What I tend to think about while at work...

I've neglected this poor, pathetic little blog and now it has shriveled into nothingness. Never fear, I've motivated myself, once again and hope to bring it back from the dead. Not that I have anything amazing, interesting or unique to say, but I've got a crazy amount of border-line a.d.d. ideas to share. Here is a partial regurgitation, take from it what you will and don't judge my hyper-active brain. If only I could use my brain power for something useful to the world...hmmm.... nope only good for meaningless frivolous stuff....like party ideas! Weeeeee!

Dinner parties I would like to have/throw/force onto others (friends real and imagined may attend):

1. SUSHI - having a live in sushi chef and NOT taking advantage of it? Now that's a sin. Bring the sake and an ingredient, we'll do the rolling. Just no uni. I smell uni and you're out.

2. PAELLA - I have to buy a special pan, but just you wait, once I get my hands on one I wanna have a Spanish feast like you've never seen before. Or you have seen and want to eat again and again. I'm thinking munching on tapas (olives, cheese, spanish tortilla, etc.) while we wait for the paella to reach perfection while sipping on sangria or the like out on the patio. I'll pretend Luis & Lacey are there and Luis is criticizing my crappy americanized paella. It will be amazing, so who's in?

3. PIZZA party - so who loves pizza? Um, everybody. So let's make some awesomeness together. All we need is dough, sauce and cheese...whatever other toppings people like (can anyone say goat cheese and smoked salmon with capers? I can, YUM) add some red wine and maybe some game action (I currently have Taboo and Scattegories) and you've got a pretty nice little night for yourself.

I can't decide which one I want to do first, they all sound delicious and fun, plus we have hardly had anyone over our place in CO. Sigh. The house needs to be warmed still! Be prepared friends, acquaintances, strangers, you may very well be getting an invite to a very fabulous dinner party. I'll try real hard not to act like a small child who has been starved for attention and suddenly is showered with people to have conversations with.

Doing the Mile High City on the cheap!

Since moving to Denver I've been able to sample quite a few places to eat, drink and generally have some fun. Not anything fancy, since we are living on one income at the moment and that one income isn't anything too awesome. That being said I am all about cheap thrills. Well, I've always been a bargain hunter/junkie that enjoys something even more if it was a "good deal". I've found quite a few super awesome, but wallet friendly things to do in the city since I arrived two months ago. Here are my faves:

The Alley Bar: I basically should start paying rent at this place because I pretty much live here. I usually find myself here at least twice a week because the happy hour is that amazing. From 5-5:30 they sell 10 cent slices of pizza, meatball sliders & PBR's. I don't think I have to explain further. Except that from 5:30-6:00 they are 50 cents. They also have an array of other happy hour apps/beers/wine/wells that are from $3-$6. Basically if you come here at 5:00 and order an XL cheese pizza and 4 beers your tab is a grand total of: $1.20 So this is the main reason I frequent this place when I'm too lazy to cook anything at home or when a baseball game is on that Nick wants to watch since we are too cheap to pay for cable. They also have trivia night there on Thursdays and other fun little deals everyday of the week. I LOVE this place.

Elvis Movie Theater It's your standard bargain theater with $2.50 matinees and $3.50 movies after 6, but for some reason it's so much more. I like the funky vintage interior and cheap popcorn and soda. They also carry a variety of toppings. Yes, flavored popcorn toppings that take popcorn to a whole new sodium/msg level that I can't get enough of. Come here on a rainy/snowy day and you will not be disappointed.

Colorado Rockies Rockpile tickets Every game has $4 tickets available in the notorious "Rockpile". It's known for it's rowdy, mostly drunk crowd (who use the savings from the tickets to buy booze) and I think I will feel right at home! For a while I was incorrectly referring to these seats as the "rockpit" (hey it's pretty close), but whatever you call it, I plan on being a regular fixture this summer.

Free Museum/Zoo days. I kinda missed the boat for the time being on this, but at the end of summer I plan on hitting up most of these. I really want to see Egyptian mummy stuff and the cool looking pirate exhibit. Plus the botanic gardens and zoo seem pretty cool too.

With a little planning and some online research you can have a LOT of fun for just a few bucks. For a cheapo like me, a city is a goldmine of bargains just waiting to be discovered and so far the little gems I have found so far are just a taste of what is out there.

More Brunch

I've been on a brunch kick (hey, ya can't ever go wrong with brunch, it's two meals in one so it's ok to over indulge) and after some consideration we thought we would give Lola a whirl. Everyday I bike past this restaurant on my way home from work and envy the patrons sitting on the patio enjoying the happy hour. It always looks so inviting and lively! Immediately after Lola is the local ice cream shop, Little Man and people are usually spilling out onto the sidewalk staring at me huff and puff up the hill as they eat their delicious looking ice cream while I look longingly at their waffle cones. My bike ride home is an exercise in self control that I often fail. Miserably.

So I really, really wanted to be one of those happy shiny people laughing on the patio fo Lola and I decided brunch was where it was at. I saved up an especially mighty appetite for Lola's one saturday morning recently. But it ended in sadness because after an order of home made donuts, bloodies and a bennie I was still hungry. Real hungry. Everything tasted awesome, but there was just so little of it. I thought the cheesy grit cake underneath my poached egg was going to be a little more generous in size, instead it was dwarfed by the egg (which is hard to do). I wanted it to be so much more and there just wasn't.

I guess I'll just have to stick to their happy hour and amazing dinners. Although the bloody mary bar sounds pretty tempting on Sundays...maybe after I make breakfast at home a nice bloody mary can be enjoyed on the sunny patio of Lola's.

Bottomless Mimosa Time

Today was an awesome sunny and warm day, so Nick and I decided to ride bikes towards downtown and try out Paris on the Platte. Mostly due to the purchase of a living social deal, but also because I knew they had brunch and more importantly bottomless mimosas! There is nothing better than sipping on a refreshing mimosa while basking in the sun. We both ordered their Venice Bennies, they were pretty standard, decent hollandaise with a side of taters. It hit the spot and the mimosas made for a pleasant bike ride home.

But before we went home we decided to stop at the light rail station to see where I would need to get on to commute to work. I wanted to buy some tickets and (in my semi-inebriated state) I bought 4 round trip tickets from the kiosk. Which would be fine at any other rail station. Except I failed to see the giant yellow sign that says tickets are only good for 24 hours. Effffffff. These tickets are not cheap people. I'm hoping their security is lax and I can get away with using them in the next week...or I will have just thrown away $30. Poop.

The bottomless mimosas were still worth it damnit.

and the Denver oyster hunt continues...

Well, I have not been good at photographing my food-ventures, but I've been good at hitting a happy hour almost every weekday (good, bad, I'm not sure yet). I am having a BLAST exploring new places to hit up after work for a drink and a nibble. Yesterday Nick and I hopped over to Gaetano's to try out their happy hour. You have to sit at the bar to enjoy happy hour food (which we did not know at first); don't worry I had no shame marching my drink up to the bar to take advantage of the cheapo food. I ordered the $3 vodka cran, a $2 3 cheese mini panini & Nick and I split the truffle oil fries. The panini is what you would expect for $2 and hit the post work spot. The inside of this neighborhood Italian joint is dark and has dark booths that look fun to hang out in maybe late night.

Not wanting the fun train to stop, we headed just a few block down Tejon to Lohi Steakbar for their Monday oyster night special. We called ahead to make sure they hadn't run out of oysters, and it turns out we timed it just right catching the last half hour of their drink happy hour and got a dozen oysters and $3.00 margis. The oysters were delish and served classic again (lemon, horseradish, etc.) and the margis were oh so strong! A steal at under $20 for two people to feel utterly indulgent. I see this possibly being a Monday night ritual, as it is about 10 blocks from my house and the atmosphere is awesome. There are several "bar" type seating areas that seem fun inside. We sat at the regular bar, but there is one running through the restaurant and one facing the outside (summertime perch?) and outdoor seating as well.

We left Lohi as happy & full campers. No need for dinner with a double header happy hour!

New J-O-B

So we moved all of our stuff to Denver (driving through California, Arizona, New Mexico and finally Colorado) and moved in last Monday, I interviewed for a job on Tuesday morning, was offered the position the next day and I start tomorrow. Woooosh. That's how this week has felt, like a whirlwind of activity, unpacking, cleaning, downsizing everything to fit into our new one bedroom duplex. I can't wait until everything is settled and I can concentrate on more important things like eating and drinking.

I picked out an appropriate first day of work outfit, one that says, "Hey, I'm professional, smart and not a weirdo with tattoos." They don't need to see tattoos to know that I am a little weird, they just need to look at my ocd lunchbox I recently bought myself. I decided to prepare a veggie bento box for my first day of work; I actually don't want to eat it, instead I want to bask in the glory of how pretty it looks all organized and partitioned. To top it off it all fits into a cute recycled plastic tote. I think bringing this to work will let my new co-workers know that I just like my food to be as attractive as it is yummy, while also screaming, "ANNOYING PERFECTIONIST". Yeah, I think that's good.

Man, I feel like I'm getting ready for the first day of school: I've got my outfit ready, my lunch packed and I even bought myself a new travel mug for my soon to be early morning commute. In case you were wondering, it's teal and may or may not match my new lunchbox :)

Wish me luck as I start a new chapter in my life in a brand new city!

Denver: I'm here to eat all of your food

I arrived in Denver after the scariest two day drive of my life and since have mostly been concentrating on scheduling interviews and finding an awesome place to live. I think I have the awesome place to live part worked out (pending any surprises on the criminal background check) which is a huge relief seeing as we are driving with two animals and all of our belongings in one week.

The other part of my time has been spent researching places to eat and drink in the city. I've never had this opportunity: a whole new city to explore that I LIVE in. Amazing. I was racing around on Yelp jumping from review to review, bookmarking the crap out of everything as "To Try". It was all over the map and then I realized I needed some focus.

Since I am a pretty organized person and don't want to go on a food rampage through the city all willy nilly, I'm outlining a very loose plan for the next few months. Here is what I aim to accomplish:

1. Find a place that serves decent pad kee mao (drunken noodles) & has a spice rack (I NEED pickled peppers & sambal in my life). The spice rack may seem minor, but it can make a huge difference.

2. Locate and indulge in $1 oyster happy hours throughout the city. I love a good happy hour and I love it even more when it includes $1 oysters.

3. Go on the hunt for amazing eggs benedict. I love all kinds, be they topped with smoked salmon, veggies or simply with hollandaise.

4. Locate an amazing and cheap mexican food joint, be it a truck or hole in the wall. Sometimes there are times (i.e. hungover) when only a delicious burrito will do the trick. Sometimes you only want to have to eat once in a day and you want that meal to be a 5 pound burrito. Hey, I'm from California and I need my mexican food.

5. This might be wishful thinking, but I love noodles (nothing like a big ass bowl of carbs), especially ramen & udon. If I could find a decent japanese noodle house, then my food life would be complete. One that serves both traditional udon & spicy ramen topped with soft cooked egg and fish cake. Mmmmmm.

So those are my main culinary related goals for the next few months (obviously semi-dependant on my finding gainful employment). Today is day one of this magical food journey...oyster happy hour....I've come up with two options (one on the recommendation of Nick's cousin) for this afternoon depending on where my friend Katie would like to go. I'm so excited to have so many options to try, especially after being painfully limited in Humboldt County.

Here we go taste buds!!

Living Large Whilst Unemployed

These are the kinds of things unemployed people do:
Having not worked regularly for a full six months (after working through college and full time for four years thus after), I now, can safely say that working full time is highly overrated. That being said, there are may perks to a steady paycheck, like, um getting a steady paycheck so you can buy stuff. I envisioned six months ago, when I was getting ready to quit my job, that I would work on all these awesome projects I had been dreaming up but my mind had been too "cluttered" to deal with while working. So far, I have surprisingly managed to not do a damn thing. I have not written a single genius screenplay, witty novel or even kept up on this mediocre blog.

Getting dressed on a daily basis is the first challenge I face every morning, that and the decision to exercise or not, but sometimes getting out of my pjs before noon is hard enough. Hey, I don't want to push it. I find that my opinion of myself drops considerably when I find myself in my pj's answering the door at 4 pm on a wednesday squinting in the sunlight at the UPS guy handing me my latest delivery of items purchased with a groupon.

So in an effort to avoid becoming an unemployed self loathing blob, I've developed the following rule set to lend some shape to my currently unstructured life:

• Exercise: hey it's the least you can do since your excuse for not exercising before was because you were too tired from working full time. DO IT NOW.


• Get dressed before noon: this one is important as it lends a teeny bit of structure and routine to an otherwise shapeless day. Plus it makes you feel less like a loser when you go out in public.


• Apply for at least 3 jobs: this isn't asking much and probably takes about an hour. Plus, it could lead to a fabulous new job...or another crappy office stint, but hey the money aint gonna last forever honey, so it's time to start cracking.


• Do some sort of cleaning, laundry or chore: it will make you feel like you are a valuable member of society and you get something clean in return. Go vacuum your filthy car, it will make you feel like you're totally on top of your life. Cuz you are. Right?

So that's pretty much it, of course the rest of the day gets filled in with other leisure activities like reading, cooking, doing your nails, catching up on Glee or Fringe, getting your bangs trimmed, ya know...the things you used to have to wait to do until the weekend. I'm not saying I'm not enjoying tons of free time and being able to grocery shop in the middle of the day with all the retired folk, but it's easy to become that annoying unemployed person that every working person hates. The one who forgets normal things like, oh yeah it's Tuesday and of course everyone is at work during the day and that's why they don't answer their cell phone...or ohhhhh, people have to get up before 9 am and can't go to a concert in the middle of the week, oops my unemployed ass forgot what it was like to work.

So until I am gainfully employed again, here's to enjoying the most freedom I will probably have for the foreseeable future while also maintaining my super high opinion of myself.