Entrenched in our hotel room

Our summer vacation got underway today. It was off to a bit of a late start to begin with, but was slightly complicated when we found out Gerlie had strep. We were planning to stay at her pad in Northridge, but that was off. She sounded terrible, I hope she is at home getting lots of rest and fluids.

We were able to call our hotel and have our hotel extended a day, but the real issue was we were an hour behind schedule and looking at driving into Anaheim now instead of Northridge. Sure enough, we (meaning "I") hit some massive traffic on I-5 near downtown that never really stopped until we got to Anaheim.

We are at the Holiday Inn Express Anaheim Maingate, and I have to say it's not too shabby. For the price and location (about two blocks from the convention center), it can't be beat. TripAdvisor seems to have hit the mark for me, again.

Apropos of nothing, the cookies at the Harris Ranch gift shop are hella good. The baker's dozen won't make it back to the Bay Area.

After checking in and settling in a little, we bumped up our trip to Costa Mesa planned for tomorrow and went to Book-Off to do some pre-Anime Expo bargain hunting. I was pretty stoked to get the Asian Kung-Fu Generation DVD I have been eyeing for months but did not have the gall to pay $60 for. It was $35. Rhonda and Sara each picked up some CDs. If we have time, we might hit the Gardena one on July 4th (provided it's open).

After that, we drove to The Lab, a self-described "anti-mall", on the recommendation of my former co-worker Xochitl. We all bought a t-shirt at Great Laundry, a Japanese t-shirt company. Rhonda got the "Samurai" shirt, I got the "Dragon" shirt, and Sara got the "Shinobi" shirt. All legitimately awesome.

Our first meal in Anaheim was Taco Bell. Not earth-shattering, but better than nothing. Looking forward to those cinnamon rolls they like to talk about here in a few hours. Dinner with Xochitl is the only thing on our agenda for tomorrow, so it might be a relaxing day in advance of all the chaos.

Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?

Day one of vacation kicked off with a visit to San Francisco from one of my favorite bands, J-rock or otherwise, the pillows.

My previous attempt to see the band in action is well-documented. I was not determined to make the same mistake twice.

Luckily, they announced a Q&A with the band at the Kinokuniya Books in Japantown. And we were there.



Sara and I got autographs from the band, although we were both a little star-struck.



After dinner and a stop to pick up earplugs, we went to Slim's to catch the concert. After the opening acts, the real show started. In a word, the performance was electric.









Good mix of old stuff and new. I wanted to hear "One Life" but that's OK. The crowd was pumped up and the place was rocking every time an FLCL song came on. Sawao signed off with a cheerful, "See you next year!" So it looks like the pillows will be back to The City, which is a good thing.

Next stop: sunny Southern California!

All the people of the earth want to rock n roll!

What I'm up to

DRINKING! Well, at least, Rhonda is drinking iced green tea using Kirkland green tea. Yes, you read that right, Kirkland green tea - made exclusively for Costco by Ito En. It even has matcha in it. I've had it hot, and it's really good. Although drinking any iced tea, Japanese or otherwise, without any sweetener makes me wince.

WATCHING! Last weekend, flipping through channels in bed, we stumbled on Viking: The Ultimate Obstacle Course Challenge on ESPN2, and were hooked. It's a three-stage obstacle course only the Japanese could invent, complete with mental challenges (such as adding two random two-digit numbers) as well as physical challenges. It's a little like MXC on Spike TV, only the ESPN announcers give it more legitimacy (and dignity). Which it deserves, as the challenges (and, you might argue, the challengers) are totally insane. Highly recommended.

We also both really enjoyed Studio Ghibli's My Neighbors, The Yamadas. It's too easy to describe this as a Japanese "Simpsons", and it doesn't have that show's random quirkiness. It follows a typical Japanese family and while their life is fairly typical, the hiccups in their family lives are played up for high comedy. It's almost entirely appropriate for the whole family, minus one (hilarious) scene involving the teenage son buying some porn. For the most part, though, the humor is less for kids than it is for adults. It drags a little in the last half, but it's still a lot of fun. Finally, this is an anime I think even my folks would enjoy.

SURFING! to my new favorite site, Lifehacker. With the motto, "Don't live to geek; geek to live," Lifehacker supplies all the useful information to make life easier, such as how to build your own backyard deck, how to clean your garbage disposal, matting your own art or photos, and creating a false identity.

I don't really surf to this site, but Last.fm is a social networking site (think MySpace) that is build around your music tastes. You can download a plug-in that tracks all the stuff you listen to in iTunes, and it takes that data and builds charts, just like a radio station. It can let you know other people with similar listening tastes, and does an effective job of recommending other artists (since it has all that data on the users' listening habits. It even lets you generate an image file of your charts for display on your website.

LISTENING! to:





(I love that CD. Dude, can you blame me?)

What I was previously up to (6/3/06).

Home Sweat Home

It's been an interesting week, layoff rumors aside. Rhonda has been pressing to get a gym membership and on Sunday, I finally caved. We are now members at Right Stuff, about a mile away on Blossom Hill and Kooser. Rhonda gets to work out with her friends/ex-co-workers, so she is happy.

I surprised her, not only by signing her up, but myself as well. I figure the financial cost is motivation enough to keep myself going, since I need to lower my cholesterol and drop about 25 or 30 pounds. It also keeps us out of more costly places, like malls and bookstores.

I've already been 3 times this week, not bad since I didn't go until Wednesday. Rhonda went a bunch of times as well. On top of that, we went swimming at Becky's pool Thursday night (the only night since Wednesday I skipped the gym), and got a visit from the overheated Shaw family Friday, leading to our first trip to the community pool (on our 360th day here).

I am pretty psyched I had already lost about five pounds last Wednesday - I haven't weighed myself in a couple months because there were magazines piled on the bathroom scale. For about a month we have been eating a lot more salads and fruit, and I stopped buying cookies and crap. I figure with our short-term financial future a bit cloudy, it made sense to fill up on salad (cheap) and try to stretch the main courses (expensive) into more leftovers. Seems to be working, as I found out I didn't really need two chicken breasts to get full at dinner.

So things are on the upswing healthwise. I even thought about buying some Pocari Sweat at Mitsuwa today. Now I should be able to go to Anime Expo next week without having a coronary.

Thursday was NOT the day...

...for 3,600 to 4,600 soon-to-be out-of-work Sun employees. Turns out there were only about 400 layoffs, so the article was sorta right, sorta wrong.

I'll still be left in a somewhat precarious position of not knowing when we leave for vacation sometime next week.

Well, we'll see. If anything positive came out of last week's state of semi-panic, it's that I got my contacts updated on LinkedIn.com, or as I call it, MySpace for adults.

Today the day?

Will know soon enough.

Sun employees face 'Black Thursday'

Oh, so close...

Rhonda wanted to pop in our wedding video (I don't know about you, but I get uneasy watching myself on video) tonight after the sixth inning of the Giants game.

"Wait!" I cried. "We have to watch the game."

"Why?"

"I can't say."

Funny look.

"Let me just say the Angels' run came off a walk."

Smart gal she is, Rhonda got the hint (you can't talk about a no-hitter; you'll jinx it!), and we settled down to watch 21-year-old Matt Cain come closer to throwing a no-hitter than any Giants pitcher I can remember. The last Giants no-hitter came when I was 17 days old.

The final line for Cain: 8 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 10 K.

After the debacle in Seattle over the weekend, the Giants still aren't hitting, but at least they're back at .500. While technically tied for last, we're only a game-and-a-half back.

Always good to beat the Angels, although nothing can undo 2002.

That Alfonzo kid sure calls a good game, huh?

My kingdom for some A/C.

Our HOA is having a block-wide garage sale tomorrow. I was trying to scrounge together some stuff to sell (like some of these comic books!), but it's getting late. So screw it.

Just too busy this month to organize something like that. Too many trips to Stockton on the weekends. My sinuses and lungs have taken a beating the last two weeks, and just when I'm finally getting better, back into the fold tomorrow. Luckily only a day trip this time.

And it's friggin' hot tonight. 93 degrees today. Still hot inside and it's almost midnight. No air conditioning. Had to go to the mall to cool off tonight. Fan not cutting it.

Did I mention we're going to Stockton tomorrow? Black car? Black interior? Hatchback?

Living the dream.

A few weeks ago, I got a game summary text message from the Giants-Mets game. The Giants won, but it also said, "HR - E. Alfonzo, 1," at the bottom.

I turned to Rhonda and said, "Did the Mets sign Edgardo Alfonzo?"



Nope, Los Gigantes had called up 27-year-old Eliezer Alfonzo, a ten-year minor-league veteran, to fill in for the injured Mike Matheny. With backup Todd Greene still a little punch-drunk from being run over by Milwaukee's Prince Fielder, Alfonzo was here not to ride the pine, but to start at catcher for a major-league club.

He responded with a two-run homer for his first big league hit. Three days later, he caught Jason Schmidt's 16-strikeout game. The next day, he scored the winning run in the ninth inning on a wild pitch. The day after that, his hefty body legged out a triple.

Alfonzo's been in the big leagues less than two weeks. He's played nine games, all starts, and is hitting .290 with 3 home runs.

The thing is, Matheny or Greene will be feeling better soon and Alfonzo will be back on the bus to Fresno. We may never hear from him again. But in the last two weeks, he's lived the dream of thousands, if not millions, of people the world over (myslef included) who have longed to play Major League Baseball. And he didn't do it sitting on the bench; he shared the starting lineup with Bonds, Alou, Schmidt, and Vizquel. After a decade of toiling in the minor leagues and having nothing to show for it, he finally got his opportunity at the big time, and he seized it.

Right now, that makes him my hero.

Democracy at work.

Rhonda and I endured technical problems to cast our ballots today. There were five touchscreen ballots at our polling place and by the time we got there at 7:20, all five were down. To make things worse, once one of them got working, our key cards had all expired and had to be reactivated again. We didn't finish voting until 8:30 and had to settle for McDonald's for dinner. So much for technology - this never happened with punch ballots.

To their credit, there were about 8 people in front of us and probably a couple dozen behind us, and only a couple of them left (and they left to find another polling place). The rest stayed to have their shot at democracy. It's good to know that in a world where so many people are cynical and don't take the time to vote, there are still a lot who recognize the importance of free elections.

But next time, we go absentee.

Busy weekend

We made a whirlwind trip through our hometown this weekend. I've got the pictures and the sinus infection to prove it.

We wisely decided not to drive into town Friday night and spend one more night in our own bed. Saturday morning, we went straight to Alyssa's First Holy Communion. (I've got pictures but I need to scan 'em.)

We followed that up with Grandma Tillie's 75th birthday party. Grandma was looking pretty sharp.



Auntie Liz outdid herself on the cake, it looked great (and, after the communion party, was the second of her cakes I got to eat on the day!).



I knew it was going to be hot in Stockton, so I made a last-second wardrobe change. All was well until I showed up and made a major fashion faux pas.



(That killed me. I bought that shirt last year for my dad and didn't know what size to get, so I bought a L and an XL. He took the L, but I lost the receipt so I kept the other shirt. This is the *only* article of clothing I have that we have in common. Then we both managed to wear khaki shorts to finish off the "twin" look.)

I was pretty exhausted (actually, a little sunburnt, as it turns out) and Rhonda was allergy-depleted, so we had to pass on going to Angelo and Lorna's to celebrate Lorna's college graduation (sorry, but congrats!).

Sunday we had breakfast with my mom and dad and then I fell asleep for a couple hours (allergies and dehydration catching up with me). Before we left town, we went to Becka's surprise birthday party.



Guess it worked.

D rented a jumper for all the adults to jump around in. I'm pretty sure the maximum weight was exceeded and the risk of injury was high.



They learn so fast.



Right before we left, the cake was cut and Sophia got Becka square in the cheek with frosting.



A non-stop but enjoyable weekend. It looks like we're making a bunch more trips to Stockton this month, before we hit up Anime Expo at the end of the month.

Rhonda's Graduation

Rhonda got her teaching credential on May 23rd. Yay! Now if only they'll find her somewhere to teach next year.



Her mom, my dad, and Grandma made the trip up from Stockton (my mom was on the DL that week). Becky, Marv and Jesse also joined us for dinner at Gordon Biersch.

Here's us, a few beers later.



(I gotta lose some weight.)

The Marquis de Sod

Ph34r my l33t gardening skillz.



This was actually a giant pain for me. When we moved in, there was big giant rock on our weedy and overgrown lawn. I bought a mower and had the rock hauled away (to the dismay of my dad, who uses exclusively uses landmarks for directions and can't find my house). I killed most of the weeds (the noticeable ones, at least) and took out the rose bushes.

The sprinkler placement was brutal. There was a 360-degree sprinkler just a few feet from the corner of the lawn, so the fence and wall of the garage were pelted with water. The sprinklers closest to the street ended about 3 feet short of the sidewalk. To make sure the corner bordering the street and the driveway got water, some hack installed a 180-degree head, so water shot out 10 feet into the street.

There were lots of lava rocks in the first 3 feet or so of the lawn, which I started tossing in my backyard. I discovered, to my dismay, that someone planted sod *over* the rock, so digging up to move the sprinklers was a pain and was done mostly with a trowel and by hand. On the other side, where there wasn't any turf, there was a lot of dirt in between the rocks, allowing weeds to flourish.

In the end, it took a few weekends to get rid of most of the rocks, move the sprinkler heads to the edge of the sidewalk, and plant sod all around the various utility boxes in my yard. I also got an adjustable sprinkler head for the middle sprinkler so it kind of shoots around the garage. I finished this up back in May but forgot to post it during my lengthy hiatus.

Unfortunately, some of the sod dried out since I took this picture. Some of the strips were too small (trying to fit in between the boxes) or are a little brown along the edges. Hasn't helped it heated up in a hurry after a long winter. Still, it's green, and looks better than it did. I'm sure some fertilizer and more water and it'll be good as new.

The backyard, on the other hand...well, at least I have a fence.

What I'm up to

LISTENING! to St. Elsewhere, the debut CD from Gnarls Barkley. I was never a big fan of Goodie Mob, but this collaboration between Cee-Lo and DJ Danger Mouse is what The Love Below should have been. Danger Mouse can do no wrong of late, with this disc coming on the heels of his work on Dangerdoom's The Mouse and the Mask, The Gorillaz' Demon Days, and the Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The Grey Album. If you're not listening to this, you are missing out.

Also listening to the classic Doolittle by The Pixies, something I picked up from the library. Being major influences on some of my favorite bands (Nirvana, the pillows, et. al.), I wanted to check them out. Not what I expected, but I can see their influence.

READING! Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. About 100 pages in and it's aight. No Freakonomics, I liked that a lot more.

The most entertaining read I've had lately is Jin Kobayashi's School Rumble, which is a high-school romance mixed with slapstick comedy. The main characters are pretty dense, but endearing enough so as not to be annoying. It was thoroughly enjoyable and gets a recommendation from me.

On the manga front, Battle Royale came to a close with volume 15. I'm a big fan of BR in general, so I'll save my assessment of the films, the manga, and the novel for a future blogging. I will say that despite the brutal and over-the-top sex and violence of the manga, the ending was surprisingly upbeat, as explained in the interview with the manga-ka in this volume. Very interesting how something like 9-11 can be pervasive in popular culture.

WATCHING! not much of anything. In the last couple weeks, Lost, 24, Ghost in the Shell 2nd Gig, and Alias have all come to an end for the season (in the case of Alias, permanently). Alias lives on on my DVR, as does the last 3 or 4 Sopranos episodes and the IFC run of Samurai 7. So with seemingly hours of free time a week freed up by a lack of castaways and soft-talking killing machines, I should be able to finally clear that DVR and move on to Fullmetal Alchemist (thank you, Santa Clara County Library) and the mountain of fansubs I have.

WAITING! for AX 2006. Found out this week the pillows were returning to San Francisco, conveniently the day before we leave for AX. Immediately plunked down the plastic for three tickets so Rhonda and Sara and I will be there. I am determined not to wuss out and blow it like last time.

Rocket Man.

Finally, the video that The Sports Guy gave a 100 out of 100 to on the Unintentional Comedy Scale.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the one, the only, William Shatner.

The band is on the field.

Just for the hell of it. Screw you, John Elway, we got the axe.

Masculine Itching.

Ah, this commercial is a rarely-seen classic from a couple years ago. God bless ya, YouTube.com.