Visit to Square Enix

Alrighty so someone finally commented asking if I’m on vacation so I figured I better quit the silence bit and get off my butt and post something before you all start to think I died or even worse, that I lost interest in bentomaking. *gasp*

I’d mentioned that I would be attending Square Enix’s Premier Site Summit 2008 for Final Fantasy XI and so that’s what I’ve been busy with. Add in a office luncheon, prep work, and some Brownie of Doom baking and you have a long hiatus from bentos. The summit took place in El Segundo on the 25th and Mr. Pikko and I traveled up there together so we could enjoy a little monster-free time together. Rest assured that my little munchkins were not without victims while we were gone as it seems like they sufficiently terrorized Grandma and Grandpa. Many thanks to the in-laws for not putting them up for adoption during our trip!

We landed at about 7:15 AM and took the shuttle to the hotel where we were lucky enough to get early check-in. We settled in, checked our Tribal Wars villages like the complete nerds we are, and waited around until it was time to head out to The Bridge to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. The community rep from Square had warned me to buy tickets ahead of time but me being the dummy, I didn’t listen and we ended up sitting in the second row. Still, I wanted to see it and felt the experience was worth it. I’d really want to see it again too! And maybe without Heath Ledger practically touching my nose.

The parking meters in LA are pretty rude. I put a quarter into this one and it starts blinking at me:

FAIL

FAIL

FAIL

FAIL

All right already I get it!

That night we had dinner at a place called FuRaiBo on Sawtelle Blvd with my Allakhazam co-worker Thayos and two friends from last year’s Fan Festival, Pachichachi and Susperia. We visited this store called Giant Robot and passed by what Pachi referred to as the “Best Ramen in Los Angeles”. Why didn’t we eat there? They are CLOSED ON THURSDAYS. Left to right above is Thayos, Pachichachi, Susperia, and me. I tried natto for the first time and hated it. Thayos had a bit of a hard time with the chopsticks at first, but he quickly got the hang of it. Then he tried to eat his rice. lol

Later we met up with someone from our Garuda linkshell Imperial, Kaerwyn. He’d wanted to join us for dinner, but apparently some old guy at the theater he works at tried to pee on him, so he had to go home and shower off any old man sprinkles that might have gotten on his legs. I know, eww! He finally joined us at Beard Papa and then followed us back to the hotel where we hung out for a bit.

Here we are in the lobby, half a linkshell party. We just need some DDs and we’re ready to go. Mr. Pikko had never been to In N Out so we figured that we should take him to the one down the street despite having just eaten. All the hype messed things up though as that food sucked. The fries were really weird and pasty tasting, the shakes weren’t shaken, and the drive thru line was so long our food took forever and a day to be ready. Hopefully next time it’ll be better!

I’ll have the writeup for the summit itself done on Allakhazam and I’ll post that link once it’s done for you all to go read and look at pictures and stuff, though I don’t expect foodie fans to find it exciting unless you’re either into FFXI or just enjoy Square Enix games.

Saturday my cousin picked us up at around 10 and took us out to see the Getty Museum. They have a really nice tram, which I’m sure my nephew would have freaked over. Had he been here I’m sure there would not have been any chance to see the museum itself.

I thought about it a little bit and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a true art museum before. We’ve got the Bishop Museum over here, but I only go for their special exhibits. I really have no idea what they normally have there. There’s the Lyman House museum in Hilo, but that’s mostly Hawaiian things, not really global art or anything. The Getty was really pretty and omgbright since a lot of it was white. Here’s me and my cousin, yay!

It’s got a great view as you can see. Me and Mr. Pikko are here posing in front of smoky Los Angeles. I loved the garden area and I took a lot of flower pictures and even one of a daredevil snail crawling along on the top of a hedge, but I figure I better leave pics like that for some other time.  Susperia says I have to get Mr. Pikko over his mad extreme privacy thing or people will start thinking that I’m such a Final Fantasy XI freak that I actually found and married a tarutaru. Standing next to Thayos, I’m sure he felt like one.

I won’t leave you all with just pics of my gaming geekdom, I have food that’s been backed up that I never wrote about!

I made this all veggie bento sometime in the last two weeks. Unfortunately I can’t remember when that was, but I can assure you I ate it! I’ve got pan fried asparagus with garlic salt and olive oil and eggplant in the same thing. Then I have some baked Okinawan sweet potato sliced and cut into various shapes of stars. The two sauce bottles contain soy sauce for the eggplant. I’m really loving eating eggplant like this without the batter. Yum yum!

I made this one for Monday’s lunch. I think. It’s all a blur! All I know is I didn’t eat it on the day I made it for cause we ended up going out to lunch at Spaghetti Factory. I got me some yummy mizithra cheese, which my co-worker kept referring to as “mithra cheese”. As FFXI players can guess, this cracked me up, but since I was alone in a sea of non-gamers the joke would have been completely lost on them. “Hey, you know, mithras are actually these sexy cat warriors in the computer game I play!”

The meat in it is sliced Costco chicken breast. I actually didn’t get a chance to make this one into soup so it’s still sitting in my fridge, calmly awaiting it’s tossing into the trash. Next to it I have sliced bell peppers. I’m going to have to step up consumption of these because I know they’re about to turn slimy even though I did my best to store them well this time. Maybe I should tell the Iron Bento people to make a bell pepper theme soon so I can go nuts.

I’ve also got cheese and cherries and blueberries and OH YES! Golden yellow kiwis! I saw this in a Don Quijote ad and I was like oh my holy crap I have to get some. They’re so cute! They match so nicely with the green kiwis. Since I stuck a penguin food divider in between the fruit and chicken, I stuck more sea creatures into the other fruits.

I’m still busy doing write-ups and settling back into the daily routine of tornados flying through my house every night when we get home so I’m not sure I’ll be having everyday bentos for the rest of the month, especially since my mom is coming to town this weekend. She’s moving away to Las Vegas. *sniff* Of course, this makes for a fantastic excuse to fly to Vegas. Not that I’m a Vegas kinda person but if AllasVegas ever happens, I can always say I’ve GOT to visit mommy. 😀