Get off your Buns this Thanksgiving!

Who's with me??? Come on everyone from Houston... you all know you want to run a 10k/5k tomorrow, Thanksgiving morning. What a great way to start a day of feasting! My parents use to make us run the Turkey Trot every year, and we hated it! I vaguely remember one year prentedning I had a severe fever so I got to sleep in my dad's car while everyone else ran. Yes, that was back in the day where it was socially acceptable for parents to leave their children in the cars. Now, not so much....


It's not too late to sign up! Register in person at Luke's Locker in the River Oaks Shopping Center. Oh, and if you do not live in Houston, no worries....Turkey Trots go on in cities across the nation. Go to www.active.com to see where your local trot takes place. :)






A small crew and I will be sporting some holiday cheer while we participate in the 10k. It's always more fun in costume....

See ya there!

Happy Friday :)

THIS is pure amaziness and makes me question why I still don't live there?

What is it with LA and Food Trucks?

The biggest fad I have noticed since living here (besides Fedoras) is Food Trucks. People are obsessed with them, and almost every reputable establishment has one. Imagine a Fletcher’s Truck on South Congress for every First Friday and after every football game. Maybe these Californians are onto something…..

Not only do the trucks ride around all of Los Angeles during the peak lunch time, they can also be ordered for catering, and park on major streets for festivals. Jennifer’s office apparently hasn’t been affected by this ‘credit crunch’ and they cater lunch every day for their 200+ employees. The food is usually pretty standard, meaning I never hear what she has for lunch. However, on a rare occasion they really like to splurge and a few weeks ago they ordered the In ‘n Out Truck. I swear she was talking about this truck for 10 days and could not wait for the day to finally come. Jennifer was not the only one in her office excited by this either, Californians cannot get enough of these food trucks! Some have lines that are at least twenty people deep.

When I first moved out here, I remember a friend telling me the food trucks are so good. I immediately furrowed my brow and reminisced back to sophomore year when the damn taco truck would ride up to the construction site across from the Texan and play its little taco music. Little did I know food trucks in LA are gourmet (but I should have been able to guess that).

the grilled cheese truck & the masses

This past weekend in Venice was First Friday, which is similar to Austin’s First Thursday. The food trucks were tweeting all day about where they were going to be parked, and Jennifer had an email chain rolling around 2pm on which truck she was going to go to. I still was not too keen on the idea of eating at one of these ‘restaurants’ on wheels, but whatever when in Rome, right? We waited in line for I kid you not 45 minutes at the grilled cheese truck. JP ordered the Big Kahuna of grilled cheeses. It was filled with cheese (duh), macaroni & cheese, and pulled pork-- she wasn’t playing around. I went for a more basic tomato caprese grilled cheese. People were custom ordering their grilled cheese like they were at McDonalds. There was a wide variety of breads, cheeses, add-ins, desert grilled cheeses, pickles, tators tots, and the list goes on…. After our long wait and toughing through the line, we were expecting the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world. Well, they sucked. The cheese in JP’s was not even melted. My first food truck experience was a total bust. Next time I am not basing my truck decision on the one with the longest line since that test clearly failed.

Here were some other trucks parked along the street that were not as crowded and probably much better.
Border Grill knew what was up...margs and tacos

Dogtown DOGS...how did I not eat at a truck w/ such a cute name?

korean bbq anyone?

I wish this truck was there!

Sprinkles Cupcake Truck...where were you on 11/7/09 at 8pm?

Does anyone remember when I had the genius idea of making a food truck in Austin that specialized in late night? Does Mel Mel’s Munchies ring a bell? Since LA thinks food trucks are cool that means the rest of the world will too. Maybe I should move home and start up Mel Mel’s Munchies…. Anyone interested in investing??

A Tardy Halloween Post

I apologize again for my tardiness. Happy (week and a bit after) Halloween! The past two Halloweens have been a total bust for me, so this year I really had to step it up. Last year I was in Australia waiting tables at the infamous Bondi Tucker, and I think the year before I had an exam…needless to say they both were boring.

I always put the pressure on myself to come up with a great costume. I think costumes out of a bag are completely unoriginal and lame. My best costume to date was in 2005 when KP, the twins and I were The Facebook. Yes, THE is suppose to be in front of Facebook because 2005 was when you still had to type in www.thefacebook.com. I believe it was right after Halloween that year that the picture feature became available. (Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for not having that available my freshman year!) This was by far the best costume to date. I thought of the idea the day of and it ended up taking us about 7 hours to complete the look.

This year when I was scouring the world wide web for costume inspiration, a friend directed me to American Apparel’s website where they were holding a costume contest. Well, we all know I love a good competition, so I went ahead and entered my Facebook costume. My costume came out with a score of 2.53 out of 4. Not too bad if you ask me, right? It was viewed 6463 times and overall ranked 277/1313. I was proud. Thanks to all of you who voted (and yes I know I am a HUGE dork for entering this)!

Another favorite costume was from 2006 when a group of us dressed as our guy friends. This costume was another success. BTW if you haven’t noticed I judge my success on the creativity scale. Clearly neither of these costumes fit into the sexy Halloween costume category. Maybe it was a little weird that ten cute girls dressed up as nine guys and a golden retriever... but whatever, we all had fun.

This year I decided to be a cast member from my favorite tv show True Blood. I was Sookie (pronounced Ssssoooooookie). It was very fitting actually since last year I was a waitress on Halloween and this year I just dressed up as one. I have to thank Sheriff Jenny and my cousin Stef for helping me with the fake blood and scar. My costume was very well received and great because I was comfortable. I wore Toms and used my apron as my purse. A little tip for people who use the glue on scars next year, take it off after a few cocktails because it isn’t pretty in the am.

The brainstorming has begun for Halloween 2010.

:) Mel

the iphone case that will change the world

It is week 2 of my “real world” job and time to start blogging. Today has been really slow, so needless to say I have been scouring the world wide web. My find of the day: “THE BEAMER.”



Not only is this product genius, but I think it is also going to spearhead the release of air mattress living 2.0. If you haven’t noticed already, all of the pictures on my blog that are not from the internet come from my iphone. I am not sure why Steve Jobs (named CEO of the century, another fact I read today on cnn.com today) did not think of this himself. I suggest everyone commit to purchasing The Beamer. The Beamer is only $32 and comes with FREE SHIPPING, which we all know is a rarity in this economic climate.


This website is really cool because they have quirky products, hint the name of the site, and once enough people commit to buying the products, they create them. You can even submit suggestions and they will develop your product. My mind is already racing with products I want them to create! Hello world, my next big ideas are going to finally be made into a reality! (ok I might be getting a little ahead of myself here, but you get my point.)

I commited to the lime green. :)

Here is a sampling of some other great quirky products.

Watt time is it?


Shot block: A household staple





Last but not least, the ouch pouch. Very fashionable