Oct 28th Pic!

"Looking Up"

Picnic at the park! Eva worked a split shift at work today, so during her break we took some sub’s from Jimmy John’s and had a mini picnic at a local park. It was only 90 degrees out with a cool breeze so it worked out.

Oct 27th Pic!

"Monster Care"

I found this kid’s book many years ago when moving some stuff out of our old home in San Jose; I found it amusing and have held onto it since. I guess the book’s title could be interpreted many ways, especially if you watch Showtime’s Dexter, but it’s a simple kid’s book about how to keep and care for pets that happen to be monsters.

Oct 26th Pic!

"Floor Bound"

Still moving in! We’re almost out of room at Eva’s place so the books instead of being in a book shelf are delegated to being on the floor. I like the look, it’s very modern but I don’t have a ounce of Henry Kissinger in me to convince Eva that’s a good look. Eventually I’ll have my own room, then the books will be all over the floor…oh wait, no, they’ll be neatly stored in my Kindle…maybe I could buy multiple Kindle’s and throw those around the floor? 

Oct 25th Pic!

"Pumpkin Twins"

My first attempt at carving pumpkins, the plan was to carve these bastards the day we picked them up but I decided to start my new workout regimen, P90X. If you haven’t heard of P90X, Google it. At first I thought, working out in front of the TV? That seems like something an 80 year old lady would do, so I decided to use a laptop instead. Seriously though, after the workout, which lasts an hour, I was on the floor seeing stars! The next day (since I’m writing this 3 days later) I was still sore and barley able to move, granted I’m no longer in my marathon shape from 3 months ago but I didn’t expect it to hurt THIS much! I can’t wait to keep doing it! As they say, no pain no gain, and I’m almost dead.

The Pumpkins are set to be carved Friday morning. So maybe they’ll show-up on Friday’s picadai.

Oct 24th Pic!

 "Gone Dutch"

Sunday morning at 3am we started our drive back to Tucson, I’m glad to be alive. After waking up sometime in the afternoon and taking a few hours to get back to my normal routine, I decided to gorge on some Dutch chocolate. Whenever Bhup visits from Holland, chocolate is to be expected, so needless to say I’ve had more chocolate in a week then I’ve had all year. Good stuff!

Oct 23rd Pic!

 "U....OF....A"

Gameday! A ritual that includes boozing and overeating, going to the actual game sometimes does not happen. This year we ended up waiting in line for 30mins to score some tickets in the nosebleeds, which was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The main pro of sitting in the nosebleeds are that you get to see the entire field, which means you get to see ALL of the action, something I could never do as a student. The students had their own section and we stood the whole game, with only a limited view of the action. The con of us sitting in the nosebleeds was that we sat directly under the Visitors section, good thing we took care of Washington without too much trouble. 

Prior to the game, we visited McKale center, UofA’s legendary Basketball court. The court was open for visitors, except for one catch; we couldn’t walk onto the actual hardwood. To prevent people from abusing the court by walking onto it, they hired a crack security team to monitor the drunken hooligans that like to break rules. The security team was one old man on his “rascal” (a mechanical wheelchair/scooter) with an oxygen tank on the back, needless to say, we walked directly onto the center of the court took pics, pretended to dunk and hugged the bleachers. After a few minutes of yelling the old man gave up and just watched as we did zero harm to the court. 

"The Start"

"Mavericks"

"The Entrance"

"Center court"

 "Popcorn!"

Oct 22nd Pic!

 "Calm Before the Storm"

After a year, back on UofA campus for yet another homecoming Football Game. The trip started with a fairly uneventful drive to Tucson, about 1.5hrs from Phoenix, which is a piece of cake compared to the 6 hours I had to drive back and forth from LA. On the drive down we noticed that quite a few businesses were cropping up in the barren desert we call Arizona, it’s a good sign that the economy is picking up, but the real question is who the hell is shopping at these malls, and why are they surrounded by mini-mansions? They’re probably filled with retired people and Sears employees.

Eventually we made it to UofA, even a blind person can deduce we made it into Tucson by the crappy roads, I’m sure I have a mild concussion from hitting the ceiling of my car! The Campus for its part looks pretty much the same, except for a few new buildings that took the trend of “hey let’s put a rusty box over our building so it looks modern” look a little too far.  We visited the bookstore, which is probably one of the nicest I’ve ever seen, our retired Hall of Fame basketball Coach wrote a kids book apparently, and it’s on sale…Judging by the quality of the book, It’s a good thing he retired.

We walked down University Ave, saw quite a few colorful people, including a guy sporting his Wisconsin jacket, someone forgot to tell this clown UofA was playing Washington. The restaurants on this street seem to have an unusual habit of going out of business, which is odd considering almost all of UofA eats or shops there, this year though most of the places I saw last year are intact. 

 "Hi"

"Freshman Dorm"

"Sophomore Dorm"

"The Field"

"Tunnel Vision"

"Historic Game"

"It's for Kids"

 "Wrong Game"

People from Wisconsin are everywhere! ;)

Oct 21st Pic!

"Drive By"

Picking up my Euro friend from the airport on a Thursday night. Never realized how far from rest of the world Terminal 2 is, it is literally as the ass end of the airport, having made countless drops and pickups at the airport Terminal 2 is probably my least favorite.

Off to UofA homecoming for the weekend! Blog will be updated Monday PM upon my return. Go Wildcats! 

Oct 20th Pic!

"Taters and such"

Eva cooked last night, I helped by making the rice. Most people think making the rice is the easy part, but its not. To make rice correctly you need to add just the right amount of water to the grains, usually double the amount of water. Making rice involves math, which basically means it's no fun unless your cooking tools include a calculator, see why the Asian's are so damn smart, they cook with calculators! Once you've figured out the proper proportion of water to rice (usually 2x water) using your handy-dandy calculator, you wait for the water to boil and the rice to cook. The waiting usually takes 30 minutes, most people walk away from the rice, but to make the perfect pot, you need to pour yourself a glass of wine and sit next to it, small talk usually lightens the mood. Needless to say, I made the perfect pot of rice. 

Eva made some Potato, Tomato, Onion & Squash thing, it was excellent. I didn't include the pic of the perfect pot of rice because I didn't want to make anyone jealous.   

Oct 19th Pic!

"Nashty"

Contribution from Eva, yes it's blurry and yes she hates it. However it's my blog and I like it. Thanks to one of my friends giving me tickets to the Suns - Warriors pre-season game we made a fun night out of it. We sat in the nose bleed section of the stadium, the highest and top most seats in the stadium. The place is designed pretty well but one can still see the action pretty well. Eva bust out the telephoto and got some good pics. 

One downside of sitting in the nose bleeds is that you never know what sort of fan's you'll sit next to, the die hards can be loud and obnoxious, which can be fun at times, but during this game we sat next to obnoxious teen's who though they were being supervised were out of control. not fun. Old farts like us lasted till the start of 4th quarter before we left. Can't wait for the Season opener against the Lakers!

Oct 18th Pic!

"Post Meal"

The day after funk from a nice short/sweet vacation, I wish the weather had been better but hell, vacation is a vacation. One of the gifts I got Eva for her B-day was a Pasta cook book, The Geometry of Pasta. There are many types of pasta, this book breaks down each one and identifies what sort of sauce to make/use and which Wine to drink. The other present I got her was a Wine journal, so she can ID all the wine’s we drink and rate them. Today used both her gifts to have a great meal. Funny how her birthday presents are working out in my favor! Maybe next year I’ll get her an IPad and an Indian cook book. ;) 

Update: The meal was damn good. So good in fact that I forgot to take a pic of it because I was too busy stuffing my face with it! Penne All'Arrabbiata located on page 196 in Geometry of Pasta book. This recipe alone is worth the cost of the book in my opinion. 

Oct 17th Pic!

"Gloomy"

 Getty Musueam, probably one of my all-time favorite places. The trip here usually consists of spending 3-4 hours walking around outside the building checking out the gardens, water features, the views of LA skyline and the sculptures, and 10+ minutes looking at the exhibits indoors. There is nothing wrong with the exhibits indoors, the place has Van Gogh’s, Monet’s and other famous artists, they also have sculptures from 1600’s to more modern times. The problem is, when you spend $1 Billion with a B in 1980’s money!, on the building that houses the art works, one rarely finds the time to enter the actual building. On the 17^th however, it was cold and dreary weather with little rain, so after spending 10 miserable minutes outside, Eva and I decided (mostly Eva) that we would go look at the exhibits. It was actually pretty nice, having seen ad’s around the city for the new exhibit they had it was nice to actually see it. Another crazy thing about the Getty is that the parking lot may be full (we had to go down 3 levels to find parking) but you’ll rarely feel congested from people.

Speaking of people congestion, on the way back home from LA, we stopped at the Cabazon outlets near Palm Springs. The Coach Outlet store probably had half of China’s entire population. Thanks to all the confusion at the Coach store we missed Seth Rogen (Knocked-Up, Funny People, Green Hornet, etc) at the Banana Republic store. After a two hour detour there we finally made it home before 11pm. 

 "Singin' in the Rain"

Oct 16th Pic!

"Nails done and hair did"

This pic was taken after a short discussion about how it wouldn’t be cool to be the dork that takes pic’s with a DSLR in the clubs. In retrospect I wish I had been that dork, the first place we went to turned out to be a Wisconsin Bar…Imagine the odd’s of that, In LA on a random weekend we end up at a Bar for Eva’s birthday and her alma mater is having a get together to not only watch Wisconsin beat #1 Ohio state but also eat some local Wisconsin food (Cheese Curds!). I wish I’d had the camera to capture the insanity when Wisconsin won. After all the fun at the Wisconsin bar we went back to downtown LA and spent the rest of the night at one of the lounges. My camera would’ve been useless there with the severe lack of light, which was probably a good thing. So far we haven’t spotted a single famous person.  

"Shot"

Some uber fancy shot of coffee Eva got before we hit the town, if memory serves me right it had one shot of espresso, chocolate, froth, and some chocolate shavings. Like I said U B E R fancy.

Oct 15th Pic!

"Big Wheels"

Venice Beach! And also Eva’s birthday! I figured it’d be a good idea to go to the beach for one last time before the winter season kicks into high gear. No such luck, the weather was pretty bad, silvery clouds that looked as if rain was going to burst out of them at any moment. Venice beach is usually filled with a plethora of unusual characters but on a cold gloomy day we only spotted a handful. One guy walked up to us and informed us that there was a huge hole/pit in Arizona that we simply had to go see, I was afraid to ask if he was talking about the Grand Canyon. 

 "Cold Surf"

"Single Bird"

"Come and knock on our door"

 "Through the scope"

"Lil' Robinson"

"Playgoers"

"Playcritics"

"Playview"

Later that night, we met-up with Sam and went to see a play at Fountain Theater, it was probably one of the shortest plays I’ve seen but it was pretty good, though a little depressing. It added to my depressing state because prior to entering the play I failed miserably at parallel parking Sam’s car, which is much bigger than my Prius and does not have a reverse camera, which I think is a necessity now more than a mere want.Note to car makers, all Car's need reverse cameras! BTW, the Play was pretty damn awesome, and the actors were able to recreate an amazing South African accent.

Oct 14th Pic!

"Her's by him"

Day before Eva’s birthday, we decided to celebrate in style by taking a trip to LA. We left Phoenix around 1:30pm, the sun was just right and I had eaten the perfect amount of food, which is to say I was one boring conversation away from being comatose. 10 Minutes into our drive Eva had the smart idea of using our idle time to listen to “Michelle Thomas teaches you to speak Spanish!!”, you see we’re getting prepared for our trip to Argentina early next year. 10 minutes outside of Phoenix, with the sun shining on our faces, and food in our stomachs, and listening to Spanish Cd’s the comatose scare was creeping on us faster than you can say Siesta!. Eva was the first to pass out, I while driving 75mph, was dozing in and out of consciousness, I lasted for about an hour before I decided it was probably a good idea to pull over. We pulled into a rest stop, napped for 15mins, then hunted for some caffeine. The rest stops charge an arm and a leg for some simple caffeine, we ended up driving a few miles more and getting our cup of Joe (i.e. Monster Energy Drink) at a gas station for ½ the price.

We made it safely into LA, and learned our Hotel was dead smack in the middle of Downtown LA, which has it’s pro’s and con’s, traffic being one of the biggest con’s and having many restaurants being close a great pro. Since I’m travelling with a picky vegetarian eater, I have to spend 90% of my travel planning looking for restaurants; LA was easy enough because they had Vegetarian places around every corner. The pic is from a Vegan place called Pure Luck about 2 miles from our hotel. The food was great, they use Jackfruit and season it and marinade it till it tastes like meat. 

 "His by her"

Oct 13th Pic!

 "Fresh and so Clean Clean"

 Dishes, dishes and more dishes! That’s the problem with cooking; the unintended byproduct created is all the damn dishes. My favorite trick is to tell Eva that the Dishes need to soak overnight so the grime is easier to clean in the morning, but really it just delays the inevitable…she got me this night. 

Oct 12th Pic!

"Bar-Cook"

One of my friends was visiting from LA, we all went out the last night he was still here. In an attempt to not look like a complete dork I decided to leave the big camera at home. We ended up at the Cornish Pasty, which is probably my second favorite place after Chipotle. I’d write more about it, but there isn’t room on this blog to describe how delicious a Pasty is. Miners in Britain used to eat these things to fuel them for their long days in the mines, I’m sure I can make Chilean miner reference here somewhere.

Oct 11th Pic!

 "Local Park"

Eva’s contribution, she went out to Papago Park to explore the local wilderness. When she first got her camera she couldn’t figure out how to take a decent pic at this place, now nearly a year later she decided to try again with her bag of tricks and lenses in tow. I’m writing this without actually looking at the pic, but for the sake peace and quiet, I’ll say it’s great!! She gave it a subpar review but I’ll blindly disagree and say that it’s pretty damn good. 

Oct 10th Pic!

"Clean Monster"

A smiley face from the Windex on a table...now that made my day. 2 sec's later I wiped the smile off his face!

Oct 9th Pic!

"Chapped"

Living with Eva the past month plus or so, I've had to adapt my Chapstick strategy for the new environment. I now keep 3 at my work desk, one flavored, one with Sun Block, one regular. At home however with the big windows and all, I use the SPF version.

Oct 8th Pic!

"He's Back"

Picked a basketball videogame for the PS3, it's kinda sad but I think I've outgrown videogames. I just don't have the patience to sit and play for 30+ minutes. It probably has to do with those damn addictive cell phone games on the Android, I play for 2-5 mins and that's all the distraction I need and the time I have.

Oct 7th Pic!

"mmm Chicken"

I made the Chicken dish my co-workers liked, this was my third time so I upped the ante, and made a much larger portion and added some extras. Sadly it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Oh well next time I'll be sticking to the script I guess.

Oct 6th Pic!

"Blurry View"

This pic was taken a few ticks before midnight, on my way to bed I realized it was too preoccupied to take a pic during the day, or proper night time. Good news about the lake though, it's being slowly refilled, should be at almost full level by first week of October or so. 

Oct 5th Pic!

"Tapande & Bread"

Our local grocery store was nice enough to cut the loaf, this was part of a meal that went with soup and some great red wine.

Oct 4th Pic!

"Robot!"

Pic from my Phone, didn't have my DSLR handy but needed this pic! 

I don't watch many Indian movies, maybe one or two every few years, the main problem with them is quality and the length. Though they're getting better and some are even great, but most are just glorified soap operas. Considering the audience it makes sense, overall they're not too sophisticated so the industry tends to cater to the most common denominator, it makes sense because that's where the dough is. Hollywood is the same way, it puts out 80% crap, but the indie film movement is much greater here than in India, which also puts out some great indie films but they don't get nearly as much recognition like that crap we had a few years ago "Juno". 

The point being, I went to see an Indian movie on Monday, it was the most expensive movie ever made in India (or maybe just South India, not sure), but anyway it used all the resources available to Hollywood directors to make it happen.  The result however was pure and unequivocal crap. Did the movie have redeeming moments? Sure, Did it throw everything and the kitchen sink into the plot? You bet, so was it way too long? YES!!! 

The story is about a scientist who develops a state of the art robot, at first it's basically a talking and walking humanoid that takes commands and does exactly what it's told. As the plot develops it develops conscience and falls in love with the scientists girl...a big no-no in the scientific community I'm sure. On paper the movie sounds awesome, it tackles all the social taboos we might encounter on developing a Robot that knows it's better than us...if you've seen the "Social Network" this robot is like Mark Zuckerburg minus the whole human decomposing factor. So what went wrong? Well besides the cheesy jokes and the awful song/dance routines (The lead is 50+, I don't care if he's playing a robot, I do not want to see him dance, even if it's with Ashwyra Rai) the story simply tries to do too much. Most of us can agree that "Transformers" was crap, but at least the movie knew what it was, a brainless action blow-em up and in that aspect it succeeded and was fairly entertaining. This movie never hit that sweet spot, too preachy and heavy to be campy (though it did have unintentional campy scenes) and too dumb to be taken seriously. The movie did have plenty Asimov refrences to keep me happy but in the end (which I didn't get to see, after 2 hr 45 min + run time I had to leave to pick up Eva, the movie ended at the 3hr mark) it failed miserably.    

Great article by Slate.  Make sure to watch the trailer...LOL.

Oct 3rd Pic!

" Crawlin' "

Sunday involved me mostly working from home, which is pretty boring considering all the fun we had the day before. In order the break the monotony of work we decided to take a break and go to the desert botanical garden for some pic's. Fortunately for us a creepy friend decided to cross the path we were walking on, however due to poor lighting conditions the pic above was the best I could manage.   

"Halo"

A little lighted covering that greets the visitors to the Cactus garden. Yes we have Cactus gardens in Arizona.