Ninja post!

Secret Santa

2010-12-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

For all of my friends not from Kansas City (or even some who are), you've probably never the name Larry Stewart (and most of us never had either till 2006). All of us from KC remembered him as Secret Santa. He was a truly inspirational man who proved that the spirit of Christmas only dies when you let it. Every year at around this time, he would race across KC and give out gifts of $100 or more to completely random people who needed the money. This came about due to an act of kindness bestowed upon him and his promise to God to help those in need if given the chance.

You can read about Larry here. To read about this year's round of Secret Santa, go here. If you haven't found a meaningful place to make a Christmas donation, you should consider Secret Santa.

NY, NY.... eh

2010-05-12T16:08:00.000-07:00

Well just got back from a nice long weekend vacation to NJ. Susan and I visited our friend Bob (former coworker) who was celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary and his kids (who are all around my age so strange calling them kids), asked if Susan and I could go as the surprise to their party.

Friday

We left Vegas on a red eye on Continental (we flew to Newark as it was easiest place to fly to logistically). Also, who knew that Newark,NJ is closer to the City as JFK? The flight was completely full! We left at 10pm and got in at 5:10 am (4 hour flight roughly with the time zone changes). Bob's daughter Jamie picked us up (and she's a port authority airport cop so she just parked her car out front and had her coworkers watch it! Talk about perks!) and took us to my friend Cami's place. From there we just crashed for a few hours (airplane sleep is not sleep).

Saturday

When party time started, a SUV picked us up and brought us to Bob's place. This was the big surprise part since Bob and Diane had no clue what was going to happen other than a car was going to pick them up at around noon. So we pull up to Bob's place, and he comes out, the driver rolls down the window, and before Bob even says Hi to the driver, he says, "My kids are driving me nuts!"

Then he looked over and Susan and I said, "Hi Bob." He was completely shocked to see us! Diane was shocked as well (but not in a rush to be shocked as when Bob told her to come to the car to see 2 people they hadn't seen in a while, she went back inside the house).

The party was great. I met Bob's friends and family (and not one of them was wearing a track suit!). The place is called Seasons, and it's a beautiful place. You can see it here. The food was great too!

Afterwards, we went back to Bob's for a while and then went back to Cami's. On the drive back, we got a quick tour of New Jersey. I saw the Bada Bing from the Sopranos, the Meadowlands, where the Jets and Giants play, and the Xanadu, from what I was told, just one big mess with a indoor ski hill in it.

Now off to Manhattan!

We took the Path train into the 33rd Street Station and when I got outside it was almost like walking into a movie set. We were 10 streets from Times Square but I could already see the lights. We walked past what I'm guessing has to be the world's biggest Macy's (it takes up a whole city block). I didn't know that Miracle on 34th Street was also named by since it took place in this Macy's.

Seeing Times Square was just like seeing it on TV. The lights, the glitz, the police barricades. I remember hearing on an episode of the Office that you can tell the tourists in New York because they're always looking up. Yup i'd believe it! It's funny how I didn't know Sex and the City 2 was coming out till I saw about 15 billboards plastered everywhere saying it.

We saw the Ed Sullivan Theater (home of the Late Show with David Letterman, more on that on Monday), Columbus Circle, the Met, the Lincoln Center, and the Library. From there it took about an hour to get home. From there, it was sleep time!

Sunday

The big day! We saw practically everywhere in lower Manhattan. We took the PATH train into the World Trade Center Station. It's still a big hole in the ground, but you can't really see it as it's all fenced off. We went to the display of the new WTC and it was like experiencing it all over again. The place showed the news reports from back then, pictures, time lines, and items recovered from the site. It was quite emotional; some people were crying. From there, we went to the World Financial Center, which gives a beautiful view of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty, and New Jersey. We then made our way all the way to the other end of the island to the South Street Seaport. It's a semi hidden area of the City that a lot of tourists don't know about (it wasn't very busy there). We had a light snack of a piece of pizza (thin crust Unos pizza!) and then we took the water taxi around the City. We went past Battery Park (which got its name since military artillery was placed there waaaaaay back in the day), then on to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. From there we went to the east side of the City and toured the City's border with Brooklyn. It was a neat one hour tour (which was nice to get off our feet as our feet and legs were hurting from all the walking the night before!). Plus it was freaking windy as hell so it was nice to be inside the boat. After we got back to the South Street Seaport, we walked down to Wall Street and found the Golden Bull you see in all the ads and pictures. We then realized that it's less than a block from there to Battery Park (we were gonna skip that since we were trying not to walk due to the achy legs). So we went to Battery Park and saw this weird looking (yet slightly familiar) globe statue. When we got up to it, we found out it was artwork structure that was between Twin Towers. That's why it looked familiar.
After we left Battery Park, we took the #4 train to Chinatown. It wasn't as foreign looking as I thought it'd be (there were tons of white people there). Susan got a beef kabob from a street vendor (and started a trend as no one was buying from him but there was a line of 3 people after we left). The interesting thing was that when he rewarmed the kabob, he deep fried it instead of putting it on the grill. Grilled and then deep fried beef tastes interesting. From there, we went to BIG WONG! It's a fairly well known Chinatown restaurant known for their "Eat it and get out....NOW!" attitude. When Susan and I walked in and she pointed she wanted a seat, the lady NATURALLY assumes Susan speaks Cantonese and just busts it out talking to her. After we got sat, like 8 seconds later, she's ready to take our order. Susan asked why she couldn't find the roasted duck she wanted and the waitress told her that she had the wrong menu. They had the traditional menu and then the "Special Menu".
After looking at the people at the table next to us order, we realized the "Special Menu" is the "White Safe" food menu! The Panda Express type of food. That became a running joke for the rest of the trip. After we left BIG WONGs, we went explored more of the area and saw Wu Hop. We noticed it had 2 restaurants. One in the basement and one at ground level. This, we found out, is basically the Traditional downstairs, and the "Special Menu" upstairs. Strangely enough, the downstairs had a huge waiting line with white people! We left and walked over to Little Italy (next door to Chinatown). At this point, our legs were killing us so we just found a set of stairs to sit down on to rest for a while. OF COURSE, that very restaurant (which wasn't scheduled to open for 10 more minutes) happened to be the place that the only other people on the street wanted to go to. And it didn't look like it was open (all the lights were off and chairs were up and they were due to open in 10 minutes). So the people hung out there for a while hoping it'd open so we left since we couldn't stand their complaining that the place wasn't open. As we were walking along, we found a place that had a ton of people in it, which turned out to be rice pudding store. Out of curiosity, we were gonna try some, but it was $6 for a small one! I don't care how good they think it'll taste (rice pudding is gross), i'm not paying that much. After that, we took a subway to Grand Central Station so we could go to the Palm Steakhouse. Grand Central looks just like I remember it (the upstairs part). I remember we were standing in that area when we bought my first NY bagel and man that thing tasted good. Almost like a pretzel. We walked out to 45th and 2nd Ave, and then found out, the place was closed! WTF? Mothers Day and they're closed? They have a sister restaurant across the street, but I only wanted to go to this one since that's where the cartoon drawings are at. At that point we were a bit demoralized as we knew we'd have to do a lot of walking to get back to the subway station and find somewhere else to eat. But since we were just one street from the UN, we went over to take a picture (my famous, "The UN as seen on 24" photo that I took). Susan remembered there was a bus that would take us into chinatown from there so we took that down (mental note, they only take exact change in change, no dollar bills!) So we went back to Wu Hop and had their lobster which Susan was just raving for! Susan was salivating for that lobster and when we went by Wu Hop the first time, she was trying to convince me to eat the lobster rather than the steak. After that we went home and slept from this exhausting day.

Monday

Having learned our lessons from the two days before (mostly as couldn't move ha ha), we took this day reallllly easy. Originally planned was going to Central Park, 30 Rock, The Letterman Show (which I requested the tickets over a month in advance), and then the Mets game. After waking up and walking (very slowly) to the train station, we decided to skip Central Park and 30 Rock as we'd have to rush back to the Letterman show if we did that. So we went to midtown and had some street food (hot dogs and kabobs). The kabob was pretty good too. The hot dog was decent in that I had hoped it would have been grilled (since he grilled all the other meats), but it was just boiled so it didn't have as much flavor as I would have hoped. We had to wait in line for what seemed like forever for the Letterman show 3 different times. It got to the point I was about to kill a few of the show pages as they were really getting annoying and after a while just repeating themselves (this gets amplified when your feet are hurting so bad you can barely stand). FINALLY we get into the studio. The stage is surprisingly small. Camera tricks are incredible to make it looks so big. We had a comedian come out for a few minutes to warm up the crowd (and they were blasting the AC to get the temperature down to about 55 degrees since Dave likes it cold in there) and then Dave came out for a few seconds to say hi before the show started. An interesting tidbit is that behind the Manhattan mini city set they have is a bunch of trash cans, but i don't think you can see them on TV. Our guest line up (from the May 10th show) was:

Evangeline Lilly
Sam Rockwell
Whoever the American Idol castoff was that week
and the Million Dollar Quartet (a musical in Broadway)

They film the whole show in about an hour! Almost in real time like 24. When they cut to commercial on the show, they just finishing playing whatever song they're playing and then start right back up again (and Dave takes off his jacket at every commercial). Plus when they say they're gonna show a clip of something, they put this big ass tv right in front of Dave and his guest (so it's hard to see them due to that).

After the show, we took the train out to Queens to get to the Mets stadium (very convenient that they have a subway stop right in front of the stadium). Citi Field is beautiful! I've never seen a stadium (football, basketball, or hockey included) look this nice! Though it's a bit too open air for me (it was about 50 degrees at best with the wind chill that day so it was cold). We tried the Shake Shack (which was freaking expensive there! It cost us $30 for 2 burgers, 1 fry, 1 shake, and one drink!) And i'm guessing since it was stadium prepared it didn't taste as good as I've been told. Oh well, next time, we'll try it in Madison Square Park. Since it was freezing, we didn't stay for the whole game and got back to Cami's around 10 that night to get to bed and ready to travel the next day.

Our Tuesday was fairly uneventful. We left Cami's and took a train and a subway and then another train to JFK to fly back to home.

It was a fun trip to NY/NJ, but I don't think I could live there. Not having a car can be nice, and the public transportation system there is great! That being said, I don't think i'd have fun waiting for a subway or a train when i have tons of groceries to haul or when it's raining or cold. Maybe it's just the small town KC boy in me, but NY isn't for me. Next vacation is definitely going to be a cruise!

The mic goes silent

2009-05-01T23:53:00.000-07:00

In a shocking (and surprisingly national) story today, Vegas lost it's voice. Danny Gans, the man of a million voices died. It was probably due to a heart attack, but they're not sure yet. He was 52 but he didn't look or move like it at all. Susan and I saw his show (at the Mirage) last year and it was very entertaining. He had a very sterile, family friendly act that while at times bland, it was what made him Entertainer of the Year for 11 out of 13 years he was active here (he was at the Mirage forever). Steve Wynn hired him at the Mirage and as soon as his contract was up, he pulled him to the Encore again. Sadly, it was barely 3 months that he was there.

It didn't take long for Youtube to put a tribute up or for Wikipedia to update (I found out at 7:40 this morning and his page already had the info on it!)

Danny was just as well known outside of the show room as in it. He really appreciated his audience. He always gave out tickets to the locals and did charity work to give back to the community.

We'll miss you Danny. The illustrious glow of the Strip has lost it's shimmer today.

The Horror... Again!

2009-04-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

Been a rough week. Need sleep!

In yet another example of how my cowardice and indecisiveness have cause the world more harm, I saw Carrot Top at my gym again. This guy is FREAKY looking! He's even scarier looking in real life! He used to just be annoying looking, but now he looks like a 'roid freak so juiced up he could rip your hand off by shaking it. Surprisingly enough, he didn't bring a pair of work out gloves so he was buying some there. Why can't Heidi Klum or Christina Ricci work out at my gym? Interestingly enough, NO ONE talks to this guy when he works out (probably due to fear). But I did hear a few of the trainers there saying he looked really juiced up (like more than usual). I could have rid the world of a major annoyance if i could have gotten up the courage to off him but he probably would have been able to crush my whole body before i got close enough to "hurt" him.

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of my dad needing to have open heart surgery. That was a very rough weekend for the whole family, but we all prayed a lot, and dad is doing great.

Another birthday down and if i'm dead tomorrow it's because i'm trying to make cookies from scratch tonight!

I'm hoping and praying there is some rhyme or reason as to how the Chiefs did their draft this weekend. They didn't even draft any offense till the 6th round! But we do have the distiction of picking Mr. Irrelevant. So I'm hoping they're gonna go offense crazy shopping on the free agent market soon? Hopefully?.......

Ha Ha Ha!

2009-02-09T21:12:00.001-08:00

One thing that really annoys me about Vegas is the fact that pedestrians here treat cross walks and red lights as optional items. I've almost hit at least 8 people who were crossing the street in the dark (going against traffic naturally). Well today I got to see some poetic justice at work! While I was stopped at an intersection, I saw a guy standing on the center median and i noticed he was flailing his arms and moving funny. It was raining this morning (yes it rained twice in one month in Vegas!) and since the geniuses who built Vegas decided to not put in drainage in the roads, water builds up pretty quickly. At first I thought the guy was retarded or something but then I realized that he was flailing and moving funny because he was getting splashed, trying not to get splashed, and getting pissed off that he was getting splashed all at the same time! I'm actually surprised that the guy didn't get ran over as he kept falling off of the median (which was only about a foot wide) onto my side of traffic. The funniest thing was he was yelling it like it was the on coming car's fault that he was getting splashed!

Moron.

Well football season officially drew to a close yesterday as the Pro Bowl is now over. Boy what a disappointing season for us Chief fans. I'm glad the Steelers won, but I wished deep down that Kurt Warner could have gotten another Super Bowl ring. So what do I do between now and preseason?

Naga.. Naga... Na gonna work here anymore

2008-08-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

If you don't know where the title is from, shame on you (it's from Office Space, go watch it!)

Friday.... Going to Naga. When our family had dinner before I went to the Philippines, mom and dad mentioned we were taking a trip to Naga (where my dad is from) to attend my cousin Nicky Boy's wedding. Mark, Phil and Leo all started laughing (the last time I went to Naga, I was 4 years old and don't remember it). I understood why. Though I don't remember going to Naga, I remember the trip of flying to the Philippines and flying back. My brain probably blocked out the trip because (from what I've heard) I got really sick because someone gave me the water there (you DO NOT want to drink the water there!) And I was told it wasn't a pleasant experience. Going to the airports in the Philippines (and a lot of other countries) is very different than in the States. In the Philippines, you can't even get into the airport if you don't have a ticket. Luckily since I wasn't over my jetlag, getting up at 6am was no problem. We got to the airport cutting it a little close (there was still traffic) but we got checked in pretty easily. The thing I don't understand there is that they just told everyone to get on, and then we were completely loaded onto a full flight in 10 minutes! What's up with that? The flight was a quick 45 minute hop down to Naga. From the air, all i could see were lots of green, and lots of water (and not a golf a course in sight!). I also saw something that looked like a 100 foot long road. Then I noticed we were descending towards it! I was like, "Crap that's the runway?" We landed and hit the ground HARD and flew right by the terminal. We stopped at the end of the runway and then turned around and brought the plane up to the "gate" which turned out to be some stairs and then walking about 30 yards to the airport. I noticed while we got off of the plane a lot of people were saying hi to this guy who was sitting in the first row (who also happened to be standing behind us in line at the airport in Manila). As we got off, even dad said hi to him too. So naturally I asked dad who it was, and he said it was the mayor! Apparently on Air Philippines (and probably Philippine Airlines) flights, the first row is saved till the last second for government officials. So I asked dad if the town is so small that everyone knows everyone. And mom said that the mayor knows dad because his wife is my grandmother's god daughter so they've known the guy for years even before he ran for mayor (so that was basically a YES to my question). A bunch of guys pulled all of the luggage off and put it in a small trailer and then just dragged it around to the front side of the airport (which was pretty small). After we got to the "baggage claim" which was little more than them throwing all of the luggage into a small pickup spot, i noticed that the airport people looked like they were getting ready to close (it was barely 8:30am at this point) and then i noticed that the flight we were on was the ONLY FLIGHT OF THE DAY! So that's all the airport people had to do! One of my uncle's picked us up and we were all to Naga and all of it's "nothing to do" country side. After we got to my grandma's house, I said hi to her (she's not doing well), and then just basically did nothing. We had lunch provided by my uncle who is running a pretty successful BBQ place there (pretty good food too) and then went to the Cable Water Ski place they have one town over (about 2 miles away). It's pretty neat. It's basically a network of cables that go in a circle and can pull you like you're water skiing but with no boat. And if you fall off, you can jump back on the platform and have the next cable pull you. I found a video on youtube even!

But I didn't try it because my knee had been hurting ever since we had gotten to the Philippines (probably from sitting cramped on an airplane for 17 hours!) . After that, we went shopping to get a barong to for me to wear to the wedding (it's the formal shirt to wear at a special events, kinda like a shirt and tie). Then it was just a drive home and then we had dinner and then went to bed.

Saturday we were up early and went to print something up at an internet cafe (they don't have a computer or printer at my grandma's house). I met yet another cousin i'd never met before (Dennis) who was helping my uncle setup a newer and bigger restaurant (his old on was essentially inside of someone's garage and it was so successful, the owner wanted to open his own restaurant). We went home to get ready for the wedding and then got ready for the weirdest part of the day! We got the Church and my uncle (different than the restaurant uncle) and his son (the one getting married) had gotten to the church way too early because they thought the wedding started at 2 and not 3! There were like a zillion sponsors for this wedding (i think like 20 or something). After the wedding we had a few hours to kill so we just went home and then chilled out for a while (it wore dad down from being in the heat so long as the church was fairly open air and it was hot). We had dinner at a local hotel and I saw a few cousins I hadn't seen in a few years. After that, it was home and to sleep as we had to get up at 6:00 again.

Sunday we got back to the airport and I checked the flight schedule for the day. Just one flight, so I was right! We had to wait forever as the flight to get us was 45 minutes late! When we finally got on, that was pretty scary too! When we took off, we barely cleared the runway (i don't think it's FAA approved in length). If we have gone another 100 feet (which is not long when you're going really fast on a plane) we could have fallen off the end of the runway and fallen 100 feet (at least) into a rice field! That was the worst part of the flight. We got into Manila no prob. I had lunch with my other grandma, and 1 of my mom's sisters (and her kids) and 2 of her brothers. Then I took a nap. I was still trying to meet up with Jill and Jennifer, but we just couldn't fit it in. We did have dinner with another one of my mom's brother's and his family so I ended up seeing all of my relatives on my mom's side. Then it was just sleep, and then it was a flight to Taipei on Monday.

Monday I got up early (again) and got to the airport (which mom and dad couldn't come in with me since they didn't have tickets) and had to go through a 2 hour wait to get through all of the security and immigration. I had some Christian missionary family from Wisconsin behind me and I think they were just going back to the states temporarily (but had like 4 bags each!). When we got to Taipei the lady behind me got hassled for having liquids in her bag (I did too, but her bag got through first so they hassled her and i got through scott free!). I had to wait in Taipei for about 1.5 hours and that went pretty quick since they had internet at the airport. on the flight from Taipei to LAX, I saw this fascinating documentary of the National Museum in Taipei. They house some of the greatest treasures from past Chinese Dynasties. The items are here because after the Chinese Revolution a lot of the items were never returned to China after the revolutionaries fled to Taiwan. So depending on who you ask, a Chinese person will say the items have been stolen, while a Taiwanese person will say they're being held to protect them. Kinda like during Katrina, white people found food, black people stole food. Jet lag was really kicking in during my flight so I was falling in and out of consciousness for most of the flight. I got into LA late (I rarely had a flight on time this whole trip) but customs was relatively painless, though if you've ever gone through customs at LAX, it's LONG. I got through ok and Susan was nice enough to meet me there as I had about a 2 hour layover till my flight back till Vegas (cut down to an hour since my flight was delayed). So luckily the flight back was fine and then it was off to bed for some "not sleep" as i was jetlagged and i knew work the next day was gonna be hell (which the next 2 weeks were)!

Well that was the trip and hopefully next time i write a trip blog it won't take me 2.5 months!

b!

Pried chicken and no appetite

2008-08-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

So I finally get to the Philippines after what seems like days without a shower (I was ready to give my blanket to anyone on the plane as I was sweating even though people were bundled up (wimps). The lack of A/C probably had something to do with it. Once we got onto the ground you'd be amazed by how non foreign the place looks. You'd think you were in San Fran or Fort Ree, NJ. Except everything is in English instead of Chinese! There were more things in English here than in Downtown LA The first thing that I get adjusted to very quickly is that i'm not considered short anymore! Almost everyone is around my height or within 5 inches so I'm able to see the tops of peoples heads (that aren't 5 years old)! Due to the limited number of flights allowed into the country (due to runway space at the airport) every flight is usually packed full. Sooo, customs is usually packed full.

Luckily we got a line pass since dad was in a wheelchair. I look behind me and it's this 139 year old white lady is there (in a wheelchair too). So being curious, the porters are all asking her what the hell she's doing here? Her son married a pinay and decided to move to pinas. She said they lived 1.5 hours from the airport so that could either be 60 miles or around the corner depending on traffic.

After getting out of the airport was fairly painless. The ride back to the house was relatively quick. It was about noon (local time) and I was exhausted. So since the 3 of us were hungry and wanted something quick, where else to go (while in the Philippines) than KFC!?!

One different thing there is that people practically DRINK the gravy (they serve mashed potatoes but most people get rice) and the gravy is poured all over everything! For years I never understood why Phil and Mark liked gravy with rice. That is until about 4 years ago when I first tried it. Mannn that's gooooood stuff. But since we were tired (and double parked outside), we just got it to go. Naturally as soon as we got home, I went to bed! Of course since it's so hot and humid it took the room unit about 20-25 minutes to get the room cool (due to the high cost of power, it's more practical to have room units than central air).

The nice thing about being in the Philippines is the relaxed pace that things go (whether you want to have that pace or not). Pretty much all day Monday was sleeping and trying to stay hydrated. Dad was really worn out from the traveling so he was resting most of the time. I don't blame him; I felt the same way! I missed seeing my aunt Patty that afternoon because

1. I didn't know she was there till she was pulling out of the driveway.

2. She didn't say hi since mom thought I was sleeping.

So it was mostly just KFC for dinner and then went to bed.

Tuesday was interesting in that I saw my grandma (she's like 86 and can walk faster than me!) still kicking strong and she even drove herself over to my parents place! That was a shocker! But an even bigger shocker was her wireless landline (which sounds like an oxymoron). I found some info here:

http://quago.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/the-proliferation-of-the-wireless-landlines/

It was still hot of course. Tuesday night started a bathroom ritual that lasted till I left. Every night I had to kill a cockroach that was at least 2 inches long. Those things are honking big over there!

Wednesday. A day long remembered. I finally got to meet my penpal Myla (see her here). We've known each other for about 7 years now so it was weird to finally see her in person (especially since in the time we've known each other, she's gotten married and had 2 kids as beautiful as her). We ate at a place called Gerry's Grill and boy was I adventurous! I had Pusit which is grilled squid (not nearly as tough as I thought it would be) and Sisig a pork dish that is mostly pig head and pig ears. It was overcooked (burnt) but other than that, it was fine. I treated her to the SPA. That's the thing I always look forward to going to when I got to the Philippines. You can get a 1 hour massage for less than $20! You can't get that anywhere in the states for that price! I wanted to go back again the next day but we didn't have time :(

Thursday. Family time. Today was mostly either going out with family I hadn't seen yet or doing errands with mom. I went to Gloria Maris (a Chinese restaurant i've gotten really sick of going to) again. This time wasn't as bad as we ate on the "casual" dining side. Every other time i've gone there we've eaten on the formal dining side (9 course meals of the same thing everytime) so it was a nice change of pace. Though the scallops there sucked! Mom had a zillion things to do but we found time to get some games for my phone (and Sannie's).

Friday was going to be a busy day as we were going to be flying down to Naga for Nicky Boy's wedding. That's next up (hopefully faster than a month away)

Where the hell is JB?

2008-06-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

Before I continue on my adventures to the Philippines, I ran across this website today which basically showed me (a white guy who can’t dance), doing it all over the world. It was a simple video but I guess the music and camaraderie. You can access it here

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding.

This was pretty neat video that took forever to do. He even goes to Tagaytay! It's a nice place and one of the few places in the Philippines that isn't HOT!

b!

Ever Heard of Loading Arm 216 at LAX airport?

2008-06-17T23:14:00.001-07:00

God I hope you haven't! I've seen it once and it was hell from beginning to end. To those lucky enough to not know what i'm talking about, there is an auxiliary loading section of LAX for the international flights. I've always wondered how they had 248 different airlines flight out of LAX yet only have 10 gates. I found out the hard way. As i mentioned in last blog, I went to go on an all expense paid trip to the Philippines with my parents. That old airline rule of thumb about checking in 3 hours early actually applies when you fly international out of LAX (as opposed to when mom flew out of San Fran and it took about 9 minutes to get from the check in line to the gate!) and it's hell the whole 3 hours. Our flight was at 1:30 am (yes 1:30 AM) and we got to the airport at 8pm to get checked in! When we got there, there was still a line! And it was a big one! Luckily we got to use the business class check in since my parents have enough miles to get upgraded. We also requested wheelchair service so that dad didn't have to walk so much. So it only took about 25 minutes to check in, but we had to wait over and hour to get the freaking wheelchair! So after that, we went through security and walked forever through a ton of construction (they're trying to drag the international terminal out of the 70s but it looks like it's fighting back!) to get to our gate. Since our area was under construction it didn't have any AC so that really sucked. We waited about 30 minutes and then this lady comes on and (in veeeeeery faint volume because the temporary speakers broadcast about 5 feet) and tells us that our gate got moved all the way across the international terminal (always my luck) but of course no one moved because no one could hear her! So i walked up to the lady and asked her to repeat what she said (she looked annoyed when I asked, and i asked nicely!) because i couldn't hear a thing she said. So she turns to a security person (so i guess i really annoyed her) to ask her if her voice could be heard well (she thought i was making this up?) and even that lady said that the broadcasts over the intercom suck. So finally word gets around that we have to leave and of course our wheelchair person left already so dad had to walk. Luckily someone sent the word to the porters that they needed to move everyone and we ran into our porter (who was a 19 year old pinoy guy who looked like he was 35! Usually it's the other way around!) So we get moved across the terminal and i notice that the gates are only about 10 feet from each other. Then i even saw a car outside of one of the gates! So i'm getting suspicious. We get to the gate and I see buses outside! So i'm like, "crap we have to ride to anther terminal!" So that's how they fit a million airlines into a 10 gate terminal. So naturally it takes forever to get everyone loaded (and my parents and i get separated because they only allow one person to accompany a wheelchair person) so we don't get loaded till about 1:45 or so (remember the flight was supposed to leave at 1:30!). So i'm sitting on the plane (it was a 747 jumbo jet) and was in awe because i got to sit upstairs this time! That was cool since i've never sat upstairs in a plane. I look at my watch, it's 2:30, then 2:50 and people are running by at a frantic pace (the cockpit is 7 rows in front of me). So finally they announce that the AC isn't working in the back of the plane (lack of AC seems to be a recurring theme) so they had to get that fixed. So we finally get it fixed at like 3:40 am. It sucked for everyone else on the plane too since they had to turn off the entire AC unit to fix the broken part. So we finally got off the ground and i swear that same 6 people are just taking turns using the bathroom. I'm glad i wasn't sitting in their rows and i'm glad i didn't eat whatever they ate! Aside from that the flight was mostly uneventful. Airplane technology has improved since I last flew international. Now each seat on the plane has a tv and has tons of stuff to watch. They had 15 movies (US and international, mostly asian obviously), tv shows, documentaries, games, and a GPS showing you exactly where the plane is at in the air. I came loaded for bear this trip though. I had my laptop, ipod, gameboy, and God forbid even a book! I only used the ipod as I was watching movies I hadn't seen before. I saw Vantage Point (not that bad), Shawshank Redemption, and part of a new Chinese movie called The Empress & the Warriors (starring Donnie Yen). I only got through part of the Empress movie since it was in Mandarin and I was falling asleep so it was hard to keep reading the subtitles. Dad watched part of Rambo but didn't finish it.

After an nice 14 plane ride (after waiting on the plane for 2 hours) we finally got to Taiwan. Customs there is a little different (and no one is over 5'8" tall either). Even though we just exited an airplane, we had to go through metal detectors AGAIN to get to our next gate. Due to the fact our flight was 2 hours late, we had to race to the gate as we only had 45 minutes to get to our next gate (normally not an issue, but dad couldn't move too quickly or too long). After going through all of the security hassles, we got to the gate about 10 minutes before they started boarding. And as with every flight that I go on when I go to asia, there is the lone white man going to Thailand. Going there to go fishing my ass! I hope they're at least molesting women instead of little boys. And the guys are always a little weird looking (that's to be expected though). So excluding waiting on the plane, we were in Taiwan for about 25 minutes or so. Luckily we didn't have any issues flying to the Philippines so we took off on time and got to the Philippines in about 2.5 hours or so (about 11:30 am local time).

And this is all just the trip to get TO the Philippines!

More soon. B!

33.......53

2008-06-16T04:35:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting few months. I turned 33 in April(and for the geeks, the Battlestar Galactica episode titled "33" is probably one of the best of the entire series) and in the same week, dad had to have surgery which was a pretty stressful ordeal. Luckily dad is ok so that's one less worry for the family.
This makes me realize I need a vacation!

It was good to see my friend Jennie for her big 3-0 a few weeks ago. Jen and I have been falling behind on our monthly chats and our annual get togethers (we're at every other year right now) so it was good to catch up with her. It just felt like an old glove (non OJ version). Speaking of OJ, this skit from Madtv is still a classic

Dad is still recovering from surgery (it's only been about 6 weeks) so mom asked me to go back with them to the Philippines. VACATION! problem solved! It's been about 4 years since I've been to the Philippines so it was about time to go back again. Naturally I had one priority while back there. Getting a Massage (and not the Thailand kind either! I mean STRICTLY a massage!). There is this great place in pinas (the Philippines) called (creatively enough) THE SPA
I had 2 other priorities and they were to see my penpal Myla (localed on Friendster here) and see my cousins Jill and Jennifer). Well.... 2 out of 3 things wasn't bad! Sorry Jill and Jen! More on the Philippines in the next blog.

A few weeks ago I filled up my gas tank and almost had a heart attack. It cost me $53 to fill up! Man that was rough. SO my monthly gas expenditure has jumped from about $65 last year at this time to over $100! Man i'm glad I don't have to drive much in Vegas (and everything is fairly quick or close to get to).

Uh-Oh

2008-01-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday there was a collective "OH CRAP!" heard throughout the US when news that software firm Too Much Media announced that thousands of identities were stolen from porn sites through out the nation! The Horror! The Humor!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,322550,00.html

I guess this will be a bad joke to bring up at the porn convention this week.

In what was giving me flashbacks to the Chevy Chase movie Vacation, a family went on a roadtrip with their dead Grandma in the back!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,322806,00.html

Ohhhh man 3 day weekend coming up so I'm going to do my best to sleep and watch football but alas, it's only Tuesday :(

The Year in Review

2008-01-13T17:04:00.000-08:00

Ah, 2008. What an interesting 2 weeks so far. The stock market is tanking, our economy is going down the tubes, mortgage related layoffs are over 100k, and most importantly, I was right about the Chiefs sucking!

It was quite a depressing football season watching the Chiefs continue a downward spiral due to a complete moron running the offense, a 5 year and running anemic defense, and a coach can't coach. Now all I can hope for is that 3 draft pick next year (depending on if we win the coin toss).

Well with the Colts (my preseason pick for the SuperBowl) out, I think it'll be Patriots and Packers (1996 all over again) except that the Patriots will be winning. I'll decide if i'll bet on it or not though :)

So 2 weeks into the year only and last night I was reading about a possible contender for the 2008 Darwin Award winner. The article is HERE at CNN.COM. A guy tried to slide down an escalator (while drunk) and fell off. In a twisted sense of irony, he died when he fell ONTO another escalator! This just shows God has a sense of humor. At least he did it in style as he died at the Hollywood mall (at Hollywood & Highland) which is where the Oscars and all big film premieres are held (also where Marky Mark and his Italian Job crew stole that safe with all of the gold in it).

It was a good Holiday season. Mom and dad came to visit (both LA and Vegas) for Christmas which is the first time they've been in the states for Christmas since they moved back. And mom made this prime rib that was sooooooooooooooo good. It was like Las Vegas buffet quality (this excludes the Excalibur, Palms, Wynn, Orleans, and Gold Coast when i make this statement so don't eat the Prime Rib at these places). But all that is over so it's back to stupid reality (speaking of which the Simpsons Movie is still just as funny the second time I watched it, Dave will probably be the only one who gets this joke).

b!

Goodbye Chris

2007-06-25T21:05:00.000-07:00

Today I was shocked to read that WWE Wrestler Chris Benoit died. At first I thought that it was a joke or storyline (despite the fact that I read it on CNN.com). Chris was a great entertainer who I've seen on tv many times. I relate to his death because I met him in person once. Phil and I went to Niagara Falls back in 2003 and while we were on the Canadian side at the WWE Store, one of the employees told us that Chris was making an unscheduled and unannounced appearance at the Store. We waited in line for about 40 minutes (which is pretty damn long for an autograph signing no one is supposed to know about!) and when Phil and I met Chris, I asked him why this was a secret appearance. He told me that he was on vacation in the area because he had enjoyed it so much the last time he had come. He decided to do an autograph signing just because he was there. He was very very nice and very friendly, posing for a picture with Phil and me and never rushing us and taking the time to talk to us with real sincerity. Even though he was on vacation he took the time out of his extremely busy schedule to thank his fans for being there for him. I read yesterday he had to fly home due to a family emergency and then it was revealed that his wife and son were dead too. I pray that if there was pain in his family & his life that he finds peace in his eternal slumber.

Goodbye Chris, Heaven will be a better place with the Crippler.

24

2007-06-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

My name is (not) Jack Bauer (but no coincidence the initials are JB)!

Holy hell i had my own 24 experience this morning. As I was slowly drifting into consciousness, I rolled over and checked my cell phone to see what time it was. As i 1/3-ish awakedly look at my phone, I see it's 6:35 am. After about 2 seconds, I was like, "OH HELL NO!" I say this as I have to be at work at 7 am.

So I jumped out of bed, managed to get dressed and awesome looking and out the door in 4 minutes. I'm thinking, "this is one of those days where i'll go to my car and see I have a flat tire or something." Luckily I didn't. Buuuuut of course my mutant power manifested itself so every freaking car got in my way. Regardless, I was driving like a chinese maniac out of hell (meaning I was driving Chinese Bad but also as fast as possible). That's still better than Chinese Slow. I prayed to the Patron Saint of Crazy Ass Chinese Drivers, and even thought about calling Jennie Ho, but I was in too much of a rush. Thankfully there were enough gaps for me to zoom zoom zoom (and not even in a Mazda!) through traffic and got to work.

6:59 am!

So i went from sleeping at my bed to sleeping at my desk in 24 minutes! Which is a freaking record as it has taken me 24 minutes to get to work period before.

One of my greatest fears in Football was shared by the Great Peter King today. In his Monday Morning Quarterback Column today he gave a breakdown of rankings of the starting Quarterbacks for all 32 teams. Naturally the Chiefs finished in 32nd place. Herm Edwards is systematically destroying my team.

1. Why take a super high powered offense and then make them a run oriented team?
2. Why piss off one of the biggest sparks on the team in Dante Hall (who admittedly hasn't been playing too hot as of late) to the point you have to trade him?
3. Why not draft or sign a cornerback? At least they got Wide Receiver but they have drafted very badly in the past few years. Snoop Minnis anyone?

Well enough rant for me. Late Happy Birthday Mark and I hope all of you wished your dad's happy father's day.

El Pollo....LIBRE!

2007-04-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

There have been many firsts in my life (and many continuations that i'd rather not deal with like my mutant ability to attract bad drivers and the constant threat of FEDEX drivers trying to kill me). I've had interesting things like running my first road race (the grueling 7.7 mile Hospital Hill run), bad ones like almost getting killed by a FEDEX truck (2 times and counting), and one of the most interesting one was last Saturday. I decided to go to El Pollo Loco for dinner and i knew i was in for a long night when the dumbass in a big SUV couldn't go around the drive-thru corner properly and had to back up (and scared the hell out of me since i couldn't move my car) to readjust and run over stuff in order to get over the corner. So after that, I spend like 5 minutes or so waiting behind this dude (they only sell chicken! what the hell is taking so long!?!) So it looked like the person paid with their credit card 3 times because they kept giving their card to the worker. After what seemed like enough time to kill and cook a chicken, the dude finally left. As I drove up, i handed the cashier a $10 bill since i knew my food was between $8-9. She takes the bill, checks something on her computer, and then hands me my money back!
I was like, "Um, what's up?" Then she tells me that the SUV in front of me paid for my meal! That was pretty interesting! First time that's ever happened! I would have chased down the SUV to say thanks, but they went the opposite way i was going.

In other news, I made the paper! Well kinda. The Department i work for at the school (and yes this is the first time i've EVER mentioned my job in the blog, but this was too good to pass up) made the paper last friday (and not in a good way)

You can see it HERE at the Review Journal

Gotta love being a publicly accountable institution.

Valley of the Sun..... and tacos

2007-03-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

It sucks being sick. Being in one big room at work with little circulation tends to let germs sit around and get you sick. It was bad timing too since i had already planned to take time off to go to my best friend's wedding! So it looked like i took a 5 day vacation (but it's not like i didn't enjoy the time off). Wednesday i got hit by a sledgehammer of sick and it just sidelined me till Monday. But hey it was Mike and i haven't seen him in ages and he was getting married! Plus i bought my plane tickets already so that didn't help. ha ha. Man it's been ages since i went on a trip like this. Having to get a hotel, a rental car, trip planning. Dude that stuff is expensive! The rental car was cheap, but taxes added almost 100% to the cost! Damn i'm glad i usually only go to LA when i travel.

It was good to see Mike again (all 20 minutes of it since he was busy entertaining). I didn't actually get a chance to talk to his wife Angela (or even get introduced to her) but Mike and his mom have both raved about what a great woman she is. The best example i can think of (this might be slightly inaccurate since I don't know all the details) is that she is appox 32 years old and has 2 daughters, 18 and 19. Yeah you read that right. She saw these two orphaned Russian girls who completely captured her heart so she adopted them. It's amazing to think that someone in their 20s would adopt 2 girls and raise them by herself and disregard what other people would think of her in that situation. I don't know if I could do it so I know that Mike is in great hands and i wish him and his family (and his new family) the best.

I made sure to make the most of the trip since I don't think i've been to Phoenix before (i think my family and i drove through but i can't remember if we stayed in the city or not, it's been a long time ha ha). I went to the Cracker Barrel which is best described as an even WHITER version of IHOP. There were a million white people, 3 black people and me there. Strangely enough, they gave me the only non white waitress there (chinese no less). Man it's hard to leave that place hungry! They've got some big ass portions of food and it's goooooood. I also went to Panchos Mexican Buffet . It's that special type of mexican food that's greasy enough to lubricate an engine. It's cheap, it's low quality, but dammit you get to "raise the flag" to get your next helping. See here

Due to being sick and having time constraints, I wasn't able to go to the Heart Attack Grill made famous by their Quadruple bypass burger and the "nurses". I took a picture of the outside, but I was so full from the Cracker Barrel if I had attempted to eat anything there i probably would have burst.

The scary thing about going back to work today (Tuesday) is that it felt good to "sleep in" till 6 am this morning. Lately i've been going in at 6:30 which required me to get up by 5:30 which i actually go used to if you can believe that (but i'd make up for it by sleeping till noon on the weekends :)

So it's back to grind and i hope to get the creative juices flowing soon because my brain is still stuck in neutral from being sick.

Farewell to the Fallen King

2006-12-18T21:20:00.000-08:00

It is a heavy hearted day in all of my worlds. From my hometown of Kansas City, to Dallas my home of 9 years, to my love of football.
Lamar Hunt, the pioneer of the AFL and a visionary of the sports world has died. Without his presence and influence, the Super Bowl as we know it might not have ever existed and Chicago Bulls might not have risen to their dominance in the '90s. But the greatest trait that I had always read and heard of Mr. Hunt was his generosity, his kind words to all of his friends, and his humility. In all of the years he has been in the news, I have never ever heard one disparaging or derogity spoken by him or to him. His influence on Kansas City is long reaching. If not for him, we wouldn't have had fun every summer at Worlds & Oceans of Fun. My parents wouldn't have been able to take me to watch the Chiefs lose all those games in the '80s. If you look at the sporting landscape today (especially football), you'll see coaches, managers, players and usually owners criticized about the performance of their team. Even the harshest critic of the Chiefs, Jason Whitlock never spoke badly of Mr. Hunt as there was nothing to say. While watching tv over the weekend it was hard not to notice the impact Mr. Hunt had on so many people. The greatest way to judge someone is to see how they treat people they don't need to treat well. That says it all about Mr. Hunt.

He will be missed.

I'm on Youtube (kinda)

2006-11-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

I think my body came with a 31.5 year warranty (which conveniently ran out last month). Man everything seems to be breaking down on me. First I chipped my tooth (at Hooters no less, and ironically on the last day they were open! What's up with Hooters closing?)

Then, my right leg seemingly died on me (it felt like rigimortis hit just the knee joint area). My leg was extremely stiff. If it was straight it ws a chore to bend it and vice versa. After 5 days of this, i finally relented and went to the clinic. It turns out that I had fluid build up in my leg! The Doctor was feeling my knee and it was then i realized it was really swollen (bare in mind i did nothing to hurt it). After some more poking he deduced that it was swollen (and i couldn't bend it) because the fluid was basically acting like a cement had been poured into my leg and that's why I couldn't bend it. So he took a big ass needle (and frigheningly enough, he said it wasn't the biggest one they had) and jammed it in my leg and drained the fluid. He was good. I barely felt the needle go in (he did give me some low grade contact anestetic) and proceded to suck out 2 ounces of fluid (much the same way you use the turkey baster but in reverse). This whole process took like 10 minutes (and it felt better almost instantly). Yet, when i got up to leave, he said we had to just finish up some paperwork and the nurse would escort me out. I wait 30 minutes! He could have done it 3 more times in the time i just sat there waiting! Up till now i don't know why (they're supposed to be running some tests but i haven't heard back from them yet).

Then on to the tooth! Turns out I had a cavity. I'm sure Jill (my dentist cousin) is just shaking her head. It had eroded some of the tooth away and i bit down just wrong on it and it broke (never had a problem with it beforehand). So i had to get a root canal! Man that sucked. The procedure was probably painful, but they numbed me up pretty nicely (though i could still feel my gums swelling). Apparently they procedure is pretty straight forward. They numb you, jam metal robs up your tooth to kill the nerves, and then seal it shut.

Yeah it didn't feel good. About 3/4 of the way through, the novacaine started wearing off so that sucked. Surprisingly, i was fine the rest of the night. But dammmmmn it hurt for the rest of the week!

Ok finally (and i probably should have put this up at the top) I'm on Youtube!
Actually it's Susan (but i helped!). If you listen closely you can hear me ramble something (even i don't know what i said). Susan goes through the 6 minute process of cooking chicken lettuce wraps!
You can view it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXyGuxieMPY

Yeah it could use some polishing but pretty decent for something i slopped together in about 10 minutes.

You can embed it on your website using this code:

I'm glad that Sarah, Jennie, Becky, and Heather had fun on their European Vacation. SB I got your postcard about a week after you got back!

B

2006-10-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh, New Orleans is a cesspool, but there is more reason to go there. The Hooker to client ratio is at an all time high! I guess when in doubt, put out! ha ha

Man i hope Nokia makes this phone It looks freaking cool!

I can't believe it! I went almost a whole trip to the Palms without being greeted by my friends! Usually i can't go 10 seconds without a security escort at the home of the newest Playboy club (just opened last weekend).

But this week's blog is some crazy funny video finds:

1. Sometimes cows just get lonely
2. Tripod can dance!
3. The Northern Lights are cool looking!

No Freeo Stuffo for you......O

2006-09-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

More greeeeat news finds abounds!

First up! An owner if a A/C service company has put up the following billboard by his office:

"Metro Council. Welcome to America. We speak English here. Pass the bill. Immigrants. No habla ingles? No freeo stuffo from el governmento. Comprende por favor?"

I'm not making this up! Go HERE to read it.

Second up! There is guy with an unforgettable name from Vietnam. He's basically the 50 cent of Hanoi. His name is (translated and i'm not making this up either) FINED 6500 Dollars (well technically BOT as that's the currency). Vietnam had a 2 child policy (modeled after China's 1 child policy) and this son was the FIFTH child so the government fined him 6500 bot as punishment. So the dad was pissed off so he named the son that! Can you imagine the hell that kid must've gone through? FINED 6500 BOT it's dinner time. Hey FINED 6500 BOT you want to watch the game? He actually had to endure this name for 19 years despite repeated pleas to his father (and even the government asked on his behalf) but the dad wouldn't budge. 6500 Bot is roughly about 50 cents.

Third up! Six Flags FEAR FACTOR style!

The Disney run last weekend was very fun. It was the most themed run i've ever been in (it ran through both of the parks). But Good GOD! it was the most disorganized race i'd ever been in. NONE of the Disney staff had a clue what was going on, the parking lot where the race started was virtually impossible to get into and confusing to navigate once you did get into it. And the trail was so narrow you couldn't even run half the time (which in itself wasn't a bad thing ha ha) due to all of the people getting bottlenecked.

Pain, ipods, and bitchy old white people

2006-09-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

JB on the News First

Oh man i thought illegal immigration couldn't get more annoying.... or amusing. I was listening to the Bill Handel Show from 9/6 and they had a report that almost made me spit my drink out laughing (mental note, only drink while pausing iPod or during non Bill Handel or Keith & The Girl shows). It deals with GAY illegal immigration! I was like, "what the hell?" As i'm sure most people didn't care, they had more illegal immigration rallys on Labor Day. The KFI reporter was trying to find people to interview and ran across the "Out For Immigration" Group. This is a gay illegal immigrant activist group (try saying that fast or without laughing)! They are fighting for the right to bring in their gay lovers but:

1. They're illegal
2. They can't sponsor them since gay marriage isn't recongized in this county

You can listen to it HERE

I am in some PAIN right now. I did a ton of squats the other night (just bodyweight, not ones with weights) and my quads are killing me. I'm hurting just thinking about walking right now ha ha.

The new crop of iPods and stuff were announced yesterday. I think i'll wait for the G6 iPod to come out (the one probably around Feb next year with the touch screen and rumored bluetooth so no wires). I was reading Wil Wheaton's page today (Star Trek's Wesley Crusher or one of the kids from Stand By Me, also to be playing Cosmic Boy on the Teen Titans replacement cartoon: Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes) by way of Digg HERE and noticed he had a hell of a time with iTunes 7. Maybe i'll just wait for a while to get that download.

Last weekend was the end of the 5 month promotion that Harrah's was running. The Million, Million, or Million (or something like that) contest. You could win $1 Million, $1 Million in slot credit, or a million American Airline Frequent Flyer miles. They had a swipe thing daily that you could win free stuff, but to enter into the big contest you had to swipe at a specific time at the Flamingo (new home to Toni Braxton). I went when the line opened and man it was a loooooooooooong line. I had these two old white wind bag ladies in front of me who did nothing but BITCH. Why is it that white people always bitch the most about everything? The line took 45 minutes to get through and it was not like it was some secret it was long so they could have come back but it was nothing but complaining almost the whole time! I must have called at least 8 people trying to find something else to listen to aside from these women. Ugggh, and to top it off, i didn't win anything from the contest!

At least it's football season now! Though i am really worried that the Chiefs will be doing about as well as the Royals this year (10 more losses and the Royals will be the only team to lose 100 games 3 times in 5 years!). If Trent goes down and the Offensive line stays porous like it was, it's gonna be a long season.

The Comic Con from Hell

2006-07-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

Or more technically, the Comic Con IN HELL! My GOD it was hot in San Diego this weekend. I think the city set an all time record as the thermostats were melting. For the uninitiated, the San Diego Comic Con is the Biggest Comic Con in the world and is the Mecca of all Comic Geeks. Had it not been for Comic Con (when you say Comic Con people already know you mean San Diego) Star Wars might not have been as successful as it had been (Lucas and Co very wisely promoted the movie there waaaaaaaaay back when to show the morons at Fox that the movie wouldn't be a dude, though Fox still didn't believe them).

Phil, Sannie and i went down to SD on Friday night (i flew into LA and then we drove from there). Leo went too but he was already in SD preparing for his bar exam (which he is working through as i write this). When i go to LA, it was only in the 80s or so and that felt nice compared to the minimum 105 degree weather we've been having in Las Vegas. San Diego is supposed to have weather as nice as LA so i thought i was in for a treat. Or so i thought.

I talked to Jennie a few days before the Con and she had told me that she thought about going to SD that weekend. I advised her not to. You'll understand why.

"I find your lack of Hygiene disturbing." As quote from Leo on as quoted from Darth Vader

Now as anyone living in California (or probably any part of the US) knows, last weekend was one of the hottest weekends EVER! Particularly Saturday. Leo had text me that quote on Wednesday night which i knew it to be true (Star Wars quote #2 for the geeks keeping count).

If you ever find yourself wanting to waste 2 hours of your life you'll never get back, go rent the movie Trekkies (not to be confused with the movie Free Enterprise, starring the less gay dude from Will and Grace). See how geeky and socially inept the people act in that movie. Multiply that times about 10 billion and you've got the basic groundwork for the Comic Con. You're bringing together thousands of nerds who have no idea how to interact with women, engage in small talk, or even pick up a bar of soap! I would swear i was in France or something by the way it smelled.

Now the astute reader has probably figured out that if you combine REALLLLY hot weather and people who don't smell that good to begin with, cram them asshole to belly button (a marine term) into room after room, you'll be amazed at the incredibly new smell you'll discover (Quote #3). Man it was bad at some points.

Overall, it was a fun trip, just way overwhelming and not enough time. We got to the Con at 8 am (it didn't open till 10 and there were already over 1000 people outside the building). On leo's advice, we decided to volunteer (both to get in free, and get in faster). We had preregistered so we didn't have any problems getting in (aside from dealing with the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT sized red tape and cluelessness). That place is run about as efficiently as the Houston Evacuation during Hurricane Rita last year (sending people north bound in the south bound lanes and forgetting that there is still southbound traffic) so needless to say, it was freaking disorganized! We got in around 9:30 and i told Sannie to brace herself for something she will probably never see again (at least until we go next year ha ha). The sheer size of the Con is hard to grasp. This thing takes up every single square inch of the convention center and still looks like it's about to burst. There were rows and rows of toys, comics, games, movies, anime, Hentai (look it up), "live action Hentai" (you'll figure it out when you look it up), and various nicknacks. After 2 hours, Phil, Sannie, and I hadn't even gotten through 1/6 of the place. I guess i was in geek heaven because i wasn't hungLy, thirsty, tired, sweaty (or so i thought), etc while Phil, Leo, and Sannie were hungLy and tired and ready to go eat. It was Leo's birthday and we were gonna go to Todai (for the free birthday lunch). As a funny aside, it's interesting how July 20-28 keeps popping up in my life. July 21 is Sarah's birthday, July 22 is Leo's, July 20 is my old roommate Ken's (former) Father in Law's birthday, July 24 is his son's birthday, July 27 is my dad and Ken's dad's birthday, and July 28th is Ken's (former) sister in law's birthday, as well as Becky's (i didn't forget you Bec).

Mark and Dada were gonna drive down and meet us for lunch but in 1 hour of driving down the 5, they got about seven miles! Damn those geeks! Damn those gay pride people! (The GALA folks not coincidentally have a gay pride gathering the same weekend as the Con. What better weekend to find a bunch of confused virgins? They want to recruit dammit!) Needless to say, Mark and Dada decided that fighting geeks and fagolas in traffic wasn't worth it so they decided to go home.

Did i mention it was hot? When we were leaving the Convention Center, there was a huge line outside. We asked what it was, and people told us that was the line to get in! People had been waiting over 2 hours to get in! Holy Hell Batman! Then, we saw another HUUGGGGE line. We asked what this was (and laughlying thinking back, we walked passed at least 20 people and i settled on asking an asian guy! I'm getting FOB too ha ha). He said it was the line to see Kevin Smith (Clerks 2 came out last weekend remember?) The room they had the conference in holds 6000 people (i was in it for the Star Wars stuff 2 years ago) and i think they filled it to capacity again this year.

When we got outside, i was like DAMN it's hot! One thing you have to plan for is that every restaurant within a mile or so will have an hour wait minimum so either eat lunch at 9:30 am or at 4 in the afternoon, otherwise... you ain't eatin'! Luckily most geeks don't sushi (remember this is drawing people from all over the country/world) and the Todai is about 10 miles north of the city so no prob there. The heat never bothers me that much (i am a Vegan, the Las Vegas kind ha ha) but the humidity was killing me. I could barely eat that day and i was drinking up fluids like Pepsi was getting cancelled or something.

We got back to the Con (which was a hassle due to all of the traffic) and looked around some more and i saw the scariest costume (more on that). We still had to "volunteer" and Phil, Sannie, and I basically were door people for the Adult Swim videos. They had a panel of people who make the cartoons for that block (i've NEVER understood why people think most of those shows are funny). The thing was 2.5 hours long and it filled up a 2000 person convention room! After that we were pretty beat so we went back to our hotel and basically went to bed.

Now for all of my Asides. Every hotel from SD to practially Orange County was full, so i already told Jen not to go since i knew it'd be hell finding a room, no matter how much you were willing to pay.

The scariest costume i saw was this white chick who had more hair on her back then myself and all 3 of my brother's combined do. I kid you not, the hair must've been close to 1/2" long along the entire upper back! She bleached it heavily to try to conceal it, but that's like trying to hide a fat ninja behind a small tree. The only other time i saw female hair like that was this mexican hair dresser who cut my hair once (very badly i might add). Her arm hair was probably close to 3/4" long! Scary stuff!

An interesting sidenote is when we watched the news. It was 112 degrees! I thought it was only in the 90s! The other interesting thing is that the Con is basically outgrowing itself. The Organizers fear they might need to move it to another city within the next few years (VEGAS BABY please!). I'm sure San Diego is freaking out as this brings in Millions of dollars for them in just 5 days of convention stuff. Oh in semi related news, due to the Heat wave, California almost ran out of energy (and is still close now). I'm sure 140k people sucking up the AC and using 100k laptops and other gadgets probably didn't help!

In keeping with the Star Wars theme, i dug up a reallllllllly old email my friend Brent sent me (back in 1999, but still damn funny). It's known as,

"25 lines from Star WarsThat Can Be Improved if you substitute the word Pants"

1.A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in thepresence of my old master.
2.You are unwise to lower your pants.
3.We've got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
4.She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment downto retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.
5.These pants may not look like much, kid, but they've got it where itcounts.
6.I find your lack of pants disturbing. (Easily the best one)
7.These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.
8.Han will have those pants down. We've got to give him more time!
9.General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.
10.I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.
11.TK-421. . . Why aren't you in your pants?
12.Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.
13.Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought onboard.
14.You look strong enough to pull the pants off of a Gundark.
15.Luke. . . Help me take...these pants off.
16.Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.
17.That blast came from those pants. That thing's operational!
18.Don't worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
19.Maybe you'd like it back in your pants, your highness.
20.Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong.Especially for your sister!
21.Jabba doesn't have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.
22.Yeah, well short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.
23.Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my pants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.
24.I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
25. You came in those pants? You're braver than I thought.B!

JB On The News

2006-07-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

Man all sorts of weird an interesting stuff i've read/heard in the last week.

The Commerce Department and the Bush Administration have very quietly been working to impliment the SUPER HIGHWAY. www.spp.gov .

Basically they're wanting to make a highway that'll go from Mexico to Kansas City that way they can bypass those super overpaid lazy ass LongShoreman who take 4 days to unload a boat where in it would take 45 mintues to do it at any non US port. Speaking of ports, the Port of Hueneme in Oxnard, CA was the site of a possible terroist threat the other day. Read here

2. It was a hard news week for me last week as almost all of my podcasters went on vacation. I had to listen to Bill Handel, John & Ken, and John Ziegler sans Bill Handel, John & Ken, and John Ziegler! One plus was that i got to listen to Michelle Malkin. She's hot and smart!

3. Went to Angels game last weekend. God Baseball is boring. Right up there with Soccer. And yet, those dumbass super favored Brazilians can't beat the cheese eating surrendor monkeys known as the French! What's up with that?

4. BEWARE THE PICKLE ! I think this girl probably was child molested. Either this is made up or her dad is probably gonna be taking a trip to jail. The hosting website, College Humor is pretty damn funny as well.

5. BEWARE THE WASTE OF TIME ! Defend your castle is fun, though it starts out kinda slow.

6. It was yet another holiday weekend here in Vegas (but i wasn't here) yet the fat people were still magnetically drawn to the buffets.

7. On my flight back to Vegas on Sunday night, i saw the coolest things (aside from a flying Elvis). I think i actually saw a lightening bolt start a fire in the forest (so then does anyone hear it? ha ha). The other cool thing was when i was right on approach for landing. The Stratosphere was setting off fireworks for a Sunday party they had. I've never seen fireworks from the air before so that was pretty cool.

Need sleep!

Crips (and i don't mean gang members or Jennie Ho!)

2006-06-27T00:03:00.000-07:00

Last week was a bit of an annoying time for me and handicapped people. I had two instances that just drove me nuts. On Monday i was leaving the Palms minding my own business when this guy and woman in a wheelchair (i'm assuming it's his wife) just stop right in front of me for no reason (so my mutant power has somehow manifested itself to be able to attract bad walkers as well as bad drivers). So i slip by them on the right side (between the guy and a chair at a slot machine) and then suddenly both of them are giving me attitude! I was like what the hell? They're yelling at me saying i should have gone around them on the left side so i told them that they're not in a parking lot so they shouldn't have stopped. Then a few days later, i was driving home and this car kept continually getting in my way and was like like 20 in a 35 and there were just enough cars coming from the other way to keep me from going around them. They were driving a Chevy Malibu (the new ones) so i knew they could have gone faster (those things can move!). So as my luck would have it, they drive all the way to my apt complex and park right beside where i need to park (i had to go to the mail room). I parked after them, got to the mail room, sorted my mail and even got all the way back to my car and they hadn't even gotten out yet! As they're getting out as i'm getitng ready to leave i see it's an old guy and his handicapped wife (common theme) and he's BITCHING at his grandkids (i'm assuming were) at why they weren't helping grandma out of the car.

On a lighter note, it was GAMBLING TIME last week! I gambled more last week then i have the entire year..... and didn't spend a dime (well except on gas)! I had gotten a free slot credit voucher from the Wynn ($10 a week) so i went on Monday (before the Palms people with attitude) and played my $10 and won $30. I also put in a bet for the Hurricanes to win the Stanley Cup (which they did) so i won another $20 on top of that. Wednesday i went to the Palms for my free Megabucks slot pull (Please God let me win that so i can just be a bum!) and won $150 on one of my spins (you get two). So i was sitting pretty last week.

Buuuuuuuut wait, it gets better this week! Today (monday) i went with a coworker to the Wynn again and got a free dinner (he had enough slot points to get us both a free buffet). Then Bob graciously let me play with his wife's slot card (she's out of town) so i had $75 in free slot credit. With that credit, i won $40 and decided to try my luck at Wheel of Fortune. The Wheel was not too kind for most of the day. I lost practially everything. A guy 3 seats down from me hit the Spin and hit the 1000 credits mark (the most on the bonus wheel for those of you who don't know what i'm talking about, Sarah) which on a $0.25 machine equals $250! I was like, "dude! i've never seen anyone hit that!" As i'm trying to look to see if he had actually hit the 1000, a chinese woman gets in my way (so now my mutant power has mutated to people just getting in my way when i'm trying to look in a specific direction). So back to me. I'm losing all $40 till i'm down to my last three dollars (i had gotten one spin in that time frame for 20 credits, the lowest number on the board) and i was talking to a guy beside me on how they just tease you with that to get you to gamble more. As i push my way down to $2, i hit the spin again! I was sure i'd get 25 credits this time (the second lowest amount and very teasingly beside the 1000 credit mark). As i'm waiting for it to stop on the 25, i notice that the 25 has stopped one left of the middle..... i won the 1000 credits! First i was speechless, then i screamed because i won, then screamed again because the guy beside me punched me to exclaim how i won the 1000! So i took that as a sign to stop :) I made all the necessary points for me to get more free slot credit at the Wynn month so i'll be happy gambling on their money for a while (and hopefully hustle a room out of them or something :)

Next post JB on the News and crazy stuff it is!

Damn Computer, Damn Time Zone

2006-06-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

I've had the fortune of never having had to go to Allentown, PA. Due to misfortunes beyond her control, my good friend Sarah has been exil.... stationed there. But if she's lucky, she'll soon become an imperial stormtrooper for the Dark Empire (Micro$oft).

Today exemplifies why we should buy Mac computers. I don't know if it was the Hick Allentown air or what, but Sarah ran into problem after problem trying to get her wireless network to work. This is of course after getting it to work flawlessly. So Thank God one of her neighbors has an unencrypted network so we just leeched off him ha ha. Never have problems like that with a Mac.

One thing i forgot to mention was that i spent over $100 on Saturday having lunch and buying necessities. I had some goooooooood Sushi as always at Sushi Mon. The store itself has some drama. If you go to sushimon.com it's not for the sushi mon i go to. Apparently the two stores have some kind of fight with each other so it's kinda weird. That was about $25. Then i had to get gas. That was $45! And then i had to buy some things from the grocery store.

I finally got around to watching the finale of 24 last week. I don't think the last episode or two was really in real time. (SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT) If it is, i'd like to know how the chinese were able to kidnap Jack, sneak him out without anyone seeing him, beat him up (a lot) and sneak away on a BIG SLOW moving sail barge all in 12 minutes! I still have yet to watch the My Name is Earl finale (God i love having a DVR), but i'll get to it this week sometime.

I went to get my free Megabucks spin today at the Palms, but someone won the $20million jackpot at 2pm today! At this place called the Cannery......... And i'm sure you're wondering what the hell is the Cannery? Even I've never been there (it's on the North side of the City). You can see it here
http://www.cannerycasinos.com/home.html
I didn't win anything this time. Doh!

Remember it's the number of Beast tomorrow! 6-6-06 so it gives movie companies excuses to release crappy movies on Tuesdays and for people to sacrifice and eat cats even if they're not chinese.

b!

Useless Links (as opposed to Freaky Links)

2006-06-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

And to all you tv watchers, that was the name of one of the many crappy shows put out by Fox .

This weekend i had soooo much time on my hands (no visitors or things that couldn't wait ha ha) that i slept too much, ate too much, watched too many movies, exercised too little, and surfed the web too much.
Some funny (for me) things i stumbled upon were these links:

(Work safe but may make you the butt of jokes if people see you watching them ha ha)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGYNBIMcUGA Is a Hole In One that almost looks fake (but cool)
http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/index.blog?entry_id=1491530
Geeks with WAY too much free time on their hands

Getting back into the workout groove is going well. I'm feeling less winded when doing my workouts so that's good and i can feel my legs getting their strength back. I've had a minor problem with my knees aching some so i'm switching to Stair climbing and ellipse machines for the next week or two. A ligament or tendon on the outside of my right knee is also sore so i'll wear my brace for a while too. Other than that, things are going well. I might be brave or crazy enough to try running a few times with the Las Vegas Running Club (it's free and weekly, but it's a Las Vegas summer!) in a few weeks once i get in good enough shape that i can beat a crippled person on a 100 yard dash. Susan's brother Andy wants to write up an exercise and diet program for me to get in really good shape. I'm sure i'll talk to him soon about that (he knows his stuff from losing 30 lbs while gaining muscle in the last 7 months or so).

Back to the Palms tomorrow and i'll see if i'm still loved by my security guard friends

b!

Fatman & X-Men

2006-05-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

Ah it was nice having a long weekend but man it was just crowded as hell here in Vegas this weekend (the news said like 300k people were here, like's like 1/4 of the city population). But HOLY HELL i can understand why there are so many concerns about obesity in the US now. There were sooooooo many fat people here. And not just fat, but faaaaaaaat. I'm talking about the kind of people that make me look skinny (and that's really fat). It was just a mad house on the Strip (and i barely went there!) When Leo and i went to the Venetian it took us forever to get out and we weren't even on the main road (we were on Koval on the backside for those tourists who know what i'm talking about).

I also went to see X-Men 3 at the Palms no less. Without spoiling the movie for you, the basic plot is that the "regular humans" have come up with a "cure" to cure the mutants (God i wish i could get rid of my attracting bad drivers power). After the movie, it's gotten WORSE! People are constantly changing lanes for no damn reason and just cutting me off and then later on changing lanes again (sometimes 2 or 3 lanes over). I don't get it, i seem to attract the dumbest drivers. So i typically ask other people to drive for me if they're here :)
Whatever that cure was in the movie, i need more of it. Oh incidently if you haven't seen the movie, make sure to stay till after the credits are over.

B!

Neglected, but not forgotten

2006-05-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

The title is inspired from the Corrs song Forgiven, not forgotten.

A few posts back I talked about my mutant powers and how one of them dealt with the security forces at the Palms. Lately I hadn't been feeling the love from them. I've been to the Palms 3 times in the past 2 weeks. Gotta love being a local. Though i don't think they love me enough. Sometimes Leo or my mom get offers in the mail that i don't get so that kinda sucks. But this month i got the May coupons (one of which gives you $5 to spend in the food court, no strings attached). So last week i went in and bought some Panda Express and paid $1.24 for dinner :)

I also got a coupon to get a free first aid kit last friday (really nice too). When i went for the Panda, i drove in, parked, and went almost all the way to the entrance and all i got as a greeting was ONE biker security guard. What's up with that? Last friday was the same deal! But one cool (and bad for me) thing was that i they've installed an updated version of the Star Wars slot machine in the Palms (Thank God it's a penny slot!). I made money so i was happy. Today the free prize at the Palms was a pair of binoculars that are pretty nice looking. BUT WAIT! my friends were back! I didn't see anyone as i walked into the Palms, but as i walked out, a BIG ASS security truck pulled up and drove by as i was going to my car. I felt the love again :) ha ha

I've really enjoying listening to Bill Handel again. I didn't think about getting his podcasts till about 1.5 months ago but now i get them everyday and the podcasts cut out 98% of the commericals and most of the other unnecessary info (like that days traffic). You can subscribe free on iTunes (under Bill Handel). go to http://www.kfi640.com/main .html Right now my podcast subscriptions are:

1. ESPN daily news (though it's a bit boring now since all they talk about is baseball but more basketball since the finals are heating up)
2. Bill Handel (LA morning radio show host for those wondering who i'm talking about)
3. John and Ken Show(also on KFI, same as Bill Handel)
4. Keith and the Girl (www.keithandthegirl.com)
5. Sci Fi channel (for battlestar galactica, great show even for non sci fi lovers)

I barely use my ipod for music anymore (only at the gym). At work i just listen to all these crazy shows.

Ahhh, Kansas City. It was nice to get to go back there again (though it was very brief).

2006-05-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, Kansas City. It was nice to get to go back there again (though it was very brief).

The BBQ, the lack of traffic, everything is in English, everyone is white and did i mention the traffic? Well last week i went back to the homestead (first time in about 3 years). Since it was 90 degrees already here in Vegas, it was nice to go back to weather in the 60s. The city has grown quite a bit since i was there last. There are tons of new things everywhere. The Zonarosa is trying to become the new "IT" place up north (i didn't get to go there but it looked like it had a lot of things to do). The Hardee's is still there (the Carl's Jr. of the midwest and east coast) and of course the BBQ! I had both Gates and Arthur Bryant's. Gooooooooood Stuff! The only bad thing about that was that i wasn't able to go to the Original one. That place has a certain "aura" to it. It looks like it was built in the '30s and hasn't been cleaned since. The walls have this "film" on them that can only be achieved by 70 years worth of grease and fire. The fries are cooked in pure lard. They're soggy right out of the frier but man it's part of the experience. Gates is good too and has the best beans i've ever eaten. Morons from Texas have no clue what REAL BBQ is (and this is after 9 years of living in Texas). We didn't really have much time to go around as our schedule was pretty tight, but we got to go to the Plaza, and we passed by the Liberty Memorial, the Mecca for gays of the Midwest (scroll down about 1/2 way and you'll see why). It's also one of the best World War I museums in the world, but i've never been there.

I got to see my best friend Mike's parents again which is always a treat since they're some of the nicest people i know. I also got to see my god parents (both sets) as well as many family friends i haven't seen since i left KC. Alas,,, i didn't get to see any of my friends since it was a busy trip. Luckily when we went to Leo's graduation we only had to go to the Law School's graduation (as opposed to the whole school) so it was only 6 boring speeches instead of 84.

After going back, it'd be nice to go spend a relaxing weekend there (pace of life is sloooooooow there so it's nice and relaxing)

b!

Freaky Freaky

2006-04-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

Man i don't know what's been up lately. It's just been freaaaaaaaaakiness everywhere around me. First up, my new next door neighbor (across from me) is just plain SCARY looking! He looks like a cross between retarded, Axe wielding maniac, and just PLAIN FREAKY! I swear no matter WHAT time of day i see him, he ALWAYS looks like he just woke up, has a massive hangover, and looks FREAKY.

Then last last Friday (14th), Susan and i went to the Goldcoast for a late night dinner. We pulled into the parking lot and it's freaking FULL. Now bear in mind this is the Goldcoast hotel. The GOLDCOAST! Most of you reading this probably don't even know where that is (you can cheat and go here: www.goldcoastcasino.com). So after Susan and i finally park and still wonder why the lot is so full (the only time I've ever seen the parking lot this full was on New Year's Eve). As we're walking into the hotel i noticed a few people were dressed '50s like. As we get near the entrance, we see even more people '50s like (and just a lot of people period!). When we get inside the hotel it's like a California prison in there! Just packed full of weirdos (and just packed) and plenty of tattooed people in '50s outfits. It's so crowded we could barely walk through the place. The usual Pinay 3 some of singers weren't singing that night either. Every single gambling table was full and it was noisy and smoky (if you've never been to the Goldcoast, it's normally a crowd of people in their 40-50S in there so this was really strange). When we got to the cafe, it was only half full or so which we thought we'd be waiting forever since there were so many people (the lack of people here is usually why we eat here late night). After we're sat, i ask our bus boy (a young black dude) if it's Freaky '50s Friday. He had no clue and was wondering what this was (80% of the freaky people were white). We then asked our waitress what the hell was going on (she was an older white lady) and she said it was some hot rod show type thing called the Rockabilly weekend or something. It was being held at the Goldcoast which is why so many people were there.

That's my freakiness stories. I had a fun birthday weekend last week. I flew out to LA on Jet Blue (the flight is so short i can barely finish my drink by the time we're landing). Since i was flying into Jet Blue, i decided i wanted to go to Lucille's for dinner www.lucillesbbq.com
Surprisingly we didn't have to wait too long (40 minutes, but we timed it so that Phil and Sannie put the reservation in first and then picked me up) so that was nice. I got a birthday sundae too!
The next day we went to a place Phil has been wanting to go to for 3 years! The Pirate's Dinner Adventure! A little backstory on that: When Phil went to Orlando with one of our uncles back in 2003 (in April so it really has been 3 years) they were there for 2 WEEKS and they still didn't get through all of the parks! Talk about Slooooooooooooow. Phil saw this place there and wanted to go but he was in the minority and didn't get to go. When Susan and i went last year, we were pressed for time (she moves slow too but not as slow as my uncle's family) so we couldn't go either.

As luck would have it, they opened a 2nd location in Buena Park (north of the Disneyland area for you non OC people) so we finally got to go. The place is a bit expensive ($50 a person, plus we tipped about $30 to our server) but it's neat and i think doing good business on the weekend. There are three shows on Saturday. 1pm, 5pm, and 8pm or something like that. We wanted to go to the 8pm, but it was sold out a week in advance! So we tried the 5pm and got the 5 tickets! (there were 6 of us so they oversold it a bit so I'm wondering if someone else got SOL on that). There were some people who were REALLY into this show. They dressed up as pirates just to attend the show (we're talking about adults in their 50's, not kids). They tell you to get there 2 hours before the show and you get a weird buffet (it's a really open room with 2 bars and the buffet stations are located all over the place so you have to walk the entire area (2 big ass rooms basically) to get everything. Then the show actually starts in this waiting area. A princess and a gymnast get kidnapped in the bar area and then you're taken to the ship area for the dinner and show. It's about 1.5 hours or so but it goes by fast and was pretty neat.

Thanks to Sarah, Becky, Jennie, Jill and Jennifer (as well as my family) for the birthday cards and stuff. Especially Jennie since i forgot her birthday. Sorry Jen!

b!

Keith and the Girl (and JB)

2006-03-29T23:11:00.000-08:00

In yet another thing i forgot to mention sooner, but last week i found the FUNNNNIEST podcast comedy show. It's called Keith and the Girl (www.keithandthegirl.com) and is available on iTunes as well. It's raunchy but fuuuuuny. Keith is a stand up comedian (and sometime clown i think) and nothing is sacred them (i'm assuming this is what Matt Stone and Trey Parker would be like). One of the current underlying themes (which i'm not sure why it's such a hot button issue) but they HATE Adam Curry and his podshow.com venture. I never liked Adam Curry as a VJ on MTV so i'm sure he's even worse in public. The details of a Podshow.com contract were revealed on their show the other day HERE and it's pretty funny stuff (shows how bad he'll rape you and own your ass if you sign up with him, but i'm sure it's the same in the record industry).

But the best podcast of theirs (fret not! for tech handicapped people, you don't need an ipod, but it helps) is from October last year and it is freaking hilarious! You can get it HERE.
To sum it up, it's called FUCK DANE COOK. Named because a comedian named Dane Cook was supposed to be on the show but cancelled and didn't tell them. But the funny part is about 12 minutes or so (don't quote me on it) in where they talk about this DERANGED guy who was on NPR who compares the Food Channel to porn!

It's really funny stuff (they cuss A LOT so if you're one of those easily offended people then don't listen) but i was laughing while listening to it today (just found this episode yesterday) while working! People around me must've been wondering why i was busting out laughing even though it was quiet all around me (i was listening to it on my ipod).

b!

aaaagggggghhhh!

2006-03-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

There is something of a misconception in the world today. Most people believe that super powers are imaginary, or that the X-Men movies are fiction (dealing with genetic mutations that give people powers). Most of you don't realize it, but you know someone who has mutant powers and it happens to be me.

One thing that is talked about in X-Men is that it can be a curse to have super powers. Most people would think, "Why the hell would it be a curse to have powers that no one else has?" Right?

WRONG!

Check out Meg (from Family Guy) in the Episode "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1"

She has the amazing mutant ability to....... grow her finger nails.

I have two mutant powers that I'm cursed with.

1. The first one is the mutant ability to attract all the bad and dumbass drivers to me (meaning they get in my way no matter what city, state, country I'm in). I just don't know what it was, but it's like Magneto amplified my powers last weekend. Whenever i got on the highway it was bumper to bumper traffic and people were always just pulling out in front of me and then going 20 miles an hour. Last week, on TWO separate days, i had cars just STOP in their lane (during rush hour traffic no less). The first time i thought the car was broken down, but AFTER i drove by it, the guy just starts driving! Dumbass decided to take a freaking coffee break on the road. The 2nd time was even worse! This van (both were vans actually) was at an awkward angle in the turning lane (the kind where it's its own lane so either side can use it for a turning lane). As i drove by, the guy inside looked like he was DEAD! Head leaned back, mouth open, completely still. So i was like, "Oh Crap!" but i was 2 lanes away so i couldn't do anything (but we were moving slowly). A dad and his son drove up to the car and the son jumped out of the car and shook the guy to see if he was dead (aren't you supposed to poke dead people with sticks?) and then! the guy jerked AWAKE and HIT THE GAS! The kid was lucky he didn't lose his arm from the van moving forward so quickly (and the dad was lucky he parked his car about 20 feet in front of the van so he didn't get HIT!) So the dumbass decided to take a nap in the car DURING RUSH HOUR! WHAT THE HELL? But it gets better! TODAY on my way home i was on my way home and completely stopped at a left turn lane minding my own business when SUDDENLY i hear this SUPER LOUD screeching noise and this car came out of nowhere on my right side (angled toward me) and only stopped about 1.5 feet from hitting my car! i don't know what the hell that stupid bitch was doing/thinking/apparently not thinking since her angle of entry would have done nothing but HIT ME! And then she just goes straight in the lane she stopped in!

2. My other mutant power (it isn't completely bad) is that WHENEVER i'm at the Palms hotel, I'm practically STALKED by the Palms security trucks! they're always around me! But on the upside, it makes me feel very safe! It was funny (and i should have posted this story months ago), but on New Years Eve, Susan, Leo, and I went to go watch the fireworks (they close all access in and out of the Strip for safety reasons, i.e. to keep drivers from running over drunk morons who run into the street) and we had parked my car at the palms and watched the fireworks on the Flamingo Road overpass into the Strip. As we went back to the car (my foot was hurting so Leo got back faster as i walked slower and Susan walked with me), i saw all these people screaming and acting like something happened (or that they were about to throw down with each other). We (being Susan and myself) found out that an Acura flew into the parking lot and took a turn REAAAALLY hard. So hard, that he sideswiped two cars! One of the ladies had called the cops and was reading back a partial license plate number, TR8 *** or something. So we walk another aisle over and we see Leo, and he's on the phone. I try talking to him but he motions to be quiet and he hear him say, "TR8 ***" too! So i'm like, "Oh he saw it too!" Then as i look to the right of leo, i see an acura with a TR8 ***!
Now i'm not condoning hit and run driving, but what kind of dumbass hits two cars and then parks one aisle over! At the very least you high tail out of that parking lot! But nooooooo, this guy parks one over and not only that, but hits the car in front of him too (apparently this is how the guy knew when to "stop" his car). So Leo was talking to the cops and was like, "damn i need to report this to security too! Where the hell are they?" So naturally i'm like, "Ummm, i'm here don't worry my friends will be here shortly too." and low and behold, i turn around and an EXTRA big Palms truck pulls up and 4 of my buddies jump out to secure me and protect the area! So Leo started laughing since I had barely said that and then they popped up and he was there a good 2 minutes before me when all this happened and not a soul was there!

Oh and the worst part (or funniest part) is that we had to wait for like 25 minutes while Palms Security got Leo's statement and description of the guy driving the car. While Susan and I were waiting, we sat on the curb waiting (beside the Acura), and then these GOOOOOOFY looking FOBs drove by and STOPPED in front of us and pointed and started laughing (because they thought Palms Security had stopped us for something and were ticketing us).

So there you have it! Super Powers can be curse!

Random fitness tip of the week: The fact that i'm exercising is a miracle enough right now!
Random news tidbit: Crazy CNN Story

????????

2006-01-24T23:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.largefriends.com
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WTF?

Wynn Win situation

2005-11-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

Ok this is a bit late, but last weekend i got an email for a free night's stay at the Wynn hotel! The room is very nice! It was also the first time i stayed in a hotel room that faced the Strip too! (it's only the second time i've stayed in a hotel since i moved here since i really don't need to stay in a hotel). I'm guessing they must have a lot of open rooms before Thanksgiving since i know it can't be based on points played there (since when i got the email i had 4!). The room has a 32" (i think, i didn't have a tape measure with me) LCD tv in the sleeping/living area and a 13" one in the bathroom. I bet Gateway was loving the Wynn since they had to have bought over 5000 LCD tvs for the hotel.

b!

Weiiiiiiiiird Coincidence

2005-10-19T20:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/19/spain.us.soldiers/index.html

This is an article that was posted today on CNN.com

It details how the Spanish government has issued arrest warrents for 3 soldiers in connection to an unnecessary and unwarranted tank blast into a HOTEL in Iraq during the US invasion back in 2003. 3 places were hit and 3 journalists (all non US based) were killed. The US claims they were counter attacking Iraqi soldiers but even US/British journalists said no one was firing on the US trooops.

the Weiiiiiiiiird Coincidence part is that the last two movies i've watched in the last day and a half were Black Hawk Down and a documentary called Control Room. Control Room deals with the Al Jazeera TV network, which is basically the CNN of the Arab world. The US says it's a propaganda machine for Bin Laden and his ilk, but the documentary shows how the US uses progaganda to assist them (as any country would do in a war). Very interesting to see the other side of broadcasting. One of the 3 journalists killed in the above mentioned article was Taras Protsyuk, who worked for Al Jazeera. His death is covered for about 10 minutes worth of the documentary. Another thing brought up is how the US is very quick to forget past events, and one of the things brought up was botched US operation in Somalia, which was essentially the movie Black Hawk Down. So it's weird how all this stuff pops up right after i watch it.

Todays random exercise thought: Well i need to start exercising again for one ha ha. I went to my Piyo class tonight but for some reason my right knee was giving me some minor problems. I did a bunch of squats last night so i thought that would help strengthen it, bu tthe quad were hurting too. Last week i did the Taebo Focus Abs/Mid Section (the whole hours worth) and man i was HURTING the next day. It was a great workout so i'll probably do it again tomorrow. I'm eagerly awaiting getting the Tae Bo Boot camp dvd as that's supposed to be pretty good from what i read.

b!

The Long awaited Day 7

2005-10-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry this took so long. I was waiting for some pictures i took and then just got lazy ha ha

Day 7 & 8

Castaway Cay, Castaway Cay Castaway Cay (If you watch the Disney video on this you’ll know why I say that. They say Castaway Cay about a million times in the video for you to remember).

Ahhhh, got to sleep in finally. Susan and I got up around 11 (she had no clue what time it was since it was dark in the room). It was so weird when we got off of the boat to go onto the island, the boat was DEAD QUIET! We barely heard anyone moving or talking. The only people we ran across were ship employees so we were practically the only people on the boat!

Even though this is a private island that only Disney cruise customers can go to, they still checked IDs and stuff when we got on and off of the boat. We walked about 2 blocks to the main area of the island where the beaches and food and stuff were. We had lunch of burgers and hot dogs and the like at the restaurant set up on the island for boat guests. After lunch we rented some snorkeling gear and went swimming.

NOT

Susan can’t swim so she just stayed by the shore. I went way out to take a picture of the submerged Mickey Mouse (pictures in process as I had to buy a waterproof camera and, GASP do something archaic like develop film (haven’t done that in years). I was out swimming for a good hour or so and it was fun. The beaches were white sand, the water so crystal clear (about 60 feet out since the shore was cloudy from all the people walking on the sand) and the water was very calm. It was really neat. I can’t even remember if I’ve been to a beach like this before.

After about 3 hours on the island, we headed back to the boat. We decided to go swimming in the pool on the boat (I wanted to try the waterslide but it was closed!). So we decided to go to the adult pool (least amount of people in it). But the water was warm! It was like being in a lukewarm tub. We didn’t stay in it long and I STILL hadn’t been to the gym yet so we went there to take a look at it. The gym was at the front of the ship (the other 2 I’d been on had the gym in the back). Also you could look right into the bridge of the ship from the gym so that was interesting. We asked if they had a sauna and stuff and one of the staff members showed us a room that could be used for $15 each for hot, cold, and relaxing treatments. So we paid that went on our way in the room.

Ooooooooh man it was so relaxing in there. They had an aromatherapy room, a mild sauna, a hot sauna (and it was hot), 2 cooling showers, and these weird seats that looked like they were made out of tile or porcelain that were heated so they were relaxing to sit in. We spent over 2 hours in there and my sore throat was completely gone! Susan didn’t believe me that relaxing in a sauna and steam room would help her throat out (ancient Chinese secret ha ha). We even skipped going to the broadway like show of that evening since we wanted to relax here. Word to the wise if any of you go on this cruise. I think you can just sneak into the aromatherapy room as we were in there for two hours and no one ever bothered us or anything. The $15 we paid was for the locker and the robe (and the room supposedly) but there were people just walking in there and using it so make note if you go on this cruise!)

We finally only decided to leave because it was getting close to dinner time and it was time to eat at the Animator’s Palette! There are some cool pics in my yahoo photo album

HERE

It was so cool how the room changed colors throughout the meal. I think only Disney or Warner Bros (possibly Dreamworks) could do something like that still looks cool (you need those childhood animated heros!)

After dinner it was off to bed and HOLY HELL it was rocky! I think around 1 or 2 am they stopped the boat (it would only take us about 6 hours to get back to Florida and we had about 10) and it was pretty choppy in the water. Things were falling over in the room and it was hard to sleep with all the noise (and we had an inside cabin too!) .

Day 8

OUCH! I got sunburned yesterday (3rd time ever). I paid for forgetting the sunscrean on the boat.

Well the vacation is over. We got back promtly a 7am and were off the boat by 8:30 and to the airport by 9:45. The only problem was, my flight wasn't till 2. As luck would have it (as i type this), there is free wirless internet access at the airport here so problem solved.

Overall the trip was SUPER FUN. I'd love to do this again soon (assuming Susan can keep up).

The Pluses:

Disney really has their act together on transport and logistics. Be it from hotel to park, park to park, park to hotel, hotel to airport, hotel to cruise, etc. they were on the ball almost the entire time (the exception is when they forgot to tell us the cruise shuttle was gonna be late but we were late too so it didn't matter ha ha).
The ticket to the World pass. This is your park pass, your ID, room key, charge key, and basically your life at disney. It's so convenient so you don't need 2 or 3 seperate keys or ID or tickets.
Service with a Smile. I've worked customer service and i know it sucks. But these people were nice to the point of almost making me nauseous. the smile can make all the difference sometimes
Almost no lines! Go in Sept (which is why i planned the vacation for exactly when we went as most kids are just back in school so the parks are almost empty and the vacation packages are cheaper!)

the Minuses:

I almost drank gasoline since it was cheaper than the food or drinks at the parks
It rained almost everyday (well that can't be helped but what can you do)
The parks closed fairly early (7:30 or 8pm at night? what gives?)
Did i mention the food was extremely expensive?
The park food wasn't that great
the cruise food was decent to good (the snack food is exactly the same as in the parks down to the napkins)
No lobster or crab for dinner on the cruises
only 24 hours in a day! My Lord never enough time to get stuff done (plus the 3 hour jet lag!)

The things that i regret on this trip are:

We never got to ride the boat from our hotel to Downtown Disney
We never got to ride the boat that crosses through Epcot
We never got to ride the Monorail (that is THE Disney way to ride)

Vacation Day 6

2005-09-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Day 6

Nassau Mon!

So now I can say that I’ve traveled to 4 foreign countries (not counting layovers):

Philippines
China (Hong Kong and Macau)

Mexico(both south of California and Phil’s neighborhood)
Nassau, Bahamas
Canada doesn’t count

I made sure to force Susan awake today as we only had 8 or 9 hours in port and she walks slow. The first thing I noticed was that we were in a 3 boat dock. We had a Holland America boat on one side of us, and a Norwegian Cruise Line boat on the other. And it was Damn HOT down there. The Bahamas is made up of about 700 islands but most of the people only live on a few of them. New Providence (the island we were on and the capital of the Bahamas) houses about 60% of the whole population. One thing that was cool was that it was near the Atlantis hotel and casino is on Nassau. We were docked on the north side of the island and only about 15 minutes from the hotel. Phil and I saw it on TV a few years ago and they have this monster water slide that is really cool looking. The Nassau tour guide that was in the room said that it would be at least $12 each way plus tips to get to The Atlantis is technically on another island, but it has a bridge connecting it but you have to pay a toll for it. As luck would have it, we found a boat tour that would take us across for $6 per person round trip! Half the price! SCORE!

It was a short 10 minutes site seeing ride across to the other island. Club Med used to have a spot here, but the owner of the Atlantis bought them out to expand his hotel. One of the producers of Thunderball (an old James Bond movie that you will laugh your ass off watching if you’ve watched the Austin Powers movies) moved here after they filled Thunderball since he liked it so much. They point out the houses and stuff like that. When we got to the Atlantis, it was pretty cool looking. A Vegas casino needs to copy the underwater thing like here (Mandalay Bay doesn’t have anything on this place). Even though it looked just a nice as a Vegas casino (though the casino itself was a bit on the small side in terms of mega resorts), it still had that “foreign smell” to it. I can’t really describe it, but if you had kidnapped me, left me blindfolded, and walked me through the place, I could probably tell I was out of the country. I think it’s the heavy moisture in the air that causes the smell (I smell it in the Philippines too) but I’ve never smelled it in US even when I lived in Texas.

We went to the customer service booth to see how much it costs to ride the water slide. They said since I wasn’t a hotel guest, I could buy a day pass for $75. $75!?! Man I could practically get a room for that much. And that was each! Not $75 for the both of us. So I said, screw that! I wasn’t lured to the slots at all as I’m practically immune to it from living in Vegas for the last year. But when Susan played, I decided to play some too. I played Family Feud since I hadn’t played it before and on my 4^th spin, I won $80 (I was playing quarters so I spent a total of $1.25 to make $80) so I just stopped there :)

After some other site seeing, we went to….. Starbucks? Geez go all the way to the Bahamas and I’m drinking a mango tea shake from Starbucks ha ha. After that, we took the ferry back to New Providence Island and did some shopping (while sweating to death too). After that, it was back on the boat to do a little eating and swimming (to cool off!). We went and saw the show on the boat that might (of course heavily Disney themed) and then went off to dinner for the “Pirates in the
Caribbean” dinner (told you in an earlier post to remember that part!). It was dress up night so that’s why I’m wearing a tie in some of the pics. After dinner (naturally we were one of the last ones to finish ha ha) we went above deck for the continuation of the Pirates in the Caribbean night. There was dancing and music and one thing I’ve NEVER seen on a cruise boat. They had fireworks launched from the boat! That was pretty neat. After that it was another snack (hey I paid for it might as well get my moneys worth) and then off to bed. It sucked too since my throat was starting to hurt a lot from getting sick by Susan.

Vacation Day 5

2005-09-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

Day 5

Our cruise day (we hope!)

Ok this is what confounded me on this trip. Our original itinerary was to leave the hotel at 11:45 (or 12:45 if you leave from Animal Kingdom) onboard the Disney Cruise bus (a separate bus from the buses that take you to the parks or to the airport) and get to Port Canaveral around 2 pm or so. Buuuuuut since we had to go to Port Everglades, they decide to have the bus leave at 2 pm! What’s up with that? We have to go farther so we leave later?

We went to Animal Kingdom, which is basically the zoo (it smelled like crap). We didn’t have a chance to explore everything due to time limits and it only really has 2 good rides.

1.It’s tough to be a Bug (Bug’s life, and it’s also available in California Adventure)
2. Dinosaur- a semi rollercoaster like ride where you’re in a time machine and trying to get a dinosaur out of the past before the asteroid hits.

It’s cool at the McDonald’s in the park, they have special happy meals only available there. The happy meal has Animal Kingdom stuff on it and has a postcard you can mail to people saying you were at Animal Kingdom.

We barely finished those two rides at 1:20 and were like CRAP, we have to get back to the hotel still! So we got back to the buses and waited for almost 30 minutes for the Port Orleans bus (which we also found out that they change drivers at the Animal Kingdom so we had to wait even longer). So I was really afraid we were gonna miss our bus so I even called the hotel to have them hold the bus for us. They weren’t sure if they could but they put in the notice to the cruise people. We didn’t get back to the hotel till 2:05 so we were racing to see if we missed the bus. For those of you wondering why we just didn’t take the Animal Kingdom bus (since I said earlier they pick up there), it’s because Susan had left one of her bags with the bellman at the hotel so we had to go back to get it. We saw there was a line of people when we got to the cruise desk so I knew we didn’t miss it. They told us, “Oh we called everyone to tell them that the bus wouldn’t be here till 2:45!”

Fuckers! I never got that call and I left my cell number so I knew they didn’t call. And why would they bother calling my room since they called after check out time so I wouldn’t be in there anyways! We finally got on board the bus and took the trip of forever to get to Fort Lauderdale.

We had to go to one more hotel (the Disney Swan, which is pretty nice looking) and got going around 3:15. We had to stop at around 5 for a “required pit stop” (apparently it’s state law a charter bus like this has to stop every two hours, but I think that the pit stop place we went to pays the cruise companies to do that for more business ha ha). The pit stop was 45 minutes and then we were on our way again. We got into the port around 7:40 and got all checked in so I’m sure that was a big mess for all of the people who had early seating (for those who haven’t been on a cruise before, cruise ships are huge, but they’re still not big enough to house everyone for dinner at the same time, so there are usually 2 dining rooms and 2 seating times). Luckily we had late seating at 8:30 so we dropped our bags, explored the ship some and went to eat.

The Disney Cruise boat is like walking into a cartoon. There are Disney characters or paintings or pictures everywhere. When you first walk into the atrium, there is an entrance to one of the restaurants (more on that later) that has a life size (or close to it) statue of Ariel from the Little Mermaid. The atrium was a bit small I thought considering the ship is pretty new.

There is literally Disney coursing through the entire ships veins. I don’t think you can look at anything on the ship without seeing some kind of Disney reference. Look at my pictures I’ve posted and you’ll understand.

The dining on the boat is really cool. There are 3 restaurants on the boat (and a premium one where you have to pay more to go to) as well as the buffet and food stations. Each night of your cruise, you dine in a different dining room. On a cruise you have a personal waiter and assistant waiter who serves your table. On the Disney cruise, they follow you from restaurant to restaurant. Each restaurant is different. Parrocat Cay (our first night) is Caribbean themed and is a more casual place. Triton’s was on our second night and is the formal dining. Animator’s Palette was by far the coolest and I’m glad we had that on the last night. The entire restaurant is black and white. Throughout dinner, it starts gaining color (the pictures will turn to color and lights will internally illuminate things that were formally black and white). It’s really cool and something any kid will love (like me). I took pictures.

In Parrocat Cay, it was Caribbean themed (remember that part and think of a recent Disney movie). When I’m on a cruise boat, it’s steak every night! Since I paid for everything already, why bother getting the cheap or vegetarian stuff right? We had a 6 seater table but we only had 2 table mates. It was 2 japanese ladies (too bad Leo wasn’t there ha ha). When I listened to them talk, it was like watching an anime movie (they’re eyes just weren’t big). We discovered they did speak English but they mostly just talked to each other so Susan and I didn’t say a whole lot to them. We missed the first night of entertainment due to all of the hectic moving around and transport to the boat (we got to the boat 2.5 hours after it was originally supposed to leave so that really screwed up the schedule).

There are lots of cool pictures so check them out.
photos.yahoo.com/ninja421

Vacation Day 4

2005-09-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

Day 4

The day Susan was waiting for! TheMagic Kingdom (it’s basically Disneyland but bigger for those of you who haven’t been there) so we’ll get up early and get going fast right!?!

Ha ha I think you know the answer by now.

Susan was feeling pretty bad since she was sick so we slept in again. She was starting to run a fever off and on too. We went to Epcot (since we couldn’t fit it in the day before since we didn’t have time) to finish off the pavilions (and get a sneak peak at the recently opened Hong Kong Disney) that we hadn’t had a chance to get to, but she wasn’t feeling good so we went back to the hotel (if this was Phil and me, that’d be an unheard of travesty! He would have dragged my lifeless corpse through the park if I had died on him, that or just left my body at customer service and picked me up later). She took an hour nap back at the hotel (and I did too since I didn’t have anything else to do) and surprisingly enough I was pretty tired too. That nap felt good and I was pretty reenergized (though I got low batt later on).

I noticed that the message light on our phone was blinking so I was wondering who that could be since no one even knew what hotel we were staying at. The message was from Disney Cruise lines. So I had two thoughts crossing through my mind:

CRAP! The cruise has been cancelled due to a hurricane
CRAP! We’re gonna have to really change up the itinerary due to the hurricane.

Crap #2 was correct. Due to Tropical Storm/Hurricane Ophelia, we couldn’t leave from Port Canaveral (which is only about an hour from Disney World). Instead, we got to take a fun filled 4 hour drive to Port Everglades down inFort Lauderdale.

Man it was a good thing that I booked transport through Disney. For $98 (for the both of us) we got transport from the

Airport-Parks-Cruise-Aiport

If we had gotten transport separately, I’m sure it would have cost us way more than that (especially since we basically had to drive down to Miami!).

We had put Magic Kingdom on the last day because it was going to be open till midnight tonight (at least one park a day is either open early or closes late, but most of them were opening early and since we overslept everyday, that didn’t help out a whole lot). We had made dinner reservations at the steakhouse at the Contemporary Hotel (one of the coolest looking hotels ever, as the monorail goes through the hotel) to make sure we’d be able to get through the park in time. We got to the park around 4 and made our way through

Stitches Great Escape (set before the movie but it was just ok)
Space Mountain
Small World
Haunted Mansion
Mickey’s PhilharMagic
Tomorrowland shuttle
Pirates of the Caribbean (with no Keira Knightly to be found dammit)
Snow White’s Scary Adventures
Peter Pan’s Flight

We could have gotten through more, but it monsooned rained for about 45 minutes and then rained more off and on so that kept us from doing a lot.

We watched the fireworks show at 9. After that, we went on a few more rides and went back to the hotel (and got rained on a few times again). This time on the bus, the A/C was out and man it was HOTTTTT. The windows were starting to fog up from the condensation so that kinda sucked. We didn’t get back to the hotel till kinda late (around 11) and we still had to pack everything up since that was our last night there.

I really have to compliment and say how well Disney’s logistics team works. They cover almost everything on the backend so that you don’t have to do anything when you’re there. We had barely gotten our cruise documents in time (we got them on Thursday and we left for Disney on Saturday, but that wasn’t their fault as we had gotten it through a 3^rd party company) so I didn’t have time to check the documents to inform me that we could have tagged our luggage ID tags that would have had the Disney people pick up our bags before they even came out of the baggage claim and they would have taken them straight to our hotel! That’s cool. I’m not even sure if they do that in Vegas. On the day of your cruise (if you get the land/sea package) they pick up your bags in the early morning and delivery them straight to your stateroom (that’s what your room on a cruise boat is called) so you can go to the park on the day of your cruise and not have to worry about your luggage! The only thing that doesn’t work too well is the “buy something at the park and have it delivered to your room” service. The service itself is pretty cool, but they can’t deliver it same day though so we couldn’t take advantage of it. Another option they do have though is that you can buy something and have it held at the front for you to pick up on your way out.

We got everything packed and went to bed (I was starting to get sick too!)

Vacation Day 3

2005-09-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

Day 3

Off to the Disney MGM studios at the crack of dawn (8 am opening instead of 9 am for Disney hotel guests).

NOT

Susan couldn’t get up (this becomes a recurring theme) but this time because her throat was really hurting. So we stayed at the hotel till about 12 and then went to the Park around then. We got to the studios about 12:45 or so and then went on the Tower ofTerror first. Ha ha, that ride scared Susan to death, but it was fun. After that we went on

Little Mermaid show
Indiana Jones show
Muppet Vision 3D
The Great Movie Ride
Animation tour
Star Wars (of course, but only since we had spare time J)

And the LIGHTS, MOTORS, ACTION! EXTREME STUNT SHOW!

That stunt show was cooooooool. It had 6 stunt cars doing all sorts of close quarter stunts and chase sequences.

On the Indiana Jones front, most of you will be shocked (and think I’m lying), but I found a Chinese guy who is WHITER than me! The announcer (Terrance Yip, still remember) was talking and first thing I said to Susan was, “Do I sound that bad!?!”

She said yes but I know I don’t. He sounded like the movie phone guy and I’d never know he was Asian if I closed my eyes.

Finally, we went to the lagoon area of the studios (near the front) for the Fantasimic show. I think this is where the 50^th anniversary show that is shown in Disneyland is from. It’s pretty cool looking as they use a solid wall of water (from jet nosals) as a screen to project a tv image on. It’s pretty cool looking. But naturally, it started raining again (which didn’t help with Susan’s sore throat) and we got drenched pretty bad trying to run out to the buses. I was pretty wet on the bus and it didn’t help that the A/C on the bus was set to like artic freeze so I’m sure some other people may have gotten sick too. It was still kinda rainy that night so we skipped swimming.

Vacation Day 2

2005-09-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

Day 2

Woke up late :(

I was supposed to return the car by 10 and I wanted to return it at 8 so that Susan and I could go straight to Epcot. But that didn’t work as Susan couldn’t get up and then I fell asleep again after she wouldn’t get up. So I didn’t get up till 9:40 so I had to high tail it to the Double Tree to get the car dropped off. I made it at 10:10 (had to gas it up again) but the car rental booth was empty! So I had to wait for 30 minutes for the dude to get back but finally got that taken care of. But as I walked back to Downtown Disney (to take transport back to the hotel), it started raining! Man what’s up with it raining in sunny Orlando? So I had to wait in the rain (at the Downtown Disney bus stop) for about 20 minutes and then got the bus to go back to the Port Orleans. Somehow during the walk to Downtown Disney, I managed to hurt myself. I was looking at his pond with turtles in it and suddenly my neck started hurting (the kind when you sleep wrong). So that bothered me for most of the rest of the trip. I didn’t get back to the hotel till about 11:45 so we didn’t get to Epcot till about 12:50. So we had 8 hours to do 9 rides and get through the 12 country pavilions. Could we do it? Well Phil and I could have (and probably made it to another park too).

Our first stop was some pictures as Susan’s Disney vacation started here. The only ride that I can think of that is in Epcot and in Disneyland is Soarin’ (in California Adventure) so everything was new to her. Then we headed off to Spaceship Earth (the big golf ball looking thing). That ride is a bit old (and God forbid…… educational) so we had to wait for about 45 seconds to get on the ride. I haven’t been on this ride in ages (I don’t think Mark and I rode it last year) so if I didn’t ride it with Mark, the last time I rode it was back in 1994. Today’s list of rides includes:

Mission: Space (barf bags included at no extra charge)

Test Track (kick ass)

Soarin’

Journey Into Imagination (the old school one was better)

Spaceship Earth

Circle of Life

Maelstrom (in the Norway Pavilion)

El Rio del Tiempo (in the Mexico Pavilion)

China Movie at the China Pavilion (with a sneak peak at Disney Hong Kong)

All the other Pavilions

But the Living Seas ride was closed! DENIED!

Oh Mission Space is a ride a kid died on a few months ago. Last i read, they still don't know why.

After finishing up the LAND ride, we went to the Pavilions. We got through 9 of the pavilions before it got dark and we decided to stop since it was hard to see and harder to take pictures. The plan here was to come back again on Wednesday morning or on Tuesday afternoon (foreshadowing to a disaster of “It ain’t gonna happen!”)

We stopped at the German pavilion because I wanted to eat some bratwurst. I haven’t had that in ages. We discovered that there is a German restaurant there (buffet with live entertainment!) which was about $21 plus drink (not bad for a theme park) but it was 8:30, the park closed at 9 (what’s with all these early park closings?) and it was Susan and me eating ha ha ha. The buffet was ok. I had forgotten that German food is kinda bitter/sour tasting and the bratwurst wasn’t that great. We watched the fireworks (every park has fireworks every night so that’s cool) and then went home. Naturally (and almost like clockwork!) as soon as the fireworks stopped and they kicked us out of the park, it started raining again. We got back to the hotel and it had stopped raining so we went swimming again. The pool at the Port Orleans is heated so it was luke warm still so I was nice to swim in. We were in the pool for almost 2 hours and I think this got Susan sick.

Vacation Day 0/1

2005-09-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhh, vacation at last!

I’ll be posting a day by day account of the trip to Orlando. It was a long and mostly fun trip but despite all of my planning many things went wrong (both within and beyond my control)

Got to sleep in and it felt great! Nothing much to do today except rest, get ready to leave and pick up Susan. Our flight isn’t till 10:45pm so we have plenty of time to do stuff. I did have to go to work for a little while today but nothing big. After I picked up Susan, I went to work and then after that we had some ice cream at Dairy Queen and did some last minute shopping at Wal-Mart.

We went to the Cortez Room at the Gold Coast for dinner. Great steak at a great price. It was just the right size (11 oz) but I felt like I could have had another one ha ha. After dinner Susan and I went back home, got packed up and then waited for Alvin to take us to the airport. I had to do something I very rarely do on a flight; check luggage! So we had to get to the airport a little sooner than usual since I had to check the bag. Since it was Saturday night, the airport was almost empty. The busy days at the Las Vegas airport are Sunday, Thursday, and Friday. Sunday and Thursday for people leaving Vegas, and Friday for people to get in and lose all their money!

The first of wackiness happened on the flight. I fell asleep with my glasses on, and then woke up and they were missing and I found my left lens in the seat next to me! I looked frantically and found that my frame was 2 rows up! Somehow after I fell asleep the glasses fell off and were either stepped on or bent or something and the left lens was popped out. On the bright side, the frame for the glasses weren’t broken, just bent, so I think it should be able to be repaired ok.

We landed at 6 am in the morning (Eastern time)! Man that was early! It was still only 3 am in Las Vegas! So we had about 4 hours of “not sleep” during the flight so Susan and I were really sleepy. We waited in the lobby for about an hour (the info said that the Disney transport didn’t start till 8 am) but we found out when we went to the check in desk that it starts at 5:30! So we could have left anytime! So we got on our shuttle to the Port Orleans Hotel French Quarter and the vacation has started! The ride was smooth and uneventful (which was a good thing) but we got to the hotel around 8:15 in the morning so nothing was open and our room wasn’t ready yet.

We checked in and left our luggage, and went down to the Doubletree Hotel (which ironically was the hotel that Mark and I stayed at last year. We got our rental car and drove off to Universal Studios. Whew it was a bit hard to drive without my glasses especially since I hadn’t had any sleep and my eyes have two different vision grades. But we managed to get to Universal with only a minimal amount of getting lost. Today was going to be our toughest day since we had to do 2 theme parks in one day (I found a special ticket to Universal that was a 2-parks for the price of 1 but you had to do both parks in the same day. I had gone over the list of the rides so I had a general idea of what to ride, but we didn’t get to the park till past 11 and the freaking park closes at 8 pm! What the hell is that? It’s the Sunday before Memorial Monday and they’re closing at 8 pm! So we had to work fast! We went on as many rides as we could, but we hadn’t had any sleep so any ride we were in that was dark (like a 3D or 4D ride) I was a falling asleep. We went on the following:

Amazing Spider Man (WAAAY COOOL)

Hulk Coaster (just me, Susan didn’t want to go)

Storm Force Accelatron (like the teapot ride at Disney world)

8^th Voyage of Sinbad (a 20 minute show, pretty cool)

Men in Black

Shrek 4D

Twister

Jaws

Jimmy Neutron’s Nicktoon Blast

It doesn’t look like a lot but when you’re waiting in line forever (even with the Fast Pass) it’s enough to take up a whole day (plus everything is so far when you’re walking across 2 parks)

After we left Universal at 8 pm we made our way down to Steak-n-Shake. I’ve always wanted to go there but wasn’t able to in KC or when I was here last year. They have pretty good food and shakes but I think I was too tired to appreciate it. After leaving I noticed that we were right by the Doubletree again! Mark and I almost could have walked there (well maybe not as it was over a mile or so from there).

After semi driving by the seat of my pants (I wasn’t quite sure where I was going since I hadn’t stayed at the Port Orleans before) we made it back (I recognized some of the landmarks from earlier in the day and from when we were in Orlando last year). Got back and went swimming for a bit (well as close to swimming as Susan can get since she can’t swim) and then went to bed!

oongawa!!!

2005-08-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

Ok last night i reached a new level of dumbass-ness. I cut myself on a jar of peanut butter.

Ok hopefully you're done laughing now. So you're probably thinking, "Boy you have to be pretty damn stupid to be able to cut yourself on a cylindrical blunt plastic object." And i would have thought the same thing right up until i cut myself. But i was opening the jar (new jar... remember that part) and as i was just about finished unscrewing the lid, my thumb grazed the security seal (sealed for your protection.... and hers. ha ha ha) right at the part where they have the pull tab to pull it off. Well my thumb hit it at just the right angle to give me a papercut! It was so startling that i dropped/threw the lid when the pain hit (how often do you brace yourself for injury against a jar of JIF?)

It was a great weekend of doing nothing. Peter from Officespace would have been so proud of me. All weekend i did nothing and it was everything i could have hoped it would be. I slept till 1 pm on saturday and sunday and i think i was close to going into a coma from being so lazy. I would have worked out but the one bad point of the weekend was i slept wrong so my back/neck muscle was tight so it was hard to do physically active moves so i just skipped it and it's off to the gym tonight.

Random website of the week: www.engRish.com
Pretty funny stuff.

oongawa!!!

2005-08-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

Oh man it's been a rough couple of weeks.

Last week i got an email from a friend of mine i hadn't talked to in quite a while. He had told me how he had gotten into a major car accident. The craziest thing was it was a single car accident because he had fallen asleep! He decided to go cross country (all the way to canada even) to visit places he hadn't been to before and decided to drive the entire trip, by himself! That alone was a bit crazy but the fact he didn't die and isn't too badly hurt is amazing too. He swerved off of the road and flipped over and only has a herniated disc in his neck. So he had to wear a hard cast and then a soft cast on his neck for a few weeks but that's it.

This will (hopefully) be the first week i'll have more or less to myself in over a month. I plan on sleeeeeeeeeping tomallow. Mom packed up a nice big box that needs to be shipped to the Philippines but luckily they do door to door service so all i have to do tomallow is wake up, give them the money and the box and i'm done :)

The rest of the day i'm not sure about. My godparents son is coming into town to visit with his friends so i think i'll just need to pick him up from the airport. If that's the case, i'll be hitting the gym hard tomallow. Well i'm not sure if i'd want to get one of those Tread Climbs by Bowflex. All 3 of the ones at the gym were roped off the other night so i'm not sure if they're broken or what, but they've been there less than 5 weeks so that's probably not a good sign of durability.

Man i'm glad it's a long weekend next week. Just rest and relax! Plus i need to get caught up on my movie watching. There are a few i want to watch but just haven't had time to watch. To quote the Go Go's, "Vacation is all i ever wanted..."

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-08-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

Oh man! this weekend when Mark, Chris, Dada, and i went to Laughlin was fun! We went jet skiing. DUDE that is funnnnnn! I wish i had done it earlier. But i have to apologize to Chris because i accidently threw him off the jet ski when we were on it. I took a turn a bit sharp and hit a wave and next thing i knew i saw Chris flying off of the thing. Ooops!

We spent a few hours with Randy and Twei (still don't know how to spell her name) and Twei's family. We only stopped jet skiing because the things ran out of gas ha ha. Laughlin is like if Vegas were in the suburbs. It's smaller, more space, less traffic and there are old people everywhere. I think older people like it since it's more quiet and the pace is a little slower. They cater to war veterans too as they have flag raising ceremonies every morning at some hotels (not a bad thing but how often do you see that now a days?)

This weekend the earliest i went to bed was about 2 am i think. So needless to say, i'm tired!

Just this morning my friend Chris (different Chris) came into town for work and his cheap ass company won't give him any money allowance for a rental car! So i picked him up (EARLY at 8 am) and dropped him off at his hotel. They're working him to the bone hard tonight. he got in at 8 today and leaves at midnight tuesday (wednesday morning) so he won't be able to enjoy the city very much.

Well didn't work out this weekend (aside from gripping the jet ski hard so as not to fall off) but hope i can a few times this week.

jb!

oongawa!!!

2005-08-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

Ah another fun filled weekend ahead! Tonight Mark, Dada, and Chris get in so undoubtedly more gambling and eating ha ha. Tomallow we'll be heading down to Laughlin (about 2 hours away) to experience gambling in a different Nevada city (but they actually have non smoking sections in the casino!) We're gonna go jet skiing (which should be fun since i've never gone before). We'll be meeting with Randy and Twei(sp?) so i'm sure we'll find ways to keep ourselves busy the whole day.

The pace of life is a little slower there so hopefully we won't feel rushed. Then on sunday we'll drive back here and then chill for the day and then pick up mom from the airport. Mark and company will go home on monday to avoid any traffic (plus we won't hit too much on the way back to vegas because no one GOES to vegas on sunday except people who live there).

Wednesday was a good chat night as i got to talk to my russian penpal whom i haven't talked to in a while. She has met a man in france and was staying with him in Paris for a month (well actually still is till next week) so her english is really getting a test (which she has flawless english already even in her written as she almost never makes mistakes in her grammar, i can't say that!).

Todays random exercise thought: Nothing too much today since i didn't work out at all yesterday. I'm gonna go to the gym tonight before Mark and them get here. Gotta do my 3rd day of a week on that treadclimber. The calves are still kinda sore but everything else feels great! (in Tony the Tiger voice). I'll try to work on strength tonight so maybe do some weights or something. Being Friday, i'll just go to the gym around 6 or 7 and it should be empty ha ha. But aside from jet skiing and doing some walking i doubt i'll be doing much exercise this weekend. And of course it'll be buffet for every meal too ha ha. I'm not sure if the yoga on wednesday helped or hurt my legs in trying to get the lead out of them. but my mid section feels good so maybe the legs were just hurting too much. The hip flexors are what hurt the most during the yoga class and those feel fine now.

b!

Peace... and ouch

2005-08-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

It's weird this week as it's my first week in a while that i don't have any visitors or have to travel to LA. I just get to go home and do.... nothing. It's great! ha ha ha. Leo left monday so i've had up till today to do nothing and i've been making the most of it :)

Nothing new this week since i've just been too tired/lazy to do anything most of the time. Mark, Dada, Chris, and i will go to Laughlin this weekend (overnight trip) and then mom and lola come back on sunday.

Todays random exercise thought: I've finally started working out again this week. Man i've been so bad about it lately. I've only worked out once in the last 3 weeks (not counting the last two days). Well i take that back, i did do my 5 minute work out a few times here and there but that's about it. I was too tired to go to my Monday class so i skipped that. Tuesday i ran for 20 minutes (well 8 minutes and then struggled the other 12) and then did the Treadclimber (www.treadclimber.com) for about 30 minutes. So i'll see if that 30 minutes 3 times a week thing works or not. Wednesday (or even tuesday night) i was in a world of pain. My right shin was/is hurting from the running pounding. I still gutted it out last night and worked out for about 2 hours. I did the ellipse machine for 20 minutes (i could i was not up to my normal health level on that too), walked for about 15 minutes, and then did another 30 minutes on the treadclimber. After that i went to my yoga class and even though i'd been working out for an hour, i was still stiff and my joints were hurting from the run the day before. I must've looked like an old man in there (and the only man too as the other dude who does it wasn't in there). Man says i've gained some weight and i think she was right. i was going between 160-165 back in March, but now am at 165 on a good day and i think the muscle is turning to fat so i weight even more :(

It was weird though as since i've been working out i haven't been hungry at night (but thirsty as hell!) and i'm craving salads for some reason. Even though i haven't been working out, my arm endurance has gotten a little better (i think). I was able to do 100 straight pushups the other night so either the endurance is better or i'm cheating doing the pushups :)

Either way, it's rest and take it easy tonight. Maybe some situps or something. Can't do squats as the legs hurt still.

that's all for now
B!

Double Dannnnnng!

2005-08-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

I guess i need to start calling this the monthly JB update now ha ha. Man yet another busy month (must be because it's summer). To start the month off (as in the month of July), i had a wedding to go to for my coworker Janice. The Sheraton Universal has a spectacular view of the city but i'm sure you're paying for that view too.
After the wedding and reception, I went to pick up Susan and we drove straight to Vegas (i wanted to go home! I'd been gone for 2 weeks!). Susan and i didn't leave LA till about 9:30 pm or so. Luckily since it was Saturday we didn't hit too much traffic once we were out of the city. We made it to Vegas by 1 am and that included a 20 minutes stop in Barstow to fill up the tank and stretch! In the month long annoying saga that was my washing machine, they stil hadn't fixed the damn thing yet! Man it sucks not having a washer so now i understand why Mark and Dada were so excited to get one in their new place. It took my complex a month to look at my machine and tell me it needed to be replaced (which i told them at the start). But to replace it only took a few days (they ordered a brand new one so mine is nice now). Mark and Dada were in town too so the 4 of us had a fun 3 day weekend. I spent on week back in Vegas but decided to make another trip to LA starting July 14-20 for work. I got back in time for Leo to get here and celebrate his 35th birthday! Now today my mom gets here with my non english speaking grandma so it should be another fun filled time. We go to LA again on thursday for Phil's engagement party this weekend. Then it's back here, Leo goes home, then Mark, Dada and Chris (Dada's cousin) come for the weekend, and then we'll go to the Avril Lavigne concert at the Hard Rock (need to go buy those tickets still). Then after that, they go home, mom gets back from LA and one more week of visitors. Mom leaves on Aug 23 and then it's hopefully gonna be back to normal for 30 minutes or so.

He he hopefully my next update will be before September.

jb!

dang

2005-07-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Man I can't believe it's been over a month since i updated this baby! Well it's been hell and high water since last post. Last month I spent more time in LA than in Vegas! It was a whirlwind. The first week of June was fine (though it was only 4 days!). The second i had to go to LA to help Phil move (with enough things going wrong to make yet another reality show). I even squeezed in a day to go to work in the office there! Then i was in Vegas for most of week 3, but went to LA again on the 17th and was there for 2 weeks! Man now i remember why i moved! TRAFFIC SUCKS! I was partially homeless while i was there even :(

I slept in 4 different homes over those 2 weeks so i had clothes and crap all over Orange and LA county!

On a fun note, we went to the beach last weekend. I'd never been to Laguna Beach (site of the famous falling Million dollar houses). Man it was weird like the movies! People screaming out bible passages, old losers walking their dogs trying to pick up chicks, young guys walking dogs trying to pick up chicks, silicon, 80 pound women, and lots of lobsters!

Being the morons we are, Phil and i jumped head first (read: not thinking) into the COLD ocean water and spent about an hour or so jumping into incoming waves and riptides! Women take note! This is a great way to exfoliate for free! All of the sand and God knows what else in the water was rubbing against my skin for that hour and it was smoooooth after that (for the most part). The next day i was sunburned! Just on the shoulders and my face was a bit red (but not burned). The shoulders were sore that monday. This is even after putting on sunblock! But the sunblock was ripped off due to the exfoliating too ha ha.

The branch office moved too while i was there so that was a lot of work (but not for me ha ha ha) in getting everything moved and stuff. hopefully everything should be hooked up by next week (phones and internet and stuff).

Then i went to Janice's wedding and drove home that same night! Got home to Great Las Vegas at 1 am that night and slept my ass off! Thank God Susan was with me on the ride to keep me awake (otherwise i would have driven back on Sunday). I would have been like Homer in that one episode of the Simpsons where he said, "I can drive all night" and the next scene you see this car crash and go up into flames. Then it pans to a hotel and Bart says, "Glad that wasn't us."

Whew it's good to be back but i'm still sleepy :(

And my damn washing machine still isn't fixed yet!

b

oongawa!!!

2005-06-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, June 1st, it's summer time and it's time to cut some dead weight in the NFL too.

Today's movie review is one that's frightening and depressing not because of the movie itself, but because of the subject matter. Lilya 4-ever (IMDB link here) is a Swedish made film about the modern human slave trade. Lilya (played by Oksana Akinshina who i realized only the other night was in the Bourne Supremacy) is a girl living in an impoverished town in the former soviet union. At the beginning (or near the beginning) of the film she's all joy as she is going to be moving to America with her mom (who has married a U.S. based Russian through a marriage agency). However things quickly go to hell when her mom basically leaves her to rot and moves to America on her own. Left with just an uncaring aunt and virtually no money, she turns to prostitution to support herself and her one friend. She is then befriended by a very nice Russian man who offers to take her to Sweden where he lives to give her a better life. Against the wishes of her friend, she decides to go as she has nothing left in Russia. To her horror, when she arrives in Sweden, she finds out she's become a sex slave in a Swedish prostitution ring.

Things are completely hopeless for her there. She is locked up in an apartment till she's used by her pimp, and she can't run to the police as she's been threated to be killed (also she was travelling under a fake passport so she could possibly be deported back to Russia). In the end, she ends up killing herself to escape the hell that she found herself in. The movie was based on the real life story of a girl named Dangoule Rasalaite and i'm sure this happens alot in real life (not just Russians either).

I'd heard about this movie two years ago but obviously since it's a Russian/Swedish production (the movie is in Russian, Swedish, and a little english) I knew it wasn't going to have much of a chance for a stateside release. The IMDB even says that it isn't available in the US, but Netlfix recently released it as part of their foreign film catalog (the DVD itself is very basic looking, just a gray background with the name of the movie and a NETFLIX stamp on it). The movie probably could have been much more graphic (it alludes to a lot of sex and rape but it's not shown as the star was only 15 or 16 at the time) but it gets the message across pretty well.

Man i can't believe the year is almost half over! Seems like only recently i was just getting back from the Philippines and being jetlagged!

Todays random exercise thought: Well back to the grind today. I skipped my monday class since it was cancelled due to Memorial Day. I skipped working out yesterday just because i was lazy ha ha.
Tonight is my Piyo class and running night (hopefully ha ha). I a little (very little) exercise last night but i've been maintaining weight so i must be doing something right (but need to lose more weight dammit!)

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-05-31T11:36:00.000-07:00

Phew! Been a while since i made a post. Well last monday marked my first year in Vegas! Man i can't believe it's been a year already. What do i have to show for it? Year older, slightly (very slightly) slimmer (which is a shock since i'm in buffet capital), and back in the heat (just like in Texas).

I was looking forward to having a nice quiet 3 day weekend of catching up on DVDs i haven't had a chance to watch yet, but last week Hotel JB got a room reservation request. Susan and her friends wanted to come again so i knew it'd be non stop eating! Ha ha ha. And eating we did! My tongue and tastebuds are overwhelmed and overused from all that food we ate! I ate a buffet almost every meal this weekend (solly i consider today the start of the week since i mostly didn't need to work yesterday). Friday night when they got here, we went for the midnight specials at the Goldcoast. Saturday i had Makino sushi (excellent place) for lunch and Sam's Town for dinner (it was prime rib night!). Naturally i wasn't hungry for any of these meals since i was always full from the previous meal!. Sunday we had the Palms for lunch and then the Goldcoast buffet for dinner (steak night! ha ha). I gained 5 lbs in one day from all that eating, but luckily i lost most of it by the next day (all but 1/2 a pound). I'm too lazy to work out today as i'm tired so i'll probalby do the 5 minute work out a few times today to at least try to do some exercise ha ha.

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-05-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

Alright! now if everyone sees Star Wars 4 more times, then it'll make more money than Titanic ha ha ha.

Thinking back objectively i think Sith probably ranks 3rd out of the 6 movies (with Empire and then Star Wars being ahead of it). The film probably should have been a bit shorter but the last 30 minutes are the best 30 minutes ever in any Star Wars movie (if you rank it just off of that, it'd be #1).

This weekend was great. i was eating so much pizza i thought i was in heaven ha ha. I got that 5-5-5 special at Dominos so i was eating pizza for like 4 days :)

I'm currently watching the Forever Knight tv show (on DVD). I'm kinda disappointed in Sony. They crammed 5 episodes per disk onto the DVD so the image quality is suffering because of that. I've been watching episodes i'd never seen before so that was kinda cool. For those of you who don't have a clue as to what i'm talking about, Forever Knight is a story of a Toronto based cop who is an 800 year old vampire. He has become a cop to try to atone for his many years of killing and sin. Obviously he works the night shift (otherwise he'd melt in the daytime!) and he has to try to keep his vampire secret from his partner. At the same time he has to deal with his vampire master (who does not want him to become more human) and his ex lover (also vampire) who are always trying to tempt him back to his old ways.

It was a good show with an interesting premise. Too bad it was cancelled. Probably because it's canadian ha ha.

Over the weekend i did the 5 minute workout and that's about all the motiviation i had. Tonight i'll be hitting the gym again.

b!

Star Wars!

2005-05-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

The Circle is now complete!

I'll post a review later for the ones who haven't seen it so that way i don't spoil it.

For the first time ever i think, the theater at the Orleans was full and busy! Even the valet parking took a while. It seemed like a friday night at the Orleans. Darth was kicking some ass in that movie. Some of the criticism i have is that DAMN! he needs to hire someone who knows how to write the romance scenes!! There were some hooky lines in the movie but overall it was good. I'm sure there will be things i won't catch till the 9th or 10th time i see it ha ha ha.

Man it was busy at the theater! We got there over a half hour early and we still had to sit in the 6th row! So that was a bit hard to watch at that close a distance. But at least it was on the Digital Theater. So 3 or 4 more times in the theater and then 900 times on dvd and i'll be set ha ha ha.

Well the only workout yesterday was the hand motion of getting popcorn from the bucket so nothing new to report on that

oongawa!!!

2005-05-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

TWO MORE DAYS! TWO MORE DAYS!

Today's movie review is for Startup.com

This movie was released a few years ago and it documents the rise and fall of a dot com company that had a great idea but was not suited for the private sector to handle. They were the first (or one of the first) to make a website where you could link to various municiple websites to pay your parking tickets or licenses or stuff like that. Great idea but not all cities were receptive to the idea. Then of course they got caught in the big dot com bomb that exploded in 2000 (that eventually cost me my job too!)

Tomallow (meaning what i'll be watching tonight) i'll be reviewing Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Disc 1 of the Joe Schmo Show. Well i guess i could do an initial Batman one now. It's good! But no extras on the disk :(

the Joe Schmo is the uncensored one so we'll have to see what's new in it (aside the removal of the blurred stuff).

no major workout thought as i skipped the gym yesterday. Quads were still hurting and i had to go to Costco. I did do the 5 minute workout last night though and the gymnast bridge to stretch my back and neck out though. The 50 squats squeezed out all the lactic acid so the legs aren't sore anymore so back to the gym tonight!

Foooooood!

2005-05-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

i watched the movie Super Size Me yesterday. I don't know if it was something unconscious but i got McDonald's for lunch yesterday before i watched it and man the food looked and tasted extra good due to that! I had actually gone to Mcdo for breakfast (10:50) but the one by my place stops serving breakfast at 10:30! Mark and Phil were right, i was getting hungry for Mcdo watching it (i watched it in two parts) in the evening i had a salad for dinner but wanted more Mcdo! So i went to get breakfast from there this morning :)

Man i couldn't believe that Morgan's (the dude in the movie) health went to hell so quickly. He gained 25 lbs in one month (he was really thin to begin with so he didn't look too bad afterwards) but all his internal stuff went downhill. I guess i'm glad i cut back on the sugar but i guess i should eat more natural foods as the doctor in the movie said that all that crap in Mcdo food can increase uric acid output and that probably won't help me gout any.

Hotel JB was empty this weekend which is good since the employee was tired and just slept all weekend :) Felt good to be lazy again :) 3 MORE DAYS! 3 MORE DAYS!
I was looking up some stuff on the Star Wars premiere in Cannes and i was shocked to see Natalie Portman shaved her head (see here) for a new movie she's doing.

I saw the last Star Trek episode on friday and it wasn't that bad. It kinda was like another episode of Next Generation (that isn't a bad thing). Maybe it'll be a good thing the franchise is put to rest for a while. When you think about it, when you've made over 600 hours worth of tv shows it can be hard to come up with fresh ideas for stuff sometimes. So now it's off to Battlestar Galactica ha ha. If this had happened (ok i'm going to into geek mode here and gasp maybe even taking myself out of my star trek closet) 6 years ago during/after Deep Space 9, i probably would've been devastated but since the quality has consistantly gone down since then (it's hard to top DS9) i don't feel like i'll miss it much ha ha.

Todays random exercise thought: Oh man Friday night was a Milestone for me. I was able to do 100 squats in a row! I've never been able to do that many. My previous record was 78 but i really pushed my body (i had done 4 sets of 25 each earlier that night and didn't even feel it so i thought i could do it). Buuuut man! on saturday till now i'm still feeling it! My Quads are still killing me! Hopefully i'll be ok when i go to the gym tonight.

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

ONE MORE WEEK! ONE MORE WEEK!

And one more day and i can sleep in all weekend ha ha. Thank Goodness Hotel JB is closed to visitors this weekend (unless something i dont' know about pops up). Good thing too since the hotel really could use a cleaning. Time to whip out that Dyson and watch it suck!

Whew i was watching GI Joe yesterday (got the DVDs) and man i feel like i was 12 again ha ha. Kinda like after i get a haircut. I'll probably watch the Thundercats DVDs when those come out. Thunder-Thunder-Thunder- THUNDERCATS HOOOOOOOOO! another tv show i'm looking forward to seeing on DVD is Titus. Man that show was so funny and so messed up it made everything else look tame in comparison.

For my geeky readers (which i don't think i have too many) the last episode(s) of Star Trek: The Phantom Men..... um Enterprise airs tomallow (in chinese accent). I think i've watched more 4th season episodes than any other season (like 4 episodes). Man this show just was not interesting. I don't know if it's because it's over saturation of Star Trek, or if it's so anticlimatic (kinda the problem of a prequel series, it would have been better as a movie, a la Star Wars), or if it's just boring. They've had some interesting things this season but not interesting enough for most since less and less people have been watching it. Tomallow's episode is interesting as (in order to get as many viewers as possible) they are having people from Next Generation guest star (so even i'll watch ha ha). It's been described as another (and better due to better special effects) TNG episode.

It's starting to get hot in Vegas (about the right time frame). Nothing like getting up at 8 am and it's 70 degrees already . Well i'm sure i'll find a way to lose weight just standing outside next month ha ha.

Todays random exercise thought: Well managed to work out twice this week and will probably go tonight too. Monday's class wasn't too bad. My arms are getting stronger (or at least have more endurance as i can do the exercises longer without stopping). Yesterday's Piyo class wasn't bad but we did a lot of ab work so i was dying from that. Tonight i think i'll do the sculpting class again (same as Monday's class but different teacher) and some running. Gotta burn off more calories so i have more space for popcorn next week he he.

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-05-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

Oh Man monday again :(

Yet another fun and tiring weekend at Hotel JB. This week's guest stars included Phil and Sannie. They got in late friday night (had time to go watch Kingdom of Heaven (much like Braveheart, WAY TOO DAMN LONG, but unlike Braveheart, not as good). Also worked out.

We went to the Sahara and played there for a while. Feeling the need to eat cheap food, we went to the Goldcoast which has their graveyard specials 7 days a week (though not as good as the Orlean's specials). We got up at around 10:30 or so the next day and went to the Stardust (to put in a sports bet), the Wynn, and some sightseeing. The Pacers won so that was good (Phil won his bet). We then went to this BBQ place called Memphis Championship BBQ. Being from KC (and having eaten Phil's ribs) i'm gonna be bias. The Spare Ribs were good, but the babybacks weren't. If you have to fight to seperate the ribs on a babyback, then it's not good. We were pretty full afterwards (i'm still gonna be eating ribs for the next two days). You can look at the BBQ place

HERE

Sunday we went to Treasure Island for breakfast/lunch and then did more gambling. We went to TI, Mirage, and then the Casino Royale. They have $3 craps there so we played there. I finished up $8 so i was happy. Phil and Sannie left that afternoon and then i took a nap due to no sleep over the weekend.

I just read there won't be a Episode III on IMAX. Bummer! Oh well i guess i'll have to see it 3 or 4 times in the theater and then get the DVD he he.

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-05-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

Friday at last! 2 more weeks and i'll have seen Star Wars once (maybe twice ha ha). Well thankfully this has been a relatively uneventful week. The weather has been a bit freaky here. Hot as hell one day and then down to 60s the next but i'm not complaining. Better than HOT all the time. Another busy weekend at Hotel JB. This weekend Phil and Sannie are coming here so it'll be another weekend of no sleep and too much eating :)

We'll go to the Wynn again and i'm sure it'll be busy again so we might park at the TI and walk over again. Man there aren't enough hours and meals in a day to eat at all the places we want to go.
It being mother's day this weekend, it hopefully shouldn't be too busy so i hope Phil and Sannie don't hit too much traffic.

Todays random exercise thought: Boy i've really been lazy about working out lately. Both due to company being here and just being lazy ha ha. This week i did work out twice (and will probably go tonight too) but i've been maintaining my weight pretty well. Between 160-165. I've been on my "Atkin's lite" diet for most of the week (but i won't be when Phil and Sannie are here! ha ha). I weight about the same but i feel better since i haven't been eating very much sugar (but oooooh yeah i've had cravings) or preservatives (mostly just grilled chicken breast and varies veggies). I usually eat yogurt for my sweets but have had a few low carb bars but i think the yogurt is better for me (in taste and in health ha ha).
I worked my arms out really hard the other night and i'm sore but not as sore as i thought i'd be. I took two 25lb dumbbells and curled them. Then i did a 50lb bar bell (curled using both arms). Did 3 sets each (so a total of 6) with very little breaks. Then did some tricep work, and then i did 3 sets of benchpress with the barbell but i did it 50 times each! so 150 total! After that i did the 25 lb dumb bells again and surprisingly i wasn't having much problems doing it. I guess that's the feeling people have when the take roids. The foot aches a bit but it's ok to walk on but it's hard to run on it since the part that hurts rubs against the shoe hard if i'm running. Might need to stick to biking tonight.

b!

It's May!

2005-05-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Man i can't believe it's May already. 4 whole months just flew by this year already. But if it's May that means closer to Star Wars baby! The circle is almost complete and i'm wondering if the geeks are still lining up at the Mann's Chinese theater (despite the fact it won't play there!)

This weekend was something that hasn't happened in a long time. A new casino opened!
The Wynn
http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/

Ok to save all you non Vegas people time, the Wynn is way rich looking and looks kinda like the Bellagio with lower ceilings. It was nice since it was not too smoky since it just opened. The biggest shocker was actually outside. At all four corners by the hotel, the Police were there and actually ENFORCING no jaywalking! That is NEVER enforced in Vegas. So that was a surprise.
I'm wondering if i should institute a frequent guest card to Hotel JB. It was a busy week last week. I had company in town everyday since last monday. But i got free meals out of it so keep those people coming! ha ha.

Todays random exercise thought: Man haven't written one of these in a while. Today i'll start working out again (though the foot hurts a little i should be ok). Tomorrow for 2 weeks i'm gonna be going Atkins lite. I'm gonna be eating a structured chicken and veggies and a few other things meal plan to get some of the fat out (and if it's the gout acting up in my foot hopefully that out too!). I'll probably be hurting tomorrow since i haven't worked out in almost 2 weeks :( Bad JB!

oongawa!!!

2005-05-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

Whew it's Wednesday already? This is a busy week at hotel JB. I have one friend in from KC who will be here till friday and then another friend from LA will be coming that night. This hasn't been a fun week. Damn foot still hurts (but it's waaaaaay better now). I don't think it was a gout issue but i don' t know (it doesn't hurt the way the gout does). The tendon i hurt back in 2001 is really stiff so i'm wondering if it had something to do with the change in cabin pressure while on the plane? It's a bit inflamed so i've been taking pain killers to try to keep the swelling down and i've gotten back most of my mobility of the foot but i think i'll lay off exercising on it till friday. Don't want to rush back too quickly (or at all ha ha).

Got some great offers in the mail from Bally's. A 2 night stay plus entry in a slot tournament for only $100! Of course the Bally's is about 1 mile from me as i right this, but that's beside the point ha ha. For anyone who wants to ask me to book it for them, let me tell you all of the offers are for the weekday so unless you're skipping work don't ask. I might do it just to pamper myself some ha ha. It'd reduce my drive to work down from 1.7 miles to about 1.4 miles ha ha ha.

One cool (well to me) thing i noticed yesterday is that the Orleans finally posted info about showing Star Wars on the DLP screen. I've seen the last 2 in DLP (and darn the luck if the one in Plano was one of the first 6 in the whole country!) so i'm glad the streak will stay intact :)

I think tonight i'll do some push ups or something because the only exercise i've been doing lately is getting fatter. I think i'll be eating a nice healthy dinner of sushi tonight as Bing wants to go to Todai and as luck would have it, she's staying at the Paris so she's next door to the Aladdin.

Oh today i saw my first hitchiker (at 8:50 in the morning too!). She was kinda "streetwalker" dressed so God knows where she was going.

Just Shoot Me

2005-04-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

I think i'm becoming more asian in one aspect. I'm becoming more and more like my good buddy Jennie Ho. Much like her, i am randomly, unintentionally, and unexplainably hurting myself doing simple things like walking.... or nothing! On Friday morning when i was in LA, my left foot just started hurting like hell (not my gout, a whole different type of hurt!). All i did was just fly to LA! So i was kinda hobbling around over the whole weekend but i managed. Ate a lot of food though. Had the woodranch grill on friday (the food was ok). On saturday we went to Chuck E Cheese for lunch. Man that place was busy with kids! We ate and played games for a few hours and went home for a while. We then went to Boomers to play more games as we weren't quite hungry yet for dinner. We went to Houstons for dinner and man that steak was gooooooooood. Their prime rib is always good. But man they are always cutting corners at that restaurant. Years ago you used to get a salad with your meal but nope now (and their salad is really good)! Then i noticed they don't give you a choice for your side (just fries now). And now they don't even give you that many fries! (but man those fries are good).

I more or less got all the presents i asked for :)
I got my DVD wallet (by surprise! thanks Jacq) and my scale. My aunt gave me money but it was enough to cover the other 2 requests :)

So i think i'll have to take it easy today as the foot still hurts (i wish i knew why dammit). I guess since the 30 year warranty on my body ran out, it's starting to break down.

b!

Today Sucks!

2005-04-21T11:12:00.000-07:00

Man this sucks! I'm sick on my birthday. That's like getting laid off when you're on vacation (oh wait, that's happened to me too! Thank you very much Alcatel!). Yesterday morning i woke up with a sore throat but after drinking a few glasses of water i was fine. And then i was also fine at work. But like 20 minutes before going home my head and throat started hurting. I was debating about going to the gym but luckily i forgot my yoga mat so i went home first (i have to pass by the house to go to the gym). But as i was moving around the house, my head was hurting more and my body was aching so i knew i had to stay home. I went to bed at 8:30 last night even!

So tonight i'll be off to LA and will more than likely be gorging myself with lots of food. The tenative plans we have for saturday will be:

1. Chuck E Cheese for lunch (Sannie has never been there). But i told her, birthday or not, i'm not letting some strange person in a mouse costume slap my ass!
2. Boomers for games and mini golf (weather permitting)
3. Houstons for dinner (haven't been there since last birthday ha ha).

I can't believe it has to rain all weekend dammit! Ok non californians, some natives here (or at least people who have lived here for a while) don't believe some of the following generalizations we make about LA:

1. Anything from Magic Mountain area to Irvine is considered "LA" and we just call it LA until you're in the San Diego area
2. The weather is always nice (well kinda true)
3. It's all white people and movie stars (and if you've ever been to 6th & Alvarado you know tht's not true!)
4. black people only live in the hood
5. They think you really can drive around LA as fast as they do in 24
6. We see movie stars everywhere
7. Everyone in LA is a tree hugging vegetarian
8. Everyone is thin and pretty

I thought most of these things before i moved to LA. Man LA looks more like a foreign country than Canada! When i went to Niagara Falls it was like ALL white people there and it looked like Mayberry too.

No exercise thoughts today since i was sick.

Remember you still have time to buy me those presents i asked for ha ha ha.

jb!

wohoo and ouch!

2005-04-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

Wohoo! One more month till star wars and they're posting more commericals and stuff on the starwars.com website. They haven't announced IMAX theater dates yet so i don't think it'll be a simultaneous release. Doh! Hehe well i guess it'll be an excuse to see it 3 or 4 times ha ha. And Mark or Dada if you're reading this i'll answer the question probably in your minds. NO I WILL NOT DRESS UP AS A STAR WARS PERSON OR BRING THE LIGHTSABER TO THE THEATER!!!! I'm a closet Star Trek/Star Wars geek (there is a difference between the two. One is cool, the other will get your ass kicked! ha ha ha). Why do you think Star Wars is nominated for Oscars and people laugh at Trekkies?

This movie looks pretty cool and if it's as good (plot and storywise) as it looks then this might beat Empire Strikes Back as the best of them (my favorite of the 5 so far).

Todays random exercise thought: Man i don't know if it was the sore legs or what yesterday but during my body sculpting class yesterday i was about to die. i was running out of gas quickly for some reason. Oh and of course the one time i'm able to get there a little early the class isn't that full (the class has been packed the last few weeks). I wasn't surprised i was about to fall over while doing the squats or lunges but my lower back was really hurting too (well sore not hurting) so i had a hard time doing the dead drop lifts. After class i was fine so it was just the leg soreness still. I stretched the back out a lot when i got home so it didn't hurt at all today. Oooooh but man the legs really hurt today. Back in my younger days if my legs were sore, i'd just go run a mile or so and they'd stop hurting. Nope not today. i was hurting even worse today! Maybe i'll have to take tonight off from working out. That or maybe do some weights or the bike.

b!

Monday Monday

2005-04-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Oh man i did not want to get up this morning! Technically i guess i should say i didn't want to get up today since i didn't fall asleep till like 3 am this morning so it was more like a bad nap than a bad night's sleep ha ha. For some reason all day yesterday and even up to now, i'm just starving. Probably not good for my diet either if i keep wanting to eat! 3 more days and i'll be in LA and 30 years old.
This weekend a friend (and a work client) named Susan stopped by. We met up at her hotel on friday and luckily i was a bit early. While waiting for her i played some wheel of fortune and i won $27 in only 10 pulls and i got 2 spins in a row! Never had that happen before! One Month till Star Wars! (well technically one month one day).
Oh another thing i guess i could add to my birthday wishlist is Star Trek: First contact Special Edition (it's 2 disks)

Todays random exercise thought: Whew did 500 squats yesterday (25 at a time) and man my quads are SORE. It should make it interesting to see how well i can do my monday night workout. It's getting hotter here in Vegas so i've been drinking noticably more water. I think all that water flushing through my system is helping to push out the uric acid crystals (even without the gout pills) so the foot is feeling good right now.

b!

ha ha ha

2005-04-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

Oh Man yesterday was my major realization that i live in Vegas. On my way to the gym last night, i saw ELVIS at the bus stop! i almost crashed my car because i was laughing so hard. I mean this dude was in full purple polyester garb and had the hair and everything. In any other city that would seem odd, but hey, it's Vegas! The new list of what tv shows that will be renewed and what tv shows will be cancelled has come out (as well as shows on the bubble). You can look at it here

That made me realize i don't watch enough tv! There were some shows on the schedule i'd never even heard of! Like Jonny Zero on Fox or the Mountain on WB or Rodney on ABC. And did they ever reveal who the "boss" was in My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss? I know the show got destroyed in the ratings because of Desperate Housewives but it was so funny watching all those ass kissers on that show. And it was funny seeing how ignorant they were yet still trying to be ass kissing. Like when this one guy was drinking this champagne (which they said they bought for like $3 at a 7-11). He said it was "aged perfectly". Hello! This isn't wine! Champagne is pre-aged before it's sold you dumbass. Plus since it's cheap champagne they probably didn't even age it in the first place.

One show notably on the schedule to get the axe is Star Trek: Enterprise aka Star Trek: The Phantom Menace called that due to the fact that they were blatantly trying to capitalize on the whole "prequel" craze. The problem is that the show sucked! Yes as big as a star trek fan as i am, i found this show extremely boring to watch. It was very anti climatic too. You know no one is gonna die, earth won't get blown up or anything, the Federation will still be there, and why the hell does this ship look better than the one on the Original Star Trek? Believe it or not, out of the 4 years it's been on, i think i've only seen about 1.5 years worth of episodes total (including bits and pieces of several episodes).

Hehe, enough of my star trek geekiness. I'm really gonna be sad if Committed isn't renewed. That show was freaking funny! It was like Titus (though not as extreme and that comes out on DVD in Sept!) in that it was just completely messed up and took really weird subject matter and made it funny!

Looking at the rest of the schedule made me realize i don't really watch a lot on broadcast tv. Mondays are only interesting during football season, Tuesday will suck without Committed, Wednesday has Alias and Lost (has that show resolved anything yet this season?), Thursday has the Apprentice (but i haven't watched it lately since it just seems to be turning into a big advertising commerical, plus all the people this season are ugly he he. I don't want to watch a tv full of people who look like me!). It seems i waste a lot of my time watching reruns of the Simpsons and reruns of Futurama and Family Guy on Cartoon Network. And only 3 more weeks till Family Guy comes back! YES!

Todays random exercise thought: Whew another tough Piyo class last night (must be because i'm running before the class, but for some reason i was really stiff feeling last night). I think i've progressed enough that i can start running more without the embarrassment of huffing and puffing like i'm gonna die when run, so i'm gonna start putting that back into the workout. Plus i'm gonna start putting in my isometric exercises too since i think my body is getting to used to my workouts lately (ie i'm not losing weight!)

Happy Birthday to my cousin Girlie and get those taxes done if you haven't yet!

b!

gimme gimme gimme!

2005-04-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

Well as is a fine tradition in the US, i'm going to shamelessly post my birthday wish list! he he (this may be updated a few times too!)

1. a really big CD/DVD wallet (like 128-256 pocket kind)
2. an electronic scale (so i can see how fat i am ha ha)
3. 512 megs of Geil RAM. CLICK HERE for an example (the most expensive of the 3 wishes)
4. uuuummmm ok i can only think of 3 things

See i'm simple to shop for he he. If anyone wants to buy me a nice house here in Vegas that'd be nice too! ha ha.

Oh man it was great this weekend. Had the whole weekend to myself so i just sleeeeeeeeept. Man i was so lazy i think i was slipping into a coma. Saturday was the worst. I got up at 12 or so, moped around a bit, did some shopping at Walmart, went to church, and then went back to bed! Then i decided to get up again around 8pm and then watched tv and then went back to bed again. But man it felt goooood. First weekend of rest i've had in a while.

It would have been nice to have a 3 day weekend as two days of being lazy just wasn't enough. But it had a very negative effect too :(
When you have a guy and a woman in the house and there is nothing to do, you get busy. When it's just a guy (say me in this instance) i just eat and watch tv.

Todays random exercise thought: Whew got fat this weekend with all that eating and only moving during my trips to the bathroom. I worked out on the ellipse machine for an hour yesterday and did some weights. I did something i read in a Bruce Lee book. Lie down on a declined bench (like a sit up bench) and then do arm curls with the arms hanging free downward to start off (and start with low weight as this is harder than normal curls!) i did 25 lbs first and felt like my arms were gonna get ripped off (Fezzik tear his arms off haha)! So i lowered it down to 20 lbs and that wasn't too bad, but this morning my left bicep was really hurting so i guess it did it's job. After examining why i haven't been losing any weight lately i think it's because i've been ingesting too many artificial foods like soda pop (even the diet stuff) as they have lots of chemicals in them that probably aren't healthy for you. And (this sounds nuts) i haven't been eating buffets enough here! When i eat a buffet here i eat a lot of salad too and since i haven't been eating that i've been filling my body with other foods that aren't as healthy he he. So i'll make sure to eat more buffets this week :)

Happy Birthday!

2005-04-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Umm Happy Birthday to my car. Mine is still weeks away. I still remember this day last year when i drove my troubled Mazda 626 down to Westminster and went two hours filling out paperwork to get my car (despite the fact that my loan had been approved, the price set, and just about everything was already done). Westminster Honda was the best car experience ever! Absolutely no pressure (really Phil, no pressure ha ha). A few days after i bought my baby i realized that they didn't even ask me if i wanted to add a spoiler to my car! It was great and if i need to buy another honda in the near future i'd go there :)

So for today (maybe tomorrow), i'm gonna have to give the baby a really good washing and waxing to really give her that new car shine again. I washed her last week but she's still got some dirt on her from when i drove back from LA. Overall she still looks and handles great (aside from that VTEC oil regulator problem from a few weeks ago)

Todays random exercise thought: Good Lord i think my Piyo instructor was trying to kill me last night. She really gave us a workout last night (and it could be that since i went running before the class i was tired and my hip joints were already sore). Just 1/3 of the way through i was hurting everywhere and really sweating up a storm (the AC wasn't on in the room for some reason). But the kicker was the last 10 minutes of the class. She was doing so much ab work i was ready to cry. I was hurting during/after that. Of the 5 exercises we did, i had to take a break in 4 of them because i was just running out of gas. And the thing that pisses me off is that she is doing all the exercises while talking and her voice isn't struggling at all! I could barely breathe while doing this much less talk and give instructions.

Overall yesterday was a good workout day. Ran for 25 minutes, did some weights, and then the Piyo class. But i think i need to start altering my workouts as i think i'm hitting a plateau. I'll probably need to do some outdoor running (as opposed to the treadmill) to change up things (and make me sweat more as i am in Las Vegas!) That or maybe i'll switch over to weights exclusively for a day or two during the week. We'll see. Maybe i'm just eating the wrong foods at night so i'm just staying even on my weight. Maybe it's been because i've been drinking Pepsi One (it tastes better now that it's flavored with Splenda) instead of water and Hawaiian Punch. Ha ha or maybe i need to stop sitting on my butt so much :)

Tonight i'll do an hour of cardio and then hit the weights for 30-40 minutes (and i think i'll eat dinner first and then go work out).

b!

oongawa!!!

2005-04-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

oongawa!!!

The Tar Heels won! Now why the hell couldn't Roy Williams do that when he was coaching KU all those years? Oh man i was just laaaaaaaazy last night. I just went home and took a nap. Then i got up and watched some tv and then went back to bed. Man made me feel like I was in college again ha ha. This one semester my two roommates would either watch Die Hard or A Few Good Men everyday! I had those two movies memorized for a long time after that. Ahhh the good old days.

Man it's Wednesday already? Man this week has just flown by and all i'm doing is just being lazy.
Only about 2 more weeks till my birthday but at least i don't look 30 yet :)

Todays random exercise thought: My monday class has gone through a routine change so we changed up some of the exercises and the music. Some of the new music is depressing sounding so i'm gonna have to talk to the instructor about that. Well last Saturday i finally got down to where i was before i went to LA so now i'm about 160 again. But i'm way behind schedule since i wanted to be around 150 at this point :(

So it's exercise every morning (Homer Simpson quote). But i think eating pizza hut saturday and sunday probably didn't help me out any ha ha. Well you can only make so many sacrifices when you're losing weight and you can only give up pizza hut for so long :) . Mmmmmm maybe i'll have that for lunch today :)

oongawa!!!

2005-03-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

Man it's already thursday! How the week flies by. Yet at the same thing it's amazing how lazy i've been since i got back from LA as there are still some things i haven't unpacked yet! Mom got back from Mexico alright so that's good. Something i forgot to mention in the last few posts was how much fun i had last weekend. Phil, Sannie, Bams, and Dave came back to Vegas with me last Friday. We gambled a lot and we found this new game (well new to us) called X-Treme Hold'em. It's like Texas Hold'em but you play against the dealer rather than each other (so you can only lose your place bets). You get 4 cards (dealer does too) and then you either keep your two best cards or you can put another bet down and play 2 hands. The dealer keeps their 2 best cards and then flops out all 5 cards. If your hand is better than the dealers than you win. You can also put a side (in my opinion sucker) bet that if you get a straight or higher you can win more. But i think you'll lose more than you'll win in that. Sometimes a pair is enough to win it for you. I lost $30 on it but it's fun.

On saturday all of us took over a blackjack table at Sam's Town (where we had gone to eat at the Rachael Ray recommended Firelight Buffet for Brunch and it's good!) and we were able to last for over 1.5 hours and i still won money! But man we were all exhausted from the weekend. Luckily all i had to go do was go home, but the rest of them had to drive back to LA (and it took them 7 hours!)

Todays random exercise thought: Last night was goooooood! Did 45 minutes of stair climbing (really worked up a good sweat), 20 minutes of weights, and an hour of Piyo (combo Pilates and Yoga). The 45 minutes of cardio before the piyo helped since i was already kinda loose so i was able to do the stretches easier. I finished out the workout in the sauna again so i was pretty drenched in sweat when i left. Good workout. So i'm taking tonight off to relax everything (the weights were a short time but i worked them out with heavy weights to give the arms some work). The legs are a bit sore so one night off is good. I'm thinking of going to play more X-treme Hold'em tonight he he.
he he been too lazy to do push ups the last few days so i don't know if that tensing the abs thing helps yet. Maybe tomorrow.

b!

Thoughts for today

2005-03-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

Well thankfully it's been uneventful so far today. I'll be going back to LA during my birthday though i'm not exactly sure what my cousin has planned. We were thinking of going to Catalina Island since i've never been there. The other day i got to talk to my buddy Sarah. It was nice to talk to her again since i haven't kept in touch with her too much since i moved from Dallas. Of course we talked about cars as she is more knowledgeable than i am on them since her brother does a lot of mod'ing and used to race them too. Thanks to her (and lack of a better color at the time) i picked silver as my Accord's color. Hopefully the baby will be working ok for the next 10 years or whatever. Had some problems with it on the way back to LA but luckily it was still under warranty (better be! it's not even a year old till next week!).

Todays random exercise thought: Oh yeah that lack of working out caught up with me. The lack of any cardio work became apparent when it felt like my right lung was about to burst when i was doing the ellipse machine. I was able to push myself pretty hard last night so i was happy with that. The calves are a bit sore from the exercise but otherwise i feel fine. Doh! i did gain 3 pounds in LA. I only worked out for about an hour and then hit the sauna room last night. Holy Hell it was full! The steam room is closed for maintenance so i guess everyone was in the sauna. there were like 10 people in there and it was almost 8 pm! Felt like a sardine (packed beside some "healthy" sardines). There are some people (like me) who really need to exercise more before showing a lot of skin in there. The gym was pretty packed last night. Ever notice how the gyms usually start some new promotion around March or so? They know by then people will be losing interest in working out so they make some new challenge or discount to make you keep going (but they don't really care since they'll get your money either way he he).

Well i did 250 squats last night but i was too lazy to do the rest hehe. The quads are a bit sore from that (and the other stuff i did last night) but it's minor and nothing compared to what i felt like a few weeks ago. I'm hoping to get up to full strength by this weekend.

b!

Back in Vegas baby!

2005-03-29T10:25:00.000-08:00

Whew it's nice to be home! It's nice to be able to drive home from work in 10 minutes (even during rush hour) and be able to see all the bling of the Strip from the office :)

Man i'm scared to see the scale next time i go to the gym. i'm sure i packed on a few pounds even last weekend. No sleep, lots of bad snacks, and no exercise is not a good combo! I was even too lazy/tired to go to my monday night workout class :(

Todays random exercise thought: I'll put my "5 minute workout" to the test tonight. The pushups have been helping so we'll have to see if i can maintain strength tonight. but since i haven't been doing any cardio i'll probably be suffering there. One thing i've tried to do while doing the pushups is to tense up my abs (they're already kinda tensed up in pushup form) to see if that'll help out the abs or not.

last night i was too busy to do the "exercise while watching tv" routine (well busy and lazy he he). Tonight should be different. I've gotten all the laundry done and vacuumed up the house (that Dyson sucks! in a good way ha ha. i just vacuumed a few weeks ago, and remember i wasn't home for 2 weeks and it picked up a lot last night). So for tonight i think i'll try 500 squats (25 at a time), 200 push ups (25 at a time) and i'll try to be creative on what else to do. He he let's see if i can do it (this is gonna be after i go to the gym so i might have to cut back on the pushups). I'm gonna start drinking monster energy drink (obscene sized at 16 oz so i'll probably be shaking after i drink it) in the afternoon to give me a boost before working out. i'll have to see how that works out.

I'm like in LA

2005-03-21T10:24:00.000-08:00

Man! it's been almost a week here. No working out, too much working and way too much driving (well riding in a car while my cousin drives he he).

Whew been getting fat since i've been here too! As of today i've net gained 3 pounds (i had been at 5 but levels dropping... urge to kill rising... dropping..... rising! (it's from the simpsons "The Shinning" epsiode and yes it's spelled Shinning). Man all this eating and no working out isn't good. I've been doing my 5 minute work out (and haven't been sore despite not having done any pushups lately and not working out in over a week now).

Just finished watching 24. Interesting stuff. but it'll be better to watch it all on the dvd later.

Mom is off to Mexico tomorrow. Man i hope she doesn't get kidnapped or something. The only time i've been to Mexico is by cruise boat (and i didn't spend more than 2 hours on land) .

Man LA just isn't the "promised land" that so many people see it as when you're working the whole time you're here. I haven't had time to see or talk to any of my friends so i guess i'll have a few people mad at me (he he sorry Jennie). But i guess any city is like that. It's one thing to visit and vacation in a city and quite another to be working in that city (especially the LA traffic uuuugh). If i flew into LAX at rush hour, it'd take longer for someone to pick me up even from Downtown (even if i was only flying in from Vegas). LAX= nightmare airport (do your friends a favor and fly into Burbank, Long Beach or John Wayne).

Todays random exercise thought: Well i'll do the 5 minute workout this week and see if i weight the same as when i got here by the end of the week (just in time to go home and eat more buffets ha ha). Man i saw the craziest thing in the lastest issue of Forbes yesterday. "The Homeless Maker" exercise machine. It's called the ROM machine. It's supposed to be able to do a full body workout in 4 minutes. i'm not skeptical but if i had that much money to blow, i'd pay off almost all of my car with the payment of this baby! If someone has one i'd be interested in trying it out.

I'll have to read up more on the ROM before i can make a good judgement but it would be foolish to be scared away on price alone (though that's a big factor!!)

Next week i'll have to start working out with a vengeance. I've been hungrier since i got here (must be because i'm moving more and doing more at the office here). I'll probably incorporate more running into my workout next week so i'll update on how well that'll work next week.

I'm like going to LA

2005-03-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

But i'm not going to the Province (better known as the Valley to the non Pinoys). I'm gonna be in the OC area. Tomorrow i'm Leaving Las Vegas (it's a song and an Oscar winning movie!) to help out in the LA office for a week or so. So bring on the smog, traffic and um more traffic. Ahh man that's one thing i don't miss about LA. Even bad traffic here doesn't compare to LA. It'll be a mini family reunion since mom will be in LA and Richo will be there till Tuesday night.

Man these allergies are sucking! i'm congested still and my eyes are still watery and puffy. Glad i have those Puff's Plus kleenex's (yes i know that's basically two brands listed) otherwise my nose would be raw. Even some Claretin i bought yesterday hasn't been super effective (it worked yesterday but hasn't been too good today). I felt fine till i walked out of the house this morning.

Todays random exercise thought: I'll be putting my 5 minute workout to the test this week and next week since time will be a lot more limited. But i won't mind taking it easy for a few days. Over the weekend i (both involuntarily and somewhat voluntarily) didn't eat a whole lot and was exercising like crazy! Man i was at the gym on saturday night at like 11 pm and there were still like 5 people in the sauna! what's up with that? i was doing a lot of cardio work on friday and saturday (the right knee was a bit sore while running so that kinda disappointed me so i had to lay off that). But did alot of elliptical work and some biking and stair climber. Sunday i was trying to do weights but almost killed myself at one point when i was picking up 130 lbs (two 65lb barbells) and almost dropped one on myself when my right arm ran out of strength (that lack of eating was catching up to me). Next weekend i'll be working Mark out some at the gym he he. We'll have to see if we can cram in a X-Press class at the gym or not.

So for this week i think i'll be concentrating on doing some of the abs exercises i've learned in my Piyo class, the squats, push ups, and the "wall chair" workout. That should keep me ok till the weekend.

It's Friday!

2005-03-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

Well it's finally friday. Been messed up this week due to the high amount of pollen in the air (really irritating my allergies). So that's been messing up my sleep patterns too. I didn't think there'd be so much pollen in the air in the desert. I've never seen so much in any of the other places i've lived in. The dust is so plentiful that i've actually had a film of it on my car every morning this week!

Dude that Star Wars trailer looks AWESOME! Can't wait to go watch that in only like 2 months! Then the circle will be complete and i will be the master ha ha.

Today's random exercise thought: Man i was sore till yesterday from doing all those freaking squats on monday! I only worked out 2 times this week. The Piyo class from Wednesday really helped to squeeze the lactic acids out but i was still sore yesterday. Felt like crap yesterday too due to the allgeries so i just stayed home :). Gonna work out tonight though! He he maybe i'll do the 250 squats again and then not work out for 4 days again. i think i'll mix it up with some weights and some cardio stuff. When i'm in LA it'll be tough to keep the workouts consistant since i won't know what time i'm getting home and i haven't been to the gyms there yet. I'll try to manage :)

Lot's of great exercises HERE
I'm gonna have to try some of these myself

oongawa!!!

2005-03-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

Well not much to talk about today so i'll just jump straight to the exercise stuff

Today's random exercise thought: Ouuuuch! man i am sore! the SET class from yesterday was tiring (i don't care what lifting/aerobic workout you do for an hour, it'll tire you out especially if you don't take a break the whole time!). But actually the main reason why i'm hurting is the squats i mentioned yesterday. A variation i've started doing recently is to do some sort of exercise while watching tv. In this instance i'll do 25 squats every two minutes. I did 10 sets over roughly 20 minutes or so. Doesn't seem like much but when your body is kinda spent from the earlier workout it can tire you a bit (especially with my out of shape ass). But man this morning OUCH! My quads are sore and my hip flexors too. It's a good sore though. Not like that really sore when you go running after 2 months of not running. It's a "good hurt" as they say. he he.

Other "tv exercises" i do is to do push ups or sit ups during commercials. Good time management huh? One tough one is doing the "wall chair" exercise. Lean against the wall and bend your knees like you're sitting down. That's it! Now see how long you can hold it.

Hmmm there are still some New Years Resolution stragglers left at the gym (maybe because it was monday). A tell tale sign (life i said before) are people who are hanging onto the treadmill for dear life (even at low speeds) and a line at the A-Bench sit up machine. We'll see how it is tonight.

oongawa!!!

2005-03-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Well back to work. Man that weekend went fast. But i went to Disneyland. Mental note to tell my aunt, start filing lawsuits against Disney! Man at night they don't turn on any lights in that freaking park! I'm surprised i didn't fall down or trip 5 or 6 times! My new pic (taken by Dada) was taken in front (of a surprisingly small looking) enchanted castle at Disneyland. We'll go to California Adventure next week!

Man i ate a lot this weekend. Ribs mmmmmmm. Go to Lucille's BBQ! You won't regret it (except for the freaking 1.5 hour wait to get in!) Thanks for introducing that place to us Bams! Best of all, i found out they opened a branch here in Vegas (well Henderson but close enough) so i might need to take a few trips to the Green Valley Resort soon! hehe.

So now it's back to the hard work outs again (though since i'll be in LA next week it'll be tough to keep up my workouts). So on to the recommendations

Today's random exercise thought: Well it's Monday so it's my SET class at 24 Hour fitness. It stands for Strength Endurance Training. Basically it's an hour of weights (working our almost all of the body) with no breaks in between (so that helps with the cardio). This is 24 Hour's description:

Take power sculpt to the next level! You will love this workout. Multiple strength & toning techniques using barbells, hand weights and jammin' music.

Since Monday Night Football ended the class is a bit more full.
For those of you with "no time" to work out, there is a fairly quick and effective workout you can do in about 5 minutes that will really work you out. The first is to do about 25-50 squats (no weights just squat down and go back up). Like this: http://www.chinastrategies.com/squats%20clr.jpg

Do 25-50 of those and you'll be feeling it. This exercise will really work your quads and lungs out (it's a good exercise i like to do when i get congested, it always clears my nose). Then do about 100 push ups (obviously you might not be able to do all 100 in a row, but the important thing is to never get out of the push up form even if you have to stop and rest). Usually Phil and i do 50, take a breather (but staying in push up form and not letting our knees touch the ground) and then do 5 sets of 10 and take a break between each set.

These 2 exercises will work a good portion of your body out (when you try it the second day you'll realize what it worked out when your body is sore he he) and is good to do when you're limited on time, especially the squats since they really help with lung endurance and quad strength (i could tell the difference when i running since my running uphill was easier).

Thoughts for today

2005-03-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

oongawa!

Today's random thoughts. I'm sleepy! And contrary to what Bambi put in her comments i'm supposed to be sleeping in that Friendster pic, not taking a dump! I guess i'll take a pic of me taking a dump next time ha ha.

If the weather cooperates this weekend i'll be doing what every Super Bowl MVP (except for this year) says. "I'M GOING TO DISNEYLAND!"

If it does rain, then i'm going to bed and sleeping all weekend! he he.

Today's random website: http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com
Is this dude right? Is he whacked? is he both? Well much like a Jerry Springer episode, who cares, it's entertaining.

Today's random exercise thought: It's March! All the damn New Years resolution people have stopped going so i finally get my gym back in peace now. You could always tell the types (i've gone to 4 different gyms over 10 years and see it every year). 2nd week of January TONS of people i've never seen at the gym before. Some are on the treadmill (clinging to that thing for dear life even though they're only going 3 or 4 mph) but most are on the elliptical machines (they look like this: http://gymratz.co.uk/discount-cardio-fitness-equipment/usrimage/ctg1.jpg if you haven't seen one). Translation: They want to try to get in shape but don't want to try too hard he he. But the elliptical machines are good (i use them since they are less stressful on the knees and if you go fast it'll work your cardio out). Anyways, by the end of January, the herd starts to thin a bit as it's too hard for people to work out. Usually by around Mid Feb, it's almost all the regulars only. But this year they stayed longer. Now that the parents are gone it's time to jump back into my 5 day a week routine (as soon as i get back from LA he he).

oongawa!!!

2005-03-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

That title from an old Far Side cartoon. Tarzan put that as his only entry in his diary everyday.

Well mom is on her way to KC now to probably freeze as it's cold there (for her).

Ahhhh man i finally get the house back to myself! It's been one big whirlwind since i got back from the Philippines 2 months ago. Now i can just around in my underwear and watch the Apprentice tonight.