Happy 28th birthday to the craziest biatch I know! No one knows my heart like you do. Thanks for EVERYTHING.

I miss Hawaii. The food. The beaches. The weather. The lomi lomi massages. The BOYS. Sure, I can eat kalua pig and spam musubi at any one of the L&L joints in San Diego. And sure, I can pick up entire loaves of taro bread at any of the Asian supermarkets in San Diego. And sure, I can go to any beach I want in San Diego. And fine, the weather is pretty much the same in San Diego most of the year. But do we have Hawaiian boys over here? Maybe. But it’s not the same. The more I travel out of San Diego, the more I’m convinced I’ve exhausted my stay here. They closed my favorite dive bar earlier this month, and if that’s not a sign that I should get out of here, I don’t know what is. Hawaii is so laid back. I consider San Diego pretty laid back. At least more laid back than LA or NYC. But Hawaii is ridiculously laid back. Like telling us to meet in front of the hotel at nine in the morning to be driven to the moped rental store and us showing up ten minutes early and waiting twenty five minutes for someone to arrive kind of laid back. And I like to consider myself a laid back, no worries kind of girl. Even when we were transferring boats to go from jet skiing to parasailing, we were hurrying to take our life jackets off and cross over and the HOT! parasailing instructor said, “There’s no rush, darlin’… This is Hawaii.” That was probably the exact moment I decided I wanted to marry that man stay there forever. Yet here I am… blogging from the Valley. Hawaii was just so amazing. I plan to revisit again and again in this lifetime. My vacation couldn’t have been any more perfect. I miss the girls already. I miss trying to sleep through their symphony of snoring (okay, maybe they miss trying to sleep through my snoring). I miss waking up to Shi singing “Morning’s here.” I miss Chel sticking her fish eye camera in my face. I can’t wait till our next trip together. Until then, it’s back to the real world! Boo whore.

The real world ain’t so bad, though… Since I’ve been back, I’ve received an unexpected promotion at my second job where I’ve been a graphic design intern for the past couple of months. All of a sudden, I found myself putting my two weeks in at AAA. I’m sad to be leaving, but I just can’t pass this promotion up! Starting next month, I’ll have nights and weekends off. I won’t know what to do with myself. I suppose I could go to the gym and lose all that weight I planned to lose BEFORE going to Hawaii. And all that weight I gained while I was IN Hawaii. Or I could just have more time to blog about how much I want to lose weight while snacking on these chocolate covered macadamia nuts I brought home from Hawaii…

So you’re shopping on Melrose and you only have, oh, let’s say, $5.96. (I’m just throwing a number out there.) You can either try and find something affordably vintage at Wasteland or buy a cup of deliciousness at Pinkberry instead! It’s only the greatest frozen treat you’ll ever taste in your life. Every reason I could think of why I’d never want to live in LA was forgotten once Pinkberry hit my lips.

I could go on and on about my love for Pinkberry, but instead I’ll tell you about my awesome weekend in LA. I had work till eleven o’clock at night all last week, and looking forward to this weekend was the only thing keeping me sane. I drove up after work on Friday and crashed at Pammie’s in the OC. Shi and Chel were fading in and out of sleep by the time I got there at one! The four of us went shopping at Southcoast before having lunch at Auntie Em’s Kitchen in Eagle Rock afterwards. Their cupcakes were featured on Bobby Flay’s Throwdown and Pammie’s been raving about them ever since. We didn’t get to try their famous red velvet cupcakes, because the biatch in front of us snagged the last two. Oh, well. She was really skinny and needed the cupcakes more than we did. They had really good food there otherwise, and we got to try the chocolate and carrot cake cupcakes (our favorite!).

Afterwards, we hit up Gallery 1998 on Melrose to check out Kurt Halsey’s exhibit. It was beautifully intimate! It closes tomorrow, so stop by if you’re near the area. We were browsing through the shops on Melrose when we saw this crazy line at the Pinkberry across the street. We decided to try it, and I’ve been a changed woman ever since. After my first bite, I was like Hmm. This is pretty good. Then I bit into some Cap’n Crunch and was like Oh my, this is ridiculous! When it was over (and it was over fast), I was like Did I really just eat this entire thing? I almost ate the cup. It was that good. After froyo, Shi graciously treated us out to dinner at Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles. We somehow rolled ourselves back to Pammie’s apartment close to midnight and Chel and Shi drove back home to SD.

On Sunday, Pammie and I slept in and ate a late lunch at Sonic Burger—Yet another food chain I wish they had in SD. I don’t know why they tease us with Sonic commercials on TV when they only have one location in the OC for everyone in southern California to eat at. There’s upwards of ten Sonic Burgers up north in Bakersfield. There is nothing to do in Bakersfield. I’m sure that all anyone does there is eat at one of the many Sonic Burgers they have to choose from. And that would be perfectly fine by me. We hit up the Beverly Center where we weathered the most annoying elevators I have ever been on and returned my only purchase from Southcoast the day before. We ate a vegetarian dinner at M Café de Chaya with my cousin and her friend who both live in LA. It was the only healthy thing I ate all weekend. The best part though was that M Café was right next door to Pinkberry on Melrose. I had me some more Pinkberry goodness (with MOCHI topping this time… FYI you have to ask for it because it’s not on the menu). By the time we had gotten back to our cars, both my cousin and I had received parking tickets for having our cars parked on the street after six! I looked around and found a very confusing parking sign, and clearly, it wasn’t confusing to just me because every car parked on that street had a parking ticket. Apparently, these confusing parking signs are rampant in LA. Bah.

After dinner, we headed out to the Hollywood Bowl nearby to see John Mayer. It was our first time at that venue, so we weren’t sure where it was exactly. We just parked at the first paid parking lot we saw on Hollywood and Highland and ended up trekking almost a mile up to the show. I’m sure I burned the calories from at least that second Pinkberry I had that day. The Hollywood bowl was GIGANTIC and crowded and pretty awesome. We don’t even have a venue in SD that compares to this in size. Ben Folds was the opener and he was alright, but he didn’t sing The Luckiest which is pretty much the only song I know and like from him. John Mayer was really, really good. I’ve seen him one time before in SD and this show was so much better! This was an add-on show, and he had played the Bowl the night before, so he didn’t sing some of the songs we hoped he would (Comfortable, Stop This Train, In Repair), but he did sing some of my old favorites. He’s a very charming guy who knows how to entertain. There are few things I dislike more than going to a show and being bored. Jack Johnson hardly uttered a word in between songs when we saw him last, but that didn’t stop Edgar from being the happiest person on earth! Ha. By far, the highlight of my night was when he opened one of my favorite songs, 3×5, with Springsteen’s I’m On Fire:

I’m unbelievably starstruck, so it’s probably a good thing I don’t live in LA. Although San Diego does have its share of homegrown celebrities (Um, hi? AC Slater?). We ran into Schuyler Fisk and Joshua Radin on our way to our seats, and I just about died. Pammie was like, “Wait, who are they?” You’re probably thinking the same thing. I saw Joshua Radin a couple years back on the Hotel Cafe tour and Schuyler Fisk is his ladyfriend (also a singer/actress). It’s a good thing Paris Hilton’s in jail. My stomach would’ve fallen out of my butt if I ran into her at Pinkberry.

Before I dropped off Pammie in the OC after the show, we stopped by Diddy Riese in Westwood for cookies (as if I didn’t eat enough unhealthy food that weekend). As I drove home from LA, I sighed at each and every Pinkberry-less mile.

We went to my aunt’s viewing yesterday. These last few months, she had gotten so sick and so pale… but yesterday she looked SO beautiful. Chel said she was going to do her make-up, because she didn’t want them to pull some crazy shit on her face like they tend to do at the make-up counters in department stores… They did a damn good job, though. I’m glad, too, because I wouldn’t be able to put make-up on my mother for her viewing… Chel has too much to deal with right now to have to do something like that. My aunt was LOVED. There were sooo many people there… I’m not the most religious person in the world, so I usually skip out on the rosary, but I needed to be there. I was crying half the time, because Chel said a few words before the rosary that were so upsetting. She was crying while she was up there, so it just made whatever she was saying ten times sadder. I hate to see your family in so much pain, Chel. I know I keep saying this, but let me reiterate that THE GIRLS are here for anything you need…

I started spring semester today. I have three classes today with half an hour to an hour between each class… SUCKIES. What sucks even MORE is that I got out early from my first class, because the first day is usually just SYLLABUS day, so I have a few hours between my classes now… I don’t really want to go anywhere, because I just have to come back here anyway. Lame!