Here piggy, piggy, piggy

In the last 12 weeks I have gained 23 pounds! I went from 212 pounds to 235 pounds. Holy smokes! I’m 6’5” so I don’t look terrible, but I can feel it and everything is much tighter. Anyway I have started my diet again. I think the reason I gained the weight so quick was because I was dieting for a long time before the wedding. I finally stopped dieting a couple of weeks before getting married and I just started eating everything in sight. Even with the extra weight, I still not at my all-time high weight.

I don’t mind the low-carb diet too much, because eating bread makes me feel lethargic anyway. It has become much easier in the last year since restaurants started offering low-carb menu items and the stores are carrying a lot of options as well.

My favorite foods to eat on the diet…

• Breakfast: Carl’s Jr. Low-Carb Breakfast Bowl. It is a good portion of egg, ham, cheese, bacon, and sausage all cooked together like an omelet. It tastes really good.
• Lunch: Quizno’s has a couple of salads and low-carb flat bread sandwiches (kind of like a gyro). Both are good and I eat these even when I’m not on the diet.
• Dinner: Steak is always good. Vanessa makes good pizza too with baked wheat tortillas.

I know I am going to gain weight in Europe (end of December), so I need to get at least most of this off before then. I will probably take a break for Halloween, Thanksgiving, 49er games, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, my dad’s birthday, Election Day, Hanukkah…

And on the 2,190,000,000,000th day he created the cell signal…

I was in a meeting today and my cell phone started ringing. While that may seem trivial to you, this changes my life considerably. At each of my last two jobs I have not been able to get a cell signal in the building. Everyone has my cell number and that’s how most people get a hold of me. So for the past 3 years I never get the call until I am 2 blocks away from work on my way home.

The person calling was my mechanic to tell me about my truck. I was expecting him to call, but I normally wouldn’t have received this call and he would leave a message. I would have spent the rest of the day walking outside in the parking lot for a couple of minutes hoping to catch a faint signal to get the message, then go back inside to call him back. Suddenly, the $650.00 invoice he has waiting for me this afternoon doesn’t seem so bad.

WHAT THE F*@%??? My signal just went out completely while I was writing this!!!
My life is miserable again!!! Why God? Why? You give me something then you take it away! Why must you hate?

UPDATE: It's working again.

No "ifs", "ands", or... talent

I went to Vegas this weekend to pick-up some money I loaned to the casinos. I drove out Friday afternoon with Vanessa and Albert. Traffic wasn’t bad (except where the 15 and 215 meet), but they really need to get a train going from the LA area to Vegas. Jennie, Adam, Kirsten, Ryan, and Jerome showed up a little later.

It was a relaxing trip. The first night we gambled until 3 AM and slept until noon. We hit the buffet at the Sahara (where we stayed), as did the 400-pound bride, her husband, the 350-pound bridesmaid, and the rest of the wedding party. Classy place for a reception! The Sahara has been remodeling their rooms, so they’re not as bad as they used to be and for $54 a night it was a good deal.

Albert caught a flying elbow in the eye from Kirsten while jumping on the bed and we spent the rest of the weekend creating colorful stories he could tell when getting home when people ask about his black eye (picture below). We spent Saturday at the pool and hit the Pink Taco at the Hard Rock Hotel for dinner. This is my second time eating there. The food is amazing and we always have a good time.

Afterwards we went to Crazy Girls at Riviera. This is the show advertised everywhere with 7 girls butts and interlocked arms. Terrible show! We called for tickets ahead of time, but it’s first come, first served seating, so we stood in line for over an hour to get mediocre seats. The theatre seats 400, so it’s kind of small. All of the music is lip-synced, and the girls’ dances look like they made them up in their living room that afternoon. The best part was the juggler who came out halfway through the show. The audience was not happy when the juggler came out, since they paid $45 to see topless girls, but by the time he was done he got a standing ovation. The girls only received pity applause.

We gambled some more that night, but nothing exciting. Sunday we had lunch at Café Lago (Caesars’ Palace). The prices are high, but you can order a buffet or off the menu. The buffet was $22 and my sandwich was $10 (add $4 if you want fries). The quality of the buffet was high with peeled shrimp, large crab legs, nice desserts, etc.

I think everyone won money gambling. The big winner was Jennie who left with $300 more than she came with (including paying for the room, show, food, etc.). Jerome hit a $400 slot machine and a couple of other smaller amounts, but lost most of it by the time we left. Kirsten won quite a bit on the slot machines (as always). Vanessa and I won about $100.

Albert finds Kirsten's elbow

Everyone (well, everyone that counts) at the Pink Taco

Introduction to Jack Handey…

Starting in 1991 Saturday Night Live featured a segment called “Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey”. I have listed some of the Deep Thoughts below, and will continue to list them a few at a time. I think Deep Thoughts played a big part in the odd sense of humor I have today. Some of his quotes are funny and simple while others may make you just scratch your head (just like my jokes). The quote listed in my yearbook from my senior year was, “It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.”

1. If they ever come up with a swashbuckling School, I think one of the courses should be Laughing, Then Jumping Off Something.

2. When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.

3. It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

4. At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw fuck you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.

5. One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

6. A good way to threaten somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you call the guy and hold the burning fuse up to the phone. "Hear that?" you say. "That's dynamite, baby."

7. Why do people in ship mutinies always ask for "better treatment"? I'd ask for a pinball machine, because with all that rocking back and forth you'd probably be able to get a lot of free games.

8. I'd like to be buried Indian-style, where they put you up on a high rack, above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even feel it.

9. If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.

10. I bet when the neanderthal kids would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying, "Don't forget the thick, heavy brows." Then they would all get embarrassed because they remembered they had the big hunky brows too, and they'd get mad and eat the snowman.

I was going to move to Iran, but now...

Iranian woman wants only to be beaten once a week
22 Sep 2004 13:07:48 GMTSource: ReutersTEHRAN,

Sept 22 (Reuters) - An Iranian woman, beaten every day by her husband, asked a court to tell him only to beat her once a week, a newspaper said on Wednesday. Maryam, the middle-age woman, said she did not want to divorce her husband because she loved him, the Aftab-e yazd daily said.

"Just tell him to beat me once a week ... Beating is part of his nature and he cannot stop it," Maryam told the court.

The Tehran court found the man guilty and banned him from beating the wife, the paper said.
"If I do not beat her, she will not be scared enough to obey me," the husband said.

Mmm… My toes taste good!

My dad called me yesterday to catch me up on the recent goings-on at his work. I used to work there too and a woman I knew was fired recently. I learned a valuable lesson once when listening to a conversation between my dad and this woman.

We were in the warehouse and walking down the dock talking about something. The woman came up and started making small talk with my dad and I. She had a baby about 6 months before, but had still not lost any of the weight she put on while pregnant. So my dad makes the wise decision to say something like, “So you’re pregnant again huh?”. I think her response was, “No… I’m just fat and I haven’t lost any of the weight.” Oops. That moment solidified my thought that you never make any comment about a woman being pregnant unless she’s 9 months pregnant and it’s absolutely obvious.

I wouldn’t say that I’m known for putting my foot in my mouth, but I have done it quite a few times myself.

When I was living in the dorms I went to visit one of my friends. His roommate was a shy, quiet, and dorky guy. That’s says a lot coming from me, since I myself was shy, quiet, and dorky. Anyway, I find a prom picture on this guy’s desk and he’s standing with this completely hot girl. No way. So I say, “There is no way he took this girl to the prom. He is so ugly and she is so hot. It must be his cousin.” My back was to the door when I made the comment and the roommate had walked in. I tried to cover by laughing and saying, “I knew you were back there. I was just messing with you.” I don’t think he bought it.

The worst was when I went grocery shipping one time with James (my roommate at the time). It was late at night and there was no one in the store. I was pushing the cart down the bread aisle and James was right behind me. As I was walking down the aisle, a black man came around the corner with his cart and was walking toward me. For the most part he looked normal , but he had a jheri curl. This wasn’t just any jheri curl. This guys hair was shiny and glistening. I could actually smell the hair product coming from this guy. It was so wet that it was slowly dripping onto his shoulders. Think “Soul Glow” from Coming to America. So this guy walks past me and I stop and count to 20 before saying, “Damn James, did you smell that guys jheri curl juice?” I turn around to look at James and James is at the other end of the aisle. The black man is standing about 10 feet away from me. I turned back around and pushed my cart around the corner as quickly as possible (without running) and stood there waiting for the guy to come kick my ass.

There have been many other times, but these are the one’s that I remember the fondest.

On a side note I found a story on CNN.com where a woman in Italy was killed when a cross fell on her. The cross was in the middle of the town square where workers were setting up for a religions festival. I think this is God’s way of telling us he doesn’t was to be worshipped anymore.

Oh no you didn't!!!

So… What do you want to talk about? I’ve got nothing. All I have done since Monday is watch 12 Angry Men and The Flintstones. Both were pretty good movies and were on my lists. The Flintstones was #80 on International Box Office Sales with $358,500,000 and 12 Angry Men was #21 on Top Rated Films with a 8.5 (out of 10).

I did see a commercial for a new show called Cold Turkey. It’s going to be on PAX.

The series takes 10 unsuspecting chain smokers who were brought to the show
under variety of pretenses, only to discover that the real task will be to quit
smoking cold turkey.

From the little bit they showed on the commercial there appears to be at least 1 cigarette in plain view of the contestants (in a clear plastic case sitting on a table). At anytime they can give in and smoke the cigarette, but then they are out. I think it will be entertaining to see all of these people going through withdrawals as a group.

Here’s my idea for a reality show:

Just beat it! – Sex addicts are put into a house (naked) with tons of pornography and strippers. They aren’t allowed to “release”. They wear heart monitors at all times to make sure they don’t cheat. This one might be better on Cinemax.

I think this idea came from watching Seinfeld and 40 days, 40 nights (which is another movie I watched last weekend).

Honey, look at all the money I saved!!!

Friday
Vanessa and I went out for sushi at Yoshi’s. Yoshi’s is about a mile from our house and has had some impact on our wanting to stay in the area. The sushi is great quality and the people that work there are fun. We have been going for about two years now. We’ve tried other sushi places, but we keep coming back here. We always finish with a Kawasaki Roll (shrimp tempura, rice, and red spicy sauce wrapped in lettuce).

Saturday
We started our day with lunch at Mimi’s Café. The Artichoke Spinach Dip makes a great breakfast and the Café Club with fries was a nice dessert (or appetizer and lunch if you prefer). After that we headed home. Too much time in the sun is bad for the skin. I watched Once Upon a Time in the West so I can knock another movie off my list. I have about 10 movies recorded now that I am trying to get through.

While we were at Mimi’s Albert called and told us he was planning on going to Lobster Fest in San Pedro with a couple of our friends. I had never heard of Lobster Fest (apart from Red Lobster), but when he mentioned a lobster dinner for $13.00 it sounded like a good deal. I’m not a lobster fan. I can take it or leave it, but since it’s so expensive, it makes since for me to leave it. Vanessa on the other hand is a fan.

Albert had to work for most of the day, but we decided to meet there around 9:00 pm. It was okay, but I wouldn’t go back. I expected a nice event with seafood vendors and perhaps some white wines to taste. What we found was a tent with picnic tables and trash everywhere. It was more of a carnival setting with carnival games, psychic readers, and temporary tattoos. We made the most of it. Vanessa got a butterfly tattoo and I ate a bratwurst while she devoured the lobster. For dessert we shared a funnel cake. I enjoyed getting out and seeing Albert, Keith, and Jerome.

Sunday
My day started with picking my dad up at LAX. He was returning from another trip from Thailand. He goes twice a year for two weeks at a time. This trip was a little different as he was getting details on retiring there. He looked at places to live and the overall cost of living. Rather than traveling to resorts, he stayed in one place and tried to do “normal” non-vacation actives such as shopping for groceries. While looking for places to live he looked at a 2,000 square-foot condo with 3 bedrooms (twice as big as my last 3-bedroom condo). Total price: $150,000. Not bad at all. Despite the 18-hour flights and having to return to work, he is always in such a good mood when he gets back.

Vanessa and I went to Chili’s to grab some lunch and watch the football games. They have a great burger there. It’s called the Chipotle Bleu Cheese Bacon Burger. I get it every time I go. Yummy. The 49ers lost and the Patriots won. No surprise there.

I have been looking for a sale at Robinson’s-May for the last month or so, because they luggage I want is only sold there. It’s Pathfinder Presidential II. My dad has a couple of their suitcases and they are super durable. I won’t bore you with details, but trust me when I tell you it’s good quality. I spotted a sale going on and an additional 10% off coupon. Within 5 minutes I was out the door. I picked up three pieces. A 22-inch wheeled carry-on, a 26-inch wheeled suitcase, and a wheeled backpack. The backpack is great. It is 20 inches, opens like a suitcase, has hidden straps so you can wear it like a backpack or hide the straps and roll it along, and it has a smaller backpack that unzips from the larger one for day-trips.

All of this is for out trip to Europe in December. Total price for the 3 pieces: $419.00. Vanessa crapped her pants (not literally) when I told her how much I spent on it. We had talked about it before, but I don’t think it ever settled in until yesterday. We had set $500.00 aside for luggage out of our savings account. I know I sound like a woman, but I saved a lot of money. The backpack was $89.00, which is 48% off of the suggested retail price and 25% off of the lowest price I could find on the internet. Anyway, we shouldn’t need anymore luggage for a long time.

Later we ate dinner, watched Perfect Storm, and ate homemade strawberry ice cream. The movie was good. I enjoyed it a little when I realized Vanessa was under the impression everyone survived. There was one part where she commented, “they’re all going to live anyway”. It was fun watching her expression when the boat sank and everyone died. Oops! Did I just give away the ending?

You wanna go steady?

I have been married for just over a month now, so I can justifiably claim to be an expert at relationships and marriage. There are two schools of thought when it comes to living together before getting married.

1. Living together gives you a good idea of what spending the rest of your lives together will be like. I agree with this, but you don’t have a good idea until after a couple of months (probably a year) of living together.
2. If you wait until getting married before living together, then you are more willing to work through the problems you discover.

While I believe both are true, I think it is wise to live together before getting married. If you can work out your problems while living together and not being married, then I think it shows you are compatible and committed.

Any girl that I dated for more than a month I have lived with for some amount of time. Vanessa and I lived together for 4 years before getting married. The only thing that has changed is the word “wife” and “husband” has replaced “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” (when I don’t forget). Other than that everything is the same. I didn’t suddenly start doing dishes and laundry. She didn’t suddenly start taking out the trash. The trash, taking care of the cars, and the yard are my “jobs”. By the way, we don’t have a yard.

Survivor and Donnie Darko

I watched Survivor last night and it looked okay. Nothing really has me hooked yet. There are a plethora of girls that are 7’s and 8’s in this one. It seems like they are zeroing in on a target market. There is one black guy and everyone else on the show is white. I found that a little strange. No Asians? No Hispanics?

All of the guys are under 35 except one guy who is 40. Six of the nine women are under 35. the “old” lady on the show is 59. As luck would have it, it was her top that fell off during the first competition. Who wants to see that?

This is the 9th season of Survivor. I think they need to do something to change it up a little. The may sound contradictory to my last sentence, but they could start by not adding a twist every episode like last season. The last good twist I liked is when they told everyone they were going for a photo shoot before the show started and then proceeded to kick everyone off the boat in the clothes they had on (Armani suit and all).

Donnie Darko was a strange, yet good movie. I was hesitant to watch it, but found the storyline interesting. I’m still not done digesting the whole thing. Was the guy in the rabbit suit real? Was the rabbit from the future? Either way that’s another movie crossed off of my “Best Rated” list.

Wonderland - Two thumbs up!

Sorry I “nerded out” yesterday. I just had to get some things out of my head.

So here is my question for today. Are people for the most part good, or inherently evil? This is something that has actually been on my mind for about a week and my opinion keeps changing. The other day I tried to take the perspective that people aren’t rude intentionally, they just don’t realize they are being rude. That only lasted about 3 hours.

Last week, I had just left home and I was driving to work. It was 6:00 AM and I was driving down a two-lane road. There was a full-size truck in front of me (one lane over), and a compact car about 100 feet behind me (one lane over). We are the only 3 cars on this road for as far as the eye can see and we were all going the same speed. My lane was ending, so I put on my blinker to get over. The compact car speeds up so I can’t quite get over. The lane I’m in doesn’t end gradually. There is a metal guardrail at a 90-degree angle at the end. So I start to get over very slowly hoping the young girl driving will realize I don’t have a choice but to get over. She speeds up again and is 2 feet in off the bumper of the full-size truck. I had to slam on my brakes and come to a complete stop so I wouldn’t crash. Why would someone do that? She wasn’t driving fast until I put on my blinker and she didn’t drive fast afterwards when the road widened to two lanes again.

So I did what any calm and mature driver would do. I turned on my brights, tailgated her, and honked my horn for 30-second intervals while I followed her for a couple of miles. Okay. I know I over-reacted, but that’s what I’m talking about. There was no reason for her to do that other than to be rude. Other examples from this week:

• A lady driving on the shoulder of the road because she didn’t want to sit in traffic.
• Someone grabbed a piece of paper out of my hand while I was reading it.
• Mike not updating his blog for a week at a time.
• I won the football pool at work this week. When the organizer paid me, he shorted me $10, because he thought I didn’t know about the extra two people that put their money in at the last minute.

Intentional things like this bother me the most. I feel that I am a good person and wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone. I go overboard sometimes about teasing someone when I am trying to be funny, but I feel terrible if I am called on it. My emotions feed heavily off of others so when someone does something rude or inconsiderate, it really affects me. On the other hand I see so many people doing intentionally rude things and it doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

My billion-dollar idea…

I was listening to Mark Cuban on Howard Stern yesterday. Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks (basketball), a billionaire, and has a new TV show “The Benefactor”. I am always interesting in billionaires, so I looked for more info about him on the Internet and found his blog. He has invested $100 million into a company HDNet who will distribute HD quality shows and movies to viewers most likely in a Netflix format. The interesting thing is the HD quality is takes so much memory that it won’t fit onto a DVD (even the new formats coming out next year), so they are looking at distributing the shows/movies on miniature hard drives. Hard drives are expected to be around 25 cents per gigabyte by next year, so they could potentially sell a 20 gigabyte hard drive with a movie on it for prices that compare with today. You would then connect this to your TV via firewire and watch your program.

This kind of relates to where I think a market exists on the internet. Why not offer an online hard drive? Here are the benefits for the users:

1. Use as much or as little memory as you need. Many computers come with from 80 to 250 gigabyte hard drives. This will always be too much for some and not enough for others. Perhaps charge a very minimal monthly fee depending on the amount of storage used. Maybe $5 per month for 100 gigabytes and an additional $5 for every 100 gigabytes.
   
2. Never lose your information to a hard drive crash. The data would be backed-up onto other hard drives.
   
3. Connect to your information and programs anywhere.
   
4. Upgrade your computer without having to transfer everything from one hard drive to another. You would load all of your programs onto your virtual hard drive.

Does this make sense? Has anyone heard of something like this? Does anyone want to pay me a billion dollars for this idea?

UPDATE: I found this company, but it looks expensive. and 5 GB isn't a whole lot of memory.

Tivo'd out???

It took me until last night to realize I have been spending WAY too much time inside watching TV. I need to get out more. There are so many shows and movies I watch and record. We probably record at least one movie a day (if not two). Vanessa has an average of 2 shows she records every day that I have no interest in. I have several shows I record just for me (Howard Stern, Penn & Teller – Bullshit, Entourage, Rides, Motor Week, Road and Track, and The Wire)

Then there are the shows we record to watch together (Survivor, The Apprentice, The Benefactor, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Six Feet Under, 24, Trading Spouses, The Assistant, CSI: Las Vegas, CSI: New York, The Amazing Race, The Osborne’s, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, The Joe Schmo Show, Airline, Monster Garage, Monster House, Last Comic Standing, and The West Wing.) Those are just the one’s I can think of. I know there are more. There is a good mix of intelligent shows and mindless crap. This doesn’t even cover special events like the football games (two a week minimum), MTV Video Awards, etc. Right now it’s not too bad, because the fall season is just starting. Only about half of these shows are actually on right now, but by next week I will be completely overwhelmed.

By last night I couldn’t stand it anymore. At 9:00 I turned off the TV and went to bed. I was tired, but I also just couldn’t take anymore TV. The problem is I feel like I am going to miss something (other than real life). I guess I really need to narrow it down and get rid of the mindless crap. All of the reality shows have a two-hour finale where they recap the entire season anyway.

I’m sure you get my point. I need to get outside more. Well, once it cools off of course. Right now it’s too hot to go outside.

My day with Vanessa, Sara, Kate Bosworth, Hillary, Beth, Betty, and Hazel

Today started with Vanessa waking me up at 6:45 AM to ask if I would make a run to the store since we were out of waffle batter. You can imagine the look I gave her as I made a “leave me alone” moan and rolled over, going back to sleep. We agreed to watch Sara (Vanessa’s 5 year old cousin) today and Aunt Beth (Sara’s mom) dropped her off around 6:00 AM. Between the two of them they agreed that they wanted waffles. At 7:45 AM Vanessa woke me up again to tell me the waffles were almost ready and to ask what I would like to drink with breakfast. Now that’s more like it. I still wasn’t ready to wake up, but this made it more acceptable.

After a wonderful day of waffles, watching the movie Blue Crush, going for a swim, making a run to Burger King for a Chicken Fingers Kids Meal, and a half hour on the Hillary Duff website Aunt Beth knocked at the door to claim the little angel. All of this was accomplished before 1:00 PM (which is the time I am usually searching for breakfast on a Saturday). Sara was actually very well behaved, but it is tough trying to do things appropriate for kids all day.

Now it was time for me to drive my Mom and grandma to the airport. After 1 week of visiting and 5 weeks of recovering from the fall my grandma was finally well enough to fly home. She is still very frail and my mom and I were still a little worried when we put her on the plane. My cousin Fadra was picking her up at the San Jose airport so she isn’t alone.

Tonight I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. I still don’t know why people like this movie. This was the first time I saw it and plan to never see it again. I found myself checking how much longer the movie had to go several time and had to resist from fast forwarding to skip scenes. It didn’t help that it reminded me of the Rudolph & Frosty's Christmas in July crappy claymation we had to watch as kids.

I received a call from my friend Sebastian tonight. Sebastian is from Germany. We were exchange students in high school. He lived with me for 6 months and I lived with him for 6 months. It was 2:00 AM in Germany and he was at some party. He has a habit of calling me when he is drunk and tonight was no exception. He had run into some guy he knew in high school (his high school in Germany) and was commenting about how I am coming to visit in December. Well this friend of his, Rowland, spent a week in America as an exchange student with a guy I knew (barely), Andy Levy. So we stumbled though a drunken half German and half English conversation so they could ask me to try and track Andy Levy down. I haven’t seen the guy myself in 11 years. I guess this guy Rowland is super rich, so If I can find Andy Levy then he has a all-expense-paid trip to Germany waiting for him. Why can’t I be so lucky?

Now he’s my cousin too… beeaaatttcchh!

I spent most of my night watching Space Jam and the Patriots game. Space Jam was terrible. I can’t figure out how it made $225,400,000. I think the studio should be thanking Michael Jordan and R. Kelly for that one. It ranked 215 on the “All-time World Boxoffice”.

Watching the Patriots game was fun. I have had a hard time getting interested in football this year, but watching the game last night got the excitement pumping through me again. My team, the 49ers, has been completely disassembled in the off-season. All of the star players are gone and they didn’t win one pre-season game. I’m going to 4 games this year, but I’ll be happy if they can win just one.

Adam Vinatieri was great (as always) last night and made every kick. John Madden made the most intelligent comment I’ve ever heard come out of his blubbering mouth last night when he commented that Adam Vinatieri is the best “clutch” kicker in the history of the game.

One thumb way up

This week has me completely screwed-up. Tuesday, I thought it was Monday, and Wednesday I thought it was Thursday. I not just talking about having to remind myself, “it’s Thursday”. I went through the whole day thinking “Thursday” and couldn’t figure out why the Patriots game wasn’t on TV. I finally figured it out it was Wednesday around 5:30 pm. So, now I know it’s Thursday, but it no longer feels like a short week because I have to relive Thursday again.

I realized I have a couple less films to watch then I first thought. For some reason IMDB lists some of the films on the list in their foreign language titles. Some of these make sense like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Life is Beautiful, since they weren’t made in America, but The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly really should be listed in English. So, instead of 12 “All Time Box Office” films to watch, I had 10. I watched Jaws yesterday, so I’m down to 9. I’m not sure how I went through 29 years of my life without watching Jaws, but I did. I was pleasantly surprised. The shark was pretty realistic (especially for 1975) and the movie made me jump a couple of times. I guess it’s not hard to impress me.

I have The Flintstones and My Big Fat Greek Wedding recording this week. Two films I have avoided for a long time.

A new goal for me

A couple of months ago I was looking through www.imdb.com. The Internet Movie Database is a great site for anyone and is one of the most popular websites overall. If you are not familiar with it, you should be. It is a great tool for finding out who was in a movie, or what films (or TV shows) an actor/actress has been in.

Anyway, they have several lists on the site. The two I have become the most interested in are "All Time Box Office World-wide" and "IMDB Top 250". The first list contains the top money-earning films world-wide and the second is the top films as rated by the IMDB users. My first goal is to watch the top 100 movies on each list. If I can't remember the movie, then it doesn't count. With my Tivo and Satelite set-up it should help.

On the All Time Box Office list I only have 12 left to watch and I am recording 5 of those within the next week. The Top 250 rated list is much harder as many of these are older films and/or international. I still have 56 to watch from that list.

Anyway that is my new goal. I would like to have it done by the end of 2004.

Wedding Photos

This is a link to see some of the wedding photos (149 of them). There are many more pictures, and these are not necessarily the best of the bunch. I should have the rest loaded by the end of the week and I might post another link at that time. Enjoy...

http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeENGTdy1ZtHFg&notag=1

Report Card for the weekend

The weekend is almost over, so let's see where I stand on my "to do" list.

1. I updated two pages on the website including posting a picture from the wedding and adding the www.brokencandy.com link.

2. I fixed the dishwasher and that machine that cleans the dishes :) I didn't even lose any fingers!

3. I had my mom and grandma over. We ate lunch and went through all 950 wedding pictures.

4. I bought the pantry for the kitchen, so everything has it's own place now.

5. The "thank you" notes still aren't done. We are going to work on them this week. We are planning on including a picture in the cards, so it will take a couple of days to get those printed anyway...

Not bad. 80% is a B- I'll take that. Other than that we cleaned the house, barbecued until I ran out of propane, and stayed inside with the air conditioner running.

Next stop... Maui and Sons

While all of you were working yesterday, I went to tour the Quiksilver warehouse in Huntington Beach. They are running a warehouse management program that we are considering. Although it was a very large warehouse (maybe 400,000 square feet) I wasn’t overly impressed. I thought the warehouse would be extremely automated and running like a machine, but it was an average warehouse. They did have some creative ideas, which I will be incorporating at a later time. They do some things better than us, and I feel we do some things better than them.

After we all went to lunch at the Macaroni Grill I was done with my day by 1:00 pm, so I hit Lowe’s on the way home and bought a pantry for the kitchen. Sure, it’s the kind you have to put together yourself, but it looks nice. I think I pulled my shoulder lifting it from the truck to the house.

All I had was a large screwdriver and I couldn’t find my drill, hammer, or a small screwdriver. With my drill and hammer I could have had the whole thing together in 30 minutes, but it took me a while since I couldn’t find them. I need a new hammer anyway, so I will pick one up today and finish putting it together. I did manage to “hammer” 9 nails in using my screwdriver, but it took a lot of skill.

That’s one thing off my list for this weekend. Today I will finish the pantry and start working with the wedding photos. Vanessa picked them up yesterday. There are 950 pictures and take up 7 CD’s. I figure out of 950 I have to look good in at least one of them.

Things to do this weekend

I’ve been home for almost two weeks now and everything is back to normal. I am excited about Labor Day weekend and I already have a long list of things I want to get done.

Update the website
The website needs a lot of updating. We are getting the wedding pictures from the photographer tomorrow, so I want to add some of those pictures. I also want to add some links (www.brokencandy.com), and change the look of the site. I should at least get the first two done.

Fix the dishwasher (No, I do not mean Vanessa)
The dishwasher has been broken ever since we moved in. I have a couple of ideas as to what the problem is. I’ll look at it, but I’m not going to put a lot of effort into it. That’s what landlords are for.

Have my mom and grandma over
My mom hasn’t been to our new place. We were supposed to have my mom and grandma over for dinner before the wedding, but that was postponed when my grandma fell. It will also give them a chance to go through the 950 wedding pictures, 35 minutes of wedding video, 167 honeymoon pictures, and 45 minutes of honeymoon video. They’re going to regret this…

Buy some furniture
Our kitchen is painfully small and 90% of the wedding gifts we received are kitchen items. We couldn’t fit everything in the kitchen even before the wedding. I am determined to buy a stand-alone pantry, or shelving, or something this weekend. I can’t stand everything sitting on the counters and kitchen table anymore!!!

Write “Thank you” notes for the wedding gifts
Thank you notes have to go out. I wish one mass “Thank you” email was acceptable. Even a computer typed form letter would be great. I would even be willing to put the effort into a mail merge to get the names and gifts correct.

I think having a wedding is the one last cultural ceremony that Americans still feel obligated to follow. Okay, not everyone does the full-blown wedding, but many do or do a smaller, similar version. There are so many rules and traditions that need to be followed otherwise everyone thinks you are impolite or have bad etiquette. I’m not going to get too deep into this, but if you have ever been married you will know what I am talking about. There are things that just don’t make sense, but you do them anyway, because that’s what people do at weddings. I’m not just talking about the ceremony, but also the reception (even more so at the reception). Anyway, I just think it’s crazy.