Beef Pasta Bento (235)

I had a bitchin’ Saturday this past weekend. Why? I got to meet, shake hands, and take pictures with BJ Penn, UFC Lightweight Champion!

Should there be any other BJ/Bento fans out there, you may commence with the envy now. He was a very cool guy to meet, even if just for a minute. I’ve heard stories of really obnoxious celebrities and since BJ is a Hilo boy the potential for him being a jackass was significantly higher in my mind. Anyway, this was not the case  with him, much to my delight! (Sorry nice Hilo guys, but for some reason us nice Hilo girls have no idea where you hang out, but it’s probably with nice Honolulu girls.)

This was at Barnes & Noble Ala Moana, so we headed down and got there at about 9:45. The line curled through the bookshelf aisles but once he arrived it moved at a decent pace. We ended up waiting a little over an hour. It was just me and Baby Girl and she used her good behavior to extort some Juicy Fruit out of me. The bookstore wanted it to be fair to everyone waiting in line so they insisted that there would be no personalized autographs and no posed photographs, which was a bummer but after waiting in a really really bad line for Colt at the Ohana Festival two years ago, I can fully understand their policy.

That aside though, one of BJ’s guys went through the line writing names on Post-its to stick on items we wanted personalized, which I thought was awesome!! I wondered why they’d do that and came to the conclusion that maybe that eliminates the likelihood that you have someone making money off your autograph on eBay. The store people were telling everyone, “No pictures, no pictures!” but BJ looked up for posed shots anyway. Very nice!

He offered his hand when I said hi and when I apologized for not having a BJ Penn shirt, he said it was ok and then when he saw I’d brought my FBI shirt (From Big Island) he said, “FBI…” in an approving voice. I wished him good luck in his next fight and he said thanks and thanks for coming down. I’m out a sleepy shirt now but of course, I DON’T MIND!!

And holy crap if that wasn’t cool enough, I also saw Bad Badtz Maru down there. I grabbed his punky ass to take another photo. What are the odds of meeting two celebrities in one bookstore?!?

I wish now that I’d told him how great I think it is that he has put our little town of Hilo on the map. When I was in high school I just wanted to move to the big city and people told me that when you get older you like move back but I was just like, no way. I have to admit though, I get those feelings now and then. I love Pearlridge but there’s just something so familiar about Prince Kuhio Mall. I prefer Foodland over here but there’s just something so distinct about shopping for food in KTA. I trip out anytime I see footage of Hilo during UFC PPVs and it makes me miss home and the days where Y’s lunch shop was more than a MAYBE once a year thing. Mr. Pikko was looking at some pics of BJ yesterday and I was like OMG that’s the farmer’s market! I can still go back to that place and the same dang booth sells the best cigar mango. Some things just don’t change there and I guess that’s something really great about the town now that I’m not in such a hurry to leave.

Speaking of Hilo and farmer’s markets, my dad is shipping us lichee and cigar mangoes. Baby Girl will probably do cartwheels at the sight of the lichee. I’ll be doing my cigar mango cartwheels next to her.

Every once in a while, I get the yearning to eat some cheap food. And what cheap food tastes better than Hamburger Helper?? Beef Pasta is the flavor of choice for Mr. Pikko so I went with that. I re-joined Weight Watchers on Thursday and intend to start officially tomorrow since we’re celebrating goodbyes at work and birthdays at home. I’m not really sure why I joined last week if I intended to start on Tuesday, but oh well! LOL I know there is Spark People, but I need that nagging knowledge that I paid for something to make me stick to it. Since Spark People is free, I just found myself jumping off the wagon in only two days.

With D-Day approaching, I went a lil nuts this weekend, eating whenever I felt like it, eating whatever I wanted. I ate too much. I ate a lot of licorice and chocolate. And can you believe that this morning upon weigh-in, I’d lost 1.6 pounds? What the heck is up with that?? Anyway, the goal is 125 pounds by the time the Square Enix Summit comes around and 120 forever.

I have revived the infamous KCAA (kim chee crab avocado for new readers) salad from the depths of my WW success recipes. In my third tier I packed grapes and strawberries. Sadly, the grapes are from Mexico. E-coli, here I come!

Yummy yummy in my tummy! Hope you all had a great weekend like I did!