Monday, October 29, 2007

Frying Fish and Yogurt

Celia had a few friends celebrate Jim's birthday tonight at the Frying Fish in Little Tokyo. We were around 16 people and we took up about half the place. The Frying Fish has a conveyor belt that has the sushi going around the bar and Celia had a camera on a plate going around the conveyor belt. You can see the video on her blog. Here are some of the pictures I took...

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Never a normal picture with these two and Jim? Well, it's Jim.
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Poppy is such a darling!
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HAPPY BERRRTHDAY TOOOO YEUUU!
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The conveyor belt
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Jim's close up on the camera on the conveyor belt...
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Now for dessert.
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Yogurt at CeFiore
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Good food, great company, yummy dessert... all on a Monday night!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Whooligans at Buster's

Tonight I went to see the Whooligans play at Buter's Beach House in Long Beach. I've been watching this band since I met their lead vocalist, Ed Bell and his "better 3/4", Royce standing in line at a luau over 3 years ago and it started with a hug.

The band had their Halloween show, so they were in their costumes.

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Matt Brislawn is amazing on the violin. According the the band, the crowd, he was either the Gay Blade, a Swashbuckler, a Rennaissance Fair reject and when he took off the vest maternity wear model...
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Danny Wilder plays the accordian (and makes it look cool), the recorder and sometimes gets on the guitar. He was playing the role of a drunken pirate (the drunken part was done extremely well, what an actor!).
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Matt Clutterbuck plays the guitar and provides vocals. With the help of some make up artistry from Royce, he made a pretty good caveman.
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Paul Toth is the bass guitar wizard. He didn't know it was Halloween, he admitted to Ed that he just had the outfit in his closet already.
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Ed Bell is the lead vocalist. He also plays the Bodhran, the bass ukelele and the banjo.
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It was an awesome show and the band did not disappoint. If you ever get the chance to see the Whooligans in action, definitely take it.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Disneyland in October: Take 2

Ok, so Amanda asks me Sunday asking me what I was doing Monday. I thought, "she wants to go to Disneyland." Sure enough, her college is closed due to the fires. Not from the fire itself but from all the smoke. Well, I told her I couldn't go Monday but Tuesday was a possibility (read: YEAH! LET"S GO!)

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I saw this and the first thing I thought was "Man! Her dogs are going to be howling before the day is through!" Ladies? Would you wear this to an amusement park that required a lot of walking?
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Got on the Finding Nemo ride with not too long a wait. There was one accident, where this guy's face got stuck in a porthole...
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The park was not crowded at all!
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I almost got these. I really wanted to get these. I was at the counter with these.
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Amanda and I got these instead with our names embroidered in the back.
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When the empty boat pulled in, they shut the ride down.
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Like I said the park was NOT very crowded at all! Since there was no one in the boat behind us, I took a few flash shots (only time I would do it).

We had left at 4pm. Amanda had Bible study that night and I had Jim's birthday dinner with the family.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Miramar Air Show

James and I went to the Miramar Air Show today. I've never been to an air show so I thought it would be pretty cool to check out. I thought that it would be pretty crowded, most air shows are crowded right? At least the ones I've read about or seen on the news are packed. I was really more interested in checking out the "static" exhibits than the aerial show. James said that it was free as unless we wanted to get into the grandstands to watch the actual air show. We figured that if it got interesting enough we can always buy grandstands seats once there.
As we got closer to the air base, we were getting worried that it might actually get cancelled! It was drizzling quite a bit and there were clouds for as far as we can see. We couldn't even see a "window" of sunlight anywhere!
Sure enough, as we got off the freeway, it was a straight shot in to the base... no waiting. All the worries about being able to make the "cut-off" for people getting on the base pretty much became jokes.
Once we got there and parked the car. It was still very overcast and there was a light drizzle every now and again. Right at the parking lot, they had a bunch of these helicopters all lined up. I have to say that seeing one up close is cool but seeing a whole line of them is freaking impressive!
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The static exhibit they had was very cool. They had some older jets and as you can see it was very cloudy that morning.
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Front
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Back
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The public was able to enter some of the larger panes and helicopters in the exhibit.
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The announcer kept telling the crowd that the Stealth Bomber was going to do a fly-by but James and I kept missing it every time it flew by. It was still overcast and well... it was pretty damn fast! I was finally able to get a few shots of it only because the announcer was telling the crowd from which side it was going to be flying in from.
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I don't know if these were the actual pilots flying it but they sure made it into the crowds rather quickly considering they just flew by less than 15 minutes ago.
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I wanted to say that there was a crash but no one was hurt but the smoke was from a jet truck racing through the runway. Yeah, a jet truck... oh brother.
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That bomber in the back was huge! From what I was told it isn't even the biggest! Yikes!
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They also had a few demonstrations.
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Then a "window" in the clouds and a biplane flew in to do a few aerial stunts.
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But as quickly as the window appeared, it closed up just as quickly. Never saw these guys take off.
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By noon, we went through the whole exhibit and a couple of air stunts/demonstrations. The clouds were getting thick again and since we did not bring any chairs, we decided to go ahead and leave. On the way out, we saw that the line of cars still heading into the show and the base stretched pretty far out. It almost went all the way back to the freeway but not quite. We were glad we decided to get to the show as early as we did, parking would have been insane!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Disneyland in October

It was that time again! My God-daughter, Amanda and I took our monthly trip to Disneyland. We had planned on doing one ride from each "land" and shopping for new hats. The weather was great for Halloween. It was overcast for most of the day, which was good since the temperature did not get too warm. The crowds are once again very light (let's hear it for the Disney ju-ju!) and because of that so were the lines. Of course some people just can't be happy, I still heard a number of "Why is this line soooooo long?" Yeeesh!
Anyway, as it turned out we did not stick to the plan and braved the 50 minute wait for Nemo. The people behind and in front of us were really nice and it made the wait seem so much shorter.

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The Haunted Mansion was given the usual Halloween makeover.
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Since it was overcast, the cast members in the parade were not blown out in the photos as they usually are in the parades.
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We did not stay for the fireworks. It was pretty windy in the afternoon and there was a very good chance that it may be cancelled. So, we met up with Jim and Celia for dinner in Los Angeles.

Ohyeah, we never did get our new hats... oh well, next time.