Tim's celebration dinner

I woke up before 10 this morning. I thought about going back to sleep, but decided to stay up anyway. PK called and wanted to know if I had anything planned today. Not really. I said we should do something after my working out and Ralph's.

PK came by after I was done with the gym and grocery shopping. I told him I wanted to buy new underwear and I also had Gap gift card, so off we went. The Santa Anita mall was packed. We couldn't find any parking spot. As I was leaving the parking lot, we found it was no problem to park on the outside of the mall. We were happy we finally could get into the mall.

There were a lot of sales going on and people were everywhere. I bought a pack of new underwear and a pair of boxers at Gap, and used up my gift card. We then shared a nacho at this nice sit-down Mexican restaurant in the food court. The food was decent. It was mall food, we weren't expecting too much.

We stopped by Vanille de Patisserie on the way home to get Tim a birthday cake for this evening. There was a lot of gorgeous colorfully designed cakes in their showcase. We looked at a few and picked this rectangular shaped "caramel pear vanilla" cake. PK and I then came back to my place to rest. He laughed a lot while we were watching Crank - The movie had a lot of over-the-top moments. Kind of crazy, with stylized stunts, funky camera work, and of course non-stop violence, similar to this other movie we saw called Shoot 'em Up.

Tonight we had dinner at Hong Yei again. This has become our go-to restaurant. We had sizzling beef, spicy chicken, leek with tofu skin, fish-flavor eggplant, and ma-po tofu to start. Every dish was tasty. Tim was more than satisfied and really enjoyed the food. Later I helped Dave order garlic bitter mellon and also beef pancake for Tim. We were so full. The food was exceptional, and the service was excellent. I even cleaned all the plates. Finally we had the cake that PK got. The flavor was subtle. I didn't really taste pear however. The cake was not sweet, and had a light caramel taste, with delicate pear like texture. It was a understated cake.

After finishing the cake, Tim opened his presents and seemed to like the fragrance and iPod. We left the restaurant around 9 o'clock, and PK came to 99 Ranch market with me. Every sort of fruit was more expensive here than other Asian markets. Still I found and bought some apples, and PK got more Transformers toys from the little quarter machines outside the bookstore. We came home before 10 and I helped PK load the books from my boxes to his car.

I am exhausted, but I feel very good. This has been a productive and wonderful weekend.