Filed under: Uncategorized
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Filed under: Food
We’ve been talking about our Empire of magazine, design, food, t-shirts and all around awesomeness for quite some time now. Up until now, we’ve done lots of planning and not so much executing, until our friend Kathleen came down and visited us in San Diego. We got to talking about how, now with a decent income, we’ve become total foodies, and how we need to start sharing recipes.
Before I go on, let me take a moment to mention that I do not know exactly when I became a foodie, but looking at the percentage of kitchen/cooking items we had on our wedding registry, I’d say we are certified now.
Anyway, so we get to talking about sharing recipes. Kathleen goes back up to LA, and within a few days, has taken things into her own hands and created FEED THE EMPIRE. It’s a great idea, and between a few of us, we’ve already got 10 posts in two weeks. Be sure to check it out and add it to your RSS feed so you can get all of our great updates.
Since our honeymoon in January I have been seriously talking about adding a food section to this blog. We both love eating out, and love cooking, so this makes sense. After making this vow on our honeymoon, I proceeded to take pictures and make notes on all of our really good meals, which have since, been sitting in my iPhoto.
Well today, that changes. You will notice to the left, there is now a food category. Not that I’m catching up quite yet, but last week we had some food that was blog-worthy. While in Hawaii we found shark steaks at the grocery store. Having never heard of, or tried such a thing, we bough two and did some internet searching and asking around on how to prepare them. We decided on a baked, lemon-ginger with pepper recipe which was really good. Served with couscous and salad it was a delicious dinner. Two steaks was pretty ambitious though, so we had enough for leftovers. I’m pretty please with what we did.
We reheated the shark and toasted some bread. We had some avocados that we added along with some lettuce, tomato and balsamic vinegar. Here is the final result, which I must say, was better than the first night we had it.
Shark bite.
Mr. Burns: "You dolt, use an opened-faced club, a sandwedge." Homer: "Hmm, opened-faced club sandwitch."
How crazy is it that we’re now residents of Hawaii? Now that we have an apartment, I honestly don’t want to wait another month and a half to get back there. Our trip was a huge success, we found a great apartment, an awesome sectional couch, and some sweet bar stools.
How awesome is Hawaii? well the other day I was driving down the road and what did I have to stop for?
seriously? what happened to the squirrels?
not one, but three.
That’s right, peacocks. Three of them, just hanging out in the middle of the road. When was the last time you even A) saw a peacock B) saw multiple peacocks C) saw multiple peacocks in the wild D) had to stop your car due to peacocks in the road.
Personally I’ve never had to stop my car for anything other than a squirrel, dog, maybe a cat, or an animal- like person. I imagine in some parts of the world stopping for cows or sheep is common, but a peacock? that’s just crazy.
Another kind of odd thing we came upon in Hawaii was this, though as a designer, my mention of this is not in a good way:
I'm blue blah bloo ble blah bo blah.
A blue stop sign? really? I’m not even sure what that means. You can have a red octagon that doesn’t have any words on it and people know that it means “stop”, but this? it’s like changing the colors of a traffic light to purple, orange, and aquamarine. Weird. There were also several of these in this mall parking lot, so it was cleary intentional and not a mistake.
Even with these crazy blue stop signs, we’re pretty pumped to be moving there and calling this place home for a while.
Who got da keys to ma beemah
I have to say, our apartment is pretty sweet, and in a great part of town. We’re in Kailua, which is a cool little beach town on the east side of the island, or as they call it here, the windward side. Our criteria for finding a place was walking distance to the beach, a bar or three, a coffee shop and a supermarket. It was ambitious, but the town of Kailua said “I’ll see your criteria and I’ll raise you several bars, restaurants, and some other good stuff”. One of the bars is a Karaoke bar, which is major points, our new landlord took us to a great Chinese restaurant yesterday, there is a Safeway practically next door, a hardware store, a sushi place, a book store…the list goes on.
Close to beach, bars, supermarket, etc.
Now all I need is a bike with a surfboard rack , and we’ll be all set.
More to come on the inside of the apartment, and our painting or the walls.
So as you may or may not know, I’m in this organization, commonly referred to as, the US Navy. I drive big ships. War ships, to be exact. In May, I’ll be transferring to a new war ship, and this ship happens to be stationed in Pearl Harbor. One of the perks of Navy life is the opportunity to take house hunting leave before getting stationed somewhere, which is exactly what Gill and I are doing in Hawaii now. Basically I can take 10 days of leave with out getting charged for those days. Pretty sweet when it works out.
I was able to score a beach cottage at Bellows Air Force Base which, honestly isn’t much of a base, except for some sweet beach-side cottages. I’m not sure how I managed to get us a spot in one of these cottages on such short notice, because they are apparently pretty high demand (especially for weekends), but one way or another, it happened. Now that we are here, I can see why they are so coveted. They are freaking amazing. We got one that is called a “Un-renovated Cottage”, which would imply that there are also, better, recently renovated, cottages as well. This place has a full kitchen a really nice living room, full bath, a room with two twin beds and another room with queen size bed.
Oh and the view isn’t so bad either:
Step out our from door, and this is what you got.
Our view out the back, our cottage being the one on the left.
It’s amazingly beautiful here, and since we so diligent in finding an awesome apartment, we get to just hang out and enjoy the scenery for a few more days. Oh, and I’m pretty sure finding an apartment in a day and a half is a new record, at least for me.
More to follow on the apartment itself, which if you have the grace of knowing us, you will have to come and see personally. So start planning those trips now. You pay the airfare, we’ll provide the bed and maybe some waffles.
Filed under: Ridonk-a-vision, Travel | Tags: Navy, New Orleans, photos, Road Trip, San Diego, Texas, Travel
Here are a couple of random pictures from the drive we took last week from New Orleans to San Diego.
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- Those crazy Texas, so clever.
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- Pausing for a pit stop and a scenery shot.
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- I always watch for snakes Mr. Sign, but thank you for reminding me.
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- Another scenery shot.
I mean, who can drive through Texas without seeing something silly.
Filed under: Travel | Tags: Drive, New Orleans, Road Trip, San Diego, Texas, Travel
The long road.
We bid farewell to New Orleans, yet again, last Friday, which sucked as usual. Generally speaking, things get easier the more times you do them, like say, typing, or re-shingling a roof. The experience of doing something over and over makes it less strenuous. This is not true, however, for leaving or moving, which I have had the fortune of doing practically annually for the last six years. True, I am damn-good at packing, and stacking boxes in an efficient manner, but the act of leaving good friends and family behind, has not been getting any easier. In fact, it is getting harder.
I’m not going to to lie, it’s great to meet new friends, but I’m realizing more and more that the friends we made in college are really a great group of people. That sets the bar pretty high for all subsequent friend encounters. Some people can hold up to the precedent, others, not so much. Knowing that we’ve found some great people makes leaving hard, every single time. We leave New Orleans knowing that the next time we move back, its will be for good.
Ok, so enough crying in my beer, lets talk about his drive. It was pretty ambitious, and though google quotes us as 1,835 miles, the odometer on our Honda read 1,943 after the three day journey. We left New Orleans around 1 pm on Friday, and arrived on Sunday at about 10:30 pm. According to google, here is the breakdown:
- New Orleans, LA to Austin, TX– 533 mi – about 8 hours 36 mins
- Austin, TX to Deming, NM– 677 mi – about 9 hours 54 mins
- Deming, NM to San Diego, CA– 624 mi – about 8 hours 54 mins
It was a pretty ambitious drive, and we did it with a small trailer attached to the Accord, ta boot. We listened to books on tape (or ipod, rather) most of the drive, which made it go pretty smoothly. As far as drives go, it was not bad at all.
There was also no tire blow-outs, or car flipping, so that was a plus as well.
Filed under: Wedding
Photo by Gill's cousin, Jeremy Mau
So a few things have happened since my last post. To name a few: my birthday, Christmas, New Years, and more notably, Gill and I got married and went on our honeymoon.
The entire weekend was amazing and it was incredible to have so many friends and family come to share such a special occasion with us. It was really touching to look around and realize that you are the center of a gathering and that all of the people who are present are there because they truly care about you. It’s so tough to get people together at the same place and time regardless, so having such a gathering was priceless. We have heard from many of you that our wedding was the best you had been too, and that we throw a great party. These are probably the most flattering things that anyone could possibly say to us. Thank you.
I would like to go deeper in depth with the wedding weekend, but while I formulate my thoughts, we have several very gifted friends who have already begun to chronicle the events. Here are the ones that I’ve read so far so please check them out (for those of you who also read Gill’s blog, this will look oddly familiar).
Contemplative Gene (photo by Nick Boeglin)
Gene: the true reporter, carries a notebook around with him all the time. If he pulls it out and writes something in your presence, you might just make his blog. Fortunately for us, Gene wrote about us for several days:
-The Bachelor Party
-Best Wedding Ever. Seriously. Part I
-Best Wedding Ever. Seriously. Part II
-Best Wedding Ever. Seriously. Part III
-Best Wedding Ever. Seriously. Part IV
Katie Ide: beneath all that sass is a slightly less-sassy person.
Kathleen! (photo by Kathleen herself)
Kathleen: who could be my neices older, non-related, twin.
Lisa, making a face that is oddly similar to Kathleen. (photo by Lisa, or at least from her camera)
Lisa: If I were to estimate the ratio of Lisa’s likelyhood of shiving you to her body weight, it would be 3:1
-Where has the time gone?
-Toast from Lil Lisa (this is actually a link to Gill’s blog)
Me: Who does that? Nick: I saw two straws. (photo by Katie Ide)
Nick: This post is short and sweet but good.
So again, I thank you all for your kind words. If I were to list all the great things people told us in person, by email, wrote in cards, and even by text message, I would be at this all day. Again we thank you all for making our celebration the perfect mix of friends, family, food and fun.
Another person who gave us some shout-outs was our photographer Marc Pagani, who we could not have been happier with. His style was that of a photojournalist and we hardly knew he was around, yet his shots are incredible. Just when we though he couldn’t get any cooler he had this to say in his blog:
Gillian and Brian are one of THOSE couples…you know the type…happy….in love…they make each other laugh…they throw fun parties. I love shooting THOSE kind of couples! The day started at Gillian’s hotel. I shot her getting ready and then we went to the church for the ceremony. Afterwards, we did some fun portraits in my old neighborhood in Coliseum Park. I used my remote strobe with an umbrella and the light looked great (I had great models, too). After we got some good portraits, it was off to Mulate’s Cajun Restaurant for a great party. They kept me for an extra 2 hours, so it was a 10-hour day for me, but tons of fun.
We know that all the people we invited to the wedding love us. Why wouldn’t they? But Marc doesn’t know us at all, and it’s really nice to hear such great things from an outside observer. To go and top that, he has one of the pictures from our wedding on the landing page of his website. It’s like we’re famous.
Who wouldn't love this picture?
More updates to come.
Filed under: Iraq, Ridonk-a-vision | Tags: Coleman, consumer, cooler, failblog, instructions, Japanese
Oh, I guess all the Japanese writing should have tipped me off.
Thank you Coleman, I might have been confused why the directions to my brand-new cooler where in language I didn’t recognize, but you were one step ahead of me. I can only image the event that forced someone in Customer Service to put the “For Japanese consumers only” on this piece of paper.
I think this might be failblog material. Anyone agree?
