South Park, Decaf coffee, Shotgun, and our Halloween Tree

One of those random days...

The most recent South Park episode opens with Cartman who can't stand the 3-week wait until the new Nintendo Wii releases. His solution is to freeze himself for the 3 week duration, but an avalanche keeps him frozen for 500 years. Brilliant. Wanna watch? (LINK)

So, what's up with decaf coffee? It came up in conversation the other night. How much caffeine is in a cup of decaf coffee? 6 cups of decaf coffee contains roughly the same amount of caffeine as a single cup of regular coffee. Did you know that decaf coffee represents about 18% of all coffee sales? Also notable is that most of the caffeine removed from coffee is used to caffeinate soft drinks and medicine.

Everyone (mostly guys) thinks they know the rules of calling "Shotgun." The most recent debate was regarding the timeframe when shotgun can be called. Is it when you are on your way to the car or is it when you actually see the car? This website (LINK) creates a solid set of rules for the game of Shotgun. So when can you call shotgun? You must be on the way to the car and you must be outside. That's the way I used to play growing up, but then people changed it to when you can actually see the car. Debates anyone?

And I had a special request from Amy to put up a couple pictures of our Halloween tree. Joanne and I are quite proud of it (despite others' criticisms). Check it out! Great improvements since last year.

SexyBack

Now I practically like this song. The Office is bringing sexyback.

Fed-Ex

If you didn't know already, Britney Spears and Kevin Federline filed for divorce today. Huge disappointment. Huge. I don't know what to say. I still can't believe it. If Britney and K-Fed can't stay together, then I don't know if there's hope for any of us.

What is to happen to K-Fed's shining career? I guess he'll get half the money so he can still fund his brilliant music and acting career, because he's not going to get very much from his concert Saturday night that only sold 300 (of the 1500) seats. He took the stage 3 hours late and by the time he completed his 1.5 hour set, only about 100 people were still in attendance. I guess people aren't down with his new "Playing with Fire" album (apparently it's horrible). At least he ended with a heartwarming note: "Everyone get drunk! That's what I'm going to do!"

Back to the divorce: if you don't believe me, here's the paperwork so you know it's official.

Happy Halloween

Like everyone else, we had a Halloween Party on Saturday. I was impressed with how many of us came with costumes! And for the first time in years, Joanne and I dressed up to celebrate. I was a baker, Joanne had a bun in the oven, and Buster was a hot dog. And check out our Halloween tree!

The Sasaki's did a great job dressing up as a pirate family. Arrrrrr!!!

Daniel and Amy dressed up Preston as a pirate. Check out the mean face he had on. Jill and Jeff had Jacob in his Elmo outfit...although it looks like he's a Two-headed Elmo here.

Of course our event was a potluck and everyone brought great stuff. Check out the eyeballs and brains (spaghetti and meatballs) and the spooky bread claw!

Have a great Halloween!

Save the daylight !

What time is it right now? Well, you can look at the bottom of your computer screen or check out this cool online one. (LINK)

This Sunday (last Sunday in October) marks the end of daylight savings time. At 2am, we'll be setting our clocks back one hour so we can reclaim our useable daylight and get one hour of extra sleep! I didn't realize that the government's argument for Daylight Savings is energy conservation. News to me.

"Theoretically, the amount of residential electricity needed in the evening
hours is dependent both on when the sun sets and when people go to bed. Because
people tend to observe the same bedtime year-round, by artificially moving
sunset one hour later, the amount of energy used is theoretically reduced."

In the United States, daylight savings is observed in all states but Arizona and Hawaii. Arizona chooses not to observe it because the state is so hot that people will only run their air conditioning systems longer if daylight was optimized. Hawaii does not observe daylight savings because they experience very little variation in their winter and summer days (based on their latitude). Alaska is trying to get rid of it and Indiana just started observing it this year.

To make things even more complicated, daylight savings will start at a different time next year based on the passing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Instead of starting on the first Sunday in April, it will start on the second Sunday in March. Instead of ending on the last Sunday of October, it will end on the first Sunday of November. That's 4 extra weeks of daylight savings. After 9 months of the daylight savings change, Congress has the right to revert back to the old Daylight Savings schedule if it demonstrates no savings in energy or is unpopular by the American public.

The Energy Policy Act also addresses Halloween trick-or-treating. By extending daylight savings, we would have one more hour of daylight trick-or-treating or one less hour of evening trick-or-treating. What to do?

Anyway, what time is it?

Ball to the face.

It works on so many levels. (LINK)

It's Peanut Butter Federline !

You know I'm having a good day if I have an opportunity to put K-Fed's picture on the blog. To get you all pumped, I recommend you check out someone's brilliant work of blending the well-known "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" song with Kevin Federline at his very best. (LINK)

Make sure this great little tune gets stuck in your head.

In other good news, Kevin Federline's new album, Playing With Fire, will get "dropped" on October 31st.





Now, a few days ago our buddy K-Fed showed up at a Celebrity WWE wrestling match only to be booed by the audience. How great is that? He's introduced as an "A-Lister", gets booed by the audience, then defeated via rap-battle and body slammed by WWE champ, John Cena.

It's the perfect series of events. Check out these 3 clips:

Clip #1: K-Fed gets introduced as an 'A-Lister' then gets booed (LINK)

Clip #2: K-Fed gets told that he has less talent than Paris Hilton (LINK)

Clip #3: K-Fed gets dropped to the mat! (LINK)

Peace out. Popozao.

Lost and Heroes

VS

Lost, as you know, is a show that requires that you tune in each week to followup on the last cliffhanger episode. (Speaking of Lost, check out the new poll on the right) Heroes runs by the same formula, and after finally watching Monday's Heroes last night, I'm finding that I am a little more intrigued by Heroes than I am with Lost right now.

Of course, Wikipedia has a great article condensing information about the show. Here is a list of the main characters along with their superpowers.

There's a symbol that keeps reappearing in different scenes in each episode. When repeated, it resembles a DNA strand. I guess that makes sense.



There are also some graphic novels online that you can get directly from NBC's site. (LINK)

Start watching is you aren't already!

"Name That Nintendo Game" Game

Here's a quiz...guess the Nintendo game based on the clues. Don't forget the hints at the bottom (25 point penalty each). (LINK)

Court Reporters, Cinnamon Sticks, Gelato and the Lakers

I tried and tried and couldn't get these 4 topics to work together. Oh, well.

Court reporters: During my 2.5 week jury duty, I spent much time watching the court reporter use the stenotype machine. Needless to say I was intrigued. First, how can she hear what these people are saying and second, how does she type all that so fast with only 22 keys? Nothing a little wikipedia can't answer. They describe a stenotype as a phoenetic chorded keyboard which means you press multiple keys at the same time to create the phoenetic sounds of the words. The result is up to 300 words per minute. Amazing. Check out the keyboard layout:

Cinnamon sticks: Recently we attended a wedding that had a fantastic setup for the coffee. Good coffee, whippped cream, and cinnamon sticks! We were unsure exactly how they created cinnamon from cinnamon sticks. The answer isn't that great...they just grind up the bark to get the cinnamon. What is also interesting to note is that it's really cassia or "bastard cinnamon." Real cinnamon costs more. (LINK)

Gelato: Over in Italy, we ate a lot of gelato. It's fantastic! But one thing that we never settled was what the critical difference is between ice cream and gelato. It's cream! Gelato uses milk, not cream, and is supercooled to reduce air content and make it more dense. Ice cream uses cream (I guess that makes sense). (LINK)



Lakers: The preseason has begun and Lakers took their first win against Utah last night, 94-79. Kobe didn't play (sore knee), but Sasha Vujacic made the big plays in the game (here's a picture of him turning into Teen Wolf). Lamar Odom was the high scorer with 18. AND, Jordan Farmar (UCLA) made his debut scoring a field goal and a free throw after 4 minutes of play time. Go Lakers! (LINK)

GoogleTube

If you haven't heard already, Google just bought YouTube...probably my blog's largest content provider (or any blog for that matter). It looks like Google is continuing to expand its dominance of the world's internet. So how much does the most popular internet video site go for these days? $1.65 billion. Couldn't they have made it $1.651 billion and given me the measly $0.001 billion? (ARTICLE)

The good news is that YouTube's founders are maintaining the right to operate it independently...which is great news for me and you. YouTube's fruitful nature shall continue. Where would we be without direct access to gems like this?

Tivo Gone Wild !

Finally TV has let go of reality and created some great shows to watch. Now our Tivo is going crazy trying to keep up. For the most part, here is our household lineup:

What are you watching? Anything you recommend?

My favorite show, The Office, is already going strong this season. It's the one show I have to see right away so I'm able to talk about it at work on Friday. The interactions between characters have become essential formulas for each episode: Michael and Dwight, Jim and Pam, Dwight and Angela...it's all so good. And if you aren't watching the deleted scenes (available here) then you are missing out on part of the episode. They're not your typical "I know why they were deleted" scenes.

And I still have to watch Season 2 again on DVD.

Beautiful LA

Most people like to talk about how smoggy LA is, but Joanne and I had a great experience when we went out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We went to eat at Windows, a restaurant on top of the old Transamerica (now SBC) Building just south of the skyscraper cluster of downtown. It was a beautiful day and we were able to watch the sunset and enjoy a fantastic dinner.




How was the dinner? It was fantastic. Joanne had the Kurabuta Pork Chop and I had the Kobe Ribeye Steak (my first time with Kobe beef).



And by the time we were enjoying dessert, the sun had set and we had a great view of Downtown LA at night.



We had a great time and recommend it if you ever want to celebrate a special occasion.

2 years and counting...

Happy Anniversary...to us!

Today marks our 2nd wedding anniversary. Hard to believe how quickly time passes. Guess we're having fun. We'll be celebrating later this week since Joanne has work today. :(

Sorry for the lack of blog entries lately, but I think it's time we'll be catching up. Stay tuned for pictures from our trip to Italy and Switzerland.

Here's a picture of us at Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. What a beautiful place.

Greetings from Venice !

Joanne and I are here with our family in Venice! We just got here yesterday and already we've seen all sorts of stuff. I'd post up some pictures except that there isn't any way to do so.

If you haven't already been here, it reminded us of the Venetian in Las Vegas since that's what we saw first.

We already miss Buster and miss you all!

- Russell and Joanne

It's a boy !

Today, we went to see the doctor for our 20 week ultrasound and the big news was that our baby is a boy! He (finally we can say "he") is perfectly healthy for a 20 week old fetus. He sure moves a lot now, which Joanne can tell you from first-hand experience. Here he is, just relaxing in the womb.

And here's a picture of the goods...proof that he's a boy!

Our new baby.

Oh, not that baby. Last night, Joanne and I signed the papers on our new Acura TL. We love it. The only sad news is that I had to bid farewell to the Mini. :( Thanks, Mini, for all the great times.

So, why do we like this car so much? Joanne likes it mostly for its comfortable ride, grown up appearance, fun GPS navigation, and the fact that she can finally drive my car (since it's an automatic). I like it mostly for the fantastic engine (258 hp), the color (black with black leather), the Bluetooth phone link, and the fact that it puts the driver's seat in the right position before I get in the car (no more scooting the seat all the way back after Joanne drove it). And we'll both soon be liking it for all the space it gives us when baby arrives.

So, during my fantastic jury duty experience (which is still ongoing), I decided to take a picture of the car this morning. Doesn't it look great in front of the Disney Concert Hall?
(Yes, I am in the right hand turn lane. It didn't say 'No Parking.')