Enrique ! Porque' ?!

Saw a great commercial yesterday. You can enjoy it, too. (LINK)

Sudoku !

I surrender...It's taking over and there's nothing we can do about it. I have not personally gotten into this craze, but it seems like everyone else is. Joanne is all over this stuff, but she's always loved puzzles. So, this entry serves as nothing more than an acknowledgement of its popularity. If you like to work it out on paper, just check your LA Times or USA Today or go to www.dailysudoku.co.uk. If you are computer based, this site is pretty cool.

(Just pick the number then select the box. You can use the scrollwheel on your mouse to select the number. Also, hold the space bar while selecting the box to leave a guess there.)

Another mapping option.

MapQuest. GoogleMaps (still my favorite). VirtualEarth. Now A9 (It's an Amazon website). So many options. Not the best interface ever, but definitely something interesting. You can view images of what you would see while looking on both sides of the street. Pretty cool. Is it useful? Eh.

(Check the box to view which streets have viewable images)

40-Year-Old Virgin

I thought the 40-Year-Old Virgin was a pretty funny movie. Joanne and I went to check it out last night. I enjoyed it almost as much as Wedding Crashers. Some people may disagree with me, but comedies are viewed very differently from person to person. The movie was solid...nothing to criticize (thus the high Rotten Tomatoes ranking 86%), but I don't think it made me laugh out loud quite as much as Wedding Crashers did. Worth a viewing.

Just remember that I thought The Office was a pretty hilarious show. By the way, it's back on TV and is on tonight at 9:30pm on NBC (repeat).

Pee Power !

While checking out a news article that Glenn sent me regarding the rotation of the Earth's core (the premise behind the movie The Core....brilliant movie. *wink*), I noticed a story about pee. Had to check it out.

Pee = Power. That's right. Next time you step up to the plate (aka toilet) just remember that you are throwing power away. Now I know what the doctor's office is really doing with my sample.

My Colorado Rendezvous

Greetings from Colorado! I am over here in Boulder, Colorado on business and I tried my best to make it less business, more pleasure. It's great up here...and you'll think I didn't get any work done. That's the point.



Things started off on the right foot with the rental car I got. With a free upgrade, I made off with the Buick Rendezvous, a luxury clone of the Pontiac Aztek. And you probably all know how much I love the Aztek (so ugly it's great). This bad boy is ready for battle!

After my first day of work (Wednesday), I drove down to visit Dave and Miyuki's new house in Highlands Ranch. And if you're from California, you might not want to read this part (mainly you, Joanne). Their house is beautiful! In Southern Cal it would definitely be a million dollar home. It's disgusting really. On my way to their house, I saw signs for condos starting in the 140s. 140s! So, here it is:

Here is their view out their window (which is 2 floors tall). They get beautiful sunsets and a nice open field in their backyard. It's just not right.

They have an overpassing bridge on the second floor (here is the view looking down into their family room). And they have a gigantic basement downstairs!

And their gourmet kitchen...

Anyway, I'm jealous. That night we went to have dinner at the Trail Dust Steak House which is like a restaurant straight out of Texas! It was a big place and had live western music, square dancing, a huge 2-story indoor slide (seriously), and all the waiters/waitresses in cowboy outfits. As 3 asians, we blended in like trees in a forest. I finished my 20 oz. Porterhouse. Woo hoo! Thanks, Miyuki and Dave, for an awesome dinner and a fun time.

This morning I woke up a little earlier to take a nice drive up Flagstaff Road into the mountains. What a fantastic view!

I drove up to Lost Gulch Overlook about 4.5 miles up the road. I even found some hikers up there to take my picture.






After work today, I drove out to check out the Pearl Street Mall located between 11th and 15th Streets just north of the University of Colorado. It's an awesome walking mall that has a cozier feeling than 3rd Street Promenade.

Tonight, I met with Miyuki and Dave again and we had dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Japango on Pearl Street. Very americanized, but it was pretty dang good. We had lots of sushi. Mmmm...

On Pearl Street we saw a couple street performers including this unicyling flame juggler. Cool.





And to top the night off, we had some Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Here you can see Miyuki trying to decide what ice cream to get. Apparently she has a history of making it a pretty difficult decision. She did it in under 2 minutes tonight. Good job!



I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go back to LA. I haven't seen Joanne since Sunday!

Hooray Amnesty Clause !

With the recent introduction of the amnesty clause in the NBA, we finally got rid of the ball and chain in the Lakers' roster....Brian Grant. The Lakers will still have to pay for the last 2 years of his contract at $30 million, but at least they will get the relaxation on their luxury tax status. Brian Grant was the second highest paid Laker, just behind Kobe Bryant. That's ridiculous. Just last Thursday, Brian Grant got picked up by the Phoenix Suns for a more appropriate price of a 1 year $1.67 million contract.




This just in: The Lakers just signed on Aaron McKie, shooting guard for the 76ers, after they released him due to the amnesty clause. The Lakers signed him on with a 2 year $5 million contract.

Sweet ! Contact Lens Sunglasses

Let me know if any of you get these.

Madness !

Things are a little crazy at work today so I thought I'd post a picture to express the confusion and madness.

Happy Cake !

In response to my sad face entry yesterday for being sick, Steph and Eddy came over last night and cheered me up with a Happy cake! We all enjoyed it for dessert and it was fantastic. It's a cookies and cream ice cream cake from Penguin's. I would recommend it. But, if you're like me, you probably haven't seen a Penguin's in a long time.

Anyway, we didn't do much more than chat all night, but it might have been our last time to have dinner with the single version of Stephanie and Eddy. They'll be Mr. and Mrs. Eddy and Stephanie Viola soon. Stay tuned for wedding details to come.

The news is finally here !

It's Diddy. Just Diddy. Not P. Diddy. Not Puff Daddy. Not Puffy. And definitely not Sean Combs. Now you can sleep at night.

The worst part of all of this is his response:

"Nobody knew what to call me," he said. "I'd notice that people were uncomfortable when I'd meet them for the first time, and then they'd ask me what they should call me."

"I even started to get confused myself - and when I'd called someone on the telephone it took me a long time to explain who I was. Too long."

Yeah, ya think?

Vote Walken in 2008 !

Have you heard? Christopher Walken is running for the Presidency in 2008! Check out the site: http://www.walken2008.com/

Okay, so the site is a hoax, but it's been getting a lot of attention.

I lost The Belt...

I know. It's sad. But, it was a great game. Only four of us were able to play this month...Gina (Glenn), Daniel, Alan, and myself. We played this past Saturday with only four of us, but it was a surprisingly great night. The battles were fierce and the chips were flowing. The match was at my house since the Belt holder always hosts the next game. Alan took The Stick (the antithesis of The Belt), but he did not beat the record for largest loss (which he already set himself).

The winner was Gina. He was up about 50 bucks and took The Belt home (but not Buster). Good job, Gina.

We played until about 6:30am so the sun was up at the end. Maybe the trick was the drink of the night, the mai tai. Everyone was probably not too excited about me making 'experimental' mai tais, but it went over well. The first recipe was a success! Here are the ingredients...a little labor intensive:

I have a cold.

But I'm recovering.

Our walk on the Red Carpet

Russell and I were lucky enough to be able to hang out with Jimmy "Hollywood" Matsuki at his new apartment in LB! It was very neat and very artsy-fartsy, so it matched Jimmy absolutely! :) I think we need him to come over to our place and do a little redecorating.

Here's the famous "wandering village boy" in between movie deals and relaxing in his lavish 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment.

Later that night, he took us to a trendy restaurant on 2nd Street called "Bono's" and they had the yummiest bread ever!

We felt very "in" and almost couldn't finish our food due to the ever-present paparrazzi! (sigh) Fame...

This sure sucks...

Well, we did it. It's done. We purchased our first vacuum cleaner. After borrowing Joanne's parents' vacuum cleaner all this time, we finally bought our own. I don't think we ever realized how difficult this decision was going to be. So, here it is, the Dyson DC14. We are ready to hear the criticism from everyone since the vacuum was so dang expensive (I'm sure you have an idea), but I think we are already very happy with it after using it last night for the first time. We felt the Dyson was necessary since we have Buster running around the house all the time. (Although, Buster will be the last one to tell you that he is excited about this purchase) It's a very well designed and well built machine, contrary to many of the competing uprights on the market. And we think it might help out with Joanne's allergies. Lately she likes to get sick a lot.

The central canister comes out real easy and you can push the button to empty the canister. No bags! In the back it has a telescoping hose that comes right off the vacuum. Very handy and well designed. We can attach the special turbine head to it and it picks up Buster's fur off the furniture like magic!

Here you can see Joanne modeling how the telescoping hose works. Zing!

So, how good is it? After quickly vacuuming our entire downstairs carpet, we filled up the tank! It was a little disturbing that it picked up that much, but very reassuring that we made a wise purchase. Man, how old are we? We're excited about a vacuum cleaner.

HE IS PISSED

Tiger isn't too happy with his performance in the first round of the PGA Championships. He's 8 strokes back from the leader. Four bogeys and a double. Ouch.

He'll rebound, won't he?

Escher Legos

Good Times in San Francisco !

[San] Francisco! That's fun to say.
- Buddy the Elf, Elf
(I thought the movie was funny)

This past weekend Joanne and I flew out to San Francisco for Scott and Jaime's wedding. We took Jet Blue up to Oakland and I was amazed at how much room they had in the seats. I spend all my time getting in some quality Tom & Jerry cartoons (provided by DirecTV) while Joanne put away a few of her Sudoku puzzles.


We stayed at the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Hotel on Nob Hill and boy did we feel swanky! The only downside is that we felt a little out of our league at this joint. Our excuse is that we got special discount rates for Scott and Jaime's wedding. We asked how we could get down to Fisherman's Wharf and they offered us the 'house car' (a new Mustang convertible). Since we didn't feel up to paying for parking we passed on the opportunity. Note to self: Intercontinental Hotels are very fancy. (Joanne and I once stayed at the Willard Intercontinental in D.C. - again for real cheap - and it was known for having regular hotel stays by Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln)

Joanne wanted to get some crab for dinner so we headed down to Fisherman's Wharf where we went to Nick's Lighthouse. We've eaten at this restaurant the last few times we've been in San Francisco and it's definitely our favorite place for crab. We recommend it!

Mmmmm....boy!

That next morning Joanne began working on her sourdough bread from Boudin's (we picked up some after dinner). It's her favorite and the only reason I mention it is that I find her method for eating it a little amusing. The inside is her favorite part since it's the softest; so she digs out a cave in the bread and eats the inside first. After a while you are left with a crust-only loaf of sourdough bread. I don't even think I'm supposed to be talking about any of this.

Moving on, the city offered some great sights (that pointy one is the Transamerica building).

We met up with Chang for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square. The Cheesecake Factory is located on the 8th floor of Macy's so we were able to wait outside on the balcony by the 'm' in Macy's (above the robot picture on the right).

Here is the view from the 'm' at the top of Macy's. It was an awesome day in San Francisco. Perfect weather, clear skies.

Chang experimented with the telephoto lens and took this picture of the statue at the top of the column in the center of Union Square.

For lunch, Joanne had the Chicken Marsala while Chang and I both had the Double BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger. I would classify it as my favorite hamburger. I warned him that it was huge.

That evening, Joanne and I went to the Merchant's Exchange Building, where Scott and Jaime had both their wedding ceremony and reception. It was a beautiful wedding. Everyone in attendance was in tears after they exchanged the vows they had written to each other.

What also made their wedding unique was the head table arrangement. The bride, groom, groomsmen (with girlfriends) and bridesmaids (with boyfriends) were all at the head table. That was pretty cool. They also had a great motown band that played some great stuff. They were very talented and everyone had a great time on the dance floor.

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Scott and Jaime Dever!

Late that night, Joanne and I went to have a couple drinks at the Top of The Mark, the restaurant/bar at the top of our hotel. They had a selection of 100 martinis. The Surfer martini was awesome (vodka, malibu rum, banana liqueur, and pineapple juice).

The next morning we had a fancy brunch buffet there. The food selection was awesome. Prime rib, honeybaked ham, caviar(?), omelettes, and a great set of desserts.

Soon it was time to go. Sad, but Sunday's weather didn't look as nice anyway. Here's a view of the houses on Nob Hill.

We flew Jet Blue on the way back and I am very impressed with their dual entry system. It made getting in and out of the plane a breeze.

Joanne and I had a great trip. Good times.