…makes for a great start of the week, minus the lethargy from going to bed late.

On Monday after work, a bunch of us coworkers took our colleague from Korea out to eat Ethiopian food as her send-off back home.

The spread at Cafe Colucci, beef, chicken and lamb tibs, and veggie combo

And because we are brilliant people (jk) we used a restaurant.com  gift certificate that Christine had bought for $1 awhile back to save $25 on our meal. Our bill came out to be $80 after the discount, which ended up being $10 per person (including tea and beer/wine).

After Cafe Colucci, a few of us headed over the famous Ici Ice Creamery in Elmwood for some gourmet ice cream. My sister raves about this place, and I had been wanting to go for awhile now, so it was a perfect opportunity. I ended up getting a scoop of “orange honey blossom” which actually tasted like really good green tea (jasmine tea) ice cream minus the green color. They hand-make their cones and roll them in the morning, and fill the bottom with chocolate to plug the hole (think the drumstick ice cream cones).

After ice cream (and being absolutely surprised that it was only 8pm), we made friends with the man at the liquor store down the street (he scolded Yow for never making it over to the store even though she has been living across from it for almost a year) –and initially our plan was  to have beer and watch the Olympics, but you can only get so excited watching curling, even if you have beer and think curling is interesting, so we moved on to the next best thing. “The Bachelor: The Women Tell All” and beer.

—–

Tuesday, pouring rain, but when you have tickets to a Warriors game, you gotta go! Tiff met up with me and my coworkers and caught a tshirt! Good hands woman!

The game was pretty boring until the Warriors actually decided to start playing basketball in the fourth quarter. Once again, not victorious, but at least we got a little bit of excitement.

Being in Texas this weekend for the All-star game was fun, but hey, there’s more to see in Texas than basketball. We took advantage of some downtime and decided to drive around and explore some of the other things that Texas has to offer.

That day, we drove to Arlington in the morning to scope out the parking situation at Cowboy Stadium. We had found a place online that was pretty reputable and only $30 as opposed to the $50 prepaid parking pass cost at the stadium and close to $100 if not prepaid. Even though the $30 parking was pretty great, later that day, we found parking for $20

OK, continuing on. First stop post-parking scoping was the Historic Stockyards of Fort Worth. There is no place that speaks rodeo, saloons and general stores better than the stockyards. It was once again super cold, so as much as we wanted to walk around for a longer period of time, the fact that my earlobes felt like they were going to fall off, decreased our enthusiasm for a walking tour.

Cowtown Coliseum -- like hollywood, they had rodeo stars on the sidewalk outside

REAL longhorns, not the orange logo one.

hello there buddy--cold?

We stopped for lunch at H3 Ranch. Since we're in Texas, I had to get some Texas bbq. Bbq brisket, baked bean with pork, and coleslaw. I was so hungry that I started digging in, then realized that I hadn't taken a picture yet! If your mouth hasn't already started watering, how about I tell you that the brisket was so good that it just fell apart without needing to use a knife.

We had initially driven to Fort Worth to visit the JFK museum because we thought that he was assassinated there. However, he wasn’t. We were pretty bummed that we drove all the way to Fort Worth and didn’t actually complete our mission. We didn’t have enough time to drive all the way back to Dallas before the game, so we had to postpone it.

After the game (probably around 11pm) we grabbed a bite to eat at Whataburger.

Whataburger burger I actually really liked this burger because it wasn't overly loaded with sauces like lots of fast food often is.

It was about midnight, and as we were driving back to the hotel, Steph said that she still really wanted to go see the Grassy Knoll, Tiffany and I agreed and off we went! Nothing like a midnight run to see historical places. Wikipedia entry on JFK’s assassination.

It is said that JFK was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street.

Tiff & I standing on the Grassy Knoll with Dealy Plaza behind us. Freezing our butts off.

Here’s a picture that gives you a good idea of the layout of the land.

X marks the approximate spot where he was shot.

We figured, since we had come all this way, and it was 1am, that we needed to take the opportunity to document our visit to this historical area. Please pardon our smiles, we’re just used to smiling in pictures. It definitely isn’t a smile worthy historical event.

An awesome 3-day weekend completed successfully.

 Here are pictures from the actual game at Cowboy Stadium! Please note that it was FREEZING in Dallas. I’m thinking it was probably around 30 degrees. We planned on going on this trip and bought tix about 6 months ago, but then tiff and I didn’t plan the ACTUAL trip very well. Next All-star game we are definitely going to Jam Session earlier, getting tickets to the rookie-sophomore game, and hopefully getting better seats in the arena.

Overall though, definitely a worthwhile trip with good company! Lucky for me Tiff travels a lot so she had a lot of hotel points so we got a free stay at Embassy Suites Parking in the stadium parking lot was $50 for pre-paid passes and almost double if you showed up the day of, but we were lucky enough to find nearby parking for $20 that wasn’t even that far of a walk!

On our way to the game I dropped my contact in the car and could not find it for a good 15 minutes. I was super panicked –what could be worse than going to a game and NOT being able to see it —but luckily after searching every little crevice, we found my little hard contact wedged semi-under the plastic guard by the bottom of the door. Tiff helped lift it up while I snatched the contact and it felt like someone had lifted 40 Texas Longhorns off my shoulders.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Next post will have all the other fun stuff we did in Texas

Um, it was cold

front entrance

group shot! minus Tony who's taking the picture for us.

inside view

I'm trying to find a picture that will show you just HOW GIGANTIC the jumbo screens are.

Here's another one

Here's a good one Tiff's finger

USHERRRR does the opening! Had no idea !

This was so cute! East All-stars dancing

Ur-sher dancin

This one's for you Laura! - Carmelo Anthony. Funny that his finace is named LaLa too!!

Can I just say before I post some more pictures that the West team would probably have been wayy more exciting if B.Roy, Kobe and CP3 weren’t injured.

GAME TIME! TIP!

Of course, Diddy was there.

Oh, remember how I said it was like a triple concert? Shakira performed at the half.

Followed by the one and only Alicia Keys --her boo Swiss Beats was there too, sitting next to Spike Lee

Teammate shot! 8 years we played together!

How many people were at the game? Broke a record for # of people at a basketball game!

Announcing the MVP

DWADE!!

Final Group shot! Minus Steph who is taking the picture

So, at the beginning of the year I did a post about my resolutions for the year. I must say, I’m doing a little better on the seeing 3D people bit, but haven’t really gotten a good jump start on it because in 2010 I have already made trips to:

1) Israel (January for a week)

2) Taiwan (end of Jan – beginning of Feb –2 weeks)

3) Dallas (this past weekend)

—soo, lets just say we’ve had 6 weekends so far, I’ve been gone for um, 4, of them.

So, the whole “more 3d friends, less 2d friends” comes from a conversation between my good friends Mariko and Alana during winter break freshman season of basketball in college. Because basketball season is in the winter, those of us on the team would come back to an empty campus (besides the guys team and the swimmers) and have two-a-day practices. This meant our daily regimen consisted of wake-up, bball practice, shower, eat, watch a movie/take a nap, get up, bball practice, shower, eat, watch more movies/tv shows, go to bed. Repeat.

One day during winter break, it was almost time for practice, Mariko walked into Alana’s room found her refusing to leave her desk because she was watching episode after episode of Sex and the City and said to her “Um, it’s time to go see your 3d friends” and voila! A new phrase was coined.

Sadly, I haven’t seen my dear friend Alana, since we graduated in 2007. What’s super cool about our friendship is

1) We have the same birthday Feb. 8th (except for shes 1985, and I’m 1986)

2) We both play point guard.

When I went to visit the East Coast last year in October, she was on a business trip so I didn’t get to see her. I was hoping to see her this weekend in Dallas at the Allstar Game since she was working it, but sadly, this is the only way I got to see her, through my binoculars (no, the picture wasn’t taken from binoculars, but from a camera…but I did rent some binocs..for the purpose for finding Alana. )

Can you find her?? Look at where it says Spalding BOOYA, best seat in the house.

Oh Alana, how I miss thee. We shall meet again soon. BIG VIRTUAL HUG. Time for you to move to the West Coast and bring Reagan!

Don’t worry, I told her that I was stalking her from our nosebleed cheap seats which we got at one heck of a good price.

So, I got back from Taiwan on Sunday afternoon, watched the very beginning and very end of the Super Bowl (guess what happened in between) and went to work on Monday, my birthday. Needless to say, I didn’t really think of anything to do to celebrate my birthday (I loved/appreciated all the birthday wishes on Facebook, texts, emails, etc.) . So, around 3pm, I was browsing craigslist and remembered that there was a Warriors game!! Hooray, and found $15 lower level seats. Man, were those great seats. Dirk, Jason Kidd, Monta Ellis, Jason Terry. Oh yea, and Mark Cuban was there too, yuck.

Haha, the fan photographer asked us if we wanted a picture, and we were like "for what?" haha and he said "Don't worry, there's no cost" ---so hey! Why not!

Thanks Yow for going to the game with meeee!

牛肉麵 － beef noodle soup and small vegetable plates

Let's say "Christine FAILED" --look at the two empty bowls and then look at hers

Duck noodle soup, wonton soup, and bbq pork lo mien

Yup, all gone as well. Thumbs up

Mimi and I had dumplings for lunch today. We had 20 dumplings and two cups of soybean drink for 130NT, which equals about 5 dollars. How absolutely ridiculous is that.

I was also able to see my grandparents and my aunt from my dad’s side for the first time in 5 years I was so happy to see them and get to talk to them. My aunt and my grandma met me after work and we had Japanese food in the SOGO close to where I was working. Then we headed home where my grandpa was waiting All in all a great night, except that I think that I’m getting sick…..traveling may be getting to me, but definitely won’t be slowing down my eating that’s for sure.

Maybe I’ll feel less guilty about gaining weight if i just say that my goal is to gain 10 lbs in two weeks. Then, when it actually happens, I can say SUCCESS!