To keep or not to keep

Clunky embellished rider boots are in this fall.  I just bought this from Zappos (they are wonderful, btw!) and I am wondering if should keep them.  Are they clunky, embellished or rider enough for the coming season?

Decisions, decisions, decisions. Halps!

Mendocino

I have been in Mendocino for a few days to get some R&R before internship and new school year start.  I am coming back later this week and will resume blogging.

Ciao.

Rejected!

I love cats. I make a beeline for felines. Mr. Dingleberry was so cute napping in his king size bed so I went to look at him.  I accidentally woke him up with the camera and I believe he wanted to swat me because of it. I don’t think he wanted me around. Cats nowadays, so mean!

Rejected!

Even so, I still love him.

* LOL caption made on www.icanhascheezburger.com

Froyo Craze

I like froyo. Froyo with fruity toppings make me really happy as a clam:

Likes - Buzzin’

I like this song. I have been playing this song over and over again and it’s stuck in my head. The beat is really catchy.

The guitarist of this song, Cisco Adler reminds me of Weird Al.  He is no Brad Pitt but apparently this million-dollar baby attracts many gorgeous ladies such as Mischa Barton.  Kudos to him.

(See photos below: Cisco Adler on left and Weird Al on right)

Potato Chips - FAIL!

I always like to try and make new things.  Sometimes I try and I succeeded.  Most of the time, I FAIL!  It’s ok. I am fine with being a human being.

Not long ago I made baked potato chips and I have been meaning to document the process.  I really love potato chips and I see there are baked chips out there so I thought, why not? I got a recipe from interweb (I forgot where the url is) and it seemed pretty simple.

Step 1: Wash potato (no boring photo, sorry)

Step 2: I thinly sliced potato with skin intact into 1/8 mm with a slicer (no boring photo, sorry)

Step 3: I really like the Asian curry flavor potato chips so I marinated the sliced potato in a curry, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper concoction for about an hour. (see photo below)

Step 4: Preheat oven to 350 degrees and put the sliced potato into oven on each oven rack for about 30 min.  (as you can see, some of them were burning at a different rate)

Step 5: FAIL!

The end product were burnt in different consistency.  Some were underdone and some were overdone.  The burnt chips had nothing to do with the placement in the oven.  The shapes of those chips were gnarly and not crunchy.  Even so, they were not greasy and very flavorful.

This exercise taught me a lesson: I am not a baked potato chips maker.

Ciao.

First day of vacation

Woke up at 9:30 am.  Pulled some shenanigans online.

2:00 pm: I haven’t done shit.

2:00 - 6:00 pm: Ate Linner and watched three episodes of The Cleaner.  It’s a show based on the true story of an ex-junky who saves addicts as “extreme interventionist” starring Benjamin Bratt. It’s a really awesome show.  I could not peel my eyes off.

6:00 - 7:00 pm: Made chocolate cupcakes.  I saw Noel’s winning cupcake and I was dying for one so I whipped up some from store-bought mix to curb my cravings.

The batter:

Making and baking:

So far so good:

All done. Looks good.  Put some icing on the cake to hide the cracks…and ready to eat!!

BUT WAIT!!! You haven’t seen the whole picture yet. You have just seen the good side of the good ones.  There were a few that I over filled the cups and became all UH-GLY. I just turned them around on the plate so you don’t see them.

Semi-successful. SEMI-FAIL!

UH-GLY:

Oh BUAHAHAHA!

Summer Just Started

Last day of summer school has finally ended and vacation has just started for me!! W00t!  What should I do? What should I do? Help me perfect my list of things to do before fall + internships start (9/4).

1) Make a dress.  Well, not me personally because I cannot sew to save my life.  I wrote an entry about my latest obsession over an infinity dress “My Latest Obsession”

The dress is rather expensive ($270) and I was scouring all over the interweb for better pricing.  I somehow found the pattern of the dress and looked really simple. It’s a round skirt with two long long (slightly angled) thick straps, sort of looks like a halter top.  With that being said, I am going to get fabric from Joann and find an inexpensive yet highly rated tailor on Yelp to do this.  Call me crazy but I am not paying $300 for the dress w/ S&H. Especially when I have to live frugally as a student.  I want to enlist my sister to do it because she is a really good fashion designer, but she is in LA and she is busy with my liiiiittle nephew.  I know I don’t want to spend more than $70 for the fabrics and I will use my smooth operator skills to sweet talk the tailor lady down to $30 to sew this dress (or half of her price).  Hopefully I can get this done for 1/3 or less of the retail price. I will try. Wish me luck.

2) Read 3 books to enhance my knowledge in my profession.  I don’t know what they are yet.

3) Make Vietnamese Canh Ca Nau Dua.  It is fish with pineapple soup. Recipe My roommate’s brother made some and it was really really good with Pho or vermicelle noodles.  Since I am not Vietnamese, I see making this dish as a challenge.

4) Bond with one of my classmates.  She and I went to a seminar over the weekend and she seems pretty nice so maybe I will call her up over the break to do something other than school stuff together.

5) Learn to swim (yeah right!).  I missed swimming classes in community colleges because I was pondering whether I should do it or not.  I have great fear of water and maybe I “subconsciously” deliberately missed the classes.  I have finally decided to take the plunge (pun intended) and have just emailed a swimming instructor in San Jose.  $50 for a week, hopefully I can be somewhat proficient in swimming in two weeks. I want to overcome my fears, this is huge for me.

I really have big plans for myself and I won’t let myself get distracted.  What else should I do before summer ends? Hmm…

Food God Mod - FAIL!

A month ago I wrote about how I put my fat cat on diet by modifying his food dispensing machine (aka. Food God). The strategy was to make the “serving cup” in the Food God smaller by rolling up sponge pieces into sponge paddings and stuffing them in the serving cup.  Here is the link: http://mabelyiu.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/food-god-mod/

I thought the padding was working quite well because cat seemed to be losing weight for a month.  Well, the strategy failed. Miserably. Yesterday I woke up and saw all the spongy paddings were on the ground near the Food God.  Either the construction of the paddings were weak or the cat got the better of me.

Before:

After:

Cat: 1  Mae: 0

Mae K.O.!! Cat Won!!

Vote for Paris

There was a hoorah about John McCain’s celebrity ad campaign against Obama:

I was taking a break from reading to see what was going on in TV-land and I saw this on Jay Leno:

I love it. It’s different to see Paris speaks with such sense even though it’s scripted. Funny!!

Great PR to help launch FOD site. Brilliant!