right on bro!

Spent today playing guitar, rehearsing with this band, and then a pleasant belated Thanksgiving dinner. I ate deep-fried turkey for the first time (thanks Toby!), which turned out to be as tasty as people have told me over the past couple of years.

I’ve only been back for one day, but time is moving much faster again, and I’m already starting to feel anxious that I don’t have enough of it. Oops.

Spent last week on Kauai island in Hawaii with my folks, my bro, and his girl. It was really cool. Notes:

• The first thing I noticed is that it is super bright and contrast-y compared to Southern California, probably because Kauai isn’t always covered with a perpetual cloud of smog.
• Visually, Kauai is too amazing to be described with words. I will probably bore you all with some “look at my vacation” photos when I get them developed, so if they actually came out well, you’ll be able to see for yourself.
• Caught a mahi mahi fish on a deep-sea charter.
• Went swimming for the first time in about eight years.
• Visited the Kauai Coffee Company, and had some of the most flavorful coffee I’ve ever had.
• Jammed around a plantation owned by Steve Case on an ATV for about four hours. Ate some sugarcane, didn’t taste like much really.
• Wasn’t so down with some of the local cuisine, which seemed like a mixture of Japanese and Chinese food (like, teriyaki chicken or fried mahi-mahi and shrimp, always with rice and macaroni salad). Some of it was pretty good though, including pancakes at the Oki Diner. We did go to a tourist luau, and the food there was good. I didn’t like poi though.

Managed to get through three books during the trip, mostly during air travel, so here are some Useless Book Reviews:

• CSI: Miami - Florida Getaway, by Max Allen Collins. Dude writes all of the CSI books, and they’re very enjoyable, shut-yer-brain-off books, if you happen to like both TV series. This one was no different.
• The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell. Yes, I took comfort in her work while passing time on an airplane. I love her NPR geek aesthetic.
• Hey, Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland. I’ve liked all of Coupland’s fiction since Shampoo Planet. But I wasn’t too sure about this one when I read that the novel was centered around a Columbine-like high school shooting, except it was in Canada. However, it turns out that Coupland hasn’t lost his touch. The one thing that bugged me was that all of his characters were constantly writing - on paper, no less. You’d think that all modern communication today would be Word documents and email. Who uses a pen anymore to express themselves?

Well, back to the grind. Any new revelations? Yes, but I wouldn’t tell you. That would spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?

Ran a bunch of errands today, cleaned my apartment, played Socom 2 some more. I am now ranked about 16,000. I slipped a lot because I didn’t play all last week, but I guess I managed to make it up some.

I bought some film to take pictures next week. Gonna try using this filter (Hoya Skylight 1B) that my uncle gave me, along with the camera. I hope it doesn’t turn everything pink.

I am SO fucking glad the week is over. Except for Pie and Alcohol Night, “CSI,” and “Las Vegas,” it was pretty rough all around. Weird, I did my laundry before the weekend was over, so I don’t understand why it was as bad as it was. Although I didn’t fold the clothes and put them away until Tuesday. Maybe that was it.

The deluge of holiday catalogs has started. In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten two from Dell, one from Sony, two from WearGuard, two from Musician’s Friend, one from Sam Ash, one from Macy’s, and a “surprise” gift card from the Gap. I wish they wouldn’t do that. It’s a giant waste of trees because 99% of the catalogs I get end up right in the trash, without having looked at them. I guess this is my fault for being an improper consumer.

“Kindergarten Cop” was on TV last night, and I’m shamed to admit that I watched the whole thing. The chick in that movie is really, really cute.

I am greatly looking forward to next week.

I haven’t really felt like doing much all week. Or, I’ll start something and then get really into it for about 2-3 hours, and then just be like, “Eh.”

CSI is on tonight. Yay!

I feel really disoriented right now. I’ve been so accustomed to a regular routine, it was really weird to not be at work during the week. I spent most of today watching TV and I don’t really feel attached to anything right now.

I took a walk around the neighborhood around 2 o’clock. It was a really beautiful day outside. It reminded me of when I first moved to Los Angeles, when I didn’t have a job, and I could just kind of walk around and see life going on.

I am at home today. I woke up feeling like bleah in general. Now I have the World’s Biggest Headache. Weak.

This was a very “off” weekend. Oops.

I am ranked around 13,000 in SOCOM 2 (out of about 200,000) though.

Took a nap at 6 last night to get up at 8 and go out, and ended up waking up at 6:30 in the morning.

Nice work.

It’s Friday night. While most of you loyal readers are just beginning your usual night of celebrating the end of the week by going out and partying, I am beginning my usual night of celebrating the end of the week by staying in.

Things I usually do on a Friday night:

• Laundry. I’d rather get it out of the way and not have to worry about doing my laundry. Running out of clothes on a Monday throws off my entire week.
• Clean my apartment. My apartment is mostly clean already, but I like moving things around to make sure everything is in its right place.
• Go through my mail for the week, manage bills, and check my finances. Again, something I’d rather not have to worry about over the weekend. Sometimes I put this off until Saturday morning.
• Order dinner via delivery. Sometimes I will stop on the way home and pick food up. Tonight it was a pizza (delivery).
• Make sure my computer’s security is up to date. That includes downloading new updates for Norton Antivirus, checking for new Windows critical update patches, and sometimes even scanning for malware with Lavasoft’s AdAware.
• Catch up on the week’s news via the Internet. Most of the time I am actually caught up on the news because I read it at work. But if there is a subject I ran across during the week that I didn’t get a chance to research, I’ll look for more in-depth news.

I usually go to sleep fairly early. I wake up early on Saturday morning (why is it that I have no trouble waking up on weekends but can’t respond to two alarm clocks during the weekday) and start my weekend then.

Today my co-worker read my blog and said it was mean for me to write mean things about people at my workplace. I told him I don’t tell anyone where I work, I never name names, and if he wasn’t such a bad person, I wouldn’t be bitching about him on my blog.

It’s cold outside.