graduation 2011.

graduation is such a momentous occasion, as it marks the end of one chapter in our lives and the beginning of the next.  it's crazy to think that, exactly one year ago today, i graduated with the wonderful aliso niguel high school class of 2010.

yesterday, i had the pleasure of supporting several of my good friends as they walked in their own graduation ceremony, with the class of 2011.  although it was quite hot outside and we (me, christine, ina, taylor, zach, matt, jason, and gavin) had to do a lot of walking to get to the ceremony, it was completely worth it to be able to support our friends in such an important milestone in their lives.

and, of course, it was great to be back at the high school football stadium (a.k.a. the marching field), the place that brought us all together in the first place.  it seems perfectly fitting that the field we spent countless hours on together for marching band/drumline/color guard practices should be the last place we all set foot on as high schoolers.

i'm so happy for and proud of all of my friends that graduated yesterday.  they each have so much to offer the world and i can't wait for them to start the next chapter in their lives.  congratulations, class of 2011!  you did it!

an unexpected twist.

i was expecting today to be just another simple, fun day with the friends.  i got coffee with suzie, played mario kart with christine and her little brother, and was ready to play a good game of mao with the group from last week's barbecue at night.  nothing out of the ordinary.  and it seemed that my day was going as expected, as christine and i got into my little green bug and headed for ina's house.

alas, we were within three minutes of ina's house when it happened.  we were sitting at a red light at a major intersection, talking to pass the time.  we didn't notice anything funny, until the light turned green.  before i hit the gas, we felt my car give a rough shake.  it startled us, but we didn't think much of it.  but then, i pressed down on the gas pedal and nothing happened.  no noise, no shaking... nothing.  my car just wouldn't move.  i looked at my dashboard and my battery light was on.  this had happened to me once before (last year), so i didn't totally freak out, but the light had turned on while i was driving that time, so i at least was able to pull my car over to the side of the road.  but this time, i couldn't even move an inch, so we just sat there, turned on my hazards, and blocked traffic.  (some people are idiots and don't realize that they should go around a car that has its hazards on).

everyone else moving, but not us :(

we quickly called my stepdad and AAA.  of course, in the midst of this mini emergency, we had time to take a picture:

my stepdad beat AAA there and helped us out.  we were three full lanes away from the side of the road and my stepdad pushed us all the way there!  i had to manually maneuver the wheel back and forth to steer us over there, as he pushed (and let me tell you, i appreciate power steering a million times more now!).  it was so hard to steer that christine and i both had to pull on the wheel.  i even had to take my jacket off because i was seriously working up a sweat.  i felt like we were in a scene from a movie or something!  some nice man also pulled over to the side of the road and helped my stepdad push my car and ward off traffic so that we didn't get hit.

luckily, we were able to get my car to start again and i drove it to pep boys.  phew.  so much for a simple day.

but the night improved once we got to ina's (my stepdad dropped us off), thank goodness.  we made s'mores on her stove (which actually worked out quite well) and played mao and a few rounds of egyptian rat slap.  i still can't believe how many hours cards can keep us entertained for.  i <3 christine, nili, taylor, ina, gavin, matt and jeff :)

a weekend well spent.

this was one of those weekends where i enjoyed every moment of it.
on friday night, i drove up to los angeles to visit the wonderful antp.  we started our date night out with dinner at vistango, a little restaurant that i've been begging him to take me to for months so that i could finally try their penne vodka he's always raving about.  he claimed it to be much better than the penne vodka we made together a while back, but i didn't believe him.  we make a pretty mean vodka sauce pasta (at least by my standards).

vistango's penne vodka:

alas, anthony was correct.  vistango's penne vodka definitely lived up to his claims.  it was so good!  and, unfortunately, much better than ours.  guess we've got some practicing to do.

back at his apartment in la, we had fun taking silly pictures together.  anthony brought me home some of my own E3 swag from the convention he attended earlier in the week, so we decided to be super cool and dress up:

i'm representing the empire and antp's representing the republic.  woot!  oh, and these are officially my new driving sun glasses.  they live in my car.

even later that night, we got hungry again and went looking for food in the kitchen.  unfortunately, for me, this turned into anthony pelting frozen green beans at my head.  after our mini frozen food war, (which i lost), we finally settled on some simple top ramen, apricots, and cucumbers with salt.  i was hesitant about the whole cucumber thing at first, but it was actually really good!  i highly recommend it.

our super fancy ramen:

the next day was ina's confirmation, so we had to head back to aliso viejo.  of course, we made sure to get yet another yummy meal in before the day's events.  this time... chick-fil-a!

if you haven't had the cookie parfait, it's a must.

that evening, back in aliso viejo, we attended ina's confirmation at the corpus christi church.  nili, jeff, bryan, taylor, and jason were also there with us to support her.  i've been to this church with anthony's family a few times before and, although i am not a church-goer myself, i always enjoy the services.  i love listening to what father fred has to say and the music is wonderful.  and this service was no exception.  it was so great being there with friends and i was so happy that i got to see ina be confirmed!

after the ceremony, we all went back to ina's house for a celebration.  we had food from panda express (yum) and sang along to piano and guitar being played by ina's family and friends.  it was so much fun to be able to celebrate with ina and for all of us to spend more time together.

as it got later, ina's family left the party, leaving us alone to play the board game, taboo, and of course, mao.

we played taboo with two teams: girls + taylor vs. guys.  and, obviously, girls + taylor totally owned (sorry boys).  a couple of our favorite clues/guesses: "twinkle twinkle little... winkle?" and "dog of hair" :)

and our game of mao was just plain ridiculous.  we implemented some pretty complicated rules this time.  my brain definitely got another workout.


sunday was filled with even more great food!  christine, my bestie, finally got home from school last night, so i decided to take her to cha for tea to get boba and munchies:

she got an iced peach green tea with aloe vera and i got an iced almond milk tea with boba and soy milk.  we shared orange chicken and crispy chicken dumplings.  so good.

after that, we went back to her house and literally just laid on her bed talking (and lurking on facebook) for seven hours.  i love that we can do that and never get bored <3 

sometime later in the evening, anthony interrupted our seemingly endless talking by bringing us a brownie earthquake from dairy queen to share!  (yes, more food, don't judge).  what a sweetie!  after the boba and the sundae, we were definitely on a sugar high, but that just made the night all the more fun :)

this weekend's checklist:
- spend time with boyfriend... CHECK
- spend time with best friend... CHECK
- spend time with great friends... CHECK
- spend time with... food? ... MAJOR CHECK

i'd say that's a weekend well spent.

i am mao, your mom's a cow.

so, i kicked the morning off right with a long overdue gym workout with nili and ina.  but this workout didn't even compare to the ab workout that we got later from laughing so hard with our friends.

tonight, we (me, nili, ina, taylor, jeff, matt, gavin, and lauren) had a wonderfully fantastic barbecue and jacuzzi sesh at ina's community pool...  i can honestly say that i haven't had this much fun in a long time!  first, matt and gavin barbecued burgers, hot dogs, and sausage for us (and a boca burger and fake chicken for taylor, of course).  and ohmygoodness it was soo tasty!  we also had plenty of soda, salad, chips, and chocolate chip cookies to make for quite a little feast.  we definitely ate to our heart's content :)

then, on very full stomachs, we headed for the jacuzzi.  we spent a good couple of hours in there, passing the time by playing some version of the "one word game," where each person is only allowed to say one word to continue the sentence in order to form a somewhat coherent sentence - generally with very random and crazy results.  two of our favorite phrases of the night: "salty looks" and "mundane."  probably one of those "had to be there" moments.

but, i guess we let time get away from us while playing our fun little game because, in the middle of a very awkward/bad-timing conversation, the pool security guard crept up behind us (def heard our conversation) and then kicked us out.  he acted all stern at first, asking who lived there and blah blah blah, but, thanks to ina's silliness about keys, we befriended him and he told us a story about how a guy pulled a machete on him the night before.  apparently, you can go to jail if you use a community pool and someone in your group doesn't live there.  note to self: don't do that.  so, anyway, this guy got all freaked out when mr. security man asked for his key (which he obviously didn't have because he didn't live there) and i guess then "attempted murder."  so then mr. security man tasered him!  i think he ended up going to jail for the whole machete thing.  should have stuck with the punishment for not having a key.  we asked mr. security man if he would have arrested all of us if no one lived there, but he said he wouldn't have because he didn't want to fill out paper work until six in the morning :P

these are our "we got kicked out faces":

but, no worries, we just moved right back to the barbecue area and made s'mores with the grill!  and took more random pictures, of course :)

by this time, our night was only halfway over.  we packed up our stuff and moved our fun to ina's house, where we spent the next few hours playing the card game "mao" (the name of the communist dictator).  i never thought a game of cards could be so much fun!

the game starts with a fun little phrase: "i am mao, your mom's a cow, and this is how we start..." and then it's played like uno, but secret rules are added each round by whoever is "mao," the dictator of that round.  if you fail to follow a rule, you are punished by getting a card.  my brain was fried by the end of the night, trying to figure out and remember all of the secret rules.  but, oh how much fun it was :)  a fried brain was totally worth it!
 
a few of our secret rules:

failure to touch an ear.  failure to touch someone's chin.  failure to tap.  but those are just the ones pictured above.  failure to pinch and failure to slap were a bit more painful.  my personal favorites were failure to clear your throat and failure to "moo" :)  i'm already looking forward to next week when we get to play together again!

as is evident by the time of this blog posting, today (well, yesterday now) was just such a great day that i couldn't go to sleep without writing about it.  i love my friends <3