A day in retrospect.

I was lucky enough to have one of those really really awesome days this past Saturday, but freaking Early Apps have prevented me from posting anything about it. Well, I still should be working on the App but a break is definitely nice.

So the day started off at Sayo's house when we decided to watch Ashley's performance. Sadly, we didn't quite make it in time and ended up going to TAM to check out The Maize Project. Again for me.

Hehe...slug on wall.


We finished up there and were driving along...and somehow ended up at Farmer's Market for lunch :D

Oh...and a freaking cajun sausage dog with brisket and bbq sauce? glorious.


Enjoyed our lunches of beef, sausage, and Thai food over at Walteria Elementary.

Teeheehee...we found some bubble stuff. Fun ensued.


Sabrina decided to be a creeper for the day.


We then headed over to Marcy's for some good ol' fashioned sweets. Yummmm.

Hehe Ashley tried to scare me when I was taking this. Better luck next time...

Picked up a nice, massive strawberry marshmallow covered in chocolate. Sugar overload.


Yay! Crossed the street and what did we see? A pumpkin patch!

So I guess Sabrina and Sayo or on the same brain frequency or something...they both picked out the same pumpkin at the same time...

Ah! Pumpkinheads!

Dunno why I took this one...

Ashley's terrified of the leatherface. Yet Sayo and Sabrina look perfectly fine...


Headed back to Sayo's to work on Halloween costumes and eat some more. And yes, I do enjoy drinking honey out of a bottle.


We went to Aardvarks, ate at T&T's for dinner, and some other random things happened. Sadly, I have no pictures. My desire to photograph died off sometime during the day.

But yeah, great times were had by all.

Smattering of thoughts

No real theme here...just a couple of shots of the first weeks of school that I particularly enjoyed.

Sabrina discovered the usefulness of finger stamps using pen ink. Observe.


Yes, I am the school creeper. But even creepers get creeped upon.


And now...the birth of Greenhouse Effect. Damn, I wish I had a wide-angle lens. Or a fisheye. Really would've shown what 300+ students in a single room looks like...


Ah, and those lovely lunchtime moments of absolutely nothing productive. These are the days...

Awesome day.

You know how you have those days where everything is just plain awesome? Yeah, today was definitely one of those days.

Started it off with Nikki and headed out to the Torrance Art Museum. I had a friend who worked on one of the exhibits so I decided to check it out. Definitely interesting. Definitely worth checking out. It's called the Maize Project. Every kernel of the ear of "corn" has the personal effects of someone in the artist's life. Go check it out. Admission to the museum's free, so watcha got to lose?


There's also this Marco Casentini exhibit. Very colorful. Very pleasing to the eyes. Reminded me a lot of Piet Mondrian's work.


Drove out to L.A. to check out the Masakatsu Sashie exhibit "Under Fluorescent Light" at Giant Robot 2. This guy paints his entire childhood memory in little condensed spheres. I like the idea...it's fun to pick out all the little details in the paintings...cup noodles, cigarettes, vending machines...


Not really all that important, but GR2 has the coolest shaped rubber bands, amongst other strange knick-knacks and useless (but amusing) junk.


Looked through all of the uselessly awesome junk there, then walked over to Giant Robot 1 for more loitering and amusing books.


I love the little sketch book they have lying out for people to doodle in. Observe.

We left our own little mark in it too. Guess where...

Let's see...drove out to find the elusive little place called MILK in Beverly Hills. Ended up taking this picture instead:

For the record, I cannot take these freaking myspace pictures. Got this on my 10000th try.

Oh and just kidding. We found MILK.


MILK happens to have amazing Brownie sundaes that are thick, rich, thick, and rich. Did I mention they were rich?

Yum. No. Yummmmmm.

And lovely little Red Velvet Cupcake Poppers for $.50 each!

Notice the preemptive bite mark. I couldn't wait. The little things just looked too damn appetizing.

and the tiniest caramel apples that I've ever seen. Hand shown for reference.

So after eating it, it turns out that the tiny "green" apple is just an unripe red apple. How disappointing.

Got fat, then drove towards the highlight of the night. But random little thing: The intersection of La Cienaga and Venice is infested with "Madagascar 2" billboards. Like...6 or 7 altogether o_O


And then...the best part of the night. One of my favorite places in the world:

Yeaaahhh.

The Ernie Watts Quartet was freaking sublime. I got totally lost in the rythm...and each of the four was an amazing musician in his own right. They were definitely together, but each guy was in his own little world, moving to the beat in his own way, rocking out to a solo every once in a while. Amazing.


The virtuoso himself: Mr. Ernie Watts.


He said something very interesting: "Life isn't digital. It's analog. Think about it, but don't think about it too much." Digital's sharp. Beep. Beep. Beep...but analog...analog melds together...flows like water. It's like...the whole day seemed like a series of random events at first, but thinking about it now, the entire thing melded ever so nicely. We went from one place to another, the spirit of the whole day carrying over to the next place we went, adding up until it reached a peak with the beautiful rythms of the Ernie Watts Quartet. Analog, indeed. Thank you, Mr. Watts.

School up to this point

I'm kinda sad that I didn't write anything about the first couple weeks of school. A lot of very interesting things happened...mostly random little moments that made me smile :]

Like...late start!

I originally didn't want to go to Sayo's for breakfast in the morning because I'm a lazy fatass. But something deep inside told me it would be a good idea to go. Must've been my stomach. Puts a whole new spin on the saying "follow your gut."

So yeah...it turns out that Ashley makes the most AMAZING bacon EVAAARRR. It's thick...and yet kinda crispy...and not too greasy. Yes, I am in love with Ashley's bacon. Yum.


And then the blueberry muffins joined the party! I felt kinda bad not having helped make them, but not bad enough to stop me from shoving them into my mouth.


and a well-deserved close up of the lovely little things...

Man, that was like the PERFECT way to start the day. Great breakfast, great company. I think everyone would be happier with more days like those.

and you know what? I'm gonna throw in one of those profile-type pictures just for good measure. Ya know, just to keep the high school spirit alive and all that jazz.

Catching up

I guess I should start catching up with the first couple of weeks of senior year before I go forward...

8.30.08 Last weekend of summer

Nikki and I finally took Kenta and Chris to The Counter after 10000 years. The Counter is THE BEST burger place in So Cal, hands down. Kicks In-and-Out in the face. Repeatedly. Actually, that's a bit unfair. In-and-Out is relatively cheap and is fast food (some would disagree...). The Counter is top-quality gastronomical wonder worthy of the history books. Their choice of topics, size and quality of meat, and awesome decoration are worthy of the history books.

Exhibit A:


Kenta is a complete fatass when it comes to eating.


After eating ourselves silly, we drove around and somehow ended up in Hollywood. Shopping, gawking, and other touristy things ensued.

and yes, that is in fact a dude. He was stumbling around drunkenly and we saw him walk by us a few times on different sides of Hollywood Blvd while we were there...


Watch out! Oh, and that's the LV store by the way. Freaking high-end stores catering to people with so much money that they don't even know what to do with it.


Chris has a good eye for random shadows.


Now THAT was a a good day...one heck of a way to spend my last weekend of summer :D

Student Free Day!

So we had no school Monday, but because of freaking WASC I ended up at South until 2:00 anyways. I made up for my lack of a good sleeping in by going to Disneyland :D It was surprisingly busy on a weekday... all those parents taking their little kiddies out of school to enjoy the parks. Great. Come to think of it, my parents did that too when I was in kindergarten...

But anyways, I thought while I was there I would take some pictures. Turned out kinda nice, I think.

I love the holidays. In addition to the presents and food and all that good stuff, Jack redecorates the Haunted Mansion. Tim Burton + Haunted Mansion = Happy Andrew


Grabbed a dole whip in the 90 degree weather and enjoyed the (thankfully) air conditioned Tiki Room!


I've been meaning to take this shot for a while...


Those funny little name-plaque-tile thingies in the Esplanade:


One of my favorite details in the park.


so yeah, Disneyland is great for pictures. It's too bad I had Gov AP and Bio AP tests the next day. I really should've studied more instead of fooling around. Oh well, I think it was pretty much worth it...

Anyways, thanks for stopping by.

It's about time.

So I've been meaning to make a photoblog for the past million years. Now that Larry finally has, I guess it finally motivated my fat ass enough to do something, too. Now if only I can drive myself to keep this thing fairly updated...

Studying for Gov AP and Bio APis a pain in the ass. I could sit here bitching about the teachers, but that wouldn't really get me anywhere. But seriously...senior year's not all that chill if you have AP after AP breathing down your neck. Can't wait til second semester.

At least we've sort of fallen into a habit of sorts. Go to Wienerschitzel, go to Starbucks, commandeer the lovely couch and three chairs, and study our asses off. Lovely.

Of course, we waste plenty of time texting.


And eating.


And taking pictures of each other attempting to study. Notice the red lamp.



and more fake studying...



Sabrina has the coolest backpack. ever.


and when I get distracted, I take random pictures of my shoes and such. that's productive.




Wanna see more? flickr.com/photos/ello_there

Checking out some gallery openings in the next couple weeks. Hopefully I'll get some good shots up.