A Proper York Blvd Welcome

We had kept Micheal's arrival a surprise. Jenny and Chi were speechless. It was funny. My mom certainly acted surprised when she came through the door. But then, she let us know that the surprise was ruined right before she walked out the door of her house. Steve, Mike's brother, called, looking for him. Dang it. Oh well. It was still fun!

I had fleeting fancies of cooking dinner but it was just not realistic. I've been so busy, there just hasn't been time to plan or shop. Our fridge was so sadly empty. I joked about it and Mike graciously said, "No, I saw you have eggs." Thai Eagle Rox (on york) and Sergio to the rescue! He picked up the giant order. When he got to the restaurant and asked for our order, they said, "Oh, the expensive one?" Funny. It was A LOT of food. It was tasty and dinner turned out to be quite fun. The bottle of wine we opened up was especially wonderful. At least the fridge wasn't empty anymore after dinner.




After dinner, we sat around the living room chatting. We YouTubed a few videos -- Lady Gaga acoustic, Michael Jackson...it was a bit incongruous yet so very now to be gathered with my family around my laptop and surfing YouTube. I suppose if we had cable TV or suitable unwatched DVD we would have watched a movie. I think though, they ended up popping in Fearless, a Jet Li movie. Surprisingly, one or both of my parents hadn't seen it yet -- the DVD belongs to them. Thinking back, it's probably because I snuck off with the movie before they got a chance to watch.

We decided to take a jaunt down to The York after Mom and Dad went home. We met some fun people. There was an extraordinarily drunk Scotsman named Scott who was celebrating this birthday with his wife, Priscilla -- also very drunk. We sat and chatted loudly with them for while. Also met very drunk girl named Ana who works at Roy's downtown. She grew up in the area and we reminisced. Her buddies had left her at The York and went to Marty's up the street. I was kind of worried for her because they had her money, but she said she just needed to go to Marty's and she'd be fine. It's only a couple blocks. As we were leaving, we did walk with her a little since we were hittin' up Estrella too...


Before Estrella though, Mike tried his first bacon-wrapped hot dog. They had a great location right outside the bar. There was this guy sitting with them whose face was all beat up. You can sort of see the cuts on his face in the picture (left). The vendors didn't know who he was or why his face was messed up. He looked amiable enough though.

At this point, all my pics are pretty blurry to match my blurry voice recorded for posterity on the videos at the bottom of the post.

La Estrella came through as always. Mike and I tried El Pique too. I think the al pastor is better marinated there (ack, I know! blasphemy!) but the red sauce is unparalleled at Estrella. Yeah, I'm a little obsessed with it - as evident by my video commentary.




Most of Mike's stay was about the eating. I have a few more posts worth of meals. Poor guy. He's on a diet too.

:)

Videos: Mike tasting 1) bacon-wrapped hot dog; 2) la estrella al pastor taco