I was supposed to do some more serious research on firms tonight, but I watched Inter lose to Chelsea tonight instead. TV's not working in this room and this happened to be one of the few nights that I decided to leave my laptop in the office, soooo I couldn't get anything done really while I was streaming the game.

Instead, I'm going to blog. Meant to talk about the weekend my cousins were here. Tyler and Becca got here on Friday. We took them to get yogurt and Pizza My Heart (they have pretty cool new shirts there by the way).

I spent Saturday morning at the Immigration Clinic in Japantown. Good time to be there, too, apparently. They were holding the Odom Festival there. We had lunch there. A lot of good food. We went straight from Japantown to Great America. The last time I was at Great America, this so-called "Flight Deck" was still called Top Gun. You might remember this time. We didn't ride it anyway. Not because of the long lines, but because we had our little cousins with us. Speaking of which, it was not crowded there at all, which is something I did not expect to see on a Saturday during the summer. Dumb economy. Kind of. We actually got quite a few rides in even with our long stop in the games section where everyone spent way more than the $3 I said they could spend on games. Good times. My favorite part of Great America is the little boat racing thing in the children's section. I was delighted to find that it was still there. There's also this new-ish Survivor-themed ride that looked interesting. Probably would have gone on it if we weren't with little kids. Next time maybe. If there is a next time. Disneyland >>>>> Great America any day.

Sunday, we went up to Rohnert Park to help Uncle Brian look for a new place. It was a slightly productive day. We took Bruce with us. There was a lot of traffic on the way back. Stopped by Chabba's house and looked at his India pictures. Then we went to the movies. Umma to the Proposal; Halmony, Tyler and Becca to Transformers 2, and James, and I went to Public Enemies. I really liked the movie. You can't go wrong with a movie starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cottliard. If you do, you should be given some sort of award for failing at life.

On Monday, it was back to work. I don't remember much of what we did that day, but I do know that we were sad to find out that the San Quentin tour we were supposed to go on was canceled due to a swine flu break out. Lame. After work, we went on a quick walk and then took Grandpa out to dinner for his birthday.

Tuesday was the first of the three days went spent at court in Palo Alto watching a trial. We watched jury selection, which is a pretty fascinating process to watch. After work I raced through traffic to get back home, sat down for like ten minutes, and then turned around to take James and the cousins out to Santana Row's Bastille Day circus. It was kind of a cute celebration put on by Left Bank.

It was actually a lot more fun and well done than I might have thought it was going to be. There was dancing, and body contortions and beat box juggling (which is pretty much as awesome as it sounds). They pretty much used like 3 French songs and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack though. I don't know how legit that is, but I like the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, so it shouldn't matter.





Oh and there was a guy spinning a cube around with his body. That was kind of amazing.

(this scene does not translate well as a photo, but I have to give you something to visualize the sheer awesomeness of the moment)

After the performance, we got more Pizza My Heart and yogurt, and then went home. They left the next morning. It was a fun, but busy weekend, for sure. I would post about this past weekend, but my eyes are about to fall out of my brain, so I should probably going to sleep.

The last few weekends were jam packed, making the weekends seem extremely short. I'm sure next weekend will be the same as I am flying down to SoCal for Kristina's birthday. I'm trying to figure out how this OCI thing works. Mainly, whether I can hold off on sending in my bids until after I found out whether I got onto a journal or if that's going to severely hurt my chances. If I have to turn in that stuff as soon as possible, the next few days are going to have to be severe crunch time as I have not even researched all of the firms that interested me. Nor have I narrowed everything down to the 35 bids. Nor have I written a gazillion cover letters. I haven't even fixed up my resume. Got a lot of work to do.

If it makes anyone feel better, I did forego any Monkey Island this weekend to put whatever computer time I had towards OCI research.

I should do some right now but being in the sun all day for pool cleaning, swimming and soccer game has wiped me out and I'm going to bed in a little bit.

So I liked this Harry potter movie except they seemed to have sucked out essentially all of the half blood prince storyline

I meant to post something longer on the trip to Disneyland. We went for Chris's birthday and it was surprisingly not as crowded as you would have expected for a summer day in Disneyland. That's all right though. Definitely not complaining about that. We got most of the rides done, including two attempts to get the flower from Alice on the Alice in Wonderland ride. Not successful. Apparently that one doesn't come out. Good to know.

(look at that pure angst on my little brother's face)

(this may or may not be the most romantic Disneyland picture you'll ever see)

Anyway, because we got through most of the rides by four or five, we left relatively early. We grabbed carne asada fries from Alertos on the way back and also got stuff to bake Chris a cake. Mia and I did a lot of the work on it and I think we should give up and of our past career goals and open a bakery.





Actually, despite the unappealing exterior, it was very good and Chris enjoyed it.



I was going to combine this with other stuff, but I've got pictures to sort through and probably should do some OCI research tonight.

Oh, also, if you didn't know. Today everyone got to experience 12:34:56 on 7/8/9 whether they realized it or not. I was going to Tweet as close as possible to that moment as I could get, but I was at a brown bag lunch at Superior Court.

I am not playing Monkey Island like I said I was going to. I decided that I should finally watch and return my Netflix movies, so I put in Frost/Nixon. It's not really the type of movie to play Monkey Island to, so I've been doing other Internet-related things. One of which will be blogging.

This movie is actually very interesting by the way. I spent the first forty minutes confused because I wasn't really sure what was going on, but it's pretty intense now that I'm into it.

In other exciting news, Sondre Lerche also announced his tour dates. So, so excited. I missed him the last time he came to SF because it was during orientation. I have to go this time.

Until then, I am going to do a short thing on the Tallest Man on Earth/John Vanderslice show I went to a week ago. Because it was over a week ago, I don't remember a lot of details, but I still wanted to post pictures. All in all, it was a good show to go to because the last one I went to was that terrible Third Eye Blind show. Ew.

I was also excited about the show because after being back in the Bay Area for a year, I kind of missed the Troubadour and the Hollywood shows. Unfortunately, we did not follow this one with the usual trip to Pinks, but we had Kogi Tacos a couple of days before so I thinnk that fills my quota of unhealthy LA hipster food.

Mia and I drove out to LA to Churro's house. We met her there and she drove us out to the Troubadour. She had to get cash along the way and I have no idea where banks are in LA.

Anyway, we got there pretty late and pretty close to the start of the show. It was surprisingly empty. Probably the emptiest that I had seen it in a while. It filled up by the time that the Tallest Man on Earth started and it was definitely pretty crowded by the time John Vanderslice was up, but it was still not as crowded as the other shows I've been to there.

Tallest Man on Earth's set was pretty great. I was more familiar with his music this time around, which was good. Still maybe not familiar enough to make the fact that I was pretty front and center not awkward, but it'd have to do. I think one of the most entertaining moments of the show was definitely watching him stare down some girls who were talking very loudly during the performance. Owned. There was also some pretty obnoxious drunk guy in the audience. According to Mia, he was very upset that Kristian Matsson was not literally the tallest man on earth. He was also comparing his music to Glen Hansard, which really didn't make much sense to me.





I also neglected to mention that during this set, the Troubadour was unbearably hot. I was dying. There was a breeze as soon as the set was over too. I don't know. I thought I was going to pass out. Not really though. That would have been a problem.

The set up between that set and John Vanderslice's set was not that long beacuse most of the instruments were already up. I did forget how shallow people in LA can be. As they were setting up, some pair of hipsters next to me were very distressed that he looked old, so they left. Their loss. The last time I saw John Vanderslice at the Rickshaw Stop was kind of weird. I mostly went to see the Morning Benders and actually did not know much of his music apart from the little snippet I heard on MySpace. He put on an incredibly good show that time (hence the reason I went to LA to see him again). It was, however, a lot more enjoyable watching the show knowing at least some of his music and not having the question of whether "Pleasant Inc" infringed on "Rick Broadway's" trademark (for the law journal writing competition, if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Where was I? I don't know. He, once again, put on a very fun set. They are amazing to watch live and put on a very fun show. When I saw him about a month ago, I believe he was kickstarting his tour. When I saw him last week, he was doing one of the last shows on the tour. It was kind of cool that we were book ending this. I eventually need to get more or his music, though. I totally recommend seeing him live if you get the chance though. It's a lot of fun.





For the last song, the entire band came out and played in the audience. It was kind of a party. The only thing that would have made it more awesome would have been if he (or anyone else) started break dancing as soon as it was over. Unfortunately my iPhone (forgot real camera) could not take good pictures of it.



Anyway, so after the show was over Mia pointed to some guy and asked if he was Heroes. I didn't believe her at first because she has a tendency to think random people are celebrities and then shout their name (like when she saw "Alan Cumming" in Italy). Then I looked over and, yeah, the person she was pointing to looked a lot like Nicholas D'Agosto, who played Claire's flying boyfriend in the second season of Heroes. Not many people remember hiim because, like Claire's gay friend from season one, he inexplicably disappared by the start of the next season. I'm sure the guy who can breathe underwater will face the same fate. Apparently Claire is going to have a lesbian romance next season. Perhaps she will have more staying power than the guys.

Where was I? Oh yeah, he's also been on the Office (Jan's assistant) and in a couple of movies (Election, Rocket Science). I actually saw both Election and Rocket Science in the same week when I got them Netflix. I didn't know he was in both films, so that was kind of weird.

Anyay, the three of us stood around creepily for the next ten minutes or so as the Troubadour completely emptied out trying to decide whether we should approach him and take a picture with him. Seriously, I'm sure he and his friends thought we were creeps because it totally outdid whatever creepy we did to BJ Novak (speaking of which, I finally have the picture from that). This is okay though. We eventually found a good time to cut in and ask if he was on Heroes. He said yes and we got pictures with him. When the first picture didn't come out, he moved us over to the restaurant where the lighting was much better. He was super nice. I also told him that I liked him in Rocket Science, so we could mention something in his resume more legit than season 2 of heroes. He was probably my favorite part of that movie, too.





Anyway, after spending all of that time with that stuff, we were too pooped to stop by the merch table, so we headed off. Churro also had to wake up at some ungodly hour to surf the next morning. Drove to Churro's house, got into our car and headed back.

Because we didn't get our late night unhealthy food fix in LA, Mia and I stopped by Fountain Valley on the way back to get carne asada fries at Alerto's, which Mia assured me is pretty much open all the time. Except at like 12:30 on that Monday night. This was extremely upsetting and we were pretty hungry. We decided to stop by Del Taco instead and had probably one of the weirdest Del Taco experiences ever. This included a discussion about whether we liked Del Taco or Taco Bell better. Good times. That's it for now. I want to get some MI in.

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



View all my reviews.


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.