#310 - epitath

dammit fox, wtf? did you enjoy messing with dollhouse just for kicks and giggles? how much more royal-ly could you have screwed that series? at least it was a fitting end to a great show, a series finale that obviously left way more story to tell than was possible in an abbreviated season (nevermind an abbreviated series). but, i think joss whedon did a great job providing enough material to bring things to a close, while opening up a multitude of back-story to let the viewers extrapolate a story as a back-handed ribbing to the network that there was so much more quality left in this show.

so for those of you who watched the series finale, wasn't it awesome!? and those of you who watched it and had no clue what was going on, well, sorry, but this one wasn't for you. this series finale was for people who not only followed the series on tv but also followed it beyond the [idiotic] fox network because this episode was "epitath two," and made absolutely NO sense at all unless you saw "epitath one," which was not aired by fox (it was on the season 1 dvd). which is really too bad because it was a GREAT epilogue for the events of the season and the penultimate episode of season 2... which just goes to show (even more so) how great of a storyteller joss whedon and the other writers of this show are/were. i'm really disappointed that the rest of this story will never get told, and i'm even more disappointed that it'll never get told with magnificently beautiful shots of eliza dushku and the other pretty pretty people on this show. what a waste.

but, all in all, it was a fitting end to this show, and now i don't have to worry about fox's treatment of it and can just look forward to the dvd. one more awesome joss whedon show goes down for the count... at least one thing i can look forward to, those awesome joss whedon actors coming back for his next project! i love how he uses a lot of the same actors (because they're awesome) for bits and parts on his other shows. i mean, just from dollhouse we got eliza dushku (buffy), amy acker (angel), alexis denisoff (buffy), alan tudyk (firefly), summer glau (firefly), even felicia day (buffy). i really want to see more of dichen lachman (she played sierra), i hope she's on another one of his shows in the future. sigh... until then i'll just have to wait for season 2 on dvd!

#309 - the procedure

** UPDATE**
how disgusting is this? and this is AFTER the cyst was removed... this is what's left, it's like a bullet-hole. hope it heals... eventually...
anyone squeamish?

not that my writing could do justice to the disgusting-ness of the procedure, but if you are, best not read any further.

so after a weekend of slouching (because it was too painful to stand up straight), constantly rotating from one side to the other of my couch (because each shift in bodily position had to be carefully selected for minimal pain and cyst-squishiness), not being able to lean back in a chair, and getting neck pain from lying on my stomach forever (good thing it's aussie open time, i would've been so bored otherwise), i was finally able to get a doctor's appointment yesterday to take care of this nasty thing on my back. turns out i was right with the diagnosis at least, it was an infected sebaceous cyst. the cure? excision!

after reading up on it on the internet and seeing youtube after youtube of guts and pus spewing out of people's backs, i was a bit nervous, but my sister had a cyst removed and she said it was painless after the lidocaine. and after spending the weekend with a ticking-time bomb on my back i would've done just about anything to get rid of it. so here's how it happened:

1. the needle - not so bad, easier than an injection for like dental procedures, and after the numbness took over i was feeling pretty good

2. the incision - hardly even felt it. there was a slight sharp slice through the numbness (like a fingernail running down your back), but that might have been more my imagination than an actual sensation

3. the guts - well, since it was on my back, i couldn't see what actually spewed out... but i felt stuff trickling down my back and they were sure wiping up a lot

4. the pain - so after the initial and primarily painfree slice, he started to squeeze. and then it was all over. the pain. holy crap the pain. that could possibly have been the most painful medical procedure of my life (at least, that i can remember... probably getting the wisdom teeth out was more painful, but my memory of that is kinda fuzzy). it wasn't that each squeeze was excrutiatingly painful, it was the constant, unrelenting squeezing. i tried to block out the pain by imagining all that crap being finally purged out of my skin, but after what seemed like minutes of squeezing i was getting the pain trembles and everything.

5. the searing - after he finally (FINALLY!) stopped squeezing, the doctor cauderized the inside lining to kill all of the infection, then slapped a bandage on the thing and told me to give it a good squeeze after showering and not let the wound close before the next appointment next friday (otherwise he might have to reopen it... and hell no, i do not want that).

so it's gone. hopefully. what's left is a putrid crater of seared, blackened skin in the center of a red, irritated mess of bruised skin. it's great. not. so i'm squeezing whatever's left outta there and hoping that when i see the doctor on friday it'll be all cleaned out and he can patch me back up and i can get on my way... until then, i'm having a great time taking it easy and watching aussie open all day... too bad for andy, but go roger!

#308 - the human body is so gross

i'm sick of this. i guess i've been lucky to have been pretty healthy so far in life, and have avoided major accidents or whatever, so when these weird medical things happen to me i have a hard time taking them in stride. just 11 months ago i got shingles, which was the worst medical thing to happen to me since i had chicken pox as a kid (or maybe when i got slammed in the face by a surfboard, i had bleeding sinuses, but that one was kinda cool). shingles sucked. a lot. and now, almost one year later i've got this gross infected cyst in the exact same spot as the shingles. it's probably my fault. after the shingles was over i noticed that weird lump, but it didn't hurt or anything, it was just there. so i figured it was just some scar tissue or whatever. i suppose i could have gone to the doctor right then and have him take a look at it (or take it out), but i thought it was kind of lame going to a doctor and saying, "here's a weird bump, what should i do?" although, in retrospect, i think that's probably exactly the type of thing you SHOULD see the doctor for huh?

anyway, fast-forward to last wednesday, that bump started to hurt, which was annoying, and i started to think about finally asking the doctor about it. well, i hardly had time to think that over because within the next two days that fricken' thing swelled up, turned red (that's what she said), and started to hurt like a bastard. yesterday i couldn't even stand up straight. it was like someone had sewn a marble under my skin and every twist of my torso made the skin stretch and hurt. gross. now all i can think of is all that bacteria and gross stuff swirling there under my skin and it completely grosses me out.

so i've quarantined myself indoors this weekend (as to not upset it, the cyst) because when i called the doctor's office on friday morning they told me i'd have to wait until monday to come in. which i figured was probably just procedure on friday morning, but now (on sunday morning) i think it's a load of crap. couldn't they have just squeezed me in for a quick lancing? i mean, don't doctors keep some time open for emergencies. well, i guess this isn't really an "emergency," but shouldn't you NOT wait to take care of medical procedures? but i may be over-reacting. perhaps you need to wait for a lance-able time to take care of an infected cyst... except how would the doctor's office know when they set up my appointment without seeing it? i wonder, if it had gone to the hospital or something would they have done it? hmm... i guess i don't know much about how the medical business works, but hell, as long as my doctor just gets rid of that thing by tomorrow i'll be happy.

anyway, this post was gross, but educational. i had no idea how common infected cysts were, and had i known i might have decided to go to the doctor much sooner, rather than stick to positive thinking and telling myself it'll get better on it's own. so if you or anyone you know has some weird bump, just go get it checked out and save yourself the trouble. i really should've gone to the doctor when i first noticed the non-infected cyst after the shingles was over. but it's too late for that, it's made its' presence known... and now i just want to get the damn thing outta me!

(that's what she said)

#307 - the good old days

what does that phrase mean? i mean, of course i know what it means, but the words make no sense unless you understand the context, which is the case with most of english obviously, but i still don't like to use it. the only reason i use it to name this post is to make this point... that i don't like it and don't like to use it. ha.

anyway, being back to work for one week after a vacation-filled december has made me a bit nostalgic. not for too long ago, just a few years back, in my third year of undergrad. at that time i had finally chosen a major, but had taken all my intro-to-that-major classes a year earlier (to see if i really liked it) and so for the first sememster of my third year i was taking all the back-up pre-requisite courses that i was missing and so i had just a few classes (i took one online) and a lot of extra time (because those classes were retarded and i didn't need to study for any of them... and quite frankly, i really didn't care what grade i got in them because 1) i personally did not see how they were related to my major anyway, 2) i thought it was a waste for me to be taking them, seeing as how i already started taking my major classes and were acing them anyway, and 3) i considered them nothing but an exercise in brainless busy-work... which is why i got my first and only B-... in stats, which was surprising because i did crossword puzzles in class every day that i went to class and didn't know wtf i was doing on the final so i thought i'd get a C at least).

holy crap i just realized that my idea of "just a few years ago" is actually 8 years ago! dammit.

anyway, during those last two years of undergrad i had a lot of extra time. there weren't a whole lot of classes to take in my major area so i was taking a lot of language classes (japanese, hawaiian, spanish) and PE classes. those are both things i wish i had started doing earlier in life. i only started learning japanese in high school and i only started working out (seriously) in my first year of college. well, i guess i really had no reason to learn a foreign language (and if you don't use it, you'll forget everything so i guess it's okay that i really didn't take that up), but i wish that i had taken a earlier interest in fitness. i mean, as a kid my parents shoved me into every sport they could think of, i didn't really like any of them, but more for social reasons. i didn't like the mean-ness of competition. i didn't mind the physicality of it (although i hated being out in the sun in full baseball gear for sure), and i actually liked running and conditioning exercises, but socially i wasn't gonna be best buddies with my teammates (who were jerks, i assure you) and i thought all the coaches were grumpy old men. but, if it had started thinking about fitness earlier, like in high school, maybe i would've been a more confident and/or out-going person y'know? then again, it was high school and can you really consider ANY high schooler a socially appropriate person? probably not.

so it took me all the way until high school to figure out that i really liked tennis, and it took me until college to find weight training and surfing. one of the best decisions of my life was to take food science and human nutrition in my very first semester of college. it turned me on to proper nutrition and creating a lifestyle of eating right and exercising, and i embraced it fully. which, really when you think about it, is probably the way most things are right? in college you're finally out living on your own and you can choose what kind of life you want to lead. well, for two great years i lived that life. of course, i didn't have to worry about a mortgage or actually working for my money (thank you, bank of mom and dad), and thanks to my glorious brain (haha) i was able to spend pretty much all of my time outside of classes doing whatever the heck i wanted to. so for those last two years of college i had a great life plan:

alongside my regular classes (those which were required, which was really only 2-3 per sememster) i took language classes (i love learning languages) and PE classes. my language classes fit on MWFs and i put the PE classes in the morning on tuesdays and thursdays. forcing myself to wake up for a 7:30 or 8:30 tennis or volleyball class gave me the entire rest of the day free until my next class at 1:30, so after tennis i'd grab breakfast (chex used to make little breakfast mix packets, which is what started me thinking about all this because i just had chex mix for breakfast this morning), walk down kalakaua ave. to rainbow drive-inn, pick up a loco moco (it was only $2.00, then later $2.75) and eat it at waikiki beach, then take a mid-day nap on the sand and then go for a swim, a jog, or rent a board and go surfing if the waves were decent and the crowd was thin. then i'd walk back up to campus, grab a jamba juice along the way and brush the sand off my heels before my 1:30 class. how could it get any better than that? those were the healthiest years of my life, for sure.

so that's what i'm working towards. the weekends, vacations, retirement. all the elements for my ideal day off. sweet right? but today i am at work, and will have to wait until this weekend to do it again. still, i think those two years are just about the only two in my life that (if i could) i would live over again. sure, there are a lot of years that i wish i could DO OVER again (like all of high school), but only those two years i would like to live over again. but for now i'll have to settle for finding the little moments in between the rest of my life to fit the good stuff in.

anyway, eating my chex mix for breakfast this morning got me thinking about that. chex mix, loco moco, sun, sand, ocean, jamba juice, walking. all those things have just kinda grouped together in my brain making me remember that time in my life. sign, well, at least i have something to look forward to in retirement... or summertime at least!

#306 - 2010!

so if you've been watching "attack of the show," it should be no news to you that this is now the year 2010, and it is very exciting. so what do i have to get excited about in 2010? not much i thought. but let's try and be a little more positive huh? here's something that can ring in 2010 on a high-note:

UH men's vball - of course vball is always fun, but 2010 brings a new season, a new coach, and a new system for the UH men. last night they started out with a win against #10 Ohio State and looked great doing it. i am already impressed with charlie wade as the new coach (i always thought wilton had a lot of short-comings in the coaching department... of course he had some great talent in the past, but lately his inability to recruit locally, his "cauldron-system" that used points earned during practices to determine that week's starters, his lack of creativity and intelligence in running offensive/defensive systems and such left UH with 3 consecutive losing seasons). i liked wade as the wahine's assistant coach and i think he brings the same kinds of good points to the men's game as well. such as:

- quick-tempo offense: it's about time hawai'i got with the national and international scene in running a quick-tempo offense, getting the ball out of the setter's hands and to the hitter much quicker and running fast and multiple hitter plays much more often. it's efficient and effective. much like the wahine team this year.
- the middle attack: there IS one this year! amazing. of course the passing has to be on target in order to run the middle, but i think a good ratio of kills for outside hitters to the middles is 2:1 and that's pretty much what they got last night. last year the middle attack was pretty much non-existent.
- blocking: last year's block was pretty much the ONLY good thing about the team (that and ric cervantes) and it looks as if that will continue this year. they didn't get as many block in the stats, but it was an effective block, changing the other team's shots and putting ball back (if not down).
- serving: last year's serving was like "flash in the pan" serving, one great serve sandwiched around multiple service errors. they still had a lot of errors last night, but now those are sandwiched in between pretty great serving. with zemljak in all the time and tuaniga really improving his already pretty good serve from last year, they put a lot of pressure on other teams. (still, no one can match eyal zimet, remember him? he used to yo-yo other teams, ace them twice deep and then pull the string and send a roller short over the net for another ace).
- jonas umlauft: i love when freshmen start. because then you know they're good (if they're starting as freshmen) and you know they'll get better for 4 years. he doesn't jump very high (he probably touches just as high as joshua walker) but he's got smart arm swing and uses the block very well. he reminds me a lot of costas theocharidis (he even kinda looks like him) the way he gets most of his kills off the block. but what he is to the team is the outlet, something they haven't had in a few years. someone who can take a good swing out-of-system. the middles and walker are great in-system players (walker's vertical looked pretty spectacular actually), but this new guy can keep hawai'i in a lot of plays that they couldn't last year.

overall i think it'll be a big year for hawai'i volleyball, i'm not sure what the other teams in the country look like right now, but i say no way will hawai'i end up #12 in the country (like they are now) when this season is over. i think the possibility for a top 5 is there, and a run at the post-season wouldn't be out of the question either... but then again it's a long tough season in men's vball. there aren't a lot of schools even fielding teams and even less scholarships to go around so every single team out there is quality. it's going to be an exciting year though, and it continues tonight vs. #5 Penn State and saturday vs. #1 USC. good stuff.

#305 - what happened in 2009?

ok so i rarely do year-in-review type things because i don't really like categorizing such dissimilar (and continuous) events into a single category (i.e. a year)... actually, that's not true, i LOVE categorizing things... but it kinda seems weird to do it by years when things that happen today would be categorized into 2009 but what happens when i wake up tomorrow will be categorized in 2010... and what if i stay up past midnight, then i'll have to decide whether to categorize those events in 2009 or in 2010, so you see the problem here.

anyway, instead of doing a "review," i just went back and looked through all my blog posts for the past year and i was surprised at how many things i had forgotten i'd done, or forgotten that i had done them just last year. things back in january/february seemed like an eternity ago... for example:

- roger federer was no. 2, and rafael nadal won the aussie open. then during the spring season federer smashed his racket on court! then proceeds to win the french open and wimbledon completing his career slam, breaking pete sampras' record by winning grand slam #15, and regaining the #1 ranking... phew.
- i was in a community orchestra... yikes, i'm not ashamed of it because i wanted it to be fun and cool, but it was very much neither of those things, so i quit. oh well, a learning experience
- i bought a piano... seems like i've had that thing for way longer than just a year, but it's still sweet
- in february i was feeling so overwhelmed with all my activities that i over-worked myself and got shingles! oh man, that was HORRIBLE. and it was only a year ago (not even), seems like a lifetime ago...
- dollhouse started on tv... and now, one year later, dollhouse is canceled. so sad.
- my quarantine (with shingles) led me to the big bang theory, psych, attack of the show and... OLIVIA MUNN! woo hoo!
- got my dino buddy
- i totally called kris allen winning american idol (and the rest of idol sucked)
- me being a neilsen "family" was sadly not enough to save terminator and dollhouse
- started playing on a tennis team with my sister's friends... weird, but i like playing tennis so it turned out to be awesome
- the second half of the year was largely dominated by geekiness, taking things easy, and the beach.. so, a pretty good second half of the year!
- almost made a go of it in the romance department, but it flubbed... oh well, better luck next year.
- oh, and can't forget my portland trip last month! see? that was only a month ago and i have to categorize it as last year already...

anyway, i guess instead of a "2009 in review" it's more of a "where were you a year ago?" kind of thing because i really only had to remind myself of what happened in the first half of the year (the second half was too recent). oh well. i think the biggest news story of 2009 for me was SHINGLES! man, that sucked. hopefully there'll be a much better headliner for 2010, but for now let's start off with... live in the now, don't worry so much about the future but enjoy the present. take stock of what's around you, what's in your life and what about you and your life is great right at this moment and appreciate. i got a lot of this inspiration from reading a book (yes, reading an actual book!) by steve martin called "the pleasure of my company." of course i would related to a main character who's socially awkward and has OCD right? anyway, it's a good book, if you're looking for one to start of the new year with, give it a read. i love the point of view from inside the main character's head (he makes an awful lot of sense) and i think gives a nice boost of reassurance in human worth. plus it's funny.

#304 - PORTLAND! Day 4

day 4... well, we had to cancel our planned trip to see the oregon coast, due to being scared of driving on icy roads. but i still wanted to see some oregon forest-y landscape so we decided to go to the japanese gardens instead. but i missed the turn driving there and we ended up on the wrong road, there was a sign for the Pittock mansion so we decided to check it out! go spontaneity!
it was a good thing we didn't go driving all the way to the coast because just driving up to the mansion (which was on top of a hill) was kinda scary. but when we got there it was pretty cool. we didn't go inside the mansion (you had to pay, and i'd rather see nature than the inside of a house), but we walked around the gardens outside.

imitation of a tree:
there were surprisingly a lot of japanese plants around the grounds, like the red japanese maple trees were all over the place, making the garden look really cool with leave-less red and brown trees, and some evergreens mixed in.


so after the mansion we finally made our way to the japanese garden, but when we got there...
it was closed! BOO!
i guess that was a good thing too though, because we had a hard time walking the icy steps just to get to the entrance to the garden.
so after that we decided to get a head start for the concert instead. we drove to salem (about an hour outside of portland), stopped off at an outlet mall along the way (sorry, no pictures from there, but there were a surprising amount of asian tourists at that mall, like FOB no-speak-english asians, weird...). once in salem we had a bit of a hard time finding the arena, but once we did we were ready for RELIENT K! okay, so not a lot of photos from the concert obviously, but we had pretty decent floor seats and everyone was pretty close to the stage, so it was a great concert. we didn't watch the two opening acts (b. reith and stephanie smith) because we were starving and got some burritos instead (but we heard them, they were not bad). they only did a few songs each, which was perfect for an opening act, then we got seated for relient k! they started with "sleigh ride" (cool), but then their lead guitarist wasn't there, so they did an acoustic set, which was very cool because the lead singer is great on piano so it made for a good set. they did "forget and not slow down," "therapy," and "who i am hates who i've been" along with a few more christmas songs. luckily, though, they brought in the guitarist from the opening act's band to rock out "be my escape" and finish with another christmas song. it was sweet! after they were done it took toby mac for-e-ver to come back out and finish off the concert. i don't really care for toby mac (think white rapper + christian radio + black eyed peas wannabe back-up singers), but he actually put on a pretty fun show, lots of lights and excitement, not too awkward, so all in all pretty good.

after a somewhat long drive back to portland i thought it would be appropriate to end my trip on the last night with a nice, eccentric portland coffee house... and i got just that.

i don't actually remember what this place was called, but they had some funky art on the walls, a weird altar with creepy-looking dolls, and just lots of look at. i also had a gingerbread dessert and a latte, yum.

so that's it! it was a fantastic 4-5 days in portland, i loved playing tourist and brandi was an awesome tour guide! i definately got to see everything i wanted and more. relient k rocks! i have new appreciation for hawai'i weather and although i kinda liked the cold and being able to bundle up at christmas-time, i definately would not be able to live in that kind of weather on a daily basis. one thing i do want to take away from this trip, though, is how to live life like a tourist. to be able to start out each day with the goal of going on an adventure. i mean, a lot of the things that i found so neat about portland were things that people living there go through every single day, so if i can flip that way of thinking around and see those great things in MY everyday life, how much excitement and zest for life will every single day bring? i mean, hawai'i is a great place to that right? so live like a tourist, find the good things in the world around you... every day.

#303 - PORTLAND! Day 3

day 3 started much warmer than the previous two days... above freezing... by one degree. well, at least we didn't have to worry about icy streets anymore. this is the view outside brandi's apartment.
i even caught a squirrel running across the telephone lines!
here we are outside the steps to brandi's 2nd floor apartment, note the 5 layers of clothing that was still not enough to keep me warm the whole day.
first stop... the portland saturday market! it was pretty cool, like the swap meet except with quality things. plus, in order to be a vendor, your products had to be locally made and not mass produced, so there were a lot of cool things. unfortunately, nothing for me to buy, but still great stuff.
even though the forecast said the temperature was finally above freezing, we still found spots of snow and ice. the entire market was OUTSIDE (crazy people) and some tents had little space heaters... so at least we found a little bit of shelter. i had hot pho for lunch, which wasn't really great pho, but it was so warm that it tasted like a bowl full of heaven.
around the market was a park (we're now on the other side of the williamette river, on the opposite side of the museum) which was very cool. lots of stone paved walkways and old-looking street lamps. we're kind of in a historic district right now so all the architecture and surroundings were very nice.

after the market i was feeling like a popsicle so we stopped off at stumptown (fancy coffee chain) for coffee. i don't think i've ever drank so much coffee in the span of 4 days (or ever) in my life. but it was so cold that everytime i saw one of those hot, frothy drinks i wanted one. coffee shops were pretty happening places too, i don't think i ever saw an empty one, and each one was very lively.
after warming up for a bit we headed to pioneer square... it's a shopping district, but we went there to see a tuba christmas concert! well, it sounded kinda neat at least. when we got there they were still setting up (i think they said there were 200 tubas there) so we waited in the cold with everyone else (and there were a surprising amount of people waiting out on the icy steps to hear a tuba concert). then a super old guy came up (he was the conductor) and like an old geezer talked endlessly trying to introduce the band, it would have been comical except that by that time we were frozen solid and just wanted them to hurry up and start because we had to get to our walking tour very shortly. anyway, we ended up only hearing 2 songs (which were like 2 minutes each, it was weird) before we had to catch a train to our walking tour.
GO BEAVERS!
our tour was called a portland underground walking tour, because it was all about crime, sex, and other shady business. we started out exploring some underground tunnels, all the building in portland have underground tunnels to move goods, drain floodwaters, and (allegedly) kidnap people from their homes and force them to work on the export ships! here's one tunnel (it was closed up by the police) that may have been used for that purpose...
in the underground basement of a pizza parlor we sat in the dark and heard these kinds of stories, shanghai-ing, illicit trade, etc. i don't know what this sign was, our tour guide didn't know either because there really was nothing else in this basement except bricks, dirt, and more tunnels. but he said lots of people take pictures by it... so we did too.

after the undergroud we walked through more of the district and were told stories of corruption, brothels, and bars. it was pretty interesting stuff, mostly because the history was all pretty recent. i think his theme was "history repeats itself" because a lot of the places that he told us stories about were either still in existance or have come back in another form. for example, we walked along one stretch of the city that was mostly bars, clubs, etc, and when the city was first beginning those were the same kinds of establishments that portland was founded on.


we rode the tri-met a lot of places, it was cool because it's free within a certain area (then you just pay if you want to go beyond that area).
finally for dinner we ended up at rock bottom brewery. portland is famous for their multitude of microbreweries and this one was pretty good, i got the sampler...


this picture came out blurry, but i put it in here because immediately after taking this picture we were approached by an old man who asked us, "are you okay?" then, without waiting for our answer, promptly followed up that question with "you got any weed?"

after getting home for a bit, we decided to go back out to a mcmenamin's pub. it's a chain, but each establishment is pretty seperate. like this one was an old school that they turned into a resturant, bar, movie theater, hot tub place, etc. it was pretty darn cool, they really didn't change anything about the school, so walking down the halls you have your choice of getting a drink in any one of the seperate classrooms, the teacher's lounge, go for a hot tub soak or grab a pizza, pitcher of beer and watch a movie! we saw zombieland (awesome!). which was appropriate because on the way out we walked past this painting in the halls... creepy...
i liked that place a lot, i think i would go drinking there any day. later on i found out that my cousin (who lives in oregon) had her wedding reception in the gymnasium! coincidence huh? and at the time (before i knew about this place) i was thinking, "a wedding reception in a school gym? that's a weird thing, but i guess they do that on the mainland." now i realize it must have actually been pretty cool! day 4 - coming soon....

#302 - PORTLAND! Day 2

busy day... this morning was a little bit warmer, i think it was in the upper 20's... geez. no snow, because there was no rain, but anywhere we went with standing water there was ice. like in the parking lot of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry:
okay, it was just a little bit of ice, but still exciting.
here are some shots i took outside of the museum. the museum itself was pretty fun, of course, as in any museum you have to pretend you're a kid again so i ran to any exhibit that was "hands-on." their main exhibit was about fear, so that was kinda neat, although it was a friday so we were in the museum with a busload (probably more) of school-kids.


man, just about any outside shot looks cool and unique huh? i mean, i'm sure it looks pretty commonplace to anyone from the mainland, but it was cool to me. oh this picture below is me in front of a mural. it was kind of in the corner and didn't look very special, but there was a stool right in front of it just begging to be sat on... so i did... and here's proof.
this is the sunset over the williamette river, not the prettiest of rivers, but still kinda cool to view the scenery along both sides of the river (the museum is on one side, and the day after we went to the market on the other side).
so we probably spent the most time at the museum at this infra-red camera. not sure really why it was so much fun... but it was. and that's just it.
along the river outside the museum was a bike/jogging trail that went along a good length of the river, but it was fricken' freezing outside! i have no idea why anyone would want to run in that weather, i mean, run yes, because you don't want to stand still, but then the cold air would be blasting you in the face... hello snot-sicles. but there were a lot of people on the trail so i guess you get used to it?

went for dinner at saburo's. i know, a japanese place in oregon? but it was really good, and super popular, people start lining up in the cold a half-hour before the place even opens.
and we did too, so i had some time to snap shots of the streets...
check out the size of the sushi! geez, it was so good though.
and that's only one plate, i didn't get a picture of the second...

to cap off the night we took a walk to the video store to get some wii games... along the way we saw a playground, so what the heck... day 3 - coming soon...

#301 - PORTLAND! Day 1

PORTLAND! what a trip. it was a last minute, spur-of-the-moment decision. i needed a jolt to jump-start the end of my year (into next year) and i definately got it. i had a great time visiting brandi, seeing the pacific northwest and finally going to a relient k concert. i had fun being a tourist, being open to new experiences and everything and if there's one thing i want to take from this trip, it's how to be a tourist. y'know, not worrying about money or time, just going though each day looking forward to being amazed or entertained or even pleasantly bored about life and the world around you (wherever you are). it's that open-minded mentality that i'd like to keep with me now that i'm back home (in the warmth, thank goodness).

so, how did my trip go? that's a great question! let me tell you...

Day 1 -

the plane trip from hawai'i to portland was actually one of the most pleasant airplane rides i've ever had. it was just over 5 hours but i was never bored, and i didn't even sleep. somehow there always seemed to be something happening. in keeping with my tourist mentality, i splurged on the hawaiian airlines trail mix for a snack (which is completely opposite from what i've been groomed to think while growing up, y'know, your mom telling you, "you don't need that!" to every treat that you wanted), popped in my ipod, read my new book and before i knew it we were in portland, it was great!

outside of the airport it was something like 16 degrees! geez, they said that if there was any moisture then it would be snowing, but it was completely dry with clear skies (which was unusual, so they told me). so after picking up our rental car (i requested a prius, to test-drive in case that's the kind of car i'd want to buy when mine inevitably breaks down, but they upgraded me for free to a chevy cobalt, which turned out to be the crappiest car, too bad), we picked up brandi's boyfriend, jeremy, and headed out for some late night eats.


we went to a place called "le bistro montage." it was known for late night eats and drinks. jeremy told us that after 12 midnight they switch the music from pleasant tunes to hardcore metal, and the service gets really bad as well... i guess even though they stay open late they want to kick out the riff-raff. anyway, we started with some oyster shooters...

then jeremy had the pesto basil mac & cheese (they had all kinds of mac & cheese creations), brandi had andoullie sausage jambalaya, and i had ALLITGATOR jambalaya!

it was weird. half the time it tasted like fish, and half the time it tasted like banquet frozen chicken nuggets (remember those? they were shaped like little bite-sized tatter tots?).

then whatever leftovers you have, the waiters/waitresses wrap them up into aluminum foil scultures. we got a front row seat to see they wrap everything up, it was pretty neat, i don't think i saw them repeat a sculture the whole time we were there. mostly they made animals, but also palm trees, swords, and all kinds of other things. here is a scorpion, a crab, and a rabbit. i got the crab.

finally, to cap off the night, we went to a 24 hr. donut shop/wedding chapel (although no one was getting married when we were there) called Voodoo donuts. they had all kinds of creative donuts, lots with different cereal toppings, a maple-bacon bar (that one was fricken' fantastic!), and a voodoo doll donut, complete with blood (strawberry jam) filling... yum.

after that we were pretty wiped so it was off to brandi's apartment for a big sleep.

coming up... day 2.

but if you don't want to wait, you can see all the pictures from my trip by clicking.... HERE!