Shawna’s Whimsical Weblog

Janel was visiting for a day and she wanted to get together at her old haunt -Norma Jean’s in La Mesa. Non air-conditioned? You bet. Musty? Heck yes. Drunken yokels? Of course. Karaoke good times? For-rizzle.

Angela and I are looking for a good karaoke joint for our big 30th birthday party throwdown. Our next place to research is Jin Karaoke Box on Convoy. If anyone knows anything about this place, or has another place that they are fond of, let me know.

See the remainder of Thursday night’s performances.

Tim and I ate our way through Chicago last weekend. This was the kind of vacation that you come back and don’t need a vacation from. Instead of sitting around our place all weekend, we sat around Doug’s place all weekend. We played video games (Doug puzzle pirated with me while Tim played God of War), watched some so-so anime(Rurouni Kenshin), Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica.
On our one touristy day downtown, we caught a great Cubs game at the beautiful Wrigely Field (no bad seats in the house), and visited Millenium Park and Buckingham Fountain. See pictures!

On Friday evening we headed down to Park Forest to have a lovely dinner at my Uncle Dave and Aunt Carmen’s house. Cousins Mario and Hillari joined us as well as Grandpa John. I could kick myself for not remembering to take my camera out to get some photos. I have yet to figure out how all of our family discussions end up with us talking about traffic and roads. Even I know what a big mistake it would be to take Cicero Ave now.

Saturday evening was spent at Kathy’s place. Kathy prepared us a 4-course meal fit for kings. I am in awe of her superior entertaining abilities. After a short walk to settle the food, we took in Citizen Kane. I’m not sure where i’d put Citizen Kane on my move ranking list. It’s a good story and well-delivered, but the 16th(IMDB) or 34th(rottentomatoes) best movie of all time? It’s not. I’m fairly certain I can generate a list of 100 movies that I think are better.

All-in-all a great vacation and now we return home to finally finish a great leg of home remodeling. Our bamboo flooring should be in by the end of the week!

Sunday marked Tim’s and my one year anniversary. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since our wedding. Disappointingly, I did not finish posting all of our wedding pictures by the one year mark like I had planned. I did make significant progress though! My new goal is to have them done (including the Napa reception) by the end of the month.

To celebrate our first year together as man and wife, Tim and I returned to the Park Manor Suites for dinner on Saturday night. The restaurant isn’t the most romantic of place for a heterosexual couple. In fact I think we were the only heterosexual couple in the packed room. I think we were the youngest couple by about 10-20 years as well. The couple to our left was celebrating their 12th anniversary. The food was good (especially the dinner salads), but we were saddened by the fact that the Napolean we ordered for dessert was coffee flavored.

After dinner we walked (waddled) over to the Marston Garden to grab an anniversary photo. The garden looked as lovely as the day we were wed. A few more pictures from the evening.

On our actual anniversary on Sunday we celebrated in a very American way. Rampant consumerism! We stopped by the mall and searched unsuccessfully for a watch replacement for Tim. But we were not discouraged, we went on to buy a Monster iCarPlay Casette Adaptor to replace his broken iTrip. But the real success story for the day is we bought furniture for our place. A 5 piece dining room set and a microsuede couch and chair for the front room. How very fitting that our wedding gift to each other was to finally put our wedding furniture fund into use. Cotton here we come.

Venue: S.D. County Fair, Del Mar

Much like the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, I believe in 5-year plans. However rather than focusing on economical development, my 5-year plan is about how often I test out my gastrointestinal development at the San Diego County Fair. The regular Dinner Club crew (Jeannine, Brian, Tim) joined in along with Bill, Danielle and Dale. Make no mistake, this trip was about stuffing our pieholes with as many items we could find that was not the usual lunch fare. This was almost unilaterally achieved by taking item A and then dipping that item into a fried batter. To quote Danielle, “Every culture has a deep fried dough.” There were cinnamon rolls, funnel cakes, garlic battered artichoke hearts and mushrooms, deep-fried fruit burritos, Indian-fry bread, lumpia, fried rice, chow mein, beer, turkey legs, teriyaki chicken, lemonade, cheescake on a stick, deep-fried apples, orange and strawberry juliuses and the ultimate in cholestoral intakes: the deep-fried Snickers. All of this didn’t leave much time for actual fair viewing, but we did squeeze in the flower landscapes, photography and hobby collections, exhibit halls, and bunny rabbits. View other photos from the outing. Aside from the superior fat ratio, damn that fair food is expensive.


Rating: Owm Owm