i accidently only brought my 50mm so my pics are kinda weak. i’m sure that broad with the 10 foot, $1000 lens got some good shots though.

here is my flickr set from the wedding:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentomatic/sets/72157604324277879

last night eric and ben came to gardena after work and we checked out tampopo ramen restaurant. it’s actually right next door to the kiraku ramen restaurant that eric and i ate at on saturday.

i thought the food was delicious. we all ordered the “tampopo” ramen, which i guess was the house specialty. the ramen was in a very light chicken broth, and had pork slices and bean sprouts. eric thought that the noodles were a bit too soft, but i thought they were just right.

they served a few different appetizers including some tofu dish and different pickled goodies. along with the ramen we ordered gyoza (perfect crispiness), spicy california rainbow rolls (pretty good), kimchi which no one else would eat, and a few beers.

since i’ve been at a few different restaurants around here now, i’m going to start giving ratings: i give this joint a solid b.

it’s difficult to photograph food and make it look appetizing. i’m going to start bringing my camera to all these places. maybe they’ll think i’m from a famous publication and give me special treatment.

i had dinner with sss, shantelle’s friend sean and mike scully at california beach sushi on friday night. i’d never been there before, and since it was sanam’s idea i imagined there’d be a long persian-style line outside, but it turned out to be a pretty kick back place. they had all-you-can-eat appetizers (izakaya style), and sushi for $22, which we all got (except for miss picky). the food was really good, much better than most all-you-can-eat sushi joints, and they had this gimmick, where every hour:37, they’d play that phil collins song: in the air tonight and all of the sushi chefs and waitresses and patrons would do the drum solo with these wooden blocks that they passed out. it was pretty ridiculous, but it kept us there for quite a while. i’ll prolly go back soon with the wife.

me, eric and ben went up to stephan’s place in downtown la on saturday night. we went to the same bar/restraunt we went to a few weekends ago and drank cheap pbr (maybe the second time i had drank pbr in the same day?) when we were walking back to stephan’s place, we saw this group of 30+ jews? mormons? quakers? stop across the street from a beat up old building and started singing jesus songs really loud. we were directly infront of them when they started singing, but it seemed that they were all looking up towards the building. our best guess was that the buidling was a whore/drug house and they were trying to sing some jesus into them. maybe they were just having fun. pretty cool either way.

stephan has a trendy loft in a renovated old building, with huge windows that look into the city. using his binoculars to try to see women changing in far off buildings has never made me feel so urban. we drank beer, argued about the geekiest things and played wii and mame arcade games. next time, we’re gonna daisy chain two x-arcade controllers and get some 4-player ninja turtles action on. yep. watchout.

jean’s company through a huge halloween party in venice on saturday. she works for a digital effects company and those hollywood-movie types had some crazy and creative costumes. ben and i went as the skipper and gilligan, a costume 27 years in the making. the party had free food, free cover (it was an invitee only thing) and best of all, open bar. i got pretty wasted really quick, and by the time i left i was stumbling to get to the car. taka had to work on sunday morning, so she was my designated driver.

we took tons of pics, and i’m sure both ben and costin will blog about and post their pics of the party.

it was nice to wear a costume where everybody recognized me and said hi, it was like i was famous. notice the sexy gogo dancers in the background:

these guys dressed up as the cast from family guy. when one of of them went to the bathroom, i had to try it on. notice, i’m still rocking the gilligan hat, so you know it’s me.

this steve urkel wouldn’t get out of character when i was trying to talk to him. it was annoyingly hilarious.

this doll even had a blow-up valve on the small of her back:

here’s my photoset:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentomatic/sets/72157602770281815/

i’m not sure, but this might’ve been the first time shadow’s been to the beach. he goes to the local park and for walks around the house almost everyday, but since most beaches are off limits to dogs, until today he’s never seen the ocean. he was pretty excited just to walk around on the sand, and even though he doesn’t particularly like water, he was happy to splash around in the waves.

shadow’s not too friendly when it comes to other dogs, so this time we kept him on the leash and away from everyone else. he started barking a couple of times, but luckily the other dogs didn’t seem to care and we went on splashing around by ourselves. next time we go out, we might let him mingle a bit more.

the long beach dog park is about a half mile stretch along the beach, east of the belmont olympic pool. since shadow seemed to enjoy it so much and was well enough behaved, i’m sure we’ll be heading back soon.

so i clearly underestimated her ability. before yesterday, taka had never even tried the wakeboard, having failed getting up on the water skiis twice last season, and having seen so many other peeps get yanked around by the boat to no avail. but yesterday, shali, sanam and me and taka took out the boat for some nice, non-pressure runs, and on her 4th attempt was up, and by the end of the day, she was up on just about every start.

it seemed we all figured a few things out yesterday… sanam almost got up, and probably will next time out. i think two instructions that i figured out in helping a beginner get up is 1. don’t lean back so hard and 2. turn your board immediately in the direction of your front foot. and shali’s getting pretty good at towing a skiier, and is finally letting me pull her fast enough so that a jump-able wake forms :)

around 4pm, the weather started getting pretty cold and it even started to sprinkle a bit. the water was cooler too at around 70F, so we dropped off the boat and had margaritas at acapulco, which is becoming the standard post-boating place to be.

we saw jen and james riding their cruisers right past us when we pulled the boat out of the water. that’s two weekends in a row. weird!

on saturday, the wife, ben and myself went to check out the oc fair in costa mesa. we pretty much go every year since it’s a cheap and fun thing to waste a day doing. this year, ben heard rumors of a chicken burger where the buns are jelly-injected, krispy kreme donuts, so after about 30 minutes of searching, we found charlie’s chicken hut and ate the most delicious and gross creation ever made. my gut was heavy for the next hour:

we spent the rest of the day doing standard fair stuff. this year taka paid the dollar to see the world’s largest cow (last year she saw the horse, so now she feels complete). for the first time i saw the pig races, which was more entertaining than i expected it to be, and the concert at the end of the evening to top it all off? weird al yankovic! we had some super crappy seats, but they were free so i didn’t have much room to complain. fun day at the fair.

taka said she only had one margarita, but i swore she was on e:

i’m not tall enough to ride all the rides at the park?! … and according to the sign, i’m not even 5′ tall :)

ben almost won an electric scooter. he knocked 2 of the 3 blocks completely off the table… i bet the bottom block was nailed to the stand:

i uploaded all the pics to my flickr account. you can see them starting here, and browsing to the right:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentomatic/869783557/in/photostream/

i finally got a chance to get some wakeboarding in on wednesday. by around 1p, most of the cloud coverage had burned off and the water in marine stadium was a warm 74f. i took some pretty nasty crashes off my first few jump attempts and my neck is still kinda stiff today, but it’s a lot like snowboarding where it takes a couple of outings to get as good as you were at the end of last season. everyone tried the wakeboard, except taka who we pulled around on the boogie board to her and everyone’s amusement. the boogie board actually broke, so i’m gonna have to find another solution for people that just want to have dumb fun like that.

by the time we were finished wakeboarding, the sun was already about to set, so we pulled into acapulco, had dinner and a few more drinks, then cruised out to the queen mary to watch the fireworks. the show was fun, and we were only about 100m or so from the barge that the fireworks were launching from. there were lots of new fireworks that i hadn’t seen before, although the finale was a bit lackluster.