Well, I think that writing these posts will be good, not only as an exercise to keep my literary muscles toned, but also for posterity.

So here goes:

A few weeks ago, I went to my primary care physician. We have an HMO, so we need to start there to get every thing else. I hadn’t been to any sort of doctor for a year, so I got all set up with all my appointments. so far I’ve been to the dentist twice and the optometrist. I still need to go to the dermatologist. It’s part of my initiative (like blogging again) to get my life in order. TCB, if you will.

Today is my mandatory day off (our company instituted mandatory hour reductions. We have to take two Friday’s off a month. I’m off 2nd and 4th,) and my wife and son are catching up on some sleep they missed out on last night.

Last week was the twenty-eighth anniversary of the day of my birth. To celebrate, My wife and I purchased Disneyland Passports again. They now offer the option for Southern California Residents to pay for the Passport in installments with no interest and no fees, so that’s awesome. Since we now have the ability, we plan on going to Disneyland sometime either today or tommorrow. give us a call, maybe we could hang out at Disneyland this weekend!

In most situations, you can guess the hour, and the last digit of the minute is often inconsequential. This leads me to another conclusion. We could save some money on clocks by producing new ones with only one digit: What time is it? 3.

Oh, and this will also work across time zones… neato.

So here we are next up to be checked out. There are three people behind us, and we have no way of paying for these groceries.

Becky, thinking quickly, tells me to go and find Christie. I turn to the cashier and tell her she might want to stop ringing us up, I need to go find my wallet. She tells us that she can ring the whole thing up and suspend the transaction. I take off in an attempt to find Christie. I search half the store, unable to find her. I come back to Becky, thinking maybe I could run home quickly. Becky tells me she thinks she saw her in one of the other isles waiting to check out. I dash over to where she was last spotted, and sure enough find her. I ask if we could possibly impose upon her, and explain what we have done. Christie kindly agrees to have mercy on us and pays for our groceries.

It was really embarrassing. While I was searching for Christie, Becky had nothing to do but stand there while the cashier and customers behind us slowly lost patience. We drove our groceries home, and immediately drove out to the bank, wallet in hand, and got the money to drive over to her house and pay her back.

Thank God for helpful sisters-in-law.

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my mother and father in Las Vegas. Once we decided that we were going to travel for the holiday, we had to decide exactly how and when. In the past we’ve either driven our own car the over 300 miles, or rented a car for the long trip. This time, we decided to fly. Out flight was scheduled to leave Orange County at 18:10, but the flight was delayed more than an hour, so we didn’t arrive until 20:30. My father greeted us and we drove to my mother and father’s house where we were able to stay in the guest room for the duration of our stay.

Thursday morning, we woke up fairly early and wandered into the living room. I made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast while we talked about the logistics of the day. We then got dressed and ready and went to place flowers on my grandmother’s grave.

We walked through the veteran’s cemetery and saw the engraved paving stone that my mother’s family had purchased in memory of my grandmother. We then drove to the nursing home where my grandmother spent her last days and brought them cookies.
At that point, we had to go back to the house to finish up cooking the side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner. My father and I busied ourselves making bruschetta and green bean casserole. This Thanksgiving, we had planned to dine at my sister’s house which is about 15 minutes away. My sister has limited seating and dining space, so we were charges with bringing an extra table and chairs. To accommodate transport of all these items, my parents had arranged the borrowing of a friends truck. My mother and Becky went to go pick it up and my father and I finished the food. When we were ready to pack up and go, we opened the garage door to find it raining, so we has to come up with a quick solution to prevent the wooden table and chairs from being ruined in transport. A tarp.
We arrived at my sister’s house without incident and greeted my sister, her husband, my father’s mother, my father’s sister, my father’s sister’s roommate, and my sister’s three dogs. It had stopped raining by that time, so we were able to get all of our food an equipment in the house without fuss.
My sister had recently acquired a new pug puppy, and while I was carrying the table into the house I nearly stepped on it. I’m not used to dogs that you can step on.
After visiting for a bit, we were all seated and my sister presented the main course: Turducken. We enjoyed the meal and sat down to relax and partake of some of my sister’s Playstation 3. We took turns singin solos and duets in Singstar, and after a while I played the demo of Mirror’s Edge. Eventually, it was time to pack up and go home, so we did. That night, Becky, my father, my mother and I attempted to play a new card game: Golf. We didn’t know all the rules, but we still had fun.

Friday morning, upon awakening, we were greeted by a homemade breakfast skillet made by my father. After our semi-normal morning hygiene ritual, we saddled-up and prepared ourselves to brave the busiest shopping day of the year. Our first stop: the Sportsman’s Warehouse [link]. Surprisingly, we soon found we had no cause for our bravery: the store wasn’t that busy. We browsed among the kayaks, tents, and weaponry, eventually finding my father handling sidearms at the gun counter. My parents have apparently been researching the possibility of exercising their second amendment rights, and this trip furthered their research.
For lunch, we went to a local pub and was again surprised at smelling smoke indoors (California indoor smoking laws have spoiled us!) After lunch, we encountered part two of my parent’s research into gun ownership: a visit to the indoor gun range. We met my parent’s friends at the range, they own a number of guns and they let us shoot them. After our spree, we went home to relax and prepare for dinner. My father prepared homemade baked ziti and meatballs and while it was baking, I instructed him in the finer points of playing World of Warcraft. After dinner we inaugurated in the holiday season by watching Elf. It’s official now. After (for some people, during) the movie we went to sleep.
In the morning, we woke up, showered, dressed and went to the airport. We then boarded an (on-time) flight home. When we were seated, Becky took out her phone to turn it off and noticed a voicemail. She quickly checked it and discovered that her mother, our ride, never received our itinerary and had no idea when we’d be at the airport. Becky stealthy and hastily text messaged the carrier and flight number before the hostess called for the cessation of electronic communication. Once we landed, we hoped she had gotten the message. Out bags took an inordinate amount of time to come out the carousel, but once they did we were able to walk to the curb to our waiting ride!

Overall, it was a success. We did Thanksgiving.

Oh, we need a hands-free device now? well, how about I just don’t press it against my ear, that’ll be fine.

It’s a hands-free law, not a face-free law.

In personal news, I’m taking tomorrow and possibly the next day off work. I’m getting my wisdom teeth removed while under the effects of general anesthesia. Fun, huh? We’ve stocked up on pudding, jello and juice for my eating comfort. I’ve never been unconscious before, but then again I’ve never had my wisdom teeth removed, so here’s to new experiences.

For now, I need to sleep, but I didn’t want to leave you all hanging any longer, so enjoy these Flickr photos from the trip.

Full write-up to come later.

Before that, I went to work as normal on Thursday (22 May) morning. At about 07:45, the power went off. It came back on less then a minute later, so I went up to the server room to make sure the servers weren’t broken. They weren’t. I went on with my normal day, or so I thought…

You like that? Cliffhanger to get you to continue reading! (I’m sure we’ve got a lot of readers that need incentives) So at about 08:30 the power went off again, but it didn’t come back on within one minute. Lae and I went upstairs and after fifteen minutes or so without power we started turning off some non-essential servers. After another fifteen minutes without power the room was getting pretty hot, so we turned off all the servers and went back to our desks.

Almost an hour had passed with no power when the emergency loudspeaker system came on and told us that a transformer had failed and the power company estimates it will be back up by 20:00 that night. Upon hearing that announcement, we all went home understanding that someone will need to came back once the power comes up and power the servers back on. We decided that if it comes back on before 20:00 Tony (my boss) and I would both come in, if it comes on after that Tony would come in alone.

I went home, hung out a bit, then picked Becky up for lunch. We went to Panera to eat. We had a good lunch, I dropped Becky back at work and went home. I started to feel a little uncomfortable a couple of hours later, but I attributed it to gaseous build-up in my stomach. The problem didn’t go away by the time Becky got home, and it began to feel more and more uncomfortable until I vomited that evening. I call my boss to let him know I wouldn’t be at work the next day, vomited again, and went to bed.

I barely slept (poor me) and my caring wife woke up early to make a trip to the grocery store to get me sick-friendly supplies before work. I vomited when I attempted to get out of bed when I heard her leave. She came back bearing medicine, lemon-lime soda, bread, bananas, applesauce and chicken soup.

I arrayed myself on the couch (well, love seat to be honest) for the rest of the day alternating sleeping and watching Bones: season 2 on DVD.

By the time Becky came home I had kept all my food down, but I still didn’t feel 100%. We hung out at home that night and I slept much better and we were able to sleep in on Saturday morning.

I was scheduled to direct video at church that weekend, and I felt much better by the time I was scheduled to report for duty, so that part of the weekend went by without incident.

Sunday (25 May), John, Becky and I were in the mood for adventure when lunch time came, so we wednt driving around and ended up in Long Beach at Acapulco. Becky wisely ordered the brunch buffet. The rest of us were not so wise. As I often do, I attempted to broaden my horizons and I ordered the featured special: this gigantic chicken taquito thing. Sharon and John followed suit and repeated my order. The first thing we noticed when the dishes came was that they were huge. And by huge I mean massive, extremely large, gargantuan. A normal taquito is about 6 inches in length, and about a half inch in diameter. These things were about 18 inches in length, and at least a inch in diameter. Oh, and there were six of them on each plate. Huge. We all also seemed to notice that they were pungent, and not necessarily in a good way. They were not good. The chicken seemed to be extremely low-quality, the filling was literally soaked in grease (so much so that it spilled on our plates and overflowed onto the table. Needless to say, none of us could even finish half. Looking back, I’m still surprised I didn’t unload the contents of my stomach at the table. We are not interested in taking the rest to go, thank you.

The previous night we had all corroborated on a list. This list was to contain activities that we want to do. Most were in southern California and the vast majority could be accomplished in a few hours, but it was a bunch of activities that we’ve always wanted to do, or maybe just some things we just came up with. Monday, 26 May, Memorial day. We all decided to check off a few adventures that list. First on the docket: Visit the Ronald Regan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. So we did. We drove the hour and a half or so and spent approximately three hours seeing landmarks from the Reagan presidency, including a collection on Nancy’s dresses, a large piece of the Berlin wall, the actual Air Force One he used, and a full-size reconstruction of the Reagan Oval Office. We ended the visit at his grave which overlooks the beautiful hills surrounding the valley.

On the way back to Orange County, we drove through the UCLA campus, and down Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, past Rodeo Drive (which evidently is not pronounced as it should be) and we even saw the Ivy. All were on our list.

We all came back to our place and watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After the movie we all mourned the departure of the weekend, but at the same time, the holiday we just enjoyed means a shorter work week.

Except for John, he doesn’t care.

Because he finished finals last week! Yay John! Only 2 years to go (…3?)

My car before:	First thing I saw:	Missing something:

Now I’ve reverted back to the factory radio. Anyone want to buy a slightly-broken-into Honda Civic? I’m gunna buy a MINI. And we’re going to move. to safetown, ID (for those of you not familiar with safetown, there are no spiders, lizards, hooligans or shouting neighbors. It’s entirely shenanigan-free.)

Last week we received our first two movie-films: Becoming Jane and La Vie en Rose. We attempted to stagger our returns, so we wouldn’t be forced to wait for our next two movies, but so far we’ve failed. We’ll see how we do with the next batch. We currently have Eastern Promises and This is England.

Right before the fireworks spectacular, we left. The next day, we returned to the resort, but started at Disney’s California Adventure. We had a good time, and we successfully convinced my parents to purchase annual passports so we can go whenever they come visit us.