The Best Man Burger vs. Mr. Olympia

Manburger finally met his hero....Jay Cutler aka Mr. Olympia. He appeared at the base GNC to sign autographs and pose (quite literally) for pictures. When I saw him, I thought, "That can't be real, he must be wearing a muscle suit." I expected him to turn around and undo the zipper and become some normal looking guy. As Manburger said, "His bicep is as big as my head." It's true too. Well, he did have huge muscles, but I like my Manburger muscles better. Atleast I know he can use his right hand to touch his left shoulder without a problem.

Guess what! I have a new calling in church too! I am now a every-other Sunday teacher for the 15/16 year old Sunday school class. Quite the assignment; my first time teaching will be this coming Sunday. I'm excited, even though I broke down and cried when I found out what the calling was. It'll be good experience for me for when we have our own teenagers long down the road. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. Manburger will be there in the class with me in case anyone needs a head-butt. Ha, I doubt it will ever come to that. Manburger and I also just gave talks in church two weeks ago. It was a bit overwhelming with all the new information coming at me at once. Fortunately, we did well (or atleast everyone says we did). Now a few more people know who we are in church and don't think we're just some couple who likes to visit a lot.

This past weekend we went up to LA for Manburger's friend's wedding. Manburger was the best man and looked super sharp in his groomsmen shirt and tie. Hot stuff! AFter the wedding and pictures we drove on up to Lancaster to spend the weekend with the family and attend the wedding reception on Saturday. We really enjoyed staying with Ian and Audra and seeing Brandon again. He's gotten a lot bigger in just a month. The reception Saturday was really nice. I helped out in the kitchen, just for fun, while Manburger posed for some pictures and kept the bride and groom entertained with his wits. There were Hawaiian haystacks for dinner and two chocolate fountains with fun things to dip like pineapple, grapes, cream puffs, pretzels, and these fabulous peanut-butter ball things with p.b. and rice krispies. Yum!

Early Saturday afternoon we also went up to the feline compound north of Lancaster and saw big cats. It's kind of sad seeing those cats in cages, but some of them are rescue animals so maybe it's better for them there. My favorite cat was this gorgeous jaguar. Now I understand why ancient South American cultures idolized the jaguar. What a regal and powerful creature.

It's been a while, but I have still been cooking and making yummy new dishes for my Manburger. Last week I made whole wheat pasta with squash, mushrooms, onions, and bell pepper. I garnished it with fresh grated parmesan and some Italian parsley. Delicious! How I love to be healthy and creative in the kitchen. It's nice to know I don't need a recipe to make good food. Unfortunately while I was creating this masterpiece, I melted our cutting board on one of the burners. Well, mark one down for Yogurl's mishaps in the kitchen. The cutting board still works, but we only use the one side now.

Road Trip

Our trip back home was half the fun of our San Fran trip. On the way up we took highway 5, which is really, really boring. So on the way back we decided to take the famed Route 1 that runs right along the coast. It took about 5 hours longer than our trip up, but it was way worth it. The views were spectacular.

Here's Manburger in front of the Winchester Mystery Mansion. We didn't actually go inside b/c we got there before it opened in the morning and we didn't feel too keen about spending $26 per person to see it. Maybe some other time. This is the house where the wife believed it was haunted, but that the ghosts would leave her alone if construction was always going on. So there's staircases that go up to the ceiling and doors that don't lead anywhere etc.

Driving along Route 1 there were a lot of vista points to pull off and check out the view. Here's one of the first we saw, just south of Monterey. I like living in Southern California, but I am seriously drawn to the greenness and the rugged coastline of Northern California. The cliffs are awesome.

This is Manburger standing on the edge of a cliff somewhere near Big Sur. Isn't that view amazing. Now just picture seeing that for hours as you drive down the coast. Were were lucky or what? We stopped in Big Sur at one of the handful of stores they had to get lunch. The burritos we got weren't worth the $6 we paid, but they sure were tasty.

One of the neatest parts of the trip back was the chance to see real live elephant seals. Aren't you jealous!? The only ones I had ever seen were on the Discovery channel. I don't even think I knew they lived in California. Manburger pulled over while I was napping and we got to see the elephant seals pretty upclose and personal. There was even an "elephant seal guide" who told us a bit about them. He said that the biggest male there was about 5000 lbs. That's one big seal. Only the males have the weird trunk nose things, the females are prettier and much smaller. I realize the seals look dead in this picture, but they're not. The guide told us that that's pretty much what they do all day...just lay in the sun. I guess they're storing up energy for their next food hunt or in the guys' case, for their next WWE match. Ha, just kidding, but I have heard that the male fights get pretty violent.

We made it safely back home after our long drive. And I now feel happy saying that I have seen how the "other half" lives. That is the "other half" of California. Till next time!

San Fran Part Deux

If you feel a little seasick looking at this picture, it's b/c I got a little crazy with the camera angle. My apologies! But wow, our lunch (which is what Manburger is eating) was delicious! We had really chunky clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls. It was probably the cheapest thing down at Fisherman's Wharf, but I bet you'd be hard pressed to find something more tasty.

Here I am fulfilling my Roman Holiday daydream. I don't look a thing like Audrey Hepburn, but Manburger is tall, dark, and handsome like Gregory Peck. Fortunately I still have my hand, so my claim that I'm madly, deeply in love with Manburger is true. This Bocca Della Verita was housed in a crazy mechanized museum with some really old school machines, like French guillotine scenes and fortune tellers like the one in Big.

We didn't see too many crazies while in town, but we saw a guy painted all silver to look like a robot. He had a boom box and a kazoo in his mouth to make him sound robotic when he moved. He didn't move until someone paid him and then he did a fun electronic, techno-y dance. It actually wouldn't be too bad to do, until you get an itch.

The last photo is one of Manburger reliving his childhood at a park on the edge of Chinatown. We went there to take a break after walking around all day. It was a pretty nice park too. Lots of benches, clean, and a cool play area for kids complete with a flower like labyrinth thing that you can see in the right hand corner behind Manburger.

I really enjoyed San Francisco. It was neat to see all the neighborhoods like Japantown and Chinatown and climb the crazy hills. I don't think I've seen hills that steep since Utah. We made use of the park-n-ride just outside of the city, b/c believe me, you don't need a car here. There's enough public transit that you can go anywhere in downtown.

Manburger saves San Francisco

As you can see from this irrefutable photographic evidence, Yogurl, as she has been known to do, turned into some sort of all-consuming monster after tasting the yummy foods San Francisco had to offer. Fortunately, I was there to stop her. I just assumed my true form of Sumo Master Burger and held her back until the SFFD was able to rig their hoses to dark chocolate hydrants found in Ghirardelli Square and hose her down for a while. Then she turned back to normal and we continued with our vacation.

Even though I am making a funny face, this is a nice picture of us at the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked across it and back. It has emergency phones all along it with signs telling people not to kill themselves by jumping, but to call for counseling help. I wonder if anybody has ever actually used one of those phones?

Then there is a picture of Yogurl by the entrance gate to Chinatown. Chinatown was awesome! I love that place! I'm sure Yogurl will talk about the awesome food, so I will just say that if we lived there, I would be humongous. There were also a lot of short people there, so we fit right in.

Yogurl was very amused by this surprisingly accurate sign. The officials in San Fran want to be sure to protect their guitar-playing hippy population, so they are sure to mark all their crossings very carefully. What a crazy place San Francisco is!

By the way, we stayed at a Coast Guard station in Novato. The room was a little nicer than what you would find at a Motel 6. For $25 a night, it sure made me glad to be in the military.

Christmas at the Burger House

Sorry it took so long to get the blog updated, but here we go. Here Yogurl and I are in our new Christmas Eve pajamas. I thought Yogurl's were pretty crazy looking. Of course I always have been the less silly one in the couple.

We just want to thank everybody for their wonderful gifts! We really felt spoiled with all the great stuff we received.Of course, the best part of Christmas for me was getting to see my whole family at the same time. My Canadian sister-in-law, Mo, even came down for Christmas. We hadn't seen her since before I went to boot camp, so that was really great. Oh yeah, she brought her husband along too.

We had a Mexican food Christmas Eve Dinner, with tamales, bean dip, chips, salsa and other Mexican food stuff. Then on Christmas, we had the more traditional American foods: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. Needless to say, Yogurl and I had plenty of difficulty sticking to our diet. And by difficulty I mean that we completely forgot about it.

The bottom picture is Momma Burger with her favorite gift. What happened was, Yogurl and I were at a thrift store just looking around. As I was looking at the books, some guy walked up and told me to pick out two hardback books. Apparently, he had bought so many books that they told him he could have two more for free. Well, he didn't want anymore books, so he decided to let me have his two free books. I just grabbed a book by Kissinger, because the guy seemed a little pressed.

Then for the other one, I was just looking for an author I recognized. I saw a Danielle Steele book. For some reason I thought that I knew the name because my mom owned some of her books. Well, as you can tell from her expression, she does not, in fact, enjoy Danielle Steele books. Oh well! Merry Christmas anyway!