OakMonster's Den

Holy CRAP! It’s all ready been a week?!

My god. Am I a bad blogger!

But I promise to have something much more entertaining than my weekly food journal in a day or two.

For now, on to Meatless Tuesday.

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Breakfast:

• Open faced “grilled cheese” sandwich: one slice of 7-grain bread, buttered, topped with slices of one whole vine-ripen tomato, sprinkled with Nature’s Seasons seasoning blend, and a few slices of snack-sized cheddar cheese, toasted in the toaster oven until the cheese is melted.
• A mug of full-leaf oolong tea.
• Mid-morning snack: 2 whole grain crackers (they’re like 2.5 inch across!) from Fresh & Easy with generous schmear of whipped cream cheese, my mid-morning snack of choice these days.

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Lunch:

• A bowl of vegetable chili based on the recipe in Food & Wine magazine (which I will blog about later).  In that: heirloom carrots, daikon, red bell peppers, kidney beans, hominy, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, and generous shakes of Chipotle Tobasco.  And a piece of 7-grain toast.
• Late dessert/afternoon snack: a Godiva dark chocolate truffle.

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Dinner:

• Because it was a buy one get another one for $2, I got 2 rustica pizzas from Z Pizza: Moroccan (egg plants, pine nuts, feta, basil pesto, caramelized onion) and Mediterranean (artichoke hearts, feta, roasted red peppers, greek olives, pili pili oil).  I ate a few squares out of each.
• A glass of organic peach oolong iced tea.

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Satisfaction level: Meat? What meat?  Nope.  Didn’t miss it one bit.  And I was full all day.

Thoughts: It’s getting easier and easier each week, I have to tell you.  I even didn’t miss the meat too much today.  But I did have an egg for breakfast.  I did crave some proteins for dinner but I didn’t go for my usual burger or ribs, but salmon.  A little weird, I know.  I’m sure I’m going to want me a juicy burger in a few days.

I’m also more conscious now of what I’d eat on a Meatless Tuesday and Brandon has been helpful in keeping me in check on that too.  He’d try to help me think of places I could get something meatless to eat at.

Now, I’ve been thinking about it today that since I’m doing this a Buddhist reason, perhaps I should also not do alcohol on Tuesdays as well to make the whole religious day out of it.  After all, abstaining from alcohol is one of the Five Precepts a good Buddhist should follow.

By not eating meat/eggs on Tuesday, and having not kill anybody, abstaining from taking life is checked off the list.  Abstaining from alcohol? One day a week, I can do that.  Abstaining from sexual misconduct is everyday…although I wonder if lusting after  Taylor Lautner and/or Sam Worthington or dreaming about Jason Mraz counts.  Abstaining from taking what is not given, no klepto here so check.  And finally, abstaining from false speech aka lying. Well, that might be a little hard to swing in a corporate world, but we’ll do our best, won’t we?

Alright. It’s decided. Tuesdays will be meatless AND dry.

Oh boy.

Oh hell yes.2,300 or so on paper but it felt/looked like 6,000 out there in the plaza!  Brandon shot over 700 pictures and I had another 200.  (What a trooper he is, braving the Blue Line and all!)

Worldwide, last counted, 23,000 people.

What a moment.  What an adventure!

You can’t see me in this clip though they did close up on me for the “Coming up next” before this section.

Life is slowly getting back to normal.  I have to lead my little Long Beach team to perform on Halloween at Halloween on Pine and that’s it for Thriller for a while.

This one I’m on the right toward the front.

“My friend is having a green wedding,” an acquaintance said.

Everyone present chimed in.  How cool!  How exciting!

Of course, being me, I piped, “Ah! Green wedding. Also known as just another wedding that cost twice as much.”

“Well, they’re using all these recycled materials and stuff.  You know, being really green about the whole process.”

I chuckled.

The acquaintance, at this point, was getting annoyed with me. “Well, she’s a very environmentally conscious person. They want their wedding to be good for the environment.”

“The bride and groom and two witnesses carpooled to the courthouse and get married by a judge, now THAT’s a ‘green’ wedding,” I added.

The acquaintance glared at me.  Someone else changed the subject.

Am I right?

You and your fiancee, 2 witnesses, your parents, and a judge.  That’s the LEAST amount of waste and carbon footprint one could generate for a wedding.

Brandon pointed out to me later when I told him about the conversation.

“Sure. What about all of the guests driving in to the wedding in their gas guzzling cars? How is your little ‘green’ wedding going to off set THAT.”

Exactly my point.

Having a “green” wedding because it’s trendy and then you go right back to live your normal, not-so-green life? What’s the point? Well, I guess with a “green” wedding, you can now show everyone just how socially responsible you are.

After all, for some people, being socially responsible is not something they really want to be, they do it because it’s just another fad.

That’s just me.  What do you think?

Happy Earth Day.

I’m not much of an environmentalist but I’m slowly becoming a plastic bag usage nazi.

I have canvas bags in my car and use them for my grocery shopping everywhere, and I refuse to take any plastic bags whenever I can carry my own loot out of the store…which was met with a LOT of  “Are you sure?”

Yes I AM sure I can carry my prescription and a bottle of Nyquil out on my own.

Yes I AM sure a loaf of bread, a pack of sliced cheese, and 2 tomatoes won’t need a bag.

Yes I AM sure I won’t need a bag for ONE bottle of Dr. Pepper, doesn’t matter what size it is.

It’s not just us shopper who need to change. It’s the shopkeepers as well.

I do recycle bottles and cans at home because we have a recycling trailer thingy close by.  And with the amount of sodas and Yakult consumed by Brandon and I, respectively, it would be ridiculous not to recycle those.

However, if our apartment has a full recycling trash pick up like those in private homes, I would recycle everything possible.  I think it is worth the time to recycle.

Finally, my biggest environmental guilt.

I am a big guilty for not bringing my coffee mug down to Starbucks.  I was doing that for a while and ended up with up to 3 unwashed mugs on my desk.  Now that I’m doing Starbucks latte type only once a week, I probably should pick that habit up again, and bring a plastic bottle in for my occasional iced tea treats.

Now only if we can do something about garbage BAGS we put all this stuff in.

And it wouldn’t be Earth Day without this.

It was hot as hell at AIDS Walk Long Beach. But we did it.

Yey, us!

The green X would be me and my friend Master Greg at George Michael concert next Friday, courtesy of the local news radio station whose promotions website I visited weekly to register to win something.

Oh, and today I bit into what looks to be a little pearl in my fried oyster. So technically I won something twice this week.
As a fan of Eli Stone, I BELIEVE!

So the Lesser Weevils had our little fundraiser dinner tonight at Thai Issan in Cerritos.  Samone and Tom, the owner, graciously donated 10% of our tab to AIDS Walk.

And they are promising 15% donation from now until June 27, one week after the walk (which I can still turn my money in, I think) at their other restaurant, the Delightful Crepes Cafe in Long Beach.  The Yelp review for the place is a little iffy.  Even I who had been there once think the place still needs a little work.  But they ARE working on improving the menu.  Give it a shot if you want to try something new.

Delightful Crepes Cafe
1190 Studebaker Rd
Long Beach, CA 90815

At least give a new place a try WHILE SUPPORT THE WEEVILS! Just tell your waiter that you’re supporting Oakley’s Team at AIDS Walk Long Beach, and they’ll make a note of it.

Or you can just donate to the Weevils directly and not try a new restaurant.  Up to you.  Any kind of donation helps.

I didn’t go anywhere near a mall, if you were wondering.

I am not THAT insane.  Thank you very much.

As a matter of fact, we had Shane over for a good part of the afternoon.  We were thinking of going to the movies, but changed our minds as we figured all the bored family members from out of town would be at the theaters.  Heck, that was what I did before.

Anyways, the boys played on the XBox 360 while I got my magazines and recipe folders sorted out. Later that night, we picked up Tamara and we all had dinner, some wine and played a little more games.

Despite the fact that we stayed home all day, I got 90% of my Christmas shopping done.  Oh yes, the old school online bargain hunter is back in her original form! Haha!

Back in my earlier days, November 1 marked the start of Christmas shopping. Well, for those my mom and I didn’t already shop for during my summer trip back to Thailand, that is. Most shopping will be done online or through catalog. By the weekend after Thanksgiving, I would be have the Christmas tree up and the gifts will all be wrapped.

Recent years, we have been giving home made gifts with the thought of it being more personal yet economical. But this year, we returned to the consumerism circuit. The past few years of giving homemade treats haven’t really been a success. I mean, some of the friends I won’t get to see for a while and therefore the goods weren’t fresh, or I had to bake according to when I would see them, also not horribly convenient.

Anyways. This year, I supported traditional consumerism.  And I’m pretty much done. There are still a few “hand made” items that need to be done for Brandon’s family. And I still have to put some more thoughts into what to get for a few more people. Other than that, we’re all set.

And to capitalize on other home shoppers like myself, Brandon handed me a few used games to re-sell on Amazon. Despite all the raves, we didn’t particularly like Halo 3 or Assassin’s Creed. Well, Brandon doesn’t like playing them and I got bored watching him play them.

Mind you, Assassin’s Creed is a marvelously beautiful game and the concept is pretty cool, but boy was it boring to watch. It’s like, go to this tower, now go to that tower, scale it and do all of this cool move and stuff and then go to the next one. You can’t even run if you want to keep your low profile so you saunter through a town. I’m sure there is more to this game but we were so done with it. But I digress.

So I put those games back on Amazon for sale on Thursday night. Not 10 minutes later, both of them were sold.

(And for those who are curious, we went out and bought Mass Effect to replace those two games we just sold. Brandon’s enjoying it so far and so am I.  It’s really awesome how everything is done. Just like what they said on the promo on SciFi channel, it does feel like you’re in a “Choose your adventure” movie instead of a game.  Everything is so detailed.)

The buy of Assassin’s Creed turns out to be from a military address.  If you know us, do you think we’re going to have a military personnel buy his own game this time of year?

That’s right.  I sent the buyer a confirmation email that his item has been shipped and that it is on us.  Merry Christmas is my message that I sent with the full refund.

Oh, and our Marine contact for this year’s Operation Jingle All the Way wrote me back! After a few years of sending stuff to the troops, this is the first time I actually got an email back from anybody.  (Well, except for Air Force Amy.  Then again, she’s a friend and not a random contact.)  Everything works out for him and his company. All the girlie things got distributed to the ladies and the boys surely will enjoy the loot.

We have been emailing back and forth a little bit now.  Guys, I think we have just adopted a Marine.     So, our Biker Marine, if you stop by, thanks for being out in the front line.  We’ll send you some more stuff soon!

As for tonight, it’s full moon in November. What do you think we’ll be doing after dinner?

Actually, I almost forgot about this year’s Loy Kratong if not for my former blogger friend Kitjar who popped in on my IM to say hi.

Wow. How this month has flown by. And Wednesday is the 100th day anniversary of her death.

3 months have come and gone. Holy cow…

Now you too can assist Southern Californians affected by the fire. The Red Cross guy did say that MONEY is the most needed, so off you go to donate!

Go to KROQ right now for the links on how to help!

First of all. Last night, it rained. Rain makes me happy. It was a good start for today.

And then, well, I’m going to jump the chronology here a bit because I’m a happy Trojan.

Like the text I sent to Amy the Gridiron Goddess…HOLY Sanchez Batman!

Mark Sanchez. Once that boy got going, he GOT going, didn’t he?

Yes, another squeaking victory. But consider that the entire offensive line is the back-up players and some of them are even the back-up of the back-up players, plus a brand spanking new QB, we did okay. Thank god, our Defense held even without Maualuga. [ETA: Amazingly, Amy the Gridiron Goddess said almost the exact same thing I said here over there.  LOL.  Now you see why we're friends?]

And I made it home to watch the end of 2nd quarter all the way through the end. Yes, I REALLY need to watch my Trojans for us to win.

Where was I this morning? Well, that’s the second point that make today glorious.

Brandon had a side job out in the Palos Verdes Estates. Our client is hooking up his brand new house to an entertainment system that is wired into the internet and all that jazz. I lost count of how many flat screens he has in the place. But then again, I was busy hanging out with the guy’s lovely wife, their adorable 13-month-old baby little girl Mia and my new boyfriend Jake, the most lovable doggy in the whole wide world.

Jake followed me out of their house and looked longingly at me until I got into the car. That boy loves me! Well, I did give him the attention he has been missing since the baby arrived. Plus a few sessions of doggy massage. When we go back next week, I’m bringing him homemade doggy biscuits. And the Absolutely Weevils Cookies for the Client. He, like many of our friends and my husband, too is addicted to my baked goods.

Our clients not only love us for Brandon’s fabulous IT skills, but for the cookies that I bake. Hey, at least you KNOW they want to continue being your clients at least for the cookies. That’s good enough for me.

Now, on my 4th day of adding Adsense, I have $0.33 in the bank. Haha! No, it’s nothing to look at, but eventually all those cents from the ads and $1 each per Siamese Pixie purchase will add up to $10 and that’s another $10 donation to Thai Red Cross. The donation from YOU generous folks of the Blogosphere. I am just a vessel for your good karma.

And speaking of good karma. Finally, the cake topper for today. Hallmark is now a (Product)RED. Finally, a product I can actually afford! Hooray!