotic faces and lament that we are both jobless bums who sleep in too much most of our days. Amidst all that wholesome goodness and the inevitable feel-good feelings that arise from re-connecting with people, there are other instances that confuse me and make me hesitant about whether or not holding on to strings is good or a waste of time, which then leads to how I'll sever ties much too quickly and then when the other person tries to reconnect it's decidedly an awkward struggle on my end.

To put it simply, one of the contacts was a girl I was pretty much "besties" with throughout high school - we stood next to each other in choir, sat together at lunch, played on the same water polo/swim teams, watched movies every weekend and scribbled notes to each other which we would pass off to each other during breaks between classes. I enjoyed her company, but we never made a deeper connection in terms of girlie sleepovers and plots to snare boys or whatever. I knew for a fact she was having a blast with her 'closer' group of friends over the past winter break (facebook newsfeed, wooo I know) while we were both at home, and all during that time I didn't hear a word from her. I had reconciled myself with the fact that the last time we had hung out we were so different that we were kind of struggling for a common subject to discuss (she's at U of O, in a sorority, very active etc.) while I'm the architecture anti-nerd slacker constantly trying to find herself - and when our half-hearted attempts to meet up at another time fell through, I dropped the social obligation of keeping up an old friendship that had massively changed.

It's very difficult. I severed ties with another girl from high school my freshman year of college after a falling-out she had with my sister - long story short, she had only ever approached me when she was in need of emotional support but never reciprocated (such a child!) and I haven't heard from her since. So when the state of a friendship with someone is tacitly neutral, does one let it forever float in limbo until it grows into something more or disintegrates into something less. Part of me figures, life's short, let it lie, but at the same time I'll be thinking "Life is WAY too short, figure out what's important to you and jettison what isn't."

But then there are those people who inevitably stay in your life, whether you like it or not. And they probably always will bob in and out of contact with you. One such person wants me to go see him in Chicago, and I want to catch up with this person I haven't seen in two years, but I don't know if I should go flipping pages through a book I had tried to close off a long time ago.

In the end, I think whatever happens - as long as I am true to who I am (cliché as it is) I can learn from all these re-connections, and figure things out about other people, then learn more about myself...

on starting a new sketchbook

Ever since I can remember, I've loved the limitless possibilities an empty sketchbook, notebook, or ream of paper held and promised to me. A promise of hours of self-entertainment, worlds and realities of my own creation, and blissful escape from the sometimes mundane workings of life. I still remember the first time one my mom handed to me - a kind of cheap spiral-bound thing with maybe 50 sheets inside and a big mechanical toy Godzilla destroying a city; its pages were definitely not acid-free but its selling point was its huge size - 12x17 or something around those dimensions. And I scribbled in it to my heart's content, or rather, when there were no more blank pages to fill. When that book was finished my mom tucked it away with my dozens of other loose-leaf drawings and upgraded me to another large sketchbook - this time with better paper. My sister and I would fly through these sketchbooks afternoons at a time, after school, on the weekends and of course all throughout the summer. After a while, my mom no longer actively supplied us with sketchbooks, so we went off and to find and fill ones fit to our liking. I opt for thick, creamy pages, the higher quality the better (I hate to sully them with useless chicken-scratch sketches, but HEY, I do), whereas my sister wants her pages WHITE and dispensable enough for her to tear through them, filling them up with ideas and references that usually nobody but she understands.

It would be pretentious of me to say the sketchbook influences the artist - because that's total rubbish/utter bullshit, but with the amazing marketing skills of Moleskine notebooks, it's the 'it' sketchbook/notepad/journal to have. A tangent! I am guilty of being a Moleskine carrier, but I found my first one in the summer before 9th grade and have been nothing but loyal ever since. Alas, regardless of the manufacturer of said sketchbook, if all one has on hand is a cheap blue-lined notepad, a legal pad, a napkin, a scrap of paper (and a pencil) - really it's all you need. That and a spark of an idea, a design - anything, and surely, IT will be on its way.

sweet blossom soda

I went to Galco's - an old-timey soda and goodies shop in Glendale Highland Park (thanks anon!), with Steph a few days ago! With several aisles stocked with more kinds of soda you can imagine (or consume in a day for that matter), and with a sleepy but pleasant independent grocer's vibe, AND a sandwich counter in the back, Galco's seems like the place people would have hung out at as teens after school. Well I don't know about that, but I love little novelty places like this. More photos coming up, hehe.

what to do on a rainy day?

Nerd all day long on the computer and nap when you get bored. Maxie demonstrates it best. Productivity mode switched off, temporarily.

follow me down to the rose parade

Seeing Colorado Blvd. closed down for spectators and floats in real life was so cool. We didn't camp out all night like most of the people lining the streets but of course it was still an experience.

This marching band float guy was so tall, I'd say three stories high!

One group of many horses, with guys waiting along the sides to sweep up any poop, hehe.

The city of Burbank won the "Animation Award" - the plane's on hydraulics and it rotated 180º - probably my favorite float!

The Trader Joe's Float won..."Innovation Award" I think. So cute, colorful and creative.

Natural Balance had an Alpine-themed float with Tillman the bulldog that skateboards - but this time a bunch of bulldogs went sliding down the "slope" on boogie boards!

La Cañada Flintridge won the "Fantasy Award" with the Scissored Wizard float - pretty sweet origami dragon!

This is the last float we saw before leaving...Pufferfish!

I helped someone out with some Rose Parade business about a month ago, and to show his thanks he gave my family and me tickets to some great seats in the grandstands for the 2010 Tournament of Roses Parade. Getting up at 6:00 AM to get there was a struggle, but I had a great time seeing everything in real life for the first time. I've lived in Pasadena pretty much all my life and yet have never been to the Rose Parade for the New Year - until today!

The rest of the day was spent working on financial aid stuff, and cooking for hours on end for a traditional Korean New Year's dinner!