We bought our book through Blurb which we had also used for our engagement photo guest book. We were really happy with everything. We uploaded the most up to date blurb booksmart program and went to work. In a few days, doing a couple hours a day the book as done. We go to upload and our book wouldn’t upload, our internet connection router thing was having issues so luckily after about 12 hours of trying to upload our book and then uploading the images which if the internet connection also dropped we had to start over from the beginning and two trips to Best Buy, it was uploaded. It was a big headache and since we waited to the last minute, literally the last day to get the books before Christmas, and to get to use our free shipping coupon. In the end we got it uploaded 15 minutes before midnight 4 days before Christmas.

Anyway we realized that free shipping was actually only up to 15 bucks and our shipping was close to 90 bucks. Well its something right? We got the books sent to the in laws since we wanted to make sure we had their book for Christmas. Three days later on Christmas Eve we check out the books and they looked great, until we opened the first one!

We opened it up flipped through it and after our book ended, another one started. Another wedding was attached to my wedding album! What?! I was shocked, what is that about? There was a page bright orange and teal that said proof copy on it. I guess that is where a new book starts and all the books are supposed to be checked and the page removed, but this one was not. Blurb didn’t proof my album. Blame it on the fact that they are busy since they had a coupon out and it was close to the holiday deadline.  Also my Sunday deadline was before their absolute last deadline which was until Tuesday, anyway that is no excuse. When a 178 page photo book that costs 108 bucks, and I am ordering 3, I expect someone to flip through it to check for this kind of thing. After our not so great discovery husband went into swift action and started to send an email to Blurb about the issue.

The other books seemed good to go but I wanted to make sure the book was still sealed in plastic before I wrapped it and sent them off. So instead of breaking them open we looked at the thickness and how the ink was on the side and we realized the book with the extra pages was significantly thicker and we could see where our book ended so we knew those were fine. Anyway they messed up on one of them with this extra book attached to my wedding album…it was pretty hilarious. We figured it out after we sent our complaint email and were able to laugh at the situation, it was a photographers wedding portfolio. I should say amateur and it was so bad! There were really low resolution photos and the photography was pretty low caliber. Not to mention some of the styles of the weddings were pretty yucky. All I have to say if your going to have Halloween colors for your wedding go all out with the theme, not just shiny orange vests for the guys and a orange bouquet for the bride. Ugh I sound so mean, but maybe if the photos were better I wouldn’t talk so much crap.

Anyway, Blurb responded right away and was cool about it and sent us another book, but without emailing us about it. We had to go online and check the status of our previous orders to see that they were sending us another. Hello an email would have been cool since we had our books sent to our in laws who we don’t plan to see for months. Anyway a replacement book was the least they could do and we told them exactly that and while a new book was nice that is the really the minimum that they could do, while they fix the mistake I don’t know if I would use them again because all they did was send another book. We told them this and they sent us another coupon for shipping up to 15 bucks and a coupon for future purchase. Well it’s better then nothing right? And it shows that they would try to smooth things out rather then just sending another book out.

Anyway enough of my rant, the books that didn’t have tacky wedding photos at the end of them turned out beautifully. We plan to just cut out the bad pages of the tacky wedding portfolio and boom there is our wedding album that we were going to buy at a later date. And I am assuming we always have a coupon for our next blurb book. Anyway, finally some pics of the album, sorry for some of the bad lighting in some of the pics, my silly flash was blowing out the photos.

The Front

The Back

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The month zoomed by so fast, and then it was Halloween! As a costume,I decided on a harujuku girl called gothic lolita, I know sounds really nice right, think, little bo peep/ school girl/ french maid/ goth!!

Then I turned 29, I had a delicious dinner at my brothers sushi restaurant with my closest friends the day before my bday.

Then a casual Thai food dinner with the hubs on my actual bday, next up  a day out in the city filled with art and yummy food, two of my favorite things!

So I was thinking about what to be for Halloween. I don’t have plans and doubt I am going to do anything so I hadn’t given it any thought until my best friend told me she was planning a back up costume just in case something fun comes up for Halloween. Hmm, so I thought well maybe I should too, just in case I am not stuck wearing last years barbarian woman costume. Anyway I thought for a short period of time and decided, I am going to be a mime for Halloween. I googled it really quick and I enjoy face paint and black and white stripes are always cool. I emailed the husband about my idea and he emails me back, people hate mimes, but that would be funny if you dressed up like one! Huh? What people hate mimes? I faintly recall something about mimes on tv, mimes in jail or being yelled at on the street in Paris or something. Mimes are not clowns though and people hate clowns. Am I the only one that did not know that people out there hate on mimes?

So then I searched, “hate mimes” and I got some interesting results. I encourage you to check them out, I like the killing of mimes would be called mimecide, and they hate their wordless sarcasm. Please check out these sites, they are pretty funny.

http://www.ihatemimes.com/

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=mimes2

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2226507524

I am kind of bummed out now, I don’t want to get beat up on Halloween because of mime hate.

This is a tapas bar near El Xampanet near the Picasso Museum we came here twice I think or maybe three times! It was indeed our favorite!

So this is still Euskal Etxea and it was the tapas experience we were looking for.  This place gets packed with locals and has a dining room that no one eats in! Why go sit down and pick what you want when you can get it all yourself, as much as you want! You go up ask for a plate, order your drink either a beer or txacoli and start eating! Couples usually share a plate too, I think it is to save counter room. Lots of locals totally willing to teach you what is inside everything as well. The weirdest thing I had was conch with a blueberry jam on top of bread yeah kind of weird but still tasty, really! When your done eating you hand in your plate, they count your toothpicks and you pay your bill about 1.50 euro per tapa. It kind of sucks though when there are 8 people trying to pay at one time. Also I failed to mention not only to they have tapas on the counter they have hot tapas that are taken around the bar by a waiter and you will know you are going to eat one. They range from fried mussels to cheese wrapped in bacon and then fried, yep delicious. They go so fast so you have to get one or else you will get really sad watching other people eat them!

Yep that is what it looks like, cheese wrapped in bacon and then fried, it was so delicious!

This is from our last nice dinner in Barcelona, we ate at the oldest taverna in barceloneta, this shows some pan con tomate, pulp de gallega which is a yummy grille octopus dish, it was really good, and some really good jamon we splurged on.

I know this looks kind of boring but it was really delicious and simple. It is fish cooked in salt, They bring out a huge steaming plate that has a mountain of white stuff on it and a little fish buried underneath it somewhere, they show it to you briefly and they walk away. They cut up the fish and serve it to you. Simple you eat it wish olive oil and vinegar! It was really good and tender, but then I tasted my husband dish and just about died it was so good but also pretty rich so I was glad we got to split our plates and get a nice balance.

Brent got bacalao in romesco. Uhhhh soo good! Then we decided on dessert, Brent got an irish coffee which were on a lot of dessert menus for some reason and I got a crema catalana and strawberry dessert thing with filo. Best dessert on the trip besides the gelato.

This tapas bar  was called Taller de Tapas, a chain tapas bar that are all over Barcelona. The chain aspect of this place kind of turned us off but it came highly recommended by our flight attendant as a beginners guide to tapas and because it was busy when we walked by the Gothic quarter. Our waiter was really cool he wanted to go to California to live because he was tired of Barcelona and wanted to travel the world some more since he was from Italy, what a life. Anyway we got our jamon on and we got some croquettes which I didn’t get on camera, really good fried potato, cheese and jamon balls basically. Some more pan con tomate and a garbanzo bean, bacon and spinach salad. Weird that it was called a salad but it was so good and warm, and the bacon was thick and crispy.

This photo is from one of the restaurants by the beach, this is my first paella with lobster and it was good, but afterwards after having eaten more paella I realized this was not the best place for paella in my opinion unfortunately, to each their own though, I like it when I ate it though since I had nothing to compare it to.

This was also where we got to taste crema catalana for the first time and the padron peppers that my husband became addicted to. This pepper single handedly sealed our next trip to Spain, it may not be any time soon but I know I will be going back someday!

This was taken at El Xampanyet. The food we got was recommended from the owner guy who was on Passport to Europe he was really really sweet and offered us each a plate one from the land and one from the sea. Well sort of, the sun dried tomatoes with the bacalao is obviously not from the sea but a plate with fish and a plate with jamon, delicious and simple and went great with the house Xampanyet, which is not champagne but that is another post.

Here is a picture of one of our Italian dinner that we had when we got tired of Spanish food, yeah I know crazy but it did happen! We got a huge calzone, I mean crazy big. We also ordered some breaded and fried mozzerella which we thought would be breaded fried cheese but was a breaded and fried cheese sandwich, we were kind of confused but ate a little bit of it anyway. The calzone was huge and we could not even think about eating it.

Anyway that is it for the food well mostly I am sure I will have a few more food pics to share. Here is the delicious gelato from the shop around the corner from our apartment.

A lot of restaurants will give you a little plate of dried meats. Here is what we got at Paco Alcalde one of my favorite restaurants in Spain. This restaurant was conveniently one block from our apartment and we ate here again before we left. They had a great pre fixe menu for a great price so we took full advantage of it and it was a great way to try new things!

This was husbands first course of his pre fixe menu. Scampi. He said they were delicious, I think I had a bite and it was good, but a lot of work to get the meat out.

This was my first course a bouillabaisse, a light fish stew. Oh my gosh it was delicious, as you can see there is a ring of squid, a scampi and a shrimp (gambas). Yes I sucked the juice out of the head, it was really salty. I did this again another time and it was also really salty and weird. Anyway also there are two hunks of fish in the soup light and tasty!

This is an individual paella. It looks like a lot and it is a big portion but you can definitely finish it.  The paella is made really shallow in the dish so you can make smaller servings even in a pan this size.  It was delicious, it tasted like comfort food like it was a moms recipe.

This was my main dish, squid ink fideua. Let me just say anyone who has tried this loves it! Squid ink is a big deal in Spain and can be found in a lot of dishes. You can get paella in squid ink as well which I hear is really good but I was hooked on this so I didn’t end up trying it. I know it looks scary but believe me it is yummy!

To describe the squid ink fideua, the taste it is like a rich alfredo, lots of garlic, kind of oily, a little lemony with little bits of tomato and chopped calamari inside. And the large hung of moist monkfish on top went so well with it. I actually had this another time and it because it is rich I got sick on it. Sorry to say that throwing up black stuff for hours was not the highlight of my honeymoon.

Sorry if your not too tired of seeing my husbands face but I had to put this one up. A lot of restaurants give you a little after dinner cordial and this one was my favorite. Melon liquer shots slightly chilled. So delicious! Again kind of hard to handle after a three course meal, a bottle of wine and coffee. I don’t know how the people in Barcelona do it. But Paco Alcalde was indeed my favorite. The day I go back to Barcelona I am going back to this cute family owned restaurant, the servers were so helpful, the food was good and priced well for locals I am assuming since I could walk one tiny block up to the beach and pay double for the same items. I heart you Paco Alcalde!

Delicious fruit bowl from the boqueria, was only 1 euro.

This is of white anchovies and olives, so delicious, probably the best thing we had at this tapas restuarant.

This is a mixed plate of marinated vegetables which was out of control delicious! The little pepper to the left was stuffed with tuna but wasn’t fishy, I found that a lot of the tuna or fish in general was not fishy at all.

This is Spanish chorizo and a hunk of crusty bread. Rich, greasy, delicious, and gave me heartburn.

This is patatas bravas without the tomato sauce so I am thinking patatas aoili. The white stuff is garlic mayo, it sounded good while we were ordering it is just french fries with garlic mayo, two bites were enough for me. I know in Europe they love their mayo.

This was the last lunch we had in Barcelona at one of our favorite restaurants. It was a tomato, olive, anchovy, pickled asparagus and cheese salad with olive oil and vinegar. It was amazing. The little cheese that came with the meal was a soft fresh cheese and the the heirloom tomatoes were so good. The last two days we were in Barcelona the weather started to get really warm so this salad was so refreshing.

This is pan con tomate. Just some good rustic bread toasted with garlic and fresh tomato pulp rubbed on top. Usually this is free in everywhere, but some places did charge something small like 1.5o euro. But it was so good, throw some jamon on there or olive oil and salt, so delicious! We brought stuff to make this at our apartment and it was a great snack.

This was our first recommended appetizer by our waiter in barceloneta it was called something like fritto mixti or something. It is fried calamari rings, I think the big round calamari’s are called something like Roman style. Then the chipirones were the little squid fried till they tasted like potato chips no joke, like Lay’s potato chips! Then the padron peppers! This was our first taste of salty peppery goodness and from this point on husband was hooked on these. The last thing on this plate were little fishes fried whole. You can barely see them in this pic they are grey and when you eat them you eat them all. I tried a few and left the heads on the plate, I just could not eat the heads thank you very much. Anyway this was a great dish served only with some lemon and I saw many of these plates on the tables of people dining around us. When the dish got to our table I was thinking where is my marinara sauce? Where is the ranch! HA! I didn’t see any of that around any Spanish table.

I’m going to end this post with this plate of olives. On the first day of our honeymoon while we were so jetlagged we sat down to the first restaurant that caught our eye, and they gave us this free plate of olives. Oh my gosh as soon as we ate one our taste buds were so happy. These olives were so delicious that every olive I had for the next 12 days were compared to these olives. I tried to find them at the boqueria too and I failed. Seriously the best olives ever.

I thought about getting a masters in library science like my friend is doing. I was interested in being an archivist. Someone that takes care of the archives of, art, books, tv shows, anything really. But I looked into the classes and I wasn’t too thrilled about it. Then I remembered another classmate that had gone back to school for radiology tech. I looked at schools around my area,one of the communities colleges in the area had a great program, actually the best program in the area, these are hard programs that had prerequisites that this art major did not have. It would have taken me a year to get the pre req’s then I would have to wait a year to apply and two years to get my degree, and if I did not get into this small program which accepts about 30 people a year, I would have to apply again. I am not getting any younger so 5 years in school did not sound appealing.  The reason why I even thought about this at all was because I took a general ed class at SJSU and it was about humans drugs and disease and amazingly I loved it. It totally made sense and the class was really easy for me. Like A plus to the plus! I thought wow I could totally be interested in this field if I wasn’t already consumed with getting my art degree.

Anyway that is why I decided that health care could be a possibility. I looked and researched and entertained a couple health careers over a course of a month and a half. One that I first found that was really interested in was Health Information Technician. But unfortunately there were no schools that I could find that had a program that I could get registered with. That is no schools around were accredited. So I looked at AHIMA which is the American Health Information Technician Association. Their website listed all the schools in the United States that were accredited for Health Information Technology. I found one, CCSF. City College of San Francisco. What I had not ever heard of this school ever.  So I checked out the schools website and I realized this was San Francisco’s community college. At any given semester there are 25,000 people that are enrolled in classes! I thought wow I am so lucky because this is really the only school in northern California that has the program I want. So there, I registered and now I am attending classes. It is a lot of studying and I am into it. I get a little overwhelmed at times but most of the time I am into it. So yeah that was how I went back to school.

What else?? My best friend Catalina is pregnant! That is so exciting! My great friend Sara is getting married in a matter of weeks in Livermore. I am also a bridesmaid in her wedding, and we just got done showering her and having a great time at her bachelorette party.

One thing I would love to change are my vacation plans. Currently there are none and I would love to make some for the winter months.

If your ever contemplating staying in Barceloneta I would recommend it, because the neighborhood is so awesome. If your ok with smelling fish both fresh and decomposing, and dodging cat and dog poo then your going to be OK! Seriously that is the worst of the neighborhood. We stayed in Banys del Mar Apartmentos Barceloneta. It is a super affordable way to vacation and really get a feel for how people live. Really see since the streets are so narrow I could see the people in the building next to mine getting out of the shower, eating, and hanging out. It is not the most posh of places to stay and if your looking for all the amenities like daily housekeeping and an ice machine down the hall your not going to get it. Every time we wanted a change of sheets we went down and exchanged our old for new and the got our refills of toilet paper too. We went out the first day we got there to get hand soap and clothes washing soap. Sine we had our own little kitchen and clothes washer. We also had air conditioner which was pretty awesome.

After heading over to the store and getting organize in our room we went out to the boqueria, the Mercat St. Joseph on Las Ramblas.