Pictures from Malibu

So here are some pictures from the State Park beach up in Malibu we visited on the first day I got into town.

This is a view of the beach from the cliffs above.



This was a house that sat at one end of the beach. Not a bad place to live or visit, huh?




This seagull was very interested in our bag.



Here is my mom just watching the waves roll in.



Most of our time was spent running around in the water...



...or just standing around in the water.

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Fun at Ralphs

Oh yeah, I forgot. I was walking past the meat section in the supermarket today when this guy yelled at a worker and stormed off. Did I say he merely stormed off? No, that's not what happened. He yelled at the worker, tipped over a lady's shopping cart, stormed off towards the next aisle, turned around, yelled at the worker again, kept storming, and tipped over another person's cart. It was pretty funny.

I heard the worker explaining what happened to a friend after it was done. Apparently the psycho was a little upset that they were out of something that was in the weekly ad. I know that always sends me into an insane tirade.

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Lazy Day

I spent today mostly sitting on the couch in Brians apartment. A nice lazy day in LA.

It was a rainy morning here and at just about the time I wanted to head out, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Brian had already left for work and I had a couple of errands I wanted to do. So outside I went to hit the sidewalk. A nice 10 to 15 minute walk and there I was at Best Buy. A few nights ago my family and I had watched Napolean Dynamite. I had heard it was pretty funny and I wasn't disappointed. I will definitely say that not everyone would enjoy this movie, but I thought it was brilliant. It was just so strange and funny. So anyway, I had to buy my own copy, which I did at Best Buy today. Much fun. Then I walked across the parking lot to Ralphs, a supermarket. I picked up a few things for dinner and some chips (mmm, just plain chips). And then a short walk back to the apartment.

For the rest of the day I've done laundry. Watched the first half of The Great Escape. I'm watching That Thing You Do!, which is actually pretty good, at this very moment. A very movie-ful day.

I guess that's about it.

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Well, isn't this nice

For all of you who might be jealous of super nice Southern California weather, it is pouring outside. Brian said he can't remember it raining as hard as it is tonight. Plus, it was raining most of the day and overcast all day today (and yesterday). It probably didn't get much above 60 degrees either. What's that about?

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Loving Life

Well, SoCal is nice.
For the first couple of days the temps got up to the low 70s. Much nicer than the zero degrees and lower that I left in Bozeman (and that my parents had left in Chicago and that my brother and Steve stayed in in Minneapolis.)

After I flew into LAX Brian and I headed to pick up my parents at their hotel in Westwood, a really nice neighborhood next to Beverly Hills. From there we headed out for lunch at this nice little place towards the ocean. As we were in the shade we did need to wear long sleeves, but the sun was shining and the sky was blue. After that we headed for the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, US 1. We drove up the coast and past beaches and past hills and nice neighborhoods into Malibu.

Malibu, as you may imagine, is quite nice. We didn't even see all of it (it is a 27 mile long city on the coast) but from what we saw we wouldn't have minded living there. We ended up stopping at a State Park beach and getting out for a while. For the next two or three hours we just walked up and down this very secluded and private beach and enjoyed the ocean. We stood in the surf, skipped rocks, and just enjoyed the beautiful days. We took a number of pictures, which I hopefully will be posting some time soon. They are all on Brian's main computer and he's working on it nearly constantly.

After our time on the beach Brian drove us over a canyon to the San Fernando Valley. Have you ever seen movies or Saturday Night Live skits with "Valley Girls" in them? Yeah, it's this valley. We then headed back to Brian's place, in Palms, and ordered pizza for dinner and watched Dodgeball. It was hilarious. Steph and I had watched it earlier in the week, but it was funny the second time as well.

That was my first day in Los Angeles, so the trip started out well.

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Bye bye

I didn't have any time to write today (yesterday). Why you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

First, I didn't go to work this morning. I went skiing. It was epic. Nothing less than knee deep powder, and in some places it was waist to stomach deep. I got sprayed in the face so many times I had snow frozen in my beard. I was only there for a couple hours, but it might have been my best day ever. And my first run was definitely my best "first run of the season" ever.

Then I went to work for a little and was kept busy enough.

Then I came home and have been really busy here getting ready to leave. Leave? That's right. I'm heading down to Los Angeles tomorrow morning for Christmas and New Years. My parents flew out there a couple days ago and have been hanging out with my brother. After they leave he and I will be chilling. On New Years Eve we'll be attending a giant techno party downtown LA. It's going to be awesome.

Anyway, I don't know how much I'll be writing in the next week and a half. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you all.

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Don't you hate it?

Don't you hate it when people try to tell you something funny, or something about something funny, but they can't remember the whole thing or the punchline, so it was just a big waste of your time? Don't you? Well, I hope you don't hate it too much, because I'm going to do that exact thing right now.

When I went home for lunch yesterday I was watching "Comic Remix" on Comedy Central. Whoa, was it hilarious. I let out hardy guffaws multiple times. Unfortunately I can't really remember all (or any) of the jokes, but let me assure you, they were really funny. It was just what I needed.

On an almost completely unrelated point, does anyone else think that the show Strangers With Candy was one of the worst shows ever put on TV? If you agree with me, don't you find it sad that you can buy all 3 seasons on DVD? Who buys this crap? My roommate can only get the first two seasons of his favorite show, Northern Exposure, on DVD. Plus, they're really expensive because the studio has had to spend a lot of extra money to try and renegotiate the rights to all of the music that goes into each episode. It really bums him out.

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Postponed until further notice

This is hilarious.

It is the 2004-2005 NHL schedule on ESPN.com. Every game is there, though for some reason they aren't listing what kind of TV coverage each game is getting. My favorite part is how the time (in Eastern Time) on each game is given as "Postponed". I didn't even know that the Dallas Stars were playing my Minnesota Wild tonight in St. Paul. I can't believe I almost missed it. Go Wild.

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We won, now what?

More fun with professional athletes:
Two Raiders arrested for public intoxication

My favorite part of the article:

"Apparently what happened, an officer in our transportation section was flagged down by a woman who said the men were in the back of her car and wouldn't get out," said Ashford, who was uncertain whether the players knew the woman. "They were very uncooperative. They had problems maintaining their balance and had a strong odor of alcohol. They were acting in a belligerent manner."

I guess these two were so excited after beating the Titans that they went out, got plastered, and jumped into a lady's car. Maybe they thought it was a taxi or something. Or maybe they were just so drunk that they had no clue what was going on. That's the kind of guy I would want on my professional sports team.

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*sigh*

Thanks for the kind word gents.

I know you're all sick of my bellyaching, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum. Today I'll regale you with a tale of overcoming hardship and defeating hardwork.

It is well known that I hate washing dishes. I just don't like to do it, so if I have to do it I want to do it in as easy a way as possible. (That sentense had 14 two letter words, including 5 in a row. That's got to be some kind of a record.) As you can imagine, I wasn't to keen on hard work--including dishwashing--this weekend, seeing as how I had just been made single with my girlfriend leaving me to go home. A pile of dishes had started to accumulate earlier in the week and had no thoughts of slowing down. Something had to be done, and there was no one to do it but me.

So, what did I do? Did I clear out the sink and fill it with soapy water? Did I roll up my sleeves and plunge my hands into the greasy melee? Did I brush and scrub as I had never brushed and scrubbed before? No. I went straight to work at getting our portable dishwasher to work.

It came with the house and Eric and I had tried to get it to work once before, with no luck. For some reason we couldn't seem to get the nozzle hooked to the faucet with a tight enough seal. No water would actually get to the machine.

But this time it would be different. This time I really wanted it to work. Because this time, I would have to do all of the dishes.

After much finagling and cajoling I finally figured out what we had done wrong and I had the nozzle attached to the faucet. Now the moment of truth. I turned the machine on and...nothing. No water was going in, it was just running. Bummer. But wait! What is this I hear? The water, it is flowing, the machine is working! Eureka! It just wanted to run a little before starting the water up.

So I loaded the dishes up and put some soap in and set it to run. No water...no water...no water. Hmm, this seemed to be taking longer...whew! There it goes.

You have no idea how nice it felt to have all the dishes being washed while I played a computer game downstairs.

So there you have it. When you're not feeling tip top you have to take the small victories. Hooray

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blah

I'm very bummed today. I'll talk about it more after this weekend, but I'm bummed.

I've had a great week though. I left off my tale of the weekend after Friday.

On Saturday was my company's Christmas party. It was lots of fun. The dinner, prime rib, was very tasty. The gift giving was very fun as well. At the beginning of the night we were given $25 of fake money to be used in an auction for the gifts at the end of dinner. We exchanged money in a couple of ways before the auction. First, some people sold their drink tickets for more money. Second, if you heard anyone say the word "Christmas" they had to give you $5.

The auction consisted of around 50 presents or so. They were all wrapped so you didn't know what you were bidding on. Steph took the first gift with only $10 and it was a big jar of chocolates. Perfect! After that the bidding took off and some gifts went for $70 or $80 or even $90. Some of the gifts were pretty disappointing to some people though. Like a liquid soap dispenser or a picture frame. Towards the end of the auction, when the big spenders had finally spent all of their money I finally won an auction. When I opened it up it was a daily Dilbert calender. Perfect! I have gotten one for Christmas for like 3 or 4 years running, so I loved it.

After the party Steph and I decided to rent a movie. We wanted to get Dodgeball, but it was out. So we got The Terminal. Steph really likes Tom Hanks and we had both been curious about the movie. There were certain things I didn't like. For instance the "bad guy's" motivation just didn't seem real. I really didn't believe he was doing all his stuff for any reason. But the movie was cute and Tom was of course excellent.

I can't for the life remember what happened Sunday, but I think I mainly just relaxed and had dinner with Steph. Very nice indeed.

On Monday night my roommate took a bunch of people out to celebrate passing his Licensed Surveyor exam. That was nice. There were nine of us and we had a good time. Tuesday was the win in hockey.

On Wednesday I made my Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza, which, if I may say so, is very good. I made it for Steph and Eric. We had a good time eating and it filled us up. After that Steph and I were finally able to rent Dodgeball, which we enjoyed quite a bit. It could be pretty, but it kept us laughing pretty much the whole time.

Anyway, that's pretty much my life up to date. Tonight is a birthday/congrats/going away party. It is Ricarda's birthday and Steph just graduated and is going away. Hopefully I will be able to enjoy myself. Steph's family is getting into town very soon and will be coming to the party as well, it will be nice to see them again.

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A double double

Wow. Twins for twins. That's crazy. I would think that the chances that the odds given at the end of the article are based on any facts to be approximately 1,230,875 to 1.

Still amazing though.

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You have to wonder

You may remember a long time ago when I told you about a pillow that is in the shape of a man's arm and shoulder that single women in Japan could buy to "sleep with someone".

Well, they've done it again, this time for the boys. I give you the lap pillow. That just freaks me out.

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We Won!

Our second win of the hockey season finally came. I know I haven't been keeping up with the season for the last couple of weeks, but we hadn't won since that first game. But last night we broke our winless streak. We are now 2-6-2. Hooray! The common factor in our two wins was that they were the two games that Steph came to watch. With her leaving very shortly, I'm not looking forward to the rest of the season.

We ended up winning 7-5, so we didn't do too bad, but we could have done better. We were up 4-0 at one point. Like so often, we started strong and then tapered off towards the end.

I had an up and down game personally. As a defenseman the main thing I care about is that there are no goals scored while I'm on the ice. Assists and goals are just gravy. I feel I played pretty well but the other team scored their first 4 goals while I was out there trying to defend against that very occurrence. (On a side note, I can't think if I've ever written the word 'occurrence'. I had no clue it was spelled like that. I tried 'occurance' but thought it didn't look quite right. I figured it could have been an 'e' instead of an 'a', but I didn't know there was a double 'r' in there. Crazy)

I have to be honest and say that the goals were mostly not my fault. On two of the goals I would not have played any differently. I was in the position I wanted to be in and had my guy where I wanted him to be. The goalie just let in weak goals from bad angles. On the other two I feel I was interferred with and wasn't able to make any play. It was very frustrating.

So I was -3 for the game on a night that I felt pretty good about the way I played. It was really weird.

I also got my first penalty of the year. This other guy and I were getting into it a little bit for most of the game and finally with just over 2 minutes left in the game he slashed me one last time and I kind of checked him into the boards a little bit. We both got whistled. My problem with the guy is that I just don't think he has any class and I don't respect him at all. This is rec hockey and there's no place for cheap play and chipiness. I won't go into everything, suffice it to say I don't like him. He even owns a shop here in town and I don't shop there anymore.

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La Casa Sanchez y la Betty Boop

Alright, you've all been very patient with a slow week. Thanks. I hope you all had great weekends, because I did.

On Friday night I took Steph out to dinner at Casa Sanchez. I'm not a huge fan of Mexican food, but Steph likes it, so I took her there. I had been curious about the place since I had moved to this part of town. It is a house, I'm sure someone used to live there, maybe they still do. I had always thought it must be a fairly tight fit for everyone inside and my suspicions were confirmed when we entered. Steph and I were seated at the smalled dinner table I had ever eaten at. It almost had less room than my lap.

Most tables for two we've been seated at in restaurants are arranged so that the people are seated opposite each other, with ample space behind each person. Some times we get seated at a table for 4 and instead of sitting opposite of each other we sit kitty-corner (or catty-corner) from each other, on the two sides of one corner. Well, merge those ideas and imagine a little less room and you've got it.

The room itself was very cramped. There were three tables for four in three of the room's corners. In the final corner, right next to the entry to the room was our table. It was a very small two person table, maybe a one-and-a-half person table. It was pushed into the corner so that the only two sides to sit at were adjacent. Steph's chair almost couldn't be pulled out since the guy sitting behind her was basically right up against her chair--luckily she's really small and fit in fine while seated, she just couldn't get up very well. My chair pulled straight out with no obstructions, though I was seated pretty much in the entry to the room.

The salsa and basket of chips nearly filled the table, which didn't bode well for dinner. The chips were excellent, lightly salted and just the right amount of density and crispiness. I did feel obligated to try the salsa once, but as you can imagine (look at the title of this website) I enjoyed nearly all of my chips sans decoration, and I loved it.

With some help from the server we figured out what we wanted and ordered. I ordered pork fajitas and Steph had an enchilada and a chili relleno. Everyone knows what enchiladas are, but a chili relleno is something I haven't seen anywhere else. It is a green chili (pepper) stuffed with monterey jack cheese, lightly battered and pan fried.

Our food came and it was an excersize in quantum spacial mechanics (a new field I just made up) to figure out how to fit all of the plates on our table. With everything in place we comenced the dining. Unfortunately I can only say that the food was okay. Definitely not the best Mexican in Bozeman. Steph and I both agreed on this point, but you should take her opinion more seriously, since she actually really likes Mexican food. But hey, we would have never known that had we not gone, and you wouldn't have known it either.

So we headed home and popped in a DVD to watch. A while ago Steph and I were in Walmart and I happened to see a huge display of DVDs with large signs proclaiming DVDs for $1. Things of this nature tend to catch my eye so it wasn't surprise that I noticed it. The DVDs in question were collections of old cartoons. There were old Superman, Spiderman, and many other characters I don't know well enough to remember. The one that was most interesting for the purposes of our story was the one Steph ended up buying, which was a Betty Boop.

Steph loves Betty Boop. She has a thermometer, a clock, a framed picture thing, a little figurine that hangs on her cell phone, and numerous other paraphenilia of her favorite cartoon character. So, even though she doesn't have a DVD player it didn't take much for Steph to shell out the one dollar for the item. We knew we could watch it at my house or she could watch it at her parent's house some time.

So we finally sat down to watch it on Friday. I can't say for certain, but I don't think I had ever seen a full Betty Boop cartoon before. They certainly had some risque parts, considering they were made in the 30s. Especially the one where Betty was wearing nothing but a grass skirt and a lei and doing a Hawaiian dance on the beach. The flower in the ground next to her was so embarrassed he replanted himself roots up. They were all pretty funny.

I am a big fan of the cartoons of my youth and Japanese animation and it is interesting to see what kind of stuff was made in the infancy of the art form. For one thing, there aren't too many tunes in todays cartoons. Every episode of Betty Boop had her or someone else singing a song.

So that was Friday, we had a good time. I'll get to the rest later.

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Stupid Internet Explorer

Okay, through the magic of not testing enough, my new site doesn't look right in Internet Explorer. It doesn't surprise me (either that I didn't test it, or that it doesn't look right). This would be a great time for you to discover the wonder that is Firefox, which I use exclusively.

Edit: Okay, I got it mostly working (thanks Steve). If you didn't get to see it really crappy, well, that's too bad. Now, there's the little problem of the sidebar sticking out, which I will have to work on.

(I still think you should download and use Firefox)

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Where Am I?

You may be asking yourself that very question when looking at the site you're at.

Well, if you couldn't guess, I did a little bit of a redesign. I like it better than the old one, at least most of it. I think the main content region (where you're reading right now) may be a little cramped, and I might dress up the post headers or date headers a little bit. But overall I like how it turned out.

If you have any thoughts, good or bad (seriously--I can take criticism. I'm not a designer nor do I know HTML/CSS very well), please give me feedback. Either leave a comment here or email me directly.

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We've come a long way baby

Sometimes, it's nice when visions of the future don't come to pass.

Just imagine how easy Need For Speed would be on that baby!

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Nothing to see here

Sorry, I just haven't been in a writing mood lately. While many people in the history of literature have been inspired by less-than-happy times in their lives I am more inclined to write when everything is sailing along smoothly and I'm feeling on top of the world.

I'm sure I'll be writing something soon. But you're not missing much, I promise.

Oh, and this isn't meant to imply that I'm feeling down in the dumps. I'm just not feeling as ecstatic about everything as I normally do.

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It's not our fault!

So I guess retailers in Europe are having a difficult time getting Playstation 2s. It turns out that everyday reasons like "explosions at factories" or "we are trying to build our new product, so forget you" are not the real reasons.

According to this story the real reason is simple shipping problems and apparently the Suez Canal is to blame. You know, I remember learning about the Suez Canal in geography, but I couldn't tell you where it is...without looking it up on google...it's the waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez and then to the Red Sea.

The story just struck me because I don't think I've read or heard the words "Suez Canal" since eighth grade geography.

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Ouch

I'm a mess this morning. I really strained my groin last night in hockey. I could hardly walk or move last night. I'm better today but still get around with some trouble. Then my jaw really hurts as well. I'm thinking I must have clenched my jaw a lot last night from the pain of tossing and turning.

Like I said, a mess.

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