Hanging out | Hip to be Mom

Case of the errant camera cap

Mar 112011

So it seems we’re losing stuff again. First, it was Steev’s iPhone in Monterey, now our camera cap! It was at Coffee Bean (after our lunch at Chili’s) that Raine fished out her camera for the second time to find it sans cap. Duh!

When we couldn’t find it under our table, we imagined it might’ve rolled off under other tables. Ever tried peering.. um, discreetly, in a mesh of legs under the darkness of Coffee Bean’s modern coffee tables for a perfectly camouflaged camera cap? Well, it was embarrassing and yup, a little like a scene right out of a comedy.

Nope, not there!

So we trudged all the way back to Chili’s thinking we might’ve left it there. There was a young couple in the booth where we sat earlier and I had to pounce on them and break up their whispers of sweet nothings to peer into the dark corners of the booth.

Nope, not there either!

So I asked one of the servers if they might’ve seen it while clearing our table. In response, he sent an entire crew over, armed with a giant torchlight and one of the staff proceeded to get on the floor to scour the area under the booth.

The young couple was trapped in their seats, lamely shifting their legs about to avoid the wrath of that giant torchlight. And there I was, apologizing profusely to them for invading their privacy for the second time in 2 minutes!!

Still the search turned up nothing, nada, zilch!!

So we trooped back down to Coffee Bean where Skye was waiting for us. Resolved to never seeing our camera cap again, we decided to snap a couple more pictures before heading home. As Skye was moving closer to Raine, something went… clack!

Ack, the welcome sound of our errant camera cap dropping from Skye’s shorts onto the floor! No way! It sure wasn’t there when we were scampering around under the tables earlier. How could that be?

A love letter, a man (who is really a woman) and a date with a hunk

Posted by Clairity 3 Responses »

Mar 072011

Don’t ask me what I did this weekend. It went so fast I didn’t have a chance to see where it went. Not that we did very much, mind you. Just lunch and a grocery run on Saturday afternoon and a couple of late movie nights. Very late by our standards! 1:00am, to be exact, two nights in a row!

Here are the 3 movies me and my girls watched.

1. Letters to Juliet which I really like for its schoolgirlishly romantic plot. If I’d written a book in my teens (wish I had!), this is exactly the kind of story line I would’ve come up with. It’s about a writer wannabe who inadvertently finds herself helping a lady find the love of her life after 50 years.

2. Win A Date With Tad Hamilton which is about a small town girl who wins a dinner date with a big movie star. Well, if I ever won a date with Paul Walker, I’d be a lot more light-headed than her . Chances are pretty slim but still a girl can dream, can’t she?

3. She’s the Man which is a really fun movie about a girl who pretends to be a guy to get into an all-boys soccer team. Hilarious! It reminded me of the time when my family was moving to the big city, I almost ended up in an all-boys’ high school so yeah, I can so see how it could’ve turned into one big laugh.

By now, you’re probably seeing a trend here. All 3 movies are charming in their own way. I loved them all, went to bed with a big smile on my face and slept right through my alarm.

Okay, now let me explain why my alarm clock was going off on the weekend. My phone is set to go off at 6:00am on weekdays, and 7:30am on weekends… no particular reason except that I hate getting to the grocery store late and not finding a parking spot.

I really should learn to relax and kick back . But how? More movies? Any good romantic comedies you’d care to recommend?

Sit, sip and giggle

Posted by Clairity 7 Responses »

Feb 152011

After lunch this afternoon, the girls and I wound up at Coffee Bean sipping an iced lemonade and a large ice-blended hazelnut coffee between us. These days, we don’t even have to make much of an effort at a girls’ day out. Since Steev left for college in Cal, it’s been just us girls.

We don’t do coffee very often. Living in the city, we’re always rushing to get some place – from school to extracurricular activities, from the gas station to the grocery store, it’s never-ending.

So this being able to sit back, sip a nice cold drink and watch the world go by is really nice. And quite frankly, there is so much to see and hear, and laugh and joke about. We really should do this more often.

Lost but all is not lost

Posted by clairity 9 Responses »

Feb 082011

I heard that someone at the gym lost her cell phone the other day. She’d left it in one of the pigeon holes and gone home, only to realize oops! She called the gym immediately and was told it wasn’t there any more. Gone. for. good!

Steev lost his iPhone while he, me and the girls were peddling a rickshaw (like crazy, I might add, it was such great fun!) along this busy beach front in Monterey.

Have you ever lost your cell phone? Can you imagine losing all your contacts and personal settings? OMG, such a big headache!

We split up and backtracked, tracing our steps back along the entire length of the beach front but we might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack.

Finally, Steev decided to call his own number hoping its ringing would lead us to it. Instead a guy answered and said he had the phone and that he would wait for Steev to meet him along that same stretch of beach. What a dear soul!

So Steev got his phone back. Quite effortlessly, I might add, though we were really doubtful at first. It was a happy ending, one that we didn’t even dare to hope for.

In most cases, chances are if you lose your cell phone, you will never see it again. And you can only hope and pray that whoever’s got it isn’t using it to call the rest of this planet and beyond before you can make a report and get your number deactivated. Peace!

Clams, cousins and cookies

Posted by Clairity 2 Responses »

Feb 042011

Time for a random post simply because this Chinese New Year is so quiet I can hear a pin drop. No doubt, it’s because we miss Steev. No one has officially voiced it out but I think we all feel it . Skyping with him every day before and after his classes helps but it’s not the same.

To kill the boredom, the girls and I had 4 movie nights in a row. We watched both parts of “National Treasure” which had us on the edge of our seats. And we watched “The Losers” again because we like Jensen and his elevator song , and “Eclipse” for the first time which, if nothing else, was good for a few laughs.

We scaled down our reunion dinner partly because Raine and I have been working out so hard at the gym we didn’t want to pile those nasty calories right back on. So a very simple meal it was – takeout fried chicken (mm, so fattening!) and chicken curry, and 2 homemade dishes of stirfried Pacific clams with shiitake mushrooms and fish maw, and stirfried broccoli with ginger.

We haven’t visited anyone but my Dad stopped by as did one of my cousins and her family. Her husband is one of my favorite relatives simply for the fact that he does his own thang and could care less about the family politics and what the herd does.

Random quote from him this time: I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t have an iPad. I don’t have an iAnything. And I’m not on Facebook because I don’t have any friends.

Priceless! Now there’s a man I respect! He took the words right out of my mouth!

On an even more random note, Skye and I are missing these Danish cookies (and I’m not even a big cookie person!). I bought two 4-pound boxes of these at Costco and we finished one-and-a-half boxes while we were traveling up and down the coast, and left the rest for Steev and his Roomie. Heard the cookies are almost gone now .

Girls’ day out with my youngest

Posted by Clairity 5 Responses »

Nov 202010

Skye and I went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving this morning. Just the two of us. Raine is cramming for her big exam so we left her at home with a bit of quiet study time. Looks like this will be the first of a good many girls’ days out for Skye and me in the coming weeks while Raine hits the books. Yay!

For Thanksgiving next week, I’m going to roast a large chicken and potatoes, and put together a simple salad. Steev will be celebrating Thanksgiving with his roommate and his parents in California. So without our big eater, we’re just going to cook something simple here.

We set out armed with a long list of ingredients to buy and as usual, we still managed to miss out some items. Sigh! But never mind, that means we get to go out again tomorrow . The perfect excuse for another girls’ day out!

And since Tyson, our playful little beagle, has chewed up practically everything within his reach including his collar, Skye has been wanting to buy him a new one and a few new toys as well. I don’t think he deserves them but she is intent on spoiling him. That’s Skye, our pet lover! No wonder Tyson is crazy about her !