#57 - summer lovin'

so... one more week of summer left eh? let's review... it was good. okay so i hate summarizing. it makes me feel like i'm back in school, summarize this book in 250 words. bleh. who needs it? if i want a summary i'll just scroll back through the posts, see? i knew i was keeping this blog for something.

anyway, so six weeks of summer have passed (yes, summer is only 7 weeks long, how depressing, it's just not right, we end work in june and then say, see you next month in july? dumb) and i've watched a lot of tv. haha, well, i've had time to watch a lot of tv at least. so i thought that i'd spice up my blog with a new poll (not that it wasn't interesting to find out that 3 out of 5 people want to go to australia, but...). here are four be-u-tiful ladies that i've been watching on tv all summer that i think are all very very hot. do you agree?

1. eliza dushku - i think she was the reason why i started watching buffy the vampire slayer (make your jokes as you like, but i swear, that's a great show), she's just hot. no explanation needed. she's also the reason why i watched tru calling this summer (make your jokes, because that's a crappy show). then she was in some horror movies that i watched only because she was in them (they were likewise crappy). oh well, i guess those producers knew they had crappy shows and needed a hottie to pull people like me in... keep up the good work producers.

2. lauren conrad - don't laugh (nah, go ahead and laugh, i'd laugh at me too), when i was in grad school my classmates (all girls mind you) were into laguna beach, and since i spent every single waking moment of every single day with them, i heard a lot about the show. so i watched a couple and then i saw her and i watched some more and i kept watching 'cause she's hot. don't get me wrong, everyone on those shows seems pretty idiotic (probably due to the fact that they're all loaded rich and spoiled), but that's the fun of watching it eh?

3. paris hilton - is it wrong to like watching the simple life? tough because i thought it was a great show. haha, of course, not a "good" show, but an entertaining half-hour of laughing at a hot dumb blonde on farms. c'mon, that's good tv! haha, okay, but really, she's still hot... of course, i'm not taking into account any of her actions or various media "incidents" into consideration, just going by the looks, and she's got 'em.

4. maria sharapova - COME ON! i love maria's mean face. and yes she's hot, but she's got the game to back it up too... now THAT'S hot. i'm seeing a US Open repeat for the two-time grand slam champion eh? how awesome was it last year when they played all those commercials of her during the open and then she went all the way and won it huh? man, you can't script that stuff, it's just pure good sports story. sweet.

#56 - breakage

aah... i love the smell of freshly broken strings in the morning. okay, not really, but for some reason it's really fun when you break strings on your tennis racket... even more fun if you break it a la serena williams and smack it down into the court, but i broke mine the old fashioned way.

usually, i'm not really interested in tennis for competition, and i don't very much like playing with strangers (like, pick-up basketball or something), but for some reason i was at the courts on friday just serving and playing the backboard and this random guy asked if i wanted to hit with him for a bit. usually, i just say something like, "thanks, but i'm just practicing serving" or something and decline, but for some reason i guess i was feeling confident and i agreed. anyway, i guess i should stop being so awkward about things like that, but i guess all those D.A.R.E "stay away from strangers" things they bombarded me with in elementary school got etched in my brain somehow. anyway, the point is that the guy hit pretty hard with some wicked spin (and actually i was pretty proud of myself afterwards for hanging right with him in the rallies and little mini-games or whatever, since i never really get to compare myself with other tennis players), but then of course, hard-hitting = string busting.

but hey, that's what it's about eh? it feels pretty cool to be smacking consistently forcefully enough to break your strings. but then i had to do a rush job on the restringing to go to lessons on sunday, but thanks to that shop in pearl kai it was ready to go! yeah tennis!

ps - on a sidenote, today there was a mini-marathon of "tru calling" on the sci-fi channel today. i liked that show, it wasn't a good show, but it had a semi-interesting plot and a hottie for a star so it was a nice hour of tv during the weekdays. too bad it didn't last very long, i think they started running out of ideas so they brought on jason preistly (bad bad bad actor) and then from there on it was pretty damn crappy. but of course i'd still watch it for my weekly dose of eliza dushku (see above, re: hottie). anyway, it was kinda nice to see it back on tv, since it went off tv so quickly, but it was nice surprise.

#55 - bear vs. wild

this guy is my new hero. the second season of man vs. wild just started this summer on the discovery channel and i'm loving every second of it. not that i think i would ever want to get myself into one of these survival situations, but at least i can pretend that if i ever was in that situation i might possibly know something more than how to make a sundial. anyway, after that hike the other day i got that man vs. wild craving again and watch a nice summertime DVR'ed marathon of man vs. wild and even though i know what he's gonna do, i still can't believe it when he drinks water out of elephant poop, or pees on his shirt and wraps it around his head, or jumps over a snowcliff just to show you how to climb your way back up. and i think the worst (and most awesome part) about bear and this show is that you KNOW he doesn't HAVE to do these things. even though he's "stranded" himself out there in all these places, there's at least the cameraman with him, and you know that HE ain't drinking elephant poop! haha, and i'm sure that as much as the things that he does are real, i'm sure there are some things that are staged, but who cares? when you see that guy go all golem on some fish he caught in an ice pond it's just good tv!


hmm... so how long do you think it'll take me to get my own show on the discovery channel? or, how about on olelo? what do you think? matt vs. wild!

#54 - the trail

first of all, a couple of new things for the blog... check out the poll on the right column, hopefully i'll have a new one each week, this week: where do you want to go on your next vacation? of course, if i had a million-zillion dollars then i'd pick something a little more exotic than vegas (think europe... spain, italy, etc.), but being more realistic, i'd be happy taking a vacation to anywhere!

also, check out the new pic on the footer of the page, hopefully it'll be an oft-rotated pic, but this one suits my mood right now. i tried to fix up a sweet banner for the header and title of the page, but i'm not quite that technically minded just yet, so it'll have to be a plain title for a while longer.

anyway, here are some pics from another summer adventure, same trail as last time, but gone a little deeper. we actually took three different trails, judd trail, that connected to nu`uanu trail, and at the end of that was pauoa trail. about a quarter way through we were looking a little more like this:
but once we got to the top of the mountain there was a great view all the way from diamond head to ewa.
that was about halfway up... then we went down the other side of the mountain through some cool (but superbly muddy) bamboo forests only to climb back up the montain and get the same exact view of nu`uanu at the end of the "pauoa flats trial." haha, see, someone wrote on the side of the pole "who is on trial?" below that someone wrote "aaron." poor aaron.anyway, overall it was a decent hike, but an even better time just taking the hike, being outdoors, and taking pictures of nicole's awesome spit bubbles.

#53 - Fourth of July

Fourth of July! i'm glad most everyone could make it out to the beach on wednesday, despite the early wake up call and unfortunate morning weather. but once it cleared up it was a nice day eh? here are some pics from the fun day... so i tried about a million times to get these two pics upright, but i guess i suck so you'll just have to tilt your own head you lazy bums.

i guess we don't smile for the camera anymore huh? that's okay, this is funner.

oh, here's falcor. i don't know if that's his real name, but he appeared in the early morning at the beach park all by himself and took a nap in the shade by our camp. we named him falcor after that disgusting dog/dragon thing in the neverending story. but then i went home and looked up "falcor" on the internet and it actually looked like this:
gross! anyway, for a stray dog, falcor was impressively polite... he patiently waited off to the side when we started cooking for his scraps and didn't bark or be too nosy around our stuff. and he only once stepped up on our beach mats (then i had to go dog whisperer on him and show him who the humans were) and peed off to the side and then disappeared again. well, i think he got a pretty good meal out of us so a win-win day for everyone eh?

#52 - hanauma bay

oops, i almost forgot about these pics! this is from the first day of pre-wedding week fun, a day at hanauma bay. it was a real nice day, weather-wise, and pretty cool to play tourist for a day, hopefully i'll get to do that a lot more before work starts up again in.... sigh... july.

anyway, click here for the pics

#51 - Neil & Nicole's Wedding

here you go guys, some pics from Neil & Nicole's wedding. unfortunately, i couldn't get a lot of good pics inside the church and reception because it was so dark and i was too far away for the flash to work. but i figured that they've got the professional photographers going so i didn't take a lot of pictures anyway. but if you wanna see my pics... click here anyway, it was a real nice time for everyone i think. i had a blast hanging out with all of neil's family and friends and meeting new people, plus melissa is tons of fun so it was nice having her back for a week too.

but that means another one down... would you guys just cool it already with all the weddings and babies? take it easy huh? slow down a sec and wait for the rest of us to catch up already!

#50 - five-o with taiko

happy 50th post birthday to me! i thought i'd cap off 50 posts to this blog by reminding myself why i started it in the first place. looking back at my first post, i started this blog to faciliate the expansion of my life. a way to make a symbolic turn away from everyday monotony and encourage myself to discover what life has to offer and to decide which elements of that i want in my life. so far i think i'm on the right track... ready to move out of the parents' house, feeling comfortable and confident in my career, got my ambitions pointed in the right directions (even if i'm not quite there yet). so this post is about something that i've wanted to do for a long time and finally worked up the courage to do so.

as a kid my parents wanted me in sports (actually, i think they were really worried that since i was such a small kid that i wouldn't be able to "fend for myself" if they didn't breed me into competition or martial arts or something like that, bs), and even though i loved playing sports, i didn't like competition or coaches or a lot of the other kids (they were all mililani brats, haha). so even though i had fun in each sport, i grew tired of them very quickly because of all that other stuff that came along with playing (i.e. potlucks, getting yelled at, mosquito bites). therefore i was shuttled through all the major sports between kindergarten and 7th grade, soccer, baseball, basketball, aikido, korean karate, and finally tennis (which i regret was the last sport i learned and not the first).

but i had this lingering interest in taiko, well, i didn't see it very often, just once in awhile and then right after seeing it i'd tell my parents i wanted to do it, but they'd tell me that i couldn't because of soccer practice or aikido (which backfired on them because then i grew to hate those sports even more, up to the point where it was an all-out screaming match every tuesday/thursday when it was time for practice... grr.. i'm getting mad even thinking about it, this was a serious parenting error on their part as far as i'm concerned because i've developed a great deal of animosity toward them and their authority because of this conflict... in fact, i probably joined marching band just because practices were on the same nights as korean karate class and by that time i HATED anything that my parents wanted me to do and they forced me to go to that class). hmm... okay, so now i'm kinda p.o.ed and off-topic... but anyway, my advice to future parents: follow your kid's interests. it's no use fighting them on what they want to do with their life, you can only force your will on them so much. and kids won't understand that you're just trying to look out for them by making them take marital arts because they need to protect themselves, they'll just see that you're making them do something against their will when you should be fostering their variety of interests. i'm glad that i learned a bunch of different sports and i sure feel more well-rounded having at least a basic knowledge and skill level in each, but i wish that i had been allowed to explore a lot more different interests and was not forced (tooth and nail, for years) to do those that i had lost interest in.

GRR! okay, now that i'm trying to get back to the topic of this post, so now i'm taking taiko (finally) and it's completely awkward to me right now. granted, it's only my first couple of classes, but i feel like i've suddenly grown two new arms and i have no idea what to do with them. but, at least the class is pretty non-intimidating so i don't mind looking like an idiot, ha, and hopefully i'll get the hang of it soon. well, let's stop writing now before i get angry again... it's a good thing to learn something new. new hobbies, new people to interact with, this is the direction that i'd like my life to go.

next up: nicole & neil's wedding

#49 - pigeon-ocide

TARGET: Spotted Nape Dove

OBJECTIVE: Total Exterminationi've been waiting for summertime to come along again since it ended last year. beach weather, no work, get to sleep in late. but every single frickin' day of my summer so far has been maliciously ravaged by these fat, lazy bastards. every single day between 5:45 and 6:00 am i've been jarred awake by their constant, blaring, and insanely metronomic COOING!!! GRRR!!! it's destroyed any hope i've have this summer for catching up on my sleep and restoring some type of normalcy in my sleeping patterns.see this? see that little shit hidding behind the fern? that's my neighbor's roof and it's right outside my damn window. there the jackass sits cooing insanely all morning. and it's not like i hate all birds chirpping. hell, i had parakeets growing up, but this bastard is different. it coos LOUD and in maniacal intervals. it's like, "COOOOO!!!" and then i'm like, "crap, shut the hell up," and then i actually have to wait for the next "COOOO!!!" and then i don't hear anything so i'm like, "okay, it's ov.." "COOO!!!" grr, so irritating! so, every morning i lie in bed and seethe hatred until i'm finally forced to get up out of bed and pound on the windows to scare them away, by the way, the other morning when i did that i hit the windows so hard in frustration that i knocked a glass jalousie out. but recently, the little creeps have gotten bold and aren't scared away by noise anymore, so then i gotta leave the warmth and comfort of my bed at 6:00 in the morning, put my clothes on, and go outside in the cold to find and throw rocks at the bastards. GRR!
and i swear it's only those doves, because even those these zebra doves (above) do that annoying mating dance thing where they lift their disgusting tail feathers and coo, the frickin' spotted doves are ten times louder and a ga-zillion times more insane-making.

and so now, my mission for this summer is to hunt down and kill every single one of these little f***ers on my street. i sit outside and wait for their feathery asses to land on my roof and pelt them with as many rocks as i can fit in my hand. but the damn things are bold frickin' idiots. they come and fly right back into the strike zone.

so, to help you identify (and subsequently kick, run over, or stone to death) these birds, here's what the experts say about these bastards:

"Adults are brownish-colored with a pinky hue all over, but slightly paler below. The tail is darker and quite wide. On the neck there is a band of black which is covered in white spots and extends from the fore-neck right around the back of the neck. Juveniles similar but lack neck collar. (12 inches) Calls: Three or four "coo"s but lower pitched and louder than Zebra Dove."

by the way, although not part of the original plan, please feel free to rid the earth of any zebra doves you may come across as well (just for good measure), here's what the experts say about them:

Sexes similar. Pale gray below with a pinky wash and gray above with dark barring. Barring below varies but can be restricted to the neck sides or can cover the entire underparts. The upper breast and neck are often tinged blue.Dark eye and small pale bill. (8 inches) Calls: Series of staccato "coo"s given rapidly. Also when displaying more drawn-out deeper "coo", accompanied by tail fanning and cocking.

although they don't bug me as much, they use the wall outside my bedroom window for their "tail fanning and cocking," (haha!) which grosses me out.

but there must be a better way to get those pigeons besides throwing handfuls of rocks at them. yesterday i tried to build one of those traps with box, a twig and some string, but that didn't fool 'em, and bear grylls hasn't taught me how to catch birds yet so i'll have to wait for another episode of man vs. wild to tell me how to get those damn birds. so please, tell everyone you know about Operation: Pigeon-ocide. we must spread the word! PIGEONS BEWARE!!

#48 - Nu'uanu Trail

ask and ye shall receive....

so here we go, first "adventure" of the summer was hiking up the nu'uanu trail. it was a really nice day, clear skies all around which made for very nice (and very dry) hiking. the views from up top were pretty nice, camera doesn't really do them justice though. anyway, i took a bunch of continuous shutter shots to try and catch some of the action so you can check out all of those pics (warning: there are loads of pics) here via snapfish.

we started on the judd trail, which turned into the nu'uanu trail about halfway in
i thought i flipped these pics, but i guess it didn't work, and now i'm too lazy to go back and fix it, so flip your heads to the side to see jeremy and keane...
and elizabeth and spencer
at the end of the trail was this swimming hole, lots of people there already, they had a rope swing for catapulting yourself into the water... this one drew a collective "oww" from everyone watching.

coming up next... my master plan for total pidgeon extermination, stay tuned!