Riding the cougar!

Well, sorry I haven't posted in a while. There have been interesting things going on, but mostly I've kind of forget to blog about them.

This weekend, Austin and I went to Napa Valley for the wedding of one of my fraternity brothers, Dan Fanton, or as he is also known, Don Santon.

Austin and I's flight left at 7:20am on Friday, necessitating a drive to his parent's house at 5:00am. I went to bed Thursday night, Austin decided to just stay up and sleep on the plane. We flew Frontier, which I hadn't flown before. Our flight had a layover in Denver, and the first leg was fine, I slept a little, and also watched a couple of episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on my iPod which I had ripped from the DVDs I borrowed from Austin.

Once we got to Denver, things went a bit awry. Our departure gate was changed, plus we had to truck down most of the concourse to get there in time. Then the seat assignments were all screwy. Thankfully they decided for the hassle they were going to give us free TV. I should also mention that all of Frontier's planes have a picture of an animal on the tail and the that these animals have names. I think we were on Spike the Porcupine for that particular leg. The rest of the flight proved fine, though as is usually the case these days, there wasn't a meal, just a snack (a granola bar).

We arrived in Sacramento about 11:00am, where coincidentally one of the other fraternity brothers, Drew and his fiancee, had just arrived on a different flight. We bussed over to the rental car terminal and headed out towards Napa. We had decided we would look for somewhere for lunch on the way. Little did we realize that there is very little between Sacramento and Napa. Drew led the way and twice we had to turn around while off the freeway because we couldn't find a place to eat. We finally found an Applebee's in Davis (home of UC Davis) and stopped there. After lunch we headed off towards our respective hotels. I managed to get off on the wrong exit, but we turned back around and made it eventually to our hotel.

That evening (this being Friday still) we went to the rehearsal dinner. The food was very good, I had the rainbow trout. After the dinner we went to the sportsbar in the hotel and had some drinks before retiring for the night.

Saturday, Austin and I met up with Drew and Erin, and also Adam (another fraternity brothere) and Andi and we headed down to Fairfield (town of my birth) to tour the Anheuser-Busch brewery and the Jelly Belly factory. Both tours we showed up just in time to join the next group. At the brewery they gave us some samples and as none of us had had lunch yet, we got a bit tipsy. After that we went down the block (literally) to the Jelly Belly factory. At the factory store I bought several bags of the "Belly Flops" which are jelly beans that fail the strict quality standards of factory.

After the tours we headed back and looked for a spot for lunch. Once again we were following Drew and he got us all turned around, but eventually we ended up at a Baker's Square, where there were some interesting people. There was a Cajun festival in town, so the couple seated at the table near us were regaled in bib overalls and straw hats.

The wedding was at 6, so Austin and I headed over a bit early to the winery's store to pick up a few things. Oh yeah, the wedding was at the Domaine Chandon winery. The ceremony was out on the lawn and then we went up to the patio for champagne (or rather sparking wine) and appetizers. After that was dinner. There were neverending rolls, where as soon as you ate your roll (or even most of it) they appeared with basket to give you another. There was a salad course, soup course and then the entree. I had the beef tenderloin with carmelized shallot sauce, creamed potatoes, and market vegetables. That was seriously the best beef I have ever had. We also had wine with dinner, red, white or both. Both were very good, though I'm no wine connoisseur. Then there was cake, and dancing and candy and coffee. I was so stuffed from dinner I couldn't have any cake.

When Austin and I got back from the reception, we turned on the TV and "Harold and Kumar" was on, near the end, where they were riding the cheetah. I fell asleep very soon after that.

The next morning there was a good-bye brunch hosted by the maternal grandparents. We packed away the food as we knew there would be nothing on the plane. We managed to make it back to Sacramento in pretty decent time, and I was only one hour over 2 days on the rental car, so it ended up being pretty cheap. I mentioned before that all of Frontiers planes are animal named, and our plane for the trip back to Detroit was Charlie the Cougar. We were Riding the Cougar all the way back to Detroit! What was also funny was our pilot on the second leg was Tom Cruise (or maybe Cruz) but I was tempted to ask the flight attendant if the co-pilot was Anthony Edwards. We got back to Detroit a bit after midnight. Austin's dad picked us up and then we headed home.

I should have some pictures to put up along with the post soonish, but they aren't here with me. All in all, an awesome weekend, it was a lot of fun to catch up with my fraternity brothers. Drew is getting married the weekend of Thanksgiving, so we should all be together then also.

Master of Magnetism

Lots of computer based news today. The biggest bit of that is I finally bought a new Mac. I kind of went almost all the way out and bought a MacBook Pro. I got the lowest end model, but that still runs ~$2000, so thankfully I was able to work the student discount angle, which reduced the price by $200.

It's definitely the fastest computer I've ever owned, but we'll see how well if fares at the LAN party... I mean super cool party with a bunch of awesome guys doing really neat stuff, that's totally not nerdy at all.

What finally spurred this was the fact that they just released these new, faster ones, they had a sweet rebate deal going on when you bought a computer and an iPod, and I also got a bunch of offers for 0% balance transfers until next summer.

Oh yeah, that's another thing, I got the 30Gb iPod with Video too. I have to send in the rebate for that though.

For my old computer, I just bought off the Subaru forum a DVD burner (it had a DVD reader, and an external CDRW) and installed that yesterday, and also decided to put in the refurb hard drive I got on a warranty return. Well the DVD burner went in fine, but when I fired up the computer, the refurb hard drive started making some really nasty noises and then did the "click of death". So the refurb hard drive is dead, and I have to sent that back, and hopefully they'll send me a new one.

All of my files are still on the old computer and when I wanted to sync up my iPod, I kept getting all sorts of freezes and what not, so I ended up doing a lot of troubleshooting of the USB hub and swapping ports for the cables and I've eventually gotten it to sync at full speed. Those kinds of issues are why I wish the latest iPods still were FireWire capable.

With the new computer I should have a few less of those issues, as it has built-in USB 2.0, and should play nice with the new iPod. So happy with the new laptop. It has the nice MagSafe connector where if you kick the cord, it will detach instead of dragging the whole computer to floor. The power of magnets. Awesome.

Dropping like flies

Well, diet, week 4 has come. I didn't weigh in last week because of my sickness, but this week I weighed in and had lost 8.2 pounds for the last 2 weeks. That's a total of 13.8lbs. I'm in the 250s. Crazy. I weigh less than 2 Austins. It really hasn't been that hard, aside from forgoing a lot of my favorite things, at least sushi is pretty good, relatively.

I'm mostly recovered from my illness. I'm still coughing a bit, but my throat is ok.

Thursday I had to rearrange my garage so I could get the trailer out so my sister could borrow it, then my Dad borrowed my Saturn and Lani's car stayed at my house the weekend so she could use my Dad's truck to tow the trailer. There was also some minor drama with trying to get the lights on the trailer to work.

Dan came home for the weekend. Nice.

Weekend was low-key for the most part. Friday I stayed home and watched TV so I could rest, Saturday, Jessica, Dan, Austin and I went to see Spiderman 3. It was decent but sort of a mess plotwise. Sunday I went with my parents to visit my Grandma for Mother's Day. Lani also came by to drop off the trailer and get her car.

Monday, Dan and I met up with Austin and Beckie at Augie's for dinner and drinks. Augie's also had Guitar Hero set up. We of course played a bit.
Tuesday a big group met up at Xochimilco's for dinner. I had some delicious chicken fajitas. Dan and I split a liter of Margarita. There was a pretty good storm going on all night, and when I got back home, Dan had come along also, we went to watch Veronica Mars, which I had recorded, but about 10 minutes in, the signal cut out, and recovered only in the last 5 minutes. My cable was intermitently out for a couple hours so, internet and TV were all screwy. I ended having to download a torrent of Veronica Mars.

I sent in a hard drive for warranty a couple weeks ago, and I got it back yesterday. I had sent in a 160GB drive and awesomely they sent me back a 250GB drive. I think I'll replace the 120GB drive that's currently in my computer. It's getting pretty full.

In The Great T-Shirt Adventure Quest 2007 news, I loaded in my latest batch of photos, bring the total to 92. I think there are maybe 8 shirts still left in my drawer, so I just might break 100. That would be awesome. I expect to make the animation sometime soon.

Novi, Nachos, Weight Watching, Waiting

After much prodding, goading and peer pressure by my co-workers, I joined Weight Watchers which is being sponsored by work. What's cool is that half the cost of the 13 week program is being paid for by work and if I meet my weight loss goal, I get the other half refunded. The WW program seems pretty simple, and really what it comes down to is portion control and avoiding certain "bad" foods. I'll get to some of the bad ones in a minute.

Friday evening, John came over after being banished from his house because Julie was having a girl's night, and we met up with Austin and Beckie and Beckie's cousin Jennifer at the Little Tree for sushi because it was Jennifer's birthday. There were also quite a few other of Jennifer's friends who came out also, so our party was pretty large and as such we had to wait for-ever for our table. I had a roll and a chili-tuna salad. Tasty. I decided not to go to the bar afterward with everyone.

Saturday, I went shopping, I went to Trader Joe's and bought some foodstuffs and then went to Sam's Club for more stuff. Later I went out to Novi with Austin and Beckie (man, I really need a shorter way to refer to them) to meet up with Jenn to celebrate Jenn being done with classes for the semester. We had drinks (bad) at Jenn's then went to 5th Avenue for more drinks (bad) and then over to Gus O'Connor's for beer (bad) and nachos (even worse). At some point at Gus O'Connor's, Austin's illness of the last couple weeks got the better of him and Beckie drove him back to Jenn's apartment to get some rest. Jenn and I discussed future vacation plans, including the possibility of vacationing together again, what our respective parents would infer by this, and also my apparent lack of picking up on flirting. Eventually Beckie returned and we headed over to The Mixx for another drink (bad). Closing time arrived and we headed back to Jenn's where we recovered for a bit before Beckie drove us home.

Sunday, I was supposed to go to dim sum (bad) with Austin and his family, but he was still too ill to go, so I stayed home and slept some more. Later I went to my parent's house for dinner and went with my dad to get his birthday present, a wheelbarrow. In my family birthday presents for my dad tend to be practical and useful for the rest of the family. In the past, presents for my dad have been various tools, a snowblower, a bbq grill and now a wheelbarrow, which will in all likelyhood be used for a project at my house in the coming weeks. I also stopped by the Mitchell's house to drop off MaryBeth's harddrive and the backup on my portable harddrive.

So, a fairly busy weekend. What I'm really looking forward to is this coming weekend is the Ninja Prom. That should be fun. I've got my ninja costume, but I want to spice it up a little bit. Look for pictures later in this space.

New toys!

I got my new computer speakers delivered yesterday. They are pretty cool.

You can't really tell the scale from the picture, but they are pretty big. The "satellite" speakers are about a foot tall, if that helps your mental picture.

The sound is so much better than my previous free crappy speakers. Woo.

Kiwis, cake and skates

A little bit of a weekend recap.

Michelle (Chellee) came into town from San Diego for her birthday this weekend. I haven't seen her, for, um, about 4 years. So, it was pretty cool. Of course, Michigan decided to reward her homecoming by sending us some of the crappiest April weather that I can remember.

Friday, I took the day off and went shopping and cleaned. I went to Sam's Club, and Kroger. I returned $24 worth of cans to the store, although I still have about the same amount left to return. They're sitting in the back of the Saturn still.

Speaking of the Saturn, I've been driving it the last week or so, because the weather has been so cold and lousy, and I had already put my summer tires on my Subaru. The summer tires don't work so good when the temperature is below 40 degrees. I was too lazy to put the all-seasons back on the Subaru.

Anyway, back to Friday, after starting my cooking for the party, I ended up going to see Blades of Glory with Beckie and Michelle. It was pretty funny. I give a B. (mostly because it was ridiculous, but not terribly smart) After the movie, we went back to Beckie's apartment where we had drinks, and played video games. Michelle and Beckie decided that my hair needed to be straightened. See Pic.

Also, Beckie and I somehow managed to statically shock and kill one of her Guitar Hero controllers. After Guitar Hero, Beckie and Michelle played Mendels Palace. It was a kind of weird game. I headed home and did some more stuff to get ready.

Saturday, I busied myself with party preparations. Unfortunately the weather refused to cooperate. I took the Skip for a walk, and waited for people to arrive. They eventually did. John and Julie brought pierogis, and a salad. I made delicous ribs and chili. Julie also brought a cake.

Beckie and Michelle showed up a little bit after them and then other people started to filter in. Jackie and El Dave, Jessica, Austin, Lani, Michelle's friend Eugen (Yugin?), and Beckie's friend Colleen. We eventually played a drinking game to Spaceballs. It was pretty brutal, the most brutal rule was drinking whenever Dark Helmet's visor went up or down. We also played "Don't Quote Me" which is a game I got somewhere for Christmas.

The party eventually wound down and people headed home. I cleaned up a little and headed to bed.

Sunday, I went to my parent's house for dinner and then over to the Mitchell's house to help MaryBeth with her computer. The hard drive died. I tried to recover whatever files she had not backed up. I ended up staying there for a couple hours trying different things. She was probably buying a new hard drive today and then reinstalling and restoring everything. Major bummer.

Oh, and I still have a ton leftovers from Saturday. Anyone is welcome to come by and chow down. I had leftovers for lunch today. And for dinner. I still have almost half the cake too. Ugh, gonna go into sugarshock.

The resemblance is uncanny...

How is it that I meet people who look so much like me?

Exhibit A

This is from the LAN party Austin and I went to on Saturday. That is Taiki. He's 3/4 Japanese. We played Wolfenstein ET and Unreal Tournament. I also played a bit of Guitar Hero as seen here.

Friday night I went to see 300 with Austin, Beckie, Jim and Jennifer. I was called last minute. We were going to see the an 8:15, but it was sold out so we went to The Shamrock for a beer or two until it was time for the show. The movie was decent. A lot of waxed up dudes in thongs. But it was just like a comic book. Visually awesome.

Thursday night I had dinner with John and then went to see Steve's band play at the Berkley Front.

I just finished watching a new show on F/X called The Riches, which stars Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. It was pretty good though a lot darker than I expected.

Boombas, Airports, Non-Magsafe Power Connectors

Picked up Dan from the airport tonight. The airport was crazy. Like, crazy traffic.

I couldn't take Skippy for a walk because of the afore-mentioned picking-up-Dan-from-the-airport, so I asked Beckie if she could stop by and take him for a walk. She did, and for that, I thank her.

After picking up Dan, we stopped by his house to drop off his luggage, and then headed to the Shores Inn, where we had some food. Jackie showed up after a while. We had the Boomba-size beer, which are in giant mugs. Eventually, this dude came over and said, "Can I ask you a random question?". And then he asked if he could have our empty mugs, because the bar was out of clean ones. Apparently Tuesday is $2.95 Boomba night, so there were a lot of people drinking out of these big ass mugs. Strange.

In computer news, I was getting up from my couch and the cord for my laptop was somehow wrapped around my foot and I accidently yanked my computer right off the table. Luckily the cord plug was the only thing damaged, just a little bent up.