january: week 3

Jan. 16 (mon): MLK & Work
Because of the horrible weekend I had, I decided to treat my coworkers at my regular store to lunch. I appreciate so much their hard work in making the pharmacy run smoothly. I'm one of those people that believes in teamwork and I've told them this many times but this store is a well-oiled machine.


Jan. 17 (tues): Errands
After receiving my Naked palettes in the mail, I didn't have the time to send it to Lauren yet so I was able to make my way to the post office today. I actually was able to post about today in a separate post (here) so you can check that out if you haven't already. I was starting to wonder why I sounded so redundant lol... then I realized that I had already blogged about that day lol.


Jan. 18-20 (wed-fri): Work
Yay for another Friday working the morning shift! Tony came up for the weekend and we had dinner at Ichima Sushi in Pasadena. Their sushi is pretty affordable and the place was pretty popping on a Friday night. It seems to be a great place to celebrate a birthday or for large parties.


Jan. 21 (sat): Adventure Date!
So before we left my house, Tony gave me my early V-day present :).

It's actually for us to use for water sports (lol... not those kinds, nasty!) that we may do in Hawaii when we go at the end of this month. All the pictures taken at the Griffith Observatory were taken using this camera.

Anywhos....

1. turkey omelette? lol I forgot. 2. hickory maple waffle
3. chai latte 4. cornbread melt 

Tony and I seriously have the hardest time picking places to eat but just the sound of Peach Cafe had us salivating. Ever since Judy introduced me to this place, I've been coming back time and time again and I don't think I've ever been disappointed... oh wait... just the time I ordered their Chicken and Waffles... that was a fail... But other than that lol, every time I've been there, their food has been absolutely delish. And it's weird because every time I go, I'm actually not afraid to order something different. I'm usually one of those people that look through the entire menu and end up ordering the same thing but not here.

After lunch, we were pretty stuffed so we decided to walk off the food. We walked around the shops in Monrovia and also checked out the Monrovia Public Library. It's a pretty nice library. Wish I would have known about it when I had stuff to study although it probably would have been too far anyways.

It had been raining the entire night but the sun had started coming out so the skies were super clear. I've been wanting to go to the Griffith Observatory since they remodeled it but I hadn't had the chance to go  so we decided to take our chances with the rain and go check it out. I had no idea how close to the Greek Theatre it was! We had to park super far and pretty much hiked up the entire mountain lol and yes I admit, I was completely out of breath :(. I'm so out of shape!

Here are some pictures from the Griffith Observatory:

from where we parked

its going to be a long walk lol. and this is zoomed in a lot too lol.

Here are some panoramic shots using that function on the camera. It's kind of like the stitch function on the old Canon cameras except you just sweep across what you want to take a picture of. It's pretty cool.

and of course no trip is complete without a jumpy picture lol

Jan. 22 (sun): Chinese New Year's Eve
Started off the day by going to eat dim sum with my parents at Top Island. Their dim sum has actually gotten really good. Their tripe was so fresh and their dishes were piping hot and stayed that way so you know it's not microwaved (I think I've been watching WAY too much Kitchen Nightmares because that's what Gordon Ramsey always say, "Has this been microwaved?!" lol). We were super stuffed afterwards so we just rested at home and watched the two football games. We got pretty hungry in the middle of the 2nd football game so we tried this new fast food/fried chicken chinese place in El Monte called "Louisiana Fried Chicken". We only tried it out since it has 2 of my favorite foods: fried chicken and chinese food lol. Their fried chicken is actually pretty good. It's in the Home Depot plaza incase you guys were wondering. The fried chicken is really different from most of the fried chicken I've tasted. The batter is crunchy but not oil ridden like some of the other chain fried chicken places. Their portions were GYNORMOUS! The lady kept giving us more and more. We spent maybe $15 (plus I got a boba drink) and had enough food for 2 meals. We'll probably be going back there when we're craving both fried chicken and chinese food... that is if they stay open. They are actually right next to a Popeye's so there's some massive competition.


And that concludes week 3 of January!

january: week 2

Jan. 9 (mon): Off and Date w/Cat
Had the day off so I spent the day organizing my music. After transferring all my music over to my new iMac, I felt the need to rename all my music since I was starting to see many repeats all filed under different albums. My new way of organizing is just by "Artist - Song" in the "Artist" folder. Hopefully this will free up some space on my harddrive.

After HOURS upon HOURS or organizing, I was only at folder "Aaliyah" so you can tell it was really going nowhere lol. I took a break from re-organizing and tried to catch up on my blogging. After that, I got ready to visit a fellow pharmer for a dinner date.

decor at RA sushi in Chino Hills

Cat and I decided get some grub at RA Sushi in Chino Hills. We got the Lobster Spring Rolls for sharing and I got the Viva Las Vegas Roll and I can't for the life of me remember what Cat ordered lol. I just looked thru their whole menu lol. I'm pretty sure it was something with shrimp on top lol.

our food at RA sushi

I had to work the next day at 8am so we called it a night pretty early.


Jan. 10-11 (tues-wed): Work


Jan. 12 (thurs): Extreme Couponing at CVS
In my haste to leave on Wednesday night after closing, I left my lunch box and my water bottle at my store so I went there to pick those items up and also to pick up some fish oil/multi vitamin combo packs for Tony. I also bought a bunch of new make up as well for a future haul post.

I've been dying to try more products and there were a bunch of good coupons at CVS.


Jan. 13 (fri): Work and Naked 2 Palettes!
I had been working the closing shift on every single Friday since I could remember (6 Fridays in a row I closed) so it was my lucky Friday the 13th to be opening for once! But too bad it wasn't even that great since I had to work the entire weekend so it didn't make any difference whether I opened or closed. Usually I want to open on Friday because I want to leave to San Diego earlier for the weekend but since I had to work the entire weekend, it really didn't matter. When I got home, my Sephora package with my 2 Naked 2 Palettes arrived!

I ordered one for Lauren for a belated x-mas present and one for myself. I figured I would use my VIB 10% discount so the 2 palettes ended up being less than $50 each including tax (free shipping). People don't seem to like this palette as much as the older one but I haven't really touched either one (so lazy to do eye make-up lately lol) so I wouldn't really be able to tell you as of right now.


Jan. 14-15 (sat-sun): The Weekend that Shall Not Be Discussed
The most horrible weekend in the history of the world. I was pretty much a verbal punching bag for every fricken customer. I don't think I've ever said "Sorry" so many times in my life.


And that concludes week 2 of January... the week I pretty much wanted to stab my eyes out and was verbally raped by every fricken customer. I think I'm almost caught up on my week in reviews! yay!

january: week 1

Jan. 1 (sun): Pizza and Football
Started off the new year by sleeping in and then ordering pizza from one of my new favorite places for piza besides Pizza Hut lol. Baby Bros Pizza is the place these days. I'm a big fan of pan pizza and they make it super well. Also, they are super fast as well. We've never eaten at the restaurant but they've got a really good sports area with TVs and alcohol. So we took the pizza to-go and watched football.

look how plump that looks! lol

Jan. 2 (mon): NYE after New Years
Worked the opening shift today and was super frazzled today. Discovered a mistake I had made and spent the rest of the day trying to fix it. Great way to start off the new year right?! Goshes maloshes. Later that night I went to watch New Years Eve with Pearl. It was actually a pretty funny movie surprisingly although seeing Zac Efron with what's her face was really weird lol.


Jan. 3 (tues): Day Off
Spent the day running errands. Went to Trader Joe's to buy Tanya's sister some stuff since they don't have Trader Joe's in Hawaii and then went to Target and the bank. Didn't really do much for the rest of the day.

Jan. 4-6 (wed-fri): Work
So I ordered my iMac during Christmas on Woot.com but due to some unfortunate planning I wasn't able to get it until Thursday. I went to pick it up at FedEx during my lunch break so I spent the rest of the night after work setting it up. Tony came up on Friday and helped me install more RAM so now my computer has 16GBs of RAM. I went back to using my Lenovo from pharmacy school and was shocked by how slow it was lol. But I think it's also because when you don't use something for a long time, it needs more updates when you do use it so it slows everything down.

Jan. 7 (sat): Father's Office
Can't really remember what I did during the day :/. I believe we went to the mall and walked around because I remember being in these shoes...

And my feet were starting to hurt. Oh! Now I remember lol. So we ate at Cheesecake Factory at the Santa Anita Mall for lunch because originally I wanted to go to Din Tai Fung since Tony's never had it before but their line at almost 2pm was 1.5 hours! It was pretty ridic. After that, since we still had some time to kill, we shopped around for a bit. I was trying so hard not to purchase anything but I couldn't resist some combat boots at Cathy Jean for $40 including tax. They were 70% off so I just had to get them lol. I also bought 2 cinch belts from Cottonon.

After that, we went to Father's Office to meet up with some friends. That place is a little ridic. We had to wait in a line to get into the restaurant... like it was a club or something! Wtf! It was so crowded we decided to take the stuff to-go and just eat it at Nam's apartment.

Jan. 8 (sun): Work
Worked at one of the slower stores which felt really painful because it was just me and one technician for the entire day. When one of us was at lunch, we had to call the front store for back up.

And that concludes week 1 of January!

NYE 2011

After a super funsies night at Nam's for Fab Five secret santa, me and Tony decided to spend NYE at Disneyland since Tanya & Jason were coming down from NorCal. We had lunch with my parents and then headed to Disneyland. We checked on MouseWait and it said that Disneyland was at 90% capacity so we were really worried that we weren't going to get in. I was more worried about not being able to park in the structure. I hate having to park in the Lion King or Buzz Lightyear area because the tram ride feels so much longer. Thank goodness when we got there, we were able to park in the structure so we got extremely lucky. Here are some pictures!

one of the best picture spots of the castle

NYE with my old roomie

popcorn bball

michael jackson gloves

NYE countdown at Disneyland

it's a small world - one of tony's best shots

And that concludes 2011! Can't believe it's been an entire year of blogging! Here's to another year of great posts!

blog: year in review

what i'll be blogging from in 2012!

2011 has been a great year of blogging. Thanks to all those have followed me and subscribed. Although my initial goal of blogging daily didn't work out, I did still managed to blog about all the things I really cared about and I think my life isn't that interesting to blog daily anyways lol. I think you guys would be extremely bored lol. Here are some stats for the year:

Number of posts: 95
Number of hits: ~2100
Most popular post: november makeup haul
First post of 2011: day 1: happy new year!
Last post of 2011: november makeup haul

Thank you for your continual readership and I wish you all the best in the new year!

december: week 3 and week 4

Dec. 12 (mon): Laundry & oil change

Dec. 13-16 (tues-fri): Workin' it. Had to miss Sophie's birthday shindig because I had to work but a big Happy Birthday to Ms. Sophia!

Dec. 17 (sat): This was the weekend of Lauren's bridal shower. I was going to start driving after work but it was a long hard day so I decided that we would drive up after a full nights rest. However, I guess me and Tony were super excited or something because we could not fall asleep so we decided to start our trip to NorCal at 5am. Took us about 4 hours to drive to Fresno and once we got there I was craving Chick-fil-A big time so of course we made a stop there. I also made a video about the fog. Bear with my delirious-ness in the video lol. It was really early and we were pretty much running on 1 or 2 hours of sleep.






After picking Blaire up from Fresno, we drove another 3 hours to Oakland. We met up with Lauren & Jason and had sushi for lunch and went to Fenton's for dessert.

our dessert at Fenton's

For dinner, we ate at Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers. Their skinny fries with garlic were so good! I could have sworn I took pictures of the food but I guess not lol.

Dec. 18 (sun): Lauren's Bridal Shower @ The Cliff House

Lauren's Bridal Shower was at The Cliff House in San Francisco. We ate at the Champagne Brunch Buffet. Here are some pictures:

our view from our table

view of the buffet area

our table w/my little favors

dish numero uno (didn't even get a chance to take a picture of the other dishes lol... scarfed them down too fast lol)

beautiful bride-to-be with pharmer friends

pharm fam that started it all :D

lauren & tanya 

throwback to the back to back pictures in high school

pharmer bridal shower :) thanks for coming out lovely ladies!

After the bridal shower, we spent nearly 8 hours driving home. On the way back to Lauren's house we saw a motorcyclist go down on the freeway. It was really scary. Thanks to Tanya for driving because I probably would've had a heart attack.

Took us what seemed like FOREVER to get home. There was another accident on the freeway on our way to Fresno so the entire freeway was stopped.

Dec. 19-21 (mon-wed): Work, work, work. Also made my cereal mix for friends and coworkers. Ended up decorating them so they looked like presents.

Dec. 22 (thur): Finished the rest of my holiday shopping and then went to boba at Tea Station with FF friends.


Dec. 23-25 (fri-sun): Worked the closing shift and then drove down to San Diego. Spent Christmas weekend with Tony's family.

I didn't take that many pictures with my camera but here's one that Tony's cousin took. She had a super nice camera.

Merry Christmas, friends!

Dec. 26-30 (mon-fri): Actually spent this week working Monday thru Friday at my usual store since they were forcing the staff to take their vacations.

Dec. 30 (fri): After closing, I went home and picked up Tony and we made our way to Nam's place for our annual secret santa gift exchange & party. This year's secret santa seemed a little rigged because a lot of the couples got each other lol. Here's our secret santa pictures for a more visual story!

That pretty much concludes December (besides NYE which I will post in a separate post)! Hope everyone is having a good time getting ready for Chinese New Year! Happy Chinese New Year everyone!