My latest video where I tell my story of working on a food truck and how it took me 13 years to see myself on TV.
★Category: <span>Life</span>
Garage Insulation [Update]
I’m in the process of building a home office in my garage. The walls are finished but there is very little insulation. The winters are tolerable but the summers are uncomfortable.
I looked into garage insulation panels. I ordered a set and installed them today. I had leftover so I hastily patched some on the bare roof above my desk.
On the warmest days, it’ll get up to 90F in the garage. It looks like we have a hot week ahead and I’m looking forward to seeing if these work or not.
Update: After a couple days, it seems like the insulation is working. While it still gets warm, it seems like the rate that the garage heats up is slower and the max it’s gotten in here is 86-88F. Which makes sense.
The insulation slows the heat transfer from outside, through the garage door, to the inside of the garage. And since it slows the rate of transfer down, by the time the sun has moved across the sky, it never has a chance to heat up the garage.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the insulation. It doesn’t get uncomfortably hot and it makes the garage door look decent.
Tell Our Car We Said Bye
And thank you for transporting our family safely all these years.
Health Update
Over on my YouTube channel (if you haven’t, please subscribe), I did a video on my health. I gave up alcohol over a year ago and I give my thoughts on the entire journey.
Morning Walks in Laguna Beach
I took some video this morning while walking around Laguna Beach. I put it together into a video.
Laguna Beach 92651
I’ve always loved driving, especially along Pacific Coast Highway. I took the above picture back in 2004 (on my Powershot A40) once I discovered this amazing stretch of highway between Newport Coast and Laguna Beach. I’d go on this drive often, usually for fun or to clear my mind.
Thanks in no small part to shows like The OC and MTV’s Laguna Beach reality show, I became fascinated with the thought of living here. The storylines and staged or not staged drama of the shows were just entertainment, but it was fun to hear and see the characters go to various spots in Orange County. Ones that my roommates and I often sought out. Heck, I even bought a skimboard after watching the kids do it on the show.
Back in March, we closed escrow on a townhome in Laguna Beach. Now almost 20 years after this picture was taken, it is almost unbelievable that I get to call this place home.
My wife and I are homeowners in Laguna Beach. If you would have told me that I’d be married with two kids, a corgi, and a home in Laguna Beach, the married with two kids and a dog are completely plausible. I would not have believed the Laguna Beach part.
It’s been almost 7 months since we closed and moved in and it still feels unreal whenver we drive into Downtown or drive that same stretch of highway to Trader Joe’s or the kids’ schools.
Who would’ve thought? Not me that’s for sure but here we are now.
Clyde Jaymeson Torres
On May 19, 2015, Clyde Jaymeson Torres was born. For almost nine months, I’ve been wondering what my son would look like, what he would be like.
There’s nothing that can prepare you for the moment that your child is brought into the world. I could feel an overwhelming sense of love and urge to protect this helpless, flailing newborn. I was shocked at how closely he resembled me when I was younger. It was like looking at the past, present and future, all at once. He is a little version of me that I want to create the best life for.
He is everything I had hoped for without even knowing what I wanted.
Thank You Crosby
“You want to check out this place in Santa Ana?”
My old roommate asked me this question on a random weeknight. Santa Ana? Really? During college, it was frequently joked that Santa Ana was where Irvine PD took homeless people to keep Irvine looking “suburban”. I had nothing better to do so I tagged along.
Mike told me that one of his buddies had friends that were opening up this bar/lounge in Santa Ana. My expectations were low so once I walked into The Crosby, I didn’t know what to think. It was as if I was transported to somewhere other than Orange County. There were old 80’s boom boxes on the walls. There was music playing. No DJ (yet) but really good, background music you could bob your head to. They served food and had beer and wine (no liquor license yet). I got the cheapest thing on the menu, The Starving Artist, and was pleasantly surprised when they had Chimay on tap for $6.
I knew this place was different when I took that first bite out of the sandwich. I said, “Oh shit” out loud. When I have good food, I’ll raise my eyebrows or nod my head in approval. I rarely use profanity out loud unless the food is that good. The Starving Artist is chef Aron Habinger’s take on the grilled cheese. And it was $5. We left that night and thought, “We’re coming back again.”
This was the beginning of my love for The Crosby. We kept going back and in February 2009, I moved to Santa Ana in an apartment two blocks away from The Crosby. I loved that I was walking distance from The Crosby, Memphis and other great bars and restaurants in Downtown Santa Ana. I loved to show this side of Orange County to people who thought it was nothing but suburbs and conservatives.
Around the same time, DJ Rhettmatic and planbb started their infamous Shift residency on Thursday nights. This changed everything. As if we didn’t have plenty of reasons to go, Shift on Thursdays always gave us something to do on Thursdays. My friends and I had it down to a routine. At around 8, Nino and I would walk to CVS to restock our fridge. By 9 we had our first drinks made and started getting ready. By 10, friends would come over and have a few drinks and by 11, we were walking the two blocks to The Crosby to enjoy the rest of the night. We did this for almost every Shift and for countless other Fridays and Saturdays from 2009 until Nino and I moved out in 2011.
The Crosby was more than a restaurant, bar or lounge. You could argue that it single handedly changed people’s opinions of Santa Ana. It was a huge reason why I moved to Santa Ana. It gave my friends a reason to visit and hang out in Santa Ana. I celebrated birthdays there. We celebrated New Year’s there. I reconnected with Mary there and threw her first surprise birthday there. I’ve bought many rounds of drinks for countless friends. When I think of my late 20’s and my transition into responsible adulthood, I’ll always look back and think of my time in downtown Santa Ana and The Crosby. And I’ll be happy that I was a part of it the short time it was there.