#67 - back to it

phew... after about a week and a half of feeling like a flattened dead toad baking on the asphalt i'm finally back to feeling alright. sickness sucks, no wonder people try to stay away from it.

anyway, it's time to get back to living now, i think my 24 hour membership might've expired while i was sick... i sent in my renewal payment, but i used to prepay everything and this time i want them to take out my monthly from my checking, so i hope it went through, i didn't get anything back yet. oh well, i guess i'll find out when i go in on monday and they reject me at the front desk.

oh, and volleyball. sigh. how can they be so crappy already? i mean, obviously you look to kamana`o first (or the absence of kamana`o), and even though the sets ARE misplaced and predictable, it really should be good enough to get some decent hits out of the already experienced players. at first i was like, okay, opening match jitters, gotta work out all the kinks and whatever, but after tonight's 0-3 lost or oregon state? i mean, oregon state? sure they're a different team from last year, but i watched each of their games the past two nights and they ain't the greatest... oh well, at least it'll make for an exciting season (one way or the other).

on a brighter note, US OPEN STARTS TOMORROW!!!! woo hoo! my picks, you ask? federer and i'm going out on a limb... taking a risk... and going for ana ivanovic! why? well, just take a look... she's hot! haha, nah, but okay really she's not a total dark horse, she's #4/5 in the world and she's been in the semis of the french open and won a bunch of titles (including a big one in LA just a few weeks ago). of course, i also gotta go with my girl maria sharapova, defending champion... but her game has been a little suspect (especially the serve) recently. still she's got a good draw on the bottom half of the women so i'll pit her up against ivanovic for the finals (even though ivanovic has gotta get through jelena jankovic and then possibly serena/justine in the semis). i'd call venus williams my dark horse for the big upsets this major around. serena of course is always in there, but i think her injuries are still hampering her a little too much to be able to get past henin.
on the men's side... well, who would you take? my man roger federer or the field? haha, i'm going with roger. how can you not? i'll tell you why not... novak djokovic! this guy's my new favorite (aside from roger), winning two huge hard court titles this year (beating, along the way, roddick, nadal 2x, and roger in the final of the big one a few weeks ago) and i think he'll push roger in the final, maybe take off a set, but roger will come up big in the end to win his fourth consecutive US Open title. i'd really like to push for roddick, because i like the guy and really want him to do well (especially at the US Open), but he's gotta get through both roger (in the quarters) and then djokovic (supposing he gets to the finals) and i don't think he can get both done in the same tourney, still, he's got the skills so if he catches one of them on a bad day (especially since he'll be facing federer early on in the tournament and heck, he's the last guy besides roger to win the US Open anyway!). my dark horse i'm gonna pick lleyton hewitt, he's been showing some sweet game lately, but he's gotta play djokovic early and i'm liking djokovic for the finals so....
well, opening matches start tomorrow... 10 hours of tennis every day, woo hoo! by the way, if you know any girls who look like miss ivanovic up there... 1) find out if she's single, 2) tell her what a great guy i am, and 3) introduce me. especially if she can pound forehands (ala steffi graf) like ana, i'm all in. ha.

#66 - sick day

i'm sick. sucks. i like to consider myself a very healthy person and i admire myself (yes, i do practice narscicsm regularly) for not getting sick very often due to good nutrition, exercise, hygiene and whatever. but, i'm sick. i think it happened because i haven't been sleeping well. i'm noticed that if i go through a whole work week of getting less than 8 hours of sleep everynight then i'm get sick by the end of the week. but if i can somehow manage to get the full 8 hours at least one night during the week then i can stave off sickness (i might feel kinda crappy, but not be sick at least). anyway, that didn't happen last week and into the weekend as well (which is usually when i can catch up on sleep, although that's not such a good thing to bank on) and now i'm sick.

looking back, this is the very first sick day i've taken since i've started work. wow, i can't believe it took me 2+ years to take my first sick day... i'm trying to remember other times when i probably should have taken a sick day... but really i can't think of any when i was just dying and needed to stay home. i've luckily been a very health boy until today, ha.

it kind of kills me that i still had to wake up early to call in sick though... seems like they should let me sleep. hah, oh well, luckily i was able to get back to sleep from about 8:30-10:30 on the couch, that was cool. oh and luckily again there was tennis on tv the whole day so it was a good day to be a sickly couch potato. i also got a chance to consistently throw rocks at those damn noisy dove bastards in my yard all day. pet the a-dawg too... can dogs get sick from people germs? i did clean the bathroom, which was a pretty productive thing for sickly me to do ay?

well, now that i've got a taste of what life can be like when you're sick i might have to take sick days more often eh? well, luckily today was a non-babysitting day for my mom and then she was out on errands the whole day so i had the house to myself (FOR ONCE!) so it was a lot different than it usually is, y'know, when there's PEOPLE EVERYWHERE AND YOU CAN'T ESCAPE FROM ANYONE IN THIS HOUSE!!!

i guess i'll have to wait until i move out to take another sick day.

#65 - drain

man did i ever need a weekend. the past week or so has been such and emotionally draining stretch of days. but luckily, it was one of those emotionally draining weeks when you can still look back and see that things have still turned out alright. still, when you go through rough times and look back at the events and the eventual outcomes and see that, like, on paper, it doesn't really amount to much, it's kinda sad because you feel like you've been through so much more.

and the sadder thing is that nothing really happened to me, haha. i mean, the actual events happened to other people around me, but of course i'm involved with them so i get involved in the reprecussions of the events. okay, yeah, vague, sorry. but i don't wanna spell it all out because these things didn't really happen to me, so it's not my story to tell. anyway, i know that i in no way had the worst of any of it, but i was still pulled along with their stresses and emotions and i guess a combination of a bunch of that plus bad timing has left me completely spent and it's not even friday yet.

but, i can share two things that i've learned through these various trials:
1. all people are just people... and people can be dickwads - it's really easy to define people by their professions and the positions that they hold, but i've gotta remember that they're still just people, and no matter how much schooling or years of experience a person has about how human beings operate and how they can deviate from that "normal/accepted" operation, they still have the innate potential to be dickwads. also, it has become my belief that people don't grow up. they learn how to be "grown ups" but it is a conscious decision on their part to act as such. therefore, i should not be surprised when adults in positions of supposed respect conduct him/herselves in a manner that is consistent with the behavior of total dickwads.

2. i guess there's a reason why i'm not working rehab - yesterday i was playing caretaker with my grandpa while the rest of the family was out and there was an accident and although i believe i handled it to the best of my ability, i do not believe that i'd be cut-out for dealing with these kinds of situations on a daily basis. all i could think was, "man, if a simple accident with an elderly person gets me so worked up like this, how am i ever gonna handle when i have kids?" yeah, well, thinking WAY far into the future i know, but then again i work with parents who are my age and have like three or four kids already so i know it's not my age, but my own personal lifepath that has not drawn me down the "kids" road yet. but then again, i mean, if a baby fell down i could just pick them right up and carry them or whatever, but you can't do that so easily with a grown man huh?

anyway, lots of stuff running through my brain and such this week. boy i'm gonna enjoy this weekend... i'm a-gonna grab myself some sand and surf and take it easy.

#64 - papa'iloa

man i was feeling so lazy today... well, after my first full week back to work, i kinda just wanted to sit on my ass all day catching up on dvr recordings (especially the quarters and semis of the acura classic with maria... hot hot... sharapova). but taking a glance outside how could i possibly let this bee-u-ti-ful summer day go to waste on anytime tv? alas, called the surf report and it was flat all over. blah. so i decided to take a tourist day and head up to the north shore for some snorkeling/sand-lying-on activities somewhere beyond pupukea. for some reason though traffic was backed up way past kawailoa so i took an early exit and went to papa'iloa instead. k
man, i'm completely jealous at the houses lining the beach... what does it take to get to live in one of those houses and see this every morning?
i think i was a good decision to stop off at papa'iloa, hardly anyone there... which is exactly what i was looking for after being trapped in this house with people frickin' everywhere i turn! ghaa! i gotta move out... only two more months... hopefully.
turtles were out in force too... didn't get any pictures though, because they actually look pretty gross, especially when they're out of the water, at least in the water they look kinda shiny, but not that nice. OH, and i also saw a seal taking a sun break down the beach. i tried to take a pic but it was too far away and then it took off right after that so oh well.
anyway, it was fun day out at the beach, just me and mr. sun-baked crab being out in the sun and (lack of) surf. actually, after taking these pics, i drove on back to ali'i beach for some snorkeling (i saw some stickfish, a couple wrasses, several puffa-fish, another turtle, some fat weke, and even a little papio) and laying around on the sand, by the way i finally got around to reading a little bit of that carl sagan book that i started about two years ago and never got even halfway through. so, all in all, good day.

#63 - duh dun... duh dun...

did you realize that shark week is half over already? damn stinkin' calendar schedule, who moved work up to august? remember when school started in september hello? damn the man, now i'm working during the summertime and have no time for shark week.

remember when you were like 8 years old and took your real life shark jaw to the living room in a box marked "fragile: do not touch" to watch hours and hours of non-stop shark shows on the discovery channel? i don't get to do that anymore. sigh... don't they realize that i'm a guy and i need to watch tv shows about sharks? duh. ok, so maybe i've already learned a lot about sharks, the shows that i have watched actually seem a bit lame, maybe shark appeal has kind of lost a bit of it's edge so many years as jaws: the revenge. still, check out the pic of this tiger shark taken on the north shore. holy crap!

i've only seen sharks in real life (minus aquariums) in the ocean twice... once when i was snorkeling in waimea bay when i was a kid, there was actually a school of small hammerheads (very small, probably babies), but i was so freaked, i bolted for shore... but then of course, i still wanted to go back out and see them again. i've caught sharks at waimea bay too... one was a two foot long hammerhead and the other was maybe a 3.5 foot silky shark. the only other time i saw sharks in the ocean was when i was surfing a few years ago at white plains, they were way out pretty far from me though, i saw splashing and a bunch of birds circling overhead, and then i saw some white tipped fins flashing in and out of the water and i bolted again! haha, looked like they were feeding on something so that time i did NOT get back in the water.
cool pic yeah? what is it? a barracuda about to chomp down on some akule or something? as a kid i was probably more scared of barracudas than sharks, because with sharks, man you know what you're getting and you know that if a shark's gonna come at you, well then it's gonna come at you and you'll see it and then perhaps you're screwed, but those damn barracuda can be anywhere, and i've swam with them in HUGE schools (like in waimea bay) and they just look nasty and disgruntled. bleh. sharks, on the other hand, are way cool. they do kickboxing too, see?
oh, by the way, new poll... if a shark bit off any one of your body parts, which one would you sacrifice? of course, "none" is not an option during shark week... so i'd probably pick "a single leg" because i'd say legs are more easily replaced than arms or hands (you could get a pretty good prosthetic leg nowdays and wouldn't have to worry too much about fine motor control), and since we come with two feet, i'd like to keep at least one of them intact, and surgeons could probably make a stump look presentable, but i'm thinking that trying to reconstruct your ass would be pretty nasty looking. what do you think?

#62 - what the bleep do i know

quick thought... just finished watching "what the bleep do we know?" it's kinda like a documentary movie about quantum physics. it explored a bunch of different theories and philosophies, and most of them were grossly over-generalized, over-dramaticized, or just very very unfounded views of science (with particular stabs at religion), but there were a few good points that i think can be taken away. in general, i like watching programs that explore non-fiction types of issues (especially non-traditional physics). usually, i like to start off believing the speakers, but somewhere in the second half of the program there's always some turning point when i realize, "okay, these guys actually don't have a clue what they're talking about" and then most of everything they've said until that point gets totally debunked.

anyway, of course quantum physics is a controversial and pretty much non-definable topic (at least in terms that most of us are familiar with), therefore, most of the arguments must be presented in analogies and like-terms, which of course doesn't do justice to the actual meat of the issues. but a couple of interesting bits of "research" that they mentioned that i thought were at least amusing:

1) japanese scientist named emoto did experiments investigating the effect that music and emotion have on the crystalline structures of water, basically he subjected containers of water (from distilled to spring to polluted) to music for a few hours or taped a word (like "love" or "thank you" or "you make me sick") to the bottle and then froze it, then took microscopic pictures of the ice crystals. supposedly, different types of music created different crystals and words live "love" and "thank you" created symmetrical forms while "you make me sick" resulted in distored crystals. not sure exactly how he theorized that the "thoughts" of the words written on the bottles changed the water (unless maybe he left the bottles out for lots of people to read and infuse their emotions on), but the end theory was that our thoughts can affect water (so-called the most "perceptive" of the elements) and since our bodies are like 80-90% water then our thoughts greatly affect ourselves.

2) along those lines was a study conducted in washington, dc in the summer of 2003. dc has the highest violent crime or murder rate or something in the nation and so they brought in 4000 people to meditate for days or weeks or something during the summertime and predicted that the power of their thoughts would decrease the frequency of violent crime in dc that summer by 25%... and apparently it did.

3) so where i'm going with this (because i am in no way ready to shout the praises and validity of these theories, i guess grad school did something useful to me after all)? even though i don't agree with a lot of the theories proposed in this movie, there was at least one interesting thought that might be useful to take away... using your thoughts to shape your reality. one central proposal in the movie is that we are so shaped by our past experiences and are so stuck in our routines (not just daily routines, but the routine that we have come to accept the physical world around us as the absolute reality instead of merely sensory inputs) that we do not allow ourselves to be privy to any of the OTHER "realities" that constantly surround us. they propose that all "matter" around us exists in all places at once (thus allowing for parallel dimensions and alternate universes) and it is only our narrow perception that CHOOSES to see the things around us as things existing in only one place at one time. an anecdotal example they gave was that when columbus came to america, the native americans literally could not see their ships because they had absolutely no reason in their lifetimes to be able to comprehend just objects. all they could see was ripples on the horizon, so their shaman sat out and watched the horizon for days until he became accustomed to the shape of the ships and he saw them. then when he told his people (since he was so respected and they all believed him), suddenly they could all see the ships too.

so what possible practical application could this have on me (because that's all i care about of course)? well, taking bits and pieces of these ideas, it might be a pretty excellent thing to once in a while take a step out of my reality, my consciousness and try to see things without all the precepts that may be engrained in my mind. of course, i'm not saying i'll suddenly see into parallel dimensions or anything so dramatic as that, but perhaps i might find myself in a new light. which is why i write so much in this blog. i love reading my own blog posts because i can view my life from a different point of view (plus, i don't have a great memory and i forget things that i just did). then i can be more objective about where my life has been and where i'd like to go next. just as when you're exericsing you've gotta switch things up every once in a while to give your muscles something new and different to do, you've gotta do that with your mind and your emotions too. it's all about keeping on living life. i read in the paper the other day that people who take vacations at least every year have a much greater life expectancy than those who travel only once every five years. and doesn't that make sense? from an evolutionary standpoint, the more you experience life and find new experiences in life the better you will be at living it right? that's the theory.

#61 - boldness

i seem to have my most interesting dreams when i'm stressed from work. do you think that stress causes intense dreaming? could be. anyway, it's not that i dream about work or anything related to work (wouldn't that be so crappy? you have to go to work all day and then dream about work at night? gross). but as far as i can remember, most of my best (re: weirdest, strangest, most disturbing) dreaming has come in times of intensity from work or school. man, you should've heard some of the dreams i had when i first started externship during grad school, those were some of the most intense dreams i've ever had. that's when i had incredibly complex dreams almost nightly with some weird phenomena, like the setting for my dreams would be very consistent, like all my dreams about school would be at "the school" of my dreams which was not like any of my schools in real life, but it was the same every single time i dreamed about being in a school. that's also when i dreamed that i got shot (i was outside my house running away from robbers and one of them pulled a gun and i said, "what the crap dude you think you're gonna shoot me? no way you'd get away with it dumbass." and then he shot me and i said, "nice one dumbass, you're going to jail now, stupid, haw haw." it was kinda fun.

anyway, now that i'm back to work after the summer break i think that ramped up the intensity a little bit more because this is what i dreamed last night:

so i was going to play at a high school, except it was "the school" that's the same school in all my dreams. and it didn't look like it, but i was in what i believed was an elementary school cafeteria in the front row watching the cast of that 70's show put on a musical. i thought it was weird, but i kept watching, then i turned around (we were sitting at those cafeteria tables with seats on both sides) and this butch bully girl was saying something to piss me off, i don't know, just because she was a bully, and instead of backing down i totally called her on it, and everyone around me was like, she's gonna beat you up for real. and looking at her i knew that she probably could beat me up, but i was so pumped up on confidence that i said, "bring it on, bitch!" haha, and she got so mad, and i said it again because i knew in my dream-mind that she wouldn't beat me up, so then i won. i don't know what there was to win, but i knew i won it.

then, i was in a college class because i had gone back to uh for medical school. they were holding the class outside on a lawn so there was rows and rows of metal folding chairs lined up on the lawn and i sat somewhere in the back. the professor was this japanese guy with white hair and he was telling us how medical school was so hard and "are you sure you know what you're getting into?" i was just sitting pretty because i knew that i already got my master's degree and i didn't really NEED to be there, so i was feeling all confident like i'd get through med school no problem and i didn't have to listen to this old guy's lecture. so i was doing a crossword puzzle and i was bare-ass naked! i guess i was naked because i said to myself that since i'm so bold and confident and i didn't really need medical school, i should do something completely new and exciting to make the most out of life. so i'm doing my crossword puzzle, but i'm cheating because i have the answers, so really i'm just copying the answers from one puzzle to the next one. then the guy sitting next to me says, "wow, that's pretty good, i try doing crossword puzzles but they're too hard." and i told him it was pretty easy, and he asked if i was doing the US Cemetery crossword puzzle, and i didn't know what that was so i asked him and he said that the whole puzzle was made up of the names of dead people and i thought that sounded pretty difficult. then the girl in back of me started talking to me, but i don't remember what she was saying and then the professor walked to the back row and saw that i was naked and told me i had to put some clothes on. and instead of being ashamed or whatever, i boldly told him, "what? you mean you want me to wear clothes EVERYDAY?" and he said, "YES! in fact, i want you to wear BRAND NEW clothes everyday!" and i said, "come on! we're not doctors YET!" and then everyone laughed and that girl behind me said it was pretty cool thing to say, but then she had to go to class so she left.

and that's all i remember!

#60 - last day

yesterday was tourist tuesday... today, forget the damn tourist, it's local boy wednesday. i'm sure there's a better way to say that, but screw it, i don't know how. anyway, it was south shore yesterday, let's go up north today. how much nicer is it to be on the north shore than in town? man, i can't even describe. it feels nicer in my soul. haha, that's dumb, but anyway, any chance i can get to pick north shore over south i'm there. but when you're just by yourself here's much more to do on the south shores so my trips north are limited, which is actually okay because that makes them that much better. another reason why i don't get up there as much as i'd like is because the surf is mostly either 1) flat, or 2) way too big for me. haha, plus, whenever it's in that nice middle-ly range, it's way crowded. so whenever i've got a day off (that's not the weekend) i love to head up there. today i picked chun's reef: it actually was pretty crowded on shore, less crowded in the water. i don't care for surfing in a crowd, i'd rather sit off to the side and wait for the waves to come rather than sit in the line-up and fight for it. and at chun's mostly people sit to the left for the prime break and i can paddle on out to the right and catch the smaller, but still decent stuff (and then when the sets come i can get some sweet rides out there too). anyway, my philosophy on surfing goes like this: i will surf based on these factors (in order of importance):


1. weather - i accept nothing less than perfect paradise weather (okay, not really, but i think i'm a temperature wuss because i get cold very quickly when it's not sunny, especially when it's windy)


2. crowd - mostly the reason why i pick my north shore days carefully is that i really hate fighting for waves, i'm a passive guy out there and i think to myself, well, if other guys are gonna be that aggressive for the waves, then good for them, they can have it, and i can wait... because the weather is perfect (see #1) and i'm just happy to be out in the water


3. waves - based primarily on clean-ness and then on size. i'm not big on wave heights, as long as it's clean you can get ultra-fun rides. but when you've got both... nice.

so today, 1) weather was perfect... clear blue skies, just a few floatly little cotton ball clouds, 2) crowded at the prime break, but very empty for a summer day on the north shore, and 3) pretty tiny waves, but rideable, a couple of shoulder-high sets rolled in which made it a bit more exciting, but everything was clean and glassy, perfect. when you can see every single reef head underneath your board as you're sliding in on a wave, that's the stuff right there. don't get that too much at white plains. so yeah, then, even as you're just sitting out there waiting for the sets to roll in, it doesn't matter that there's nothing to ride because you're sitting out there in a crystal clear ocean moving up and down with the waves, plus, bonus because you know when you go home that night and lie in your bed, you'll feel that ocean again before you fall asleep. see? it's like nature gives you a bonus to convince you how cool surfing is, haha.
so all in all, super-fun stuff out there today. a great way to end the summer (if there ever was a good way to END summer... but that's something else). me and my board here had an awesome surf session at chun's, ended it up with some kua`aina burger and now it's back to work tomorrow... sigh, well, this is hawai`i right? i guess the next "summer" day can wait until saturday!

#59 - tourist tuesday

so, summertime coming to an end... on the penultimate day until "BACK TO WORK!! AHH!" i decided to do something i haven't done in a very long time. it was a bee-u-tiful day outside so it was the perfect day to go on a tourist adventure, this time: the waikiki walk. not like i've never been to waikiki, when i was living at the dorms i used to walk down kapahulu ave. twice a week, pick up a loco moco from rainbow drive inn along the way, and have brunch and a quick swim in waikiki. it was pretty fun, it's weird though because if i didn't know that i did it, i didn't think that i would do it so consistently twice a week for a few years. it's like, it was such a routine that i can't believe i kept it up... but i did. and it was a lot of fun because there's so many different kinds of people down there at those beaches so it never got boring because everyday was different. plus some exciting stuff happened too, of course that's when i started surfing, renting a board ($10 for 2 hours) from the board stands and i learned by trying to copy what everyone else was doing (which probably wasn't exactly the best way to learn, but hey it worked so...). japanese tourists are always fun, i bet i took about a milion pictures for them (and always returned the camera, haha). oh and one time this weird old guy introduced himself to me and said he's "seen me around," gave me a business card and told me to check it out and then he whispered, "if you like some good porn." hahaha! i think he was trying to get me into porn, which was gross, but kinda flattering.... no, just gross. anyway, maybe he just wanted to sell me porn, whatever, it was creepy. anyway, see? never gets boring.
so i went down to waikiki on tuesday, pretty much with the intent to spend the day doing whatever tourists do in waikiki, well, besides shop of course because i have no money any more. but i decided to start off at kapi`olani park and walk along the beach all the way 'till the end, to the harbor where the `ilikai is. so i started at the aquarium and i was surprised at what i forgot was in waikiki. like this breakwater "pier" or whatever. pretty much just concrete wall that went out a bunch of yards into the water. the cool this is that right at the end of the "pier" is where the break is so the surfers surf right past you as you're sitting at the edge, pretty cool.
along the beach were a lot of concrete walkways where the sand was eroding away... i remember in college laying out and putting all my stuff on the sand in back of the moana surfrider hotel... but when i went there yesterday the water came up all the way to the wall of the pool! i hope it was just high tide, could the shoreline really change that much in just a few... okay well maybe 5 years? i guess that's why the news is always talking about replacing the sand on the beach eh? hmm, that's kinda sad, but pretty cool to see how nature can completely change and take over right?
i had a great time walking the whole way, it was pretty darn long, i didn't realize, i walked all the way past the shorebird and the hale koa and everything and the whole way was beach... pretty decent beach too. i mean, for the south shore y'know? and people everywhere! holy crap there was a lot of people. and a lot of hot girls too. i was surprised because you'd think that it'd all be old haole fat women who can afford to take hawaiian vacations with their bald, fat husbands right? but there was a lot of young people too, which made me feel better that young people can and do take fun vacations and i need to do that too. hmm... but then i also thought, well, heck i already live here, so it was okay.
here's a cool pic i took off one of the "piers" looking out into waikiki. i think i've grossly underestimated walking. normally i can't stand it, i get so bored and then i walk really fast and make people get out of my way to finally get to where i'm going. but this was a nice leisurely walk with nowhere really to go, but lots to see and do along the way. of course, walking on a big, landmark hawaiian beach is not exactly the same as taking a stroll around mililani, but hopefully some of that philosophy might rub off to my more non-touristy days... or turn those regular days into semi-touristy days, y'know? anyway, beach = good, vacation = awesome, going back to work on thursday = sucky.

#58 - getting set

time's a-tickin' away until i'm finally off on my own. man, i can't wait. summer was nice and everything, but man, there's NO escaping at this house. there are people everywhere. just there, being big people lumps that i can't get away from. i will be so happy when i finally have a place all to myself, and so this weekend i gave myself a break from this "house" and went off to envision a little bit of what i'd like my new place to be. first off, to pictures plus, they had a tent sale and i picked up four frames with mats for only $28, nice, the lady there cut me a sweet deal. then i found a couple of ledge shelves to hang up for half off, so picked me up a couple of those and got myself a little more pumped up to move out, haha. anyway, i've been buying a lot of photography-artwork lately, but taking a look at some of my own amateur digital camera shots, i think i could make my own (plus, i could print them out myself for like a dollar each print). here's one that i framed already, it's pupukea in the winter: i think one thing i'll really miss about living at home though, is the piano... i'd say i play the piano pretty much daily... nothing fancy or anything, just messing around running through books and books of songs. my favorites for the past few months have been japanese pieces, for some reason they are really well-orchestrated for piano. something about instrumental japanese music really catches my attention, both traditional and contemporary. could it be the years and years of nintendo engrained in my brain? i don't know, but lately i've been playing pieces from princess mononoke, spirited away, and then i've got this book of japanese video game music that's just awesome. i don't even know where the songs are from (probably some nerdy final fantasy game or something), but it's really nicely written for piano.
so yeah, i'll definately miss my big black grand piano when i move into my small townhouse. i think one of the first things i'll need to buy (beside a tonkin' big screen tv of course, haha) is a piano. except i think i might have to get an electric piano... boo. i mean, i could probably fit an acousitc upright in my place, but it'd be big and heavy and hard to move and expensive (like, 3-4 grand). so after pictures plus i went to the piano outlet to check out some of the digitals, most of them have weighted keys now so there's like hammer action when you play (like a real piano) which is pretty good. this one below that i saw was pretty cool, nice and simple, not a lot of electronics on it, which is good. but it had preprogrammed demo songs, like a player piano (except the keys don't move... that was kinda disappointing, but oh well), and it could record what you play. plus, it was only $1000. sweet. but, sigh, that's another expense to add onto my ever-growing list... i'm gonna be eating pb&j for the next five years i think.