Another day skipped

I skipped another blog entry yesterday. This is not good.

Saturday night I went to QQ with Dave and Jose. The food was good but I think they tend to put sugar on most of the dishes. Even the green onion pancake was slightly sweetened. The standout dish for me was the v. beef noodle. The flavor was almost like the meat version.

Yesterday I woke up before 10 and decided to go to the gym without breakfast. It still took me a good 40 min to get out of the apartment. Surprisingly I wasn't feeling hungry or exhausted during or after working out. I even went to Ralph's to get groceries for the week before heading back home. PK called and suggested we could hang out later in the evening. I looked at the movie listings and chatted with Jen about what to see. In the end PK agreed to The Orphanage, since I already saw Jumper with Sylvia on Saturday.

He came by early, so we watched a little bit of television. Velvet Goldmine was on and we saw the last 20 minutes before leaving. I took him to Vietnam Restaurant, which Cam and I went to the week before. We got a meatball fold-into-whatever-you-want-roll appetizer (sorry I forgot the name) to start. Fun times with separating rice papers! PK ordered this charbroiled pork with spring roll and broken rice dish, which he liked but couldn't finish. And I got a shrimp paste with charbroiled pork and spring roll vermicelli bowl. I emptied it satisfyingly. Every dish we had on the table was delicious. PK also got himself a coffee drink. He never tried it Vietnamese style before. I joked that he needed to make more real Asian friends.

Our theater, Regency Academy, was a bargain theater. $3 per ticket! How was that possible? Outrageous! It was very cold outside, so we just got inside to wait. There wasn't a lot of people coming in, about 20+ of us by the time the movie started. Because the theater seats were built and arranged strangely, picking a good place for viewing was important. I liked where we sat. We were right behind the stair entrance, so we were almost at the center mid-top viewing angle. That was a comfortable and winning location to be in.

The Orphanage is very good. It has several good scary moments. It uses almost none, if any, special effects or sound cues. The characters are well written and story is strong. It has certain elements of Pan's Labyrinth and The Others, which are the very few horror / mystery / drama that I love. The Orphanage is more stripped-down, characters are less fantastical or stylish. I did find a couple of plot points that weren't clearly explained in the movie, but overall I thought it was great.

This morning I checked the bulletin again and found the I-485 date had moved forward another 11 days. My case is still pending. I felt so upset. I had to push myself to stop thinking about it.

Then I saw this:

It made me laugh so hard. I realized laughter could make dark clouds melt, even just for a few minutes. Thanks Ben & Jimmy.