I am a Cooking MACHINE!

First off, its a very special birthday day for two of my favorite girls, so

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GAIL AND SARAH W!!!!!!!!!!
you're the bestest everest.


So I had a fun/somewhat eventful/productive weekend, with a touch of bizarro thrown in.

On Friday night, I went to my high school's Homecoming football game with Gordo and some of his friends that also went to our high school. When I asked him why he wanted to go, he said basically just for fun and because he wanted an excuse to wear his varsity jacket again because it was expensive. Made sense to me. I never got a varsity jacket because pretty much only football players got them, but I did get a varsity letter that I never sewed on anything. Too bad it got damaged and consequently thrown away when our house got remodeled, or I could have taped it to my sweatshirt. I couldn't even find any kind of outerwear left over from high school that I could have worn. I wonder where my field hockey fleece pullover went...

Anyways, it was all pretty much like I remembered it. We lost horribly, I think the score was 43-7, in the long-running Lynbrook tradition of 15+ years of Homecoming game losses. The cheers and fight song were the same, the cheerleaders were all tiny and cute, the Valkyries still sell baked potatoes, the same guy does the announcements, the ASB President won Homecoming King, the homecoming court was pretty much all-Asian and they still drive around the track in fancy convertibles, and the Seniors won Homecoming. Couple of things were different though. Now they have fireworks during halftime! What the heck, we totally didn't have that. Also, when I was there, the school was about 60% Asian. Now I think its gotta be at least 75%. Not that the whole school was there or anything, but man, I think there were maybe 5 non-Asian kids in the marching band. I don't think I saw anyone from my class there, but I did see TMac, and Gordon and I sat down to talk with her for awhile, which was great. She told us who had won King and Queen before it was announced. She's taking a year off because of all the stuff that happened with her brother and the trial and stuff, but she seemed to be doing well - but she said she probably won't be going back full time or back to Lynbrook, which is sad. Overall, the game experience was random and kinda surreal, but I had fun. High school!

Saturday was pretty uneventful, but productive. I put together a breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, lox, tomatoes, and onions for Hannah and my cousin, which was delicious. Then, Hannah and I made a large vat of spaghetti sauce (we added veggies and meat to store-bought sauce to chunk it up). Then I spent about two hours cleaning the inside of my Dad's car, which I am currently driving. I'm going to say I did it for him as a birthday present, but really, its because it was filthy dirty and I couldn't stand driving it like that anymore. After that I made a "harvest loaf," from scratch, basically pumkin bread with chocolate chips. Jo, you gotta try it.

Sunday was the AIDS Walk for Silicon Valley, and I made my way over to the Guadalupe River Park in downtown San Jose at 9 am. I raised a total of $385!!! My prizes were an AIDS Walk shoulder backpack, mug, and t-shirt. Pretty sweet. The walk itself was 6 miles and took about 2 hours and 15 minutes. For pretty much the entire time, I talked to a new employee named Kristin and we're friends now :) I went to lunch after the walk with her and two other girls from her department, and we're going to join forces and all be friends! Totally dorky, but it makes me happy because I have three friends I hang out with here, and one of them is Hannah. Just the possibility of going to dinner with all them or going out for happy hour makes me happy. Yay! Anyways, pictures of the Walk to come, once I upload them! After the Walk, I made Paella for dinner, and Hannah busted out the sangria we made the night before. Not to toot my own horn, but the paella was tasty. Not authentic by any means because I got the recipe out of Parade magazine, but it was yummy and not too hard to make. Just a little labor intensive because of all the chopping. And the sangria was GREAT, hehe. We had fun watching the Amazing Race and yelling at the contestants while eating/drinking.

So yeah...long weekend update, but not much else to write about!! Back to work...