Love In The Asylum

Last night I dreamed all my teeth were falling out. I've heard it's a pretty common recurring dream, but I've never had one like it, and it was really unsettling. I woke up in the middle of the night and had to lie there for a couple minutes checking all my teeth to make sure none of them were wobbly. Why couldn't I just have the dream about Iker Casillas starring in a porn film again? I liked that one.

Aside from disturbing dental dreams, it's actually been a pretty fun couple of days! I dragged hanjuuluver and diamminesilver over to the house so I could bake honey-orange scones for them - and managed to freak out Roommate Guy twice, the first because he wasn't expected to come out to make lunch and find a kitchen full of college girls and the second because baking the scones set off the smoke detectors. Oops. To make it up to him I left him some extra scones after we left for the mall. The mall was typically mall-like, but I did buy an endearingly odd pair of earrings made of sushi, and only barely got talked out of buying rainbow-colored knee-high argyle socks.

I highly recommend Despicable Me if you are the type of person who likes a) tiny girls having adventures and finding/making family bonds, b) stories about inept supervillains and c) adorable minions. I like all of the above! Especially the minions, which looked like corndogs with eyes. We spotted at least one Doctor Horrible reference, and I was thoroughly charmed. Not in the same category as something like Up, but still enjoyable and sweet and very fun.

My mom and the boyfriend have been working a huge landscaping job all week - 6+ hours a day outside in 100 degree heat hauling literal tons of rock - so they were pretty dead by the time hanjuluuver dropped me off at the apartment. I picked up dinner for myself and we just sort of hung out and played dice games to the sound of Law & Order. But today we went to lunch. Technically my birthday lunch - my mom wanted to get it out of the way because next week is going to be pretty hectic. We found a new Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Albuquerque that we both wanted to try, and boyfriend's grumbling aside, it was really good. I was jealous of my mom's udon, it looked amazing, but the pepper beef was great. Om nom nom.

And now I am home and have a whole long evening free with nothing to do except watch ridiculous J-dramas and play computer games. :)

Oh man, I would kill for some sopaipillas right now. All hot and fresh right out of the oil, crisp and puffy and drizzled with sweet honey, that would be the greatest thing ever. But the ones here in California are mostly rubbish. D: I've have to get my dad to let me make some when I get home. And maybe some tortillas, since he's got my tortilla press and I know my grandma gave him a big bag of masa. And some carne adovada, god.

...I need to stop reading Wikipedia food articles when I'm hungry.

Oh man, my dad and I just came from the most amazing Thai place in Albuquerque. SO GOOD OM NOM NOM. We had these great fried dumplings, and then he had the Tom Yum, which was fabulous and delicious and full of shrimp and squid and awesome (he shared), and I had the Moo Tod, which I've never tried before - it's fried pork with the most incredible spicy peanut sauce. I was totally in heaven. I love finding this kind of tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurant, it always feels like such an adventure.

It was almost enough to take away from how exasperating today was. I've been trying really hard to get the summer job thing taken care of while I'm home, but I am...not making headway. Really really not. The people at the Bernalillo library just kept jerking me around and not telling me anything until I finally gave up. So I went to the Rio Rancho library instead, which is not nearly as convenient but at least I know people there? And after going in circles for two hours, getting told by every person I talked to that I needed to talk to someone else, I finally nailed down that I needed to talk to someone who is on vacation for another week. *rolls eyes*

But I refuse to let it bother me. So: things that were good about the last couple days. Tiny cousins! My aunt came over to my mom's yesterday before I left and brought Robbie, my cousin's kid, and he is absolutely the cutest thing ever. Even if it's still weird that my cousin has a kid, since he's only a year older than me. Still adorable! He's two, and he looks just like the old pictures of my cousin. We took him around and showed him all the horses, and he was so excited. *hearts*  I've also got to see my new baby cousin, my uncle's kid, while I've been here, and CD's an utter sweetheart, and not nearly as spoiled as my mom led me to expect. It's so sweet to see him with my grandpa and grandma. So that was awesome.

Also awesome: books! I've been going through a lot of boxes with my mom, stuff that's been in storage since we moved out of the house three years ago, and it's kind of terribly fun to see all this stuff again. A lot of it I'm getting rid of - I have way too many books I've never read or will never read again and just don't need to keep around, not to mention all the other random junk - but I've brought five boxes back to my dad's already. Right now I'm rereading Anne of Green Gables, which I found in one of the boxes. It's such a fond part of my childhood, I couldn't resist.

And hopefully tomorrow will be a good last day here before I head back to California.

God, I need to stop going to food_porn (not what you think!) in the middle of the night - it always, always leaves me starving and craving the weirdest things. Right now, for example, I would kill for tamales, mac and cheese, and some fair food (deep-fried oreos ftw). The middle one is not a problem - I can get my mom to make mac and cheese if I ever talk to her again - but the fair isn't for months, and even then I may be in California already, I don't know. And the tamales...well, I live in /New Mexico/, so you'd think getting Mexican food items wouldn't be a problem, right? But no. I don't like Mexican style tamales at all. I grew up on my grandma's Gautemalan style tamales, and they are quite different - pork ribs rather than shredded pork, olives and capers to pick out, and a kind of thicker, spicy mole. So vastly superior! So does anyone know where I can get tamales like that? Because otherwise I'm stuck waiting until Christmas to get my tamale fix DDDDDX.

ETA: The State Fair opens on Sept 5th. I AM SO THERE. (hey, it's not like I make a /habit/ of eating deep-fried lard, okay? It's strictly a fair thing. Plus, cute animals! Random art! Other fair-type stuff!)