In typical fashion

Oh my gosh, this is my first post for 2009?!? This will be unsuprising to those who know me well - on Sunday we went to pick up my stimulus check/consumption voucher.* Pick-up times were from 9:30am to 5:30pm on Sunday. Of course, we wanted to enjoy a leisurely Sunday at home, so we slept in, had breakfast, made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, surfed the web...until I looked at the time and realized it was almost 5pm. We hurried out of the house and Neil pulled up to the Post Office where they were distributing the vouchers and I hopped out and ran in through the door at...5:29pm. Talk about cutting it close!

In other news, I'm still not fully unpacked from our trip to the States, I still haven't posted pictures from our ski trip to Korea last year, and we got a new camera (Canon PowerShot SD790IS), which I love and am working on (slowly, of course) getting the photos downloaded to my computer and uploaded online for all to see.

Some highlights of our trip back:

Neil picking kumquats from my Uncle Ted's backyard.


Close-up of the kumquats.


AMAZING "Papa's Portobello" burger at the Veggie Grill, one of the best meals we had in the U.S. My brother Galen took us there. It is really good (and yes, I'm using omnivore standards here). Go, go! You will be so glad you did.


We ended up behind "Obama '08 / GO V3GAN" at an intersection in L.A.

More to come...I promise!

*Instead of cutting checks to the people, the Taiwan government have cleverly decided to stimulate the economy by issuing vouchers worth NT$3,600 (about a little over US$100; they come in NT$500 and NT$200 increments). These vouchers can be redeemed participating retailers around Taiwan - it's sort of like universal gift certificates. Clever, huh?

Joshua trees, dolmas, stomach flu, oh my!

Since it's almost Halloween and I haven't posted since last month (where o where does the time go?), I thought I'd post a few photos from my last trip back to the States.

Trying to be a Joshua Tree at, where else? Joshua Tree National Park


Vegan nachos at Real Food Daily in Santa Monica:


The. best. ever. dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), made at the "My Big Fat Greek Cooking Class" at HipCooks (highly recommended!)

Billion Dollar Brows

So I've spent the past week in L.A. visiting my parents and attending my high school's 10-year reunion (gasp!). Before the trip, I thought to myself that I would have plenty of time to get to all those items on my to-do list, including ones for the wedding, because I'm on vacation. Not! Between jet lag and driving all over L.A. finding things to meeting friends and family, I haven't gotten much sleep at all. At least I've managed to catch up on listening to a bunch of podcasts while driving—can you believe over 8 hours of driving programming over the course of 2 days?

Anyways, I digress. I was so lucky to find in my inbox Tuesday morning a Daily Candy feature on Billion Dollar Brows. I find it helpful to go to a professional once in awhile, since sometimes one loses perspective when going the DIY route...and you end up with no brows.

It just so happens that the salon is within walking distance of Rodeo Drive, where my good friends Kuo and Melissa took me to so that I could gawk in appropriately touristy fashion. I was a bit disconcerted to hear BDB was in their first full day of business (could I have been their only customer?), but the service was great. After some waxing and tweezing action, I had defined, natural-looking eyebrows. They say your eyes are the windows to your soul, and now I have great window treatments to go with them.

For all the ladies in L.A. (and guys with unibrows, for that matter), you can now have browsy goodness.

Billion Dollar Brows, 9453 Charleville Boulevard, South Beverly Hills (310-270-4650). $35 for the first visit; $30 thereafter.

Cupcakes!

Yesterday I took a cooking class on cupcakes and mini bundt cakes. We made chocolate "peanut butter cup" cupcakes, sunflower decorated cupcakes, vanilla bean cakes with vanilla rum glaze, and banana caramel mini cakes. The teacher said I was a natural with a pastry bag!



Unfortunately, I've lost my sense of L.A. magnitude and when signing up for the class, I didn't realize that the drive from my home to the cooking school in Westlake Village would be such a trek!