Memorial Day Weekend, sponsored by Fanta

	This year for Memorial Day, we had the crowd head here to SB. Last year we went camping but we waited to long to book something.
	Started of the weekend with a nice hike up Tangerine Falls. The water was cold, and filled with green algae. I think we took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up going past the falls up to the fire road. Sadly the view was bleak as it was very overcast. After the hike we got lunch at the Greek deli where Alli decided to strangely order an orange fanta to go with her gyro. Interesting...
	Shower and some daiquiris, in time to get ready for dinner. We tried out Quantum, I think its a pretty new place i think. It was pretty good, kind of different. The menu took us about 30mins to figure out. They have main dishes but they also have items with the idea is to share. C and I ended up splitting, an Asian chicken salad, chicken lollipops ( chicken nuggets on a stick, but some tasty sweet sauce to dip them into ), and my favorite where the empanadas. Later we got some drinks at Elsie's, and the James Joyce.
	Sunday morning we went to Pacific Crepes for breakfast. C and Alli got dessert crepes, and my breakfast one was also tasty.
	Oh yeah on the way back from breakfast, I realized that I forgot to take a house key, and so did C. So We were good and locked all the doors and windows. Except for one, on the second story. Alli took the bold move of going to the back apt, and climbing the roof, walking across the house and then down to our winding, and voila just like that she found her true calling as a cat burglar.
	We visited I Modonnari Festival. It was a quick look as it was really crowed and we need to get supplies for BBQ-ing late.
	BBQ Time! We even invented a new game. Hedge Volley Ball! It a simple game of batting the beach ball over the hedges into the opposite grass court, and quite fun
	BBQ Delights got queued-ed up but chef Alex, sporting some Coke swag. We had some tasty 1/4 burger patties from Costco, tater Tot casserole, Grilled Corn, Alli's awesome guacamole, Missy's 6 layers of dipping fun, TJ's bread and spinach dip, beer, and oh the Fanta strikes again. Apparently the 12-er Shane brought was the hit as I think they were all gone by noon the next day. We even had a tasting of the Famous $34 Coke Zero. I was not that impressed. To me it tasted like sweet & low and diet coke, not really "Just" like regular coke.
	Monday we hit up the tradition Cantina breakfast burrito, before everyone parted ways. Later C and I hit up East beach for some Rays, and ironically, big Al was there too about 300 yards away and we didn't even see his big cabeza.

Costco + SnapFish = Lazy Picture Fun

My sister let me know that now on Costco's Photo Center you can upload your pictures, and have them sent to you local Costco to be printed in their 1 hour lab. You can even allow your photos to be shared so others can print they as well. When I was checking out their site, I noticed that it said this service is powered by SnapFish. Anyways I this this is pretty exciting and now I won't have to wait behind those people, who have 5,000 pictures to browse, crop, and rotate!

Also on the Digital Picture front check out Yahoo's new PhotoMail email software. You drag and drop your photos, and it makes thumbnails and the Html to email your friends, while at the same time it uploads the images to your Yahoo!Photo Album, so that they can click on a thumbnail and see the full-size picture. Pretty slick.

Weekend Fun

Saturday, Happy Birthday to Alli! We drove down to LA to meet up with Missy to help celebrate her birthday. It was a grand-o-time. We ate a P.F. Changs, very good. I suggest to try the SICHUAN STYLE ASPARAGUS, BEEF WITH BROCCOLI, ORANGE PEEL CHICKEN, and the CHOW MEIN CHICKEN. We then headed to some bars in Santa Monica, I think the one we stayed most of the night at was called Amor. Here is some LA advice to anyone traveling on the I-110, Check and see when the Dodger's are playing, and then stay away! Also make sure to go the right direction (my bad) on the 110 so you don't have to sit in the traffic twice :(

Sunday we drove down to Tustin for my Uncle's Surprise 65th Birthday. It was held at this place called Joe's Garage. It and old car/hotrod museum. Everything went off well and he was very surprised. It was a great party and they little kids really enjoyed the clown/face-painter/balloon lady. Ok maybe some of the big kids enjoyed it as well. I took a few pictures of the cars, check them out. To bad we did not get to test drive them :)

2x the Uncle

Happy Friday the 13th

Ok so I am not much for superstition, but on this Friday the 13 of May, I was informed how crazy the Costco can be. Check it out you can now by your very own casket or urn from them. I am not sure why, but even just looking at those pages gives me the creeps.

Get your Coke Zero!

Only 2 days left! Through my connections I was able to get 1 20 oz, bottle of Coke's new Coke Zero. Its their new flavor that is zero calories, but tastes like regular coke. Its not due to hit the stores until June, so you can be one of the first to taste it's sweet goodness. As you know I love my coke, but through the will power within, I have not tasted it, and put it up on ebay.

Place your bids, tell your friends, it could be yours!


eBay - Coke Zero

Hot Wax

On Friday C got a call from Luke and they made plans to see House of Wax. They really love to go watch the cheesey horror films. Thus I usually get exposed to them as well. The key to enjoying these type of films is to go into the with pretty low, ok very low expectations. So with expectations low I think this movie does a good job of hitting that cheesey horror flick rating.

Oh and Paris Hilton is in it too, and her death scene is sweet! I did find it pretty funny how in the movie they made a little fun of her sex tape stuff, like in one scene their friends' car pulls up next to her and her boyfriend in their Escalade, and catch her on tape giving road head.

The only thing that bugged me about the movie was the character Wade, played by the WB's jarred padlocks. He plays the type of character that when in a sketchy situation, instead of getting the hell out, decides hey why don't I check out every room, and play with strange objects. It almost make you want to scream out in the theatre, "NO! Get the f*ck out!".

iPod Mind Reader

Crazy! It was literally the other day (Sunday) I was saying to Big Al that its funny how technology is causing people to be more anti-social, especially with the rapid trend of iPods.

I for one am an iPod owner, but I haven't yet taken that step beyond, where I find the need to be listening to music everywhere I go. Mainly I listen to my iPod at work to drown out the vast silence of my office. The thing that got me was walking around downtown seeing lots of white ear phones on the people passing by, seem to give off that vibe, "Do not bother me, I don't care, I am listening to my music". Take that vibe and place it in the scenario of say a high school, wouldn't you think that more kids tuning out the rest of the interaction with other kids, would leave more of them as "loners".

Anyways what made me think about this all over again is that I went to read the UCSB Daily Nexus, and blam! There was the same sort of article, but with a nice twist on it.

Check it out:
Don’t Talk to Me, I’m an iPod-aholic