Happy Birthday, Alan !

Tonight, we celebrated Alan's 28th Birthday. We had dinner at Oiwake in the Little Tokyo area of LA. It's known for it's karaoke the most, but we didn't do any singing.

Of course, getting together with Daniel and Amy always means pictures of Preston. I got to sit next to him in his new modular dinner seat. This is the look he gave me when I sat next to him:

Several of us chose the buffet as our dinner selection and we were determined to get our money's worth. (That's never a good sign) There was Jello in the buffet, so Presto took a few licks.




Soon we heard the restaurant playing the 'Happy Birthday' song for Alan. We all sang along up to the point where there seemed to be an added verse to the song. (That's what we get for going to a karaoke restaurant) We had cheesecake to celebrate Alan's birthday. And for his gift, he got a Sony PSP!

Happy Birthday, Alan.

Lucky Strike Bowling

After a great Friday night of some solid blackjack playing at Pechanga Casino, we decided to get out and do some bowling Saturday night. I've heard of this place called Lucky Strike Bowling in Hollywood in the Hollywood & Highland complex. It was a great time. It's a more trendy, fun atmosphere (and a little more expensive) for bowling compared to the typical, smoky one we're used to. Here's a view of the bar area and bowling lanes.

Some throws were good.








Some, not as good.





Here's our final results from the 2 games. I (Gargamel) won both games! It's too bad neither score were worth writing home about (although I am writing about it). But, check out both of my 10th frames. Identical!

Game 1:

Game 2:

We're all not that great at bowling, but we had a great time.

Afterward, we had dinner at a sushi place in LA. When we were done, we just hung out by our cars and talked for another 10 minutes (typical). The only difference is this time we were parked on a street where we felt like we could get mugged at anytime. Not Glenn's idea of fun. So, we cut it short. This is just a reminder that LA can be a little sketchy at times.

Good times.

Flight Patterns

Some guy gathered all the data from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and animated all the flights in the US. It's really cool to look at. There are several animations to look at here, but I think the best one is this one.

We're very small.

Not the most useful website in the world (it's actually a pain in the butt), but I guess it gets the point across at exactly how small we are in our Solar System.

Here's a picture directly from the website (it's space).

Fonts.

If you ever need any fonts or are bored of your regular ones, here are a bunch of free ones that are pretty cool to use. The movie and TV show ones are the best. This is a picture of the Fight Club font.

Lakers are back on !

The season starts tonight. Lakers @ Denver Nuggets, 7:30pm, KCAL and ESPN. Phil Jackson is back.

I got it.

It's November 1st and I have it now.

I told you I'd get it.

Butter, Jell-O, and Origami

Here's the latest news in art. (Isn't that why you visit this site?)

Every year at the Tulsa State Fair, an artist sculpts something out of butter. This year it was Darth Vader.

And some artist created the entire city of San Francisco in Jell-O.

And some Japanese guy's amazing origami work is spreading around the internet. Check them all out here.

Happy Halloween !

We had a Halloween Party on Saturday night and didn't make costumes mandatory. Sorry, we were just happy to have the party during our jet lag recovery. But, to our surprise, lots of costumes showed up! Check 'em out:

Donald Dog

Jacob the Monkey (a little unhappy after touching the Halloween tree)

The Sasaki Fire Department

with Amy as the Fire Engine and Daniel as the Dalmatian:

And Presto as the fireman:

Farmer Glenn

The Village People (with Hilari the Indian)

Jimmy the Hollywood Actor

Glenn and Denise as the Wedding Guests

Joanne as Sleepy Girl

Buster the Japanese Dog (he had 3 costumes)

And everyone loved our Halloween Tree, right?

Other highlights of the evening: Daniel working on his Yodagami (he only got through one and a half pages of the five) and Presto drinking from the big bottle.

Later that night, Joanne designed and carved our Halloween pumpkin. It turned out great! Say hello to Darth Pumpkin:

Hope you all have a great Halloween and hopefully I can post up pictures from our Japan trip soon.

Coors Light Challenge

Turn on your speakers for this one.



http://www.coorslight.com/iceswipe/

Thanks, Staci, for sending this.

I had a feeling this would happen...

I knew I wouldn't get around to updating the blog while we were gone. Just having so much fun over here. We've been just about everywhere and done just about everything...and more importantly, eaten just about everything.

Flew into Tokyo, went to Yokohama and Kamakura, then traveled down to my relatives in Iwakuni, visited in Hiroshima and Miyajima, then traveled to Kyoto, and now back in Tokyo. And we did all of our major traveling on the Shinkansen (bullet train). Here's a picture of one of the ones we rode on:

When we went to Yokohama, we went up the Landmark Building which is 69 floors tall and has one of the world's fastest elevators. It had a speedometer! Here's a view from the top:

We also went to Kamakura where we saw the Big Buddha statue (Daibutsu). Very cool.

My relatives also own a Gyu-Kaku restaurant in Iwakuni. That's right! The same chain that's in America! We ate there for dinner one night.

Tomorrow we will be back on the airplane making the slightly shorter flight back (the way up was just shy of 12 hours). But, it will be another fun flight since we barely slept on the way to Tokyo. They have a super entertainment system that has 60 on-demand movies (you can fast forward/rewind and start when you want), lots of TV shows, and lots of video games. They even had video games we could play against each other from our seats. The remote control doubles as a video game controller. Joanne and I played Battleship on the way to Tokyo, but we only played twice since I won both times.

We'll be back soon. Can't wait to be home.

We're off to Japan !

That's right. It's time Russell and Joanne take their first big trip together since their honeymoon. We're leaving this afternoon at 2:35pm on Singapore Airlines Flight SQ11. It's a 10.5 hour flight and we will be arriving in Tokyo at 6:00pm tomorrow. Japan is 16 hours ahead during Daylight Savings Time (we don't 'fall back' until October 30th) and is 17 hours ahead when it's not DST. Japan doesn't care about saving daylight, I guess.

Japan is broken up into 4 major islands: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu. We'll be spending all of our time in southern Honshu. We'll be traveling as far west as Hiroshima and as far east as Tokyo. For reference, the actual train route distance between both cities is about 560 miles.

Needless to say, the blog entries will be a whole lot less frequent for the next 2 weeks. I'll try my best to update it while we're out there. I'm dedicated.

Sayonara!

Old Noodles

They found some really old noodles somewhere in China. Guess they had really good tupperware back then, because they look pretty good. (Article)

Speaking of noodles, I've added a new section titled "Essential Links" to the sidebar. --->

Now you can get quick access to oodles and oodles of noodles whenever you need your fix.

New iPod

There's a new iPod on the market. Slightly wider screen and video capability. They are starting with 2000 music videos available for download and they are partnering up with TV companies to allow for downloading of television episodes. You can even get some episodes of Lost.

They've also announced some new 5G iMacs with built-in webcams. Pretty cool.

What do you think?

Yes

Yes.

More Trailers

The previous post of the Shining trailer went over well. It was the winning film from a contest where students made movie trailers that twisted around the movie's original premise. Here are some runner ups: