No more blogging?

Since I've switched from windows to mac there is no easy way for me to upload pictures to blogger, so I've decided to use facebook instead (there is a great iPhoto app that allows you to upload and tag everything very quickly). So, if you are one of the 5 or so people who check my blog (i.e. mom), then get a facebook account :)

The Standard, downtown LA

This is at the rooftop bar of The Standard. It has a great view of the surrounding skyscrapers, and waterbeds lol




Marie and I looking at a mirror on the ceiling.... we are so artistic.



Here is a great 360 view of the bar:

http://www.standardhotels.com/los-angeles/virtual-tours/rooftop-pool/fullscreen/

The Belmont/Area

Last week I went out with some coworkers to The Belmont, a restaurant here in west hollywood, and we saw this dude:



Ok maybe he's not super attractive but it was exciting to recognize a celebrity. Normally I am pretty bad at that, but The Office is one of the few shows I watch. I was like :-o

After The Belmont we went next door to Area. It was pretty dead except for some chanel photoshoot thing, and some go-go dancers. And this weird collection of people dressed in business casual.

See if you can tell which photos have the chanel people and which ones have the accenture people:

San Francisco at night

Kyle and I took the scooter up to twin peaks last night. The view from up there is amazing.

The really bright street is Market:





You can see the golden gate bridge off in the distance


Here's downtown from another view:
You can see the bay and the Bay Bridge that goes to oakland:




I took pictures from a variety of angles and then used photoshop's auto-align and auto-blend features to piece them together and create this panorama:

Roasting Tomatoes

Yes, this is an entire blog post about roasting tomatoes. Don't they look great, though? These babies roasted for over 11 hours, then I blended them up into a huge pot of tomato soup that I served with gourmet grilled cheese wedges for our super bowl party.

Before roasting:
The tomatoes are coated with olive oil and sprinkled with basil, oregano, fennel, salt and pepper. Some garlic cloves are nestled in there, too.


After roasting:
The tomatoes look sad, but the house smelled wonderful. Time for the food processor.


btw here is the link to the guide I used to roast the tomatoes:
http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2005/09/day-156-slow-roasted-tomatoes.html

and here is the link to the tomato soup recipe:
http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2006/08/slow-roasted-tomato-soup.html

New York City

In December our friends Peter and Jen told us they were planning a trip to NYC. Since I had never been before, New York was on the top of my US cities list (duh), and so we told them that we would love to meet them there. Then Jen, being one of the most amazing people ever, found a friend's place in Brooklyn where we could all stay that weekend!

We flew in on Friday and met up with Jen and Peter at the apartment of their extremely generous friend Kumiko. We spent the weekend gorging ourselves on delicious foods, admiring new york, and exploring some really great neighborhoods including china town, little italy, nyu, soho, and our favorite, greenwich village.
Here are some pics:

Waiting to transfer planes in the Vegas airport:
Kyle is really proud of his winnings.

The Met:
















The Empire State Building:

Some artistic cappuccino:

Coffee in this city has boobs on it:

We stumbled upon an amazing pizza place in Little Italy:


Their tomato soup was even better than the pizza. This is the inspiration for the soup I made for the superbowl:



We also got some delectable japanese cheesecake in chinatown:


Another cute bakery in china town:


Greenwich village:


We found a cheese store that sells cheese curds! Yum.


We also stopped by the library:

Travel Plans

I don't think I've mentioned it on my blog yet, but most of my friends know that Kyle and I have a big goal for this year: to see 12 US cities in 12 months. Since I fly at lot for work I get lots of bonus flights through my airline, and a couple months ago I qualified for the southwest companion pass. The pass allows me to bring my designated companion along with me whenever I fly, for free, for a year. That means that we can both fly pretty much anywhere in the country for free this year - so we're taking advantage.

So far we have been to:

Chicago

St. Louis

Los Angeles

San Francisco

We haven't decided if those count yet since we have lived in all of those cities already.

However, we did go to one new city in January: New York!

SF Zoo (before the animals started murdering the public)

Here are some more old photos, from when Kyle and I visited the SF zoo a couple of months ago.



I really love this sign:


"this food doesn't look nearly as good as .... people!"


So grumpy...


We figured we were approaching the giraffes exhibit when we saw this:




SF zoo likes to put lots of different types of animals in the same pen:

Harry Potter 3D

These photos are really old. I finally got around to organizing my pictures and figuring out how to get them onto blogger using the new Mac. Which is actually about 2mo or 3mo old now I guess.

Anyway, we went to see the newest Harry Potter movie at the imax theater, and to our surprise they were handing out 3D glasses. Thankfully only about 15min of the movie were in 3D.




boy did I have a stupid haircut!

My new camera!

Check out my beautiful new camera! Isn't this a lovely shade of red?

Here is the black version of the phone. You can see how thin it is in this picture. Now I will always have my camera on me, since it fits in my back pocket. So I guess you can expect more blog entries, since I tend to make them whenever I have new pictures.