Food

Tin Fish Restaurant, San Diego

7:24 AM


A couple of weeks ago, M and I were in San Diego for a mini holiday. Well, I was on a mini holiday whilst M attended a conference.

On our first night there, we ate at the Tin Fish Restaurant located in the Gas Lamp district of San Diego. It was a block away from the hotel, so we trekked on down to have some dinner. It was unusually cold in Souther California to the point that I was wearing a jumper, scarf, jacket and knee high boots. Cold weather calls for some clam chowder. M ordered some and I had a sip despite my intolerance for anything that’s dairy.

M and I love to share our food. We’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. Instead of each ordering an entree, we “discuss” the menu choices and make a decision of what we would like to eat. We’ve already visited the Tin Fish a few years ago, so we knew what we were getting.

The menu prices were decent (considerig their location) and the service was fast. The seating varies. There’s the bar, the outdoor seating, and indoor seating. Since it’s cold out and there’s no one sitting outside, we decided to eat indoors.

We ordered Fish, Oyster, and Chips, a bowl of clam chowder and ceviche.

The clam chowder was creamy, flavourful and delicious, though I only had a couple of spoonfuls. Although the clam chowder was excellent, the fish and chips were disappointing. It was fried a little too long that the batter on the fish was slightly hard. When I took a bite, I can almost taste the beginnings of burnt batter. The ceviche was also delicious, but they gave way too many tortilla chips for little a container of the dish.
I would recommend trying it out if you don’t want to wait in line or spend too much on either lunch or dinner. Let’s just say that this is good eats that will fit anyone’s budget.


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New Stickers

6:58 AM

I always had a love affair with stationery items. This love affair produced an abundance of it. Whilst living in the San Francisco-Bay Area a few years ago, I’ve accumulated quite a large stash of cute paper products that ranged from Sanrio, San-X, etc. I brought them all with me when I moved to Sacramento.


My stash hasn’t quite diminished at all. With my drawers running out of room, I made a resolution to use it all up before buying more which prompted to the custom note inserts in my Filofax.

Sadly, that resolution came to an ends a couple of months ago.

I just couldn’t help myself when I walked into a Sanrio shop. I ended up purchasing a Little Twin Stars paper tape, two sticker sets, and two stamps. The downward spiral continued.



I was a Target shopping for Christmas presents when I found a 50-count Harajuku Mini sticker set. As always, I head over the stationery/office department and found the most amazing end cap display — Paperchase. They had binders, sticky notes, journals, candles and stickers. I would have bought the journal and the binder, but I had no need for just because I already have quite a few. I did pick up the stickers. 

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Filofax Right Pen Loop

9:39 AM

In my last post, I talked about the Papermate Flair Pens.  As much as I enjoyed them in my Filofax, they needed to go since they bleed on to the back of my diary.  I went back to using my Marvy Le Pen felt pens, but sadly, they don't fit in the pen loops of my Filofax Metropol.  The pens are super skinny and they tend to fall out of my Filo when its stored in my bag or when I'm getting it out.  It was so frustrating that I stored my Marvy Pens and started using my Pentel Energel Pens again.

The pen fit nicely in the left pen loop of my Filo and I was ecstatic.  When I tried to put another Energel pen in the right pen loop, it would not fit.  It wouldn't even go half-way in.  Frustration sank in as I tried to find a red pen that would fit in that pen loop.  So I trekked down to Staples to buy a red pen that could possibly fit.


I purchased the Staples brand pen called Strata.  The pen seemed small enough to fit into that tiny loop. Whilst there, I picked up a pack of Martha Stewart's removal colour-coding labels.  This might prove so much easier to pack around instead of my Expressions Tape.  I'll review how these work later.


When I got home, I opened up the pen pack, tried it put it in the pen loop and to my dismay, it did not work.  I'm all out of options and it's highly unlikely that I'll be buying every package of gel pens at Staples to see what will fit in my Filo.


But there is a silver lining to every dark cloud.  Since I love rectractable pens for my Filofax, I realised that I can unscrew the bottom of pen to add refills.  An idea popped into my head and I unscrewed the pen and found that I can remove the rubber grip.  BINGO!  The pen fits nicely into the right pen loop of my Filofax.  It just won't have the grip, but I don't really care.  



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