Chris being the smart person he is told me I should lower the video quality to stop the lagging. This worked, but by the time I figured it out it was late and I had to sleep. Needless to say, tonight I will spend some serious quality time with Guybrush Threepwood

I feel like I'm in a Got Milk commercial, except instead of a nutritious beverage, we're dealing with a computer game.

As I believe I said a couple of posts ago, LucasArts decided to make Alea very happy this summer by releasing two Monkey Island games. They're also rereleasing Loom, which makes me even happier, but that's not out until August I believe.

Anyway, the first of the games is called Tales of Monkey Island. It's going to be a serialized computer game and they're releasing a chapter each month. The first one came out today. I waited all day to play. Came home and downloaded it and now it's too laggy on my old computer. Which makes me extremely sad. I'm going to try to play it on the baby computer, but I'm sure that it's not going to be entirely happy with this. Also, I'm pretty sure that my baby computer was not built for gaming.

The other option, of course, is to deal with the problem by fixing my computer. I am in serious need of a defrag but because of all the music and pictures on my computer, I do not have enough space to do this. This has caused a serious dilemma and makes me incredibly sad.

I think it's going to be a long time before I can defrag that computer, so I'm hoping that I can actually play the game on this computer even though I installed it on the other one. Otherwise, I'm going to have to wait a while before I can play the game. Will post on my thoughts once i do, though.

I also need to do Vanderslice and D-land posts. Was going to do that tonight. Might have to hold off on that while I figure out my laptops.


Speaking of nerdy things, did you know that the Sci Fi Channel has changed its name to the Sy Fy channel? Not a fan of this decision. It's not like it's going to make the channel any less geeky. Might as well bask in that.

Oh. When I burned that mix I was so proud of, it didn't work. It gave me a chance to reconsider things, so I ended up switching out the second Sondre song and the Elvis Costello song and switching them with John Vanderslice and Love Is All.

I've also in the last couple of weeks made some pretty bomb work out mixes. It's too bad that I haven't been to the gym lately to use them.

I've been in Southern California for the last few days. Been enjoying not having to wear a suit to work every day and being able to sleep in a little.

Went to see a show at the Troubadour a couple of days ago. (will blog about that later). Going to Disneyland today with Crasher and James because it's Crasher's birthday (happy birthday, will blog about D-Land later). Watched the Confederations Cup finale a couple of days ago. Pretty intense game. Well played on both sides. It was fun to watch US lead Brazil 2-0 for almost half of the game.

Moved Miaout of her previous place and am in the process of organizing her new place. This means a lot of IKEA trips and the like.

Had Kogi BBQ for the second time. Line was not as intense as it was the first time around. The deji bolkogi burrito was just as good. Yesterday, we had the rip off stuff from Baja Fresh. It was surprisingly good. People need to stop mispronouncing kogi though. Or correcting me when I pronounce it correctly. Seriously.

Anyway, i'll post about other stuff later because Chris wants me to get ready for D-land. I guess I should listen because it's his birthday and all.

Just wanted to post that it's past the halfway point of the year and I'm halfway through the book thing. Really slowed down after finals ended for some reason.

#24

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Really funny. Love his writing. Need to read more of his stuff.

#25

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars



View all my reviews.


It was okay. I got it at the SF library for like $2 or something. I'd always been kind of curious to read it. It was okay. An easy read. Parts of it were fun, but idk.

We just got two Neil Gaiman books. James needed one for summer reading and I saw the other one while I was getting his summer reading book. I've also got that Al Gore book that I've been working on and a book on the secrets of SCOTUS. Let's see if I can get through these.

Perez Hilton got punched in the face apparently. Part of me feels bad. Part of me is surprised this hadn't happened sooner. Part of me screams Schadenfreude. That's not what I'm here to post actually.

I'm almost out of space on my laptop again. This means some creative maneuvering is much needed. Most of the space is obviously taken up by music. Usually I can delete music because I've got the hard copies to back them up. Unfortunately, however, I've now acquired a very large collection of Amazon mp3s. Not only does this mean that I am contributing to the fall of music stores like Tower Records (RIP), but it also means that I do not have a hard copy of most of the music I've acquired in the last year. I have an external, but I don't trust putting everything on just that. Thus, I'm turning to a plan B. They were selling 1.99 CD jackets at Microcenter on Friday and it inspired me to back up my CDs on CDs. This is going to be a huge process I can see already. I've filled up the first of the CD jackets (they fit 40 each) and I'm halfway through B. Shows me how many Amazon CDs I've actually gone for. Though, to be fair, I didn't decided to go through them alphabetically until I was halfway through the book.

Anyway, this music sorting and the fact that I'm going to SoCal on Saturday (which = roadtrip), I've made a new mix. I'm quite proud of it, so I wanted to share it.

1. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
2. To Be Surprised - Sondre Lerche
3. To Be Wrong - Miggs
4. A Camp - Golden Teeth and Silver Medals
5. M. Ward - Never Had Nobody Like You
6. Mandy Moore - Pocket Philsopher
7. God Help the Girl - God Help the Girl
8. Herman Dune - When the Sun Rose Up This Morning
9. Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
10. St. Vincent - Paris is Burning
11. Andrew Bird - Natural Disaster
12. Coconut Records - The Summer
13. Miniature Tigers - Last Night's Fake Blood
14. Heartless Bastards - Be So Happy
15. Regina Spektor - On the Radio
16. Fleet Foxes - Mykonos
17. The Bird and the Bee - Love Letter to Japan
18. Sondre Lerche - (I Wanna) Call It Love
19. Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army
20. Jenny Lewis - Jack Killed Mom

I really like this one. Hopefully I don't get tired of it after a couple of spins. Should go to sleep soon. Had to wake up hella early to go to the dentist (no cavaties, yay!)

So now that Chris is gone, everyone's slowly been trickling back. Uncle Brian came here last night and spent the night (Chris was still here, he left this morning). I picked up Gianni and Oppa at the airport earlier and we had dinner at Chevy'.s. Everyone else comes back later tonight. Gianni will be picking them up. I have a 7:20 doctor's appointment. Considering this is when I usually wake up, I'm going to have to be in bed at 11 at the latest. Doesn't leave me with much to do today, does it?

The days Chris were here were fun. I made him "kogi tacos" for when he got here. They were a surprise. They actually didn't turn out too bad. I probably should have just used sesame oil for the dressing, though. I used some wasabi-sesame thing that was good, but also punched you in the face when you ate too quickly. The lesson learned here, of course, is not to eat quickly.

Wednesday, we walked from the Court of Appeals to the Hall of Justice for a brown bag lunch. Normally this would be fine. It's like a mile and a half to two miles. This happened to be the day I wore dressier shoes than usual, though. My feet usually cannot handle dress shoes, so this pretty much killed my feet. Pair that with a 3 mile walk with Chris and Bruce after work and I was pretty much hobbling around everywhere I went Thursday and Friday. Good times. We also went to Chevy's for dinner on Wednesday night. Good times. I love my Chevy's.

Thursday was oral arguments, which was a pretty intersting experience. I'm more excited about Thursday's arguments though. After work on Thursday, I met with Chris for Music in the Park. I went with a couple of the other interns from work. Third Eye Blind was the headliner. Because I used to like Semi Charmed Life or whatever it was called in grade school, I thought this would be a really fun experience and a trip down nostaglia lane. This was like the first time I didn't care that much about the band playing, so we were pretty far back and really didn't need to make the effort to get closer.

It's surprising how many people you end up seeing that you know at these things. Ran into some of Mia's friends and saw people I went to high school with and kids I've watched at day care at various times in my life.

Anyway, the first band was okay. I wasn't a fan when we first got there, but they got better as the show progressed. I kind of liked them towards the end. We waited a while between sets. In between, I entered to win Coldplay tickets and a bike. I don't think I've won either, which makes me sad. We also waited around while one thousand people pushed past us. They were being super obnoxious about it too. People at shows...

Also like everyone around us decided to smoke pot. Normally I would find this mildly irritating, but I was in my suit. As in I wear it to court. As in not a good idea to have it smell like drugs. We tried moving a couple times, but a new group around us would light up. Fun times. Fortunately, only my shirt came out smelling like that stuff. It is now waiting to be washed.

Eventually they started and man was it terrible. Singer could not carry a tune at all. They sounded like some bad local high school band. They screamed a lot too. It was terrible. We left about 30 minutes into the show. I gave them 5 songs to get better and they didn't. Fortunately, they pulled out one of their older songs before we left. After making it out of the mess that is Downtown San Jose during Music in the Park, we stopped by In N Out on the way home for dinner and watched Veronica Mars.

After work on Friday, we initially planned to go to San Francisco for some like ghost/seedy underbelly tour of San Francisco. I don't know it was on Fun and Cheap CD. After sitting through some of the traffic, we decided against it. We had Bruce with us anyway, so we just stopped by Chabba's place and walked Max. Stopped by Fry's and Double D's on the way back and then went home.

Saturday we woke up early and drove to Vallejo for the 3rd Annual Northern California Pirate Festival. It was pretty much as awesome as it sounds, but also terrifying at the same time.



We were supposed to go with Andrew, but he wasn't awake to answer the phone. We even stopped by his house, but no one answered the door, so we eventually just gave up and the three of us just went.

Once we got there, we ran into several other festivals/car shows/whatever before we eventually found the actual festival. Almost everyone there was dressed like a pirate. It made my own pirateness feel very inadequate.

We took some goofy pictures at the entrance before finding something to eat.





We had meat pies for lunch. They were not made by Mrs. Lovett. This is a good thing because I was not in the mood to try human. The place we stood in line for also had scones. The rum cake the booth over actually sounded better, but the line for the meat pies took forever and the other line was just as bad. The scone was super good anyway.



After eating around, we wandered around for a while. There were mostly shops ands games for kids and stuff. Surprisingly, no grog OR rum. This saddened me. They had this roulette-esque game. Instead of spinning a wheel, they let a mouse out and the mouse chose the number everyone bet on. I think they might have done this at the Renaissance Fair I went to way back when.



We found the pirate music stage and there was a little band of pirates singing folk songs. Unsurpringingly, they were significantly better than Third Eye Blind was. I'm not bitter or anything.





Right next to the stage was some axe throwing game. Chris and I were intrigued, so we decided to play. We each got 4 axes to throw. Chris actually hit the target more often than I did, but I was the only one to got it to stick to the target. And on the bullseye. I win.








After that, we waited around to watch a canon show. It seemed like it would be fun. The moment the canons went off, though, Bruce freaked out. He was actually enjoying himself for the most part because he got a lot of attention from pirates and he loves getting attention. This ruined the event for him. We left shortly after and he was happy once we got away from all the pirates. Poor dog. He'll probably have nightmares about pirates for the rest of his life because of that experience.

The drive back was a lot shorter than the drive there. For one, we didn't get stuck in traffic like we did before the toll bridge. We did stop by REI. Chris was getting annoyed that my water bottle leaked everywhere, so he got me a Klean Kanteen. When we were almost home around 4, Andrew called us and told us he just woke up. Not surprising. We invited him to dinner with us though.

We got home and ran back out. Chris wanted to return what he bought at Frys and I wanted Yogurtland. Good combination. Apparently the one near Mitty does not have my Taro yogurt, though. Also, some high school age girl who didn't work there was obnoxiously trying to teach us how to Yogurtland works because we were asking some guy for sample cups. Whatever. Like I don't understand Yogurtland.

We came back. Watched some Veronica Mars while we waited for Andrew. Andrew came and we played frisbee with Bruce. Waited for Uncle Brian who didn't get here until 9:30/10ish. After some deliberating we went to this Ethiopian place that Uncle Brian knew of. I'd always wanted to try Ethiopian food. I was an interesting experience. Uncle Brian ordered a lot of lamb though :-/ not a big fan of lamb.

That's about it for this weekend. Chris left this morning after breakfast. Uncle Brian left a couple of hours later. I chilled out with Bruce for the rest of the day. Back to work tomorrow.

Chris is finally here. This is good because it's pretty creepy being alone in a house that is hectic bustling 90% of the time. The last two days have been pretty good though. A lot of bonding with Bruce. He finally made it on a walk to Almaden Lake without sitting down halfway through and making me carry him. That was yesterday. Today i parked near the Almaden Library and walked to what I used to call the "Dream Park" when I was little. With the exception of the Bruce poo fiasco, it was a fun trip.

Other than that, it's been some reading (finished another book, but I'll post about it later) and watching shows on the computer.

Monday was fun because 1) I was late to work because the light rail decided to not work. It took them 35 minutes to tell us this and kick us off the train. Being that I had transferred trains by that time and that no other train had come by, there was nothing I could really do until then. When they finally did kick us off the train, I waited five minutes. When nothing showed up, the Almaden train came back, so I took the train back to my car and drove. After that roundabout trip, by the time I got to 87, the train I was supposed to be on had only made it to the next stop after the one we were stuck at. Despite all of that, I was actually only like 10 minutes late. And because we kind of hang out on our own most of the day, no one really noticed. So that was good.

The other fun part of Monday (which was spill over from Sunday) was the international battle to set up Cox Cable at Mia's place in Irvine. Fortunately, that one got resolved.

Today was another fun adventure. I actually left a little later than usual because we were spending the day at Family Court (super depressing, btw. do not want to go into Family Law for sure now, unless I'm dealing with like Britney's next divorce or something). We weren't supposed to be there until 10. I actually was GOING to get in a little early and do a little work before heading over or something, but things went awry there as well. So, I've been leaving Bruce in teh bathroom with the doggy door the last few days because I want him to be able to go to the bathroom outside while he was alone all day (separate story for that). Because I'm afraid he might somehow get through the two blockades that would allow him to travel beyond his little area, I closed the gate yesterday. I forgot to do it again this morning, so I turned around, got halfway into the drive way and parked the car. Got back into the car and it wouldnt start. Umma had been warning me that the Jeep does this every once in a while, but it hadn't yet. I put it in neutral like she said and it wouldn't work. I tried that several times and the same. This was an awkard probleem because I was blocking the driveway at this point. There was no way I was going to actually be able to take another car, unless I Could singlehandedly push the car down the driveway.

Eventually, I called Chris to ask him what I should do. Then, the car suddenly started working agian. At this point, I was convinced that I was not going to make it to the lightrail station in time for the train I wanted, so I stressed and went straight downtown in the car. Turns out I made it with a lot of time to spare. This made me happy, so I decided to park and go into the court for a whlie and then head over to family court. I got to experience one of the main reasons that I take the lightrail into downtown San Jose in the first place (after using less gas, of course): parking is terrible downtown. By the time I found a suitable parking lot, I was almost running.

It's back to the lightrail tomorrow. The one good thing about being forced to drive the last few days is that I was able to get back to Bruce quicker. This shouldn't be as much of a problem from here on out because Chris is here to take care of Brucey during the day.

So yeah. That's about it. More typos than usual because I wanted to crank something out before I went to bed.

Also, this is the Cancun Blog: http://whereareyoubrucie.blogspot.com/

Everyone's officially ditched me and Bruce for Cancun. This means that if I wanted to I could be a stereotype and throw an epic party. That would require having a lot of people to invite and while I do have friends, they are all scattered around the state and/or world. Also, that means I'd have to clean up a mess. Also that just doesn't sound fun in general.

I could also set up a bunch of contraptions a la Home Alone just in case someone tries to burgle the house. That also takes effort and creativity.

Instead, Bruce and I will chill out as we are right now. Maybe he'll actually walk to the park tomorrow and not ask to be carried halfway. And Chris comes here on Tuesday. We've got some fun things planned. There's apparently some big pirate festival in Vallejo next weekend.

The externship has been fun. I can't believe I'm about 1/4 of the way through. I have a feeling this summer's going to go by super fast.

The waking up part hasn't been as fun, I guess. Oh well. I'm going to have to do this 9-5 thing some day, right? Can't be a student forever.

Grades all came out. I did surprisingly well this semester. If you had asked me what i thought my 1L grades would be, I certainly would not have guessed that. My property grade was the most surprising. I was 95% sure I got a C or worse in that class. Anyway, I feel like I'm going to get an email one of these days reading "just kidding. here are your actual grades." We find out rankings next week. That should be interesting.

I never really wrote about the weeks between finals and externship. They consisted of a couple of trips to SoCal, meeting Mandy Moore and Ryan from the Office (aka BJ Novak), having kogi tacos, watching all three seasons of Veronica Mars (very upset with the way it ended), Mr. Pizza (after an unsuccsesful trip to get kogi tacos for a second time), and a lot of relaxing/not doing law school stuff. In a nutshell.

Also finished a couple of books:

#22 - Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars



View all my reviews.

Fascinating Read. I'm not sure when we're actually getting together for that book club meeting, but it was a fascinating read. Definitely a recommended book. Learned a lot about food.

Book #23 Sandman - Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman

The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



View all my reviews.


Been super curious about this series for quite some time. I wasn't sure wihch one to get first, so I chose this one because it had a pretty cover. Quite a trip. I <3 Neil Gaiman.

I went into hibernation mode since finals finished apparently. I'll post later to update with all of the fun stuff I did. I started the externship on Monday. It's been pretty fun. I finished my first project today. I also ate lunch in a jury box. I bet you're jealous.

Anyway, the reason I'm here to post is mostly to say how absolutely excited I am that not one, but two Monkey Island games are being released this summer. I've heard the rumors of the SMI remake floating around, but hadn't heard about the other one. Apparently they've been showing it all off at G3. They've redone the animation for Secret of Monkey Island. I guess they want to introduce it to a new generation of gamers. I'm kind of torn about this. I feel a special level of nerd seniority being able to Insult Swordfight against people who have no idea that obviously the response to "You fight like a dairy farmer" is "How appropriate, you fight like a cow." On the other hand, more people need to enjoy the awesome that is Monkey Island.

Also means that there is money to spend this summer on games.

Speaking on my very mature law student behavior, I finished bok #21. I've kind of fallen off the wagon on this reading thing. I think it's because of all the traveling back and forth across California and the lack of a steady gym schedule.

Book #21

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars



View all my reviews.

It was super good. I've been on a graphic novel thing ever since reading Watchmen. And on an Alan Moore kick because he's kind of awesome. I really enjoyed V for Vendetta. It was pretty different from the movie (which I really want to watch again now), but I don't think it was different in a bad way. I don't know. Because I liked both of those so much, I may have to give League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell another chance.

But maybe not yet. I read Omnivore's Dilemma next. A bunch of us are starting a book club and that's our first book. I was actually holding off on reading that one for the book club.

That's it. Will post a longer thing later.