Saturday June 5, 2010

I did Bikram again this morning and I gotta tell ya…90 minutes of that shit after a few drinks last night is not very much fun. I mean it’s not fun to begin with, but with a slight hangover it’s fucking terrible. Some of the poses are getting easier for me and some I just simply cannot get the hang of. My muscles are sore and tired and I fall out of the poses pretty quickly but try my best to get right back in them. I do think that some days it’s hotter than other days. I keep reminding myself that I am burning close to 1000 calories each time. 90 minutes on a treadmill might do the same but I hate running and let’s face, I am no spring chicken and these joints might start to wear. Lauren is on her 28th day in a row I think. UGH.

I walked over to Joe and Vanessa’s in hopes of working on my tan but June Gloom has officially set in. I stayed a minute and then went home to continue sifting through images until I had to get ready to meet a girl I know through Twitter. Her name is Lorena and she has a dating blog that Jarin showed me a few months ago. We have been friendly on Twitter but had never met in person and since she just moved downtown I suggested we meet up for a drink this evening. Some of my friends that are reading this might be like “why the fuck is she making new friends when she can’t even spend enough time with the ones she has?” and that is a valid concern but there is a reason that Lorena and I have connected. (I’m not sure what it is it.) We met at Red Pearl Kitchen and ordered the mule which was awesome and got to know each other a little. She works in real estate (she said “yeah so I’m unemployed too!”) and also has a part time job monitoring the weather at Lindbergh field. When the airplanes fly in a different direction than normal, that is her decision. (I wonder if she ever does it just to be funny. Like on opposite day or April Fool’s Day.) Anyways we got to talking about my job and it turns out she went on a few dates with Ryan! (she did not write about him if you are wondering) She also knows Mike who owns Tivoli from the real estate business and worked at Tivoli for like days before realizing that she could not deal with the drunk idiots in there. Small world! We chatted about our jobs, dating, blogging, traveling, living downtown and shared some ideas we had about business opportunities in the future together. I also told her about a chick blogger convention in NYC in August that I want to go to, so she’s in for that too! She told me about her date with Single Steve (another San Diego dating blogger) and how things didn’t really work out. (His version)I told her all about my dates with It’s Just Lunch and she laughed when I told her how much money I gave them. I told her my idea of letting my friends pick guys for me from Match.com so I can continue my project. I wonder if I should attempt to go on a date with Steve? Anyhoo… I’m excited to have a single friend closeby as a wingman! And since now I am a Bikram cultist I am trying to get her to go with me in the mornings.

We walked over to Tivoli and ran into Andrea who was wearing a long dress showing off her hot body and to which I could not resist ever so slightly touching her bum as I crept up behind her. Omg the look on her face as she turned to see what douchebag was groping her was priceless. Sorry! I was dying laughing. We had a drink and then walked over to the Fleetwood which is probably now officially my least favorite place in downtown San Diego. Awful music, awful crowd and just plain awful.

I was home in bed by 11pm. I knew that the Rock and Roll Marathon would be tearing by my place at some point at some unreasonable hour tomorrow morning.

Saturday May 8, 2010

Chelsea Handler was supposed to be signing books at a bookstore in La Jolla at 3pm and I was pretty excited to go meet her and tell her that we were soul mates. When I looked online to get directions they had switched the time to 5pm and I couldn’t go because I had dinner plans at 5:30 pm with some friends who were going to her show downtown at the Civic Theater. I was debating about going to the theater around the time the show would end to be first in line but figured I would bring the book out with me and make a game time decision.

Dinner was at Oceanaire with Chris, Rich, Dusty, Michelle, Sully and Erin. The main reason I was going was to order the caviar and they were out of it tonight. Apparently a huge party ordered all of it last night. I was pretty annoyed.  I settled on the crab cake appetizer which is one of their signature dishes and totally amazing with huge chunks of crabmeat…It’s served with an aoili sauce which was pretty bland, but the crab cakes were great on their own.

I opted for the prix fixe menu for $29 bucks (Laura on a budget changes from day to day, food item to food item!) New England clam chowder with tons of bacon in it: (here I have been trying to avoid bacon after my brother’s heart attack and they put in there without me even knowing!)

The others had ordered a bunch of oysters and the one I ate was utterly disgusting. It was way too fishy and left the worst after taste in my mouth. I don’t know what it was called, it was small and nasty.

I had the arctic char (I don’t even want to admit this but I had a brain fart and thought I was ordering a white fish and was shocked when salmon showed up. What an idiot!) Their fries need some truffle oil in my opinion. But then again I think everything needs truffle oil.

For dessert I had the blueberry cheesecake. Nothing special.

After dinner they all had to race off to the show and I met a very drunk and belligerent Mike from Tivoli at Red Pearl Kitchen with none other than the mom of Chloe the French Bulldog! No pics, they were a hot mess after an all day pubcrawl. I walked over to Quality Social to meet up with Danielle who was supposed to be working tonight. To my surprise she was sitting on the other side of the bar and had the night off! (Yes we had “pickle backs” and they were delicious) Danielle used to work at Naughty America but quit a few years back and we had drifted apart. It’s good to have her back in my life. As I get older and now that I have some free time I feel the need to connect with certain people. I was so busy for so long that I lost touch with a lot of special people in my life. I don’t want to get into the personal details of her life, I will just say that she had an experience about a year ago that made her reconnect with her Mom and it really made me happy to hear about it on the eve of Mother’s Day. Life is too short. If you don’t have a relationship with your parents, look inside of yourself and figure out why. See if you can’t be the bigger person and change that because they won’t always be around. Don’t put yourself in that position of regret and guilt.  

We walked over to the Local to meet up with the crew after Chelsea Handler’s show. It was more important for me to hang out with Danielle then to stand in line to meet Chelsea and I don’t regret it at all. All of my friends in the other circle call her Goldie Hawn

Chris and Dusty looking silly.

Danielle and I walked to La Puerta for one quick drink because she was supposed to meet up with some cute boy but since he wasn’t there we took off. I was asleep on the couch by 11:40 in the first segment of Betty White on Saturday Night Live. oops

Saturday 1.2.10 and Sunday 1.3.10

On Saturday night we celebrated Alicia’s 39^th birthday at Taka Sushi downtown. Taka has some of the best raw fish in San Diego and it is Alicia’s favorite place to eat it. We indulged in the lobster dynamite

and a giant platter of delicious yumminess

worthy of mention is the second roll from the top/left called the Special Battera roll which is to die for despite the fact that they use that imitation crab stuff. I also love the uni here…sea urchin… I can always count on it to be perfect and never scary. I have a new love affair with sea urchin after Chris had me try it here one night a few years ago. (I do not, however, have the same love affair with ankimo, the other shit he made me try)

After dinner and a bunch of sake and beer we trekked over to Tivoli (wow, I really am a creature of habit) where we ran into the most interesting man in the world.

Here are 4 old friends who used to work in the stupid photo lab at Long’s Drugs many moons ago and our little eskimo friend Sandee on the right.

We went to East Village Tavern to do some bowling…. Is she not the cutest thing ever in her socks and bowling shoes?

I personally hate bowling because one time when I was about 10 years old I got a 2. That’s right. TWO. I opted to sit on the bench and chat with Jarin and Jason, my other downtown rat friends. A good time was had by all.

On Sunday morning, Carly Parker took the train down to visit and we went to brunch at Baja Betty’s in Hillcrest. Tommy met up with us and later we went to Red Pearl Kitchen downtown where Carly ordered dessert in the middle of dinner and then refused to share with any of us. Rude.

RPK has a bunch of Asian style tapas and we pigged out…. I had to get the fried rice with bacon in it.

We ordered wine (half price on Sundays! bonus!) and then took cabs up to Hillcrest so we could gay it up some more in preparation for our project. At that point Carly was a wee bit too drunk to be out in pulic so I took her home and put her to bed.

Oh, but I didn’t stay with her, it was early… I took a cab back to Urban Mo’s and continued the evening Here I am about to inject a giant syringe of nasty Jell-O shot. puke.