Porgy and Bess

The next show hubs and I saw this theater season was The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, which won an award at the last Tony's for Best Revival of a Musical. As season ticket holders we were invited to a special behind the scenes event where the director, Diane Paulus, discussed some of the background and history of the play and we got to watch some of the tech rehearsal.

Porgy and Bess started off as a novel by DuBose Heyward, which was then translated into a play and then later an opera, before being made into a musical. As a whole I thought the show was very good. Since the musical was adapted from the opera there was a lot of operatic singing, especially by the female cast. which at times made it very difficult for me to fully understand what was going on. Granted that is no fault of the musical...my ears just aren't used to that style and I found it hard to follow at times. Even with the operatic singing I still understood the main storyline, I may have just missed some of the underlying nuances.

Most notably the actors were amazing! In fact they were so convincing that the actors who played the villains literally got booed during the final curtain call. I don't know what was better...the fact that the audience booed them or that the actors loved it. LOL

Tale of a Bridesmaid

When hubs and I got married in Hawaii another great thing happened - our friends who were there for our wedding got engaged. A year and a half later we finally got to see them get married! Not only did we get to see them get married but I had the honor of being one of her bridesmaids.

Hubs and I had already been dating for about a year when I met the bride in one of my college classes and we hit it off instantly. I remember she used to come to my room to have me do her makeup before she went out on the weekends....man does that bring back crazy memories. We watched her date different guys that just weren't right for her and we watched her date her now husband. There is something absolutely amazing about seeing a couple you've watched blossom and grow together get married. It may be one of the most touching things I've ever experienced.

The wedding day was a crazy long and tiring day...even more tiring than my own wedding day. We started our day at the bride's home in San Jose at 3am...no jokes...three.in.the.morning. UGH...I must really love that girl. After we were all dolled up and dressed there was a traditional Vietnamese tea ceremony hosted by the bride's family. Then we made the long drive to Stockton for the traditional Chinese tea ceremony hosted by the groom's family before the wedding.

CCW: getting beautified with the beautiful bride, traditional Vietnamese tea ceremony with the bride's
family, traditional Chinese tea ceremony with the groom's family

The wedding ceremony was held in our alma mater's church which is absolutely beautiful. Hubs and I contemplated getting married there as well, but the impracticality of asking my large family to fly out to California for a wedding trumped our emotional and nostalgic desire to get married there. The ceremony was nice and short and the couple wrote their own heartfelt vows...some tears were definitely shed. After the ceremony I hung back to take pictures with the bridal party while Hubs and the friends that were staying with us went to help set up the reception site.

the new Mr. & Mrs.

The reception was a traditional family-style Chinese wedding banquet. Hubs and I were seated at a table with our friends and a couple of our classmates from pharmacy school. We all had a great time catching up, but after my early wake up call I was pretty much done once the reception program was over.

CW: the newlyweds first dance, obligatory selfies, fellow pharmers at the wedding 

Watching our friends get married truly touching. I'm glad that I've been lucky enough to see them grow into the wonderful couple they are and witness them make their vows to one another. It really reminded me of how much I love hubs and the vows we made to one another. I am truly blessed to have found my better half.

Birth Month Getaway

Hubs and I took off for a weekend getaway with another of our couple friends to Las Vegas to celebrate the 3 out of 4 of our birthdays that take place in October. All of us wanted to take a quick vacay, but unfortunately none of us could swing getting away from work for more than just the weekend. So we settled for a quickie weekend trip to my favorite vacation destination.

We got in late on Friday and went to Holstein's in the Cosmopolitan for a late dinner. Last time we were in Vegas our friends introduced us to this place. They have great burgers with interesting twits and original spiked milkshakes. It makes for a perfect go-to for a late night bite. (For a place that's known for it's night life we had a really difficult time finding places to get late dinners). After dinner we walked along the strip and made our way to Aria where we took a quick bathroom break. In the few minutes we were in the restroom hubs sat down at a slot machine with $20 and ended up with $200! Luckily this set the tone for the rest of our weekend.

L to R: Nom Nom Burger (kobe beef, cheddar cheese, and potato chips - minus 1000 island dressing) with
Black Cow Float (Coca-Cola, vanilla ice cream, cherry pop rocks, 3 olives cherry vodka),  Major slot
machine winnings

We spent Saturday afternoon doing some damage in the malls and then went to see the new Cirque du Soleil show, Michael Jackson: One. Hubs and I have been dying to see this show since it opened. As huge Michael Jackson fans and huge Cirque du Soleil fans we had high hopes for this show. The show exceeded any all expectations I had for the show. It was a great combination of dance and acrobatics. Definitely a must see for any Michael Jackson fans. I can't wait to see it again!

On Sunday we had to end our vacation and head back to the real world. But not before hubs and I hit up the new craps machines that we'd seen around the casinos. I inherited a love of gambling from my Dad who inherited it from my Grandpa. I love playing craps, but sometimes the dealers are a little intimidating; which makes the craps machines perfect for me. Jason's good luck from Friday night kept up on Sunday morning as we walked away from the craps machines up about $200. WOOT!

The weekend was too short, but still fun nonetheless. It was great to be able getaway and spend some time with some great friends. Hopefully we can do it again sometime soon.

Happy Howl-oween!

Wishing everyone a fun and safe HOWL-oween!

Hope it's DINO-mite! (see what I did there?)

PS...check out the super cute Halloween goodie bag my parents sent for Lulu. 

It's been less than 48 hours since we let her play with these new toys and she's already successfully ripped the blue monster's head off and torn through the rope on the candy corn. How one dog could be so destructive is baffling to me.   

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

I must've been a good person in my former life to end up with such a great man as my husband. A guy who is willing and never disgruntled to take me to a musical. In fact, he's so great that he actually purchased us season tickets to all the musicals stopping in San Francisco this year.

The first show for us this season was a musical making a pre-Broadway debut in San Francisco, Beautiful. The musical is about Carole King and follows her career as a young song writer and then as a Grammy winning singer/song writer. If Jersey Boys is a musical for my grandparents generation, Beautiful is a musical for my parents generation. I wonder who a musical of my generation would be about...probably Justin Timberlake. LOL

We didn't really know what to expect for this show, but I was surprised to find that I recognized so many of the early songs she wrote as well as a lot of the songs from her Tapestry album. (Thanks, mom and dad). The first half covered a lot of the songs she and her husband wrote together, but fell a little short in the plot development. As a whole, the play was really great and the actress who played Carole King was a superb singer. Looking at the program, we did notice a lot of songs were cut from the second act which was probably a good idea to keep the plot rolling along. It will be interesting to see what the final production looks like once it reaches Broadway.

On a totally unrelated note, we'll be taking off for a super quick getaway with our friends for a Las Vegas getaway. I am so excited to get away even for just a weekend. Wish me luck on the craps tables!

Cruising: Oasis of the Seas

At the end of August hubs and I took some time off from work and Lulu to for some much needed R&R. We did a 7 night Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Royal Caribbean boat, Oasis of the Seas. Hubs is a huge fan of cruising while I usually run luke warm on the idea...mostly because I get sea sick pretty easily. Hubs was constantly reassuring me that since the Oasis of the Seas is the largest cruise ship out there that I would be fine, but true to me of course I doubted him. Turns out like most things, he was right. I made sure that I had my transderm-scop patch, but for the most part I couldn't even tell the boat was moving.

We left for Florida on a Friday night after a crazy busy day at work followed by a crazy evening of packing Lulu up and dropping her off at the dog-sitter and a frenzied/panicked packing session by the both of us. In retrospect that was incredibly poor planning which led to a lot of overpacking. NEVER.AGAIN.

The first stop on our cruise was the island of Nassau where we checked off one of my biggest bucket list items and swam with dolphins the Atlantis resort. Okay, we didn't exactly go swimming with the dolphins, but we did stand in the shallow area and play with the dolphins. Too bad they didn't let us take any pictures with our personal camera. Instead they charged a million dollars for their pictures, which means we didn't get any. Boo. While we were at Atlantis we got to go their water park and play. They have this really long lazy river with some spots with some "rapids" which was nice so that floating along didn't get too boring. We also rode this water slide that shoots you into a clear tube in one of their shark tanks. Lots of fun.

L to R: getting ready to play with the dolphins, hanging on to each others inner tubes as we float down the river like sea otters, floating through the shark tank

Our next stop was St. Thomas. We spent a little time shopping around in the downtown area which was heavily dominated by jewelry stores. We spent some time browsing the jewelry stores, but it wasn't really anything to write home about. We mostly stopped in them to get a brief reprieve from the outrageous heat. After about half an hour of window shopping we were over it and ready to head back to the boat.

The last stop on the cruise was St. Maarten, where we did a Sea Trek and I checked another item of my bucket list. At first it made me a little anxious because the helmet they put on you feels really heavy and as you go deeper and deeper into the ocean you have to continuously pop your ears due to the increased pressure. It feel really weird at first too since the water comes up just below the helmet and it's negative pressure that keeps the water out of your helmet. The tour guides help guide you along a little roped off pathway on the ocean floor. They even give you fish food so you can feed the fish...which seems really cool but is not so cool when it actually happens since the fish have sharp little teeth. I was really excited that we got to do this since I never thought I'd be able to see the fishies so close up since I'm such a weak swimmer.

All in all the cruise was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. Between all the different shows and the excursions we did there was still lots of time for lounging by the pool and napping in our room. I think we napped every single day we were on the cruise. It was so relaxing and I'm really glad that hubs planned this trip for us.

L to R: unlimited soda cups = best accessory on the boat, obligatory towel animal 

Spring Breakers: Hawaii (Part Deux)

Here we are folks! The final post in the Spring Breakers series. *WHEW* (Bet you guys didn't think I'd get through it all, huh?) Our last stop on our trip was back in Hawaii. We flew back to Hawaii from Japan so that we could have 2 precious days to spend catching up with some of my friends before we headed back home.Not to mention it really helped ease us back into pacific standard time.

We spent sometime catching up with some of my pharmacy school friends over milk teas at Taste Tea. The milk tea was just meh...but I may have a strong prejudice due to my nostalgic attachment to the tea place I frequented during pharmacy school. Regardless, it was great to have a chance to catch up with friends.

look at all that buttery, garlic-y goodness!

The next day we met up with one of my friends I used to ice skate with. We made our way to Haleiwa for the best garlic shrimp truck, Giovanni's. This place is always on our list of places we must go to while in Hawaii so I was glad we could check it off our list.

On our last night in Hawaii we had a spectacular dinner at Roy's in Waikiki with my friends from highschool and their sig others. The only thing that topped the delicious food and awesome service was the great company. We hadn't seen these friends since our wedding so there was so much to catch up on. We were so caught up in conversation that we didn't realize we were the last people there. You know you're having a good time when you shut a place down.

It's always great when we are lucky enough to meet up with friends from so many different stages in my life. I love catching up and seeing what's going on in their lives. But most of all I love that no matter how much time has passed since the last time we've seen eachother when we do finally get a chance to get together it's as if no time has passed at all.

That finally wraps up the Spring Breakers series. Thanks for bearing through all the long posts that have been far and few between. I promise I'll try to step up my blogging game.

Check out all the stops from the Spring Breakers series... Hawaii, Singapore, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara/Hakone, and Tokyo.