Movie & Huntington Dog Beach -- Saturday Excursion #2

I know what you might be thinking: they went to see Spider-Man 3. No so my friends we went to see "Hot Fuzz" and escape the heavy crowds going to see Spider Man. John thought it was incredibly funny. I thought it was somewhat funny but loud with too much shooting. Now folks who know how much I like action movies would be appalled to hear me say I thought there was too much shooting but there really was. I thought I may lose some of my hearing it was so loud. We both agreed it was a tad long. The lead actor in the movie is starring in another Brit movie call Run fatboy Run -- Lord help us!!!

To the even more fun part -- we drove and drove and drove up the coast to Seal Beach and Long Beach. We detoured into neighborhoods just for the heck of it and we happened on some really nice houses that looked like they had $1.5M+ price tags. Makes you want to dream of a larger house or winning the lottery -- we always want more don't we? We took the pictures from the car as is evidenced by the car mirror because we did not want one of those reclusive loons to set their dogs on us!

I took this picture because John said it was a showing "THX 1138" George Lucas first movie.

... finally wound up at the beach. There was a wonderful breeze coming of the aqua blue water and some white topped waves gently rolling in. Being at the beach and hearing the waves drives everything else out of your mind and you feel at peace. Such a wonderful place to forget about work. One more thing to note, we were at the famous Dog Beach! Everyone up the coast to LA and down to Laguna beach bring their dogs to this beach to frolic freely. if you like dogs here is the place to come they are everywhere. I don't care much for dogs but they fascinate me sometimes. The dog that got my attention today was the Scottish Terrier. A tiny dog with a shiny black coat and ears that shoot straight up to the sky. When I squatted to touch him he backed away from me. I would back away too from a huge stranger if I was him. It was quite funny.

We walked for a little while watching the dogs, their owners, the sand, the waves, the oil platforms in the distance and realized we are really blessed to be able to do this every weekend it we choose to.

On the way home I noticed this interesting house that looks like it has an in-built water tank. John promised to ask about the inspiration for the architecture the next time he went running and saw the owner outside watering his garden. Can't wait to hear it.

Side Street Cafe -- Saturday excursion #1

This weekend was quite a lot of fun. It started out with each of us doing our own thing. John was off filming "Outworld" while I tried to take advantage of having the afternoon off (remember, I mentioned the office in SF was moving to 215 Fremont and no one was going to be in) by working till about 3:40pm and deciding to go see the Anthony Hopkins movie showing at 4:40pm at a movie hall about 20 minutes away. After a frantic shower and a very quick donning of clothes and brushing hair I was on the way to the theatre. I was in time for the movie with one minute to spare. How is that for timing! Movie was great!

After watching the movie, I went on to browse the open air shopping center. Got a nice blouse at Nordstrom Rack and ended up in Barnes & Noble. bookstores are alwasy my favorite and even better when they have a coffee shop for reading and people watching which is exactly what I did. The unexpected surprise was this group playing what sounded like Buddhist music. It was lovely -- I can't really describe the sound other than it was quite soothing and sounded like harmonized wind chimes. There a number of xylophones and other instruments. One that looked like brass pots hung from a pole and nother that looked like brass pot lids. Very very cool -- it was like a brass band with instrument you have never seen before! I listened to them for a while thinking about good fortune and contentment -- all is well with the world.




Saturday we went to Side Street Cafe another place with wonderful wonderful breakfasts always has a line. Could not find parking close by but the food is worth it to hunt for parking. He had the Texas Chili Omelet and I had the short stack corn cakes with a cheese omelet -- yum. Side Street cafe is the best place for breakfast which they serve at all times of the day -- it is a pity they close at 2pm -- they have been written up in the paper and even mentioned in the Alaska Airlines magazine. I should know, I fly that airline every other week! Everyone says their stuffed french toast is to die for I have yet to taste it -- a terrible admission on my part.

While we were chowing down on breakfast this foursome sat down next to us. Three ladies and a guy -- it appeared 2 of the ladies were mother and daughter and the guy was the boyfriend of the daughter. Anyway, they started chatting about this new book that is out called "The Secret" which is currently on the NY Times bestseller list and is all the rage. My take on it is it is basically Norman Vincent Peale's "Positive Thinking" with new packaging (Book and accompanying CD) and 4+ experts. The guy was raving about the book and one particular story in it about how a woman was cured of cancer through thinking her body well and how the book was based on Christian principles without the religious language behind it. Hmmm ... interesting. They went on to have a lively debate on the merits of the book -- the mother and the 3rd girl on one end saying it is hard to believe in the power of focused thought and the couple on the other tyring to convince them through experiences to the contrary. Just my kind of conversation. I had to bite my tongue a couple of times to stop the urge to jump in. The tables in this place are so close you could eat off the next table without straining a muscle. Though, considering how good the food is, I would not suggest that little play because you might wind up with fork marks on the back of your hand!

Clean house update from the domestic goddess

John came home and marveled at how wonderful everything looked. He did not give me a hard time about the papers! I finally feel like I can relax and think again in my clean new house. There is nothing like a paper and book free dining room table and a clean counter kitchen. It has been 2 weeks now and it has not changed much I am thoroughly delighted.


Now, my new lucky bamboo plant actually looks like it belongs. a little aside -- we originally had 4 bamboo stalks and I managed to kill 3 of the family. I was totally devastated. We also bought cactus at the same time and managed to kill them as well -- over-watering and no direct light. John, sensing my spiral into despair at being a lousy green thumb bought a beautiful replacement lucky bamboo. I added more plants to the collection by bringing the plan Yuki got me for my birthday home as well as the plant that was in my office.


By the way we are moving offices from 120 Kearny to 215 Fremont. In the process we were told we could not bring along any of our plants. So on Monday this week, when I went to SF for a meeting, I had to figure out how to get the plants home. Since I did not trust the admin was telling me the truth I was frantically emailing John asking him to research whether I could bring plants on the plane. The last thing I wanted to do was give up my birthday present to some airline regulation. It all turned out well because the guy at security just looked at the bag and asked me "plants?" I said yes and that was the end to all the earlier drama of the day. Go figure, I was stressing for nothing.


Back to cleaning, my delight may be a little short lived because John is going back to teaching. I think by the submission of the first home work assignments and quizzes, I will no longer be able to see my carpet. Hmmm ... I need to come up with a filing system for that chaotic period. In meantime I will enjoy the serenity of my clean home!


By the way the bags that were to go to goodwill never made it. I am procrastinator extraordinaire. I will be putting that off some more by enjoying my weekend.

Hunt for French Bakery & Little Saigon

The adventure that took place in the past couple of weeks that I have yet to mention is the hunt for the french bakery. Since we have our GPS "Maude" we have been feeling rather brave at exploring orange county. We did not start out with her help for this particular adventure though.
We looked up french bakeries online to see if there were any close by. After going to Las Vegas and having some really good chocolate croissants at the Jean-Philippe boulangerie in Bellagio I was definitely jonesing for a Pain au Chocolat. We read this wonderful blog on-line about this French bakery in Garden Grove. We printed out the instructions on how to get there and we were off.

http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2007/02/boulangerie-pierre-patisserie-garden.html
On the way, we realized we had not taken the directions but it is on Brookhurst Ave in Garden groove how hard is it to find? Well, we leisurely drove past Little Saigon and arab area of Garden Grove and were nearly in Anaheim before we gave up and decided to find it in a more concentrate fashion. It was not so easy after all. After some frustrated fiddling with the web on my cell phone and yelling at Maude for not having more up to date information (Yes, Maude said Boulangerie Pierre did not exist even though the blog was posted on 2/23) we got boulangerie Pierre.

It is quite understandable why we missed it. It is an understated store in a two level strip mall in Little Saigon. It was well worth the wait. As you can see from the pictures from the other blog the selection is to die for. We had chocolate croissants, beignets, sticky bun and Vietnamese coffee. Oh yeah, we had some strange looks because we were definitely not the norm. Back to the Vietnamese coffee -- it was terribly sweet. It took us 3 more visits (together -- John went there daily the week I was not at home) to figure out that when we asked for coffee with milk they were using condensed milk. Should have asked for a latte!

Finally got a picture of it (May 6th)

The second best part of the whole trip is we discovered Little Saigon. It is one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States and it is a very contained community. The buildings have the red roofs like you would see in Vietnam and some distinctly Vietnamese influences. It felt like we were in another country sometimes. I did not take any pictures myself but there are some on the following blog:

http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2007/02/little-saigon.html

We went back last Friday for dinner. We were hunting again for a French restaurant and wound up in Little Saigon -- that alone should tell you something. We could not find the place we were looking for -- we really need to do something about updating Maude -- but we did end up at Da Lat Bistro. Yum yum. John had the 7-course Beef and I had the 7-course fish (5 of those courses were on one plate so we were not quite as glutinous as you might think). The other 2 courses were a tarot soup and a beef/fish salad and the supplementals were a basket of lettuce, julienned cucumbers and carrots and a plate of rice paper sheets to wrap stuff up in.

I don't think we talked to each other during the first half of the meal -- too busy chewing and savoring. Once we took a break we got reacquainted.

We will definitely be making it back to Little Saigon to eat. There is so much to choose from and if you like Vietnamese it is eatery heaven!! Till the next adventure -- this time I'll take my camera!

May 6th

Noticed on the way out there was another bakery nearby that deals with all types must try it soon!

Vacuum update (DD)

Well, it has been a a little while and I fell off the blog wagon for a bit but I am back.

I finally got the blasted Dyson wand part in the mail after realizing there was not much I could do with the stair tool. But I digress, wouldn't you know the old Dirt Devil decided to break down when I used it to vacuum. I was giving him a last hurrah before I sent his green behind to goodwill and it make this really suspicious noise which quickly became high pitched. Very worrying.

So, I sat down and took the thing apart to figure out where the noise was coming from. What started off as a simple look-under-the-hood exercise turned out to be a full blown search for the innards of machine. I really took it apart and have the pictures to prove it. It turned out to be a little metal thingy was paying havoc on the motor. An hour later I had put it back together again feeling a little stupid for having spent more time than I should have on a machine I was going to give away.