the week of HDTV's, the Superbowl, and a bad downshift.



friday

met up with ray, got inn and out at pb. i got 1 double double, and another double double protein style.



then went to old town, parked about 1/3 of a mile away from the trolley station, then rode the trolly to gas lamp. gas lamp was packed to say the least. at one point i think we walked about 10 feet a minute. we stopped by the z90 booth (nothing going on in there), then we walked by this guy that throwing a football over our heads, and it turned out to be Dan Marino. then we went to the xbox thing they had. we went to to the exhibit, and played halo for about 45 minutes or so. then we started walking back, and we saw this SUV limo (maybe a Hummer H2). And about 15 totally dressed up women came out. it almost seemed like an endless supply of hot chicks coming out of this limo. 2/3 of them probably modeled. but all of them were extremely well fit and groomed. they weren't cheerleaders. then they disappeared like they were a figment of our imagination. on our way back, everyone seemed to be checking out the Hustler store, so we went to take a peek. there were 3 floors. just about anything you can put your mind to that a store like this would have, they had. this place would also be a good place for gag gifts.



since we didn't want to miss the last trolley, we decided to go back around 11pm. we went to get boba. then we came back to my place and watched a video clip that i downloaded called "making of smallville".





saturday

i went hiking with ray, his unkle mark, and mark's wife trish through the torrey pines trails. it was a lot of fun. i'm definitely planning to go there on at least a semi regular basis. i have been missing out. i didn't know that this place existed until a few weeks ago. we walked through most of the trails at torrey then went to go eat vietnamese. then we went to get boba again. i got the red bean icy. it tasted pretty similar to the red bean ice cream bars that you get at asian markets. then i came home and took a nap. and thought about going to gas lamp again (or maybe mission bay), but i thought i do something a little different. then eric calls me so we go to dave and busters with eric, elena, and elana's bf john to eat and play. i got a top sirloin steak. that was pretty good. i think its the third time that i have eaten there and the food there has always impressed me. gourmet food at an arcade? i thought for sure they were gonna turn friday-style after 6 months. D&B, keep up the good work. after dinner, i played ferrari f355 challenge. i didn't do too horrible, but i didn't do that great. then i played some skeetball, and the brainless games for tickets where you basically drop tokens into a machine, and tickets come out of the machines.



after we had spent all our tokens and we came back to john's place, played mario party on the gamecube on a ~50 inch plasma widescreen. the game was really fun. especially playing with 4 people. and we got to play it on one of the nicest TV's I've seen, and that was quite a treat. the crispness and the color of the TV was amazing.



after getting dead last in mario sunshine, we decided to head back but.....i asked eric if i can drive his eclipse. doh. it wasn't a great idea. getting the car rolling and stuff wasn't bad. i dont' have any problems stalling or up shifting. but i think i was trying the more advanced stuff way to soon and while trying to downshift, i downshifted too hard (let the clutch out too fast) and something popped. and it became inoperable. power steering was gone. first we thought the only problem was that the alternator belt came loose. so we called john, and he didn't have the right tools, so john drove us back to my place, and i took eric to his place, got the tools, and headed back to to his car (in sorrento valley). then after we put the belt back on, we discovered that one of the pulleys had failed and was now grinding against the inner body of the car. so when we realized we weren't going to be able to fix it, i drove eric back to his house. man, i felt pretty horrible. i don't think it was going to be costly, but i don't like wasting people's time. one of my pet peeves is people wasting other peoples time. and when i know i'm eating up someone else's time, i feel like scum. eric was planning to take it tonight to LA and have one of his friends work on it. hopefully everything went smoothly. i'll give eric a call tomorrow. so i got home by 3:30am. went to sleep at 4.





sunday

woke up at 7:45. made it to church by 8:50. had service. the message was about how fellowship (hanging out with church members) was one of the main important parts of christianity. and it went on to say, you can party like a rock star outside the church realm, but no matter how fun it is, you'll always end up feeling hallow. but with fellowship, you never feel empty afterwards. i wish i can explain it better, but all i can say is that its quite true. and because of the lack of sleep, my original intent was to just go to service, and come back home for a phat nap, and probably not make it to the superbowl party at church. but the sermon changed my mind. so after service, i got some digits, went to go eat at santong palace with my small group, then i went home for a small nap, then i drove out to jim's place by 4pm. about 30-40 people gathered at his house, ate a whole bunch of food, and watched the raiders get beat to a pulp on Jim's 60inch LCD projection HDTV. the TV was amazing too, especially with the HD broadcast.



if i had to comment on one thing about the superbowl, its about the half time show. what a load of crap that was. sure big names, but quite a few things that could have been better. but it could be that all half time shows are this bad. i just care more cause it happened in our city.



Shania Twain...was i the only one that noticed that she lip synced to a direct track off her CD? she didn't even bother to record a live version. and to top it off, she is horrible at lip syncing. no doubt....now she prerecorded hers, and wasn't as bad at lip syncing, but the prerecording she used sounded horrible. at the party, one of the people said, "who is she?" and we said, "gwen stefani from no dobut." and she replies back, "oh she's horrible. how did she ever get a record contract?" and then i had to correct her on how she has one of the most amazing voices. i couldn't blame her though. it did sound like crap. the other performances, i don't remember. i think sting used a recording directly off his albums too. the question is, did they have a choice to not lip sync? after the game, i came home for another small nap and headed out to rimac and had a really good workout.



today also marks a 1 year anniversary of a very important turning point in my life.

exactly a year ago, i had my last cigarette. started to play DDR. and this marked the change for a better life. even though, i'm nowhere near where i want to be with body building/sculpting, it's pretty amazing what a year can do to a person. i went from being ashamed from having no upper body muscle development at all, to getting complemented on my physique pretty regularly.



so anyways, sunday is always a good work out day for me. since i get 2 days of rest and plenty of good food during the week day, there are no failures on every rep that i plan out. after this week, next week is called "strategic deconditioning". which means, no gym for me except the pilates class. and there you have it.



off topic, but i've made one change to the blog. you can see some scribblings as a watermark. i like how it looks, but this watermark is 44kbytes compared to the older watermark "MM" which is 3 kbytes. i didn't want to go with a jpg cause i didn't want to fuzz out the "MM". i hope no one has to read this on a modem. i can use a background of a table, then put another background so that i would have both a jpg for the scribblings and the gif for the MM, but not all browsers support that. and it's more work for me since i didn't design this table structure, so i don't know where to put the tag in. oh well. i'll get to it eventually.