It does a body good

Harvey Milk may recruit me anytime. I cried at the end (duh, what's new). Once the first tear rolls out, you cannot stop the flood and trying not to cry makes it worse. Seeing the real Milk & Co. with the credits was so endearing, as were all the performances from Penn, Hirsche, Franco (oggle), Brolin--good acting, sir! Really. Hell to the no, I hatechoo for what you did in the film but I still love you and Diane Lane in real life.

Oh, so remember that men's website I posted about a while ago? Yes, that one where I didn't realize it was catered to men despite the many obvious clues? Well, I'm still subscribed to the newsletter. Had I subscribed to some woman's digest, I'd be receiving "10 ways to use organic food in your kitchen to make healthy makeup!" "5 minute bun exercises to fit in those True Religion's you always wanted!" Exsqueeze me, screw that. With the Thrillist (for men!), I get tips on the best burger joints, cool humor tees, and urban home decor instead. Win.

It's past 5 A.M. and I've consumed pizza rolls and Boston Market mac & cheese. To be honest, I'm a bit puzzled at how I haven't im- or exploded. I should be cautious...more of my friends are threatening to just point and laugh at me the day my metabs decides it won't stand the abuse anymore. My foolproof plan is to have the hubby before this point so he'll already be committed to me and the marriage--the vows gotta mean something, right?

Megan's familial tidbit du jour: My dad sent a text today reminding me to google chat my mom this weekend. Cool. I think I'll introduce them to skype, perhaps some video chat in due time.

I've forgotten how magical it is to shuffle through an entire itunes library. Coro's "Fallen Angel" just came on. If you haven't a clue who or what, don't feel bad. Nobody should have Coro. I just do because I'm super cool and insist upon collecting music from one-three hit wonders who appeared on occasional episodes of Miami Vice. That could quite possibly be an answer to a Jeopardy question, should you ever be a contestant (no need to thank me, I do what I can).

You really get to see my random train of thought with this post, but is it just me, or is Bruce Springsteen sounding more and more like Bob Dylan? Slightly mumbling (I give him five or so more years to become as unintelligible as Dylan was), much more folk-y in music and lyric--have you ever seen a one-legged dog makin' its way down the street? By golly, I haven't! Not that I have a problem with his progression; just some food for thought if there happens to be an empty moment in your day. "The Wrestler" is a lovely song for the film.

Look, they could even have been brothers!
I know, sorry, but I found it absolutely enlightening.

What lies ahead: Acquiring my California teaching credentials, at least looking into the basic tests: CBEST etc. The question mark of a future is increasingly unsettling and I would really like to live in something sturdier than a brown box. I also have yet to take the free practice LSAT and GRE. Maybe things are looking better. Under Obama, over the course of his term, teacher salary is sure to go up as well as demand, while the journalism market dwindles away. Way to squash my hopes, interweb.

I'll leave you with the miserable, the miraculous, and the merry.

a blonde joke

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, "Please come over and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle and I can't figure out how to get started!"

Her boyfriend asks, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?"
The blonde says, "According to the picture on the box, a rooster."

Her boyfriend decides to go over and help her. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, looks at the box, then turns to her and says, "First of all, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into a rooster."

He takes her hand and says, "Second, I want you to relax. Let's have a nice cup of tea and then" he said with a deep sigh,


"...let's put all the Corn Flakes back in the box."
[cue rim shot, hah! thanks Aunt A. for that :]

Galactic Greetings Space Ranger

a thousand words...
That's my focused face. Apparently when I shoot galactic guns, I look like I'm eating. Ryan's disgust seems to come from the fact that I won! Trust me, I still can't tell whether or not the laser is coming from my gun. I just wave it around and shoot. (In all my years of experiment and experience with these types of games, I've come to the conclusion that my "just push all/the button(s) as quickly as you can" method works. This is just as applicable to games like Wii boxing, where you "just wave your arms around as fast and in as many directions as you can".)

Took us about an hour and forty to get there, traversed the long and winding road from the 405S, 10E, through the downtown, Grand Ave cluster of joy, then the final 23 mile stretch on the 5S which is STILL under construction. Our mission: four hours to soak up as much happy magic as possible. Ryan turned on the speed walk with power arm pumps while I switched gears to super crane speed. Lines were beautifully short--for Thursday at 4pm in February, they'd better have been! Most of the crowd consisted of baby-toddlers (cute!), the tween-teen group, then me and Ryan, the probably-too-old-to-be-enjoying-Disneyland-this-happily-but-whatevs group. Ryan's birthday pin not only prompted a "Happy Birthday, Ryan!" from every worker, but also got us into the fastpass line at Space Mountain. This magic pin is the equivalent of being a hot girl and getting into the club fo' free.

I admit that the toddlers became decreasingly cute by the end of our four-hour marathon. Hadn't slept a wink the night before, driven, then basically exercised around Disneyland. We were dying of exhaustion and hunger on the tram, having held out on eating inside the park to avoid wasting precious ride time. Hi-five to us for conquering seven rides! We found a perfectly sketchy Red Robin located off the 5 inside a Holiday Inn, bathrooms being those of the hotel lobby. Actually, it was one of the nicer Red Robins I have come across. We tried and failed and had many leftovers--just too exhausted to enjoy all the food.

Discovery of the night award goes to B.E.P.'s new single. Ryan and I were kind of freaking out in the car because of how amazing it is--grew on us halfway through and we had the lyrics down. Download here, now because you will realize how much you love it when they drop the beat at 1:55 after Fergie's Aretha soul moment, yessss. I anxiously await their new album, filled with enough vocoder/auto-tuning to put a smile on your face and a groove in your shoes. Even if you can't stand mainstream club "noise", be be patient and don't hate 'cause they "3008", simply ahead of their time.

dear diary

Steph brought up something that I haven't really thought about in a while, keeping a journal--an actual, physical journal. "Psh", you say, "what's this here blog then?" I brushed off her IM with a nonchalant, "Oh well I blog now and I don't have too many incredibly personal things I need to keep hidden on paper." She replied, "Sure there are." Then I realized how lame and ignorant my response was. Of course there are! There are things I never really put out here for all to see and I do think it would be nice to return to and turn to (in times of need) a diary.

The conversation triggered some good ol' nostalgia, got me thinking back to when I was obsessed with diaries as a little girl because they made such darn cute ones--Sanrio, Suzy's Zoo, generic flowery ones from Hallmark--gotta catch 'em all! and I did. I collected diaries like I collected pogs and Pokemon cards. Though, there were two points during my childhood that I sat down and seriously kept a single (okay, maybe two) diary of my deepest and darkest secrets, Ooo ominous. You're probably thinking, "how deep and dark are a middle-junior high schooler's emotions?" But I can remember that the writing was, in fact, cathartic for my pre-teen soul, as were those delicious Chicken Soup series! I drank them up! If I correctly recall, there were recurring entries lashing out at father about how he kept "forcing" me to practice piano--my eight year old emotions tended to exaggerate, but I did go through some miserable times with discipline on lessons and practice. Now that I'm older, I can understand why he was so adamant about me sticking with piano for the ten trying years. His explanations are clear now and I'm sure further life experiences will continue to elucidate his reasoning. I also realize now that some of my reasons for understanding are a bit more personal and probably more relevant on the pages of a diary. Perhaps someday soon, when I'm more comfortable sharing those juicy stories, I shall, but I gotta keep something in the suspense box out of fear of losing you, my avid reading audience of three, or four, or maybe more?! I iz basically famous!
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In less dense and weighty news, I believe I have officially crossed over from Daisy Fail Scout to Junior Fail Scout after sleeping 20 hours from 6 P.M. Tuesday until 2 P.M. Wednesday (yup, straight through my classes). At first, most of you may be happy that I finally slept, but the cause of this mega-slumber was a weekend of insomnia. So, fail it is!

I spent the rest of the day glued to TED Talks and fortunately, they're more guilt-free than watching trash tv. I like to think that my IQ goes up a few with each clip. Wishful thinking? Oh well, eat, pray, love. Gilbert also has a wonderfully soothing voice much like Karen Sharp. Gawd, that voice! She can make anything sound like a spa tape. I'm always tempted to call in with a dedication just to hear her say it. "___, Megs is stuck out there cursing up a storm in L.A. traffic, but she wishes you the best Vday ever. She hopes you stickittodaman at your new job and wants to dedicate 'B*tch' by Meredith Brooks to you. Sleep tight." So soooothing.

all night long

I'm not sure what brought about the insane munchies, but my Monday all-nighter from dinner 'til dawn was steadily comprised of:
rice, salmon, steak, seaweed, salad, tomato basil wheat thins, teriyaki beef jerky, fruit leather, goldfish (pepperidge farm, not live), ghiradeli, a bowl of apple jacks, a bowl of healthier cereal (boxless and anonymous), maple brown sugar oatmeal, a slice of toast with TJ whipped cream cheese and smoked salmon (as close as I could get to lox on a bagel), all washed down with water, O.J. and diet lipton green tea (diet, only 'cause that's what the coupon at Costco was for).

I posted this solely for your sake. Hopefully you feel a bit better about yourself.
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dineLA Ocean Avenue: 3 stars mainly for the dessert and 'cause it's pretty and located right on Ocean Ave by the beach.

Appetizers::
Raw oysters: Nothing amazing, decent oysters but they gave us the dinky leftover ones. I understand that it's the tasting menu but the whole point is to make a good impression for us tasters to want to come back.

Clam Chowder: Pretty good, not over-salted, thank goodness. That's always the downfall of a clam chowder. The floaties--what I like to call the chunky ingredients in soups--were fresh.

Entrees::
Seafood linguine: Bummer. Strange texture to the linguine, unlike any I've ever tried. Bland sauce, skimped on the seafood, tiniest mussels I've ever seen! The scallop was cooked well, but that was about it.

Salmon: Again, nothing spectacular. It was cooked nicely, but the dark meat was a bit tough and didn't cut easily. Mashed potatoes were mashed potatoes. Highlight was the Pinot Noir dried cherry sauce, delish!

Dessert::
Chocolate bread pudding w/vanilla sauce: Warm, rich, creamy, win.

Key lime & coconut tart w/strawberry sauce: Another win! Tangy and refreshing with crispy fried coconut shavings.

Oh, the bread n butter was excellent. I LOVE bread n butter...
All in all, they probably have some specialty foods that are amazing, but none of what we tried yesterday. I spotted numerous other dineLA restaurants across, down, the street and ones over includng BOA Steakhouse and I Cugini. Probably just try them out on their own some other time.

On another note, the roomie brought up the question of what in the world I might be like when I am with child and with cravings. What else could I possibly eat? I'm frightened for myself in the future and for my child who will probably be the fattest baby ever. Eesh, scary.
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Going out to Roscoe's in about 20 minutes. All night...