Ok, blog, here’s my middle school story that I was recently reminded of when someone asked me what I would do if I could turn back time.

First, you’ll have to understand that I was quite a dweeby little asian boy. Surprising, I know. I was smaller than my peers, had rather dorky large glasses, and definitely had your stereotypical nerdy asian boy thing going on. In physical activities, I did alright when I was up against my own weight (running, pull ups, etc.) but not so hot when pitted against others (tackling).

So one day in my PE class, we’re playing flag football. Sometimes, devious kids would try to tie their belt around their waist so that it would be hard to pull off. I wouldn’t do that, but since I was so small, the belts were usually too large for me and one end would hang down really low, so I’d take the end and tuck it into the belt around my waist so it wouldn’t swing wildly as I ran.

My PE coach was all-time quarterback and for some reason on the last play of the game, he throws the ball to me. I somehow catch the ball! Amazing! I start running towards the end zone and weave my way around multiple defenders who were probably in a state of shock that I even caught the ball. I was fairly zippy once I get going so I actually make it to the end zone. Touchdown! I was so proud of myself! That was rather short-lived, however, as some kid quickly runs over to me and yanks pretty hard on one of my flags. I expected it to just fall off, but he apparently yanked quickly enough where the end that I had tucked in created a knot so the belt “tied itself” and he basically lifted me up a short distance by my belt. Oh no! Everyone thinks I cheated now! Shame!

So that’s how I failed to secure glory for the nerds and instead was awarded shame upon my family for cheating at flag football. If I could turn back time, I would figure out a different way to tuck in that belt. I’m pretty sure I would have been king middle school once news of my victorious run made its way through the grapevine, but alas…

Catching Fire - pretty good. I enjoyed the second book the most, so I was happy they were pretty true to it.

Hobbit 2 - apparent money grab and not a whole lot happens since there’s no Helm’s Deep equivalent, but I’ll forgive all parties involved if the third one makes the build up worth it.

American Hustle - enjoyable. Great performances by a great cast. Heist was a bit underwhelming, but maybe I shouldn’t have expected better.

Frozen - I liked a lot and it made me all mushy inside. One glaring flaw is the absence of a “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” Elsa reprise at an incredibly obvious point in the movie (you’ll know if you saw it). That said, had they pulled that off, I would have likely been a sniffling mess walking out of the theater, so there’s that. =) I’m disappointed they missed such a perfect opportunity to reprise the most powerful song in the movie (IMO), but despite that, it’s still a pretty high caliber Disney. Recommended!

I saw the new GI JOE with Mark and Greg. It was fairly bad, but I guess enjoyable enough. My expectations were for an enjoyable bad movie and it probably met those expectations, but did not exceed. Maybe next time it can apply for a raise.

In a week, a few of us make a quick hop to Phoenix to stuff our faces with some more grub! About a month after that, I will be taking a vacation with the family to San Diego. It’s been forever ago since we’ve taken a family trip, so this is almost like a first time, especially since we’re all older now. I’m looking forward to it, but I think my eardrums are bracing themselves. :p

The site I was helping the Greater Good Labs guys with launched a little while ago, SnapKind.com. Check it, but be gentle… it’s a baby and needs some growing up still. ;)

Sometimes, I really enjoy watching really terrible movies. It’s even better if I can sucker friends to join me. I guess I’m kind of a masochistic troll like that. =p Last week, I saw both Red Dawn and Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. I went to see the first one, with Sam and he got the choice between the two, so he picked Red Dawn. It was pretty terrible.

Viraj, got left with the remaining option and we saw that this past weekend. We were the only pair of guys in the theater, which was quite hilarious. The fact that my suffering through the movie included Viraj suffering through the movie made it all awesome.

Here is Viraj with his shame:

At the office, somehow I got added to the BV West office’s mailing list and I found out they were doing holiday decorations. That inspired my team (“code named” Firebird) to do our own in our little area. Here’s that:

I made the firebird-hand-turkey.

The poor blog’s been neglected. I’ve been very busy!

Back when Sam and I roomed together in Jester, I had this half bottle of chocolate milk that I thought would be fun to seal up with tape and then leave on my shelf… well, that’s basically what happened until we moved out. It was probably there for a whole semester or two until we finally threw it away. It was quite solid by that time. Anyways, something reminded me of this on Facebook, so I went looking for a picture of it. I didn’t find that, but I thought I’d tell you about it. =p

I also went on a hunt for an old W2. I didn’t find that either, but I found an old yearbook, so I took a trip down memory lane and went through a few old things and took pictures of them.

Here’s my Senior Scrap Book and some select pages:

Like I mentioned earlier, I found an old yearbook and and noticed that Chad, Nancy and myself made a good concentration of photos since we were usually placed around the same general area. There’s not really another set of my friends that had this same clump. I took some pics going back to middle school, too.

Chad and I, 1997 (7th grade). The writing’s from Nancy, years later.

Chad and Nancy, 1999 (10th grade). They messed up my photo and put me somewhere else with a different name.

Chad, Nancy, and I, 2000 (11th grade):

Chad, Nancy, and I, 2001 (12th grade):

For fun, here’s one of Olivia and Doris (2001):

A few weekends ago, Van came into town for his brother’s wedding. We decided to treat him to Uchi, and then decided that we couldn’t let him go back to Boston without having the brussel sprouts and fried milk from Uchiko, so we immediately went there afterwards. The waiter at Uchiko was quite pleased when we told him what we had done, haha.

For my birthday, my family got me a Nest at my request. It’s pretty!

So here’s a video montage of my vacation. Probably filled with inside jokes and immature humor. I don’t expect anyone to watch or enjoy the whole thing, but here it is. =)

I’m getting some estimates done on some major renovations to my house. Haven’t decided if that’s the route I’m going to take, but it’s exciting to think about! I’ve been looking at a bunch of pictures on Houzz.com, which is pretty cool, though they have so many photos, it’s overwhelming sometimes.

I started watching West Wing and I’m well into the third season now. It’s been pretty enjoyable and some of the episodes have been surprisingly emotional (that is, triggered a strong emotional response from me).

I also had a crazy dream last night where I went to NYC/Vegas (it seemed to randomly change in my dream), and went to some hotel room with a girl. Somewhere in there I really had to take a crap, so I went into the bathroom and found an extremely complicated toilet. After that was done, it became apparent that this girl was supposed to kill me based on orders from some drug lord. Fortunately, she decided that she wouldn’t kill me and smuggled me out of the city instead. I woke up worrying about the safety of this girl since she just disobeyed some powerful bad guy, but that quickly faded into a chuckle as I realized I was dreaming.

That’s all you get for now. Tata!

I’m in Hawaii! Today, I plan on not doing much at all. =)

I’ll post pics and videos later (though you can probably find a decent amount of pics on Facebook/Flickr). For now, I will leave you this:

Also, Oriana told me a while ago she threw away the copy of Twilight I got her from London (so what if it was infected with glitter?!). I am very disappointed, so I think I will be giving her some more copies from airports around the world…

=)

I’m heading to Hawaii for some fun/relaxation next Sunday so this week is probably going to be a busy one at work. I also, somewhat coincidentally, have a rather pleasant schedule of foodie events at the end of the week with stops planned at at least Foreign & Domestic and Uchiko. Yay!

I’ve had to keep an eye out on Mozilla this weekend as he got neutered on Thursday and I’m trying to not have to resort to the cone of shame. He’s been fairly good so far but seems to be rather reluctant to pee (does so much less frequently than before). I’ll probably give the vet a ring tomorrow to see if I should bring him in for a check-up.

Viraj is back from India, apparently, but did not return with a wife. We are all disappointed. On the plus side, he did his chip eating thing where he would only eat the part of the chip he didn’t touch. He had built up a small pile of chip pieces that were “tainted” with his fingers. I saw them, shook my head, and made him eat them. There’s that to be proud of, I guess. ;p

Last night, Sam, Mark and I scoured YouTube and watched old 80’s/90’s cartoon themes. I brought up the fact that all of the following were cartoons I used to watch.

• Poochie
• Rainbow Brite
• Popples
• Strawberry Shortcake
• Jem

Sam and Mark didn’t seem very surprised at this reveal. Granted, I also watched a lot of others (TMNT, Transformers, Voltron, etc.). After watching all of those intros, there’s an awful lot of pink going on… =D

All of this reminded me of a memory I have of when I was kid. My dad presented two packages of cartoon-branded candy to me. I don’t remember what one of them was, but the other was Jem branded. Guess which one I took? When my dad asked me if I was sure and shouldn’t I want the other one, I just shook my head and walked off with the Jem pack. That’s where my memory ends, but I’m sure Olivia was left with some MASK candy or something like that…

For my birthday, I gave myself a few days off of work (Friday, Monday and Tuesday). Chad also had Friday off, so we went on a man-date and saw:

A few minutes before the movie started, we were the only guys there. Some others showed up as the movie was starting, but we were the only ones without accompanying females. That said, I enjoyed the movie, so take away what you will from that. =p

On Saturday, I watched UT lose (good try though, guys) and just did some misc hanging out. Sunday, I had a birthday lunch with the family and then hung out with peeps again. Viraj and I finally got around to recording some post-Asia trip interviews for our trip documentary. I cut a few of the clips together last night and it’s turning out well. I still need quite a few snippets, but it’s a good start.

BYE