Pho Real!

If you want to get a real bowl of pho, you usually have to go to China Town or Vietnam. But lucky us have the Vietnam Cafe which is relatively close by. A hot bowl of pho really hits the spot during these cold winter days.

I was really craving egg rolls so I snagged some for an appetizer as well as some hot tea.

These egg rolls are not as good as my mom's, but they're still quite tasty.

Here is the bowl of pho before all the fixings are put in. A bowl slightly smaller than this would cost 35 cents in Vietnam. You can see that the meat is still rare and you have to submerge it in the broth to cook it further.

I like to put a lot of sriracha and hoisin sauce in mine.

Oh man, I love pho. I could eat it every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Pho is actually a breakfast dish in Vietnam, a little fun fact for you free of charge.

My First Car Accident

While taking Ashley to the airport last December, I got in my first car accident. I was in the center lane about to go through an intersection and apparently a girl in the left turning lane decided to change lanes to go straight right when I was passing her. She hit the rear driver's side of my car.

I was so annoyed. I kept thinking I should have seen it coming and been able to avoid it but what can you do, woman drivers. :P A police report was made and all that good stuff. At the time I didn't see any damage on my car because there was so much salt caked to it. But the next day when I washed the are that was hit, I could see scratches from the impact. As far as I could tell, my car drove fine but because of my OCD, I wanted to get those scratches fixed.

I called up State Farm and they contacted the other insurance company for me. I took my car to the nearest auto repair shop to get an estimate. I was thinking the work would only be a couple hundred bones, the estimate came out to $2180.16!

Just for a few scratches? No wonder insurance bills are so much. Once I told the claim agent the estimate she said she would have to send an appraiser to get a second quote. A day later I got a call from the appraiser saying he was too busy to come by to look at my car and he said that the estimate seemed fair and I should be able to get the check no sweat. I later called the claim agent and it turned out she called their third party appraisers that would talk down the estimate with the repair shop.
I ended up getting a check for $1,968.16. I quickly deposited that in my savings so I could make some pennies from interest over the next two weeks. After looking at the estimate, most of the cost is from labor. $700 for parts and another $500 paint labor which is insane. I should get my car back in a week. I dropped off my car today and also got a rental car payed by the insurance company through Hertz.
The car they gave me is a 2010 Toyota Hybrid Camry! Pretty snazzy if you ask me. I'll post some pictures of it. Now if I only had somewhere to drive it.

Snowboarding 2011!

Got out once this winter to go snowboarding. It turned out to be a pretty good day since it snowed in the morning. It was Spring Mountain again this time and even though it wasn't "men's day", I still got a pretty good deal on the lift ticket. Usually the all day ticket is $29, and since we didn't plan ahead of time we decided to go later to take advantage of the evening lift ticket which is $25 after 4pm. It also happened to be "business bash" night which means if you have a business card or work I.D. you can get an additional $5 off.

We all know I don't work so I don't have a work I.D. However, I do have a business card that I had to make for one of my finances classes. So I brought it along and sure enough they took another $5 off my ticket so I only had to pay $20! Not as good as the $15 all day on Monday but every dollar counts in my book!

This lady on skis took our picture with Julie's iPhone 4, it came out horribly blurry. I would have been okay with it but the fact that she has the same phone as Julie, I'd expect her to be able to take a better picture.

I brought my camera, but I only had enough battery juice to get one picture off.

Another iPhone picture. Not sure why we didn't use the flash.

Julie also snagged some video of me "rippin' it hardcore" down one of the trails but I haven't acquired that video yet.

Back to San Diego

Hi there! Today's pictures are from Monday January 17! Julie's last day in PA before heading back to California. I went over to Uncle Gary's thinking I could play Wii while she packed. But of course I didn't get the chance too as she had taken over the tv room with all her stuff. Also, she decided to wait the last minute to move her files from her old laptop to her new fancy one. So I helped with that since there wasn't anything else I could do. I think I folded a pair of sweat pants too.

Below is a sandwich I've never seen before, peanut butter, jelly, and potato chips! Sounds pretty absurd if you ask me. I've had a mayo and potato chip sandwich with some ground pepper, now that's a tasty sandwich. But I don't know about this PBJ and chips business.

I forget what this stew is called, its one of Aunt Janice's super awesome hearty recipes which was excellent on a cold day.
Julie was running a little late to the airport so she decided to drive since she thought he would drive too slow. I saw my life pass before my eyes a few times before we arrived at the airport.

Side mirror!

I wasn't planning on going to the airport with Uncle Gary and Julie, but Uncle Gary said I could tag along. I figured I didn't have anything planned that day and Uncle Gary could use the company on the ride back.
I don't understand how American Airlines runs their operations. You have a kiosk where you print out your own boarding pass as well as plug in the number of bags you are checking in. Then you have to drag your bags to the counter where they weigh them and put tags on them. After that, you have to haul them to the TSA security monster scan machine. It just doesn't seem very efficient. I guess their reasoning was that most passengers won't check their bags for domestic flights since they want to save monies.

My Sorry Attempt at Bird Watching

Mid December the Blue Heron decided to visit the pond. Did I ever come up with a name for him? I forget. Anyway, I had just gotten my hands on the T2i and decided to try out the zoom lens.

I knew nothing about the Canon T2i at the time and even less about photography, but despite that I think the shots came out alright.

Oh snap, he saw me.

I wish he would pierce one of the geese with his beak, that would totally make my day.

Flying in like a boss.

Or like a G6?

Okay now he's just showing off.

I wish I was one of those people that got paid for their photos. Someday perhaps, someday.

Night Out On the Town

This past Saturday the posse went for dinner for Rich's 25th birthday. The restaurant we went to was Alma de Cuba, one of Stephen Starr's many restaurants. If you couldn't tell by the name, its a Cuban restaurant. If you look at Alma's menu, you'll see that ceviche is one of their specialties.

They guys got to the restaurant early, so we all got mojiotos before sitting at our table. I got the suave mojito, you know, because I'm so suave. It consisted of Bacardi Limón and sugarcane syrup. It was really good. So good it might be considered a foo-foo drink, at least it didn't have an umbrella in it.
Michele ordered the mango martini with ketel one, mango liqueur, and mango purée. I had a sip of it and one word to describe it is "dangerous". Even though you can taste the vodka, its still not enough to keep you from slurping it down as if it was a delicious smoothie from Jamba Juice.
They serve they tasty rolls with some kind of pesto garlic mixture. I am currently trying to cut down on the carbs but these were so good I couldn't resist.
For appetizers, we ordered chorizo sliders and a couple ceviches. Picture below is is the yellowtail kingfish. The other two were the rainbow (tuna, salmon, black bass, w/ jalapeño & sweet potato) and the thai mixto (crab, shrimp, octopus, fluke, coconut-lech de tigre, mango & tomatillo). They were all very good. I picked the thai mixto because I like that stuff. Everyone seemed to like it. The yellowtail kingfish was a little fishy for some but I thought it was excellent.
For my second drink I decided to man up and get the classic mojito. I'm glad I did, it was even better than the suave. It also packed a punch, definitely got my $8 out of that drink.
Randomly, Jules was showing Michele pictures of a Pomeranian puppy. I couldn't find a picture of the one she had, but it looked like a fake puppy because it was so fluffed up.
For my entrée I ordered the rum cured duck breast served with creamy yucca, duck vigoron and smoked currants. The duck breast was succulent and tender. The slaw wasn't that bad either. I got to try some other dinners including Rich's Chilean sea bass, Graham's beef tenderloin, and whatever Jules had. The sea bass was something else. It just melts in your mouth like butter. I know for a fact I could feed this to someone who doesn't like fish and they would love it.
What's a birthday without dessert? Rich and Graham both got the chocolate cigar. Almond cake wrapped in chocolate mousse dusted with chocolate and served with dulce de leche ice cream. It was very fitting as both Rich and Graham share a love for smoking cigars. Each of their plates had these crazy match sticks made out of sugar and lit on fire.
I figured I didn't want to watch them eat so I also ordered a dessert, the dulce de lech crepes. Vanilla crepes filled with dulce de lech and served with truffled streusel, bitter chocolate glaze and smoked vanilla ice cream. Oh man was this good. I was hesitant to take a bite because it was so pretty looking, but didn't seem to be a problem after the first bite.
After dinner John and Kelly left to tend to their dog Smokey. The rest of us headed to Rum Bar for one more drink before heading back to Graham and Jules'.
I ordered a mai thai, that dark stuff you see on top is 151. Not as good as the classic mojito but still very tasty. Graham got one too.
Rich got a flight of rum. Not something I would do but hey, its his birthday! He can do whatever he wants!
We ended the night playing Golden Eye on the Wii. Brought back a lot of memories as I was a huge fan of the original on the Nintendo 64. Rich has been playing this game all week so of course he beat us the first game. But he soon got frustrated as Manthan, Graham, and I won the following games. Had a great time that night, not too often I get dressed up and go to fancy restaurants.

Dad's Beer

Came across this brewski a couple months ago, Dale's Pale Ale. Its brewed by Oskar Blues Brewing Company, located in Longmont, Colorado.

We bought a six pack of this stuff as it shares the same name as my dad. It was an alright beer. Not too exciting. It definitely has hops but its balanced with the other flavors of the beer. It would make for a good "Game Watching" beer with pretzels and other snacks.