Meat Fest 2009

Last night we went out as a group to try a Brazilian Restaurant downtown. It's one of those places where the concept goes something like this: Bring on the meat. And when you're done eating meat, bring on more meat. Rinse and repeat.

I'll say this, their cocktails were rockin'. What's Brazilian for Beth got toasty?

Between the 10 of us, I'm pretty sure we ate an entire cow.Notice the close up of the guys chowing, that cracks me up a little bit.
We ate this guy's cousin, perhaps. I did find it a little disturbing he stared down at us throughout the entire meal, it's kinda like the guilt I feel at our favorite sushi restaurant when they seat us next to the huge fishtank. Sorry I'm eating your brother, Nemo!

We were given little green/red things to indicate when you were done with the meat they would bring around to your table. As you can see, Rob was ready to keep going, me, not so much. Although I did save room for dessert, which sadly there WASN'T an endless supply of - and also, not shaved off a large poker brought to the table like the meat was. How disappointing.

Fun night with friends as always, but not so sure I'd recommend it to anybody else. Thus concludes my restaurant review of Brazilian.

POW #25 the "Crazy Chickens" Edition

So, it's really no secret that (1) Rob and I love to be dorks and (2) will naturally gravitate towards any photo cut-out opportunity (see previous POW for further proof as if you didn't know this already). Come on.

I was going through old pics looking to satisfy my never ending craving for more photo scanning ops- it's insatiable, I tell you. I came across this gem from my Evil Aunt Theresa (her self-title, not mine for those of you not lucky enough to know her and might otherwise be slightly disturbed thinking of our rudeness). She took it of us in 1998, we had just moved out to San Diego and we joined her at the local fair that she was performing at as a musician. Good times, good times. Please to enjoy, I promise I'll mix it up for next week's POW, there's only so many pics of us standing behind photo cut outs that one can stomach. I get that.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

I love Valentine's Day, and not for all the commercialization and pressure for poor guys to buy tons of crap for us. More importantly, Vday is our dating-anniversary, it was 13 years ago that Rob and I had our first smooches...and the rest, as they say, is history! We always try a new restaurant on V-Day and this year we tried a french restaurant in Kensington called Blue Boheme, which if I remember from french class means "way overpriced mediocre food".

We had a wonderful table, we were in a private little corner and had all sorts of cushy pillows to snuggle up on, but we were so bummed by the food! Luckily we had each other so we still had a blast, but I'm not so sure I'd recommend it to anyone else...although I love french food enough to try the restaurant again when they're not offering a prix fix menu. Our table:
The best part of dinner was the dessert - they offered a Tahitian vanilla creme brule and a rockin' raspberry mousse in the shape of a heart...it was so pretty I just had to take a pic of it:
After dinner we went across the street to the old Ken Theater - we love going to this art house because they're famous for their old school ambiance, sticky floors and they always play retro movies. There was a huge turnout so we had to stand in line outside for a while. It was freezing (my apologies to non-Californians, it was probably mid-50's but it was a wet cold, haha) so in addition to borrowing Rob's coat to cover my tiny little black dress, I also went back to the car and grabbed a blanket from the trunk. I'm a classy broad, I'm just saying:

We took a risk and tried a 70's 3D movie that ended up being HORRIBLE!!! Between the cheap 3D glasses and the subject matter, we both left feeling a little raspberry moussesick. Not good, not good.
But it was still was a fun night with good memories. Happy 13 years of Warrenski bliss!!!

POW #24 the "Dirty Old Man" Edition

Back in 1998, Rob and I backpacked through Europe for 3 blissful months - an amazing start to our lifetime of travels together. We could have kept going were it not for the fact that (1) we totally ran out of money in Frankfurt, Germany, and (2) we had to skedaddle back to the US to move our crap to San Diego so I could start Grad School.

But while we were there, we had some amazing times. Like an idiot, I glued - yes, GLUED all our pics from that trip into an album, so I'm not really sure how many are going to make it to our scanner. But this one has been kept separate for a reason - it cracks us up, therefore making it to the "bulletin board of crazy" in our garage. I busted it out and scanned it for your viewing pleasure. In Copenhagen, Denmark, at an amusement park called Tivoli Gardens, we came across this gem of a photo-op. Rob's face is priceless. Please to enjoy....

Whale Watching 2.0 - the better camera edition

So, my friend Aaron has a rockin' camera. I have camera zoom envy, there I said it. Acceptance is the first stage of healing. His whale watching pics turned out phenomenally, so I thought I'd add a couple of his here (with his permission of course). Brought to you by Aaron and his abnormally large zoom lens, please enjoy!

Whale Watching!

We went whale watching with a bunch of friends on Sunday and planned it just right that we got back just in time for the Super Bowl - truly a great day all around! It was a gorgeous, sunny day without a cloud in the sky and we had a magical time watching whales. Our boat captian later said in his 12 years of doing this, he's never experienced what we had - even our onboard whale expert/naturalist from the Oceanography Institute said the same thing...but we'll get to that in a moment.

Getting ready to start out:

It was beautiful all day long - I always love being out on the ocean...


It cracks me up that every buoy we passed had a ton of chubby sea lions and seals lazily sunning themselves:


The water was pretty flat but the boat was still rockin' and rollin' out in the open water. And no one even threw up! I consider that a huge success even if we don't see any whales....

Show us where the barf bags are, Booter:

Karen and I provided a nice safety demonstration of how hard it is to walk on a boat that's bobbing up and down so much:



Our first whale sighting was really cool - we saw two heading north and our trusty boat followed them for a while. With the boat rocking and the unpredictability of where the whales were going to surface, I have about a million pictures of the sky, and a ton of just the ocean, ha! Unfortunately, I never caught a picture of their tails but this was a neat pic of their spray as they surfaced. They were magnificent!

After hanging with the two whales for a while, our boat captain took us away to try to find some more whale action and we came across the most amazing thing: a teenage Grey Whale actually playing with a small dive boat! It was so remarkable, we stayed for about 45 minutes watching him roll around the dive boat, even slapping the sides lightly with his large fins. Eventually he started paying attention to our boat and would lazily float at the surface, spinning around, literally feet from where we stood. Of course I was bawling, it was such a great spiritual moment to be that close to such a huge, beautiful creature!!! The funniest thing is there was a little dolphin that seemed somehow put out that we were paying more attention to the whale because anytime the whale did something cool, the dolphin would not be far behind, leaping out of the water as if to say "You think that's cool? Well check THIS out! TADA!!!!"

This shot is of the whale just below the surface next to where I'm standing - look at his Barnacles!

Playing around...

After a whole day of amazing whale moments, none of which unfortunately were actually captured ON my camera, I scored the greatest little video clip! And yes, that's me all choked up and freaking out talking while our little guy surfaced right next to us. And like always, the little dolphin was never far behind but unfortunately, I didn't catch him on here. Enjoy!

And finally, some more shots from the day: