My Last Birthday Party

I know...I'm spoiled. It's like my birthday was a week long. But yesterday, I had my last party. We went to the Yard House at Shoreline Village in Long Beach. It was a beautiful day and it was packed at the restaurant (we didn't help either with our party of 18).

Two people in our party of 18 were in the 0-8 months category. Here's a picture of Daniel with Preston and Jill with Jacob. You can see Preston trying to get down his yard of milk. The babies are taking over!

Hello, Michiko, Glenn, and Kevin!

Here is what I sought out to defeat. The half yard of beer. I came to take down a whole yard, but if you have ever seen it, it has to be on the floor since it's so tall. So instead I attempted to take down two of these (I could only get down 0.9 yards...but I did have a mai tai beforehand). Eddy and I tried Shiner Bock (some Texas beer) and it was pretty smooth. I recommend it. Down the hatch!

Here, why don't you try some?

Cheers!

And we ate, too. I had the Miso Chilean Sea Bass (legally caught) and the experience was definitely worth repeating. It was prepared just right. Stephanie had her typical dish...the giant California Roll. It's a whole meal!

Throughout dinner, there were several races going on: the race between Eddy and myself with the yards of beer and actual car races on PSP Ridge Racer. With so many nerds present, we had 3 Sony PSPs available for simultaneous racing. It was pretty fun. Here's a picture of Ats and Melody playing.


After dinner, we all went back to our place and I opened up my gifts! In summary, I got a shirt from my parents and Best Buy gift cards from just about everyone else. And already today, I went to Best Buy and redeemed my gift cards for my new camera. It's a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera. I haven't used it yet, but I'll try it out tomorrow.

Lastly, thanks to my wonderful wife for setting this all up for me. I had a great time.

Birthday Dinner at the Chart House

On Friday, Tony and Joel took me out to the Chart House in Redondo Beach.

I had the filet mignon and my favorite salad (lettuce, hard-boiled egg, real bacon bits, and thousand island dressing...I call it the breakfast salad). Thanks for the great dinner!

More Birthday Fun

I had a fantastic birthday yesterday. My coworkers set up a great party for me and when I got home, Joanne set up a nice surprise dinner for me. Ribeye steaks with creamed corn and string beans. It was awesome! And my family was there, too. Boy, am I lucky!






Eddy got this great ice cream cake with Cookies & Cream ice cream in it. It was huge!









My mother-in-law got me these white roses because she says I always get her or Joanne flowers, but I never get any. They were fantastic!






Eddy and Stephanie got me these two gifts: A hilarious book of really bad Japanese inventions. (You have to take read it sometime) and a Best Buy gift card in Spanish. !Regalo! Thanks, guys.

Alan (who gave me this gift all the way from Ohio), got me this awesome flask that looks like a cell phone. 3 ounces of covert fun! This thing is amazing! I can't get over how real it looks. Thanks, Alan.







I had a great birthday. Thanks to everyone.

My Photo Cake

Everyone at my work knows that my forte is making photo cakes for everyone's birthdays. Well, for the first time, they got me. This picture was put on a quarter sheet white cake with fresh strawberries. Enter Harry Hirotsu (just in time for the book release).

Here's a photo of the actual cake.

Thanks to everyone for a fun birthday lunch at Chili's and cake party back at the office.

It's my birthday, too!

My coworker, Michael, put a nice big "27" on my wall behind my desk today at work. It's about 5 feet tall. And outside our office, he posted this sign:

Yes, our office has a doorbell. Doesn't yours? Recently, we even amplified the doorbell with a speaker so now it's even louder, and has some bass quality.

Happy Birthday, Santaur !

One of my friends here at work stands out from the crowd. And today, it is his birthday. Happy Birthday, Santaur !

FYI: Santiago (aka Santaur) may not be too excited about this picture making the weblog.

Another New Laker

Kwame Brown, free agent and center for the Washington Wizards, was traded for forward Caron Butler and a choice of forward Devean George or guard Chucky Atkins. Kwame Brown (6'11") was the #1 draft pick in 2001 and hasn't really performed to expectation so far. Hopefully he will have his breakout with the Lakers. He'll be taking position as a power forward for the Lakers and will ideally improve the Lakers triangle offense. Sounds like the trade will be for Chucky Atkins instead of Devean George. Farewell Caron.

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New Poll

Because Star Wars: Episode III has slowed down in the box office, I have closed the poll. Looks like Star Wars will definitely end up at 7th place.

With the recent talk about Family Guy, I have posted a new poll. What are your favorite animated series of all time? Pick 3!



EDIT: Although the polls are anonymous, they aren't when the voters brag that they won. Chang guessed 7th place on the last poll and he has requested a prize. Here you go, Chang.
"What do you want? A cookie?"

Stewie !

If you haven't seen Family Guy yet, it is not too late to come aboard! It's on almost everyday on Cartoon Network, but the new episodes are on Sundays on Fox at 9pm.

The best character on the show is Stewie. He is a crackup. We laugh about his quotes all the time. Keep in mind he is a baby and has the ability to speak very coherently (although only the audience and dog can understand). You can check them all out here (as well as quotes from others). Here are a couple:

Stewie (to Jeremy, the babysitter's boyfriend):Ha! I got your hat! Take that, hatless! Now go back to the quad and resume your hackey sac tourney! I'm not gonna lay down for some frat boy bastard with his damn Teva sandals and his Skoal Bandits and his Abercrombie and Fitch long sleeved, open stitched, crew neck Henley smoking his sticky buds out of a soda can while watching his favorite downloaded Simpsons episodes every night! Yes, we all love "Mr. Plow"! Oh, you've got the song memorized, do you? SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE! That is exactly the kind of idiot you see at Taco Bell at 1 in the morning! The guy who just whiffed his way down the bar skank ladder!

Olivia: You are the weakest link, goodbye. (laughter) Stewie: Ha ha ha! Oh gosh that's funny! That's really funny! Do you write your own material? Do you? Because that is so fresh. You are the weakest link goodbye. You know, I've, I've never heard anyone make that joke before. Hmm. You're the first. I've never heard anyone reference, reference that outside the program before. Because that's what she says on the show right? Isn't it? You are the weakest link goodbye. And, and yet you've taken that and used it out of context to insult me in this everyday situation. God what a clever, smart girl you must be, to come up with a joke like that all by yourself. That's so fresh too. Any, any Titanic jokes you want to throw at me too as long as we're hitting these phenomena at the height of their popularity. God you're so funny!

Things aren't made like they used to be.

My parents got us a microwave as part of their wedding gift to us. It's one of the nicest microwaves I have ever seen. We've had it for about 9 months now and it decided to break today. The door didn't shut. What's up with that? I proceed to dissect the door to discover that the tension spring used to allow the door to shut has come loose. What happened? One of the locations that holds the spring in place is made of plastic and has cracked. Big surprise. Why did they decide to use plastic? So I got a keyring and attached it to the metal frame of the door to improvise a new location to attach the spring. I was pretty proud of myself. "Back in the old days, we used to use things like metal." My parents' microwave may weigh a ton, but they haven't had a problem in 33 years. So if someone asks why things aren't made like they used to be, just answer, "Plastic."

Vegas, baby, Vegas! (Part 2)

On Saturday, we all went to the Rio to see part of the 2005 World Series of Poker. It was the 3rd day of the No-Limit Texas Hold'em World Championship. There were 5619 players competing for the $7.5 million grand prize. It takes $10,000 to enter and the top 10% all receive cash prizes.

When we entered the game room, it was almost completely silent with a background sound of only chips clicking in the players' hands. It was quite impressive.







Even the dealers were quiet. You could practically smell the tension in the air. It's like everyone nose that you have to be quiet.
(You can click on the picture to zoom)



We went to the shopping outlet near Downtown Vegas where we ate at Makino's, an all you can eat Japanese restaurant. Needless to say lots of sushi was devoured. Afterward, we went to Fremont Street to do some gambling and check out the light show that happens every half hour. They have had this for a while, but in June of last year, they upgraded their system to Viva Vision (courtesy of LG) and now consists of 12.5 million synchronized LED lights, creating the world's largest screen, now capable of producing high-resolution images at 60 frames per second and 16.7 million color combinations (Sorry, did I lose you?). Anyway, that's pretty cool. Here's a quick view from that night.

Eddy, Stephanie, Joanne and I then took some pictures in front of the 4 Queens. Cheese!




I had a great time and I'm ready to go back.

Harry Potter

Some lame bookstore worker in Canada put the new Harry Potter book on the shelves yesterday, just 5 days before it gets released this Saturday. Oh no! 14 of them were sold and now they are trying to bribe those people into giving the books back. That way, they won't sell it or tell anyone about the storyline ahead of time. God forbid. The sad thing is that I wouldn't even be able to finish it before Saturday if I wanted to.

Will you be there at midnight?

Vegas, baby, Vegas!

Joanne and I went to Vegas this past weekend with my parents, Eddy, and Stephanie (aka Stephine). We had a free room at Stateline so we got to spend our money on more important things: food, shopping, and gambling. We all had a great time and I probably pulled off the best gambling record for the weekend. I had a solid blackjack run, caught some good numbers in roulette, and caught a straight and a triple in Let It Ride. Good times. If you've never played 3 Card Poker, Let It Ride, or even Caribbean Stud, you should at least try and learn the game...it keeps all the table games from being a mystery. Joanne is making her return to the blackjack tables (she's pretty good) after several years of hiding, so now I can enjoy some table games with her. And with 7 or 8 white russians, EVERYTHING is fun.



Joanne was definitely enjoying Video Poker this weekend. Here's one of her 4 of a Kinds that she pulled.





There was an awesome kiddy bowling game (only 50 cents!) that we tried out. The only problem was that we were probably a little too old to play it (go figure). The bowling lane only about 6 feet long so when we threw the ball a little too hard it would go "TILT", telling us that we were too rough. Well, you only get one warning. And Eddy found out the hard way. The game shut him out after two hard throws! Hilarious!

When it's 1:00am and you're feeling like going to sleep, it's time for McDonald's. That's exactly what we did and we were good until 3:30.

I have more pictures, but I'll have to post them up tonight.

Hope you had a good weekend.

Welcome to our new home !

Well, if you are reading this, it looks like all went well. Changing web hosts can be quite a task...I had to surrender my old web host since they were not cooperating. Looks like things will be going smoothly now.

Have a great weekend!

Weekend Update

Well, since this weekend is about to begin, I thought I'd recap last weekend's activities, since I haven't made time during the week. In summary, lots of barbecuing and partying. 4th of July weekend is always nice. On Friday, we met with our friend Gene from Japan, whom I met when I went on my Buddhist Exchange trip in 1997 (man, I'm old). Anyway, he came with his wife, Makiko, and his baby daughter, Shiho.



They went to Disneyland for the day, so we met them for dinner at Yamabuki which is located in one of Disneyland's hotels (Paradise Pier).












They spent the whole day at Disneyland, so Shiho was pretty tired. She was sleeping when we first saw her, but when she woke up, she was ready to go. Isn't she cute?

After dinner we watched the Disneyland fireworks from afar. Here's a picture of all of us. From the left: Ken, Carol, Stephanie, Gene, Makiko, Shiho, Carrie, and my mom.

On Sunday, we had our 4th of July party (on the 3rd of July) at our house. We barbecued some hamburgers and hot dogs to hold with the All American tradition. Here's our barbecue after it's done all of its work and handled two loads of charcoal.












Daniel and Amy's baby, Presto (officially Preston), came to party with all of us.







And, of course, there was some card playing.





On Monday, we went to the Sakamoto's house for a 4th of July BBQ. Their barbecue put ours to shame. Check out all their food:

It was a great weekend. Every weekend should be 3 days long. Let me know if you'll be in Vegas this weekend. I'll be there.