Shenanigans in an Ice Bucket

On Tuesday, Joseph proposed we head over to Morongo Casino and Resort for the weekend and enjoy a couple’s retreat sort of thing. Couple’s retreat? How can I pass that up? And I’ve never been to Cabazon or the surrounding area so it seemed like a fun adventure.

So we headed over to Cabazon on Sunday morning, roamed the casino and resort that I keep hearing about on the radio, and officially checked in to the hotel at 3pm.

This is the architecture above the valet parking / entrance.

The view outside of our hotel room.

Our room was pretty neat. There’s the opaque window that borders the bedroom from the bathroom, and the shower itself was awesome all on its own.

On the first day, we immediately hit the pool as soon as we checked in to our room. There was a lazy river, jacuzzis, and a regular pool area. Lots of kids enjoying the slide and lazy river. Our room package came with free buffet for two per night, free movie per night, and some game credit. So we headed to the buffet around seven for their Prime Ribs Sunday thingymabober, which was quite delicious.

On Monday, we woke up early (if you call 8 early), to head out to Palm Springs for the morning. Palm Springs is about a twenty minute drive.

After taking a quick drive around Palm Springs’ downtown area, we went to take a ride on Palm Springs’ Aerial Tramway. Joseph talked about it before, when he was hyping up the trip, and the way he described it was that there’s a train that goes around the mountain.

What it actually was – a little cart that goes all the way up the top of the mountain where a little building is located. We were able to walk around the building on the outside and peer outside to the plains of Palm Springs. It was gorgeous.

This is a pic of a cart going down, while we were in a cart going up. There was about twenty or so people in our cart and the bottom floor of the cart was spinning slowly around so everyone would be able to get a look at the gorgeous view.

Me trying to pick up this 50lb cord.

On top of Palm Springs! The bottom looks gorgeous and so miniscule. Ah, fresh air.

A lot of people go up here to hike and camp.

Nikon lovers, unite! The guy that took this photograph is also a Nikon person but it seems he forgot one of the most basic rule which is to not put the subject in front a tree to the point where it looks like a tree is growing out of my head XD

Inside the cart going down. Sooo high up! There’s a few towers that help support the cable, and when the cart arrives at each tower, there’s a little elevator feel that makes me feel so queasy. Good thing Joseph was there to keep me feel safe <3

Heading back to Morongo. Desert to the left, civilization and palm trees to the right.

We ate at A&W All American Food afterwards and fueled up for the rest of the day.

Got myself a delicious Root Beer float with handmade root beer! <3

The rest of the trip was just as awesome. We went to the outlet mall for a liiiittle bit, which was located right next to Morongo Resort, and immediately headed to the pool once again for pool action, round two.

Around four that day, Joseph treated me to the spa! Got me a Swedish massage and a pedicure. I’ve never had a pedicure, nor a Swedish massage, and both combined, along with a short trip to to the Whirlpool jacuzzi, gave me a glow, according to him. The pedicure was really nice, and I’m not sure if it’s a normal thing, but if it is, I miight just have to do it more often. I sat in a massaging chair with a bubbling foot tub, got my footsies massaged a bit by the nail technician, who was super nice too.

We stayed for another night till Tuesday morning, and headed out by 10am. I had school, Joseph had a meeting and school later that night. The weather was perfect and sunny till Tuesday, when it was all cloudy and drab, so oddly.

It was a very nice couple’s retreat overall ^_______________________^

Wichita, Kansas

Nearly a year ago, I promised my Xbox Live friend that I would make the trip over to Kansas during spring break. I’ve known Joey for more than two years now, and we’ve played lots of Halo and talked on the phone quite a bit since then. During those times, he’s talked a lot about Kansas while I fill him in on what’s happening in California. Partly because I wanted to finally meet this person I keep talking to and playing with, and partly because I wanted to travel outside of California to the great unknown, I booked my flight to Kansas and flew out there last Sunday.

It came with a lot of skepticism from family, and some friends. The main question was “what’s in Kansas?”, and when I told them I was going to meet a guy friend that I met via Xbox Live, they were worried about how that would affect things with Joseph. It took a lot of calming down and ignoring them, really.

But anyway, the summary of my trip is fairly simple. I stayed there from Sunday afternoon till Thursday afternoon. I stayed at a local apartment-turned-hotel/suite. Joey or his friends would come get me in the morning / afternoon, drive us around, and then drop me off at night. We didn’t really do much because there isn’t much to do. The day before I arrived, Kansas was hit with lots of tornadoes and Wichita was a danger zone. Went through and caused a lot of damage. The day I arrived, the sky was blue and the bird were chirping.

Me in their airport. So small and quaint compared to LAX. I liked it.

Still at the airport. Nothing but open skies and a flat plain.

Empty freeway.

On Monday, Joey’s friend Jon gave us a small tour of downtown Wichita. He saw I had a camera and wanted to show me picturesque places. So we went in front of the Hyatt hotel where there was a river, and walked around.

The sculptures on the bridge is supposed to symbolize tornadoes XDD

Butterflies everywhere! D:

At their convention center. Jon talked the security guards into letting me take photos of this room because -_- I’m from Cali and he wanted to show it to me, or something weird like that. Anyway, this is where a lot of graduations take place, apparently.

Downtown Wichita, albeit small.

This is Jasper, Joey’s mom’s dog. Adorable and kinda hyper at times. But I took him out for a walk, which would be the first time I ever took a dog for a walk and it was a little bit harder than I expected.

Joey holding something he always has in his hand -_-

We went bowling with Seiji (friend, played Halo with him also),  Cory (brother, played Halo a few times), Sarah (Cory’s gf), Cady (Sarah’s cousin), and Markus (Cady’s bf). While bowling, I drank a fruity drink and got really red in the face. They called me Beets and kept asking if I was okay. No one else was red in the face, not even Seiji and he’s Japanese -_- so sad.

Outside my hotel – Hawthorne Suites

On Tuesday, Jon took us to the zoo.

The peacock was kinda just scattered everywhere instead of being caged up. This particular one revealed its feathers right when I was taking his picture.

Such a loud yeller too!

I got to feed goats! And you can see John and his daughter in the background there. The goats were funny, when I had food, they bombarded me. When they finished eating, the just scattered away.

Little baby goat!! It walked like a baby bambi and nibbled and sucked our fingers so adorably with their no-teeth mouth.

Although their zoo was small, one feature I like is their forest exhibit where the birds are just flying around. I saw bats hanging in the tree D:

And so ends the zoo trip.

There were a lot of QuikTrip gas station and no 7-11 or any of the gas stations we have.

We went to a local favorite – Freddies – for burger. Pretty delicious :B

Joey’s house.

Went to the mall on Wednesday. I picked up a few things in Old Navy and spotted this Tractor to give away XD Only in Kansas (or perhaps in the midwest)

We visited a famous sculpture – Keeper of the Plains. Made of metal, he lights up at night.

I get free breakfast at the hotel. But I kept oversleeping and only got two free breakfast D: it was so sad.

An hour before my flight back to LA left, we went through some tornado-caused wreckage. It’s been a few days later so a lot of the wreckage has been cleaned up, unfortunately.

On the flight to Denver, I got a window seat! So I took quite a few photos. The other three plane rides, I got aisle seats XS

And that concludes my Kansas trip. Next time I visit, I will definitely rent a car because it was a pain waiting for other people to pick me up and stuff. But overall I succeeded my mission to spend some time with my friend.

And also the mission to go outside of California <3

What’s in Kansas?

Things have been pretty good lately. Maybe a little bumpy the last couple of days but otherwise, all is well. I’m officially going to Kansas during spring break in April for a few days. I didn’t want to visit in the summer since it’d be too hot, nor the winter since it’d be too cold XS Hopefully the spring is a good time, but I hear it’s tornado season XD

Anyway, this is going to be my first time outside the states! I have been to Nevada a couple of times but people around here don’t consider that another state, boo. So yeah. Reason I’m going there is to see a friend I had actually met through Xbox playing Halo way back a couple of years or so. Really nice guy. He’s been wanting to come to California for ages but since he’s broke, I thought I’d come visit him there.

I still need to book the hotels and the rental car, but yup, it’s actually happening! ^_^ I’m super excited.

There hasn’t really been much going on otherwise. I’ve been playing a ton of League of Legends this past few days. I first played it when I was back with Oceanside but haven’t played it much since. However, I don’t have xbox live right now so no Halo, and I wanted to play an online game that was free. But yeah, each round takes 30 – 45+ minutes so it’s a little crazy I should play it at all, but it’s getting addicting XD

Now I know why Hunter played it so much XD or at least DotA.

Ho hum.

FIRST Robotics Volunteer Time :B

Yesterday, on Saturday, Joseph and I traveled to the Long Beach convention center at the wee hours of 6:30 to volunteer at First Robotics 2012 – Robot Rumble, a high school robots competition. This year, the theme is basketball. Around twenty teams / schools showed up. They were given a robots kit and four weeks to program a working robot meant to shoot baskets and defend the opponent from scoring, among other objectives.

One of the objective is to balance the robots on one of the three platforms. A big participation bonus happens when a robot from each team are balanced side by side on one platform.

Like this one!

A team from Chile and a team from Brazil made it out here to compete.

Behind the black curtain is the behind the scenes area called The Pit where the teams set up booths and work on their robots. The audience is welcome to walk around The Pit and look around.

My volunteer job was to hand out safety glasses to everyone who enters The Pit. Mundane job but had to be done. I was there for hours.

In between matches, the Field Reset crew, er, resets the field XD They pick up the balls and makes the field spot clean.

Joseph hard at work getting robots off the platforms :B

Closer look at the controls area.

Robots whizzing by, trying to defend the opponent by knocking them around.

High schoolers fixing the robots on the field.

Chaos ensues as the red robot is flipped over to its side, and a blue robot is about to fall over. I believe it even breaks after the fall.

It was a very fun event. The crowd was on their feet on occasion, the MC was entertaining, and we even danced to the YMCA song. By the end of it all, we left at 4, came back to Joseph’s place, and kind of crashed. He had a headache from having to deal with all the lights and the long use of the safety glasses, and I had a brief headache from watching all the people walk by and checking to see if they had safety glasses -_-.

Fun and tiring day. Impressed that high schoolers are able to code such things. Sad that I wasn’t able to be part of it when I was in high school. Ah well.

Photography At Its Finest

I have been reeeeeaally lacking on blogging on this site, which is really bad since this is the one I intend to keep for years to come. Since the last post, I haven’t done that much but it includes going to UCS to watch the high school National Oceans Science Bowl, opening the online accessories store with Cara, starting Fall semester and taking a black and white film photography class, and just trying to promote the online store as much as possible. PHotos were taken along the way.

Taken by Joseph during lunchtime at the Science Bowl. They gave me a name tag ^^ UCS is so peaceful and pretty, the birds were chirping like crazy as we ate our free Chipotle burritos (which were delicious!)

Took this photo in front of Pasadena City College. The sky was spectacular – streaks of vibrant red and blue – and I was lucky I was hauling around my camera at the time.

Ate lunch at Le Cordon Bleu’s Technique Restaurant over at Pasadena while Cara visited. Awesome place. 3-course gourmet-style meals for ten bucks total. Always booked though so getting a reservation can break a sweat.

Made some advertisements for the store. Shot with self-timer in my living room which was a friggin’ pain. Went to the local camera store in Alhambra to see if they had a wireless remote control for my camera and they didn’t. And they call themselves a camera store T_T bleh. But anyway here’s what turned up. I’m fairly happy with the outcome ^^Right now they’re going on a couple of blogs but we’re hoping to push the ad campaign stronger soon.

 

And then comes my photography class. I’m taking an elementary black and white photography class so we’re using 35mm analog cameras with a 50 mm lens, and developing them ourselves at our school’s rare darkroom. It’s so time consuming to develop film but I’m loving it. Our first ‘assignment’ was to just take a bunch of pictures around school  to play around with the camera and get to familiarize ourselves with how to control the settings. A lot of the pictures were either over or under exposed (which was intentional) but this tree bark was the one that would actually get developed for me.

SO first, we would have to do film processing, which allows the film to be seen in daylight without ruining the images, which takes about an hour and a half. Then to develop each print with its trial and errors takes a while, lol. The first photo turned out too dark so I did another photo, and another, and another, till I got the right exposure time (all done in the darkroom) and this was the one that won.

I spent maybe three hours to get to this stage. But it’s worth it <3 Printed on an 8×10 paper. I plan on framing it XD

Tomorrow I venture on to the camera store to see if they have any affordable cameras on sale so I can do photo assignments without being restricted to borrowing the 24 hour borrow time that the school allows. Crosses fingers it happens.

Sixth Month Milestone

Today’s date is a pretty important date. Not only is it Chris’s birthday and my dad’s birthday, it’s also the sixth month anniversary of Monkey Bear and me. He’s actually in Thailand right now till Sunday so it was a really cute surprise when I opened the door to the sound of doorbells, only to find a teenage girl in a UCLA hoodie carrying a vase full of flowers and asking if I was this so-called ‘Deasy’.

Teehee.

I couldn’t stop smiling as I signed the delivery paper. I was just talking about flowers in the previous post XD so yay ^^ They look so purty ^___^ Now it’s sitting on my computer desk, along with the candles and the big ol’ Hershey’s kiss that’s filled with bite marks :3

And so the flowers mark our sixth month anniversary. I’ve never had a relationship last this long before and I like it. In the past whenever I feel like a relationship has hit a roadblock, I have this mindset that something is wrong between the two people involved, and it can’t possibly be fixed, the relationship should be terminated till I find that movie-perfect guy. After a couple of trial and error with previous exes, I’m trying to get over that mindset because it really is a destructive one.

I’ll try not to get mushy gushy so I’ll just say that through the sixth months of dating him, we’ve had our ups and downs, just like any other couple. He’s one of veeeery few who’ve seen me cry plenty and I’ve seen him be speechless (which, I think, might be a first). We’ve eaten many meals together and watched many HGTV, taken countless naps and gave burps without hesitation; sat in the cold wind of the UCS football stadium to watch live football and slept together on the couch in sweat while his mom slept in his bed. He’s seen the best and worst of me, and I’ve seen his.

Honestly, I can’t believe it’s been sixth months since I’ve met him. Seems just like yesterday, really. Let’s hope time flies by as quickly during this next week while he’s off in Thailand D:

But what did I do for the rest of the day? Doing nothing, basically, heh. For some odd reason I’ve been having this urge to play an online game. Last week I downloaded EVE, played it for a few hours, and kinda got bored -_- Then I downloaded Ragnarok a couple of days ago, played it for a couple of hours, and got bored of that too. So today, I downloaded WoW and played it for a good.. six hours? XS I’m only a level 11 right now so I can still play the trial for a while longer, I believe. Then, when I felt it was time to do some ‘active’ things to get my blood a-pumpin’, I went to the front room and played a bit of Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball 2 on the xbox, and whenever I played a match, I’d do some exercise routine, like thirty sit-up, thirty jumping jacks, etc. And I did that for about a couple of hours.

Needless to say, I’m kind of bored XD Can’t wait for school to start this  Tuesday.

Oh, something fairly funny occurred this weekend. Ben is in a Child’s Development class and this weekend, he had to take care of a super-smart baby, rofl.

The baby sounded pretty real when it cried, and it would cry in the middle of the night a few times even, whenever it was time to be fed or to change the diaper. And everything is connected to each other via technology so it would know when the diaper actually gets changed or when the bottle is touching the baby’s lips. Ben was basically stuck on that couch the whooole weekend making sure the baby was okay, rofl!

My Sweet Valentine

So today is my first valentine’s day that I’m not alone like a soon-to-be spinster, yay! I’ve never had a boyfriend during this period of the year and it’s awesome. Since he has school on Tuesdays we just declared yesterday to be our valentine’s day and coincidentally yesterday was the day that Studio Ghibli’s ‘The Secret World of Arriety’ sneak peek premiere happened in Santa Monica at the Aero theater, and we had booked our tickets a couple of weeks in advance. We double dated with Joseph’s friend Kim and her boyfriend, whom we were meeting for the first time. I had never double dated with anyone before either, and I have got to say that I don’t like double dating.

The day started out well. He picked me up at the Del Mar train station after work at about four o’clock and we went to Paseo, Colorado with the intent of getting Juice it Up since he bought this Groupon deal that got him five smoothies from Juice it Up. But the one in Paseo just closed down so we got no juice. Then he tells me that instead of the usual flowers and dinner, because he didn’t take me to be that kind of girl, he was going to get me some candles since I’ve been really into candles recently. I thought the candles idea was really really sweet, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I was sad I didn’t get any flowers. I know my name isn’t technically spelt like the flower but he continuously refers to me like a flower, and aside from Hunter picking me those jasmine flowers from his garden, I’ve never been surprised with flowers, exes or otherwise. His reasoning is that roses are very pricey, coming at $40 for a dozen, and I think that’s very reasonable. But I’ve also told him a couple of times since I met him that I don’t like roses :\

Anyway, we didn’t find any good candles in Paseo so we headed over to Culver City where we would meet up with Kim and her boyfriend Tristan. To our little surprise we drove by this candle factory and since we were half an hour early, we stopped by because it was also open to the public. The smell was so strong, we were able to get a whiff of the scents a mile away. It was amazing inside Stone Candle’s factory. So many beautifully colored candles! the first fourth of the room was for the public and the rest was their factory. I smelt forty different candles, perhaps, and Joseph ended up getting me four ^_^ (above picture) The owner was really nice, and turns out it’s a local candle company that mainly caters to restaurants. After that, we headed out to meet our double date.

We’ve hung out with Kim quite a bit in the last couple of weeks due to the Studio Ghibli movies and also the Anime Expo Open House for Prospective Staff in Anaheim, and I like her as a person. She seems like a fairly easy person to get along with and I can talk clothes with her swimmingly. But it seems every time we hang out with her, something just rubs me the wrong way.

Side note – during the many hours I spend with Cara driving to and from San Diego, we spend a lot of time talking about what we find annoying with the world. One of them being people who fawn over certain cultures. For example, I hate it when Indonesians glorify America, wearing american flag shirts or Obama shirts, or stuff like that. Cara and I also have several friends from other parts of the country that just moved here, and all they talk about is how it’s done in their country. Japanese and Koreans alike, some of them only talk about their country as if it’s the center of attention and the greatest thing since sliced bread. But I’m not trying to pinpoint it on just these two cultures; these are just two that I hear waaay too much of.

So going back to the previous stream of thought, something rubbed me the wrong way when I hang out with them two together, and it took me till yesterday’s god-awful car ride to the cinema to realize it was their incessant passion to talk about all-things Japanese. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Japanese culture. It’s unique and interesting and they have tasty food, but just like an overplayed pop song on the radio, it gets sickening to hear after a certain point. Play something else already! Joseph talks about it on a tolerable level when it’s just us two (even then, I might cringe or twitch whenever he mentions japanese things) but when he’s with Kim there’s a level of japanese-related talk that I just can’t bear. Then there’s her laughing at every joke he tells and her complimenting him on various things, but let’s not go there.

After that car ride to the movies, I was just in a mood of contempt. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. All I wanted to do was watch the movie and go home. The movie itself was spectacular. It had a lot of personality and charm, and lightliness that was similar to Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is a movie that I love so much and have watched maybe a dozen times (need to get the dvd). There was a moment that the film skipped (as it was a 35mm showing) and the theater was just engulfed in darkness for a couple of minutes before the film began again.

However, once we were alone in Joseph’s car, he asked me why I was upset and something rare happened – I actually told him the cause of my moodiness. We talked it over in the car ride home, some tears fell, and all was well. Actually, better than well. We pulled over into a parking lot at 10:30 and shared a cupcake to end our valentine’s day excursion. So all in all, it was an interesting double date. Would I want to do it again? No. But I will gladly go on many future dates with Joseph.

Ocean Tsunami

So it’s Friday night and I’m actually at home. That’s kind of a first. I’m usually out and about with Joseph, but that’s alright. Plenty of couples time on Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday we actually went to Santa Monica to see Studio Ghibli’s Ocean Waves as part of the Ghibli film festival. Started driving there at 6 for a 7:30 showing and didn’t get home till 9:30ish. The theater was an old theater without stadium seating, so we sat waaay in the front to make sure no heads were in the way of the subtitles. We sat next two very weird guys on each side of us. One of them kept talking throughout the film and invading Joseph’s personal space. The other was on my side and he looked like the ultimate anime fanboy and for some odd reason, he kept chewing his shirt. Oddly enough, those two guys were friends even though they didn’t sit next to each other.

The theater was packed though and I was really glad we got there an hour early. So tomorrow we’re off to the same theater to see Castle in the Sky dubbed in English, and because of that (the originally advertised it as subtitled in English, I believe) they’re showing Princess Mononoke in Japanese afterwards. SO, we probably won’t get home till late tomorrow.

As for today, it’s been two days since I stopped working at Macys. The last day was somewhat weird. I didn’t want anyone to know it was my last day because I just didn’t want to say the goodbyes and all that. And it almost worked. I think a third of the support team knew it was my last day while the rest were clueless. It hasn’t hit home yet, it seems that I would probably never see any of them again. And I thought I’d be okay with that, but now, I’m just a tad bit sad. There is a high chance I’ll shop at that Macy’s again though since they carry Free People and Bar III and all that, but probably during hours when none of them are working. It’s just odd meeting up with old acquaintence. I don’t know them enough to carry on a true ‘hi, I’ve missed you’ kind of conversation so I’d rather not.

So I guess the big question is what will I do about money and all that?

Well, Cara and I have been scheming up a fashion accessories website. We’re getting things rolling so far as I’ve gotten a P.O. Box and we’ve got a license. So we’re trying to get our tax ID to start ordering things and we’re good to go. We’ve been trying to think of ways we could live together but all signs lead to ‘we’ll see how the business is in two to three months and go from there’ UNTIL she told me news today that her uncle is willing to pay a fairly big chunk of rent if we just help out his business in the internet side of things. So we’ll see where that leads us.

There’s that, the dating site, and the fashion blog. Those are the main things I’m working on. And possibly photography.

I’ve been actually pretty good with cutting back on spending now that I have nothing to spend. I’ve made my own meals from scratch, drank less restaurant-bought milk-tea, bought Pinkberry Yogurt in bulk, haven’t shopped for clothes (only once, I admit) or beauty products. So, yeah, I caaaan do it! D: I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Anyway I’ve been up since 5:30 in the morning (Macy’s time) and I’m feeling tired from sitting here all day.

/update

In a Phunk

I feel like I’ve started the new year month in a bit of a rut. For one, I didn’t make a resolution partly because I had a feeling that things would be the same this year as it was last year in the sense that I’d be a lazy bum. Whatever happened to the high school me that used to fall through with her goals? I spend so much of my time nowadays just moseying around the apartment, or even just plopping down in front of the computer and not doing any work except catch up on Netflix.

There’s so much I actually want to do this year. And since some of those plans include other people, I can’t be a backseat driver anymore. I need to do some work if I want to actually be independent overall.

I guess this post is a bit of a broken record. I always say that I need to do more stuff but blah. You know how sometimes you have so much to do in a day that you end up doing nothing because the list is just too intimidating to tackle? It’s happening over and over again. On a daily basis, my schedule should actually heavily consist of writing and blogging, with a dash of art.

Financially, I’m also in a funk. It’s weird, when freelance was my main source of income last year, I was able to save my money fairly decently. I didn’t buy clothes or anything like that (but this might have been because I was also in a phase where I didn’t care about my looks). But when I actually get a steady source of income, I end up spending most of it ruthlessly on things like clothes, beauty, and eating out. I was never broke but I was also not grounded in budgeting or saving money. It was worse during Christmas time (couldn’t help it, soo many things on sale!). But now that I only have two more paychecks from Macy’s, I’m actually trying to save what little I have left into my other account. Hah! Dunno what real good it’ll do but it’s the thought that counts right?

Now I know it’s a month too-late to make these resolutions, but here they are. I still have eleven months to cross them off my list anyway.

1. Create a daily to-do list and follow through
2. Start exercising again and be able to run 4 miles in under an hour
3. Read ten books
4. Visit five new cities
5. Make more delicious food
6. Blog more!
7. Adopt a puppy <3
8. Stop feeling like a victim and start acting like a warrior.

Fluffy Dragon!

This weekend was packed with stuff. On Thursday, Joseph and I went to Irvine while Cara and her friend came from San Diego and met up with us in Irvine to do a focus group regarding men’s fashion. It was a ninety minute question and answer thing in an office building and we were put in a room with a one-way mirror, video cameras and audio recording. A lady sat in front of us asking various questions from what we thought of the pants she brought out to Joseph’s personal fashion taste. It was an interesting experience, especially after taking the marketing class. Plus, we each got $75 for participating.

Then, on Saturday we traveled to the LA Convention Center and attended Los Angeles Time’s Travel Show where a bunch of traveling agency held a booth and promoted their travel packages. Since Joseph loves traveling, he brought home a bunch of brochures and booklets. I, on the other hand, barely looked at anything. Just looking at all the possible destinations made me a little sad inside. And then looking at the prices would have made it worse. There really wasn’t much going on. We left after a couple of hours after having a situation outside the building, and ended up just snoozing at his apartment in the afternoon.

Later on that day on Saturday, Joseph’s friend Kim had told him about a Ghibli film festival happening to celebrate the new movie Arriety, so we went to Hollywood’s Grauman Egyptian theater (first time I’d ever heard of it) and saw Nausicaa around 6 o’clock. The room was packed and I was happy we arrived an hour and a half early. I met Kim for the first time and even though I barely talked to her, she seems like a nice person. The movie itself, I thought was good but not great. It has the same theme as Princess Mononoke and that was kind of a turn-off as I was hoping to see something new but seeing as the animation was beautiful as usual for Ghibli, I wasn’t bored.

THEN on Sunday, Chinatown was holding a two-day festival to celebrate Chinese New Year and the year of the Dragon so Joseph and I set off for that around midday. We arrived just in time for the start of the performances.

Apparently in China, there’s such a thing as straw hat jugglers. They were pretty impressive!

Then a show from Las Vegas came and did a sixty minute performance. The big ‘wow’ factor was that the director of this show also directed a couple of ‘Cirque du Soleil’ shows.

The weekend had its ups and down, rough patches and smooth sailings. But overall it was a pleasant weekend.