Thanksgiving dinner for 2

We didn't have the resources to fly to New York to be with N's family for Thanksgiving, and I had just been up to San Francisco twice in the past month to see my family for my dad's 70th birthday and my sister's baby shower, so we decided to stay in the area for the holiday. I was hoping to rent a cabin for the weekend somewhere near Big Bear, but nothing budget-friendly really came up. 

We considered not cooking Thanksgiving dinner and going out for Korean BBQ, but tradition prevailed and we got an 11 lb turkey from the grocery store (the smallest they had). This was N's first time ever cooking a turkey. I had a terrible experience undercooking a turkey a few years ago, so I kept nagging him to make sure it was cooked all the way through. His first priority, though, was making sure to not overcook the breast meat. He pulled out the bird from the oven when the breast meat was done and he was overly worried that he had overcooked it, but when it came time to carve, the dark meat was completely undone. Then I had a good time saying "toldya so" to him.

No harm done though, the dark meat went back into the oven and we ate the breast! N made the bird, stuffing, and mashed potatoes and gravy, and I made the cranberry sauce, yams, and green beans:

Clippers-Knicks

I came across a Travelzoo deal for $10 tickets to a couple upcoming Clippers games and asked N if he was interested. It turned out that stubhub actually had tickets for more interesting games for even cheaper, so we ended up going to the Staples Center a couple weeks ago to watch the Clippers go up against N's precious New York Knicks.

Even though our tickets were $2 each, parking cost $20! We were in some super nosebleed-y seats, though...I think we were in the second row from the tippy top of the entire stadium. It was slightly vertiginous. 

This was the first time I had been to the Staples Center and I was pretty impressed with how new and clean and modern it was. We cheered for the Knicks and they ended up winning easily. There were a few Knicks fans around us, which I was surprised by. 

I didn't know a thing about the Clippers until we attended this game. I learned their star player is a rookie named Blake Griffin and that he's pretty fantabulous. He had a couple of almost riot-inducing slam dunks during the game and also scored over 40 points, which was a career high for him. I wanted to find out more about him so I read his Wikipedia entry on my Droid during the game, which I think makes me a huge nerd.

AFI Film Fest

In early November, N and I went to a few screenings at the AFI Film Fest. The best part of this specific film festival is that all the tickets are FREE! And you can get them online pretty easily...as long as you stalk the website and order them the instant they become available. But that's still much better than waiting for hours in line somewhere or entering a lottery, I think.

N did the web stalking and got tickets to tons of the screenings. I only ended up going to 3, though. There was an inordinately high proportion of Korean films in their offerings (I'm guessing due to the population of LA?), and I ended up going to 2 of those, plus 1 French film which was completely bonkers. It was about a tire (yes--like the ones that are on your car) that goes around murdering people by exploding their heads off. The beginning was actually pretty clever in a meta-ish kind of way, and then it just went downhill from there.

The Korean films I watched were both done by the pretty famous director Hong Sang-soo (Hahaha and Oki's Movie). The only other Hong Sang-soo film I've seen is Woman is the Future of Man, and I don't remember a single thing about it. In fact, I thought that I hadn't seen it until N claimed that we had watched it together a few years ago. So, apparently, I did see it. If you can trust N.

After watching Hahaha and Oki's Movie I concluded that I really dislike Hong Sang-soo's films. It was actually a double feature so we watched them back to back, which I'm sure did not help. By the end of Oki's Movie I was in a bad mood and wanted out of the theater. The films were filled with men who drink too much, become pathetic, and whine endlessly about women. Wow. Sooo uninteresting. Lots of whiny women in them, too.

Anyway, the AFI Film Fest is definitely a great benefit to living in LA. It has tons of free screenings, and they are all in the heart of Hollywood in famous theaters. Will definitely be going again next year...