xmas in LA

i'm back from xmas in L.A. it was pretty fun, got to see a lot of my family that i haven't seen in a long time. my step-nephews love me, i hope they think of me as the "fun aunt" hehe. of course crazy things had to happen too, it was so windy christmas eve that the power was out for our whole family dinner so we were walking around with candles & flashlights...kinda set a certain mood tho :D then on christmas day, the dogs started growling at a cat and then went nuts and started chasing each other and clawed grandma's leg, who started screeching. luckily the injury wasn't too bad and we got everything under control fast. for a second it seemed like i was in some wacky christmas comedy.

here is something i brought back from LA with me to commemorate the holidays.

hey, happy bday, self!

yeah its a little early, but i had my bday dinner on wednesday. i think pictures would describe the evening better than words could really...i think these about sum it up.

my favorite month

hi everyone! guess what. i have a cold! this sucks, because it's really bad timing... it's my favorite month, i am supposed to go on a date this week, we have our company xmas party on friday, and next week is my bday dinner... so i am loading up on the nyquil, dayquil, and zycam trying to get over this fast.

last weekend was pretty fun tho (before i came down with this biznatch) Raz and i went to the Ugly-con at the Giant Robot store which was an art show featuring Ugly dolls. we didn't realize there were gonna be so many kids there. so no scoring for tasha & raz... well it was fun anyways, the costumes were pretty funny.
what was really cool is that the store was selling dolls made by a friend of mine from school, anna chambers. i feel all special because i have a hand-made doll from her before she was rich & famous.

game review: jeanne d'arc

warning: maybe spoilarz if you care!!! anyway. i think i'm done playing jeanne d'arc. it sucks because i really liked this game, and put several hours into it, until the very end, when it got all hard all of a sudden and wanted me to level up my characters a bunch to beat the last boss. i hate when games do that. THEN i beat that boss, but it wasn't the end, it was a trick and there was ANOTHER boss after that, that i couldn't beat... and it doesn't let you save in between. so, i think i'm done with it because it's just annoying me now. but, the good parts of the game before i got to the end were: 1) gameplay very similar to final fantasy tactics which is great 2) nice graphics 3) fairly interesting storyline 4) combining skills to create new skills is pretty fun. so if you have a lot of patience to level up your characters a bunch by doing the same level over and over at the end then go for it.

but now i think i'm ready to move on to some phoenix wright 3.

happy halloween!

guess which pumpkin i carved.

happy bday razmig

last night was my friend raz's bday... well actually his real bday is either today or tomorrow, he's not sure which. (?) so we went to this awesome & cozy restaurant called La Mediterranee. i'm not usually a huge fan of mediterranean food but what i ordered - 1 of each fillo dough wrap with vegetable lentil soup - was absolutely delicious. afterwards we went to a pretty cool bar called the Hemlock for some chillin. hope you enjoy your gummy tongues and instant critters raz!

Brütal Legend announced!

yay i'm so excited, our game was finally announced! so i can talk about it (kind of). here's the double fine news posts:
http://www.doublefine.com/news.php
Here's Sierra's official site:
http://www.brutallegendgame.com/splash/
Here's double fine's site where you can see me modelling a wicked brütal legend tshirt:
http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/projects/brutallegend
also go out & purchase 52834 copies of the latest Game Informer magazine with our game on the cover cause there is a big article inside with lots of screenshots & concept art.
so work is going pretty good these days, a lot of excitement in the air.

reunion

so now both kitties are back with me at my apartment! there was a short adjustment phase where snoopy had to get used to mr. peterson invading her territory. surprisingly mr. p adapted to the new place super quick! a little bit of hissing, a little bit of barfing, but nothing too terrible. Now things are back to normal, with snoopy trying to hit mr. p's tail or sniff her butt while she's eating, and mr. p her grouchy self.

i got this photo by holding up a baggie of dried fish flakes which mr. p loves. if you look close you can kinda see her mitten hands (she has thumbs) i should try to get a better pic of those.

lets see what else is going on...i got a cleaning person to clean my apt. twice a month so i'm excited about that. i'm trying to keep up with running 2 times a week, altho i have been a bit inconsistent it's just so hard to wake up early during the week! My fantasy football team (The Dungeon Lords) has been horrible so far this season, but oh well :p oh also my new psp arrived but i haven't played it yet. i'm still playing WoW, rogue galaxy and hotel dusk so i have too many games already. also to be honest i'm getting a little bored of video games lately... just a little tho. weird.

hi again

i haven't posted in a while so i thought i'd do a little update. last night i went to my friend Nathan "Bagel" Stapley's art show at Gallery 1988 in SF. i have wanted to buy one of his paintings for a while and i love how he draws people so i ended up buying this piece- i'm so excited about it (also it has an awesome frame)
also my friend Bob visited, he's living in Switzerland right now but he's american. here's a cartoon of us that i drew- Bob, David, Me (drawn by wendell), and Wendell.
We had a lot of fun going to great restaurants, shopping, and seeing the Simpsons movie which was really funny. A couple weekends later my sister visited with her new boyfriend Joe. It was also really fun and i took them to a couple of my favorite restaurants... i went shopping with them also but was able to restrain myself and only bought a candle. the candle smells really good like honeydew. here's a pic from their visit:

cute dragon

Oola

The other night my brohams and i went to this restaurant called "Oola" which turned out to be really good. the highlight was the ribs which were so delicious they were like a dessert. oh yeah did i mention i'm not vegetarian anymore? well i was never completely vegetarian but i kind of gave up on not eating red meat/poultry. i still don't really eat it that much though.

our night out was really fun, here is a picture:

Here's a picture of the ribs. in the background is the goat cheese mac & cheese, also very tasty. to the left is a regular boring glass of water.
in other news i got an awesome new keyboard! my flimsy mac keyboard crapped out because i was pressing the WASD keys too much. so i ended up getting a Saitek Eclipse II and it's great so far. really nice keys and you can backlight them with blue, red or purple lights. here's a picture of snoopy enjoying the keyboard box:

new digital camera

woo i got a digital camera now so i can finally take some more interesting pics for my blog! probably most will be of Snoopy though. here is one for you now:

Japanese Tetris

i could watch this all day :)

yum

i have eaten at 2 really good restaurants so far this weekend already...and it's only saturday! and it's a 3 day weekend! yesterday was wendell's bday so we took him out to the Slanted Door which is a well-known kinda fancy vietnamese place in S.F. i walked there from work which was kinda a long walk but it was really beautiful since it's on the bay. i gave him the new pokemon game "pokemon pearl" for a present. wendell is awesome because he likes the same type of games i do, well he's also awesome because he's hilarious and spazzy. plus he has an awesome name, how many people do you know named wendell? oh yeah, the food was pretty good too... i think it's a little overrated, but the cellophane noodles with crab was my favorite dish.

ok, but the real treat was that tonight i went to this awesome sushi place in the inner sunset called "Koo". i am soooooo pleased that this place is near me, although i might be tempted to spend my entire paycheck there every week. they had this amazing starter dish called "spoonfulls of happyness" which was 2 spoons with monkfish liver, uni, a quail egg, and some other delicious items in there. if that wasn't yummy enough they give you a shot of sake to go with it! i think it was the best uni i've ever had. i'm definately gonna go back there, i probably should take my mom there when she visits.

welp gonna get back to my final fantasy XII. :)

meats & veggies

this year my new years resolution was to "try" to be a vegetarian, well more accurately to stop eating red meat/pork/poultry. i like seafood too much to stop eating that :) i like the taste of meat, but sometimes the thought of it grosses me out. also i have been eating mostly vegetarian for a while now, so i figured that the switch would not be toooo difficult. so far i've been successful but some things have tempted me: english muffin with bacon & egg, serrano ham at Cesar, pepperoni pizza, pork buns (dim sum). so i guess pork has been the hardest for me to give up. i've been eating a lot of cheese sandwiches. today i found out that Hotel Utah has a decent veggie burger. it's not really like a normal burger, i think they put black beans in it or something because it has kind of a mushy texture inside, but it's crispy outside.

Pizza

Right now i am eating my new favorite pizza from Extreme Pizza, the "holy cow" which has fontina, swiss, mozzarella, gorgonzola, roasted walnuts, fresh sage, & tomato sauce. I never thought of putting walnuts on pizza before but man this pizza is the BEST! i wish i had a digital camera so i could take a picture of it for you.... i really should get one of those soon. would make my blog a lot more interesting.

sorry i haven't updated my blog more but i have been super busy with work and preparing to move to S.F. BUT after my move i can get settled and buy a camera and then i will... oh Iron Chef America is on- gotta go! ttyl.

become a millionair!

my WoW characters

i've been playing World of Warcraft since the alpha test in 2004 and i can't believe i still play it and have fun! i started out playing more hardcore and raiding a lot, but these days i mostly solo and occasionally do a 5-man or pvp. i spend most of my gaming time playing WoW, but i still like single player games here and there although it takes me forever to finish them so i don't get to play too many.


Narathe
Level 67 Orc Shaman
Server: The Scryers
Talents: Restoration/Elemental

i made this character to play with some of my friends from my old workplace and also to play Horde which i always liked better than Alliance >_> i guess i would say she is my "main" now.



Rathnait (formerly Huckle)
Level 61 Gnome Mage
Server: Silvermoon
Talents: Arcane/Fire

this is my original character that i raided with for a while (on Bloodhoof server as Huckle), but then i got kind of burnt out on her and switched to the Horde shaman. i moved her to the Silvermoon server when some friends started up a guild there and changed her name because i already had a warrior there named Huckle. i play her once in a while when i need a gnome fix.

Watchlar
Level 46 Draenei Priest
Server: Silvermoon
Talents: Shadow/Discipline

i made this guy when the Burning Crusade came out- draenei look cool and my alliance friends really needed a priest. there's something i like about a big burly dude in robes riding an elephant- i dont know what that says about me :)

haircuts

today i got a haircut. i went back to the same haircutting person i had before, even tho last time she hit me in the mouth with the hair dryer. this time, no accidents. yay!

before

after