Here's something to be proud of...

So a few weeks ago, I took my first Business Writing exam ever and it was an direct memo. I honestly didn't know what I was getting myself into. I walked out of the class that day not thinking about how well or horrible I did... I could careless. I expected at least a C. I mean, I always expect to get a C... expect low and receive high outcomes...haha, even though it should be the other way around. Anyway, so at the next class session, she announced to the class that that exam was to qualify for a contest. Anybody who received an 87.5% or higher can revise their paper and turn it in to enter the contest. I got an 87.5%! There were only five other people that got 87.5% or higher. Holy cow! So I was like cool dude. I revised my paper... once again, didn't really put a lot of time into it because I didn't expect to win. I just thought what the heck, it's worth a shot, if I win, cool, if not, whatevahhs.

Well, well, well... a couple of weeks flew by. Came in class, sat down. Teacher made an announcement... "Congrats to Ly Bo! Her paper was the best one out of the class... blah blah blah." She didn't pronounce my name correctly... she actually said "Lie Bo" I'm like who the hell is Lie Bo... Gosh I hate it when people mispronounce my name. Like I'm pretty much an adverb! You don't pronounce "slowly" as "slowlie" do you? You don't pronounce "badly" as "badlie" DO YOU?! NO! Of course not! Sigh.. people. Anyway, so I was totally in shocked. Like I said, I totally did not expected to win. My paper was the best out of 37 classmates. WOW! I could not focus the rest of class. I mean, I never focus in this class anyway, but still, I was way more out of it this time. So basically I got through the first round. Now my paper is going to compete against like 15 other people. First place gets $250, 2nd gets $200, 3rd ends up with $100. If I place, I'll go through the "third round," which is a scholarship for $1000. Man, that's money in the banks! Let's see how things will unravel. It would be really cool if I win, if not that's cool too I guess. But let's expect for the worst. Alright, t'is all.

Peace love and rocket ships.. ?

The Pioneer Woman Cooks!

Have y'all ever heard about the Pioneer Woman?! No? Well I am about to enlighten your life!!! You will definitely make your wife, husband, gf, bf, bff, friends, mother, father, children (anybody you can think of that you love enough to cook for), extremely happy and love you even more after checking out this website!

So like I said in one of my earlier entries, I have been cooking, A LOT! I have recently opened my domestic skills to new and different recipes. I try to go out of my comfort zone to whip up something unique when I do cook but most of the time, I stick with pasta. I LOVE PASTA. I live and breathe pasta... haha. Check my pantry and you will find lots of different types of pasta. Penne, linguine, spaghetti, fettucini, tortelloni, farfalle, conchigliette, etc. Anyway, the face behind Pioneer Woman is Ree Drummond,  a real life desperate housewife and is a mother of four. So why do I like her recipes so much? Why do I think she is the best of the best?! Here's a list of reasons:

• She has pictures, tons and tons of pictures (I am definitely a visual learner)! Providing detailed step by step pictures for all of her recipes. I have never found a site like this! The best part is, she has a cast photo of all of her ingredients at the beginning of most of her recipes. 
• Not only does she have pictures, but they are quality pictures! Trust me, I tried imitating her pictures...they all look like crap through my point and shoot. hehe.
• She has a variety of recipes. Not only does she provide healthy recipes, but also the most unhealthy recipes. 
• She adds wine to almost everything.... I LOVE WINE.
• She is so funny. I feel like she should totally get her own cooking show! She has a great personality and it totally shows in her writing.
• Her website is very easy to navigate.
• You can print out 3x5, 4x6, or full page recipe cards! So convenient!
• There are so much more that I cannot think of right at this moment because I am writing on my break between classes! 

So here are some of the delicious meals that I have made by using Ree's recipes (Click the names to get the full recipe!):

• Penne a la Betsy (I added my own spin to this by adding scallops and imitation crab, it was a huge hit!!!)

• Caprese Salad (except I used grape tomatoes and mozzarella balls, they're so much more fun to eat!)

• Spicy spinach stuffed mushrooms (minus the spicy part, since I'm not a big spicy food fan)

• Pasta with whiskey, wine, and mushrooms (I didn't have whiskey, so I used extra wine. I also added chicken!)

• Creamy Chicken Spaghetti Casserole (This is sooooooo good! You can totally eat it w/o baking it)

• Ginger Steak Salad (So... I didn't make the salad with this recipe, I only wanted the steak. I made this twice in one week because it was just so amazing! I threw a dinner party and served the ginger steak, it was a huge hit too!)

• Steak Bites (This is possibly the most unhealthiest thing I have ever made. But it is just so satisfying! It's best for one of those days...you know when you just feel like extremely useless, bored, tired... whatevahs. I served this with garlic mashed potatoes & grilled asparagus)

So those are the few meals I have cooked. I keep on telling myself that I'm going to be a great wife/mom some day. I am still going to marry a chef though! Anyway, check out her website, she is amazing!!! Oh,  btw, she does more than just cook...check her out @ www.thepioneerwoman.com


Let me just say you are welcome!

Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo is the biggest event that my sorority put on annually. We usually raise the most money for our philanthropy, Breast Cancer Education and Awareness, at this event. As you can guess, Monte Carlo is casino themed. There's gambling (for play money of course), some cocktail food, raffles (aka "opportunity drawings"), auction, etc. This year, Monte Carlo was held at our school's TSU in the Pavilions. Over 300 people attended the event. We raised a lot of money for our philanthropy. Here are some pictures...

This is our silent auction table, it was filled with wicked stuff! Like VIP tickets to the Lakers game.

This is our casino area (bad quality pic, I know, my camera is horrible!).

My sisters Caitlyn & Kirstyann

My sisters Melanie & Camryn

My favorite Asian among the few in my sorority, Clarissa. 

A few alumnas of ZTA

My grandbig and I

Jenny & Devon with our letters

What a lovely table centerpiece!

This is our Growing Survivors tree where our guests can make a donation or write their survivor name on a pink ribbon to put on the tree. It was really neat to see it growing throughout the night.

The raffle girls

Mammoth

I apologize for the such a late update on this Mammoth post. I had Greek Week and Monte Carlo to keep me busy all week long. More on that in future entries... hopefully those will be up soon!

I went to Mammoth with my friend Amy and her family. Actually, we didn't even snowboard nor stayed in Mammoth. We snowboarded at June mountain and stayed in June's little nonexistence town. I have never even heard of June therefore I refer to this trip as "Mammoth." June is just a half hour away from Mammoth. Hence, this trip is called MAMMOTH. It's not like we didn't go to Mammoth at all, we actually went and got a mini tour of Mammoth from Amy's dad on our last day. So technically, I did go to Mammoth. Hehe.

I never knew Mammoth/June was so far away from Fullerton. I have always thought it was like an hour and a half away, two max. But no, it took us 6 hours with an hour dinner break, a few gas stops and bathroom breaks. Holy crap, it was like driving to Stockton. Except it seemed so much longer. We didn't get there until about 9p.m. I slept most of the way, I was lucky enough to get the whole back seat of the SUV to myself. We pulled up to our cabin and unloaded the stuff. I showered and went to bed since we had to get up really early the next day. I woke up to the smell of pancakes. Of course it took me like an hour to get ready, so I didn't get to have any pancakes. Amy brought me a bowl of cereal for breakfast, didn't get to finish that either. Eventually, I was all geared up and ready to go! Before we left Fullerton, I went out to invest in a few things. I left all of my snowboard gear back in NorCal, so I had to get new pants. It's almost towards the end of the season, so a lot of things were on sale. I found these hot pink snowboard pants for $40 in youth... IN YOUTH! Everything is so much cheaper in youth. I'm very blessed to be a tiny girl to fit in youth pants! Then I got some black under armour. I was planning on renting boots at June but boots were on sale here, so I decided to finally invest in boots. I got these white/mint green Lamar snowboarding boots for $40 also. What a steal! They're so cute. I didn't have to worry about snowboards or bindings because Amy had some extra boards for me. Phew, less I have to pay for. I'm probably going to invest in a board soon, maybe at the end of the season when everything goes on sale. So ya, all geared up!

It's funny because pink is not our color at all. I actually don't prefer pink and Amy absolutely hate pink. It's a good color to snowboard in though, easily to spot. We were the only ones wearing pink that day. We were REALLY easy to spot. Haha. We bought our lift tickets at Costco so it was a lot cheaper. $50. That isn't bad at all. A lift ticket for Mammoth would've cost us $95. Insanely expensive. That's a part of the reason why we didn't snowboard at Mammoth. Anyway, got there right when it opened at 8a.m. People weren't there yet so we got the whole mountain to ourselves.

The weather was pretty much perfect. High in the 50s. We didn't need to wear our jackets after about 2 runs. Amy and I did a total of 15 runs. That's the most I've ever done in one day. I tried to do jumps for the first time ever. It was so thrilling! I don't even know where I got the courage to do so. I fell numerous of times but also landed a few. Amy recorded a video of me where I ate it. All you can see is my board in the air. haha, but man, that jump was probably the craziest. I flew so high, falling didn't even faze me (gosh I sound so hood saying that). I also tried to learn carving. At one time, I hit my head so hard that my goggles and beanie came off. Still, I kept trying like a champ! I can go down the mountain and heel perfectly. The only thing left to be mastered is carving. Hopefully I can get that down soon! We went all day from 8a.m.-4p.m. with an hour of lunch break. That was probably one of the best trips I have ever done. I really liked June. Though the slopes were machine groomed, it was close to perfect. After that we went and got ice cream (that goes to show how perfect the weather was). Then Amy's dad made a spaghetti/weenie dog dinner. 

The next morning, we packed up and left the cabin. Some decided to snowboard Mammoth mountains, we on the other hand decided to have a snow day. We built a snowman and went sledding. It was the first snowman I've ever built! It was as tall as Amy. I accessorized it with my scarf and beanie. The guys put boobs on it. So we named it Maud Jones (a founder of ZTA). haha, so inappropriate. Here she is... 

Then we left. On the way home, we stopped at a few places. 1) Mammoth. 2) Convict Lake (it was a camp ground in the middle of nowhere. There's a lake there that was formed by melted glaciers).

We also stopped in this fish place and fed some trouts and this lava sand place (it was pretty cool).

It was a great little vacation. I needed it bad. Then it was back to sunny Southern California. Back to 80 degrees weather in the middle of winter. I miss the snow. Anyway, so that was it. I had a great time!

Sneak Peak of Mammoth Trip

One More Disney Day!

I am proud to say that I am among the thousands that attended "One More Disney Day." You're probably wondering what the hell that is. Well, for the first time ever, Disneyland Park (California) and Magic Kingdom Park (Florida) opened for 24 hours on leap day. The parks opened on February 29, 2012 at 6:00 a.m. and closed at 6:00 a.m. on March 1, 2012. It didn't seem like a big deal to me. The reason I wanted to go was because my Disneyland pass was going to expire soon. So I figured why not! Little did I know, everybody and their mother was going! Rachel picked me up at my apartment at about 11:00p.m. Traffic was ridiculous! I was not prepared for it at all. We made a wrong turn but luckily it lead us to the  Downtown Disney, Chip N' Dale parking lot. We found parking right away. All of which took us about 45 minutes including being stuck in traffic. Normally, it would only take me 15 minutes to get to Disneyland from my apartment. Meanwhile, our other friends were still stuck in traffic, it took them 2 hours+ to get to the parking structure. Anyway, we boarded the tram and it took us to the park. Holy crap, the line for security was insanely long compared to the usual line. We finally got through that... then we saw this....

 

A sea of people were standing outside of the entrance. The park have reached capacity and they closed all of the gates. I have never seen this before. Rachel and I ran into some other ZTAs and we joined forces. Of course we did not get in the back of the line. We somehow cut so many people. Rumors were spreading throughout the crowd. "The cast of Modern Family is here!!!" "Holly Madison and Leonardo DiCaprio are here!!!" "I saw Shaun White!" "They're never going to open the gates!" "It will be hours til they let us all in." Whether they were true or not... I have no clue. Eventually the cast members opened the gates. Everybody cheered, screamed, and yelled. People were pushing and shoving just to get through. The moment of crossing that gate, holy crap... It was so magical (a total Disney saying, hehe). I pulled up my Disney wait time app on my phone. The shortest line was for my all time favorite ride, It's A Small World! 10 minutes wait time. We headed there right away. Something about being at Disneyland at midnight was just so incredible. It was like GradNight all over again. Here's a picture of the inside of It's A Small World...

After that, we waited in line for The Haunted Mansion ride. The wait was like an hour long. After that ride Rachel and I departed from the rest of the crew. They wanted to head home, so we stuck around. The wait line for all of the rides I wanted to go on was 100+ minutes long. Rachel and I walked around celeb hunt/ trying to keep ourselves warm. Oh my god, at 4:00a.m., it was freezing!!! I couldn't hang no longer. So we decided to go to City Hall and pick up a "One More Day of Disney" badge. We got there and they told us they ran out. I was devastated! 

Then this nice lady was like "You can have mine."

I wanted to say "OMG! THANK YOU SO MUCH!" right away, but that didn't feel right. 

So I pretended to control my excitement. "Oh no, I can't take that from you, there's no way." 

She said "I have been renewing my Disney pass for the past 14 years, honestly, take it."

I said "Thank you so much, it really means a lot to me because my pass is going to expire in like 6 days."

So she gave it to me, and we took a picture together. Gosh, what a saint! Here she is.... 

If y'all see her around, do something nice for her, or simply just say hello. Even a smile will do. =)

After that, we waited for like 30 minutes for the tram to take us to our car. I got home and KTFO. 

I woke up the next morning at 11:30a.m. I missed my 8A.M. class... and was 2 hrs and a half late to work. I was so afraid to call my boss. So I text her a long text saying how disappointed I am of myself and gave her the excuse that I have just been studying so hard lately... She responded and said it's okay, it happens. OMG, I felt so guilty, actually I still do. Let's just hope she will never ever ever discover this blog of mine.

Well, it was a pretty neat experience. How many people can say they attended Disney leap day?! Just thousands out of 6 billion+ people... that's not so bad. Maybe it'll happen again in 4 more years? Hopefully!