construct a life

#319 - living real life

2010-07-26T16:01:00.004-10:00

so i really haven't been posting on this blog for the whole summer, mostly because i don't really have much to say. or whatever i do have to say i've been saying to real people (haha, sorry the internet) and so the ideas don't have time to bounce around in my brain and stew until i can craft an entire blog for it. part of that is probably due to me joining facebook and buying a smartphone so i can instantly post my various random (yet insightful and intelligent) thoughts so easily. the other part is maybe because i've got different groups of people to tell things to that i think i get tired of saying the same idea more than once.

in any case, the blog is slowly dying... that's not such a bad thing, it's actually about 4 and a half years old so perhaps it's time to start off on a new project. although i do hate e-waste... like all those old email accounts that you abandoni, or that geocities webpage you made when you were in high school just because you could. still, this blog has a lot of great pictures that i've taken so i'd like to keep those around. here are some of my favorites... but before that, since this may be my last post, thanks to all three of you who read this, it was nice to know that my (brilliant) thoughts weren't going entirely unheard. i'm sure there will be other avenues with which to keep up with my life, i think i've just out-grown this one. so, time to move on, and with that i'll leave you with some of my favorite self-taken pictures from this blog (well, really, they're mostly just for me, haha).

#318 - my almost puppy

2010-05-23T16:44:00.002-10:00

this is my 24 hour puppy. here's how it happened....

a couple of weeks ago we had a baby shower for one of my co-workers at work. so everyone was crowded in my office eating and talking, and my other co-worker brings in this cute little puppy! before i even had a chance to say anything, my co-worker puts him in my lap and says "look puppy, you found a new home!" she was looking to give him away, he was the last of a litter and they were trying to find a good home for him. i had been talking to my co-workers about wanting to find a puppy for about half a year, but i hadn't gotten one until this point because i didn't think that i could take very good care of a puppy right now. i had these points...

1) i'm not home enough, and i'd feel bad leaving the puppy home alone for long periods throughout the day, whether he was inside or outside the house

2) my yard's not really big enough for a dog, maybe a small dog, but i wouldn't want a small dog, i'd want a medium size dog i think

3) my house is really not dog-proof, so if i kept the puppy indoors he would totally wreck up the place, and i would want to keep puppy indoors some of the time, cause he'd be lonely outside by himself

4) when i do get a puppy, i'd think about getting two so they'd have company when i'm not around
but all those reasons fell by the wayside when i saw the cuteness of this puppy! so i made a really stupid, rash, impulsive decision to take him home!

here he is exploring my yard. poor thing, he liked it out there, but as soon as i got home i knew that i had made a mistake... what was i thinking?! i can't take care of a puppy! i felt so intensely guilty but i wanted to keep the puppy... but i knew that i couldn't give him a very good home. i'd have to leave him alone for long periods throughout the day... he cried just when i left the room so that would've been so mean to the puppy. so i made the VERY hard decision to take him back the next day.... BOOOOOO!!! i was so sad!!!!

but i had to keep telling myself it was the right decision because i'd want puppy to have a good home with a family that could take care of him well. my other co-worker's brother took him home the next day, he has a big house with a big yard and a family to take care of him so he'll be much happier there than trapped in my little townhouse. so sad though... it would have been okay if i never took him home at all, but just those 24 hours with puppy made giving him up so heartbreaking! but that's the way it goes, and it was the right decision to make in the end.

and if something good has come from this, at least i know now not to make anymore super impulsive, irresponsible decisions like that. and also, if anything this experience has given me a renewed appreciation for my parent's dog, look how cute she was when she was a puppy too!
of course, she's still cute and fun to play with so now you can bet i'll be going over to my parents' house to spend a lot more quality time with her!

#317 - make it so

2010-04-01T07:07:00.000-10:00

remember last april 1st when i blogged about the tauntaun sleeping bag from thinkgeek.com and how awesome that website was only to find out later that the product was an april fool's joke only to find out later that so many people actually tried to order the sleeping bag that thinkgeek.com decided to try and actually make it only to find out later that they succeeded and now you can buy yourself your very own tauntaun sleeping bag for $100?

well, i got fooled again this year... i was so ready to splurge on these awesome products...
i didn't want to get an ipad (ever... and still don't), but theiCade - ipad arcade cabinet made the ipad look SO much more tempting... playing donkey kong and all those original arcade games is very possible now on the computer or whatever, but check out this cool little contraption? how sweet would that be on my kitchen counter?
this product has been on my wishlist for years now, temporary tattoos! well, my original idea was for tattoos with disappearing ink (which actually exists already, they created some kind of nano-type ink that is trapped in little bubbles, but when you pass some kind of laser over the bubbles they pop and the ink is reabsorbed safely into the skin and the ink disappears), but with themoodINQ programmable tattoo system it would've been painless (after implantation surgery of course)! aww... i'm really sad about this one, i would have bought this in a heartbeat.
of course, they also had some ridiculous ideas, like this SPAM wannabe, canned unicorn meat, imported from ireland, i actually thought about it until i saw the glitter in the meat hahaha
but this one is the winner for sure... combine extreme geekiness with a little bit of evil and you've got the "tell me your secrets bear" hahaha, spying on your own child? genius.

so if they could get that tauntaun sleeping bag made, let's get rolling on that evil teddy ruxbin too, i mean, the evil-ER teddy ruxbin, cause let's face it, the original was pretty damn creepy...

#316 - disaster!

2010-03-03T19:16:00.001-10:00

on the heels of my last post "broken" this february has just turned out to be a disatrous month. first my poor car, then my health, and now my longboard......sigh... so here's what happened. there i was, surfing at haleiwa (my favorite spot because of water, the way the waves break, the short paddle out, and the great views), it was kind of a bigger day, at the very upper edge of what i'm comfortable with (which, in reality, is really not that big, but scary for me anyway since i'm a wuss) and so i was content to paddle far out and sit and wait in safety rather than fight the crowds and the whitewater closer to shore. i'd wait for some of the smaller (but still super clean) waves to roll in between the big sets and try and catch the leftovers that the better surfers didn't bother catching. so i caught a good one and was paddling back out, making sure to stay on the outside so i wouldn't get in anyone's way (i'm very conscious about that, until this day i hadn't gotten into any collisions). i saw some old guy on a huge board catch a wave way out in front of me and i was paddling more to the side so he'd have room to ride it past me. guess what, the guy wasn't looking, i know this because i was looking right at his face and he was NOT looking at me. so, of course, he plows into me with his big fat board. great. so i roll off my board so that i don't die and his board slides on top of mine, i didn't see exactly what happened because i was in "duck and cover" mode, and when i came back up to the surface i was just glad to be conscious. i saw the guy and said "sorry" (even though it was really his fault, HE was the one who was in control on the wave, i was just paddling back out to safety), he looked at me and asked me if i was okay once, at least he did that. i said i was and he got back on his board and paddled out again. i slowly got back up on my board and that's when i saw... THIS...
SO SAD! i mean, it's not like my board is brand new or anything, in fact, it's pretty awesomely old. on the brink of vintage, but far too beat up to be worth any real value. so it's got dings and dents, but man this is a whole chunk taken out of it. i guess when his board slid over mine his fin got jammed up the nose of my board and left this nice slash in it.
i couldn't believe how big it was (that's what she said, haha), i mean, i've bumped and dented the glass on my board before, but i didn't know it could get damaged like this so easily.
i was so sad look how many pictures i took of it! haha, so anyway, luckily i'm very smart and pretty handy so i went to the surf shop and bought a ding repair kit and i think i got it patched up pretty well with my homemade chemistry.
so now it looks like this...
not TOO bad right? i still gotta sand it down, but i dunno i kinda like it like that haha, or maybe i'm just lazy
but at least i guess i've kinda got a battle scar? i mean, the only real physical trauma that i've had in my life has been from surfing (i got cracked in the face with the tailblock of my own board and fractured some sinuses or something like that) so i guess this gives my board character? i dunno... something like that, if anything at least i've got a little story to tell now, right?

#315 - idol sucks

2010-03-02T20:42:00.002-10:00

this is be my last idol post... why? because idol sucks. geez. i mean, i guess i was kinda crazy for my weekly (or even bi-weekly) idols postings the past few years, so it's time to stop doing that at least, hahaha. this year's idol just sucks ass. on the plus side, it has really reminded me why i listen to REAL singers and buy music from ACTUAL artists right?

i was gonna just try and do a "stand ups and melt downs" of the best/worst idol performances in my opinion, but even that ain't worth it. nope, it's better just to say nothing and let the show slowly fade into oblivion.

so yeah, no more idol posts... it's time to get on with real life, haha.

#314 - idol again, top 24 results

2010-02-25T21:58:00.002-10:00

boo. only 1 out of 4.

as much as i'm NOT into american idol this year (mostly because i feel that the show has already run it's course and is on the downslope), i surprised myself how much i was disappointed with tonight's results. out of the entire top 24, 3 of the people ousted tonight were in my picks for the top 12 at least.

the two girls that were booted picked crappy songs and sang them pretty bad actually, but they were really pretty... and their past performances (the ones they showed at least) were pretty good so i thought that they had some promise. and since they were pretty and that blonde one seemed like she had a fun personality (a natural one at least) so i'm really sad that they're gone and i gotta still listen to the boring crappy singers.

i think i'm most disappointed with joe munoz, i thought he was good, and i love the song he picked. i can't believe those two black guys are still there instead of the mexican. but at least we got rid of that annoying 70's guy, so 1 out of 2 at least.

blah, idol sucks this year. good thing i've got dvr so i don't have to keep my attention for the whole 2 hours and i can fast forward through the boring performances... boo idol.

#313 - idol again, guys top 12

2010-02-24T23:16:00.003-10:00

okay, after a night of crappiness from the girls, let's hope the guys can do better. going into it i've got hopes for andrew garcia... but who knows? here we go:

1. todrick hall - can you be any more full of yourself? barf. wow, i actually that song by kelly clarkson... his "version" = epic fail! total crap, dude. pass.

haha, i like what randy said (for one), he "totally obliterated" that song.

2. aaron kelly - barf already. i can't stand these wimpy, weak-willed wannabe singers. okay, fine, he's young, which explains why he's like that, but doesn't make him sing better. i thought the time of the boy-band was over? pass.

wow, they all liked him, even seacrest got in on the ass-kissing. geez, who do you think paid them off, his mom or his dad?

3. jermaine sellers - another stuck up guy with a weak ass voice. something about this season... it seems like everyone already feels so entitled, like they all think that they absolutely SHOULD be stars and can't imagine why they aren't yet. what every happened to humility? well, i realize that i'm talking about humility on a REALITY tv show, but still. pass.

4. tim urban - hmm... the reject. on one hand i'd kinda like to root for the underdog, but on the other there was a reason why he didn't make it in the first place. i think idol was just trying to cash in on the zac efron factor for one week at least, but i think he looks more like he belongs in the brady bunch... and sings like it too, i mean, if you can't hit the high notes, don't sing a song with the high notes! for goodness sake, you can choose whatever song you want, why highlight your weaknesses? pass.

5. joe munoz - i don't remember this guy at all. oh but i really like the song he picked. and hey, i actually really liked this guy's performance... he gets my first vote of the night! ...and not just because he might be mexican archuleta, haha.

6. tyler grady - this guy bugs me. completely. from the greasy face and hair to the hippie girlie look, i can't stand it. he looks like he just got up on the bar after 3 rounds of drinks and some one dared him to sing some crappy song. pass.

7. lee dewyze - good song. bad voice. haha, oh wait, what is he doing? this is not even the song. y'know, i think the judges this year have brainwashed all the contestants into "changing things up" so that they're all just making their own damn songs now. and they ain't good songs. pass. haha, he goin' cry.

8. john park - okay, as much as that hippie guy bugs me, i think korean drama guy bugs me even more... barf. well, great song though... oh, but crappy singing. geez, fit enough runs in there? c'mon, pick a note and sing it. pass.

9. michael lynche - he's a personal trainer? he's enormous! who'd trust him? haha, also... here's anothe weird theme for this season... contestants going on idol to "provide better lives" for their children, mothers, fathers, old sickly grandmothers... what happened to just "i wannabe be the american idol?" not everything's gotta be so noble. that's why this show is on it's last legs... it's been on too long already. oh, back to this guy... boring, pass.

10. alex lambert - what an unfortunate last name... and an even more unfortunate mullet. wow, he sucks. pass.

ellen doesn't want to eat a ripe banana... hahahaha!

11. casey james - barf. i'm gonna anti-vote for this guy just because of all this crap that they're dumping on this guy. barf. i wasn't even listening to his singing because they're just being idiotic. pass.

12. andrew garcia - this guy i had hope for from the beginning. he's the one contestant that i've heard that actually sounds like i might like to hear him sing a real song on the radio in the present day. but... he picked the crappiest song of the night. i see what he's trying to do, but you can't polish a turd. i mean, when the last lyrics of the night are "cock it and pull it." c'mon. still, i really like this guy and i would vote for him for sure.

so, all in all, here are my picks for the guys:

1. andrew garcia
2. joe munoz
3....

and guess what? i don't care about anyone else! yikes, i really hope things turn around this season, for both the guys and girls... otherwise this is gonna be a painful season....

#312 - idol again, girls top 12

2010-02-23T22:17:00.002-10:00

hmm, so i'm trying this new thing called "having a social life." it's difficult. so much easier to sit home in quiet and blog all night, but i think the "having a life" is probably the better path to take right? anyway, that's why there haven't been a lot of blog posts lately, but american idol is on again, and even though i've been getting more and more anti-idol show by show since the end of season 7, criticizing the contestants is still a fun thing to do after watching the show. so here we go:

first week, top 12 girls, they keep saying things like "this is the best group of girls we've ever had," which just means that they're trying to hype up something that really isn't there. so i'm not expecting much. this year i really haven't gotten to invested into anything idol yet this season. the auditions were all pretty crappy i thought (perhaps just 2 or 3 that i really remembered) and i don't care about any of the contestants yet so i figured i'd just wait until the actual voting to dive into "caring about it." so here are my thoughts on the contestants:

1. paige miles - i don't remember her at all from the auditions. so she has a big voice but she's a mess with it, trying to do too many things, i don't like that. this is very NOT my preference so... pass. but at least she's kinda funny, i guess she can stick around for that "pee" comment.

2. ashley rodriguez - ooh, okay, she's hot. i don't really care what she sounds like, i'd put her through just for hotness. sounds like she has a stylistic voice... meaning, maybe there's something there, but it's gonna take a studio full of techs to get it sounding good. pass... but i'd like to see her one more week.

3. janell wheeler - ooh, another really pretty one. her "american boy" is one of the 2 or 3 auditions that i actually remembered, so i really like her, but i don't know what she sang tonight... that was WAY not good. but i really want her to go through to next week based on that "american boy" performance that they showed in her clip.

4. lilly scott - weirdo. she looks like a street performer. oh, she sounds like a street performer. like someone standing on the corner with a hat... and that's not a good thing. what does "fixing a hole" even mean? pass.

5. katelyn epperly - oh, okay, SHE looks like a street performer... i mean a street "performer." haha, okay yeah she can sing pretty well, but i hated it. okay, maybe not "hated," but i don't care to listen to anything like that again... therefore pass.

6. haeley vaughn - this is the second girl that i remembered from auditions, i really liked her first carrie underwood country audition, but after that i just thought her voice was screechy and annoying... and that's the version i heard tonight. she gotta pull it back a little bit. also, what the heck was she doing to the melody in that song? i actually thought it might be a cool choice of song, if she just sang the melody straight (playing with the tempo and style were great choices though). still, she interests me, so i'd like to see her go through.

7. lacey brown - holy crap i so wished they had picked this girl instead of that hideous megan joy last season. that being said, i thought she sucked. but beyond that i really liked this performance because everytime i hear this song i think of this:

xena rocks.

but as for this girl and her performance.... pass.

8. michelle delamor - wow, no one should sing alicia keys. i'm sure she's got an okay voice, but no one cares because she doesn't sing as good as alicia keys. an easy pass.

9. didi benami - she seems kinda different, and i like the sweet looking, singer-songwriter types (like brooke white, who wasn't all that great a singer, but she just interested me). i kinda didn't like her song choice, but it definately fit her voice. i'd like her to go through... with caution, because i can hear just a little bit of megan joy in her voice (like all her vowel distortions and glottal stops in the middle of words, haha).

10. siobahn magnus - what an awesome name! not an awesome singer. i think she's probably got some more potential than the other girls for sure, and i almost like her choice of song (it was just at the brink of working... but never got there, kinda dreary). still, she interests me too, so i'd like to see her go on.

11. crystal bowersox - this girl i think i like... i really don't like the harmonica, but i like her voice and i think i'd really like to listen to her sing more songs, therefore, i would actually vote for her! amazing, that's the first vote i would actually cast so far, and it's on the penultimate contestant. but... she looks dirty...

12. katie stevens - from the auditions it seemed like she had a voice kinda like katherine mcphee (who i really liked), but as it turns out, she's just a poor man's version... i'm sure she'll probably do pretty well just because she's got vocal chops, but i really didn't like this performance. pass.

wow, so take a look at that, i'm real critical this year. i only gave one vote out and passed on almost all of them. so, for the very first week here's my rank:

1. crystal bowersox
2. janell wheeler
3. didi denami
4. siobhan magnus
5. katie stevens
6. haeley vaughn

after that i really don't care, haha. but if these six make it to the [real] top 12 i'd be okay.

so that was kinda disappointing... let's hope the guys can do much better tomorrow night. i've got high hopes for andrew garcia... not much anyone else, but we'll see...

#311 - broken

2010-02-11T23:47:00.002-10:00

february sucks. this time last year i was just starting an awful three week painfest with shingles. this year february started with an infected cyst, moved on to a broken car door, then a broken computer, and we're not even to that damn valentine's day yet, sheesh!

well, at least that gross thing on my back is finally healed (i haven't been able to go to the beach in like a month, which is kinda okay because it's been too cold, but i feel like a sloth now), but here's what happened to my computer, it's not that interesting, but it seems to be kind of a common problem so i'm here to inform and (hopefully) protect. i really liked my computer when i got it, way back in nov. 2006, it was a pretty sweet machine back then, but i should've known from the beginning i was gonna have problems with it... the day i got it, i unpacked it, set it up, and there was no sound. i couldn't figure it out for awhile but i finally returned it and luckily got completely new one. then i had more trouble with it when vista came out and they sent me that update (it was running on XP, which, in retrospect, i should've kept). then last year the whole thing with that broken hinge happened and i had to take it in again, they sent it somewhere to the mainland and it took over a month to get back, grr. and so last weekend it was doing a windows update and all of a sudden it went to blue screen... grr, saying something about an error updating the display driver. fine, whatever, i restarted and tried again. after a few cycles of that happening i tried to turn it on again and then i got nothing but a black screen. grr... i ended up connecting it to my parent's monitor to be able to see what was going on and luckily for a span of a few hours i was able to boot into safe mode so i could at least retrieve my pictures and music (thankfully!), but after that it totally crashed and now it doesn't boot up at all. GRR!

the worst part of all that? like an idiot i bought the 4 year warranty that expires in nov. of this year. but i bought the warranty from circuit city. guess who went out of business last year? circuit city.

so now i've got no computer, all my files and photos (by the grace of God) saved across four flash drives and 3 dvds, and no idea what kind of computer to buy next. i'm thinking i want to stay away from hp definately, and i completely don't want to switch over to mac, so i'm considering dell, toshiba, or that new asus brand (it's so much cheaper... and i'm thinking i don't want to LOVE my new computer, because then when it inevitably breaks down i can just dump it).

but... that's only one major money-eater this money, the second is my poor, old car. i still love it, but damn it's costing me tons in new repairs every month. this month the door handle broke and i spent $628 so that i could actually open it again (along with new brake pads/shoes, CV joint, a bunch of little things here and there). grr.

but to top it all off, today when i went to best buy i was driving out of the parking lot and the FRICKIN' MUFFLER DROPPED OUT! geez! and this is the second time it happened. well, the first time (which was also almost 4 years ago, right about the time i bought my laptop) only the exhaust pipe fell off in the parking lot at work, this time the entire muffler just plopped down on to the road and i drove off. GRR!

so there's another repair i've got to pay for tomorrow and i will have no money left for the laptop. grr.

and valentine's day is on sunday. grr.

i don't like this post.

grr

#310 - epitath

2010-02-05T20:23:00.000-10:00

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

2010-01-26T17:43:00.003-10:00

** 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

2010-01-24T15:18:00.003-10:00

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

2010-01-13T21:25:00.000-10:00

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!

2010-01-08T09:32:00.003-10:00

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?

2009-12-31T19:25:00.005-10:00

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

2009-12-23T18:10:00.002-10:00

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

2009-12-22T16:44:00.002-10:00

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

2009-12-20T15:48:00.000-10:00

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

2009-12-18T11:14:00.004-10:00

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!

#300 - happy birthday to me

2009-12-08T18:53:00.000-10:00

i was going to save post #300 for pics from my trip to portland, but as my 28th birthday has come and gone, i decided that numbers are insignificant. what's in a number? does being #300 make this post any more important than post #299 or #301? being that they all come from my brilliant mind, no, of course not. was i so drastically different yesterday at age 27 than i am today at age 28? doubtful. so i use this post on the day after my birthday to make some birthday wishes. some impossible birthday wishes. see now that i'm all adult-ified with a job and salary and everything, if there's some material thing that i'd actually want to put on a birthday list, why wouldn't i just buy it? so instead i reflect on how i would like things to be going in my life at this very moment and what things i would like to see changed. and to that end, i have created a list of my top 10 impossible birthday wishes... in order of most improbable to least.

10. i wish people would be better. better drivers, better parents, nicer to each other, kind-er, more forgiving. as a human race, i wish people would treat each other as humans, it has been happening less and less frequently recently, at least in my scope of life. take time to consider others. ditch the "ainokea" attitude and start caring.
9. i wish parents would make better decisions about their procreation activities. stop having kids if you can't afford to raise them (both financially and not). stop procreating if you're not prepared to deal with the consequences of your actions. realize that once you have made that decision you have more than your own life to take into consideration.
8. i wish, as a culture, we all could stem the trend of self-victimization. stop using abuse as an excuse to stop doing the things mentioned in wish #10. i wish people would stop saying things like, "you don't have the right to say that to me," or "i deserve..." and "i am entitled to..." i wish people could suppress their "knee-jerk" reactions to every "scandalous" or "outrageous" event that transpires and use reason to resolve conflicts. things happen, the seconds never stop or tick backwards so there's nothing else you can do but move on.
7. i wish people would be smarter... at least smart enough so that i no longer have reasons to use my two favorite phrases... "no shit, sherlock" and "thank you, captain obvious."
6. i wish people would use better grammar, or at least be aware of the appropriate times to use formal vs. colloquial language (this goes out especially to those news anchors who say "thanks very much").
5. i wish i could find a girl who has NONE of the qualities listed above...
4. i wish the makaha peacock lady is proven completely innocent and gets a pat on the back for a job well done. (on a related note... i also wish that damn parrot would shut the hell up. or that it's owners would show a little more consideration to their neighbors.)
3. i wish fox (or someone else, since obviously they are idiots) would un-cancel dollhouse
2. i wish the rainbow wahine would blow past illinois, take out michigan/stanford, upset penn state in the final four, and win a 5th national women's volleyball championship, GO BOWS!
1. i wish i could give up trying to control everything and everyone else around me, stop worring about how to further my self-pity and get on with living my life to the fullest extent possible.

in fact, that last one is SO possible... consider it... DONE!

...now, blow out the candles

#299 - the plan

2009-12-03T16:41:00.003-10:00

so here it is... the vacation plan. portland. relient k. one week away. at first i wanted to make a really detailed itinerary, mostly because i wanted to squeeze in as much as i could. but then i realized, hey, this is a vacation! i'm gonna stress myself out trying to squeeze everything in minute-by-minute and then i'm gonna feel like i've wasted my time if i don't get to do everything i wanted to do. so forget it, i'm gonna just map out the major things and then GO WITH THE FLOW! that's my motto for this trip, just take what life gives you and go with it. i mean, i decided to take this trip on kind of a whim anyway, so let the trend continue!

Thursday - Dec. 10th
- arrive at PDX at 9:30 pm
- late night bite (le bistro montage?) or a big sleep?

Friday - Dec. 11th
- voodoo donuts for breakfast
- underground portland walking tour, this looks cool, too bad they don't have the "beyond bizarre" tour (a haunted portland tour) going on that weekend but maybe we can do this day-tour (it starts at 2 pm, might have to buy tickets in advance...)
- tax-less christmas shopping in downtown portland?
- Saburo's for dinner

Saturday - Dec. 12th
- drive out to the oregon coast, lots of scenery and picture taking along the way
- oregon museum of science and industry scream! exhibit
- mcmenamins pubs for beer/pizza/movie

Sunday - Dec. 13th
- saturday market
- drive to salem
- Winter Wonder Slam Tour, doors open at 4:30 pm, starts at 6:00 pm

Monday - Dec. 14th
- fly back home on an 8:45 am flight

well, that's just for starters... i'm gonna stick with my "go with the flow" attitude so i'll take things as they come. but i'm super excited! i bought a new gorillapod for my camera (although i decided against buying a whole new camera, i'll stick with old faithful for awhile longer, plus with the gorillapod now i can take much better low-light shots, like the pic of the moon last night, see above) so cool pics will be assured.

i'm gonna freeze i know it... i was watching the civil war today and everyone's completely bundled, there was steam coming out of the player's helmets when they took them off... but it'll be a neat change, a change of landscape, a change of lifestyle, a trip into something different. i'm excited.

#298 - well screw you too

2009-11-29T11:36:00.008-10:00

The top 4 seeds in the 2009 NCAA Women's Volleyball Tournament:

1. Penn St.
2. Texas
3. Florida St.
4. Stanford

you think football fans are the only ones who have to worry about the BCS?

Hawai'i has been ranked #3 in the AVCA coaches poll pretty much all year and they got slammed with the No. 12 seed while Florida St. (#14 in the polls) somehow snags the No. 3 seed? both Hawai'i and Florida St. have identical 28-2 records, but Hawai'i's two loses came to legitimate #2 Texas and #11 California, while Florida St. lost to #15 Florida and unranked Georgia Tech. Hawai'i has wins over #6 Stanford, #9 UCLA, and #22 St. Louis. Florida St. has only one quality win... over #5 Illinois. how does this happen? three letters... RPI.

what the heck is RPI? and how is it determined? i'll tell you how.. it's determined behind the closed doors of the NCAA... and what happens at the NCAA apparently stays at the NCAA. but let's take this from another perspective... the BCS.

in how many different sports does the NCAA have to fail with in order to instigate some kind of change with the BCS? obviously the deficiencies are most apparent in football, with perhaps an undefeated boise state (at No. 6 in the BCS polls) crossing their fingers to get a BCS berth with undefeated TCU (No. 4) a step ahead of them. now, in my opinion, there should only be one undefeated team in the country (if any) in ANY sport at the end of a season. and with this football bowl system, heck, we could have as many as four at the end of this season. there absolutely needs to be a playoff system in place for college football. if they can do it at the FCS level, sure they can do it at the FBS level. Just a little elite 8 bracket and you can get the winners of each BCS conference in there with 2 at-large bids from the mid-majors (although I would prefer just a straight up top 8 in the rankings).

but, i digress... women's volleyball DOES have a championship tournament, and it's a healthy 64-team field. but let's look at who's in this year:

Pac-10 (8 out of 10 teams): can you believe everyone except Arizona St. and Oregon St. got in? sure, they're a high-caliber conference for volleyball, but Washington St. was 6-12 in conference... really?

4. Stanford (hosting)
6. Washington
8. UCLA (hosting)
9. California
14. Oregon
ur. USC (hosting)
ur. Arizona
ur. Washington St.

Big-10 (6 out of 11 teams): sure you've got Penn St., definately No. 1, but the rest of them are unimpressive. Illinois, the second team in the conference was 16-4 in conference play... does that mean the conference was good or that Illinois was bad? of course Penn St. is good (i would even say "awesome"), but if they're beating everyone up 3-0 in the conference tournament, how can you continue to vouch for those other teams?

1. Penn St. (hosting)
5. Illinois (hosting)
11. Minnesota
13. Michigan (hosting)
ur. Ohio St. (hosting)
ur. Michigan St.

Big-12 (6 out of 12 teams): Baylor, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M all have 11-9 conference records... again, sure the competition is tough... but that's 9 loses... even if you lose to the top 3 teams twice each, that's only 6 loses, where do the other 3 loses come from?

2. Texas (hosting)
7. Iowa St. (hosting)
10. Nebraska (hosting)
ur. Baylor
ur. Oklahoma
ur. Texas A&M

ACC (5 out of 12 teams): how do you give Florida St. a No. 3 seed when they're ranked #14 and none of the other teams in the conference are good enough to warrant a seed? answer = ?? Florida St. was #3 in the RPI and Hawai'i was #22 so I guess that's the reason, but how the heck do they come up with those RPIs?

3. Florida St. (hosting)
ur. Duke
ur. Georgia Tech
ur. Clemson
ur. Miami

so... bottom line. lots of big winners and big losers by the NCAA. but the good news is... it's still a tournament. win and move on, lose and go home. Hawai'i's team this year is really good so I've got no doubt they'll prove those NCAA bastards wrong with that No. 12 seed. so let's take a look at Hawai'i's bracket.

first round at USC
# 16 USC (21-9) vs. Oklahoma (18-11)
New Mexico (20-9) vs. #3/No. 12 Hawai'i (28-2)

New Mexico has loses to Baylor, TCU (twice), #19 Arizona, Tulane, #23 Colorado St. (twice), BYU, and UNLV. quality wins? NONE! Oklahoma also has a bunch of loses to unranked opponents and USC went 4-7 vs. ranked opponents. so you gotta figure USC advances, and then Hawai'i has a tricky match-up playing USC at USC. but Hawai'i beat USC handily last year in the same round of the NCAA tournament, and Hawai'i is much better this year.

so WHEN Hawai'i beats USC, it goes to the regionals at Stanford where they are penciled in to face No. 5 Illinois, who's had a good year, their only loses came to #1 Penn St (twice), #14 Florida St. #13 Minnesota, and Michigan St. still, the way Hawai'i looks, i'm definately calling the "on-paper" upset there (really wouldn't be an upset because in the rankings Hawai'i is #3 and Illinois is #5) but still a great match-up at a neutral court. the winner of that match i'm thinking will take on No. 4 Stanford, who Hawai'i beat earlier this year, but Stanford is not the same team as when Hawai'i beat them 3-0 in september, re: Alix Klineman is healthy. when Hawai'i played Stanford, Klineman (who Hawai'i heavily recruited out of high school) was still coming back from injury, but (as Stanford always seems to do) they have finished the season out strong, capturing the Pac-10 title out-right (over an-equally good Washington team) so that Hawai'i vs. Stanford rematch looks awfully compelling, that's what i'll be wishing for come the second week of december...

as for the rest of the field... Penn St. looks just about unstoppable, but there's a reason why they play the game! that's why i love sports, you still gotta play and even if you're 99.9% favored on paper, you still gotta win, and in a tournament bracket like this, there are no second chances. nevertheless, i'm thinking that Penn St. will win easily the first two rounds, have a tricky match-up vs. Florida at Florida in the regionals, but then run into the winner of California/UCLA in the regional finals, win that, have another tough match against either Hawai'i/Stanford in the final four and then face Texas in the championship match (along the way, I see Texas facing Nebraska and Washington (who beats Minnesota and has a Pac-10 showdown with Oregon in the regional finals after Oregon takes out Florida St.).

there are only 4 teams that i think can take out Penn St (currently on something like a 96-match win streak after winning the NCAA championships the last two years, both over stanford)... Texas, Stanford, Hawai'i, and Washington. Washington has to get through Texas first (assuming Texas handles Nebraska, which i think they will), i think Washington has the serving and backcourt defense to trouble Texas so they've got a shot i think, but then to pick off Texas and them Penn St. will be a tough request. Texas looks almost as awesome as Penn St, Destinee Hooker and Megan Hodge cancel each other out, as does Alisha Glass and Ashley Engle (although in contrasting styles). i think texas' passing is a little more of a weakness than Penn St. and actually they just lost in their last regular season game of the year to unranked Kansas 0-3 (that was a late-surprise) so i still think Penn St has the edge, but in a championship match who knows? Stanford with Klineman ON has a shot at Penn St, although this time it won't be in the championship match. Hawai'i, if it passes money and get all of its' players clicking like it can and has many times during this season, can pull out the upset and go all the way this year i believe (and i've not said that since the kim willoughby days, so you know that's saying something). this year they've got the serving, passing, ball-control, and hitting to take them to the championship. the only thing they've got to worry about is height and blocking. Hawai'i has to work hard against the monsterously tall teams that they'll see in the post-season, but they've got the skill to attack them, it's gonna come down to match-ups and i think if Hawai'i is on it's game, we're gonna have a lot to watch before christmas...

GO BOWS!

ps - update, they interviewed dave shoji during the women's basketball game tonight and he was just as upset as i am (i think jim leahey even a little more). his theory? whoever is making these NCAA decisions are not volleyball people. it seems as if they went strictly by the RPI, not only with seeding, but also with selecting at-large teams. now that i look at it, yup, it looks like they just went right down the RPI list with no thought to who the teams were playing (who's on a "hot streak," what happened in the conference tournaments, etc). so, screw you NCAA (yet again)... but we'll show you... we'll show you all the way to the final four!

GO BOWS!

UPDATE!: on man, how much more upset am i? i just read this article on the NCAA's own website written by a volleyball analyst and even he is blasting the "selection committee" on their tournament decisions! they way the bracket breaks-down, the picks and the seedings closely follow the RPI, just as i've said, but the last RPI rankings produced were on Nov. 22nd... NOT EVEN COUNTING RESULTS FROM THE END OF THE SEASON (and, more importantly, the conference championship tournaments) GAMES THAT WERE PLAYED LAST WEEK! wtf?! how can you completely discount the last week of play and make your selections strictly on rankings from a week earlier? go read that article, at least someone over there has some sense... sheesh.

#297 - i want to go to there

2009-11-21T21:31:00.003-10:00

okay, so no new big news that the past month or two have been kind of a downer, so i've been looking for some things to lighten my mood. furlough fridays have helped a bit (more specifically, going surfing more often has helped). getting out of the house (although i love my house) has also helped. but i've been looking for something more than the usual picker-uppers. then i got an email advertising this:

and after seeing that, i was decided. i am finally going to see relient k in concert. taking a look at the tour dates, i was looking at a few options, vegas (that's a pretty easy trip, plus lots of other things to do there independently), san diego (ever since going there for the asha convention i've been wanting to go back... but, i don't know anyone there and it'd be pretty depressing going there solo), and salem, oregon. vegas would've been the easiest (especially since i'd be off of work during that time), but i decided it was finally time to visit my super awesome friend brandi in oregon. so that was it. with that i decided to take a trip to PORTLAND!

so after skipping my usual over-exhaustive research and thinking and planning processes, i decided it was time to take action. details can be worked out later. i needed to stop thinking and start doing. i bought my plane tickets and concert tickets and i'm all set. i put in my personal leave at work, confirmed plans to not be here and i'm gone, that's it, i'm doing.

now... now that everything's bought and paid for, now it's time to plan what to do! brandi, i'm giving you full green-light authority to be portland expert here, i obey all your suggestions and you have total veto power over anything that i think is cool but actually might not be. she already wrote me a tentative awesome portland things to do list on her blog so i'm looking through all her suggestions and they all look great. along with those things, i think the things that i'm most amped about doing are:

1. renting a car - not that i'm really amped about it, but i still need to do it and so i'm writing it down here so i don't forget
2. relient k concert - okay, as you can see on the flyer, relient k is actually NOT the head-liner (i can't say i really like toby mac, but i do know some of his songs, but it matters not as long as relient k is somewhere in there), but it's gonna be awesome, just before christmas with songs from their christmas album and their latest album (forget and not slow down) which i've been listening to in my car everyday since i got it
3. portland eats! - man every single website brandi posted makes me salivate... i'm really gonna enjoy eating well in portland
4. beer + movies? - it happens in portland! finally, a city with some common sense
5. oregon coast/scenery - even though i love the beaches, i am really looking forward to seeing the northwest landscape. it's so different from any kind of forest that i'd see here and there's something even almost enchanting about the rain and gloominess of the weather (of course, we'll see about that when i'm freezing cold and getting soaked, but until then...)
6. weird portland - i guess a big tourist pull in portland is that everyone is kinda kooky. so going to the saturday market or seeing all the arts and everything just around the city will probably be kinda cool

okay, i still have lots to research, but let's take things one at a time... first off, i got our concert tickets in the mail, woo hoo!

lots more coming... this is just the beginning!

#296 - NOOO!!! DOLLHOUSE!!! CANCELED!!!

2009-11-15T09:30:00.000-10:00

how sad am i that those idiots at fox are gonna cancel dollhouse? so sad that i couldn't even write about it for four days. so sad that in my haste to find a picture of dollhouse to put on this blog all i could find was this heavily-airbrushed promo picture that completely undermines the intelligence of the actual show itself. so sad that i pulled a "kathleen" and actually wrote a letter of complaint to the fox network like a weird old man writing an angry letter to the noisy bar across the street from his home.

now, this isn't my finest piece of work, i admit, but in the heat of the moment i scribbled this email out on my computer and sent it in without editing, purposefully, because i believe that bad grammar and "twitter"-type punctuation further conveys my anger at the fox network stupidity. but anywhere here's what i wrote:

dammit fox, can't you recognize a good thing when you've got it? here you've got Joss Whedon creating a wonderously clever show in Dollhouse, then you condemn it to friday nights and wonder why it's not getting the ratings you were hoping for? no shit, sherlock. did you notice the dvr ratings, or more specifically, did you notice the huge boost in ratings that Dollhouse got from viewers who record the show to watch it back (over and over again) when they get home from their friday nights out? of course you probably did, but i guess none of that matters when you've got crappy re-runs to air in the friday night death spot instead huh?

nevermind that this has happened to Joss Whedon before with Firefly, but I thought that this time fox would realize what a gem of writing, casting, and intelligence they've got with Dollhouse. perhaps it is not the kind of show that any random viewer can just pick up and watch. but why penalize those of us viewers who actually FOLLOW a show? a show that has a start and an ending point to each season. one with a story-arc that actually makes sense. well, i guess the ironic thing is that now we will have a definate END to the storyline, at least we can be thankful that fox has given Joss enough time to tweek-out an actual series finale. but still, how many times does it have to be reinforced in me that network television does not care about a quality product? it's depressing. who's going to have the guts to stand by a quality show?

here's what they wrote back:

ALL 13 episodes in the 2nd Season will air as promised

DOLLHOUSE will air 2-Hour episodes on FRI 12/4, 12/11 & 12/18 (8-10pm ET/PT) - then return after the holidays on FRI 1/8, 1/15 & 1/22 - to complete the full Season 2 order of 13 episodes!!

We have given the producers enough time to bring closure in the 13th episode.

ASKFOX

obviously that was a bot... and automatic reply message. but it's better than nothing. and that's what i now have to believe. "it's better than nothing."

december will be dollhouse month, with two new episodes each friday and joss whedon will have time to craft out a semi-series ending in the last two episodes (that aren't shot yet) in january. still, i can't help thinking that someone still dropped the ball on this one. sure, dollhouse got a lot of promotion from fox, with their dollhouse/terminator lead-ups, but it all seems kinda empty when you still stick dollhouse in the friday death spot, then pull it completely from november sweeps so it doesn't even get a chance to boost your ratings. i mean, i don't think i've ever seen a dollhouse re-run, wouldn't that help solve all fox's reported problems of people not being able to follow the storyline/characters? i mean, how many reruns of bones have they shown in the last two months? seriously people...

grrr... i'm going to be upset with fox for a LONG time about this one. first firefly, then terminator, now dollhouse. at least i get to watch dollhouse until it's abbreviated ending. plus we still get to see summer glau in her dollhouse episodes, and if watching joss whedon shows has taught me anything, it's that love = pain, and just when the viewers start loving a character, that means it's time to kill them off! haha, so i guess it was a fitting end for dollhouse after all...

(but really not!)

#295 - when a good joke becomes an even greater reality

2009-11-11T17:31:00.001-10:00

last april thinkgeek.com put this item up for sale as one of it's april fool's jokes. so many people actually tried to order it (thinking that it was a real product) that thinkgeek.com wrote to george lucas trying to get the rights to make it. and seven months later one nerdy joke becomes a beautiful reality...

#294 - go bows!

2009-11-07T00:44:00.003-10:00

i don't think i've posted about uh wahine volleyball yet this year, which is surprising to me because they are pretty fricken' awesome this year. i guess i've been kinda down the past few years because the team has been kinda of mediocre (of course, "mediocre" for UH vball is still stellar for pretty much all of the rest of the country). i really started watching vball in the 90's... i don't think i've ever watched a game in klum gym (in person), but i've been to the stan sherrif center from the beginning (when it was called the special events arena). the first team i really remember following was the 1995 team (i think they lost in the NCAA regional finals to florida) and was really into it when the 1996 team went to the final four (losing to stanford in the championship match). i watched the 1998 team beat BYU in the record setting longest women's volleyball match ever (a little over 3 and a half hours) in the WAC championship. i was crushed when the 1999 team (with heather bown) fell to texas a&m in the NCAA regionals in hawaii (i was there) when the final four was gonna be played in hawaii (that was also my first year as a student at UH). i coasted through all the great times during 2000-2003 with kim willoughby, lily kahumoku, maya gustin, jennifer carey, lauren duggins, etc, and went to all the "big" matches every year (those were the good ole days, 3 final four appearances in 4 years). i kept the faith through good regular seasons but disappointing "big match" loses during the kamana'o years 2004-2006 (except for that AWESOME win in the NCAA regionals at the stan sherrif over USC on my birthday!). i suffered through 2007 with the loss to utah state and middle tennesse to end the season in only the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament. i rebounded last year with kanani danielson, the spectacular 5-set win over washington, and the return of the famous hawaii ball-control. and this year i revel in the awesome-ness that is again rainbow wahine volleyball.

okay, well if that didn't sound creepy-obsessed enough yet, here's why i think this year's team is (finally!) another final four national championship contender:

1. serving - this year's team has got serving coming from all directions, aneli cubi-otineru's blistering jump serve, tough floaters from stephanie brant, amber kaufman, dani mafua, and jayme lee. on top of the tough serving, it's also very consistent, and when they're not getting aces they're forcing bad passes (also, UH's net play on overpasses has been stellar, i can only remember seeing one net violation on an overpass all year).

2. passing - with danielson, cubi-otineru, and liz ka'aihue returning hawai'i's ball control to hawai'i standards, they can finally run an offense...

3. quick tempo offense - whatever mafua lacks in creativity or decision-making (or whatever dave shoji lacks there), she makes up in setting a GREAT quick tempo offense. while i'd love to see more tandem plays, like the double-quick or the x-play, you gotta give mafua credit for pushing the tempo and getting her hitters one-on-one blockers a great percentage of the time. while i'd love to see more variety in the sets (why not include the d-set? where's the 31-set been all year?) and defiantely more involvement from the middles, you can't fault an offense that's plus-.300 and 3rd in the nation in hitting percentage.

4. blocking - with the addition of brittany hewitt (and even forsythe) it just seems like all of hawai'i's blocking has gotten better, which is probably why their digs don't show up in the national stats... they're getting a lot of touches off the block, that's a great thing.

5. all-court attack - one thing definately different from the last few years to this one is the all-court attack. remember 2002 & 2003? remember the diversity? remember getting four or five players in double digit kills? well, the games are shorter now (and the wahine are getting points in all kinds of ways), but still they are spreading the wealth. and what's even more impressive is that they're banging away from every corner of the court. the opponents are under constant fire. hawai'i players are more ready to take a rip at any time, from anywhere on court and that's an intimidating thing to see on the other side of the net.

so yeah, i know you've still got penn state up there, undefeated (for like, two years) in the top spot, but i still think UH has a great shot this year. of course, any of those top PAC-10 teams can pull an upset, and texas (although they just lost to iowa state) has destinee hooker and ashley engle so even if they get in passing trouble, heck they just throw it high and outside and hooker goes up and over everyone to put the ball down. but this year's team is the first one since the kim & lily days that i really think they can grab that national championship in december. a little ways to go before then, first of all, sunday is senior night, and i really think that this year's seniors will be hard to replace to have a great team again next year:

amber kaufman - she's my favorite. cause she gets angry! haha, plus you can't tell from tv, but man she skies! well, she's also a high jumper, even went to the US olympic trials (she placed 12th). i feel kinda bad for her because she was supposed to redshirt her freshman year, but there were so many injuries that year that she had to be "activated" halfway through the year and even then didn't get that much playing time. just imagine if she had one more year to play, woo, she'd be all-american i'm sure! heck, i'd put her on my all-american team this year just for that jump, man, tv doesn't do some things justice.

i remember hearing about cubi-otineru out of high school and i was thinking she was gonna be great from the start. then she didn't go straight to UH and i kinda forgot about her, i thought it was a big loss (like how jennifer saleamua ended up going to all-american status at nebraska after pulling out of UH), but what do you know she came back again and the hype was for real. finally UH has an ACTUAL right-side attack! plus the ball-handling skills and general smart play, she was a good one for sure. again, it's just too bad she didn't have a full career at UH, but that's how sports go right?

just take a look at stephanie brant. transfered from UC santa barbara where she made conference all-freshman, got thrust into that tough 2007 season, but still played pretty great, now is a spectacular server & defensive player. i love players who can dig, and she does it a great job right-side digging.

she's cute right? haha, okay well she's good too. it's just too bad she's so short, i'm sure she would've been the starting libero, but that's just the darn thing with sports, sometimes even if you're skilled, you can't beat another half-a-foot in height. even though she's backrow, a taller player just covers more ground. it's too bad, but as a sub she's still a great defender.

i always wonder if players who were starters for their old teams (like fowler for arkansas) regret transfering to a back-up role for a better team. then again, now she gets to be on a national championship contender team, so i guess that answers that question huh?

great group of seniors i think. even though there's a lot of talent coming back next year, i really think with these seniors hawai'i has a great shot at the national championship... only time will tell though... and i'll be watching!

go bows!

#293 - halloween

2009-11-01T22:24:00.002-10:00

little mac is back!

so, halloween turned out pretty good after all. it started pretty darn good actually, our team had our last tennis match saturday morning... i dressed up for the halloween match as a confident man (not a wuss, like usual) and finally won my first match, woo hoo! it was pretty tight though, we (my mixed doubles partner and i) were playing well in the first set, won that 6-4, then we were pretty even in the second set, but broke the lady's serve to go up 6-5 and then it was up to me to serve it out... i remember having at least one match point, but man then we cracked! we lost that game and i think were so bummed at ourselves that we tanked in the tie-break also, losing 4-7. but my partner is super competitive and that kinda parter really helps me because i fold sometimes, but she's fiesty so that helped me pick up my confidence again and we totally rebounded in the 3rd set tie-break (we play a super-tiebreak to 10 points in place of a full 3rd set) and blew them away 10-2 for my first win! the other team was nice though (which you don't get all the time, unfortunately), we had some good rallies and they didn't cheat too much, haha, anyway, it was a fun match and a great way to start a halloween that i kinda just wanted to get through.

so after post-match lunch and drinks i was feeling much better about the rest of the night. got home, took a shower, made dinner, then went to listen to the UH vball game on the radio and completely fell asleep on the couch! man, i must be getting old, a little sun and beer at lunch and i konk-out. anyway, but dinner was good and we played some wii punch-out (insert action shot:and i even got some trick-or-treaters this year. well, maybe about 12-15, but that's like 3x as many as last year, i almost gave out a whole bowl of candy (of course, i was grabbing the candy by the handful, but almost a whole bowl...).

ended up not going out to chinatown afterwards, i was feeling pretty beat from the long day (damn, i must be getting old), so i plopped down on the couch to watch a bit of ghost adventures (live!) on dvr and fell asleep. oh well, it was a pretty fun halloween anyway...

#292 - motivation

2009-10-28T12:44:00.004-10:00

i have none. this is a problem. what happened? i was on such a roll, but somehow at the end of this year i find myself very lacking in motivation.

halloween is my favorite holiday of the year (with christmas very close, but it's kind of depressing sometimes, whereas halloween is supposed to be kinda gruesome it's easy to make it fun), usually every year i get kinda into finding a costume and even decorating (and playing halloween games and using creepy vocabulary, etc with my clients)... but this year i've hardly done anything. i'm completely not motivated to do anything either. i've got a costume already (actually, it's a pretty awesome costume i think, but i got the idea a few months ago so that was before this loss of motivation), i've been on an old school nintendo kick this year and since they've been doing a great job of bringing back the orginal nintendo games i played as a kid on wii, i thought i'd embrace that... so i'm going to be... little mac!

but for some reason i don't really feel like going out anywhere. i think it'd be fine just staying home and passing out candy to the maybe 5 trick-or-treaters that come to my house (that's how many there were last year, at least). maybe i'll change my mind by this weekend, but i think i'd be just fine staying home and watching the 7-hour ghost adventurers lockdown instead (actually, i am getting pretty excited about that, at least). still... last time i went down to chinatown and had a pretty good time, blah, it's gonna have to be a last minute decision i think. see? that's how my motivation goes (or doesn't go) now days, so sad, how do i get out of this funk? i thought halloween would do it, it usually does, but not this year.

not to harp too much on an already over-used movie quote... but, rule #32: enjoy the little things.

so, after switching to t-mobile and getting my first flip phone four years ago (and suffering through it's inevitable slow death for the past year), i have finally found a phone that i want to get! for a long time i stayed away from new phones because 1) i thought they were all crap (except for the iphone, and i was super close to getting a iphone, except that i can't stand at&t and their plans... although if i did get an iphone, how awesome would this bamboo case be?)
and 2) because with any new GOOD phone i'd also have to get a data plan, and i didn't want to pay any more a month for that. but, t-mobile is finally coming out with some reasonable talk/text/data plans and the motorola cliq, finally a phone i can get on board with. it's got both a touch screen and a keyboard (duh, why did it take so long for that to happen) and it's specifically designed to keep me up to date with all the messages and social networking whatever so i can finally be a good friend and keep up with people, haha. now the only thing i have to decide on is which one to get... titanium or winter white? that's a hard decision, my instincts tell me get the black one... but something about that white just looks cool...

so, at least i can get motivated about SOMETHING... even if it is just a phone. rule no. 32 - enjoy the little things.
[sidenote: zombieland was an awesome movie for several reasons:
1. comedy - horror shows that make fun of not only the genre but the idea of horror in real life itself are my favorite, i don't like the over-dramatic-type shows, i like when people respond in very real (aka casual/comedic) ways to absolutely ridiculous situations (e.g. buffy the vampire slayer, firefly)
2. the main character was pretty OCD-like - i can relate
3. running gags - this movie was full of them, i think it's such a waste to let a good joke be forgotten, i think running gags are the smartest form of comedy (you gotta be able to both encode and recall)
4. they killed bill murray... and then laughed about it - not macabre, just funny]

so, zombies, cell phones, maybe there ARE things that can motivate me. life is more that just work, schedules, working out, driving from place to place, avoiding the toxic people of the world (which for some reason it seems there are TONS of all over the place recently, we just need people to be nicer to each other sometimes). anyway, i was talking to some of the actually NICE people at work and they were telling me a lot of ghost stories about where i work. huh? i mean, i assume pretty much everywhere in hawai'i has got to be haunted since it's all islands and there aren't really a lot of places to bury people (plus, ancient hawaiians didn't mark their graves, they thought it wasn't good for your enemies to know where your body is buried), so there've got to be ghosts all over the place right? but i've never even felt the slightest bit of the creeps around my work place (besides the toxic people i try to avoid, that is). i've never even thought i saw something weird, yet it seems like everyone i talk to has SOME kind of weird experience. maybe i'm just skeptical, actually, i KNOW i'm skeptical, but i'm definately open to the possibilities. i mean, if you just take a look at some of the issues in theoretical physics you'll see that theories about parallel universes and time/space anomolies can easily explain some of the paranormal events that some people define as ghosts or portals or whatever.

i mean, i don't really believe ALL that much in ghosts, i just like to want to be proven wrong (although i never am... in most things, haha). that's why i love watching ghost adventurers and all those kinds of shows. i love the "science" of it all. they use devices like electromagnetic field detectors, emf pulse beacons, static energy producers, all devices to measure and manipulate energy to determine the presence of spirits (sound like physics anyone?). there was even a class at KCC a while ago about the science of ghost hunting, i was so close to enrolling. anyway, i've never had an ACTUAL paranormal experience, but all through college i listened to glen grant's radio show every sunday night, i loved it. i even went to that store he opened in puck's alley "the haunt," and luckily got to go on his walking ghost tour of the state capitol before he died. he was a great storyteller, really. i'm sad to say i haven't read any of his books though... i'm gonna have to try and pick me up a copy of one of them after i finish the mafia book sam let me borrow.

well, after writing this blog i guess i've discovered a few more things that motivate me. still, i gotta find a more permanent way out of this funk. i guess it starts with the little things... then sleep... then tomorrow. but you can't worry about tomorrow when you've still got today in front of you.

Matthew 6:34

so... here's my enjoyment for tonight. i was watching psych, then at the commercial break this masterpiece came on, at first i thought my dvr was skipping, but i kept watching in astonishment, for the entire 3 minutes at 17 seconds. and even when it was over, they played the original (non-rap version of the) commercial just to make sure you got the message. then psych came back on.

#291 - mori e no pasupooto

2009-10-24T21:25:00.007-10:00

the weather today was awesome, right?

after furlough friday yesterday, today was completely free. absolutely nothing to do. i mean, usually i play tennis on saturdays but our tennis team had a bye this week. if no tennis i go to the beach, but since i didn't work yesterday i went surfing instead (man, it was crowded... you'd think if all these parents are so concerned about their kids missing one day of school they'd do something school-related with them instead of just shove them all off to the beach... not that i think there's something wrong with sending kids to the beach, who needs more school? let them be kids). plus there was a surf contest going on at ali'i today so i didn't want to join the crowd. i went to the gym yesterday too so today was my off day as well. so what is there to do, i asked myself. well, first of all i woke up at 11:15 so it wasn't like i had an ENTIRE day to fill... so i decided to go to pearlridge. here's some things i learned:

1. i'm in a weird age gap were i'm too old for the trendy clothes (skinny jeans, deep v-neck shirts), still too young for the old-man clothes (macy's, sears), but still not ready to succumb to the generic stuff (gap). i can't wear funny t-shirts to work, and it's too hot to wear nice clothes to work either. conclusion = i bought nothing. and i will continue to wear clothes over 3 years old until fashion catches up to me, or me to it. ha.

2. filipinos are taking over the planet... or at least that mall.

3. stink people hang out in that "book-off" bookstore.

4. stink people hang out in borders.

5. mall food fails me. i used to be uber-excited about going to pearlridge to get arby's... and i actually do like the roastburger, but i don't like curly fries (they got rid of regular fries and only have curly ones now) and fast-food is still fast-food = nausea and possible stroke.

6. i'm a loner. well, i mean, usually when i go to the mall (or anywhere for that matter) i'm all business. go in, get whatever you need, get out, as efficently as possible. i prize efficiency much-ly. but today, since it was a free day and i really had nothing else to be doing, i decided to take it easy, stroll around intentionally "hang" at the mall. it didn't work out so well. first of all, i don't like crowds, and no matter how much i try to convince myself that tolerating crowded places and even enjoying going places where there are lots of people makes me a better person socially... i don't like crowds. secondly, i can't dwaddle. it's that efficiency thing again, if i have something to do, i do it as efficiently as possible, if i have nothing to do, i stand and do nothing. i tried to browse through books at the two above mentioned bookstores, but i just couldn't do it. i make quick decisions about what books i do and do not want to read and pretty much stick by them, i have no interest in what does not interest me. so me trying to browse around the mall to kill time just wasn't working out at all. however, i did have a great time by myself buying some birthday gifts, grabbing lunch, almost being interested in a couple stores, i even contemplated going to see a movie by MYSELF! i would have been the first time ever, but it turned out that all i really wanted was the popcorn and then i probably wouldn't have felt so great after fast-food AND movie popcorn so i decided to go home instead.

on the way home, i decided to take an extended ride through mauka. a few days ago i decided that i wasn't going to take the short (and most efficient) way to and from my place anymore. along that way there's just too much stuff... people, cars, buildings, parking lots, ugh. i decided i needed a more pleasant ride leaving my place and coming back home. a greener ride. people need greenery, don't let anyone tell you different. psychologically, people get to be in better moods when they see greenery, plants, trees, y'know? makes sense right? and everyone's experienced it first hand too. and mauka is the perfect place for that... well, upper mauka at least. so i drove all the way up to the top and man there are some huge houses up there, but even more impressive were the trees and folliage on the side of the roads. nice job mililani. and at the very top, at the end of some of the last roads is the prettiest looking dirt road entrance to somewhere. it's fenced off, but there's a mailbox and address so i'm thinking taking that dirt road through a beautiful looking canopy of tress might lead to a house. i want to live in that house. maybe it's like a totoro house. maybe it's got huge windows looking out onto the mountain-side. that would be awesome.

as much as i love the beach, i want to live in the mountains. always have wanted to. i was so happy when i first moved into this place and saw mushrooms growing in my yard, how awesome is that? remember that movie "mononke hime?" that's where i want to live (except, without that disgusting shishigami, gross). like that picture up there that brandi took in mexico. sweetness. that's why i loved the weather today (okay, took me awhile to get back to the original point of this post, but i'm there). maybe not so much the humidity, but the misty-ness, and the big-fat raindrops and the cold wind. it's that almost-halloween type weather and i love it.

of course, i wouldn't love it so much if this weather stuck around when i want to go surfing, or play tennis or something, but this is probably as much seasonal change as we'd get in hawaii so i like it. i'd imagine i could probably move somewhere like on the mainland where it's this kinda weather all the time, but then i probably wouldn't like it so much. we need change right? we fear change. (remember wayne's world? garth said "we fear change" and then he smashed a robotic hand with a hammer. for some reason i remember that a lot).

one more week 'til halloween, i haven't decorated this year, haven't even planned what i'm gonna do on halloween night. but i have been watching a lot of ghost adventures (they're gonna do a live televized 7-hour lock-down, that should be good). i haven't really gotten excited about it like i usually do, maybe because the weather hasn't been very cooperative until now. gotta go watch me some halloween tv...

#290 - happy house-i-versary to me...

2009-10-15T18:36:00.003-10:00

BLARGH! today was supposed to be my wonderful 2nd house-i-versay and how does it start off? well...

1. woke up late
2. car wouldn't start
3. had to call my MOM for a ride to work (how embarrassing)
4. bad bad meeting at work (if only all i had to do was work with the kids my life would be great)
5. had to call my DAD for a ride home from work (how embarrassing)
6. found out i might get an even bigger pay cut with the furloughs
7. thought i had enough frozen chicken for my curry... but didn't!
8. too discombobulated to go to yoga

ugh. but, things looking up...

1. found some pork to substitute for the chicken
2. the office is on tonight
3. no yoga means i have time for a nap
4. thinkgeek.com order got delivered today

haha. how's that for my 2nd house-i-versay. gonna finish the night off with some curry and beer in my awesome self-owned home, look on the bright side and enjoy my solitude for a bit. then have a big sleep and a better tomorrow.

#289 - forget and not slow down

2009-10-05T19:04:00.008-10:00

1. Forget And Not Slow Down
2. I don't Need A Soul
3. Candlelight
5. Part of It
7. Therapy
8. Over it
9. Sahara
11. Savannah
13. If you believe me
14. This Is The End
15. (If You Want it)

if you've been reading my blog for awhile you'll know that relient k is my favorite band of all time. somehow it just seems like they make songs that speak to me, very specifically, at all the different points of my life. well, okay, i only started listening to them in college, but somehow pretty much each one of their songs seems personally written to my life, y'know how that is sometimes? i mean, it happens with individual songs here and there, but something about these relient k guys... it seems like every song is written for me. like, if i didn't know any better i'd swear they were following my life as a reality show and writing up my soundtrack. i could pick one of their songs for how i've felt in pretty much every period of my life since college to now. maybe i'm just lucky that coincidentally their musical ideas have come to reflect what's going on in my life, but then again, why should i be so special? i'm sure tons of people feel exactly the same way, we're all humans, we all live on earth, we're not so different. who am i to assume that i'm the only one going through what i'm going through? that should be a comforting thought. and it is.

additionally, this band makes use of their notes... one of my biggest pet peeves is how musicians stretch out words over notes, nevermind beyonce and her rifts, i like musicians who make use of every note, have something important to say. that's how relient k is, they don't stretch phrases, but they don't just add in filler words either, their lyrics are very well written. and good writing is very important to me.

and so how coincidental is it that i pre-ordered their newest CD a little over a month ago and it just came in the mail on FRIDAY? perfect timing. how does it happen? (the short answer is, "the Lord works in mysterious ways," but i won't get into faith on this blog) i do have to thank someone though, because man was i in need of this album this weekend. i was gonna write down some lyrics here that really struck me, but man i'd have to write out each song, seriously. how do these guys capture so well these life events and subsequent feelings... and how does it seem to correlate with my own life so perfectly?

well, gotta thank the man upstairs for that probably. he knows so much more than i do.

anyway, just in case anyone out there (or anyone you know) is going through or have just gone through a break-up (don't know if you could call what i had a "break-up" though... that's perhaps being a little over-dramatic), tell them to give this cd a listen.

and on that note, it's time to find the silver lining:took this picture at the beach today, lying on a picnic table, no clouds in the sky today to find the silver lining.. but i call this photo "the triforce" and perhaps the gold lining is better than the silver lining, so now i try to take a step back and take away some good from all of this... here we go:

1. "i've been convicing myself that i'm worthwhile, cause i'm worth what i'll convince myself to be" - (If You Want It), track 15

confidence. i have none. i need some. somehow i've got it in my head that it has to come from others, that someone else has to see what i see in myself in order to believe that what i see is true. but i don't need validation from someone else to think i'm worth something... and if i don't get that validation, that doesn't mean i'm worth nothing. heck, if you don't have confidence in yourself then how can others have confidence in you? now, deep down i know i have confidence, but would it kill me to show it sometime? (i'm talking about confidence in a very specific area of my life, of course, in other areas i probably have altogether TOO much confidence, haha.)

2. "cause i could spend my life just trying to sift through, what i could've done better but what good do what ifs do" - forget and not slow down, track 1

go for what you want. who cares if you look like an idiot doing it? one good thing i can say about myself through this is that i didn't hold back (well, maybe temporarily i did, old habits die hard, but i didn't hold back forever). if you know me (and more importantly, know my family), you'll know that me and my family are major repress-ers... that's how i was raised and that's what i've grown accustomed to. we don't talk about a lot of things. it's not that we don't care about each others' lives, it's just that there are things we don't talk about. dating is definately one of them. (we would have made pretty great mormons, i think) as far as my parents and i are concerned, my sisters never dated ever (well, except for their husbands). i wasn't so good at keeping things under wraps, but you get the idea, dating is not a topic of conversation during my family dinners. and so perhaps i'm not the greatest when it comes to trying to express myself and most times i let things slide, i go with the flow, even if the flow is where i don't want to go. but i'm getting better, and this time when the flow was not where i wanted to be, i spoke up, and (even though it didn't help much) and i can at least say that i didn't hold back just because i was afraid of consequences. i mean, like look at the 2016 olympics... why are people criticizing obama? thank goodness we have a president who stands up for something he believes in and wants. some people say he shouldn't be messing with this olympics stuff while the are more pressing government matters and that is was an "embarrassment" that he went to personally advocate for the chicago olympics, bullshit, good for him, he saw something he wanted to accomplish and he threw himself into trying to make it happen. why the hell should we be "embarrassed" about that? that the person we have representing the united states is willing to go before others for something he believes in and wants no matter what the critics will think of it? good for us, for once i feel patriotic (that doesn't happen much).

3. "and if a nightmare ever does unfold, perspective is a lovely hand to hold" - Part of It, track 5

life is still beautiful. okay, i know how corny that sounds. but even after all that's happened this weekend, i went surfing today and guess what? the ocean was still beautiful. the weather was still envigorating. even the heavy rains that fell last night were comforting and the cold air was so inviting. i love this time of the year for the weather, right before halloween and into christmas (although christmas can kind of be depressing, the weather is oh so comforting). the nights get colder, the air gets crisper, the sun still shines but not so harshly, it shines warmly. the moon and stars at night are gorgeous. when the wind whips up and the rains come down it makes everything feel alive, don't you think? so today (even though the water was super gross... because of the rain yesterday and all the gunk that the river washed out), surfing was great. just as great as it was before this past week. and so, yes, i know, life goes on, but it goes on amazingly well, and all i have to do is open my eyes to see it.

blisters on my feet i crawled back home
frozen from the sleet burned sand and stones
nourished back to life by life alone
with one shake of the mane regain the throne
(If You Want It) - track 15

#288 - just how fricken' awesome is dollhouse?

2009-09-26T22:11:00.002-10:00

question: how awesome is dollhouse?

answer: totally fricken' awesome

one season gone, one episode into season 2 and already dollhouse is placing itself in my very exclusive list of best tv shows ever. it has already passed firefly (unfortunately for firefly, it was an easy decision because firefly only had one season... but it did have movie, a pretty good one at that in "serenity"), and steadily working it's way up over angel (buffy, of course, is at the top). there aren't a lot of tv shows that i'd watch over and over again (especially hour long shows, i can always take a 30-minute roseanne or that 70's show, but to devote an entire hour of my precious and valuable time to something i've already seen means it's gotta be quality), and there are even less tv shows that i'll actually by the dvd for (in fact, right now i've only got five series, the four mentioned above plus terminator), but i'd watch this show everyday if i could. i'd live in the dollhouse if i could, but perhaps that's just because of the cool furniture and ultra-sexy lighting, haha.

anyway, so my comments on the new season? allow me to indulge in my seldom-used tv/actor/actress/name-dropping dorky side for a bit and let's start off with how quality are joss whedon actors? seriously, i don't know why they don't get their due with the media or awards or whatever (wait, actually, that's probably a good thing that they don't get that kind of hollywood "recognition"), but actors in joss whedon shows are spectacular. let's start off with amy acker up there in the clip. in angel she was just cute and funny at first, i'm not sure if the people at angel even knew what kind of talent they had in her at first, but her character grew so completely that they had to invent storylines to fully utilize her skills. and even in that the show was cancelled before they could put all their plans to use (if you've watched angel, after she gets killed in the last season and comes back as a demon, if the show wasn't gonna be cancelled, they were saying that she would've come back again in the next season playing both herself and the demon that killed her). and now in dollhouse... oh man is she creepily hot right? i absolutely love the direction her "whiskey" storyline took at the end of last season and it looks like it'll be developed even more this season, it's absolutely captivating when she plays those tortured characters, i can't wait. and how about alexis denisof with the guest appearance huh? sans british accent? haha, weird. plus, summer glau (from firefly and terminator) is gonna be on sometime this season too, woo hoo! and hopefully "alpha" will be back again sometime this season, they gotta keep alan tudyk around...

okay, but besides the past whedon actors, i'm really liking the newbies on this show too. i've already posted about that tibetian-australian girl and i'm hoping that "november" comes back too, there aren't any characters that i wouldn't want sticking around on this show (but, as joss whedon knows, the best thing you can do with great characters is to get rid of them right?).

but seriously now, three points of criticism...

1. what happened to the opening credits? c'mon, the imagery with eliza dushku and that haunting theme song last year was mesmerizing, i never fast-forwarded through it. this year the song is the same (good), but the spliced scenes seem so ingenuine... bring back last year's credits

2. what happened to dewitt's hair? she looks awful with the short hair. she had really nice older lady hair too, shame

3. now that the show is getting all these excellent actors, it's time for eliza dushku to step it up a little bit. i mean, she really doesn't have to act, she does one character to perfection (herself, i guess), and really she just needs to be someone on camera and everything'll be all good, but these other actors are way overshadowing her in the acting department... oh well, for her it doesn't need to matter does it!

can't wait 'till next friday

#287 - killer stress

2009-09-24T20:22:00.000-10:00

i was watching a national geographic show on pbs called stress: portrait of a killer. it was pretty interesting, i'm a total sucker for biological research, especially neurophysiology, and this one was all about how stress takes more than just a psychological toll on the body, but a physical one as well. one of the experiments that they showcased was some weird hippie guy (at least, he looked like a hippie, all long hair and bearded, traveling to africa to tranquilize baboons with blowdarts and all) who studied the bloodwork and tissues of some baboons who lived in a high-stress society. not natural stress, like running from lions or whatever, but societal stress... these monkeys lived in a protected environment and had ample food, so therefore did not need to spend a lot of time finding food or hiding. so, they had TONS of time to torment each other for pleasure and did so with abandon. anyway, he found that the most stressed baboons (the ones on the bottom of the societal totem pole, the subordinates) indeed had more stress and resulting higher blood pressure, more arthrosclerosis, more fat centered around the abdomen, generally unhealthier. makes sense right? just like people, more stress = worse health.

but we could have guessed that right? what was more impressive is that in one baboon colony, some accident happened so that all the alpha males died, and the troop was left with the more docile males and a majority of females. what ended up happening is that the troop was less aggressive in general, more passive, more socially linked, spent more time grooming each other rather than causing trouble to each other. when other baboons would come in, they would try to act cocky and make trouble, but they would soon learn that this society was not like that and they eventually assimilated into the gentler society. the interesting thing is that in this society all those markers of bad health were absent. without that stress of the baboon's aggressive behaviors to themselves, the baboons were healthier. additionally, they found that dopamine receptors were more active, suggesting that sensations were felt more vividly (they propose that quality of life is higher, "the sun is sunnier," etc.).

monkeys are super gross through. barf.

anyway... in an experiment i was most interested in because it involved neuro-imaging... rats with the most stress showed reduced dentridic formation in the brain, more specifically in the hippocampus. meaning that stress affects memory and learning, the more stress you get, the less you are able to remember things and function effeciently.

but it's cool to see it in nature as well as in our society (i say "our society" because for some reason we don't often view ourselves as part of nature, even though how can we not be? we're not above nature, we're still part of the eco-system and still creatures of the earth).

meanwhile, i've been having stress of my own. parents are mean. we all know that. they think that when it comes to THEIR child, they are totally justified in doing whatever the hell they please because it's for the good of THEIR child. bullshit. there's no excuse for being mean and treating people like crap. perhaps you have a logical reason for doing it, but that does not vidicate you from your rude/bad/bitchy/manelovent behavior.

luckily, i'm a damn smart guy, good at my job, and a very professional person (and humble too, haha) to boot so i got through it with help from some co-workers and now that the situation is over and dealt with i can move on. yup, so after watching this show i'm taking a day-off today. i need to get more sleep. it all starts there. gotta give the body time to recover, so i will watch volleyball tonight, have a great dinner, and get to bed early, ready to rise early and raring to go tomorrow... perhaps.

PS - did anyone watch man vs. wild this week? geez, here i thought bear grylls was the crazy one, but man his camera crew is plain NUTS! they follow him all over the place with all their equipment... but at least they think he's insane for all the stuff that he eats!

#286 - back to basics

2009-09-20T21:41:00.005-10:00

whew, it's been a busy month and a half about, lots of things going on at work and at home, but this weekend i had a little bit of time off from tennis and special events and what-not so i finally got to go surfing again for the first time in like two months probably! geez, that's a long time, and it's been so freakin' hot that it took me two months to get my ass out to the beach? sad.

but it was great out there. for some reason, ali'i was way empty, and i went on saturday. don't know why there wasn't anyone out there, i mean, the waves were small sure, but the surf report said it'd be on the rise and sure enough, waited around a bit and caught some sweet clean sets. super fun for sure, plus, kua'aina avocado burger after that = yummy!

so it was a refreshing little weekend, got some cleaning in, some tennis, surf, church, piano, reading... and now it's time to go back to work. well, i'm not hsta, but if they approve those furlough days and kids get 17 three-day weekends this year? whoa, that's 1) a lot of missed time for them, 2) a lot of time-off (or psuedo-time off since i'll probably still be at work, but with an enticingly-quiet campus) for me, and 3) probably gonna push my union negotiations to furloughs as well. which i'm not SO against, merely because if you don't work, you don't get paid right? what's the big deal about that? sure, you're annual income is gonna dip because that's like so many days without working, but doesn't that beat taking a regular pay cut and working the same amount for less money? blah, politics. after reading "the godfather" i see the skepticism in mainstream society and politics. people wanna believe that society is so unbiased but that really ain't the case at all is it? haha, it was a good book.

anyway, time also to start getting excited about tv again... namely: DOLLHOUSE!

i mean, c'mon, everything about this show is just sexy. including everything from the lighting to the architecture dude. i know last year i was super bummed about those idiots at fox cancelling "terminator: the sarah conner chronicles," but i just read that summer glau (y'know, cameron, the terminator) is gonna have a recurring role on dollhouse! plus, alexis denisof (wesley from buffy/angel) is gonna have a guest role too. and amy acker is back as dr. saunders/whiskey so we'll have a whole angel reunion with the three of them. plus, if they bring back wash (from "firefly") as alpha then we'll have even more joss whedon tie-ins, which i love, since he's the only writer/creator who's name i actually even care to know. plus, i just bought the season 1 dvd so i'll be catching up on last season's episodes while the new season starts on friday, woo hoo!

okay, i'm over my daily dorkiness... time for a big sleep.

#285 - lay off the snooze

2009-09-14T19:30:00.001-10:00

6:15 am - my dino buddy wakes up (remember him? i bought him an electrical timer so his light turns on and off automatically to give me some wake-up-with-the-sunrise-i-ness in the mornings)... i stay in bed

6:30 am - radio turns on... i stay in bed

6:40 am - cell phone alarm goes off... i stumble to the living room, turn off the phone, turn on the ipod, collapse again on the couch

6:45 am - more annoying cell phone alarm goes off... i get off the couch and turn off the phone... from here my morning diverges into one of two possible paths:

#1 - i force myself into the shower, actually wake up, clean up, make/eat breakfast, get dressed and get out the door early enough to beat the retarded mauka traffic and make it to work in time

or

#2 - i crumple up on the carpet beside my phone and snooze. when i wake up i berate myself for falling asleep again and rush through the rest of the morning routine, get stuck in traffic, not find parking at work, and go through the rest of the day grumpy

i gotta lay off the snooze. this saturday i had a tennis match at 10:30 am. okay, so i thought, no problem right? who needs to set an alarm? of course i'll get up by 10:00 at least. well, i did get up at 8:00 am... then i looked around, said to myself, "self, what are we gonna do until 10:00?" then decided the best course of action was to go back to sleep. i only woke up at 10:45 am because my team captain called, asking if i was planning to make it to the match. how embarrassing. i actually got ready and made it down there by 11:00 am, but it was way too late and i had to default (and it's only a 2 out of 3 matches kinda thing so i probably ruined it for my team, grr). so embarrassing! plus i was really excited to play that day too, ugh, i'm such an idiot!

anyway, let's learn from our mistakes (just like serena at the us open huh? haha, man, she's scary, i might've gone running to the chair umpire too if serena was yelling at me like that, haha)... so no more missing those tennis matches, and no more being late in the morning and getting stuck in traffic and getting caught without parking. no, from here on out it's time to...

SAY NO TO SNOOZE!

#284 - weekly updates

2009-09-09T20:48:00.000-10:00

thanks to my new and pretty awesome "having of a life" situation right now, i haven't had a lot of time to update the blog, which is pretty sweet because that means i'm out actually doing some cool stuff. like going hiking! these pics were not taken by me, but by a pretty awesome new photographer that i met, she's got a great eye for the pics right? and a pretty sweet camera as well, i gotta get myself a new camera so i can get back to taking some of my own pictures, everything i take with my current camera comes out blurry, grr..
anyway, these pics are from the judd/nu'uanu trail. i like that one, it's not too long, but still tough enough for a good workout. plus lots of variety, you go from bamboo forest to tall pine (or something) trees to the ridge up on top adn there's lots to see along the way. although i think the thing i like best about hiking is the workout part of it, i mean, i love the scenery and all, but i like that you can combine the scenery with the "getting a workout" part. mostly because i get so bored going running or working out on a treadmill or something. i can't do it. i get ultra bored. so if i can go on a hike and see all that and get a good hiking workout out of that, that's perfect!
anyway, in other updates this weekend:

- up open! whoa, what a year for the us open, upsets abound on the women's side, which makes for some pretty un-appealing match-ups in the second week of the tournament, but there are still some fun players around. maria's out, but she was taken out my melanie oudin, complete cinderella story for sure, she's pretty fun to watch though, so i'm gonna root for her to actually get to the final, she's only got one more seed to get through (she already took out three others). serena's still in of course, and she plays kim clijsters! yep, that's right, kim clijsters who is (thankfully) out of retirement and playing awesomely (she already took out venus). but that's a semifinal match so we can still hope that oudin gets to the final against either clijsters or serena and that'd be pretty awesome. on the men's side it's a little more straight-forward. unfortunately, roddick is out, but that just means that federer has a little nicer path to the finals (he's still got novak in the way... i hate it when those two guys are in the same half because i always want both of them to get to the final). i'm actually not that hating on nadal this year, and i'm pretty sure it's because he got rid of those damn sleeveless shirts (but not the pre-serve wedgie pull, which is still annoying). but andy murray's out so i'm gonna have to pull for to get to the finals in the bottom half of the draw

- wahine volleyball! DOH! two loses this week, one was okay, texas (and their 6'4" setter) is national championship material (along with penn state), but the loss to california was awful! oh man, so depressing! hopefully they can pull it back together after such a great (4-0) start to the year to win the next two matches against a couple of weaker opponents and get ready for no. 10 stanford next weekend

- good food. oh man, i ate so good this week. dim sum. korean country bbq. sushi. so yummy. on top of that i skipped my weekend workouts 'cause i was out so much so i'm gonna have to get back to it, start up those workouts again.

- tennis. hey, that's a great way to get my workouts in. this ekolu league that just started last week is pretty fun, i mean, my teammates are fun of course (and going drinking after matches is always fun of course), but beyond that the actual playing of tennis is pretty fun too. one, because so far no one we've played have been complete jerks (which is actually a rarity i've noticed from playing league tennis for the past year or two), and two, because perhaps i'm actually playing well amazing! that is, well enough to not make a ga-zillion errors and more often make pretty solid contact on my strokes, so that's pretty cool.

- beach! man, i haven't been to the beach or surfing in about a month, yikes! i gotta get back out there, i've been waiting for better weather or some surf, but man my weekends have been packed (which is great! so NOT complaining about that), so i gotta find some time to get out there for sure.
that's about it for now, cool picture huh? hopefully much more to come...

#283 - 100,000 miles

2009-09-08T20:30:00.003-10:00

well it finally happened, good ole JYM at last reached 100,000 miles. that's a pretty damn remarkable car. it's a 1990 honda accord and my grandfather bought it new (those are his initials, not my nick-name or my car's name, as many people thing... in fact, we never even call it "jym" like "jim," we always spell it out "J-Y-M"). it was living on maui for about 12 years in hot & dry kahului, but my uncle kept it spotless and kept the inside uphosltery oiled and everything, so when i got the car in like 2001 or 2002 in college, it was immaculate!
over the past eight years i've tried to keep it just as clean... of course i do take it to the beach a lot so that's kind of difficult, but man, once you have a clean car, it's so motivating to try and keep it clean. so man i'm washing, waxing, rain-x-ing, and armor-all-ing that car all the damn time. i'm completely in love with waxing that car though, man when you see the rain beading off that windshield so that you don't even have to put on the wipers, that's an awesome thing.
this car has been through an awful lot over these years. it wasn't driven very much in the beginning (my grandma pretty much only went from home to church to ah fook's supermarket so when i got it, it only had like 31,000 miles), but i put on a whole crap-load of miles when i was commuting everyday to UH during grad school. still, it took awhile to get to 100,000 miles. of course, now it's got a new battery and new transmission and all new tires and a whole bunch of other work done on it so it was an investment definately, but one that i don't want to give up anytime soon. as much as new cars are pretty great, this old car is awesome! i hope it holds up just as long as it can, and i will stick by until the bitter end!

#282 - ah, so this is what it's like to have a life

2009-08-26T22:20:00.003-10:00

who knew? not me apparently...

well, first here's a picture from karaoke... keane and jon are power ballad seranading each other right now, jill apparently thinks it's hilarious and i think it's a bit disgusting, but hey, different strokes...

so we start off with karaoke, actually this story starts off a couple of weeks before karaoke, but let's be fuzzy on the details here because i actually need to practice a bit of censorship. not that whoever the three of you who read this blog don't know who all about me anyway, but certain times call for a little more discretion than others.

so, to start off this blog let me just say that i've been paying my dues for a long time (some might say i've done nothing BUT pay dues), so it's so vindicating to finally realize some of the good things that come from being patient and stalwart. i've finally started dating again and it's just been wonderful. i'm not going to divulge too much about it obviously, but i just wanted to mention it because it's made such a huge difference to my outlook on life. i have more patience with my clients, i don't swear at dumbass drivers (as much), i even play the piano better, it's just a great feeling being me right now. i totally lucked out, that's for sure, i mean, who knows how these things ever get started, for me it was random blind date that turned out just about a billion times better than i could have imagined.

anyway, like i said, discretion will be used here because i'm a gentleman (or at least i will be dwhen it comes to writing about this the blog), but i need to mention it because now i have a life! haha, not that i didn't have one before, i mean, i do lots of things, just not the sort of things that probably constitutes most people's idea of "having a life." i mean look i haven't been able to update this blog in such a long time. so let's update:

1. karaoke - obviously super great... i'm kinda running out of songs though, need to update the variety of my music library

2. wet n wild - don't have any pictures unfortunately, but i went to family fun day with my co-workers and had a great time (again, surprisingly, just like last year). it's cool because they have kids and so we got to be "kids" going to a themepark again, it just makes things so much different than just going there as an adult y'know?

3. tennis - ekolu league starting up again this saturday, i'm very excited, haven't been able to play very frequently at all, even this summer, so i can't wait to start up again!

4. work - is boring! which is much better than being exciting in the wrong way, y'know? so i'll take boring for now...

5. phones - CELL PHONE SHOPPING IS HARD!! the iphone is on my mind (and EVERYWHERE else i look), but i really want to stick with tmobile and i've been wavering back and forth between blackberry and maybe that new mytouch... but that iphone is calling me...

6. damn bastard parrot - like an insane stalker i took video of that damn parrot to show everyone what horrid noise it makes all day... but i don't know what happened to my youtube account so i'm gonna have to find another way to post the video for you (beware!)

**UPDATE - okay, couldn't get my youtube account working (i wonder if i closed it?), so head on over to my facebook page to see the video of that damn parrot

7. halloween - gotta find a halloween costume, only two months left...

8. can't remember what else i was gonna write about... see? i can't even get my thoughts organized into blog-form, which is kind of a good thing because i'm more pre-occupied by REAL LIFE and not blog so that's a step forward huh? haha.

#281 - IT'S FRICKIN' BIRDS!!

2009-08-16T21:28:00.002-10:00

it's almost like this... except the one i hear comes in two parts, with a frickingly annoying lady laugh in between:

dude, i figured it out... it's birds. those maddeningly annoying shreiks and moronic laughs i've been hearing on a frustratingly daily basis are coming from parrots! i knew it couldn't have been humans, at least, i was reasonably sure it wasn't humans because 1) it was so consistently horrid and 2) if it were humans then i'd have to be even MORE pissed at the rudeness of whoever was screaming constantly for hours so loud that even my neighbors five buildings over could hear it.

but i got a clue about it this summer, i began noticing that the screams were occurring pretty regularly between 7:30-8:30 in the morning, right around noontime, and between 5:00-6:30 at night, but never once it got dark. then, as i was spying around in my yard one day i saw a bird cage in the garage of a neighbor and i thought for sure it had to be coming from there. but i got no confirmation, each time i'd hear the hideousness i'd go out to see if i could see some brat kid or some other rude-o out there, but i saw nothing.

finally, tonight, at 8:00 pm i heard it, i went outside and saw that same house with the garage light on, i saw not one, but TWO big bird cages and at least one parrot... the culprit... the damn bastard. they kept the garage light on tonight so the parrot didn't go to sleep (y'know how all you need to do is cover their cage with a towel to make it dark and they go right to sleep) and it was yelling and "laughing" well into the night. lemme tell you it's a damn good thing i don't live in makaha or wherever that condo was because i'd be calling up that peacock lady right about now...

so on one hand, it's a good thing that it's a parrot because then i'm not so mad as if someone was actually yelling (because that's so RUDE! and now i know i'm not the only one that hears it so that's even more inconsiderate!), i mean if it's an animal at least it's somewhat non-controllable... on the OTHER hand, it IS inconsiderate of the parrot's owners to keep those damn things in their garage throwing out their damn banshee calls out across the whole townhouse complex. they could close the garage or keep them in the house or in the backyard (their yard faces the freeway so at least the screams wouldn't bother all their neighbors), but no, they keep them in the garage and let them shreik all damn day. bastards!

so, first spotted-nape doves at my parents' house... then franklin birds at my friends' house... and now parrots. birds, you have just put yourselves on my permanent shit list. bastards.

#280 - i caved...

2009-08-15T22:03:00.003-10:00

so it's finally happened... i've given in and opened a facebook account. man, what happened to all my resolve to stay away? i thought i could wait it all out, like how myspace came and went, i thought i wouldn't have to get into the facebook world before it sputtered out. on the other hand though, why be so anti? who am i to refuse society's pressures? damn those afterschool PSA's brainwashing me to fight peer pressure... no, embrace peer pressure! that's how you become cool! and i want to be cool!

haha, for real though, it's not such a bad thing being on facebook, the only bad part about it is that now i have so many more people to offend by not checking the page and not writing back to people, so many more channels for rudeness, i already have a hard time not being rude to random people out in the community and now i have a whole internet community of people to try to not be rude to. well, practice makes perfect i guess, still, time is a factor. i've only been on this thing since like tuesday or something and already i've got loads of messages backed up to read, too much.

one more thing that's kinda still got me shaky on the whole facebook thing is the fear of worlds colliding. i mean, i don't mind having co-workers and friends viewing my page... but i found out that my MOM has a page! and she had a page before me! granted, i'm pretty sure she still doesn't know how to do much on it, but dude, i don't want my mom reading the same posts that my friends read, weird right? so here's to keeping my facebook page pretty boring.. anyway, i've still got this blog (hope she's not reading this one...) for my more creative posts, haha.

#279 - the search continues

2009-08-11T17:05:00.000-10:00

i just finished reading the search for superstrings, symmetry, and the theory of everything by john gribbin... it took me four years to read this book, but only because i only started reading it this summer. not for lack of interest, though, because i've always been kind of intrigued by theoretical physics (not experimental physics... because high school physics and physics labs in college taught me that NO experiment ever comes out right, and yet they expect us to believe that it might if the world were "perfect," pssh). but the reading bug comes and goes for me, i need to be in the right mood, and when i am, dude i jam through those books. but this book i bought at the mckinley book fair maybe four years ago for $4 and it was a great thing that i waited so long to read it because this year or next they will finally turn on the large hadron collider in geneva, switzerland and actually begin testing a lot of the theories presented in this book.

see, the problem with science is that it takes so darn long. people have been tackling the "theory of everything" since einstein couldn't figure it out and even string theory has actually been around since the 1960's. as technology advanced and physicists could actually contruct experiments to test out and find evidence for some of their theories momentum grew and now supersymmetry and membrane-theory (kind of an updated version of string theory) are the leading contenders for the "theory of everything" with a chance to actually be proven correct once they turn on that huge (and by huge, i mean, humungolous! big enough to straddle country borders) large hadron collider and start creating matter. yes, that's right, creating matter. it's a weird concept. creating matter from energy? how can matter just pop up? it's hard to imagine, but that's exactly what happens. matter and energy are just different forms of the same thing (so says einstein... remember e=mc squared? [i can't put the superscript in there]). so once they turn that bugger on and smash those heavy hadrons together at gargantuan speeds (the energy source) they expect to create new matter (matter that quickly vanishes through other processes) as evidence to describe everything that the universe is made of and how they all interact with each other.

man, i learned a lot from this book... most of which is completely useless for everything except for understanding jokes on "the big bang theory." the problem now is that this book was published in 1998, and although it was a great way to catch me up on all the pre-requisite info from before einstein until now so that i can understand those science channel shows about CERN and the search for neutrinos and antineutrinos and stuff, a lot has happened in the past eleven years that i also need to catch up on. looks like i'm gonna have to find myself another book...

#278 - high of 75

2009-08-09T21:26:00.004-10:00

some days are just sunnier, y'know? not a cloud in the sky, everything is bright and clear and clean and stress-free. those kinds of days don't come often (so you gotta savor them), but when they do come they jump-start your persective on the world. dumbass drivers aren't so much a worry anymore, things move a little slower, and that's okay. those days when you just smile and don't even realize you're doing it y'know? today was definately one of those days.
it's a funny thing about when things are feeling sunny, not only do you feel pretty good, but things work a lot better too. your memory gets sharper, you react a little bit faster (or smarter, or both), you just do things better. today i was having one of those days and i played a bit of piano and even THAT i did better, no messed notes, a bit smoother, like i could actually play or something.
and when you're feeling that way and the weather outside reflects that? man, that's sweet. take a little trip to the beach to surf the waves (or even non-waves, flat as it was today) and it's perfection. so... lesson learned, don't let the world get you down too often, there are sunny days if you just wait for them...

high of 75 - relient k

#277 - shark week - what have we learned

2009-08-04T16:22:00.009-10:00

woo hoo shark week! shark week is always pretty awesome, but this year i've been a little distracted. partly that has to do with work starting so early in the summer now so i've been dvr-ing all the shark week programs and watching them later. but when you look at the whole list of shark shows on your dvr list it starts to look a bit much y'know? and so i started off the week by listing down all the shows and writing my "what have we learned" notes under each one (and i had a LOT to write, kinda of embarrassingly), but at the end of the week i was just getting kind of bored with it all, fast-forwarded a bunch of the shows and in general had other things on my mind, so i'm re-editing this post and just dropping the most interesting things learned during shark week!

- discovery channel seems to be too willing to show re-enactments and re-creations for my opinion. i guess it's nice to have the visual cue, but if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. no need to make stuff up. i especially didn't like "blood in the water," the first shark week program, it was like a fake documentary about shark attacks in the early 1900's that inspired "jaws" with of-the-time-period interviews and everything... lame.
- also, another disturbing trend of perhaps a loss of perspective and un-biased-ness (for lack of a better word), i've noticed that a lot of the programs on discovery, the history channel and all those wonderful stations have been assuming that people who lived long ago (and not so long ago, like in the early 1900's) were retards. in "blood" they speculate that a string of shark attacks reported in the news were instigated by a new jersey heat wave that, for the first time (they supposed), drew people from just wading in the shallows of the seashore to swimming in the deeper ocean. are you kidding me? you mean to tell me that even though people have been alive for thousands of years they only started swimming in the deep ocean in the early 1900's? please. like the ancient mayas could not POSSIBLY have built any of their own pyramids and buildings because they were all too "primative?" lame. which is why i was so happy when "secrets of the bog people" (a show about 7000 year old remains preserved in a bog swamp in florida and how they were able to extract preserved brain matter from excavated skulls, showing that people 7000 years ago had the same brain structures as modern day man... meaning while they may not have had the collective knowledge accumulated and transmitted over the years as we do now, they were no less able to think about, perceive, and reason with the world around them as we are able to do today) showed that just because people lived a long time ago, doesn't mean they were automatically idiots. in fact, i might argue that people living back then were, on average, even smarter than people now, because back then, survival of the fittest was a principle very much still in effect. today, however, medical advances and social conventions are helping people who might not have passed on their genes 7000 years ago do so today. and if you've ever seen the movie "idiocracy," you'd understand that there is what i believe to be a very real possibility that the "smarter" people of this world may be weeding themselves out, or are at least being overrun with those with less-than-ideal-geneology. makes sense right? well, i work in a school, haha.

- not too much new info to learn about sharks i think. seems like they're having trouble coming up with new scientific discoveries and so that's why there's this glut of sensationalistic shows... too bad. perhaps people aren't so high up on shark research as they were in the 90's, or maybe i'm just really smart (of course), but these shows seem to be more bark than bite (heh heh).
- still, cool video at least. "deadly waters" showed some crazy guy jumping in the water with a bunch of sharks in different places around the world. he highlighted some of the places in the world with the most shark attacks (the carribbean, south pacific, south africa, australia, florida, duh) and fed them a bunch of (creepy) human analogs (including a "chum-sicle" and prosthetic arms and legs).

- remember the summer of 2001? apparently it was "the summer of the shark." y'know how once one story gets out to the media they start LOOKING for more stories like it right? that's how people remember things, through the news. so "sharkbite summer" detailed a bunch of shark attack stories, including ones where people fight back. i like it when people fight back after a shark attack, because, damn, i would right? i'd be so mad, like, "wtf shark? why you gotta be such a little bitch for?" haha, well, more likely i'd say "owowowowowowow" but still. so in this one story, a shark attacked a boy in about 3 ft of water, his father was nearby and grabbed the shark by the tail and dragged both the boy AND the shark onto the shore. they took the boy to the hospital, but back on shore one guy killed the shark, stuck his arm down the shark's mouth and pulled out the boy's arm! then they rushed it to the hospital and re-attached it. whoa right? geez.

- "shark tribe" was a cool show, it was about two tribes in papua new guinea who go out in skinny little canoes and catch sharks by hand, with no bait. they just use a coconut rattle, a rope, and a stick. scientifically reasonable, yes, but mix in all the culture and tradition that they associate with "shark calling" and that makes it a pretty cool story of people living in the "modern" world whose lives are just totally different from ours (or mine, at least). still, they weren't able to catch a shark on the show...

- when you google "shark week" for images, you come up with retarded things man, these are all just random pictures from one search.

anyway, all in all shark week is shark week. cool videos. freaky stories. makes you want to go out into the water and also makes you not want to go into the water. but right now the sun is shining, it's a saturday afternoon, and i'm going snorkeling! wish me sharks...

no wait... don't.

#276 - sharks! sharks! sharks!

2009-08-03T22:07:00.002-10:00

yes, there is no other way to announce the beginning of shark week! you must say it quickly and with gusto.

plus, just today there was a reported tiger shark attack on a turtle on the north shore (click here). the witnesses said that the shark was chasing the turtle and then both the turtle AND the shark came up onto shore, beaching themselves, then the shark took a chunk outta the turtle. WHOA! man, that would've been something to see. yikes. and to top it all off, it happened at papa'iloa, dude, i'm there like all the time! well, not ALL the time, but i go surfing up there at lani's and chun's all the time.

still, i've never actually seen a shark up there. i'm sure they're there. underneath me somewhere. but i've never SEEN one (while surfing at least, i've seen some while snorkeling at waimea bay, and my dad has caught a few there as well). the only time i've ever seen a shark while surfing was at white plains, and they were way far out. i could see them because they were thrashing around out there feeding on something (it was too far away to see what it was, but there was at least of few of them, with birds circling overhead too). needless to say my heart skipped about a billion beats and when it started again i motored as fast as i could in-shore and got my bite-able little ass outta there!

probably weren't tiger sharks though... probably some kind of pack shark like galapagos or something (those are the kind that i saw on that shark cage tour that i went on a year ago remember this? and this?). still, freaky, especially knowing that some sharks do this:

MAN! well i've got most of my shark week still on dvr (today i finished up those quantum physics shows... super interesting, but ultimately disappointing because we really haven't figured out all those physic problems yet, so all those shows are left hanging), but i did watch air jaws II: even higher (yes, that's really what it was called). when i was a kid watching shark week, i never really got frightened by these shows, mostly because i knew i wasn't a seal so had no fear of being eaten, but man, that's some awesome footage.

more shark week updates to come, you and me are gonna learn a LOT this week, heh heh...

#275 - i have a life?

2009-08-02T21:42:00.003-10:00

well, i must because i haven't gotten to post anything in the past week. work started, weekend was pretty busy, and any extra time i found was promptly filled with the science channel (in HD!). so here's the rundown of my thoughts this week:

- back to work, not so bad. i'm slightly motivated to start this year, after having the summer completely off for the first time i have some new ideas for therapy and such... i am a big nerd so i've been waiting for new rehab science bits to munch on.

- office at work is still hot as a mutha (i apologize for using the word "mutha," but it fits). by the time 12:30 rolls around it's game over already. it gets so stinkin' sticky in there i gotta take a shower right when i get home just to head out again to go to the gym.

- parents are mean... or dumb, it's hard to tease out which ones are which, but man, the list of awful kids' names grows bigger and bigger every year... of course i can't share, but please parents, think before you name.

- heart walk. participated in the heart walk this year, it was a lot bigger than the juvenile diabetes walk (and also fricken' 3.5 miles longer) and pretty good. this is the closest i get to volunteering for things, but i like medical charities. especially when it has to deal with things like stroke (re: big nerd). i even saw one of my old clients who had a stroke (and resulting aphasia) at the walk, good for her/him!

- mexican night/baby shower. well, you all were there, i don't gotta write about it huh? nah, it was fun, i'd write more about it but i don't have any pictures from it...

- i don't take pictures anymore. the past few picture-worthy things i've done have been picture-less. i mean, i still take my camera along with me, but i end up not taking any pictures. i think partly that's because i think my camera has been out-done by technology already, i need an upgrade i think. but also because i think i've exhausted my photographic creativity... sometimes i bore myself with the pictures i take myself. i need new inspiration...

- SHARK WEEK! man, this deserves it's own post (and so it shall get one... later)

- along with shark week on the discovery channel, the science channel has been doing a great job every sunday with the physics themes. today i dvr-ed three programs on the big bang, the LHC (the large haldron collider), and the physics of gravity. plus "the secrets of the bog people," heh.

- one more thing, well, i'm hoping to get more of a life, i've got a little spark of opportunity, but not sure if it's gonna translate to anything much. actually i'm pretty nervous about it right now, that's me being a nerd again, but don't wanna jinx anything so i'll keep quiet about it now, haha. but don't let that eat you up or anything, it's nothing too special, just maybe a chance that i have to convince myself to take!

#274 - last day

2009-07-27T21:30:00.004-10:00

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

2009-07-25T11:23:00.002-10:00

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...

2009-07-22T20:08:00.003-10:00

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...

2009-07-17T21:14:00.003-10:00

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

2009-07-15T21:24:00.002-10:00

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

2009-07-10T21:24:00.005-10:00

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!

2009-07-09T18:13:00.003-10:00

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

2009-07-08T11:17:00.002-10:00

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!

2009-07-07T12:46:00.002-10:00

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!

#265 - second monday

2009-06-29T21:56:00.009-10:00

whew, second monday at wimbledon today. i haven't posted anything about wimbledon yet... but that's because the business really gets started in the second week. sure, there are upsets in the first three rounds, but in my opinion, you don't deserved to be talked about (in length) until you make it to the quarterfinals. i think that's pretty true of just about any sport with a tournament bracket right? you only really get validated until you make it to at least the quarterfinals.

anyway, every year second monday is the best day of tennis of the year. first of all, it's wimbledon... can you say "prestige?" secondly, wimbledon is the only grand slam that does not play on the middle sunday (c'mon, "wimbledon" and "tradition" are almost synonymous, don't you think?), so after watching a whole week of 10 hours per day of tennis, all of a sudden we get nothing but highlights on sunday, and then BOOM! second monday comes and ALL the remaining men and women are in action on one day playing their fourth round matches (also the only time that happens in a grand slam). and thirdly, at the end of second monday we've got ALL the quarterfinals (men AND women) lined up. sweet.

and so now we can finally get down to some wimbledon business, here are the contenders:
the conversation starts and ends with roger federer. c'mon, anyone else not yet convinced that he is the greatest tennis player of all time need just wait about six more days 'til the wimbledon final on sunday. nevermind his records, his style of play is not only masterful, but beautiful as well. i don't think there's any other player in the history of the sport to play the game so well in all phases, including aesthetics.

forget andy murray, roddick is my pick to reach the final on the other side of the draw (opposite roger, of course). he's the second best grass court player of the decade and he's playing like it again. i like his chances to disappoint all of england and take out andy murray in the semis (even with his improvements in maturity this year, i still can't stand to watch his matches... i don't like his style of play and i love it when someone takes it to him and takes him out... like my man stanislas wawrinka almost did today).

whoa, remember this guy? lleyton hewitt? he won here in what, 2001? 2002? i don't even remember, but he's back with an upset win over no. 5 juan martin del potro and playing great. it's a revival of the old guys at this year's wimbledon...

the renissance continues at wimbledon 2009, remember juan carlos ferrero? whoa! he's a wildcard here but i always thought that the grass was great for his game. he was never quite the same after he reached no. 1 in the world following his french open championship and runner-up finish to andy roddick in the us open, the next year he was injury-ridden and never got back up to the level of play he showed in getting to no. 1. but hey, lleyton, juan carlos, even tommy haas (too bad he's got to play djokovic, my third favorite), they're all into the quarterfinals, go old guys.

just like the men's tournament, the women's side starts and ends with one name: williams. but will it be serena or venus this year? serena's no. 2 in the world, venus comes in at no. 3 but has 5 wimbledon titles (including last year's title when she beat serena in the final) to serena's 2. that being said, serena is in great form going into the quarterfinals, but how can you deny venus going for her sixth title (and third consecutive). i think venus is still the one to beat... but if anyone can do it, it's serena.
as happy as i am that BOTH williams sisters are playing great at the same tournament at the same time, i wish there was more competition for them out there. i mean, of course you've got world no. 1 dinara safina (the younger sister of marat safin) who's my third favorite pick to win here, but sharapova just came back from injury and lost in the second round and poor ana ivanovic had to retire after losing the first set today to venus with a thigh injury.
still, a trio of youngsters to be highlighted... victoria azarenka (power hitter up against serena in the quarterfinals... who i'm not quite sold-on yet as a future no. 1 as the commentators suggest), melanie oudin (american teenager who had to win three rounds of qualifying to even get into the main draw, and then once she did, won three more rounds to get into the round of 16, although she lost today, finally some young americans doing well), and my pick of the newbies:

young german with a steffi graf-like game, big serve, big forehand (kinda like ana ivanovic of a year ago), she faces dinara safina next.

whew, so after a full day of tennis (and, since it's summertime, also a day that i get to go to the gym when it's not crowded, grab lunch, and still have time to drive down to the beach for an afternoon snorkel) tomorrow it's on to ladies' tuesday. all four women's quarterfinals played tomorrow, so it'll be:

#1 dinara safina vs. sabine lisicki - i pick dinara, but lisicki's got a dangerous game if she can stick to the gameplay and execute
#3 venus williams vs. #11 agnieska radwanska - venus will DEMOLISH radwanska's serve.. easy win
francesca schiavonne vs. #4 elena dementieva - i like dementieva, and this is a great chance for her to get to the semis, good for her
#8 victoria azarenka vs. #2 serena williams - match of the day, this'll be a good one, but serena's got too much fire (mostly in the eyes) for azarenka, straight set win for serena

well, those are the predictions... but there's a reason we play the game, go tennis!

#264 - death of english... by snoo snoo

2009-06-28T23:08:00.004-10:00

haha, this clip is just for fun

Futurama

Weeknights, 9p/8c

Snoo-Snoo Chamber

www.comedycentral.com

Joke of the Day

Stand-Up Comedy

Free Online Games

i love studying languages (articulatory phonetics, especially). i totally would have become a linguist if i thought that there was any possible way to make any kind of money at all with a degree in linguistics (besides becoming a computer speech-recognition programmer i mean, which, y'know, no thank you). so with that option out at least i got into the second best field, speech pathology, where i can dip into linguistics, make a living, and flirt with the medical field a little bit as well (if i was a more motivated man i'd have gone for the big degrees in health sciences, neuroscience is the bomb dude, but i'd had enough of school already). so in my wannabe-a-linguist-ness i zoom in on any and everything language-related i come across in everyday life, lately there's been lots of stirrings in the media about the death of the english language.

i know what you're saying... silly matt, languages don't die (although they do disappear sometimes). and they're not static, they're fluid, in motion constantly... like zombies, but quicker, like running zombies... but bigger and farther-reaching, like double-zombies with ape-arms. man, zombies are scary.

anyway, back to the point, so all these research and newspaper articles i've been reading lately about the "death of english" by text-messaging and twitter are complete hoo-ha (i was gonna write "bologna," but something made me want to spell it "baloney," which would more accurately convey my thought, but would look weird, so i wrote "hoo-ha" instead, which is funny because that's not a "word" i would ever use when talking... huh, so what do you think about that?). all these up-pity journalists think they've got a breaking story by supposing that text messaging will doom the english language? bitch please (haha, again something i would never say in real life, but in fitting with this post, and my mood right now at 11:18 pm on a sunday night at the computer). they think that just because people have found a less effort-ful mode of communication through technology that we're all just going to abandon all other forms of language? geez, over-speculate much?

on snl weekend update seth meyers said: Astronaut Mike Massimo, who is aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, became the first person to Twitter from space when he sent the message, "Launch was awesome!" So in forty years we went from "one giant leap for mankind," to "launch was awesome!" I assume if we ever encounter intelligent life from the cosmos, this is how we'll be notified:

obviously although people use text-shortcuts on their phones, they're not going to use it in print (although i did hear one of my friends say that they had to grade a student's term paper with a whole bunch of "wtf" and those kinds of things in it... well, that's just a dumb kid, don't blame texting for stupidity). but my point is that even if people do start switching to use things like "ttyl" in everyday speech, then that's just the english language evolving. hey, as long as you're a native speaker of english, anything you say is correct, you can't ever be wrong.

that being said, there are of course more commonly accepted norms and those that make the native speakers squirm (the cool thing is that it's completely innate, as a native speaker you know when something doesn't sound right, even if you can't describe why... like you know that "brage" could possibly be an english word but "fgral" can't). and so, although the linguist in me accepts the following as "things that i really shouldn't get on people's cases for," the slp in me wants to slap them whenever someone says:

1. "students-es" like they're trying to say "the students' books" but they add an extra (and retarded sounding) syllable
2. when they try to explain something they use the phrase "what that is is..."
3. anything said by a local police officer on the news... seriously, i understand you guys want to sound menacing on the job or whatever, but flip the switch when the red light on the camera turns on, geez

seriously, i don't mind the pidgin and the slang, but know when to use it. it's called code-switching, know when to use your formal language and when the informal is okay (like in the blog, haha). i'm not saying that everyone needs to speak the same way, that would be totally boring (just ask joss whedon), but let the english language evolve as it will... for all those grammar purists out there, man, what if we were still all speaking "middle english" like chaucer? that would suck right? how inefficient. i could totally go on forever about the evolution of languages and endangered languages (like eyak... only one old alaskan guy as the native speaker of that language left in the world), but i'll stop there and leave you with a little bit of lingual goodness and a lot of totally embarrassing crap.

in high school we had to memorize the beginning of chaucer's canterbury tales and at the time i thought it was pretty stupid as a literary exercise, but it became a much more useful piece of memorized knowledge when i started studying linguistics, not for the literature, but for the middle-english-ness of it. click on the video and then read below... ignore the retarded non-IPA transcription on the video and the modern english translation's attempt at making the passage rhyme... tsk tsk

Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer:

Original in Middle English:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
the droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The holye blissful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

Translation into Modern English:
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liqueur of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half course in the sign of the Ram has run
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye,
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
And specially from every shires’ end
Of England, down to Canterbury they wend
The holy blissful martyr,* quick
To give his help to them when they were sick

and so while i was online searching for that, i found this little gem.

wait, wait... it gets worse... this guy totally thinks he's the shit. how embarrassing.

it doesn't stop either... each video i click on links to like 5 more just like it.

i'm in physical pain now... my heart is crying.

#263 - you forgot your flash drive

2009-06-23T18:27:00.003-10:00

how much am i loving reruns of "the big bang theory?" THIS much. what's not to love? it's got nerds, science, socially awkward situations, and multiple (and well-varied) pop-culture-like references to all things geeky (from secret agent laser obstacle chess, to atmosphere-eating nano-robots, to skynet, and beyond!). it's so nerdy and i relate completely. okay, maybe i don't get exactly ALL of the jokes (meaning, absolutely none of the star trek ones... besides rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock... which is an awesome and infinately more logical version of jan ken po), but dude i'm laughing the whole time.

it's because of sheldon... more accurately, it's because i have a lot in common with sheldon. okay, not to such extremes, of course, but throughout the course of a normal day i make a lot of sheldon-like comments in my head, i just don't say them out loud (like he does, haha). seriously though, i completely follow his logic on the show, totally understandable right? so geeky, totally like some of my aspergers kids, see?

plus they do things like fun with non-newtonian fluids... just like mythbusters.

in a perfect world i would be able to express all of my sheldon-like thoughts and everyone would completely understand because i am smart and awesome and completely right all the time. everything would be so much simpler... sigh. oh well, anyway, it's a funny show, it's like work, except i can laugh at all the socially retarded things they do because it's a tv show (well, except that i still laugh at them at work... but perhaps i shouldn't do that, haha).

go nerds!

#262 - tv giveth...

2009-06-22T21:29:00.002-10:00

example 1:
jack-in-the-box giveth...

and jack-in-the-box taketh away...

seriously, how one company can go from the heights of midget campfire to horrific lame-o sing-a-long is beyond me. i've been singing "up in the saddle, herding cows the size of schauzers but they're cattle..." for months now and now i have to endure those dorky normal-sized people motion-dancing (especially that damn annoying haole girl with her annyoing face of annoyingness).

summertime tv can be very good, but also very very awful and make-me-vomit-y. in the absence of real television shows (no more the office, dollhouse, terminator, etc.), there are some gems such as so you think you can dance, reno 911, and lots of great stuff on the discovery channel. of course, wimbledon started today so there goes 8 hours of my day (it's on from 1am to 9am in the morning, which gives me a good reason to routinely wake up at least before 10am so i can watch and get on with the rest of my day), but the rest of the day (y'know, whatever other time that is not spent at the beach) is free for both the good and the bad... here are some examples...

example 2: i survived a japanese game show
man, when this show came on last year with it's embarrassingly ridiculous host (and even dorkier audience members) and "hey, i wanna try that" games it was fantastic. but that was when the american contestants had no idea what they were in for... this new season that started last week seems like crap to me. last year they just shipped those americans off the plane straight into the studio with no idea what they were even doing in japan, but this year the contestants have all watched the show and they even know who all the people are (like judge bob and mama-san). i mean, they've still got the ridiculous games and retarded japanese people, but i don't think this was a repeatable show... oh well, i'll still watch it.

example 3: ninja warrior
this one is all "give" man, in addition to another running of ninja warrior in japan, we also get to see hottie olivia munn (who is actually part japanese and lived in japan before getting her spot on G4TV) run the course too...

Video Games - E3 2009 - Ninja Warrior

haha, and THAT is summertime tv. oops, that was last year's clip.. she went one obstacle further this year, and then fell in the muddy water, heh. anyway, if you've never seen this show, here's a clip of only the 2nd man to ever finish all 4 stages, he makes it look REE-diculously easy, but during most tournaments less than 10 people (out of 100... only 5 people made it past the first stage this year) even make it to the second stage and most times NO ONE at all makes it to the final stage, now that's true japanese style (like how the iron chefs always win on the japanese show but the challengers seem to always win on iron chef america).

one thing about watching a current show from japan... japanese people are ugly man. and so nerdy... even the normal looking ones (and there aren't many of those) are so nerdy! for example... the guy who made it the second farthest this year, he was two obstacles from the end of the third stage and he grabbed a metal support beam (which was technically "out of bounds") and was disqualified... then in his interview afterward he was crying! darn japanese, how can you call yourself "ninja warrior" and then cry when you lose? wuss. sigh, my poor ancestry.

by the way, ninja warrior started in 1997, but i was the ORIGINAL ninja warrior doing the "spider walk" up and down my hallway when i was like 7 or something... i got in trouble for putting footprints on the walls.

#261 - summer week 1 = success

2009-06-19T19:09:00.003-10:00

and so i declare the first full week of summer a complete success! why? let's list the reasons:

1. spent 5 out of 7 days of it at the beach
2. still had lots of time to get in a workout (during the non-crowded times of day too)
3. went back to yoga for the first time in two months
4. lost track of what day it was
5. didn't have to wake up early once!

hands down the best thing about summer is the time. time to do everything i've been putting off during the year. sometimes this relates to big projects (like finally finishing my cousin's slideshow dvd for her grad party this week), but most of it relates to those little projects that, once started, gets bigger and bigger and consumes much more time than you thought it would (like cleaning the car). but because there's no work and all the time in the world to do both the things that you want to do and the things you need to do, summertime is great. so let's recap quickly:

saturday - this i consider the official start of my summer because even though i was out of work since the wednesday before, that week was tainted with working on monday and tuesday, so summer actually started on saturday for me... and through the magic of summertime i forgot what i did on saturday! woo hoo! and i didn't write it down on my calendar (mental star points for me for not subjecting my entire life to what's scheduled on my calendar... shows personal growth right? yay me.)! i think i went to the beach...

sunday - woke up late, cleaned the floors, did some laundry, then went to tennis, another great day.

monday - surprisingly, i woke up early. early enough to go to the gym (man is it NOT crowded during the day), buy some sushi and even after that had time to hike it down to waimea bay and snorkel a bit (and snap some pictures, cool huh?)
tuesday - worked on the slideshow in the morning (i like doing slideshows, i don't really have a reason to do it often, but when i do it's a nice little creative outlet), then went surfing at chun's (flat, but super nice weather)

wednesday - another mid-day workout at the gym and, what the heck, went surfing again! y'know, for some reason by the time 2:00 pm rolls around i think it's already too late to go to the beach, but man, it's still light out at 7 pm, so i gotta not worry about the time so much (thinking about traffic or crowds) and just do what i want to do!

thursday - cleaned the car all morning... i didn't think it'd take so long, but after washing and waxing i decided to vaccuum all the dog hair outta the seats from when i took the a-dawg to the beach. man, that took forever. of course i had a whole shore-load worth of sand in there and some other gunk too, but now it's spiffy clean from top to bottom, even armor-all-ed the dash and junk. then i went surfing again! woo hoo! now by the time i got to ali'i it was like 3 pm and i thought it'd already start to either be windy and cold, or super crowded. the surf report said flat to 1' but i knew that a small swell was coming on friday so i chanced it anyway. man, what a good decision! it was only me and one kid out there and the sets were sweet! super clean, long rides, plus since i was like the only one out there i could catch each set and ride it as long as i wanted. then, after about an hour of small stuff that swell started to roll in... much bigger than the surf report said. i mean, it could have been just because there was no one else out there, but i was getting the rides of my life man, i mean almost barrels and stuff. it was sweet. and even when i left there was still no one out there. man, i couldn't wait to get back out there again the next day.friday - well, when i took a look at the surf report when i woke up the swell came in... but it came in too big. tons of people out there and overhead, which is not a good combination for me, i'm not that good a surfer. but luckily for me it was pretty rainy today, so i don't feel bad about not scrapping up the courage to chance the waves. instead i had a nice safe day, another mid-day workout, sushi for lunch, and a haircut to end the day. on the mental schedule for tomorrow... beach, maybe some tennis (hopefully) and then a grad party at night. let's keep this summer going!

#260 - dogs at the beach

2009-06-15T17:18:00.001-10:00

what up? dogs at the beach baby. better than snakes on a plane (sorry, it was just on tv... and it's summertime... i don't have to explain myself...). anyway, it's finally summertime and i can do ridiculous things like trying to take the a-dawg to the beach. and ridiculous it was. granted, she did way better on her very first beach encounter than i thought (the very first thing she did, after dragging me across the sand, was hop right into the water and swim around, finally some of that innate laborador nature coming out), but the car ride out there was nuts.first of all, i had prepared the backseat all covered and ready for her to chill, but on the drive she hopped herself right up to the front seat like she was meant to be there and bothered me the whole way down (luckily she's not very stable so she kept falling down on the turns, haha). plus now my car smells like dog AND wet dog and i've got white hairs flying up everywhere when i roll down the windows... reminds me of my old car, with the (heavily protested, by me) sheepskin seat covers.but once she got to the beach, at least, she was pretty mellow. she likes to sit in shrub-ery so she found a nice spot in the half-flower bushes. went for a swim a couple of times, she's pretty good at it, she didn't like the waves so much but when it was pretty flat she was ready to jet on out to open ocean, i had to call her back a couple of times. i mean, i'm sure she'd be okay, but it was really rocky and i didn't want to scrape up all my knees following her out too far. next time i'll have to find a nicer swimming spot for her second beach trip.dutch came along too and kept things exciting as always. dutch is really a lab, much more so than allie, so it's good for allie to watch some other dogs and maybe pick up some lab behavior. she's so anti-social. loving humans, ignoring other dogs, what a wuss. won't even fetch the tennis balls we brought. but at least now she knows that she likes to swim (poor thing is totally deprived of all dog-like activity at my parents' house) so looks like i'll have more dog at the beach sessions to look forward to this summer. maybe sooner rather than later because the weather has just been fan-frickin'-tastic... and since north shore has been flat as a lake now's a good time to take the dog (i mean, surf's been pumping on the south shore, but i'm a north shore kinda guy... i'll wait for my clean haleiwa waves to roll in next week, boom).

#259 - makapu'u and the start of summer

2009-06-14T18:24:00.003-10:00

the first day of summer and what do i do? go out with co-workers. haha, nah, i gotta get over this work-stigma... i never like to see work people outside of "work," but sometimes it's not a bad thing right? anyway, so i went on the makapu'u lighthouse trail with my friends from work (see, that's a step up from calling them "co-workers") on wednesday. now... i was told "hey matt, we're gonna do the makapu'u lighthouse trail on wednesday, you wanna come?" right, so of course i said "sure, i've been on that trail before and i liked it so i'll go again." that was the week before... tuesday comes along and this is what i hear from another co-worker, "hey matt, they're not going on the paved trail, did you know that?" i, of course, did not know that because when they first said "makapu'u lighthouse trail" i googled it to make sure that i knew which one they were talking about and on every page i clicked it all said "2 mile round trip, paved road to the makapu'u lighthouse."

oh, the deception.

anyway, so when we get to the parking lot on wednesday their plan was to skip the paved trail and go up the mountain another way... on a different "trail." i use quotation marks because their idea of "trail" was jumping over a rock wall (clue #1 that you are going somewhere you should not go) and following a set of pipes up and over the mountain on the cliff side (clue #2 - big scary drop-off of death) to get to the observation site at the end of the actual paved road (clue #1 that this is where people actually belong). if you've been there you might have an idea of where they went, but in the picture above you can see the main parking lot... just further past that along the main road is a look-out site (right where the ocean comes into view) where they started their "hike" (jumping a rock wall in the process) and hiking up the left-side of the mountain on the right of the picture (meanwhile, my much smarter friend and i were safely, and happily on the paved trail taking this picture).we got to the observation deck pretty quickly (and happily... and smartly) and i took this picture of those other guys on the top of the mountain after they had climbed up from their side and hiked down the near-side of the mountain to the same observation deck... see them all the way up there perched perilously with no discernable way down? haha. nah, they were okay, but two of them elected to take the paved road back down instead of going back the way they came, haw haw. anyway, it was a fun day, had some greek food at the koko marina center on our way back home, took a shower and crashed on my couch for the rest of the day... and so begins my summer, hopefully all my days will start with beach and end with a shower and crashing on my couch... good stuff.

#258 - the greatest

2009-06-07T13:23:00.003-10:00

so... any more doubters? how can you doubt the greatest tennis player of all time? well, he's been that in my opinion for that last few years already (i'm too young to have seen laver or lendl or even borg so i don't and won't compare those guys), forget that he's now got the career grand slam (wins at the australian open, french open, wimbledon, and the us open) and that he's tied pete sampras' all-time record of 14 grand slam titles, his style of play is a thing of beauty. whether he's playing for the title or playing the first round of umag i'm still watching his matches.

but today he leaves no more doubt. even though it wasn't nadal on the other side of the court, he beat robin soderling (who took out nadal) for the title and got the win. now it's on to wimbledon where he can (hopefully) again try to take revenge for last year's loss to nadal in "greatest match ever played" (and you better believe if it wasn't for the fact that nadal won there would be no quotation marks around that) and try and win his 6th wimbledon title (and you better believe if he serves like he did during the french open on grass he'll do it easy) and break sampras' grand slam record going for title #15. hoo boy, exciting next month.. i can't wait.

#257 - soderling def. nadal 6-2, 6-7(2), 6-4, 7-6(2)

2009-05-31T22:59:00.005-10:00

wow. now, it's no secret that i don't like rafael nadal, i don't like his style of play (although i have to admit he's pretty good), his greasy hair, his contorted facial expressions, his sleeveless shirts and capri pants (although he gave that up this year for equally annoying pink shirts), and most importantly, his butt-digging before each serve. but i think the thing i don't like most about him is that he's the perfect foil for roger federer... and i like roger.

for the past four years nadal has beaten roger federer in the french open. once during the semifinals (in 2005, the first french open nadal ever played) and three times during the finals. so i think it's pretty safe to say that if nadal hadn't been standing in his way, federer would have the career grand slam by now. well, this year it's on because nadal was beaten in the round of 16 by robin soderling.

it was a great match to watch, partly because soderling played pretty spectacularly (blasting nadal off the court) and partly just because nadal finally lost (after being 31-0 at the french open before this match). for the past four years (seems like at least) i've been trying to find someone to root for who could take out nadal (besides roger, because nadal's just got his number). tennis is all about match-ups and roger's game just doesn't match up to nadal's. in the past the guys who have given nadal trouble have been the ones who've really taken it to him, blasting shots and pushing nadal (even farther) back behind the baseline. someone with huge power, someone tall enough to handle nadal's high-kicking forehands, someone who actually isn't ranked that high, but can have a huge day if he's on for three or four sets. mikhail youzhny was one of the first to do so, then later on djokovic showed some signs, and juan martin del potro (a 6'6' guy with a two-handed backhand) did it earlier this year, but finally soderling came through. nadal and soderling had a great 5-set match at wimbledon two years ago... it wasn't the most sportsman-like match (soderling publically made fun of nadal's butt-digging, which was great, and totally got in his head), but it was good to see someone (besides roger) go out there and impose himself on nadal and show that he wants to beat him (not just that they want to win). this french open match didn't have much of that animosity, but it was a high-quality match for sure.

so, now that nadal's out, i'm pulling even harder for federer. i always thought that even though federer's clearly the second best clay-courter on tour, he would need help to win the french open. but i always thought that help would come from nadal's knees giving out on him or from someone like djokovic pulling him to some exhausting, 5-set semifinal before federer could finally beat him in a final. and knowing roger, he'd probably say to the press that he would have liked to beat the man who beat him for the past four years at this tournament for his first french open title, but inside i know he's popping a bottle of champange tonight. no way he's in any way sorry that nadal's out of the tournament early. so here we go roger, if he can win the french he'll not only gain the career grand slam (he's already got us open, aussie open, and wimbledon titles) but he'll tie pete sampras' all-time record of 14 grand slam titles, so go roger!

ps - in other tv news (and because i'd really feel embarrassed if i devoted a whole post to it), last night i watched the season finale of "the hills." haha. i got sucked into it because of lauren, i think she's way hot. she's got like the sweetest expressions. i mean, i have no idea what she's actually like because that "reality" show is entirely scripted i'm sure, so i'm not deluding myself to believe that anything that happens on that show actually happens, but it was a nice guilty pleasure at least. but last night's episode was lauren's last one, she's moving on to other things, but they're still gonna keep the show running? NO WAY would i watch it if lauren's not on it, now THAT would be truly embarrassing.

#256 - it's like betting against God

2009-05-30T17:43:00.000-10:00

damn what a week. i learned more about insurance that i ever wanted to know in my life, although it's probably a good thing that i finally did learn what i did. long story short... i'm going through mortgage refinancing, and since financial corporations are damn greedy bastards and banks around the nation are failing and irresponsible people buy things they can't pay for, poor little financially responsible people like myself have to pay the price. haha, anyway they just passed some new refinancing laws this month and NO ONE seems to know how to interpret them. for the past two weeks i've been on the phone 24/7 with offices, agents, brokers, and everyone else under the sun trying to get a legitimate quote on all these new insurance requirements that need to be met before i can close my mortgage refinancing.

blah, it's a long and boring story and even i don't care to rehash all of it, but the bottom line is i'm so damn smart that i figured it all out (with some help, but i had to put together all the pieces, which was frustrating because aren't i paying people to do this for me?). the good this is everyone i was working with was really nice, but i still feel like i'm getting ripped off. well, i don't really like insurance in the first place, i mean, the concept of insurance. it's probably the way i was brought up (my parents don't even like investing in stocks, their philosophy is "if you don't have the money to pay for it now, don't buy it" and their idea of "saving" is putting everything you got in the bank, so it's no wonder i came out so conservative). remember that episode of the simpsons when ned flander's house got destroyed by a tornado or something and homer got everyone in town to rebuild his house because he didn't have insurance because ned saying having insurance "is like betting against God." haha. i mean, for the big stuff yeah you'd want to insure your car or your house, but like personal property? like my tv or whatever? man, if something happens to it that would suck, but then you'd just buy a new one.

anyway, i don't even want to think about it anymore... and hopefully after this week i won't have to really. i went, i learned, i'm done.

so, on to happier things:

1. FRENCH OPEN
this picture makes me laugh. oh yeah, time for grand slam tennis again. i gotta say this is a fun tournament to watch, except for one problem. rafael nadal. i don't like that guy. at least he's not wearing his sleeveless shirts and capri pants anymore, but he's got this flourescent color scheme going on that just looks ridiculous (like shutter sunglasses and skinny pants). but roger's looking good (even though he had some tough matches already) and he just beat rafa in a two out of three set final in madrid i'm definately (like most everyone) hoping for another nadal vs. federer final!

2. so you think you can dance
okay, so it's just auditions right now, but that's the best part, because that's when they have the fun guys doing tricks. like, i could care less about ballroom dancing and even contemporary, but i like the hip-hop stuff and the pop/lock/trick do-ers. and in the auditions they have those guys who do insane tricks but don't get on the show because they can't do anything else (who cares if they can do other dances?). like just check this guy out, that's sick dude...
and man, this little toothpick of an asian girl is damn hot. she looks kinda like she could put on a little cocktail dress and campain for Miss Saigon... but maybe that's part of the appeal? i dunno, but damn this was hot.
3. now for something NOT happy. because spencer said that my posts are boring without me ragging on something, so this begins a new series called "hideous commercials that i hate and should burn and die." since i've been watching so many shows on FOX recently i've been seeing the most horrid commercials, so today's entry i saw during american idol (multiple times) and each time i saw it i called kristen to tell her "awful awful commercial is on again!" it's for comcast but don't ask me what the hell that is because i can't listen to it for more than one second without my ears burning and my eyes bleeding. the commercial incorporates three of my great hates: 1) animated humans, 2) talk-singing, and 3) rhyming. so enjoy, no, don't enjoy... abhor.

#255 - good choice

2009-05-23T11:43:00.000-10:00

man, i'm a blogging fiend this week! anyway, this morning UH announced that Charlie Wade will be taking over as men's volleyball coach after Mike Wilton "retired" to go take an assistant job at BYU (it's been awhile coming, he's a high-priest or whatever in the mormon church and was interested in the head coaching job that opened up at BYU a few years back). i think this is a great choice for UH. of course, tino reyes and mike sealy (both assistance coaches for the men's and women's teams, respectively) would have made a lot of sense also, but i'm really glad to see charlie wade back. he was the assistant coach for the wahine for 10 or 11 years (some great years too, 1995-2005 i think, and he was credited for being instumental in signing kim willoughby, among others) and just from watching warm-ups it was pretty evident that he was good for them. three years ago he left to take the head coaching position at pacific university (a once top school who's slid a bit, but got a bump-up when he was there for just three years and i think is now on a winning track) so it's great to see him come back to hawaii.

i think this is the perfect time for the men's volleyball to make a positive change. i never really cared for wilton's "cauldron" system for choosing his starters, and although i liked the fact that he played a lot of different players, i always thought he was either too flaky in his decision-making, or too reliant on statistics. and since the men's team has also taken a slide (but has always had a lot of potential) recently, i think it's a great time for charlie wade to step in and right the ship. hope he can do so...

#254 - top idol season 8

2009-05-21T18:34:00.017-10:00

oops, forgot to do my top performances post... so here's a more uplifting look-back at the past season, there WERE actually pretty awesome (and awesomely bad) moments, here are my top 8 performances:

8. adam lambert - cryin'
okay, i'll give him this one, adam doing aerosmith, that's something i can handle
Want more American Idol videos? Click here.

7. kris allen - falling slowly
this one i pick because it was so different from anything else all the other contestants were singing, it was like the little independent film that comes along and sweeps up all the award instead of the big-budget movies... that's kinda what kris was like
Want more American Idol videos? Click here.

6. matt giraud - human nature
back with matt all calm and at the piano is where i liked him best, less justin timberlake and before he started trying to be the fray and marvin gaye and everyone else under the sun
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5. danny gokey - hero
early on danny looked unstoppable huh? and for good reason, he was delivering solid stuff from the beginning... too bad he got too boring with all of it before long
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4. kris allen - ain't no sunshine
i still don't like this song very much, but he showed some talent singing it
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3. scott macintyre - just the way you are
blind scott. good for you blind scott. bad hair, good song.
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2. allison iraheta - cry baby
allison just got going a little too late in the competition, if she had been doing this stuff from the beginning she could really have challenged for the win i think
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1. kris allen - man in the mirror
his first performance and still my favorite, laid back, clear voice, cool.
Want more American Idol videos? Click here.

and the top 5 awesomely bad performances (just for fun):

5. norman gentle
how this guy ended up in the voting rounds i have no idea, but damn was it entertaining (especially when he started caressing the "american idol" sign)
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4. megan joy corkery
of course, there were many horrid megan joy performances to choose from, but this first one, with the awful shimmy-ing, was the one that brought us megan joy
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3. tatiana del toro
need i say anything else? except that this is her SECOND performance of this song
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2. anoop desai - beat it
i liked anoop, but this song was utterly an EPIC FAIL!
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1. adam lambert - ring of fire
no words. there are no words. just shudders.
Want more American Idol videos? Click here.

#253 - the end...

2009-05-21T10:47:00.002-10:00

okay, now i can be a normal person again... idol is over.

i feel relieved... why? because i invested a lot into idol the past few seasons, too much, i've realized. after last season i was completely ready to dive into this season with the same fervor, but i was disappointed by all the changes that the new producers implemented and that led to me not liking this season so much. having now realized that this makes me look and sound completely nuts, i can now look back at the hilarity of the season with a less skeptical point of view and enjoy it for the ridiculousness all the changes brought. for example:

1. kara - at first i thought she would be a credible addition to the judges, but over the course of the season it became apparent that she's really just randy and paula put together, useless and retarded. haha. nah, she had some fun moments though... most notably the atrocity that was "no boundries." i mean, c'mon, that made for some great water-cooler talk the next day. plus, having 4 judges kept the show running long all season, which, in turn, prevented the judges from commenting on each contestant (remember those shows when only 2 judges spoke?) and probably reduced the number of songs performed in the last few weeks from 3 to 2. plus we all saw her business on the finale show and now no one will be able to take her seriously (if we ever did) again.

2. norman gentle - he actually made it to the voting rounds? sweet. who says it's a "singing competition?"

3. top 13 - how awesome was it when anoop was announced into the top 13? well, we could all have argued that jasmine really didn't need to be there (but i guess they really wanted another girl up there), but anyway it turned out okay because she got out right away and anoop was a much more interesting contestant

4. the save - now this was one change that i really enjoyed, although they needed a better format (like adding a commercial break after the "sing for your life" so the judges could actually listen to the song THEN decide), this was a great way to add something new to the show

5. tatiana del toro - oh man. how awesome was she? can she come back next year too?

okay, so looking back at my 8 years of watching idol i think i can safely say that the talent this year was probably up there with (if not) the best (although i personally still think last season was a bit better), but the production of the show has definately gone downhill... which is to be expected of a show going on it's 8th season. so i wonder... what happens next year? do they renew paula's contract that expires this year? does simon take off and go back to england for britian's got talent? i think if simon leaves the show is effectively over. but kara can replace paula without too much of a hitch. randy's pretty worthless, but too many changes would be damaging i think. anyway, i won't be keeping up with these contestants like i might have wanted to do last year, they don't interest me as much, and perhaps that means i'm moving toward being a more casual idol viewer... which is definately a step in the right (less crazy) direction.

oh well, so you think you can dance is next... i'm definately not as manic about that show... which may be why i find it so entertaining. hmm... we'll see...

oh ps - yay kris allen won! i probably wouldn't buy his album outright... but i'll preview it on itunes at least, maybe a song or two, good for him.

#252 - idol finale

2009-05-20T10:14:00.002-10:00

EPIC FAIL! for the producers i mean. geez, remember when the finale was a big deal? like last year? this year it was just like another show. what's wrong with the producers this year, geez, the whole season sucked! if it wasn't for the fact that they actually had good singers it would have been a total disaster. i mean, if i was kris or adam (actually, just kris, because if i was adam i'd have more important problems) i'd feel totally jypped... gypped... jipped... gipped... how do you spell that word? i'd feel totally robbed of a big, spectacular finale. i mean, as cheesy as that big gospel chorus was for the final song, it made the show look good right? well, i guess it really didn't matter seeing as how the final song was a complete and hideous joke! seriously kara, is THAT song what you are worth as a judge? hmm... now that you think about it, it kinda fits huh? awful, both of them not only sounded pitchy singing it, they actually looked pained to sing it. and i don't blame them.

i do blame the idol producers though... after such a great year last season this one stunk up to the high heavens. however, i am very glad that my favorite kris made it to the finale (and i actually think he might win), so that was consolation i guess. look, i can't even talk about the contestants' performances because so much went wrong on the other side of the camera. but let's recap quickly:

adam:
- mad world - creepy much? with the mist and trenchcoat he looked like he was going to an anime convention... in the worst possible way. way over-camped, i wish he had sung a new song, but not sure they had a choice in that...
- a change is going to come - yes, THAT is what he sang and not "a change goin' come," get it? it was pretty dull, a crap song to pick for him i think, they should've kept with the "glam-rock" as they say and just run with it...
- kara's crap song - ouch. ouch. ouch. painful... and this time not because of him.

kris:
- ain't no sunshine - very nice, i liked it the first time, and i liked it the second time as well...
- what's going on - a good pick for him i think, i thought he was going for a laid-back performance (as simon criticized) and so i liked it that way... in fact, that's why i liked a lot of his performances this year, all the way back to "man in the mirror..."
- kara's hideous career-ender of a song - yeowch! i like how even kara said she hopes people vote for him based on the season and not on HER OWN SONG.

one last note, as the judges were both blasting kara's epic failure (holy crap is that really going to be the winning record?), kissing every inch of adam's gayer-than-thou ass, and completely writing kris off the show before the vote ("you should be proud to standing right where you are now... because you'll go no further"), they too (like the producers) failed in their jobs because obviously when you predict someone's going to win, there's gonna be a backlash of people voting extra JUST to prove you wrong.... which is what i think will happen tonight.

i think a combination of three things will happen:
1. adam's and kris' actual fans may cancel themselves out
2. danny gokey's fans will vote for kris
3. people will anti-vote for adam because of all the over-hype he's gotten from the producers/judges/katy perry

therefore, my official predictions are:
1. kris allen will win american idol
2. the two-hour finale will be just as amateurish as the entire season has been already
3. no one will care about any of the previous contestants as they come on to sing lame and uninteresting songs
4. the show will run 44 minutes overtime and everyone with dvr will have to go on votefortheworst.com to find out who won
5. we will consider all of season 8 an epic fail.

but we'll see...

#251 - punch out!!

2009-05-18T17:31:00.000-10:00

dude, guess who's got two thumbs and just got the most awesomest 2009 halloween costume idea? this guy...

yes that's right, it's back... punch out!! with TWO exclaimation points!! yes two exclaimation points are extremely necessary for this game (and this post) because how awesome was this game?!remember glass joe? von kaiser? piston honda? don flamenco? king hippo? the great tiger? soda popinski? bald bull? mike tyson? oh well, no mike tyson, but how awesome was it? the music, the star punches, referee mario, the pink sweatsuit, the beeps that play when the words come out on the screen between rounds, and pressing select to restore your health once a match? fan-frickin'-tastic!remember how you had to low punch bald bull on his third hop or get KO-ed? and, of course, no one will ever forget the king hippo strategy... i hope that all translates from "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" (for nes) to "Punch-Out!!" for wii:yup, that's right, punch-out is coming to wii, i already preordered it... this will be the first wii game that i've bought in awhile, and i'm kinda bummed that i didn't just wait until monday and buy it in the store... but it was $10 off at amazon.com on preorder plus free shipping, so i'll wait the extra week or so to get it in the mail.in the meantime, i'm gonna dust off the old NES and play mike tyson's punch out for a refresher... also, this new wave of retro nintendo recently (which i'm totally loving) has been so awesome that i've already decided my halloween 2009 costume... i'm totally going as "little mac" this year. i'm gonna ebay the green boxing gloves, black boots, grab me some green shorts and a black tank and i'll be ready for the world circuit! it's on...

#250 - federer finally!!

2009-05-17T09:53:00.003-10:00

a very special post for #250... today roger federer FINALLY beat rafa nadal on clay, in a final, for the first time in two years! he won the madrid masters series championship with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over the now #1 rafael nadal. this is his 15th masters series title (andre agassi has a record 17), but his first in a very long while (nadal and djokovic had been collecting them recently).

oh man, for awhile there it looked like he was never gonna be able to get over the nadal roadblock, but congratulations to federer, he finally did it... let's hope he can keep the win streak alive into the french open!

#249 - 6'4"

2009-05-16T23:50:00.004-10:00

6'4"

that's amber kaufman's WAC championship gold medal high jump. it's also her personal record, a UH record, and the highest outdoor high jump by any woman (collegiate or otherwise) in the US this year. that's just amazing, imagine, that's like completely jumping over any of her volleyball teammates with at least an inch to spare! they showed it on the news tonight and i still have no idea how anyone can do that.

anyway, that news clip got me searching on the internet and you wouldn't believe how many wahine volleyball clips there are on youtube (or maybe you would, how rude of me to assume that you wouldn't believe, sorry, because i hate when tv show commercials tell me the same thing... "you won't believe what happens in the last 10 seconds!"). and that got me thinking about volleyball last season... i greatly under-rated last season. for some reason in my mind it wasn't so great (it's that darn new mexico state that's making me change my WAC views)... but really, they ended up 31-4 and in the NCAA regional finals (after all those willoughby/kahumoku/kamana'o years i guess i got too used to the final fours), losing to national runner-up stanford. and along the way they beat minnesota, USC, purdue, and, in what was easily the best game of the year, washington.

nevermind "best game of the year," that was in my top 5 games i've ever been to! it was fantastic! there's even a great clip of it on youtube featuring amber kaufman, because she had a record 12 aces or something like that against #9 washington (who also ended the season in the regional finals, losing to nebraska). man, i totally lost my voice after that game, and i forgot all about it because it was at the beginning of the season. who knew kanani herring/danielson would go on to be the star of the team (along with kaufman) and be the WAC freshman of the year (and, a lot of coaches thought, should have been the national freshman of the year as well)? but that was a classic. right up there with hawaii's win of USC in the regional semifinals (when hawaii was a BIG underdog) when they went 5 games and kamana'o reeled off 12 straight points after being down 2-3 in game 5 to win it 15-5. and also the two stanford matches during the willoughby/kahumoku years, those were spectacular games... i don't go to all of the games ('cause they're all on tv), but i know which ones are gonna be the great ones, and i make sure to go to those. next year's got some doozies, so if you wanna start planning (i already am), mark your calendar for:

Aug. 30 - vs. UCLA
Sep. 5 - vs. Texas! (exclaimation point on this one, plus texas has destiny hooker, who beat out amber kaufman for the gold in high jump at the NCAA indoor championships)
Sep. 6 - vs. California
Sep. 12 - vs. Stanford
Oct. 17 - vs. New Mexico State

and to get your wahine volleyball appetite going...

PS - TENNIS UPDATE!
tomorrow, nadal vs. federer for another masters series event, the last one before the french open. kind of bittersweet though, because novak djokovic had 3 match points against nadal in the semifinals but nadal somehow wins again, sigh. so now root for federer okay... root HARD! go roger!

#248 - surprise anyone?

2009-05-13T22:20:00.003-10:00

alright! my top pick for idol this year is in the finale! that doesn't happen too often, i mean, that my top pick from the very beginning of the competition makes it all the way to the end. the only ones that did were carrie underwood (and even though i picked her from the beginning, she went up and down for me), katharine mcphee, and archuleta... and only carrie underwood actually won. so now that kris (with his jason mraz-y vibe but unfortunate dull personality and dumb slant-mouth) actually made it to the finale i can relax ('cause realistically there's no way he's gonna be able to beat adam). but i think i did pretty good in my predictions and top picks this year... i mean, of course i had adam way down on the list, but kris and allison did very well.

still, i am just a little bit excited about the finale because either way (good or horrific) adam will be a trip, and with kris in there instead of gokey at least we'll get some variety and even a chance of a really cool performance, so go kris!

#247 - the awesomeness that is dollhouse... and some other awesomeness as well

2009-05-12T23:24:00.004-10:00

OH MAN! HOW AWESOME IS THIS?!? a hand-held NES! this one is going straight to the top of my wishlist... heck, i might just buy it already (although i am a little concerned that the A and B buttons are in a vertical configuration... not liking that actually). but this is just one of the most awesome things i will be bringing you today.

well, what do you know? i'm feeling a little generous, possibly because summer is about to start and i'm very much looking forward to some free days (i've already got a vigorous non-schedule of surfing, workouts, tennis, swimming, etc. anticipated) so today's blog is going to explore all the things that are awesomely great right exactly now:

1. dollhouse -
joss whedon is so much the man. how awesome is this show? super awesome. how many super awesome things are there about dollhouse? tons! along with the always fantastic writing from joss whedon, the cast is great, in addition to the hottie up there, pretty much all the women are gorgeous and just recently they added another joss whedon alumni (from firefly)...alan tudyk as the main villian (the crazy, schizo villian, which is always fun). they also revealed that amy acker (joss whedon alum from angel)who we all thought was the dollhouse doctor, is actually a doll! wooooooooooo!

2. the big bang theory - man, i've been so surprised at how much i like this show. i just started watching it this year after mostly blowing it off since it actually began and i can't believe it, but i find myself laughing just as much as i laugh at the office, huh. i think it's because i relate to sheldon, i think in an extreme world i might probably be that guy, haha, i'm not that bad though, still, i understand. also, i kinda like the clothes they wear on that show, i mean, a few of their shirts are on thinkgeek.com and so it's my kind of style, haha. it's a bit scary, but i understand a lot of their nerd jokes and i'm not sure, but i think i might be a nerd too...

3. snl - ha, good stuff

hmm... if that doesn't work, try this link

4. tennis - hey tennis is great! who knew? our mixed doubles season is over now, and sure i came out 2-2, but i had fun, it was lax, all my partners were a lot of fun and i was lucky to have fun opponents too. y'know i've been taking tennis lessons for so long and at least when i was in high school i had a good reason for taking them (i was on a high school team), but after i restarted when i graduated from undergrad i felt kind of dumb because i really wasn't playing competitive at all, so now that i'm actually on a team and playing real games i feel little more justified (and not so completely embarrassed that i'm still taking lessons with like, high school kids). but since i'm playing mostly alongside and with beginners they're a whole lot more fun than more serious players so i'm seeing the fun side, and not worrying about sucking too much and making tons of errors anymore (plus, post-match beer-fests are great as well).

5. volleyball - well, volleyball is almost over too, but i had a lot more fun this year than last. since i don't get to play AT ALL besides during the season, i've found that my skills have gotten better over this season especially and that makes it a lot more fun when you're not completely shanking balls all over the place. but also there's less crabby old people playing, or maybe they've just loosened up this year, either way that's been more fun too.

6. being active - i think i'm in a good mood just because i've been able to be more active recently... doing something physically strenuous every single day definately heightens my mood significantly. and since the weather's actually been hot it's been real easy to get out there and do something. i really hope this continues, but one thing i definately need more sleep! every night i tell myself to go to bed earlier but it never happens, ugh.

7. american idol? i dunno about this one... we'll see what happens tonight, but i just can't get behind this season. and now tonight they're only singing two songs each instead of three? seriously, who's completely dropping the ball here? well, at least tonight i have time to blog in full, so here goes:

- danny gokey - damn, paula's picks always SUCK! she likes those upbeat or jazzy type songs that pretty much anyone with any kind of voice could sing and not really have to be a good singer (probably because those are the only kind of songs she can sing, ha). junk song, junk performance. he still comes off as an ass on tv, he thinks he's hot snip up there on the stage.

- kris allen - much better song for kris. did he really need to play the piano? looks like he's got someone else playing along with him and he doesn't look so comfortable... more like squished. oops, he can't hit the high notes either. not so great, sounded like the original, only junker. uh oh, he better have a good last song. yow, kara's got claws.

- adam lambert - okay, i really liked the first 45 seconds or so... then he took of the microphone and out came the whiny-girlie voice, and it was all downhill from there (and with him, once things go "downhill," man it's a damn steep hill). if he would only sing like he did during that first part for the rest of the song i could actually root for him, but he can't, so i won't.

- danny gokey pt. 2 - sucked. y'know, when he said the title, i actually thought it was a fantastic song choice for him, but then somehow he managed to turn the arrangement into a gospel/praise song and then it was generic, boring and sucky. still sounds like an ass.

- kris allen pt. 2 - okay, i heard a rock version of heartless (by the fray) on the radio last week and i really liked it... so here's hoping kris does something along the same lines... well, i did like it, but he definately could've used some instrumental or vocal back-up there. in fact, i think it would've been pretty hot with some added strength behind it, but it just fell kinda short without it. still, i'm voting for him for the final.

- adam lambert pt. 2 - ah, okay, i've been waiting for him to do aerosmith, and cryin'? great choice. aw crap. i liked it. dammit. well, that is a performance i can vote for though (aside from the sneers). if he does rock like this (and NOT the girly/gay stuff), then he might be okay after idol. thank you simon for taking some realism into account, yes, shut the other three up please.

ps - where's american idol rap week? i've been waiting for that... let's see some busta rhymes.

oh, okay, so let's get rid of gokey finally and have kris and adam in the final... that'd be okay by me.

#246 - aww crap

2009-05-06T22:12:00.002-10:00

aww crap, allison's out.

i really wished danny would've gotten out, cause i don't want to see him for two more weeks, but i'm really glad that kris is still in. i thought for sure he was gonna be out. and if that hideous scream of danny's still couldn't get him out, then what will? it'll be between danny and adam and then who the crap am i gonna root for? i might have to root for adam! *shiver*

also, can paula be any more full of herself?

also, was that no doubt performance prerecorded?

also, what the crap is up with idol? geez.

but, now that idol is winding down, it's time to start thinking about so you think you can dance... did you see the commercials? even though this show can be super-gay, i gotta say that the talent is so much better when you compare it to idol. i mean, EVERYONE on so you think you can dance can really dance, no so with the singing on idol. plus, i love hip-hop/breaking stuff, that's damn cool.

also, i'm super bummed that allison got out! how awesome was her last song though? right?

#245 - problems with idol

2009-05-05T23:47:00.002-10:00

i am sacrificing a little bit of sleep tonight because i just came home from cinco de mayo night at kiyomi's house and re-watched idol... and man i'm having such a hard time liking idol this year, and i'm not an idol hater, i WANT to like idol, but they're making it very hard for me this year. i'm not quite sure where idol went wrong, because last year was easily my favorite of all seasons, but i think it may start with idol getting rid of producer nigel lythgoe (he's also that third judge on so you think you can dance?). now, i don't know what a "producer" does, exactly, but i'm under the impression that they're pretty much in charge of how they want the show to run, and that whole "running of the show" is what this year lacks in spades. let's list them:

- 4 judges = 3 useless ones + simon. it's bad enough that we had randy before, then at least paula could be the trainwreck that she is and it would just be funny, then simon could come in and give a real opinion. but now we've got useless randy, then kara using horny analogies to butter up her favorites to the point where her opinion is now completely devoid of merit, paula trainwrecking it up as usual, and now simon has to spend all his time commenting on the stupidity of the judging table to even start with the contestants. it didn't work with the celebrity judges, it doesn't work now. also, can we quit it with the hyperbole already? geez, i don't need three dumbasses yelling at how great everyone is each week, it gets old doesn't it? give your opinion, your critique, and move on.

- overtime again. seriously, so first you can't get the show to end in under an hour with only 8 contestants. then you don't let all the judges speak in order to save time and still can't end under an hour. then you don't let the contestants sing two songs like they normally do when it's down to the top 5 and can't get it to end under an hour. then when it's top 4 they can only sing one song and a duet (count that, it's 6 total songs) and still can't end in under an hour? really?! (sounds like a topic for "really!? with seth and amy").

- duets. hate it. save the duets for the exhibition after the competition is over (like how they usually do on the last results show after the finale). this is just retarded. of course adam and allison are gonna kill danny and kris doing a duet on rock week, geez. c'mon, this is still a competition right? am i going to vote for a pair? no, i vote for only ONE person, and only ONE person wins. boo, idol.

okay, so with that out of the way, let's get down to the contestants:

1. adam lambert - can he sing well? yes. does he suit rock? yes, glam rock. do i want to listen to him? no. will i vote for him? no.

2. allison iraheta - good job, but of course she was gonna do well during rock week. i can't believe kara suggested "another little piece of my heart," could you be anymore generic? i think they should start retiring some songs from the idol songlists already. so yay allison, i will vote for her.

duet #1 - crapfest. great song, but sucks as a duet and totally did not match the dueters. remember when chris daughtry did it awhile back? that was believable, this one not so much.

3. kris allen - i really like this song, but i liked it when carly smithson sang it last year (i kinda regret not buying that one on itunes). this version was crap. but of course kris is not a rock singer, but he did it in his own laid back kinda way which i thought was pretty cool, but not up to par. still, i like his style and i hope he sticks around next week so i will vote for him.

4. danny gokey - EPIC FAIL! hey, remember when michael johns sang this last season and then was quickly booted off the show? yeah, i remember that. think it'll happen this time? i doubt it, but i hope so. this guy still comes off as a douchebag, he might not be, but that's how he seems on tv. no vote.

duet #2 - of course adam and allison make a great pair for rock week, but what a craptacular song, like i told everyone tonight, there's a reason why "slow ride" is the first song you play on guitar hero...

so all in all, i hope danny gets kicked off this week. that being said, they're all good singers and i don't mind seeing any of the four for two more weeks through the finale (even adam, even though i don't like him, at least he provides a foil and a point of conversation). who i would like to see get booted this week is the producer in charge of managing this show, seriously, dude, you've got to be able to do better than this.

also, did anyone else see those two amigos with the sombreros in the audience sitting behind simon? awesome!