OakMonster's Den

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!!

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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 of sunshine
• Afternoon snack: crackers and a big spoonful of whipped cream cheese.

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Dinner:

• Trader Joe’s frozen entree of paneer masala and spinach rice.

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Satisfactory level: So so.  Well, the breakfast wasn’t all that substantial and the lunch, although nice, was a little bit on the light side.  It also didn’t help that I was cutting up 7 lbs. of meat to make the St. Patrick’s Day Guinness Beef Stew when I’d usually be cooking dinner either.  LOL.

Thoughts: Like I said, it’s becoming more natural and less of an obligation.  I was VERY tempted to drink while I cook dinner but I did very good.  Then again, knowing that I’d be indulging the following day is a pretty good motivation.

**

Oh yeah, St. Patty’s day at my house was off the hook.  We have a full house this year with my friends and Twitter gang.  Lots of food but not a lot of booze consumed.  Well, you know, it’s in the middle of the week after all.  But we managed to have a few Irish car bombs thrown about.

I had two. And was still standing at the end of the night. Yey me, the wayward alcoholic!

I don’t know why nobody has pointed out before, but my Twitter/blogger friend Dave Conrey called me a Thai-rish.

Kiss me, I’m Thai-rish!   LOL.

He said he’s going to make a t-shirt out of that.  I’m still waitin’, Dave!

**

The week of fun-ness to balance out the crazy work week continues tomorrow as Brandon and I will go on a little romantic getaway to Sunset Strip for the night.

Why?

Well, you’ll have to tune back in later to find out about that now, won’t you?

St. Patty’s was a hit both at work and at home.  A great turn out at the office with everything from cookies to green deviled eggs.  9 people showed up at my doors for the Guinness Stew and a little bit of drinking.  The old gang hung out well with my new friends from Tweet Up, Annette @dananner and Wyatt @phraktyl.

A lesson we learned?  Don’t ever give Phraklet, Phraktyl’s son, a Mountain Dew. Ever. Again.  LOL.

I didn’t drink all that much at St. Patty’s.  Just an Irish Car Bomb I did with Annette and Wyatt and a couple more sips of Limoncello with Lee.  Everyone respectfully headed out at 10 p.m. sharp and since we were cleaning up as we go, we went to bed soon after that.

So, when I rolled out of bed at 5 a.m. the next day, it wasn’t that painful.  However, the Car Bomb and Limoncello still lingered in my system when I got to the meeting.  At 10 a.m., the hangover hit and I was dying for something nice and greasy for lunch.

I found that in the fresh cut fries at Rowdy Red in Downtown LA.  The black & blue burger was pale compared to that.  And it was that the lovely greasiness held me over for the next couple of hours before heading home.

As it turned out, the OC Register tweet led me to an article about President Obama’s arrival in Long Beach and how it might affect traffic that afternoon.  So I left work at 2 p.m. as to avoid any kind of traffic mayhem down there at 3 p.m.

By the time I settled in at home and got to open the windows, it was a few minutes before 3.  I spotted an airliner flying over Seal Beach.  How odd, I thought, I’ve never seen a jet going…WAIT A SECOND!

I ran and grab Brandon’s camera with super zoom lense.  It was really hard to focus past the screen, but I did caught a full glimpse of the Air Force One coming in to land.

Wow.  WOW!

Once AF1 was out of sight, I turned on the TV to confirm that it was what I just saw.  A few minutes later,  footage of the plane “parking” on TV.  Then the President stepping off…and whisked away into…Marine One.

Marine One?!?  Not a motorcade?!?

LOL.  I’m sure my boss is happy about that news.

Finally, I got to my nap.  A couple of hours I woke up to greet Brandon and headed out to yoga.

Good gosh. It’s been a crazy couple of days.

P.S. I’m going to start tagging the blog now.  Just FYI.