You know you're living the 'Office Space' life when...

...you go about your day, only to discover a post-it flag stuck to your blouse!

Book to Movie OR Movie to Book?

I love to read. Actually, I have a love-hate relationship with reading. I often get engrossed in books and they keep me up later than I planned. So, the hate part really comes in the next morning when I need to wake up early and get to work, but my eyes really want to be shut for another hour.

I’ve recently noticed that I have another love-hate relationship with books, where movies come in. Inevitably, when a fantastic book is written, it is often turned into a movie.

So, the question is, do you read the book first, or seen the movie first? I generally like to read the book first, because it is so much richer than the movie, and you can then see whether you feel the script writers did the book justice…or whether the roles were cast as you pictured the characters to be. However, I often find myself not enjoying the movie as much because I’m so critical about what was changed, left out, done differently than the book. This happened to me with C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian. I must have whispered to Andrew 5 times during the movie "This wasn't in the book" or "They changed that part of the story."

On the other hand, if you see the movie first, you cannot get the image of the movie characters out of your head. This is happening to me now. I’m reading Emma by Jane Austen for a book club that I’m attending this week, but I’ve already seen a movie version of the book, done a number of years ago (starring Gweneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam). While I’m pleasantly surprised at how closely the movie sticks to the book’s storyline, there are certain characters that I think were cast wrong. After reading Austen’s descriptions of the characters, I try not to picture the movie characters, but instead, what my mind feels is closer to the book’s description. But try as I may, I can’t quite picture anything but the movie characters as I read.

So, what do you think? Read the book first? Or see the movie first?

L.A. Day

I must say that L.A. gets a bad rap. To some extent, it deserves it, but on the other hand, it is also an incredibly diverse, unique city that has an urban-chic style all of its own. Certainly, people give L.A. its bad rap for its overload of aspiring Hollywood starlets, free-spirits cruising down Melrose (a favorite place of my brother), and hippy-beachgoers in Venice Beach, but really all of these things work together to give L.A. its strange, funky, one-of-a-kind charm.

I lived in L.A. – more specifically in West L.A. and the South Bay – for seven years, and I worked in downtown L.A. in the financial district. So, it’s not a surprise that I have a soft spot in my heart for this quirky, underappreciated town.

When Andrew told me a few weeks back that he got tickets for the Disney concert hall, I felt like a giddy schoolgirl, ready to re-acquaint myself with my old downtown L.A. stomping grounds.

We proceeded beyond the orange curtain on a surprisingly traffic-free freeway, and arrived at destination #1 just in time for lunch: one of L.A.’s finest foodie joints, Pizzaria Mozza, which has a rustic, urban feel and about the freshest, most gourmet casual Italian food I’ve ever had. I’m still dreaming of the food and scheming who I can take to L.A. as an excuse to visit Mozza again. Yum.


I had a squash blossom pizza with burrata (a creamy mozzarella) and tomato, and Andrew had the most divine lasagna I have ever tasted. One of my quests in 2009 will be to re-create the spinach lasagna with a veal Bolognese and a béchamel sauce.

After lunch, we headed over to the Walt Disney concert hall, which was designed by Frank Gehry and opened just 5 years ago! This venue stands out for a few reasons - its ultra-modern stainless steel exterior, its organ (Andrew thought it looked like french fries; I thought cinnamon sticks - judge for yourself), and its beautiful gardens. What a cool place. We sat behind the orchestra in the choral bench, and heard several Brahms pieces performed. I loved the fact that the guest conductor is the first woman in America to head a major American orchestra. It was fantastic.

Here we are exploring the concert hall during intermission.

Our favorite Minnesota greasy spoon

Isn't it strange how people get so attached to little divey diners (or is that just us?). Not that I have anything against the Denny's and Coco's of the world, but they lack that certain charm of the one-off greasy spoons. Charm is rather a subjective word - the charm of this particular greasy spoon is the crabby short-order cook, the lifesized photograph of a payphone duct-taped to the wall where the real payphone used to exist, and the sign above the counter that reads "Tipping is not a town in Russia".

Andrew is especially fixated on this little, and I mean little, breakfast spot called Al's Diner in 'dinkytown', the college town of UofMN. Without a doubt, you would miss Al's altogether if you blinked at the wrong time walking down the street. It is nothing more than a counter with about 15 stools and a space behind the counters for hungry Minnesotans and visitors, much like myself, who wait patiently for one of the coveted stools. When we arrived there last Wednesday with Andrew's college buddies Greg and Darren to get some breakfast before watching the Gophers' season opener in basketball, the stools were full and there was a line of people waiting behind the stools. The weather was in single digits, but we waited patiently outside to even get inside, to then wait 30 minutes standing behind the stools for our turn to partake of the blueberry walnut shortstack and the other sumptuous fare. I'm normally not a 'slab-of-butter-on-top-of-my-pancakes' kind of girl, but this time, I just let it be, knowing how good it would taste.


Until next year, Al, here's to you and the satisfied tummies that you provided.

So Long, December

I feel as though I blinked and December passed me by (which is why I haven't posted on here for a month). And when I looked at my camera tonight, I realized I barely took any pictures this month. I guess that means I was too busy enjoying myself to think about taking pictures.

The days leading up to Christmas were spent with my family. We celebrated Carol's 29+_ _ birthday by packing out the Pope's room at Buca, we made tamales on Christmas eve (lucky Andrew got Laurel's 'surprise tamale' stuffed with M&Ms...most of our tamales were normal), we enjoyed a Christmas eve service at my Dad's church, and we just enjoyed being together. One of my favorite things about our get-together was watching the excitement in our 2 year old nephew's eyes as the holiday unfolded (the sparkle in his eyes was especially bright when he discovered the joys of Pez for the first time). For photographic evidence of the festivities, check out Carol's blog.

On Christmas afternoon, we headed to Minnesota for a white post-Christmas/New Year's visit with Andrew's family. I must say, it's an odd feeling when you find yourself going outside and saying that 20 degrees "doesn't feel too bad"...especially after being in single digits the day before :) I managed to capture a few pictures of our time there, but again, we were too busy enjoying ourselves to bother with the camera. What has come over me?! Here are the few
pictures that I did snap:

Perhaps because snow is somewhat of a novelty to me, one of my favorite things was sledding with our nephews. Who can resist the childlike fun of sledding and making snow angels? Certainly not me!

We also went x-country skiing on the lake. Here is Andrew posing in front of an ice-fishing hut (we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto). There were dozens of these huts all over the lake - doesn't sound like fun to me, but to each his own.
We were thankful for wonderful visits with both families, and we certainly are blessed to know that our Saviour came humbly to earth to redeem us. Indeed, a noble reason for celebration with the ones we love.