Next Friday, Brandon and I will have been married for 10 years. Instead of celebrating on our actual anniversary weekend, we had to do it this past weekend instead.  Brandon’s certification course begins next Saturday. A while back, I bought a Groupon for a horseback riding and wine tasting package with Wine Country Trails by Horseback at Wilson Creek Winery. Now that Brandon is learning to enjoy wine, we thought we’d make a weekend in Temecula out of it. Besides,

Before we move forward, let’s see how I did with 2010 goals, shall we? Goals for 2010: 6 out of 10 1. SUCCESS: Lacto-vegetarian Tuesdays. I totally rocked that. Sure, there were some accidental lapses and a few intentional ones, curiously some of those cases involved bacon.  But more or less, I did REALLY good. And I even threw in no alcohol to that mix. So yay me! 2. FAIL: One hour of piano/guitar/singing, twice a month. Another victim of

It started with this picture of me with Olivia Munn. I know she’s all professionally made up for the show and she’s already GORGEOUS.  But I looked at myself and thought: Fuck, I look like crap. As I might have blogged about before, I don’t really like make-up.  I don’t like the feel of it. I don’t like the maintenance of it. But at 33…and another look at that picture…I’m rethinking that a little bit. Armed with internet tips for

We’re child-free by choice. We don’t hate kids.  And we make great auntie and uncle.  We just like to play with them and hand them off to the parents at the end of the day. We adore Brandon’s two nieces age 8 and 11.  We can hardly wait to hang out with Aurora and James’ 2-year-old Dresden and baby Chloe.  Olaina and Justin’s Ella is still too little to play with but we didn’t mind hanging out with her too.

I went online to shop for an item I needed for the kitchen that I couldn’t seem to find in the stores.  [I can't say what the item is until it is given. Read on to find out why.]  My friend @MacabrePhotog was the one who inspired me to get one of these, but he himself does not have one. When I tweeted him that I bought him something, he was quite surprised.  Another friend chimed in asking it was

A lot has happened since I got back from Costa Rica.  As I was coming to grip with how to take life a little bit easier, this shit went down in Bangkok. “How Did Thailand Come to This?” indeed.  (And this report is pretty accurate and surprisingly unbiased.) My family home is literally in the war zone.  I mean, they had been since the Red Shirts camped out not 200 meters down the street.  Everyone is safe now, but my

This Easter weekend brought out friends old and new. Saturday I spent the morning with my hubby cruising down to San Pedro for a feast that is breakfast at Gaffey Street Diner.  The rest of the day I spent baking, mostly. That night, the hubby set me loose to party with my Twitter crew. We threw an early birthday party for @always_blond at @fstop23′s place.  The ever gracious host didn’t call off the party when he heard that his daughter-in-law

Guys, at this rate, going meatless is becoming a normal part of my routine.  Very comfortable with it now. Then again, it’s easy to do when you have a restaurant downstairs selling awesome vegetarian/vegan sandwiches at lunch time. Breakfast: The usual coffee treat from Starbucks Fage yogurt with peach puree. Yum!! . Lunch: Half of the French Onion Soup Melt sandwich from Mendocino Farms.  Grilled onion on melty aged gruyere on pretzel roll. Organic tropical iced tea A nice dose

2009 in pictures * 2009 Awards Drinking Buddy of the Year: Brandon, actually. Surprise!  The mister doesn’t usually party down, but he has taken up a beer here and there this past year, a stressful one for his work.  So we had gone out for a beer together more than the year before.  Cheers to you, honey bunny! Bar of the Year: Hennessey’s Tavern and Beachwood BBQ in Seal Beach. These two places never fail to deliver cold pints and

Friends, get ready for another long and slow season on the OakMonster blog. Thrill the World is here. And in full force.  (Oh hey, register with our LA team here.) I’m involved in many different levels this time, a lot more than I signed up for this year.  Well, you know, MJ went and died on us. That brought a lot more to the original “let’s take it easy this year” plan. I met with Amanda and Mahdroo and our