The Narrative of Kurt & Becky

Today I did some stuff. Spectacular.

After work, I got home and Becky and I had forgotten to take out our Dream Dinner out of the freezer. We didn’t want to sit around and wait for it to thaw, so we went out. There was this place that I had seen on my way home that I wanted to try, so I suggested it, and we went.

Becky and I piled into the car and we were off to Le Petit Paris (that roughly translates as ‘The Petit Paris’). First of all, we parked (good place to start) and couldn’t find the entrance. We walked around the entire building and found that we had parked on the complete opposite side of the building. As we walk up we notice a young gentleman of about 27 years wearing a suit and talking on a mobile phone while he was lounging on a bench directly outside the main entrance. As he noticed us, he quickly ended his call and said, “bonsoir!” which sounded more like “bonswah!” and means more like, “good evening!”

So, we’re thinking: ooo, Frenchy! Then he babbled something that I didn’t catch and was not entirely sure it was in English (later Becky informed me that he told us that he was on the phone with another Frenchman, and they all get together on Tursdays), and showed us to our table. The decor was tasteful, the seat was comfortable, and the company was impeccable (I don’t think they provide Becky’s for everyone though). One thing we did notice, was that we were not handed any menus.

This one actually does continue…
(more…)

This morning I woke up. Good way to start the day. After I woke up, I drove to work. I was running a bit early, and I was a bit hungry, so I stopped and picket up some breakfast: two croissan’wiches. Healthy, I know.

Worked, went to lunch at Knowlwood, got the fish and chips. Now, I’ve been happy when I’ve gotten the ‘Frisco burger, and the pastrami reuben is pretty dang good. Fish and chips? Nasty.

Went back to work, worked.

Commute.

Came home, took a twenty minute power nap, then headed off to church. Wednesday is our high school group, and Becky and I are leaders. For the past few weeks Becky has been unable to attend due to summer school, so I’ve been going alone. All alone. No one but me… …and the kids… …and the other leaders… … and the band.

Whilst at High School group, a couple of the boys that I’ve gotten to know pretty well told me about this new online video game. It’s called Gunz, and it’s kinda like a FPS, but it’s third-person, and it’s kinda got some RPG elements into it as well. Best of all, it’s free.

So I downloaded it, and it seems pretty fun. I already got my character to level 2. If you wanna play, just let me know. My character’s name is DarthWilber.

On Saturday, Becky and I had our appointment for cake tasting. That was fun! We got to sit in a nice room with lots neat looking cakes, we were served free water and free cake. For those of you keeping up, you know what 4 cakes we tried (for those of you not keeping up) and we did make a decision based on those wonderful tastes. I liked the white cake with raspberry, Becky liked the chocolate cake with mint, but we compromised on the lemon cake with vanilla. Then the consultant came back in the room and informed us that we could get different flavors for each tier if we wanted. So we did. We got a luscious 4 layer cake with a sheet cake on the side. The bottom 2 layers are chocolate with mint, the top 2 are white with raspberry, and the sheet cake is lemon with vanilla!

Sunday and today…
(more…)

I felt much better today (for those of you not keeping up, I was sick yesterday), so I headed to work. Worked in the morning, went to lunch, worked in the afternoon.

This afternoon, I took a break from working to polish up my screenplay. I’ve been working on a short film that’s based on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. It’s a fantasy series that I think is pretty neato. Well, right now, I’ve got this short narrative that I wrote and sent to my co-writer and will, based on his input, then adapt it into a full-fledged script. I want to make sure that it’ll make sense to audiences that are not familiar with the series, while having deeper meaning for those who are. If you want to read it, be my guest. Any comments you have about it would be appreciated.

After work, I came home…
(more…)

I stayed home from work today. Sick.

I’ve always said that being sick wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t feel so horrible. And horrible I did feel. I woke up at about 3 with a bad abdominal ache. I thought I had to throw up but I had the wrong end. I came back from the bathroom feeling pretty drained and tried to go back to bed. I was met with limited success and awoke with my alarm at 6:15. I immediately rushed to the bathroom for another encounter. I thought I’d feel better after I took a shower, but no success. I called in to work and let ‘em know I’d not be coming in.

I went back to bed. I awoke again felling slightly better at about 11, so I went over to Becky’s house and crashed on the couch over there. Shortly, Becky came home after her class and gave me the sick-attention that all men need. I had chicken noodle soup and she even made me grilled cheese with her bare hands (well I think she used a pan and stove and bread and cheese, but I can’t be sure).

After some good rest and some medicine, I felt good enough to go out. We went to the Spectrum to people-watch and catch a flick. The question of what movie to see was not a difficult one. Especially because It was playing in IMAX. That’s right: Batman Begins in IMAX.

Holy crap. That is one awesome movie. This is the way Batman should be. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re really missing out.

After the movie, we came home and now I’m bloggin’. I feel a lot better, but I don’t think I’ll be entering the Triathlon today.

Woke up again on time today, so that’s fun. In fact, I woke up a bit too early. You see, as I mentioned yesterday, I often overcompensate with my alarm times. e.g. I set my alarm for 6:15 knowing I’ll actually get up at 6:45. I actually got up at 6:15 today and was out the door at 6:50. With my extra time I thought to myself I have some extra time to get a Jamba Juice. So I did. Caribbean Passion. Good stuff.

Got to work, worked.

Called the cake place to confirm Becky and my appointment for Saturday. We’re moving along with the wedding plans and now we get to eat free cake! Yeah, you can just call up cake places, tell ‘em what you want to try, and you get free cake! They didn’t ask me if I was getting married! Turns out, I am. So when I called I had to choose four cakes to try. Here’s what I chose:

1. Rich chocolate cake with mint chocolate chip filling and white chocolate truffle icing
2. Lemon cake with vanilla filling and classic butter cream icing
3. Carrot cake with cream cheese filling and icing
4. Wedding white cake with raspberry filling and marzipan icing

So that sounds good huh?

more…
(more…)

Today began with me actually waking up on time. Well, more on time than of late. Lately, I’ve been setting my alarm for 6:00, and actually getting up more around 7:15. Today I set my alarm for 6:15, woke up, looked at the time, and then set my alarm for 6:45. Got out of bed at 6:44, showered, dressed, performed my daily hygiene rituals, and was out of the door by 7:15. That’s important because leaving by 7:15 means I get to work before 8. Leaving at 7:30 means I get to work around 8:30. Yay California!

So, at work on time, did some stuff at work, mostly… work. I did do some non-work things like, update my webpage! Yay! Check out my new homepage with redesigned title and sidebars. That motif is now continuous across my wedding and about me pages now. Also, I added some more photos as well.

On my commute home I got a page from work notifying me that our backup ISP circuit went down. So that’s not good, but I can look at it when I get home. About 27 seconds later, I get another page informing me that our main ISP circuit went down. So… okay… wha’ happened? I’m thinking I can check into it when I’m not cruising along at the rate of 440 feet per minute (bonus points to the first one who can tell me what my speedometer was reading at that time). About a minute later I get another notification (at this time I am thinking that this proves the whole place literally falls apart without me), but this one saying the main circuits are back up, and 27 seconds later a final notification that our backups are up. So, I don’t know what was going on, but it’s something I get to look into tomorrow.

But Kurt, what did you do then… ?
(more…)

Today is Monday. Monday Monday Monday Monday.

Today at work I discovered some old barcode reader that we were going to use for the parking lot gate. Well it didn’t work out, but we still had these old scanners lying around. These things are just the barcode reader (the swipe wedge types) with a cable coming off of it. Well, I thought I could find the pinouts or some documentation online and hook it up and get it working. Well, all I could find is this pdf. So I stripped all the wires, hooked up a 9V battery up to the power, and the led came on! Yay! It blinked green for a little while then went solid red. Okay, whatever that means, so I proceeded to splice these wires to a serial cable and hooked it up to my computer. I hook up power again, open up hyperterminal, and swipe a card. Nothing happens. Or rather only the led blinks green then goes solid red again. So I am splicing and grounding and deducing and engineering, really not knowing what I’m doing, and I finally get the barcode reader to do something when I attach the battery. I get it to blink green a couple of times then go solid red.

More ahead…
(more…)

First things first. My gallery is up! Not much in there right now, but I’ll periodically put links from here to there so you can get a visual of my life as well as the verbal rant.

Work today, then commute.

On my commute home I did experience something unusual. So I’m driving down Baker past Harbor and I notice there’s this Toyota Tacoma in front of me with something hanging out of the driver’s side window. I get curious and accelerate a bit to check it out. When I get up along side this guy, I can see that it’s his boot, with his foot in it and his leg attached to his foot. Now the leg attached to the foot thing isn’t that unusual, but the leg and foot out of the window as you drive down the street struck me as a bit bizarre.

After I got to Becky’s house, we decided to go out to eat. So Becky’s driving and wants to surprise me on a location for some shopping and dining fun. We’re well into Westminster along Beach and she turns to me and asks if we had passed the 405 yet (for all you non-natives, Westminster is pretty much just North of 405). I respond in the affirmative, so she decides that she’ll get on the 22. I still am in the dark as to our final destination, but I’m thinking maybe the Block.

Well, about the moment we get on the freeway the gas light on Becky’s car lights up. So we decided to get off the freeway and fill ‘er up. So we get off at Brookhurst and head South just in time to see the sign welcoming us to Little Saigon.

But yet, our adventure continues…
(more…)

So, today is Thursday. Thursday means Natalie, our help desk coordinator(slash office manager slash all-around great girl), is in the office. She works from home on Mondays through Wednesdays, but she comes in on Thursday, and today is Thursday.

Also today, Thursday, we had a departmental lunch with Mike Stanley, our account rep (or sales manager, or account sales, or whatever) for pbm. All these guys are great. When we re-did our network a few years ago, we got to work with a whole slew of the guys from pbm, and they’re all really smart and fun-to-be-with guys. Anyways, he came down and took us all to lunch, so we went to Taps in Brea.

Wow, this place is nice. First off, the ambience is that of a really nice establishment. Nice white tablecloths, wine glasses, napkins folded interestingly… Well, so it’s billed as a fish place, so everyone got fish (sans Kevin, who enjoyed a roast beef sandwich). We had 2 orders of salmon, some Ahi, some crab, and I forget what Mike Stanley got. I got the crab. It was this open-faced crab melt. Lots of crab meat blended with spices and mayonnaise tuna-salad-like, with melted cheese and some tasty sauce drizzled on top. Splendid!
(more…)