#274 - last day

today was the last day of vacation. i'm not totally sick about going back to work. yes, it's gonna completely suck to wake up early (i hadn't gotten up earlier than 9 am probably the entire break, and usually it was closer to 11:30), but i'm a guy who likes schedule and routine, so being back in the regular working grind is not so unpleasant to me. of course, weekends help, holidays are great and "inter-session" breaks are fantastic, but overall i can still do a lot of things during the regular work week. i'm not one of those people who shut down the rest of their lives during the work week, i still go and do (of course it helps that my work schedule is pretty darn sweet!) all the things i would otherwise do if i wasn't working. only now when i go to the beach on the weekends it's super crowded, and when i work out at the gym after work it's super crowded. i'm kind of a loner. and i like it that way (i guess most loners do, that's why they're loners). so being able to do all the things i like to do while most people are working their 9 to 5's has been awesome for the past two months.

but, alas, work had to come back someday (because i do want to get paid). i had a pretty great last day of freedom though. i set my alarm for 9, actually got out of bed at 10, made breakfast, watched a little history channel, then headed out to the gym. surprisingly it was pretty crowded there at about 11:30, it usually thins out a bit around noon but i guess people like to work out on mondays huh? oh well, after today i'll be working out in the crowds again after work. bought a jamba juice and had the other half of my subway footlong for lunch, then went out to the beach. i thought i'd be perfect timing, the surf report said there was gonna be a north shore bump today, perfect for my last day of vacation. but i drove up to ali'i (my all-time favorite spot) and it was flat-sos. so i hiked over to chun's where it was super crowded! well, not like a weekend, but for a weekday with little waves it was packed. that's okay though, i stayed on the outside (cause i'm a loner and don't do well with crowds) and with patience caught some nice waves. the sun was out but it was a little chilly, and since it was so crowded i decided to call it an early day and head in. so when i packed up the car again i noticed it was only a little after 4pm, and since there's no shower at chun's i wanted to wash off my board (and myself) so i headed back to ali'i and what do you know? the swell finally started to roll in!

i mean, they said it'd be rolling in late, but i usually never get in the water after 4pm (it's too cold). since it was my last day though, i decided to go for it. i didn't stay long, only until about 5:45 but man i caught the best waves of the summer (well, my summer anyway) today. sets were smooth and crystal clear. y'know where you're riding the wave and you look down under you and you can see the glass of the wave and all the coral heads underneath it? that's the most beautiful sight i think, which is why i've got so many wave pictures on my walls, that water effect is the coolest. anyway, there weren't a lot of people out there so i could pick and choose my waves on the sets and on this one i rode all the way in, man, i must've been able to get up and down on that one like 5 times, it was sweet.

so it was a great way to end my summer break. topped it all off with a avocado burger at kua'aina, yum. so i'm not so sick about going back to work tomorrow. it'll be a change and that's cool. people need vacations. recharges the soul. i might even be motivated to start this year.... weird.

but don't quote me on that until i wake up tomorrow morning (hopefully) at 6:30 am. ugh.

#273 - cathartic dreaming

don't you love when your dreams turn into self-therapy? last night i had four separate dreams (that i can remember at least), which is unusual because most nights i can barely remember one. it was another night of sleeping too long (something i have not yet been able to keep under control this summer), i went to bed at 12:30 am and woke up at 11:21 am. the first dream was really the winner, and that's what probably motivated me to remember the other dreams, so here we go:

Dream #1 -
i was with my family, except my mom was roseanne (too much tvland prime), and she was "disabled" for some reason so some annoying red-head lady salesperson was trying to sell her on an assistive communication device that looked like a go-talk but bigger, like a dynavox (these are speech pathology devices that have buttons with pictures on them, you press the buttons and the electronic device plays a recording of the word). then suddenly we were at work, in the school library and the annoying red-head salesperson was making a sales presentation about the device using my mom as an example, except my mom was roseanne and therefore very NOT disabled and well able to speak her mind, so i was getting angry because obviously she does not need a device to talk for her (and indeed as she was testing the device she was pressing the buttons and saying the words herself out loud). but the sales lady keep pushing the device on everyone and i was getting so upset that i finally began to question her motives and i actually remember the little speech that i gave her, it went something like "do you actually believe, as a professional, that this is an appropriate device for this individual's needs? how can you stand there and sell us this device when we all clearly see that this person can speak for herself? how do you justify yourself selling this product as essential to her well-being when we all know she can talk on her own?" and then the lady got super pissed at me, but i was feeling all smug and victorious, but she kept going with her presentation and i was sitting there (we were all sitting indian-style on the floor) rolling my eyes at her and knowing that everyone else in the room was on my side anyway. but during her presentation she kept slipping in snide little remarks like, "but i guess SOME people don't see it that way" and giving me stink eye. so finally i stood up like a moke, went up to her and shoved her, like "what bitch? you got more to say?" and she was all offended and started saying that she'll complain and get my contract revoked or something like that, but i was still all smug and even the principal said "don't worry, she can't do that." haha, it was total victory for me.

after that i woke up, but it was still dark, i don't know time it was then, but i went to pee and slid back into bed.

Dream #2 -
this one was just fun. i was kinda living here in my home, except all of a sudden i was super rich and my home had three stories. my parents lived all the way on the first floor, the second floor was a bar and restraunt (like in a hotel) and the third floor was my room. each floor had a balcony and on the first there was a pool on the balcony and the third floor had a hot tub. i was sleeping in my bed on the third floor and my mom was getting ready for a big party, she told me that my friends were already there in the pool on the first floor, but i was still sleeping. when i woke up (in the dream, not in real life) i was embarrassed because i was in my sleeping shorts and i had a bed-head so i didn't want to go down to the party yet, but my friends (my friend from grad school) were moving from the first floor pool to the third floor hot tub because my mom's party was starting. so i walked downstairs (along the way i kept passing servants who were getting ready for the party with trays of food and stuff) and came into the parlor which was super fancy, all the walls were mirror and along each wall were glass wine displays, like in a department store, and my friends were sitting in the middle of the room drinking and eating, the servants brought in two trays of food which they said were popcorn and prawns, except the "prawns" were huge (like baseball-sized) kernals of popcorn. then they ran out of wine so i went to pick one from the wall, but i didn't know which one, so i told everyone to go to the third floor hot tub and i'd have a servant bring it up. then i walked around awhile marveling at the richness of my own house and finally went up to the hot tub where there was a cool view of the mountains and partied with my friends.

i don't think i woke up a second time here, but i did have another separate dream...

Dream #3 -
i was in bed again, but this time more aware that i was in my own regular home and not the fancy rich home. i heard people right outside of my door so i went to check through the peephole and saw two cars in my driveway. i didn't recognize the cars so i tried to hide from them (suddenly i had a glass window by the door so they could possibly have seen inside, and i was in my sleeping shorts again), then my phone rang, but i didn't answer it, it went to voicemail and i listened to it and it was my ex-gf and she said she got divorced or something and was all distressed and needed someone to talk to. i wasn't interested and deleted the message, but then i heard people outside my door again and there were a few people there and she was one of them, so i hid again and went back to bed.

last night i watched an episode of "ghost adventures" on the travel channel, and they spent the night inside a haunted house where there was said to have been incubus/succubus, you know what that is right? so the guy who lived there said that he's been attacked at night by the succubus as he was sleeping or just about to go to sleep. do you see where i'm going with this? not that she was exactly a succubus, but just in concept, my ex-gf somehow had a key to my front door and snuck in the house, i was pretending i was sleeping so she'd go away, but y'know what happened next. well, not completely at least, because i fought back and protested and was all proud of myself for not being a wuss. plus on that show the guys trying to catch the ghosts on camera are total pricks to the ghosts, calling them out, taunting them, really d-bag like too, haha. so i too stood my ground and talked her out of doing something dumb just because she just got divorced and in my head came up with reason after reason why it would be a bad idea. then i kicked her out, took back the key (i guess she had stolen it from me?), and told her to call me in a week if she still felt like it, haha.

that's when my radio alarm went off, but i didn't wake up completely, i laid in bed for a few minutes listening to the all-american rejects then fell asleep again.

Dream #4 -
this time i was in an amusement park, kind of like disneyland, but now that part of the dream is getting kind of fuzzy, i know there were some rides, and we went to play skee-ball (except it was called "lin-in-ball") and we were headed to the tower of terror but never actually made it there because i kept partially waking up, but it was really annoying because i'm not sure if i was actually waking up or if i was dreaming that i was waking up. because each time it occurred, i'd try to open my eyes but really just couldn't, y'know like how when you're really tired you just can't keep your eyes open? it was like that, like my lids were super heavy and as much as i wanted to wake up i couldn't get my eyes to open all the way. and i know that at least some of it was in real life because as i tried to pry my eyes open i could see my window and outside so i know that i was actually waking up, but for like maybe 10 times i'd try and could not wake up all the way. i think there's like some kind of disconnect between your body and your mind when that happens, like your mind is ready to wake up but you body hasn't gotten the message yet. because then i gave up and fell back asleep for what seemed like only a couple of minutes and then all of a sudden i thought, "i'm awake," and then i opened my eyes and the popped right open and i was wide awake. weird.

wow, that's the most dream i remembered in a long time. super weird. man, my sleep's all whacked up, it's gonna be tough getting back to work on tuesday...

#272 - who was last? not i...

hey we went mini-golfing on tuesday and it was tons of fun, i probably haven't mini-golfed for maybe 5 or more years and each time i'm surprised how much fun we can make it, i say "how much fun we can make it" because for sure mini-golfing can be annoyingly dull, but with the right mixture of teasing, competition, making up rules, and more teasing it can be a blast! okay, well, you could also add beer, but that would be overdoing it on a mini-golf course at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. but the main point here is... i was not last! haha, guess who was?
hint hint. haha, see how well teasing works into everything? anyway, we went to bay view in kaneohe (i didn't even know it was still open) and it was pretty good actually. there were 36 different holes, which i was impressed by, but they were all lazily labeled as "par 2s." even so, there were some fun mini-golf type alterations, like multiple holes (like 3 or 4 different holes for each "hole," so we designated one hole as the "bonus" hole, you get minus 1 for getting that hole), mutli-level holes (complete with stuck drain pipes, of course), a few steep hills, but there were no water holes! that was kind of disappointing. how can you have mini-golf without a water hole? like remember castle park? that was the best mini-golf ever! i don't remember too much about it, but i know it had the trademark windmill and the last hole i remember was on an island surrounded by water and you had to putt the ball over a bridge and up a steep hill into a hole and then you didn't get your ball back (because it was the last hole), so that was cool. i think all mini-golfs should end like that, or something like that.
anyway it was fun, but look at these crappy pictures, man i think i really do need a new camera. plus i was playing around with wongie's new camera (another canon), it was yummy...

#271 - deprived aka the problem with me is...

first of all, an update - after writing that last post i went to bed at 11:45 pm but probably didn't fall asleep until maybe 12:30 am at the latest... the next day i woke up at 12:20 pm! what the heck? that's like 12 straight hours, i can't be this sleep deprived can i? i mean, it's been like 5 whole weeks of summer already and i still haven't caught up on all my sleep? geez. well, whatever, at least i still got up in time to go surfing before the sun went down. and secondly, yes i do need a phone, mine's at least 4 years old, probably more, but i'm undecided if i want to take the leap into "data" yet. i've been very happy paying my $40/mo. plan but if i'm gonna get a new phone anyway should i finally get in line with my generation? hmmm...

back to the post, today i realized the problem with me. well, "a" problem with me. today tv reintroduced me to grease 2. well, what can i say? it was on all day and in between episodes of "the universe" on the history channel and reruns of "roseanne" on tvland it was a bit of nostalgia. so it came out in 1982 but i probably saw it on tv when i was like 5 years old i guess and i remember it being SUPER COOL! well, as a 5 year old at least i thought so. then i actually started watching it... how embarrassing!

the whole thing runs like high schooler's home-made youtube video. they could cut and splice scenes and show it verbatim on snl for that digital shorts thing and it'd fit right in. so lame. corny as hell. of course, when i was 5 i didn't get all the "adult" jokes and references (in one scene a guy leads his girl into a bomb shelter then has his friends run a fake siren outside so the girl thinks there's a war, then he sings "let's do it for our country, the red white and the blue, it's uncle sam who's asking, so your mother will approve..."), even though they were all hideously cheesy.

so watching it back again was eye-opening for two reasons. one, because it was just so utterly horrible. and two, because when i was young i actually thought it was the coolest movie. granted, of course, there is michelle phiffer, and she still looks uber-hot climbing that ladder (although now that i'm older i realize that the actual lyrics are "i want a cool rider, a co-o-ol rider, if he's cool enough he can burn me through and through, if it takes forever, then i'll wait forever, no ordinary boy, no ordinary boy is gonna do, i want a rider that's cool" barf). but overall i feel completely mortified that i ever wanted to be a "cool rider" when i grew up.

of course, i was young, in my defense, and my upbringing wasn't exactly full of real life experiences (as i've come to realize). so this all got me thinking that when i was a kid, man, i didn't have a chance! let's look at my parents, my mom (who went to a catholic school taught by nuns) is ultra conservative and my dad (who's nightly before-bed routine consists of him lying on the couch in the living room in the dark listening to songs from les miserables) is a kind of a nerd. when i was growing up i never heard the radio apart from the perry and price show every morning on the way to school (and therefore i never heard any actual music, just two old grumpy guys complaining) or krater 96-type songs from my dad's hand-held tape player. the only music i knew was from tv or movies so my early childhood (remember the late 80's and early 90's) music library was dominated by disney movie soundtracks and musicals like grease 2. i remember the first actual piece of music that i ever got i didn't even buy, it was a birthday present when i was in 5th or 6th grade, a cassette tape of dookie by green day (which turned out to be the savior of my music life, actually knowing that there are other kinds of music in the world besides just the wholesome kind of tunes that i'd been stuck with up until that point). i never even had a radio until i was in intermediate school. heck remember "the box" on good old rabbit ears antennae channel 56? man i wrapped so much aluminum foil around those antennae and taped them at the sharpest angles to my wall in my room to make sure that i could get reception for "the box," they'd play "here comes the hotstepper" like all day. haha, and that was my best media source for music... the box, ha. you could call in and request music videos, but it was coded so you could only request a select few. of course, it cost like $1.99 per call or something so i never did it (anyway, if you wait long enough eventually you'd see it played anyway).

so you can see my problem, i never had a shot. i was doomed into social stunted-ness by growing up in a disney world. everything was so cheesy for me, and perhaps that's what i used to form my impression of society from when i was very young. of course, i've had a lot of time to revise that impression since i was a kid, but y'know something about those very early childhood experiences and what gets smashed into your brain first right? makes me wonder what kind of slanted view that gives me other other issues... i mean, just look at this post i created with all the videos in between, man, i'm ashamed of myself even.

still... while i may have once watched this movie because i liked it, i now post these videos to laugh and point at. seriously i was falling off the couch laughing at some of these scenes, geez, can you believe this was actually in the theaters once?

"what would they say, if they knew it was michael?"

HAHAHHAHAHA!
oh man, it's even better with the chinese karaoke subtitles, ha!

#270 - saying hi, wavicles, the problem with sleep

whoa! a three-part blog today? what's going on? this is what happens when i have the day all to myself and my brain keeps running along with no one to tell all my dumb, i mean, incredibly brilliant thoughts to that pop in and out of my head throughout the day. then all those gems of brilliance pile up in my head and i've finally got to purge them in blog form. like today, i woke up WAY early (9:26 am, but i'll get to that in part 3), got a visit from the 3 yo nephew and sister, made and ate breakfast, went to the gym, grabbed lunch, bought a pineapple, went to the beach, got rained on at the beach, almost left the beach, saw clearing skies, stayed at the beach a little longer, came home, cut and ate previously mentioned pineapple, had dinner, watched so you think you can dance (too bad they kicked off that philip guy last week, that dude was sick, in the good way), and now i'm writing this post. uh, my point was...

PART 1 - saying hi
i went through the whole day today with minimal social interaction. on most non-work days i'd probably call that a success (see previous post detailing my sheldon-like tendencies), but since i'm not working at all this summer i could probably use a little more human interaction in my daily life. doesn't mean i try to avoid people, i just have this combination of shyness and egocentrism that makes me come off as aloof sometimes (or so i've been told, the aloof part, i mean). i try to say hi to people, but it gets awkward y'know? like when you see someone you know, but not too well, walking toward you from a distance, when do you lift your head and finally say "hi?" if you're too early then you get the awkward silence as you're both still walking toward each other with nothing more to say, or you feel like you have to fill the void with inane banter until you pass, and then if you look stupid if you try and pull topics out of mid-air or if you actually do pick a conversation starter then it's awkward when you finally get to each other and then have to decide if you're going to stop and talk or keep going. and then if you make eye contact too late they'll think you're rude or maybe you both do it at the same time and then you both say something dumb at the same time and it's too late for anyone to recover! it's a mess.

anyway, so i've been trying to be more friendly to random people. it's easy at the beach, especially with haole tourists, but recently people have not been very friendly to me. like i'll try and make eye contact and say "hi" or "nice day" or "small waves, too bad huh?" or something dumb like that, but it's not so easy to get eye contact back, and then i look like a weirdo. but what's been even harder has been trying to say "hi" to my neighbors in this townhouse complex. man, it's so hard to get anyone's attention. i mean, it's cool that everyone kinda keeps to themselves and doesn't really bother with other people (i actually LOVE that about this neighborhood), but sometimes you just wanna say hi when you're walking to the mailbox and lately i've been getting the shaft man, geez. what's up with that? need more practice i guess...

PART 2 - wavicles
another thing i'm trying to do this summer is read more. i think reading would be a good "pass the time" hobby, especially at work, haha. anyway, i've been reading a book on quantum physics. i never liked physics in high school or college because thanks to phiga and her ill-conceived tofu tub experiment i've learned that pretty much any physics experiment that you do on the planet earth will fail. energy equations, friction coefficients, mass calculation, they all depend on pure conditions... of which we have NONE on the planet earth. but, theoretical physics is all about failed conditions and not actually producing results (of course, in order to back up those theories you have to tinker with the math or demonstrate principles or create matter, haha, but no one thinks the results are absolute). so the research into grand unifying theory and membrane theory and supersymmetry are totally fascinating to me. i read this book at the beach today (in between rain showers) that was describing the basics of quantum physics, the history of how we came to regard matter as an atom, then the parts of the atom, then how those parts act as particles, and how those parts act as waves, and how light can only sometimes be explained as being a particle, and sometimes be explained as being a wave and how it's so much more appropriate to think of it as both, a "wavicle." anyway, i'm just getting started into to, but i like reading about this kind of stuff so way more than fiction novels, with all that grand romanticized writing and overly elaborate phrase-work, barf. who needs it? get the point and stay there (and when you don't understand what that point is, turn on the discovery channel and have them explain what supersymmetry is).

PART 3 - the problem with sleep
man have i been having many sleep troubles recently or what? and not even recently. thankfully i haven't been having any of those bouts of waking up drenched in sweat in the middle of the night anymore since summer started, but i have been on the craziest sleep schedule. the other day i went to bed at 12:30am (just after midnight), couldn't actually fall asleep for at least an hour, and then woke up at 12:20 pm the next day (just after noon). what the heck? this morning was the very first day i actually woke up before 10 am and stayed awake for the rest of the day, but who know what'll happen tomorrow? i mean, at least it's summer so i can afford the sleeping in, and it would be okay if i was just like "catching up" on missed sleep, but it seems to me like i'll be sleeping this way forever. it's weird. plus y'know how your stress hormone levels rise to help you wake up? man that's been giving me the worst dreams. recently most of them have been about me worrying about still having to get my master's degree even though i'm already working, i keep dreaming that i've still got my research project to do, or i've got one semester of classes still to take and i think, didn't i do this already? and then i wake up SUPER relieved that it was just a dream. crazy sleep. crazy dreams.

well those are all my thoughts. wait one more, i kind a want a new camera. something's gone funky with the washout on this one, see? i guess i could keep tinkering with it, but it's probably time for a new one. and a new phone too. but anyway, so i'm gonna try and sleep well tonight. surf's coming up a bump tomorrow so let's see if i can get out there before noon?

#269 - theory #8: garage filled with tortured rhesus monkeys

i was gonna start out this post by saying "one of the not-so-great things about living in a townhouse is that you're so close to your neighbors," but actually what i'm about to write about has nothing to do with closeness of neighbors, because this could very easily happen in a regular house neighborhood, it's just an unlucky situation.

so instead i will start out by saying, "what the fricken' hell are those people doing over there?!"

every single day for the past two weeks i've been hearing screams. not just screams, mind you, but butt-monkeyingly irritating shrieks coming from this townhouse on the corner of the street. well, not only for the past two weeks, i've actually been hearing it off and on for the past probably 6 months, but just since i've been home more often during the summer i've noticed it more consistently. at first i thought it was like someone's pet parrot or something because i didn't sound human... and it always came in two parts, never separate, always two different squeals spaced consistently a second apart... like, AAAH... OOOOAAA! i can't type it, it's hideously inexplicable.

but then i thought if it was a parrot, or a pet or animal of any kind, i'd probably hear it all throughout the day, but i usually only hear it during certain times of the day... between 5-7 pm. during the summer i've also been hearing it between 8-9 am. which leads me to think that it actually is a human, like some kid playing video games and screaming at the tv, but sometimes it occurs so often, consecutively, like 5-6 times per minute. and lately i've also been hearing some kind of "laughing" accompanying it, but inhuman laughter, i guess it could be someone laughing really weirdly, but it's just SO FRICKEN' ANNOYING!

my parents came over one day to look at my yard, and they heard it too. i asked them what they thought it was and my mom INSTANTLY said, "someone's sick." and i said, "what sick? they can't be sick forever yelling like that day after day." and my mom said, "sick in the head." haha, not that it's funny, but she said it completely matter-of-factly, like it was so obvious and here's me running through billions of theories in my head from "it could be a horny cat" to "i'm being haunted by idiotic child ghosts."

ps - does anyone watch "ghost adventures" on the travel channel? it's like any other ghost hunting show, they use night-vision cameras and electromagnetic sensors and evp recordings, but it's funny because the guy totally provokes the ghosts, he's all walking through the haunted prison at night trying to call them out, taunting them to "come get me," it's so lame, but funny. and when they finally do hear a "clank" or a frog they get totally freaked out.

so the hunt continues, i've finally figured out which house the noise is coming from, one of those days when i was working in my yard i was hearing it, and then i heard and saw one of the garage doors close on the place across the street and then i only heard the noise faintly, so at least i've zeroed in on the source... now i just gotta figure out what the crap they're doing in that garage. not that i want to spy on them, i stop at spying on them because then they would be influencing my life and behavior and i would not like them to have that kinda power over me.

still... it's damn annoying. i mean, i don't so much as hear my next-door neighbor's tv that's what was so good about these buildings, i don't ever hear my side-by-side neighbors do anything, but that scream comes right through my windows. and i know i'm not the only one hearing it because i went out of my front door one day to pick up the newspaper and those horrible shrieks were echoing throughout the streets dude. seriously. i bet everyone within a two building radius can hear it.

grr... i totally empathize with that lady who killed the peacock. when i was living at home i had the same problem with those damn spotted-nape doves roosting right outside my window... but i didn't have a bat. not guilty. set her free and shake her hand. not that i'd want to kill a peacock, but don't put in jail for it, geez.

anyway, on a less psychotic note... i'm posting these pictures that i took at the beach in between my rants to trick myself into feeling happier about it, haha, at least during the day i can escape this town and head out to the north shore, it's mighty quiet out there on the ocean waves, that's for sure.

#268 - project #2 update!

huh, thought that would take a little bit longer, but... yard = finished! this is the view from inside my place looking out through the glass doors to the patio...
this is the left side of my yard, under the guest bedroom window with the gate to the right (still have to find a couple of potted plants to put in the rocky area)...
and this is the right side of my yard with the patio in the foreground and my master bedroom window on the right. in the corner, that little wimp of a branch with the green leaves, is the sakura "tree." it's really just like a wussy sprout right now, but hopefully it'll grow big and tree-like. that would be awesome.... i hope it doesn't die... my mom does too, she gave it to me and she'll kill me if i kill it...

#267 - summer project #2

it's nice to have a project always in the works. something (besides tv and naps) to fill the down-times between all the fun stuff, y'know, like on the off-training days or when it's overcast and drizzly and too-cold-to-go-surfing like today. the first half of summer i was working on that video slideshow for my cousin's graduation and for this second half i'm diy-ing my yard.
when i first moved in, i knew that i wanted grass, i don't like it when people concrete over everything, makes me feel like i'm killing the earth and all that other ferngully-type crap (remember that awful movie? brr... i get chills). i don't know a thing about landscaping or gardening or whatever, but i knew i wanted grass and lots of it. unfortunately, i don't get a whole lot of sunlight in my narrow little yard and so the grass wasn't doing so great. i ended up with a lot of dead spots where the sun don't shine (haha) and so this summer my mission was to resurrect the yard!
but since i knew that i couldn't just force the grass to grow wherever i wanted, i decided to do something different in those spots where the grass was dying. so i bought up some bricks, a few plants and decided to make a little rock garden or two. first off, i had to dig up what was left of the grass in those dead areas and man, that was a fricken' butt-monkey-lovin' day of work, dude. i don't think i've ever been sweaty-er in my life. it took me two days of dehydrating work to pull out all the grass, till the soil underneath and prep it for the landscape cover. next time i'm definately going the professional route... because for all that work, it still don't look that great. i mean, i know i'm no pro at yard work, but after all that effort i got lazy at the end and maybe cut a few corners... so my bad, but if it looks kinda crappy at least i can say i did it myself.


so here's the semi-finished product... i've still got to buy some gravel or river rock to fill in the black spaces, but now i've got grass, i've got plants, hopefully everything will be a little more controlled and won't get as hairy as it did before.

plus one more little addition is a sakura tree/plant that my parents won at one of my sister's dance festivals. i don't know how it'll do, but it's from makakilo so it might be okay here... right now it's just in the pot, not quite sure what to do with it... any ideas?

#266 - go roger!

http://www.atpworldtour.com/Splash/Splash-Page.aspx

wow... any more questions about who the greatest tennis player of all time is? answer: roger federer.

too bad for andy roddick though, i've always wanted andy to win wimbledon (or at least one other grand slam, but chances are tough now), but what a final. 16-14 in the final set for roger? man, great stuff. now he's back to #1 in the world... bring on the us open series!