Fivebucks and Pastries.

I am a big coffee drinker. BIG coffee drinker. I love Fivebucks. I call it that…because unless you get a tall (read: small) black cup of the day… you’re going to spend 5 dollars. My old favourite was a quad venti (read: large) vanilla latte. Four shots of espresso allows my body to basically do a standing burnout into the day.

Anyway… back on topic. I made the switch to brewing my own at home in the mornings to save money… so I don’t actually go into Fivebucks to buy a cup too often these days. Occasionally when I do… depending on how early it is, I will get a pastry.

Is it me… or do all their pastries taste like the same thing? They’re kiiiinda good, but not great. And when combined with 4 shots of espresso, it almost always makes me feel sick. But for some reason I always repeat this cycle. That coffee on it’s own doesn’t induce nausea… so it has to be a pastry ingredient.

This morning I had an apple fritter. This apple fritter:

It wasn’t very good. Tasted stale. In fact. I only ate about half and gave up on finding a good bite.
Meh… at least the coffee was good.

 

Kill Will!

This past weekend, Laura and I took a road trip over to Columbia, South Carolina. This was a bit of a last minute trip that Laura’s good friend Jamie proposed just a few days ago, but it sounded like a great idea so we were down. We got up early on Saturday and started on the trip by heading to Chick-Fil-A where I got 3 biscuits (they were giving away free chicken biscuits with the purchase of a combo for some reason), and then stopped by the Cost Plus World Market for Laura to pick up a bottle of wine for her friend John who was letting us stay on his floor. We’re pretty bad at spotting wines but finally found the desired Chateau Elan muscadine variety that he’s a fan of.

After 3 fun hours of the ultra-scenic highway 20, we made our way into Columbia. We started the trip with a trip to Five Points, a neat part of town made up of lots of restaurants, stores, and bars. Laura suggested a local favorite pizza place called the Village Idiot for lunch, and it was great (and cheap, we both ate for $4…college towns are neat).

The restaurant featured weird mirrors behind the seats which made for fun photos.

We had cheese pizza. It was nice.

After lunching, we made our way over to the USC Campus where Laura spent many years of her life. Jamie and Drew (also alumni of the school) were already there hanging out, so we met them there and they gave me a quick tour of their old school. I was amazed to find that regular colleges feature things such as real restaurants (Chick-Fil-A, Burger King, Starbucks), a Barnes and Noble, movie theaters, and a baber shop inside the campus. Apparently art schools think it’s cool to toss everything inside one 5-story building and give you a snack bar. Awesome.

Here’s Laura posing in front of the super fancy Library on campus. Apparently most of it is underground, I thought that was neat.

Here’s Jamie, Laura, and part of myself in an elevator.

Drew, Jamie, and Laura posing by some sign in one of the buildings.

USC was also really fond of their mascot, and it’s image appeared all over the city. Apparently it’s supposed to be some sort of game cock, but I’m convinced that it looks like a cross between a dragon and a bird, and called it that all weekend. Most people found that strange.

Following the campus tour, we started over towards John’s condo where we’d be staying for the night. We arrived there, hung out for a while, and then headed out to the New Brookland Tavern where we’d be seeing Valencia perform.

We made it to the tavern and headed inside, and at this point I was starting to realize that Columbia seemed to be even warmer than Atlanta. It was easily into the 90’s, and the New Brookland Tavern greeted us with very selective air conditioining that didn’t really do anything, but oh well. On a better note, Valencia played an awesome set, and we all really enjoyed it (except John, he thought it was too loud, but seemed to enjoy himself at the bar the entire time).

Here’s Laura and John hanging out before the show started. John is tall.

iPhones take terrible pictures in dark places.

Valencia during their set. They were really good. According to lastFM, I have 193 listens to them this week alone.

After the show, I went to buy a hoodie and talked with their guitarist, Brendan, for a second. He was cool, and seemed to like my big wolf! shirt that I recently picked up from DesignByHumans.

We finally made it out of the show and went out to find John lying on the hood of his truck. After this, we headed over to some Asian restaurant down the road (I forget it’s name, but it sounded like an Italian name) for dinner round 1 with John and some of his friends. I wasn’t really hungry as our lunch had taken place fairly recently, but I did order a bowl of rice.

We finished up at the unknown Asian place and headed back to Five points to wander around and check out some of the bars. I forget the name of the first place we went, but I tried a bit of some frozen beverage that seemed nice at first but made me feel weird about halfway through. We enjoyed the nice weather and scenery, and just relaxing and talking though.

Here’s a palmetto tree that was next to us at this place. They stopped cannonballs during the Revolutionary War.

Here we are hanging out. I think John may have fallen asleep in his chair at this point.

Following this place, we headed over to some other bar down the road. I kinda wandered in behind everyone else and saw Laura and Jamie going up some stairs, and assumed that they were going up to some kind of neat second floor area. I ended up being wrong, and apparently it was just the bathroom. Jamie and Laura laughed at me for a while, but luckily I kinda needed to go anyhow so it saved me a trip.

We hung out at this place for a while and I threw down on a few cups of water. Jamie ended up having a cigarette which made John really angry, so I took a pic. He gave her this look for quite some time.

Following that bar, we briefly wandered into some other place that wasn’t very fun so we departed and headed for a classy place called Speakeasy. It’s this kinda upscale jazz bar looking place, and I enjoyed it.

Here’s a shot inside of it. You can’t really see much from the photo, but there was a live jazz band playing in the back of the club.

After Speakeasy, we finished off the night by heading to a neat hibachi-style restaurant called Grilled Teriyaki. It offered grilled Asian dishes for minimal prices at late hours, and I was a huge fan. I got a Filet Mignon for $8 at 2am. Awesome.

We finally headed back to John’s and started up our living room floor camp out. It went well until around 8am when I woke up feeling kinda terrible, so I drove to the local Exxon in my pajamas to find some ginger ale and use the bathroom (the one at John’s condo is inside his bedroom, and I didn’t really wanna bust in and wake him up). The ginger ale (along with partially awake Laura’s magical healing powers and some Rolaids) fixed me up nicely, although I woke up a few hours later and had to use the bathroom again really bad. Everyone was still asleep, so this time I just wandered into some woods near the condo and that worked out fine. One of the neighbors may have seen me walking out of the woods but I kinda ignored that fact and went about my business.

Everyone finally got up sometime after 11:00 and we all took turns getting ready. At this point, we finally met John’s cousin/roomate who had been hiding out in his room all weekend. We didn’t really have any strong opinions on him at first, however as we were leaving, John mentioned a very interesting fact to Laura which solved a mystery that came up the night before. Apparently, Will (the cousin/roomate) saw Laura’s Nalgene water bottle on the living room table while we were out at the show the previous night, and decided he’d be super mature and deface it for her (and mind you, this guy was probably in his mid/upper 20’s). She’s had this bottle for a number of years and has decorated it along the way, and one of the more prized items on it was a PETA sticker that is no longer easily found. Now, I like to occasionally poke fun at vegetarians just as much as any American carnivore, but writing “People Eating Tasty Animals” with a sharpie marker on a complete stranger’s belonging is just unnecessary. Once it was discovered that Will was the culprit, Laura decided to start plotting some revenge ideas. The most doable in the immediate future ended up being a movie poster which I helped out with after I got home, and I’m quite proud of it. Here’s the final result:

Laura has full intentions to go through with the title of this, so Will should probably be scared. I’m even planning to loan out my mall-bought samurai sword that I used in a Halloween costume in 2003 to help with the efforts.

Ok, back to the rest of the Columbia trip….We finally left John’s condo Sunday morning and headed over to this place called the Gourmet Shop. Laura and Jamie are completely obsessed with their pimento cheese sandwiches, and seem to have a tradition of going there whenever they are in town. I was pleased at the fact that they had Belgian waffles and croissants, and made those items my breakfast.

Here’s Drew attacking Jamie while we waited for our food.

And then we have evidence that perhaps Laura isn’t a vegetarian after all.

Our food finally made it’s way out and everyone was pleased. Here’s a shot of mine:

Laura and Jamie were excited about their sandwiches.

After brunch, everyone said their goodbyes and we started the trip back home. I had an awesome time overall though, and huge thanks to John, Jamie, Drew, and Laura for making it possible. A few more pics are up here, feel free to check those out as well.

 

Smoothie Skate ’08

Sometimes my  mommy and her friends like to celebrate what they call “Smoothie Skate ’08.”  This is when they pick up a smoothie from Smoothie King, congregate in my cul-de-sac, skate on their rad skateboards (Spongebob is the character of choice), and just hang out.  Now, what happens when it becomes 2009?  I’m not sure.  Smoothie Skate ’09  just doesn’t sound right.  Here are some suggestions I have for them: Dance in a line in ’09, Drink some Brine ’09, Dig in a Mine ’09, Swinging on a Vine in ’09, Ride a Swine ’09, and Eat some Twine ’09.

Anyways, I tell you all this because I love fruit, so you know I enjoy a yummy smoothie.  My sister Heidi also enjoys a smoothie.  Just the other day, Heidi and I were napping…

When we heard my mommy come through the door and saw that she had a fruitiliscious treat!

Note that the cup says that Chewing is Over-rated.

Heidi disagrees.

 

Starbucks v. Sonic

I have been lucky enough to travel the world over in search of the perfect thirst quencher.  Today, I would like to share with you all two of my recent finds.  The double chocolate chip frappaccino from Starbucks had a nice layer of condensation on the outside of the cup.  As I am allergic to chocolate, I was not allowed to have any of the actual drink.  My parents, however, enjoyed it immensely and give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.

My other find is the strawberry slush from Sonic.  I did get to enjoy some of the slush, and it was completely delish!  Strawberries are  one of my favorite fruits.  I also enjoy apples, oranges, grapefruits, and peaches.  I do not like bananas, though, and will only eat those as a last resort.  I’m just like my mommy – she hates bananas and says they have a terrible texture.  Oddly enough, she does like bananas in her smoothies.

I was also able to enjoy some hot, crunchy-on-the-outside, mushy-on-the-inside tots.  Give me some tots, Napoleon.  Daddy doesn’t share very well, but I managed to get a taste anyhow.  Nobody can resist my big, soulful brown eyes.

That’s all for now.  I’ll leave you with a cute photo of me. Ciao, bella!

 

Dolphins?!?!

Today was a very fun filled day made up of a number of entertaining activities. The day started by Erin meeting up with me at my house to grab lunch at Chick-Fil-A (courtesy of some free coupons we got yesterday which was nice) and then do a bit of work on my 240. Most of the day was spent chipping sound deadening out of the interior which pretty much sucks, but we made good progress.

After a few hours of that, Tran headed over and we decided to come inside. Impressed by the new LauraJMoss.com website which we launched yesterday, Tran decided she wanted a site of her own. We didn’t buy the domain yet, but JTranOnline.com will be up soon, and is currently being hosted on my server. It has a classy pic though, so check it out.

After that fun, we headed towards D-Wood to meet up with Laura, Shai, and Barry and head towards Little 5 Points for a party going down at Wish, a neat clothing store run by one of our friends. We managed to dodge Atlanta traffic pretty well and finally parked, and met up with a bunch of friends who ended up being down there. We also enjoyed some delicious free Nathan’s hotdogs courtesy of Wish.

After hanging around the party for a while, Erin, Tran, Laura, and myself decided to wander around L5P for a second and see some of the other sights. Laura also wanted to get a falafel wrap from this place she likes as she isn’t really a hot dog fan. Here’s her enjoying her meal:

After roaming around for a few minutes and realizing that everything closes super early, we headed back to the Wish block party for a while. Unfortunately it was like 115 degrees with 600% humidity, so we didn’t last long and decided to depart pretty quick.

Here’s a picture of Tyler’s car I took on the way out (Tyler is an old-school DriftMechaniks member, and his wife Lauren runs Wish). It had been in the shop for about a year but is finally done now and looks awesome.

Back in the car, the decision was made to head north and enjoy a night of mini-golf up in Duluth. We had been discussing this for a while and finally decided to make it happen. We settled on Pirates Cove, a big pirate ship themed place right by my house, and it was fun.

We had to wait around a few minutes for Andy, Lieze, and BM to make it so used to opportunity to pose for some crappy pics with my point-and-shoot. Pardon the quality.

Andy, Lieze, and BM finally arrived and our game was started. We all quickly realized (well, at least I did) that mini-golf was a bit harder than we remembered, and I was flat out awful. Tran lost her ball to the lake on the first hole, mine was gone on the second, and then numerous other issues occurred throughout the night. We managed to keep playing though, and did have a really good time (aside from half of the course being like 100 feet from I-85, which was really loud).

At one particular hole, I made an observation that there were goldfish in the pond which I thought was neat. Erin, deafened by the cars on the interstate, immediately turned around and yelled “dolphins?!?!”, which ended up being the running joke of the night. In honor of Erin, here’s a slightly fictional rendering of that spot with dolphins included.

We finished up the golf game and finally ended up outside the pirate ship where we posed for a group shot.

After realizing how hungry a good game of mini golf makes you, we headed down the road to conclude the evening at IHOP. Andy tried to eat the menu.

We finally had a chance to order our food and it proved to be entertaining. I decided to try out the video function on the new point-and-shoot to document this and the remainder of the meal, and here’s the result. Keep in mind I know absolutely nothing about shooting or editing video, so the results might not be very good.

Overall, quite a fun day. I put up a full gallery HERE so be sure to check it out to see even more from the day of excitement.

 

Live! Eat! Play! Urban Energy!

I’m not sure if I’ll ever know what the above words have to do with a classy Italian lunch, but for some reason Mambo Italiano (this nice place in the Forum shopping center in Norcross) seemed to have that all over their regular menu, drink menu, and dessert menu. Laura and I were quite puzzled by it (thought it might relate if there was a gym in the back, or perhaps a smoothie bar, but none of the above were seen in the establishment), but still enjoyed a delicious lunch at this new place.

We were torn between it, Jason’s Deli, and Atlanta Bread Company, but decided to change things up a bit for once and were quite pleased. They started us off with some super soft pita bread (I think) and an unknown dipping sauce, but I actually enjoyed it. Even Laura (who tends to not enjoy bread for sport) seemed to be a fan.

We both ordered our own pizzas thinking they’d be small individual sizes, but we were quite wrong. Here you can see Laura with her mammoth Veggie pizza.

I opted for the pepperoni, and it was quite nice.

The huge size ended up being ok as the leftovers will probably provide us both with another meal or two.

After the pizza party, we walked to Barnes and Noble and enjoyed a nice after lunch drink at the Starbucks inside. I think we had Iced Soy Chai Lattes, but I’m terrible at remembering the name of their fancy drinks so I may be totally wrong. Whatever the name, it was delicious. After acquiring our beverages, we sat on the floor reading books about camping in north Georgia but were kindly told to move over to actual seats. Apparently thinking you’re a child when you’re actually 25 doesn’t work well in bookstores. Oh well.

 

It’s not a cookie….

It’s delicious.

I haven’t had a fig newton in years but randomly just bought some (along with a box of capri sun fruit punch) at Dollar General by the S3 office. Good stuff.

That is all.

 

Board Game Night!

Tonight, a bunch of us met up at Laura’s for an exciting night of board games. Most of the evening wasn’t really food related (although Yousef and I did go to Publix where I managed to spend $12 on a sub, some chips, and a bottle of Sunkist) but it was a fun evening anyhow so I figured I’d post a few pics. QC also braved the month old Colossal cake that we bought for our Easter dinner which we all found mildly concerning. He didn’t seem too delighted by it, but it was still a remarkable effort.

After the fine dining, we got underway with some extreme board game action. Apples To Apples was our first choice of the evening and we all found it to be quite amusing. QC and I didn’t exactly take the game seriously (although he still managed to win one of the rounds) which may have bothered some of the contestants, but we enjoyed ourselves.

Here you can see Tracy and Aaron in the middle of a heated match:

And then we have Laura taking pride in receiving the “handgun” card:

Fun night overall, except for the team of myself, QC, and Yousef getting destroyed in a game of Cranium thanks to our awful clay skills (and the other kids having telepathic skills such as guessing “Spinal Tap” and “Eye of the Tiger” with pure magic).

 

Breakfast Buffet/Donuts/I should have bought a blender

Today started as a pretty fun day with me waking up around 11:00 with a phone call from Shai asking if I would be attending the Chick-Fil-A breakfast buffet at the Dwarf House near my place. Per discussions with myself, Panda, and Jerry earlier in the week, the plan was to finally try out this great sounding idea sometime fairly early Saturday morning and be finished up by 11:00 or 11:30 as Panda had to be at work by noon, but things didn’t go quite as planned. Part of this was due to none of us waking up on time (a few of us attended a friend’s wedding Friday night and got home fairly late, and then Jerry had to go run a rescue mission on our friend Ian who was in town from NYC and had been abandoned by his drunk friend, so Jerry didn’t end up getting to bed until way later). Anyhow, upon getting the call from Shai, Panda and I decided we could make a quick dash over there, throw down on some breakfast, and still get out of there early enough for him to make it to work. The plan went well, and I enjoyed 3 biscuits and gravy, some grits, bacon, french toast, and a chicken biscuit. Didn’t snap too many pics due to the time constraints, but here’s a shot showing the magnificent buffet:

Shai and Barry arrived mid-meal and didn’t care to join us with our dining there, however Barry did spot the Krispy Kreme next door and we ventured over there after finishing at Chick-Fil-A for him to grab a dozen glazed donuts. I didn’t have any, but here’s a pic anyhow.

Back at my house, Barry put down 4 donuts in the span of about a minute and then complained that the sugar was somewhat painful. They were probably delicious though.

After this, we met up with Laura and Jerry in D-Wood and headed downtown to kill time at Ikea. Grabbed up another blue Icee and made more mental notes of what stuff I wanted to get for the new S3 office. Also got stuck in even more Atlanta traffic (not nearly as bad as Friday night though, where it took us well over an hour to go about 20 miles from Dunwoody to downtown), but finally made our way to Robek’s Juice as I was carving a smoothie. As good as the frozen treat was, today would have been the day for me to finally give in and just buy a blender (as I’ve been thinking about doing that for a while) and just stay home. Apparently, bright blue Honda Fits are difficult to see if you are a british man in a large SUV, and I got backed into upon us leaving the lot. Lame.

The damage is kinda hard to see in the pic, but it put a sizable dent in the hatch and scraped off a bit of paint on the bumper. Nothing too terrible, but still kinda annoying to have to deal with. Hopefully it’ll all get sorted out soon though.

After this fiasco, Laura and I hung out for a while at Amli and got ready for our fun night out at a benefit concert featuring some of her friends from high school’s band. Before making it there, we made a stop by Cameli’s downtown and enjoyed a couple of ridiculously huge pizza slices and cheese bread. Made it to the somewhat sketchy venue for the benefit show around 11:00 and listened to a few questionable comedians (we’re pretty sure one was just a random homeless guy off the street), and then witnessed one of the more memorable musical performances in history. I don’t like to be negative and down anyone for trying to play music as I’ve done it for almost 15 years and fully realize there’s a lot of work involved, but I’ll just say these guys needed a bit of work. Things weren’t quite in tune or in time, but it did provide a nice bit of comic relief for the night. The good thing is they did raise about $1000 for their cause, and that was nice. Around midnight, we made our escape while their set was still underway and finally made it home after a most interesting day.

 

More Ikea!

Today, Wooley (the co-owner with me at S3) and I met a few friends of ours at California Pizza Kitchen (sorry, I forgot to get photos there) in Atlantic Station for a nice lunch. We enjoyed a tasty meal there and got to hang out with some cool people. One of our good photographer friends, StunnaBen was in town with his friend Clint that lives downtown, and another of his friends, Jonah from LA (who owns the famous purple/red/leopard interior/crazy neon green wheeled Civic from the AM7 car club, and is a graffiti artist from The Seventh Letter Crew). After hanging out with those guys, Wooley and I headed to Ikea as he had never been before. We checked out furniture for our new office and I managed to pick up a tasty cinnamon roll and blue raspberry icee. They were delicious.