I Brake For Lush

Yesterday was a good day. I went to the Pacific Ocean Marketplace (closest and biggest Asian market in the North Denver Area) and did some grocery shopping.



(I really need to incorporate my Japanese studying more into my daily life so I can learn it better, so feel free to ignore the hiragana (ひらがな) characters in parentheses. It's possible that they aren't entirely correct, anyway.)

Starting on the far left and then going in a bit of a z-like line: Furikake (ふりかけ), seasoned seaweed paste (which sounds unappetizing but is quite good as an onigiri (おにぎり) filling), aloe drink (tasty enough), sushi (すし) vinegar, almond crunch pocky, mochiko (もちこ) rice flour, bubble gum assortment, enoki (えのき) mushrooms, baby eggplants, tofu (とふ), ginger candy, grape tomatoes, snap peas, bean thread, yakisoba (やきそば), green tea and red bean paste daifuku (だいふく), gyoza (ぎょうざ) wrappers, quail eggs, miso (みそ) soup, pretty spoon, soup flavoring.


Closeup of my pretty soup spoon which should match the new bento bowl set I bought on JList.

I found a blog that posted about how easy it was to make daifuku and really daifuku is incredibly cute so it's perfect for bento (ぼんと) so I bought the mochiko to use for that. I also bought the pre-made daifuku hoping that I would like it more this time. But I didn't. I'm terribly disappointed in that too - should pretty food taste great? I don't know if it's the filling that I don't like from the premade daifuku, so I'm going to try to make the mochi (もち) dough myself and then put raspberries or strawberry filling of some sort inside and hope that I like that better.

I bought some eggs to try to make tamagoyaki (たまごやき) which is a Japanese rolled omelet. It's pretty useful and perfectly suited to bento, so I figured I'd give it a shot. It turned out darker than most tamagoyaki, but I think I like it that way. It was tasty and I think it will go very well in my bentos.


I was home from work so I didn't have to prepare my bento lunch in a box before eating it. I like arranging food on a plate too - it's very satisfying.

Avocado slices, grape tomatoes, green tea daifuku, tamagoyaki, leftover Hawaiian teriyaki (てりやき) tofu rice bowl from Rumbi Island Grill.

I messed around online, put up some books I found at the thrift store on Swaptree then got ready to meet Kyle. I stopped on the way to get my passport photos taken at Walgreens. Not happy with how they turned out at all. My face has cleared up considerably in the past few weeks and I was thinking it looked great and pretty and so I thought it'd be a great day for the passport photos. Except they just use a stupid digital camera with bright flash and then print them. So the flash made my (shiny, oily skin) super white so all my blemishes, even if they were slowly disappearing, turned out very red. I'm contemplating getting another set taken at the Postnet I have my private mailbox at. They at least have an official sort of passport camera set up. I don't know if I want to spend an extra ten bucks on it though. It's just a passport photo. Like any ID, it's supposed to be crappy, right?

Once I got to Kyle's we gathered up the rest of the materials for The Great Brake Job of '09. It didn't go quite as quickly as planned, but Kyle did a fantastic job and my brakes are grind-less and fantastic. I didn't even want to turn the radio on while driving today just so I could revel in their silence. (Eventually I did turn the music on because as fantastic as it is, it's still just silence.)

By the time I got to his house Thursday it was getting dark and cold already so we decided to just do them Friday afternoon since I didn't have to work and could get to his house earlier than normal. We went and bought new rotors too because really, the driver side one on my car was being shredded to hell.



Penny waiting for her check up.



The front brake. See how the rotor is not really shiny at all? Bad times.



Passenger side rotor - very shiny! This will be replaced too, though, just because it's good to do them both at the same time to prevent uneven wear. (So I am told by a trustworthy fellow.)



He changed my oil too, which desperately needed it. So gross, but not too sludgey so that's good.



The reason for the wear on the rotor and the grinding - there was no pad left! No idea how it happened, but we suspect a foreign object of some sort to be the initial cause.

When the whole thing was done, it was too late to go up to Boulder and go to Lush and the Cheesecake Factory. We went to Three Margaritas just down the way instead. It wasn't very good food but when you've planned for the Cheesecake Factory, nothing really compares.

Today I slept in. A lot. I didn't intend on sleeping for almost 12 hours, but I did. It was nice, though. I finally woke up because I was hungry and had to pee. I got up, dilly dallied on the 'net, played with my new DS game that I got from Swaptree (Margot's Word Brain - it's not very good) and then Kyle and I made plans to have lunch together. We ate at Little Ollie's which he's had before because it's really close to the gardens and he wanted to take me there because of their tofu presentation.



I was impressed with that and liked the way the sesame (せさめ) seeds coated each tofu log, but the inside was basic Chinese food tofu. I was reading up on ways to prepare tofu and found a trick of sorts that is supposed to make the tofu insanely good - very crispy and with a great texture that even non-tofu-eaters enjoy. I'll be excited to try that out and hopefully I can get it to the point where I can use little slices of tofu for a brilliant bento idea I have. heh. =)
After lunch I headed up to Lush, intending on buying Jungle Conditioner, Vanishing Cream moisturizer and Coalface Cleanser. I totally got sucked into the allure of the bath bombs and bubble bars, though. Which is kind of silly considering I don't have a bath tub of my own! But I do have access to Kyle's, and will use these there. I guess that's one way to ensure they last for awhile.



Middle: Bathos Bubble Bar. Clockwise: Vanishing Cream, Jungle Conditioner, Youki-Hi Bath Bomb, Vanilla Fountain Bath Bomb, Big Blue Bath Bomb, Hot Milk? Bubble Bar, Coalface Cleanser.

The Coalface and Vanishing Cream should hopefully be THE combination that will rid my skin of its oily tendencies. All the reviews I read for both were really good and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll adore them just as much.

The Jungle Conditioner should last awhile. In some of the reviews people mentioned that they crumble the conditioner and mix it with water for a pomade of sorts to use after their hair was dry as well, or a sort of leave-in conditioner and it got rid of their frizz. Since my hair is crazy fizzy, I thought this would be good to try.

I've never tried their bath stuff before and I went a little crazy with it, really. The Youki-Hi has an intoxicating smell of jasmine and ylang-ylang. Gold glitter should be fun in the bath. Vanilla Fountain also smells great with spices and vanilla. Big Blue has an invigorating scent of lavender, lemon, lime and swirls of seaweed. Evidently it will turn the bath water blue so that should be fun as well.

The Hot Milk? Bubble Bar was recommended to combine with a bath bomb (bomb in first, then crumble a portion of the bubble bar). It has very subtle scents and the lady said it would turn the water sort of milky and creamy. I'm not sure if I want to try them together or just use one or the other. One bar is supposed to be good for 5 or 6 baths of bubbly goodness. The lady there said that the bubble bar makes far superior bubbles than conventional bubble bath so I grabbed the Bathos bar too. I thought I had gotten a bath melt (oils which will melt into the water) but I evidently did not. Probably better that way given the amount of money I spent anyway.