Recapitulation

It's been a busy week!

Saturday was move day. My mom and I were going to make a second trip to retrieve miscellaneous small things from the old place... but we were exhausted (and it was already pretty late) so we decided instead to eat downtown. Had some delicious spaghetti and homemade meatballs with a side of ricotta cheese, Italian wedding soup, and tasty tasty bread from Roman Cucina, a lovely little restaurant on Harbor Blvd - YUM. It was also on Saturday that we realized we can watch the Disneyland fireworks every night from our living room!

Sunday I had a soccer game, and then spent the remainder of the day packing and CLEANING. Had a tasty group dinner at Thai Cafe before again heading back to Fullerton for some quality play time with Fred. :)

Monday I relaxed with company as I waited for an electrician, cable internet installers, and appliance people to go about their business. For dinner I had very tasty sushi (and fried oreo and green tea ice cream for dessert!) at a cute little place I found less than 5 minutes away. The owner/chef was so friendly! He made us a little edible bunny out of an orange, and came by our table to chat for a bit as we were getting ready to leave. Really nice guy, and a darn good sushi chef too!

Tuesday Jimmy came up to check out the new house/wander downtown with me. We came across a lot of neat looking restaurants/bars/fun places to check out later, and yet somehow ended up at Roman Cucina again for dinner haha. This time I got the Rosa (creamy red sauce) which, while tasty, wasn't as good as my spaghetti and meatballs... but it really didn't matter because by the time my pasta was put in front of me I was already super full with soup, bread, and an endless supply of Shirley Temples!

Wednesday was an Irvine day. After preparing for my lessons, I headed down to teach until 6pm. Ran into an old friend from high school at Jamba Juice, which was awesome. Had dinner at my dad's, where he whipped up a tasty filet mignon dinner (using the grill I got him for Christmas!). After a round of Mario Kart I headed out to the Gypsy Den where I met up with friends for a long night of hilarity and deep conversation - always a fantastic combination. :)

And that's the gist of it. Now it's Thursday and I've spent most of the morning catching up with e-mails and messages and what not. I need to do some errands before I head down to Irvine for soccer practice and MILKSHAKES! Should be fun. About time I exercise away all this food I've been eating... only to be completely negated by what will undoubtedly be a delicious (and definitely worthwhile) milkshake haha.

PS
Goldfish Crackers COLORS are now colored with natural ingredients. Which is great, in theory, except the purple goldfish now taste like beets. :(

Fun with Boxes

First post from the new place! We're completely moved out of our old place, but not completely moved in here. There are boxes everywhere, and while the walls and floors look gorgeous, everything else just looks messy. Unpacking is a slow process sometimes.

We finally got internet yesterday... but no wireless yet. Our router seems to be MIA. Hopefully it'll turn up soon, because I need it to get internet to my computer (if I want to use my computer in my room, and I do). Right now I'm on my mom's laptop. It's serving it's purpose, but I can't use it that often and I don't like using it for long periods of time.

I'll do a full update later. For now, here are some pictures of Fred as I was packing up my old room. :)

Productive Fun

It's been another productive few days. My mom and I selected a new chandilier for the dining room (LOVE it), the painting is basically done (there was a last minute decision to put crown molding in some of the rooms and it really makes everything pop!), and I'm starting to work on all the remaining design details (door knobs, face plates, curtains, etc). We've got one last meeting with our bathroom designer before that project begins. And we move in on Saturday, which means most of Thursday and Friday will be dedicated to packing.

Besides a calamitous Sunday night, it's also been a fun few days. Favorite moments include Del Taco and the dollar theatre, spicy beef noodle soup (and two more yummy Chinese/Taiwanese dishes!) at A&J, driving up to see Emilie, birthday sushi (and tempura ice cream!) at Ajisai, a refreshing afternoon of zombie killing, and a filling dinner at Haveli.

And the most random moment of late was probably getting pulled over on my way back from LA because I was "having trouble staying in my lane." Highway patrol thought I was drunk hahaha. When it became pretty apparent that I wasn't (after a quick pupil test, some light conversation, and an apology from me for "adjusting my ipod" [I wasn't]), they let me go with the advisory: be more careful with your driving. Whew. Here's some more good advice: don't text on the freeway, kids!

I Killed My Computer

So I was in the midst of typing up an entry when I accidentally (aka stupidly) removed the power cable to my laptop instead of a USB cable. Really. Really. Dumb. But I figured that, besides losing all my open documents/files/etc, I'd just start it up again and continue with life. Alas, no. It's stuck on the very first start up screen. :/

I'll deal with that later, though. For now, here's what I was going to say the first time around...

Yesterday I headed out to beautiful Balboa Island for a bit. I was feeling pretty cramp-y so no beach - just window shopping and postcard searching (followed by a delicious red pepper flaked White Knight pizza from Ameci's). I ended up finding quite a few cards I liked, to be sent out via Postcrossing! Here are some of my favorites:

Happy Things

Soccer practice always makes me happy. Today we had a good turn out AND we managed to obtain an open net within the first 15 minutes so that was good. Practice itself was a little bit disjointed (everyone's a bit sluggish post-holiday feasts) but still fun. I always enjoy the conversations too. And the fact that we're playing at NIGHT with LIGHTS. Somehow I always have more energy at night (versus Sunday mornings when I'm always tired and it's often super hot >.<).

Other things that make me happy include gifted emulator games, tofu (of all sorts and varieties), sunrises, and Deluxe ice cream (a Kroger brand). It's surprisingly tasty and half the price of all other ice cream brands! I've got Moon Pie and Fun Munch Cookies N Cream in the freezer right now and they're both delicious. I also love their version of Birthday Cake (the flavor that got me into Deluxe in the first place) and Rocky Road.

But enough about ice cream. I think it's time for some Nip/Tuck. Or Donkey Kong Country. :D

Highlights and Lowlights

Since last I've written, I've spent two Wednesdays traveling to different students to give piano lessons. While my students generally come to me, I've made arrangements to travel to my best Irvine-located students because I'm moving. It's not so bad since they're all in relatively the same area. Plus the families are great. One of the best holiday gifts I received this year was from a student's family, and what made it so great was the family picture/card that they included with it! I plan to frame the picture and put it up by my piano (along with my diplomas and awards and what not, which are lying around here somewhere...) once I move. :)

Other highlights include...

Meetings with a designer to fix up the main bathroom in the main part of the new house. I'm excited for the end result! It's going to look GORGEOUSLY modern, yet remain classic and simple.

Finalizing the wall colors (for the most part). See above to get an idea of what we chose. The brick color is for the bathroom(s), the yellow/gold is for the media room, and the darkest color is for the accent wall in our living room. Having grown up in a white house (and later a white apartment), I'm VERY excited to live among color for the next little while.

And losing our second soccer game of the season. Why is this a highlight? Because we we're playing two down with two sick against the best team in the league. Final score was 0-5, which isn't pretty on paper, but IS something to be proud of considering the circumstances. I'm proud at least. And the rest of my team is too. And that proud/happy feeling is something to be thankful for after a competitive soccer game. :)

The lowlight of the week was...

Fred being sick for a few days. He threw up 3 out of 4 meals (he eats twice a day) and I was worried sick that it might be an adult case of Parvo or something. Thankfully, he's back to being his happy, healthy self. This also allowed me to cancel the vet appointment I made for him which, in addition to me being happy about his restored health, makes my hole-y pocket happier too.

Besides a few small shindigs (including Emilie's birthday on Saturday!), the remainder of this week will be dedicated to packing. I really dislike packing/moving. It isn't a fun process. But this move has it's benefits (more on this later) so it should be OK. Plus, no move can be as bad as my last move: packing up 23 years of a life that was never spring cleaned. :/

Hello, New Year

Why, hello.

I started toying with the idea of starting up a new blog a day or so before New Years. I do like writing, and my current Tumblr isn't seeing much action on that front. I guess it's just an easier medium for posting links and pictures and songs and what not. I considered restarting my old blog, but I like that my old blog's end coincides with the conclusion of a pretty major part of my life. So here I am with the new blog: Fluffy White Dog. Why Fluffy White Dog? Because Fred's curled up next to me and he is fluffy and white.

There's the why of this blog.

The what of this blog is really just my personal going-ons. For instance, I spent most of today in Fullerton with my mom picking out colors for her (our) new house, among other things. I like the colors we picked (especially this gorgeous yellow that's going to grace the walls of the media room), but I'm a little apprehensive about how brown everything might get, what with some of the walls being of the brown-family, the floors being hard wood, my brown piano, my mom's brown (more like mahogany) china cabinet, and my mom's surprise purchase of a brown furniture set to go in the living room... which is across from the dining room which will likely house our current brown dining set, near a brown linen cabinet, in the same vicinity of a brown coffee table. Yes. I'm worried. So much so that I'm thinking of calling the painter tomorrow and imploring a quick change to walls that are less brown. Or at least a less coffee-ish brown. Something lighter. Maybe a white baby grand piano would spruce things up a bit. In any case, I guess if we do find that things have gotten too brown in the front half of our house, we can either move things around/get new furniture for the living room, or repaint the walls. No big, right? Right.

Anyway. Before I head off to sleep, I guess I ought to post my resolutions for 2011. I only have two of them:
1) be on time (to EVERYthing, even if it means I have to leave for all my appointments/etc an hour early) and
2) respond promptly to phone calls/messages/e-mails/etc. I recently realized that people are offended when they don't hear back from you in a timely manner. Sorry all. I'll be better this year, promise.