#301 - PORTLAND! Day 1

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

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

Day 1 -

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

coming up... day 2.

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

#300 - happy birthday to me

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

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

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

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!!!

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

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!

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

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

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.