Category: My Life

Const is in Houston!

Road trip to Houston!!!

This past week I have been on a road trip to Houston! Constantine has moved there for the next 6 months! 🙁

So Tuesday was not a very good day for me. I had a 4 hour meeting I had to prepare for, and I had to prepare to be out of the office for the next week and a half (I am in training this week). So I email all my clients and tell them that I will be gone, most of them were like. “Ok whatever”. Well one of them emailed me back and was all bitchy and was like. “I was expecting things to be done this week! blah blah blah. So I had to come pu with a way that I could work while traveling. I installed Windows 2003 on my external drive so that I could use Parallels, then installed MsSQL so that I had the DB. Then I had y 4 hour meeting which ended up only lasting 2 hours. Got done with that and it was noon and I wanted to go home. But As soon as I got back to my desk I had three clients IMing me wanting help with shit! UGH! Very annoying. I ended up getting out of the office at 2:30. Rushed home because Const said he’d be there in about 2 hours (when I talked to him at 2).

Get home and shower and pack real quick and what not… And then ended up sitting around till 6 when he finally got there. We went out to dinner with Sirin to Hennessey’s for burgers.

Got home that night and just hung out at the house and watched TV. Got up at 8 on Wed and had breakfast at this new Crepe place in Redondo Beach. We had a HOT french/russian/vietnamese waiter. He was really ncie too, we talked to him for a while and what not. The food was excellent! I would highly suggest going there and checking it out. It’s on the corner of Ave I and Catalina.

Got in the car and headed out after that. I plugged in my external drive (one of those portable ones that’s powered off USB) and worked away for a few hours. About the time I was finishing up, the hard drive suddenly says it’s been disconnected…. IT was still connected to me!!! So I unplug it and plug it back in… “Please initialize this drive”!

WTF! So I freak out because this drive has ALL my windows installations that I use for work, and training and playing and testing and everything else! PLUS It has ALL THE INFORMATION I need to be able to do work on this trip! VERY ANNNOYING!

The rest of the drive wasn’t too bad. 530 miles that day. Some VERY pretty wild flowers and stuff along the way. Got to the hotel and it was amazing. It was basically a HUGE apartment. Hung out there for a couple minutes and then went to dinner at an Asian place.

Thursday we got up at 8:30 again and we were on the road by 10. 550 miles that day. Lots of VERY VERY boring flat lands. Const spent hours calling all the apartments. I am SOOO jealous of these Texas apartments. 2 bedrooms with granite and hard wood floors and all this sweeeeet shit for WAY LESS then what I pay for a crappy 1 bedroom! Some of the places even have FREE starbucks coffee and fluff and fold service! UGH! That night we watched a comedian called Daniel Tosh. He’s very very funny. You should all go check it out.

Friday, 1610 miles later we MADE IT! 🙂 We got here and ate dinner at this very yummy Steak house called Smith & Wollensky got to the hotel and figured out plans for Saturday and then watched Americal Idol!

Satrday we got up at 8 and headed out to this place called Le Peep for breakfast. I got the blueberry pancakes which were not that good. But Const got bannana nut waffles which were delicious! After that we started looking at apartments. I think we went to like 10 different places. The second place we saw SMELLED soooooo fucking bad! GROSS! I wanted to puke when we walked into the stairwell to the apartment! The 4th place was just amazing! Very industrial with concrete floors and exposed duct work and what not. HUGE tub. It was SO CUTE! All the other places were really nice as well. At the end of the day we headed back to place number 4 to put down the money and what not. We get there and some guy is putting the deposit down on the apartment Const wanted. :'( So we went back to the third place which was also very nice and he got that one. I sure hope he will like it.

Saturday night we went out to a bar called “South Beach” which was tons of fun! Dancing and drinking and what not.

Sunday we slept in and then went shopping for stuff for his apartment. Got some really cute plates and what not from Pier 1. I think once I am back to LA I will go buy 2 more sets so that when he gets back we’ll have a 4some! haha. We went and saw the movie “Jumper” which was pretty good. After that we went back to the hotel and laid in the bed for a couple hours before my flight. I wanted to just bawl, but I held it back… I just realized that I forgot to get one last picture of us together there in Houston! Awwww. Anyways, we left the hotel and tried finding food on the way to the airport. That was one crazy adventure. We ended up in some GHETTO Popeye’s and got chicken. Seriously. I mean GHETTO! Got to the airport and it was very sad, but I held it together. I can’t wait to see him again.

Mika Concert!

This weekend, Const reminded me that I never blogged about the Mika Concert!

Oh my god. Just as good, if not better then Patrick Wolf.

Anyways, if you’ve never heard of him. Go check him out.

This weekend was fun. Dinner with Jason, Steve and Erick. I made a prime rib roast, but it wasn’t as tasty as I would have liked.

Saturday we did the Aquarium of the Pacific and then went to dinner with his friends up in Sherman Oaks which was tons of fun.

Sunday was a bit of an odd day. I think we were both a bit grumpy/tired/who knows. I went shopping and ate lunch at this place called “Lazy Dog” then Target then home where we watched this gay movie call
The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green. It was ok. Took a nap and then Const left my house. This’ll be the last weekend he spends here in LA for the next 6 months. It’s very sad. I cried a bit.

Not really in the mood for much more writing. Lots of other stuff to talk about though…

What a Beaut! The EX35

So, everyone knows by now that I bought an Infiniti G35 a couple months ago. It’s been a love/hate relationship so far because well, we all know I’m fucking cheap and this is an expensive car to own. Once you add up for Insurance, repairs, maint, gas and then actually paying for the car. It’s HUGE!

Anyways, I do LOVE the car itself. It’s so beautiful, it runs great, it drives great, it has all these nerdy things that I love, etc etc.

Well Infiniti just came out with a new vehicle. The EX35. This thing is just adorable and packed with fun features!

For a full overview check out the In the AutoBlog Garage article.

But basically this is just the G35 on steroids! I love that it’s got a huge trunk space, the seats fold down and it’s got a higher clearance, but it’s still pretty low and sleek looking.

My car was in for maint the other day and I sat in one and played with it. If only I had $45k to throw away on a car!

Go out and give one a test drive…. You’ll love it!

Napa Valley Trip!

I love three day weekends…

This past weekend we had a great time. First was Jason’s birthday party on Friday. We had a great time, but left early. I felt bad about leaving so early, oh well.

Saturday morning we got up early and headed out to Napa Valley. On the way up there we stopped at Pinnacles National Monument. The drive from the freeway to the monument was tons of fun. But we only spent about an hour there. It was pretty and I’d like to spend a little more time there.

Got up to Napa late that night, went out to eat and while we were
eating this girl next to us saw that we were looking over maps and stuff and talked to us about the winery she worked at called Mumm Napa.

Sunday morning we got up and headed out at 9ish. Our first stop was a few parks and what not. First was Bothe-Napa Valley SP. It was a nice park, but nothing exciting. After that we headed to the Old Faithful of California. That was also fun, but again not that exciting. It was neat to ee though. Then we headed to the petrified forest. Here’s a pic of Const at the Petrified Forest:

From there we headed out to the winery’s! First was Sterling, which was probably my favorite in terms of the overall experience. First you arrive and take a tram ride up the side of the hill to the top of the winery. You are greeted with your first wine tasting and then you go on a self-guided tour of the winery. Here’s a shot of the HUGE wood barrels they ferment the wine in:

As you make your way through the winery you get to try a few different wines, on the balcony you get some wonderful views of the valley and you can just chill and talk and drink your wine.

Once you get through the winery you can take a seat in the main building and you get to try three more wines. On the day we were there they had some AMAZING Truffles there as well from a company called Truffle Gateau. I HIGHLY suggest going and buying some of them!

After this place we headed out and and drove to Burgess Cellers. Apparently you needed reservations or something, because the guy seemed very confused that we just walked into the door that said “OPEN”. So we just left. Headed from there to Sutter Home, which we went to because I really liked the building. Tried a few wines, but nothing I really liked.

Headed from there to V. Sattui Winery. This was another GREAT winery. But only because of all the foods and cheese they had at the shop. Oh my god. The cheese was wonderful! We also ended up buying 6 bottles of wine from them. From there we headed to Mumm beacuse of the girl we met. We didn’t taste anything there, but saw the art gallery and bought two small bottles of wine just for the hell of it

Our last stop of the day was Peju (only because it was basically the only one open past 5). I really enjoyed the modern art they had outside, inside we found this great pic which is just exactly like Tuxedo!! How cute:=

We got a great guy to taste with and basically a private tasting room because they were so busy! We bought two bottles of the Provence wine which was really good.

But this whole wine tasting thing. I really don’t get it. “In this wine you’ll taste hints of bannana and mango and this and that and the bottom half is a little bit sassy!”. Umm, really!? WTF!

We went home and were just so tired from all the tasting that we went to the hot tub and then just ate dinner and hung out at the hotel for the night.

Monday we headed home and stopped at the Golden Gate bridge for some pics.

From there we headed south to the Winchester Mystery House. This place was really cool. Very crazy stuff.

Of course, you can download our Google Earth Tracks here or you can download our GeoTagged photos here.

And photos of the trip are all here.