Arizonin'

mjv.jpgBack from our quick jaunt to Phoenix. It was a much needed, thoroughly enjoyable trip that did a world of good. We opted to drive down there; it's a long way but it was fun. I think I would have been comfortable flying down there but Deanne and I both agreed that the drive would be a perfect opportunity to spend some time with each other, something we haven't been able to do in a long while. One of the things I was able to do on the drive down was fulfil a lifelong ambition - well not lifelong but I've wanted to do it for a long time. Pay a visit to the Mojave Airport. MHV is home to one of America's largest airplane graveyards. Its dry conditions are perfect for preventing corrosion. There was a lot of history there, defunct airlines, defunct planes. Sleeping Giants. A truly amazing place. We rounded the corner on the freeway and knew that Mojave was coming up. I looked to my right and nearly drove off the road. On the horizon were hundreds of planes. It was a very surreal site. We immediately rerouted and made haste towards the airport. There were Virgin planes, KLM, Mandarin Airways, Swiss Air (Asia), Qantas, Ansett, a ton of Indonesian Airlines, and the usual array of USAir, Delta and FedEx. I snapped a ton of photos which you can find here. We had an excellent time in Arizona with Stefan, Amrita and Jasdeep showing us all that Phoenix has to offer. It's a wonderful place and very inviting. I won't rehash what Deanne and Stefan have already covered on their sites, suffice to say that we had an awesome time. It was also an educational trip. I was finally able to put a nearly year long mystery to rest. Jasdeep works for Honeywell, and it just so happens he works on the avionics for my favorite plane, the Boeing 777. Now those of you who religiously follow my blog may remember I had a post on a picture of a 777 with two 7" monitors jerry rigged into the flight deck. Well I asked Jasdeep what they were and he was able to tell me. They are MATS - Maintenance Access Terminals. Kinda like OBDII for your car. They interpret and display data from all of the test equipment in the back of the airplane. At last... So anyway, a great trip, some opportunities presented and some good times had. Thanks to Stefan, Amrita and Jasdeep for showing us a good time. Thanks to Deanne for humoring me :)

Bedroom Action

bedroom.gif After three years, three moves and untold abuse, our bedroom set has finally earned it's retirement. When we moved to our first apartment in San Ramon over three and a half years ago we had nothing. No bed, no couch, no TV, nothing. So where does one go when one needs to furnish an apartment? IKEA, of course. As much as I loathe the place, IKEA is great for cheap furniture and we just happened to need an abundance of the stuff. So we got our bedroom set and it lasted from our move to Livermore and our move to Tracy but only just.The dresser finally crapped out earlier this year. That was when we began entertaining the idea of replacing it. Anyway, here we are in March and we FINALLY got around to doing it. No IKEA this time, I put my foot down :-D We went back to a store in Livermore that had previously sold us our couches, kitchen table, and china cabinet. Eventually we settled on a 5 piece, dark wood bed set and entertainment center. It makes our room look tiny! Deanne also picked up a ceiling fan which we battled with during the installation. After the requisite amount of profanity, we successfully installed the damn thing and had the bedroom set up. Since our last bed didn't have a boxspring, we had to order one and as a result, we didn't get to enjoy our new bedroom for another three days. But all's well that ends well. Now all we have to do is move the weight bench and eliptical trainer out of the room because it's starting to get a little tight in there. I put a high(er) res photo of the room here - the edges are blurry due to the wide angle lens I used to take the shot.

Best. Invention. Ever.

kittytree.jpg Mike and Mindy....THANK YOU! Ok, a little background. We went over to Mike and Mindy's on Saturday night, and their cat Nigel was showing us his new cat tree. It was a really neat structure with a "house" and various platforms. The whole thing was carpeted, giving him a great texture to scratch on. Deanne and I mentioned that we were having real problems with our cats scratching the furniture and carpet. They said that the cat tree had almost completely eliminated Nigel's scratching.Well, I had the day off today and decided that it was about time to put an end to our little scratching problem. I went down to the local PetCo which recently opened and after some brief searching, I found the right tree for our cats. It has two platforms with edges which is perfect because our cats seem to have a box fetish - they LOVE sitting in boxes. So I bring it home, and one tip Mike gave me was to douse the thing in catnip, so I did....what a reaction! All three of the cats were on it in no time, and they started freaking out like it was Christmas morning. They have yet to come down. So kudos to Mike and Mindy for an EXCELLENT tip; this one is going to save our poor couch from any more abuse.

Left turn ahead

monitoranimation.gifAfter much wrangling with various ebay merchants, everything I needed to install my new system in my car arrived on Thursday and Friday last week. I had arranged with Ken earlier in the week that we (ha we...HE) would install it on Saturday, as he had the day pretty much free. Well I decided that I would try and chronicle the install. This is going to make for a long post so here's a photo of the final install, and if you want to read the rest of the entry and see all the install photos, follow the link below... monitorsimpsons.jpg

I arrived at Ken's shop at about 10am on Saturday morning, my car filled with boxes. We pulled the car into the bay and went through all the equipment just to make sure we had everything that was needed. We didn't. So off to Radio Shack I went to get some RCA cables. By the time I returned, Ken had laid out all the wires needed for the install. I really should have taken a photo of that because it was quite a sight. Talk about a TON of wire! Most of it would be hacked up and discarded but it made for an impressive site nonetheless. After everything was planned out, the fun part began. First thing was to take the back seat out. backseat.jpg Since the XM and the MP3 jukebox were going to be in the trunk, a significant amount of wire needed to be run from the front to the back of the car; removing the back seat made this process much easier. Next chore was to remove the driver's seat. frontstripped.jpg Again, this was done to aid in the running of the wire from the rear to the front of the car. backviewstripped.jpg I already had the XM receiver stored in the trunk of the car. But since we were adding the mp3 jukebox and also changing the way the xm interfaced with the headunit (change from fm modulation to IP-BUS) we needed to remove the xm unit and strip out the makeshift amp rack. amprackstripped.jpg Then, whilst we were in the trunk, we removed the trunk lining and carpet. trunkstripped.jpg Again, this helps conceal the mass of wire that needed to be run to each of the units. Now that everything was stripped down, the fun began. This is also the part where my involvement ends and I become a mere bystander. Ken dove and and began to work his magic. He first removed my existing headunit and CD player. dashstripped.jpg Then all the wiring was run from the back of the car to the front of the car and behind the dash, where the new headunit would eventually go. The rear components were connected to their respective interface cables and then given power. Then to the front. Ken quickly created a new wiring harness for the monitor and nav unit which were going to fit in the double din opening. Once that was complete, out came the gauge cluster. The reason for this is to allow the nav unit to tap into the Vehicle Speed Sensor cable, so it can accurately represent distance travelled on the map. keninstall.jpg One the VSS cable was tapped and the gauge cluster was replaced, it was time to test fit the components. This is also when we tested to make sure that everything came on properly and functioned properly. I'm told the last thing you want is to get everything wired up and put securely in place, only to find something doesn't work properly. So everything was set loosely in place and powered up. testfit.jpg With the testing complete and successful, we were pretty much done. Just a matter of putting the car back together, and securing the new components in place. completeinstall.jpg amprackfinished.jpg And of course, the ultimate test...can it play the Simpsons? monitorsimpsons.jpg Of course! So how does it work? It seems to work really well. The XM is seamless, the AM/FM works as it should, as does the CD player. The MP3 player is quirky but works, it'll just take some getting used to. The nav is great, contrary to what my wife thinks. We had to leave pretty much as soon as the install was done to arrive on time to a dinner engagement. I didn't have time to play with the nav settings or anything so trying to use it and learn it while driving in the rain was hard. But now I have it figured out and have already found it very, very useful. A worthwhile exercise I would say. Kudos to Ken for his excellent and expeditious install.

...and boy are my arms tired.

weightbench.jpg So as you may have read from Deanne's blog, we've both embarked on a new fitness routine. We aimed to start January 1st but we both got sick and although the dieting started close to January 1st, the exercising has only been going on for a week for me. The diet part is going well; I've reduced my calorie intake dramatically. Deanne put together a binder with nutritional information for many of the restaurants I (used to) frequent. Some of the data is downright disturbing: Double Whopper w/ Cheese, large fries and a coke = 1900 calories, 95grams of fat! 6 Dollar Burger, large fries and a coke = 1950 calories, 91 grams of fat! That's your entire day's calorie intake in one meal. I used to eat that stuff all the time, no wonder I was getting fat.I have reduced my calorie intake to about 1600 calories per day. Deanne pointed me to a stat called your Basal Metabolic Rate which is the number of calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day. So theoretically, I should lose weight by just sitting on my ass all day...but it would take time. If you add some exercise into the mix, you're going to increase the rate at which you burn calories, and as Deanne said on her blog "After elevating your heart rate for an extended period of time, your body will continue to burn calories for hours sometimes days at high rates." Encouraging. We got an eliptical trainer and weight bench for Christmas. I had used the eliptical trainer a few times and found it to be a very efficient but altogether exhausting piece of equipment - evidently doing it's job. I really appreciate the fact that it's zero impact because running even for a short period of time results in excruciating knee pain (damn British medical system.) Last night I used our weight bench for the first time (I think I burned several hundred calories just putting the damn thing together.) I did a lot of weight training when I was at school so I knew the basics but I refreshed my memory, if only to avoid knocking myself unconcious with a barbell. Now this may sound weird but for what it is, weight lifting is a lot of fun. I did it for 35 minutes, which is what was recommended for a beginner, and by the end of each rep, my muscles were burning, which is apparently the target sensation as it indicates the muscle will need to rebuild, adding strength and tolerance. By the end of the 35 minutes I felt great. I had worked my entire upper body and felt very satisfied. So I went to bed, a little sore but looking forward to my next session. My alarm clock went off at the usual time this morning and I said to myself "Ok, should probably get up n......SWEET MOTHER OF GOD I'M PARALYZED!" Turns out I was just in searing pain in my elbows from one particular exercise I was doing. Silly me. I a) hadn't stretched properly for it and b) hadn't even executed the exercise properly. Consequently while the rest of my muscles ached as they should after a work out, the tendon that attaches the tricep to the elbow felt like someone was holding a lighter under it. I couldn't even get a spoon to my mouth to eat my oatmeal...pathetic! Anyway a little tiger balm and some light stretching and it felt a little better. Still hurts a bit but at least tonight is cardio! ;-)

New Horizons

I went to my first Muslim wedding on Saturday. I don't know many people who can say they've been to a Muslim wedding but it was a very enlightening experience. Our friend Chief had recently had his official wedding in Fiji (where he is originally from and his wife lived until very recently) but they wanted to have a ceremony in the U.S. so that all his family could participate.I have to admit, I didn't really know what to expect but I'm always up for new cultural experiences so I was excited about going. We arrived at the hall where the ceremony was to take place and found it lavishly decorated. There two "thrones" at the front of the room for the bride and groom and about 30 tables laid out for guests. We found a table and sat down. We were some of the first to arrive but those that were already there were dressed in beautiful traditional dress; brightly colored saris, ornate henna work on hands, men in kofias (or koffes). As the room filled up, it was clear that they had a very large extended family; there was easily 250 people there. Deanne and I made up the maybe 10 non-muslims attending but we never once felt out of place, everyone was very welcoming. When it looked like everyone had arrived, a family member who was to act as MC for the night, welcome everyone in arabic and then in English. The majority of his speech was in English but he punctuated every now and then with an arabic phrase which I discovered later were deriviatives of "God willing" etc. Afterwards, Chief and his bride Sofiana came in and took their seats facing everyone. Then a tiny young lass, can't have been older than 4 got up and recited, from memory, an arabic blessing that must have lasted at least three minutes. It was incredible. She didn't stumble once or forget a single word or line. Following here was an elderly gentleman who lead everyone in an arabic prayer as well as gave a blessing. Fortunately we had our friend Taz sitting next to us explaining what was going on, otherwise we would have been totally lost as everything "official" was done in arabic. Shortly afterwards, the celebrations began. Everyone went up to greet the bride and groom who were dressed in the most amazing outfits. Sofiana wore a stunning sari and headdress and had henna on her hands and forearms. They both looked very relaxed, all things considered. During the greetings, the MC announced that dinner was served. The food was incredible. Homemade chapatis, dall, chicken curry, rogan josh, lentils, rice. Fantastic! I love Indian food and since Fiji was originally inhabited by Indians, alot of the culture has stayed, especially the cooking. Interestingly, counter to most western weddings, the bride and groom did not eat until after all the guests had been served. After everyone had eaten, and the cake had been cut, the DJ turned off the lights and hit the disco ball. Everyone was up dancing in no time. The music was a mixture of arabic techno, arabic rap, US rap, and fijian dance music. Everyone young and old was up there dancing (except me of course.) It was great to see traditional Indian dance moves sped up to correlate with the music! I'm not sure what time the party ended but we left after about three hours. It was an eye opening experience and definitely a lot of fun. It was a great honor to be invited and I want to thank Chief and Sofiana for including us in their celebrations.

End of an era

Today came the somewhat inevitable announcement that the San Jose Earthquakes' Head Coach Frank Yallop is leaving our team to coach the Canadian National Team. Even before the MLS Cup final, there were very strong rumors circulating that he was in negotiations with the Canadian team but we fans always hoped that the lure of San Jose might be to strong. Alas, our fears have come true and he is due to take the reins of Canada's National Team on January 1st. I have a great deal of respect for Frank Yallop - I had many chats with him, espcially while I was running quakefans.com and he was affable, eloquent, intelligent and an altogether great guy. Every player I talked to has nothing but good things to say about him. I daresay he made Landon Donovan the player he is today. Frank is the one that made sure Landon didn't get to big for his boots. Landon often referred to Frank as a "mentor." A lot of Earthquakes fans are happy for Frank, as am I; afterall he's only been a coach for three years and in that time he's won two championships, with the worst team in the league, and became the Earthquakes winningest head coach of all time. So to seem elevated to the world stage makes us fans very proud. But still, it's sad to see a coach go that had so much time for the average fan. So what's next for the Earthquakes? Well the good money is on current assistant coach Dominic Kinnear taking the helm with Jeff Agoos taking up a unique player/assistant manager role. I'm comfortable with this. Dominic was exposed to Frank's coaching style for three years and they seemed to work well together. But I worry that Frank's eye for talent and relationship with the player maybe unique. I guess only time will tell. As Earthquakes guru Goodsport put it "I'm happy for Yallop personally, but am sad for the Earthquakes and its fans. The Frank Yallop era is now officially over. "

Dukes O' Hazzard

So I'm not sure if anyone will find this interesting but I thought I'd relay the epic tail of machine vs. nature (kinda)The city I live in had recently been doing some resurfacing work on the street that leads to my neighborhood. They had a detour in place for the longest time but towards the end of the project they made a makeshift dirt ramp on the shoulder of the road for residents to go over. Now I'd seen a woman in a Corolla or something get stuck on the apex of the mound so when I saw this I went up (what turned out to be) the very shallow grade at about 15mph so I wouldn't get stuck, not knowing that the other side of the ramp was at about a 65 degree angle. Needless to say at that speed I landed hard on the nose; well actually I landed directly on the gravel guard just behind and underneath the front bumper. As we hit, my brother, who was in the passenger seat, said "Oh..(ow)...that's not good." The rest of the drive home (about half a mile) was agonizing, listening to my poor car vibrate and rattle. I pulled into the garage and immediately inspected the damage. I feared the worst (smashed in bumper, etc) but to my amazement, there was no visible external damage. Looking underneath, I saw the gravel guard had a hole in it and was looking pretty worse for wear. I called my insurance company and told them what had happened and luckily they said they would cover it. Bear in mind that this was about two days before I was due to go on vacation. So once the insurance company said they were going to cover it I told them I was going on vacation and wasn't going to deal with it til I got back. So when we got back three weeks later my brother took it to the local body shop and explained to them what happened. After lots of "Dukes of Hazzard" jokes, they gave him a ride home. The Dukes of Hazzard jokes were started by my lovely and sympathetic wife on her blog :P I get a call a few days later saying I had crushed one of the engine snub mounts, shattered a cooling support assembly and pinched one of the tubes that goes into the cooling assembly. There was a pause and the guy asked me "What the hell did you do to this thing?!" So I told him the story and he replied with the ubiquitous "Dukes of Hazzard" comment. So they gave me the estimate and said it should take about three or four days to fix. Oh, that's not too bad I thought. THREE WEEKS LATER I got my car back. Apparently, or at least this is what the body shop told me, the snub mount (pictured below) had to be shipped from New Jersey because none of the VW dealers in the area had it. Now I'm not one for pointing fingers but New Jersey? C'mon. I have a sneaking suspicion that they forgot to order the part and as such needed an excuse to account for the delay. Anyway, I was so excited to get my car back seeing as it had been 6 weeks since I had last driven it (had gone on vacation right after the accident happened and refused to let it ruin my trip.) When I got to the body shop, they had forgotten to replace the gravel guard (claimed they didn't notice it was supposed to be there til last night) and then when it came time to pay my deductible, they told me they don't take credit card, only cash and check; isn't this 2003? Doesn't everywhere take credit cards? So I sign the paper work, get the car back and thank my lucky stars that this chapter was finally over. Oh boy was I wrong. I get in the car and start her up. Hey sounds great! No vibration! Until I put it in gear...wow...did they replace my 1.8T with a Ferrari engine cos it sounds and feels like this thing is trying to jump right out of the car. Turns out that the engine needed some time to settle onto the new snub mount. It seems to run pretty smoothly now. Moral of the story? A shortcut may not always be a shortcut. ..and as for the best Dukes O' Hazzard comment? I like this one from a poster on clubb5.com "Now Luke, don't be treatin' the General that way in the future!"
Cooling Assembly
Snub Mount

gimmegimmegimme

Usually around this time of year we're all asked the ubiquitous question: "Hey my handsome and venerable chum, what gifts can I shower upon you this Yuletide season?" - and usually I reply with something like "Gosh, kind friend, the air that I breathe and the water (read: Diet Coke) that I drink are all I need, they bring me joy unbounded!" For the most part that's true...ok the conversations don't really go like that, it's more like "Hey what do you want for Christmas" "Dunno" "...k"But the truth is I really don't mind what I get for Christmas. For me Christmas is about spoiling the hell out of people; I get that from my dad. I love buying presents for people. I love seeing the look on people's faces when they open their presents, and the reactions you get, from "Ahh sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!" to "....what the fuck is this?" This year however, things are different. I'm still having a blast buying presents for people but this year, I'm using a wish list - I know EXACTLY what I want. I always have things lurking in my Amazon wish list but I never publish it or tell anyone how to find it. Not this year. Why the change? Y'know, I don't know. I think it might be a couple of things; usually when I see something I want, I don't have the patience to "wait until Xmas to see if Santa brings it." This year, I have that patience so I've just added things to my wishlist instead of hitting the ol' "check out" button. Also, I know how frustrating it can be when you have NO idea what to buy people for Xmas, and wishlists can alleviate that frustration, albeit slightly. Now of course, as I'm sure some of you are dying to point out, this directly contradicts my feelings on wedding registries. I don't like wedding registries. I was forced into having one for my wedding because of "cultural reasons". See a wedding is (hopefully) a once in a lifetime event, and if people are kind enough to give us gifts, I want it to be something that THEY came up with, something unique that will remind us of them every time we use it or look at it. This isn't a very popular point of view, especially in this country, but it's something I feel strongly about for some reason. Anyway, Xmas happens every year...so I don't feel so bad about using a wishlist. So without further ado, I bow down to the Gods of Consumerism and Materialism and present to you my wishlist for 2003/2004 http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html/102-1270900-9076136?%5Fencoding=UTF8&id=1YAW3DPRRCC6O And for those of you out there who have your own wishlists, tell me where they are! Leave me a comment and let me know how I can find it.

Fleet Week 2003

blueangels.jpgI was reminded by a colleague last week that the weekend of the 11th was the annual Fleet Week celebration in San Francisco. Fleet Week is, according to their site, when the "Bay Area pays tribute to the men and women of our nation's Navy and Marine services." It's really a massive event with well over a million people attending over the weekend. Mike and I really wanted to go because they usually have a fantastic airshow featuring the Blue Angels. So we got cracking early so we could find a decent place to settle. We got to the Embarcadero at about 9:30am and parked. We had a wander around and looked at some of the ships that were docked. At 11am they had the parade of ships which featured several Navy Destroyers and Frigates, as well as Coastguard ships and a Liberty Ship which took part in the Normandy landings. The airshow began promptly at noon with an F-15 and a Bearcat doing some formation flying before the Bearcat broke off and let the F-15 show off for a while. Now I haven't been to a good airshow in years so when that F-15 came screaming by, it gave me goosebumps. The highlight of the show for me was the Canadian Snowbirds display team. They were phenomenal. By far the best formation display I've seen in a long time, probably since the Red Arrows. The Blue Angels were good, but there were only 6 of them and it wasn't as dynamic and creative as the Snowbirds. All in all, very good day. Great to see an airshow again! I tooks some photos with my new camera which you can see at http://www.haebc.com/gallery/FleetWeek As you can see I'm still getting the hang of my camera ;-)

A week on the wildside

What a week! Why is it that the week Deanne is out of town, the shit hits the fan? Work was just stupidly hectic. (tangent here for a second) Y'know I used to have a sticker that said "My co-workers are idiots." I should really dig that up and display it prominently in my cube and when anyone says "I'm offended by that," I will simply retort with "Oh yeah? Prove you're NOT an idiot." That oughta confuse most of them. Idiots.Anyway, so yeah, Deanne is out of town all week and work was so busy that, ordinarily, I wouldn't have left the office until at least 9pm every night. But I had to leave at 5pm because Will is working in Hayward and I had to pick him up. I felt terrible because I was late every single night to pick him up. Then it was my nieces birthday on Wednesday so I had to pick up a gift, get it wrapped, go to Hayward to get Will, go to my in-laws in time for dinner and then spend most of the night on my cellphone putting out fires at work. The prize winning event happened yesterday when Will and I spent over four hours at the hospital. Yeah. Long story. On Wednesday Will was complaining that his foot hurt, and being the caring big brother I am, I told him to suck it up and take some advil. So yesterday he calls me a little after lunch telling me he can't walk and he's in absolute agony. Uh oh. So I call Mindy (her mom works at the nearby hospital) for advice on whether or not to go to the Emergency Room. After some consideration I decided it was best to go pick him up and take him to the hospital in Pleasanton. Now for the record, I HATE hospitals. I don't know why, they just freak me out. So imagine my delight when the ER registrar tells us that they've just had four ambulances arrive within the last 10 minutes, and things are a little "hectic back there." Fantastic. So we get Will looked, meanwhile three more ambulances come in and wheel sick and dying people past us, as well as a lifeline helicopter arrival. For those of you who don't know, they don't use the lifeline for just anybody...you have to be in such bad shape that a regular ambulance a) can't get to where you are or b) won't get you to hospital in time. Yeahhhhh. So when the orderlies walked past us with blood soaked towels, I decided it was time for me to "go make some phone calls." The most interesting of the arrivals was an elderly lady who was brought in on a guerney complaining about nazis. Will's guerney was out in the corridor by the storage cabinets and one of the nurses came over and hooked a bottle into and IV. He smiled and said "This right here would knock you AND me AND him (pointing to Will) out cold....it's 250cc of Morphine." I was like "DAAAAMN!" He laughed and then kinda stood there and said "She's dying," and walked away. That was like being hit in the face with a 2x4. I didn't even know the lady but man I felt bad. ANYWAY, Will got x-rayed and poked and prodded etc, and was eventually diagnosed with a sprain of the tendon that goes across the top of the foot. Rest, anti-inflammatories and common sense was the prescription. Incidentally the ER staff got a real kick out of Will's answer to "Do you live around here?" Actually it was kinda funny, the lady who registered him said "Ok, so are you still living at 113 Turquoise Way?" We left that address in 1987 :) So Deanne gets back tomorrow, thank God. I've missed her alot, despite seeing her (kinda) last night in San Francisco (long story, not even going there.) The hectic pace will doubtless carry on into the weekend. Joy unbounded.

Sunburn Country

Ow..ow...OWWW. That is the sound of trying to put shoes on when you have sunburned feet. Usually I'm really good about putting on the ol' sunblock. I normally completely douse myself in SPF 400,000 but yesterday at Turlock Lake, I only doused the obvious areas, like face, back and neck. Now I have red knees and red feet. Pain. But it was worth it. We had a good day out on the boat with my in-laws. Will managed to get up on the skis for the first time and Deanne and Don gave a great demonstration on how it should be done. Me? Well I thrashed around on the tube and took about 100 photos. I gave skiing a whirl but failed to get up this time around. I think it was my shorts which, when I began accelerating, inflated to form a highly effective drag chute, increasing my drag coefficient by several thousand times. Anyway, I put all the photos up in the gallery. There's alot of them (almost 100) as well as a video of Will wiping out on the tube.

Marathon Weekend

MAN What a weekend.We've been planning to do something for my birthday (which was on Sunday) but I had no idea that it would be anything like this. On Thursday evening we (myself, Deanne, Mike and Mindy) all met at our place at about 7pm. I opened some presents before we left. Mike got me this awesome marble thing called Frigits; it's kinda like a vertical marble maze that goes on your fridge. Mindy got me the Trivial Pursuit; Know-it-all edition which rocked and this great book called "How to Rule the World." Deanne got me two awesome comedy CDs, Dane Cook and Steven Lynch. We listened to them on the drive down to Magic Mountatin - HYSTERICAL! They're two of my favorite comedians. She also gave me seasons one and two of Red Dwarf on DVD. GREAT show, reminds me of my youth. So I made out pretty well :) Anyway, we drove down to Magic Mountain in the Passat and got there a little after midnight. I was impressed with my car, it took just over HALF a tank of gas to get down there. Not bad. Anyway, we stayed at an average motel near the park and awoke early-ish the next morning to head to the park. I LOVE Magic Mountain. Well I love roller coasters and they have some of the best. The Goliath, Superman, ahhh it doesn't get much better than that. We stayed at the park for about six and a half hours, had our caricatures drawn and then piled in the car to head back north. We stopped at Harris Ranch on the way back for some steak and arrived home at about....umm....10? Something like that. On Saturday Mindy and Deanne went to Ikea (damn Ikea) and Mike and I hung out and played video games before heading back to Tracy to watch the Quakes WHOOP Dallas. Then the marathon day, Sunday. We started by meeting Mike and Mindy at their place and then heading off in the Subaru for Napa. We found the Wine Train station pretty easily and had a look around before heading onto the train. Great views, great food, great company. We left about four hours later, tired but happy. Mike drove home and we bid them farewell before heading to our next destination; Deanne's parents house. We arrived there at about 5pm and had a great dinner (no....more....food.) I got some great gifts including some wonderful and much needed clothes, and an awesome paper plane kit from Darlene and John. We had carrot cake (my favorite) for dessert. Unfortunately we had to leave early to head to our NEXT destination. By this time I was exhausted. We arrived at Ken's shop at about 8:15pm where Bob, Bali, Brian, Ken and Dan were waiting. Ken was kind enough to arrange a little soiree so we headed to Chevy's for dinner (or in my case, half a dessert.) Bob and Bali gave me a really nice bottle of Champagne. We left at about 11pm and I just crashed when we got home, I was exhausted. Thankfully, I took Monday off...a day to recover...or so I thought. Deanne and I had the pleasure of hauling a bunch of crap to the Tracy dump and after she went to work, I got to go to the DMV! YAY! I get there and the line is out the door but Deanne assured me it moved quickly. So I'm there about 15 mins when I see the sign that says "Cash or Check ONLY." I have neither. So I swear under my breath and go to an ATM machine. I return to the DMV and get back in line. TWO HOURS later, I get to the front of the line and renew the registration on the two cars. The lady tells me the total fee....I was one dollar short. ONE FUCKING DOLLAR! I was about to go postal (how ironic) when the lady was like "Don't worry about it, I'll register the car and then just drop off a check in the deposit box whenever you get a chance." I was stunned....a DMV employee being helpful? Was this bizarro world? No...it wasn't. Actually it was...cos later in the day I found out that my insurance agent not only lived five doors down from me but was Bob's cousin...how weird is that? Anyway, I had an AWESOME birthday and I want to thank Mike, Mindy, Ken, Bob, Bali, Brian, Dan, my in-laws, John and Darlene, and especially Deanne for making it so wonderful. Mike took some photos of the weekend which I blatantly stole (Thanks Mike!) You can see them here.