Kelocity.com

A runner with an appetite for adventure!

Bean Burgers & A Bookstore May 13, 2011

Irving and I won’t see each other much for the next two weeks, so we decided to make tonight special and go on a date. We’ve been married for almost two years, but I still like to go out on dates once in a while. I even made Irving open my car door for me <— That makes it officially a date.

I even got all fancy and put fake silver earrings on. I go on dates in STYLE, people.
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We headed over to Montrose, which is a cute little neighborhood off the least used highway in California. Seriously, there is never any traffic on the 2. Gorgeous!
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Our destination was The Black Cow Café. We’ve had a coupon for ages and decided it was about time to use it. (We are not ashamed!)
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This place was AWESOME! It felt like a restaurant straight out of a movie. You could totally picture two random strangers bumping into each other here and sipping coffee for hours (they hand drip all their coffee!) It was so cute and everyone seemed to know everyone else.
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Right when we sat down, we were presented with some Ah-Mazing bread. It was doughy and had the most delicious seasonings on it. (We even asked for seconds).
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Our waiter, Victor, was probably the best waiter I’ve ever had in my life. He was funny, to the point, and offered great suggestions. I ordered the Black Bean burger. He asked what I’d like on the side: “Fries, Soup, Caesar Salad or House Salad”. I told him caesar salad. He shook his head and said “nope, go with the house salad, you will love it”. Ok house salad it is!
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Victor, you were right, it was epic. It had sprouts, rasins, sunflower seeds, chinese noodles. And the dressing. Oh, the dressing. They make them all in house. Perfection.

The burger was great too. I don’t order veggie burgers often (ok, this was my first time EVER ordering a veggie burger), but it was really great. It tasted like a falafel.

Irving got the meatloaf sandwich that he devoured in about 15 seconds. Victor brought him ranch to dip his fries in and instructed him to mix some hot sauce in it. Well when he walked by and noticed Irving hadn’t mixed the hot sauce in it yet, he gave him a stern look and Irving got scared and mixed it in. You should have seen Irving’s face light up when he tasted it. He declared it “out of this world”. Yea. We’re going back to this place for SURE.

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Then we took our party to Pasadena where we walked around a little bit. Our first stop was Distant Lands (our favorite travel book store in Los Angeles). We were on a mission to find a travel book for our trip to Europe. We LOVE the DK Eyewitness series, so we quickly found what we were looking for. We bought the Eastern Europe book. I’m so excited to read through it!
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Eastern and Central EuropeDK Eyewitness Travel Guide Germany

They probably thought I was weird, but I was so excited to take a picture in front of their bookcases.
Travel + Books = LOVE!
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After walking around Pasadena a bit more, we headed back home. Date night was a success.

Any suggestions for things to do/see in Germany?

 

Easter at the Beaches April 26, 2011

Filed under: California,Family,Travel — Kelocity @ 6:41 am
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We woke up Easter morning and discovered the EASTER BUNNY CAME!!!!!!
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Maybe he was impressed by our mad baking skills? Either way, he left lots of goodies for us! We were SUPER excited! PEEPS!
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The four of us had reservations for brunch at the Madonna Inn.
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It’s famous, but not for the reasons you’d expect in a renowned restaurant/inn. You’ll just have to trust me. The entrance to the restaurant looked like this:
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And our table for brunch looked like this… actually the whole restaurant looked like this… Pink Pink Pink.
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But the food was pretty good.
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Drinking Pineapple Juice from a goblet is just plain fun if you ask me!
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After breakfast, we drove up to Cambria and did a little antique store window shopping.
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It reminded me of New England, everything was so cute!
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We found s store that had all homemade rocking chairs. We spent a fair amount of time testing them out.
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When I was little, my parents used to take us to flea markets and antique stores ALLLLL the time. I kept getting deajavous.
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Wait, That’s not an antique!
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And neither is THAT! That’s the year I met Irving and graduated high school! Whaaa? Now I feel old. haha
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The highlight of the day was finding a box of old postcards from the early 1900s. Janie and I spent almost an hour reading through them. Did you know the price of a postcard was only 1 cent from 1900 til 1945? Some of the cards were really funny and interesting. I’d love to buy a whole box of these and track down the relatives of the people and see who they are. That would make for a great documentary, don’t you think? Some of them didn’t even have addresses, they just said “Mary Smith, Philadelphia” and I guess the postman just knew where they were! My, how times have changed!
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We drove back down the coast to Morro Bay.
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Check out this pimped out golfcart!
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We had a snack (croutons and cheese from Pea Soup Andersens!)
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Morro Bay is famous for this huge rock in the bay.
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Also on the drive, we saw one of the California Missions in San Luis Obisbo. There are 21 total in the state. It was right near Cal Poly University. I love college towns. Everyone was outside drinking coffee and reading.

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When we made it back to Avila, we had dinner at Fat Cat Diner. This was our view while we dined!
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I drove back to LA solo on Sunday night, and Irving stayed an extra day to play some golf. Yesterday, he took the train home and I picked him up at the station.

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What a great weekend. It felt like week long vacation, so relaxing and fun. Thanks Jake and Janie! See you soon!

 

An Easter Getaway April 25, 2011

Filed under: California,Family,Travel — Kelocity @ 8:53 pm
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This weekend, Irving and I headed up to the California Central Coast for a little Easter Getaway. We stayed in Avila Beach, which is about three hours north of Los Angeles. Along the way, we stopped at Pea Soup Andersen’s! I’ve been wanting to stop there for ages!!
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It’s a California Road Trip destination and they’re known for…. Pea Soup!
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It was far too early in the morning to enjoy any soup, but we had fun looking around the gift shop and buying some canned soup for later. I’m sure it’s not quite as good, but we couldn’t resist. This is what we’ll look like when we cook the soup! BAHAHA!
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We “conveniently” saw the LuggageBase.com store along the route (turns out Irving mapped it ahead of time and was planning on stopping all along!) This is the website where we buy all of our luggage and travel gear from. Great prices, fast shipping and good people. It’s always nice to put a face to an online retailer. It’s just a family owned company who started a business that just happens to be on the web. We forget sometimes that online companies can be mom and pop shops sometimes. It was really nice to visit. We bought a few things while we were in there too.
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When we finally pulled in to Avila Beach, we went for a walk to explore.
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The beach was really pretty and not too crowded. I never put my toes in the water, but it looked really nice.
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The boardwalk area was really beautiful. It’s all relatively new, and commercially untouched. So refreshing coming from LA.
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There are three main piers and we walked to the end of each of them. We didn’t have much of an agenda on Saturday, so it was nice to just walk, chat and relax.

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From the end, we got a good glimpse of our hotel for the night too. So pretty up on the cliffs.
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Wait for it…. Ready….

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It just felt right….
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Under the pier is a second level, and you could see starfish clinging to the posts! So weird!
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My date for the weekend life!
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Our walk continued along the bay.

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We saw a sign for “BJ’s Restaurant” and I’m like “YAY! PAZOOKI!” But alas, that was not the case. at all.
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But we did find Sea Lions hanging out under that pier! You could get really close to them too!
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Later that night, we met up with Jake and Janie (Irving’s aunt and uncle, whom we haven’t seen in a year!!) It was so nice spending some time with them again! While we caught up and chatted, we baked some Easter Treats in the hotel.
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PS. How scary does the dough boy look?!
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Before…
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After!
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We enjoyed the cookies while looking at the ocean from our room.
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After our snack, we headed out for some more coastal exploring. First stop was Pismo Beach.
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There was a pretty wedding going on too! We stopped to listen to the vows. Creepers!
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Look! A mom, dad and baby goose! See the baby in the middle?
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We followed them for a while, it was adorable!
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After sight seeing a little more, we pulled into the Oak Pit BBQ for dinner. We read rave reviews on yelp and were very excited to try it! The owner took our picture for us too! Thanks Sammy!

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Lots of wildlife sightings this weekend!
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Stay tuned for Day 2 later! It’s a picture heavy weekend, so I’m splitting it up.

What’s the strangest wild animal you ever saw on vacation? We saw Bears on the side of the road in Russia!

 

Around the world: A Video! January 22, 2011

Filed under: Cairo,Dubai — Kelocity @ 2:37 pm
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I’ve been working on a little video from our trip to Egypt and Dubai.

Enjoy!

 

Video is 6 Minutes Long.
 

New Year, New Possibilities! January 6, 2011

Filed under: Food,Happy — Kelocity @ 10:22 pm
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The week after Christmas is always bitter sweet. We were coming off a high of friends, family, food and festivities. Lots of late nights laughing with my sisters, traveling coast to coast, presents to give and receive. It’s a hard month to top.

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But I also enjoy the transition into the new year. It’s a chance to start fresh, make resolutions and clean up a bit. All the ornaments get wrapped back up til next season. It’s sad to put them away, but also exciting to look forward to the other great things up ahead.
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I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to most this year. It’s only the middle of January, but I’m already excited for the fun things we have planned for the summer and fall. We’ve got about four or five trips already planned and that definitely makes me happy.

Tonight, Irving and I went for a long walk after dinner. Hand in hand we discussed how lucky we are to have each other to share our life adventures with. We were bouncing ideas off each other. Where will the next big trip be? We have lots to think about, but we’re leaning towards Eastern Europe. Contiki has a great tour that goes to Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Slovakia and Poland. Sign me up! We’re still in the discussion phase now, but I was practically skipping down the street just thinking about it tonight.

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In other news, I made a killer Beef Stew tonight. It was my first time using my crock pot, and it was a learning experience.
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Lesson #1: Not all crockpots are the same size! I used this old crockpot cookbook, and I started chopping away… until I realized that it wasn’t all going to fit!
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I guess mine is smaller than a traditional size?  So I will be making Beef Stew #2 on Sunday to use up the meat and extra veggies!

Live and learn. It came out fantastic though. We served it with a hunk of french bread. Life doesn’t get any better than that.

Hopefully 2011 brings me a year full of new and easy recipes. Got any good crockpot ones?