Nowhere to Run

GTAIV comes out tomorrow. Its going to be completely ape. I pre-ordered a copy from Amazon but apparently its not supposed to arrive until Friday. That's fine though, lots to do this week with the conference and visitors in town. I have been mildly obsessed with the Grand Theft Auto games for a while and GTAIV is supposed to live up to its monstrous hype. The graphics are pretty insane and what has impressed me the most with the clips I have seen is the physics which are surprisingly realistic in the car crashes and gun-fights. All this and they still let you pull a rocket launcher out from under your coat.



Duck and cover gun fighting has also been integrated which is an improvement on the older versions where you just had to stand in the middle of the street to shoot and aim.



Last one, notice how the hummer bounces like crazy when you are driving too fast. Its pretty damned cool. Also, rocket launcher featured again.



Kia made it back safely from Hong Kong. She had an awesome time and has even grown a fondness for dim sum during her trip (bonus for me). Glad to have her home though, it was not so fun to be at home alone. She got back on Sunday morning and within 45 minutes of her walking through the door the cat managed to slip and fall in the bathtub, and somehow got his foot caught in the soap holder twisting his hind leg pretty badly. He is limping around on it right now and Kia said it is fairly swollen. We are going to take him in tomorrow to get some x-rays. Good times. Pet insurance, I balked at it when I heard about it, man, there have been a couple times now where I could have used that stuff.
Getting close to the city. Pizza for dinner tonight and some laundry on the schedule. Later.

Haircut

This woman just cut my hair.
Why did I let her near my head with scissors you ask, well, my faith in humanity is too great I suppose. I asked for a trim and now I look like this guy.

Seriously, the lady had like the bright, cotton candy, pink lipstick which was a little too spread up her lip, milk-mustache style. Poppin' oxycotton faithfully.
Damn.

I Pays for it Like Mics in the Source

Just a quick update.
The move stuff is pretty much handled at this point. Did the last walk-through with the old landlord on Wednesday and have been trying to resurface since then. Still no phone/internet at the new apartment but this is supposed to be handled today. Kia gets back Sunday from Asia. Its pretty amazing how discombobulated I am while she is out of town.
I've been overusing my car this week because Kia is out and I have access to it. The Blazer is not much of a commute-mobile but I am pretty sure I have been amusing the other commuters with my chair-dancing as I blast my neck-breakers. Wow, lots of hyphens. That said, I have noticed the volume of blogging is directly correlated to how much time I spend on the shuttle.
OK, at work at this point so I am going to wrap it up. Might go to Napa with some of the conference visitors tomorrow.
Get your bars up.

It Ain't Over

Its been a long week and its only Tuesday. Today was one of those days where my meetings were stacked in a way that I ended up just going from meeting to meeting with a little downtime in-between to check mail/eat/bullshit. I always feel like those days end up being about 70% effective in getting anything done.
Riding the new shuttle again. Its working OK so far. The crowd on this shuttle is a lot less hipster than my other shuttles which went to Cole Valley and Western Edition. I guess I am not much of a hipster anyway more of just a dirty hippy. I have seen at least two people driving alongside my shuttle during this commute who were listening to their ipods via earbud headphones while driving. I can't believe people think this is a good idea, its freaking unbelievable. They must be from LA.
Headed back to the old apartment tonight to hopefully finish up the move/cleaning completely. It was pretty amazing how much more slowly it went with just me there last night. I managed to clean out the fridge and do the cabinets in the kitchen. I think I am going to try to stop by the hardware store to pick up some touch up paint to cover up some of the knicks in the trim.
Had a conversation with Dougherty today at work about Obama and Clinton. I won't get into the details - it turned out I was right - but the main point was that I kind of feel like Clinton has gotten hosed in the media and effectively labeled as bitchy and elitist. My mom is saying via IM right now that Hillary likely won PA but its still too close to call. I guess my main point on this is that I am not convinced that the anti-Hillary sentiments aren't, in many cases, purely emotional reactions to biased media coverage. That said, I would classify myself as an Obama supporter, I'm complicated, so what?
In the city now. Zito is pitching against Webb tonight in San Francisco. This would be an awesome time for him to get his stuff together. Go Giants!

I'm the King Until I Retire

On the shuttle, the new shuttle. Rode the old shuttle this morning but almost missed it because I wasn't hip to how long the walk/bus to the shuttle would take from the new apartment. Made it though, and now I know, kind of. The weekend move was pretty tough. Spent all day Saturday moving with the Uhaul and most of Sunday moving last minute stuff and cleaning the old apartment. Got some much needed help from Kev - thanks buddy.
I have been fighting off a cold since Friday and wrecking my muscles over the weekend was not conducive to my immune system kicking this cold. I managed to set the tv up on Saturday and eat two meals of Taco Bell this weekend so it wasn't a total wash. Headed to the old apartment tonight to do some additional cleaning, move the fridge stuff out and try to get completely out of the old spot by mid-week so that I can do the walk-through with the old landlord.
Kia is on her way to Hong Kong right now somewhere over the Pacific likely enjoying some sleep. She was going non-stop since Friday and while sleeping on the plane is not particularly restful I imagine she is sacked out pretty hard right now. I have to admit, I am pretty jealous of her getting to go to Hong Kong and China. I could go for some Cantonese food and a mango smoothie right about now. I guess I shouldn't complain. In terms of cities in the world with decent Chinese food, I am doing pretty good.
I won't have internet at my new place until Wednesday but the phone should be up and running tomorrow. I had intentions to update my address on Facebook during the shuttle ride, maybe I still have time....
I'm not particularly inspired to cook a decent meal with Kia out of town. Perhaps I will just shift my schedule to work later so that I can eat at work. Probably not....
Nuggets lost to the hated Lakers on Sunday. Giants are a half game up on the Dodgers.
Stupid Dodgers.

Get Your Paper Up

On the shuttle, pretty close to the city so this might be quick. Might not, traffic on Friday's is a little iffy. Damn, the y button on my computer is not working well so I have to bang on it to get the y to come out so people think I am an angry typer. Well, I kind of am. Shuttle ride has been mostly consumed with work, but its good that I wrapped the work I have been needing to do (for a week) before this weekend as Kia and I are moving tomorrow. I have been talking a great deal about the move over the last few weeks. Its both because I am excited for the new apartment but also because I freaking hate moving and I am trying to express this frustration.
I got an IM from my brother today. He often IMs me through his wife's IM account so its both a little strange to be called a "little shit" and to know that the ridiculous things that we IM about are logged into her mail account.
So Kia went to the apartment to pick up keys today in the afternoon, did a walk-through with the apartment manager to find that there was no fridge. Now, there WAS a fridge when we saw the apartment a few weeks ago the the fridge replacement process was apparently not finished. Monday they say. Whatever I guess, I will just have to drink my beer this weekend before it gets cold - beer bong anyone?
Man, that y key thing is pissing me off.
OK, about to hop the shuttle at civic center and hang out with my homeless homeboy's while waiting for Kia to show up to pick me up. We are going to do some light moving tonight, maybe the tv and some other stuff, no perishables though, because of the fridge. Maybe I should just buy some ice and do the cooler thing. Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Oh, and go Nuggets!

In the Jungle like Mowgli

Its Thursday. This week has gone surprisingly fast considering the fact that I feel like I have been catching up on sleep since this weekend because of camping. My ability to not pass out at 10pm worked against me in this case. If you just can't wait for pictures from camping you can check out Albert's poorly named blog (just jokes buddy). My photo set will need to be censored for more sensitive readers.
I signed up for LinkedIn yesterday on the strength of Matt Dougherty's recommendation. I haven't played with it much but I did let LinkedIn harvest my gmail contact list and pull out contacts who had previously signed up for LinkedIn accounts. It was interesting to get "how are you?" emails from people I haven't talked to in a few years.
The big move is this weekend. I have the Uhaul scheduled for Saturday starting early so I will need to drag myself out of bed and drive the rig back to the apartment. I am hoping that it has an air horn like on a big rig, you know, with the pull down. I actually think its going to be kind of small. I guess my dreams of big-rigging will have to be put on hold - for now.
Kia is off for Hong Kong on Monday for about a week. We have been rethinking the Caribbean trip in favor of a trip back to AK to visit the fam. I haven't been back to Alaska in the summer in a couple years so I am looking forward to that. Maybe a quick camping trip will be in order.
Oh and for those of you keeping track, I lost my fantasy basketball final to Allan. Its OK though, he cheated :)
Getting closer to work now. Busy day ahead of me.
Stay on your grizzly.

Mmmm Mango Smoothies

I've been pretty gassed this week. The weekend long beerfest was not particularly restful. I guess its my own damn fault.
Work has been reasonable this week, busy but not too apeshit. Still trying to get the house packed up and ready to go for the Saturday move. I hate moving. Its perhaps one of my least favorite things but I am excited for the new place. Its not as centrally located but roomier and with more light (which I may or may not have to get crazy curtains for to protect the tv from much hated glare...).
I will post some pics of the place when I have them taken. We are doing the lease/key thing on Friday morning so that might offer some opportunities to take a few photos.
Kia is getting ready for her Asia trip next week which should be a blast for her. She is going to spend an extra day or two in Hong Kong hanging out with a coworker who is from the area. I keep trying to talk her into trying the mango smoothies they have but she isn't sold on it yet. I will keep trying.
Speaking of mangoes, I always impressed the Chinese speakers in Beijing with knowing when they were talking about mango smoothies in Chinese. Uh, yeah guys, the word is the same in both languages. Whatever though, I will take credit for being multilingual.
Shuay fan pi.

Show and Prove

Got back from camping yesterday. Some of my knuckle-headed coworkers and I went down to Big Sur and acted a fool for a couple of days. It was pretty damned entertaining. The weather was beautiful this weekend and it felt good to be outside for the weekend. I think it helped alleviate some of the Spring fever I have been feeling. Maybe I will be good for another week or so.
On the shuttle to SF, just finished a little work and have almost made it to Monster park. The bus is pretty warm so most of the people around me are in various states of sleep. Even the guy across me who has been blasting techno music for the last half an hour. I tried to give him the non-verbal cues of "where the hell is that music coming from" even though I knew it was his computer. I looked at my computer, took my headphones off, looked at other people around us, he didn't get it. Or maybe he thinks that we are all into electronic music. Or maybe he is wearing snap pants and is actually Party Boy.
Packing up the apartment right now getting ready for the move this weekend. Its pretty amazing how much shit we have accumulated. Looking forward to the new apartment. The kitchen is bigger, with room for a table and some chairs which will be a major step up for us.
OK, now the electronic music guy just made more space for my laptop, so he isn't all bad. I'm still not willing to delete my earlier comments though. Do you like to party? I like to party.
Looks like another nice evening in the city. We were out at Fort Funston yesterday afternoon and right at 5pm the fog rolled in. I mean rolled in. Kia looked up and said, wow, its getting a little cloudy and the fog was on top of us in a matter of seconds. It was pretty cool to watch.
About to hop off the shuttle. Turkey burgers and packing tonight.
Giants vs. Arizona tonight - Go Giants!

Running with Fire

So "San Francisco is Bracing" for the impending protests at the torch running today. Apparently San Francisco is the only city in the US where they will be doing any Olympic torch related activity. Yeah, whoever didn't see the Tibet/human rights/environmental protest implications of this should lose their job. Its basically going to be ape. I am envisioning a gang of police trying to hold back bandanna-masked activists with super-soakers. Actually, that could be pretty entertaining. Maybe they should just give the torch runners some water balloons and have some fun with it. Not sure what time that is going on today, but I imagine it will make some of the major news outlets so I am probably not needed on the ground reporting my findings.
Football this evening. I am going to try not to tear my hamstring again, good times. Its all worth it to see Hiro's fluorescent UnderArmour outfits.
Keep it grimey.

*Update - check out what the official China Olympics website has to say about the torch in San Francisco
"San Francisco embraces Olympic flame with pride" Hmmmm.

**Update number 2.
Check out the courage (from official Olympics site):

I Rep More D than 12 Eminems

Most people know that I am mildly (all the way up to completely depending on the sport) obsessed with fantasy sports. I play fantasy sports for sports that I only passingly pay attention to (NCAA basketball, to a certain degree the NBA, the World Cup). Its with great shame that I admit getting fully smoked by the vast majority of my coworkers in the NCAA pool. That said, I was pretty pumped to see that hometown hero Mario Chalmers drained a three pointer to put the championship game into overtime where Kansas ran away with it. He did what Trajan Langdon couldn't do however many years ago he was playing for Duke. Trajan did go on to be the first Alaskan to play in the NBA and has had subsequent success in Europe - seriously. Boozer is by far the most successful Alaskan NBA player but shoot, he is from flipping Juneau (like the movie). Chalmers apparently went to my high school for a while. Wikipedia says he graduated from Bartlett though. Either way Chalmers gets the thumbs up from me - good shot buddy - the kid played well the whole damn series too.
I am playing pretty well in the fantasy NBA league that was started as I was leaving Beijing though. Allan - you are going down buddy! Also playing in an NL only baseball league. Should be pretty interesting.
Speaking of baseball, how about them Giants? Trying to stay positive. Its still early and all that, but I am starting to get ripped on by people who don't even follow baseball at work (Dougherty). Not that Dougherty's fair-weather fan mentality is rubbing off on me, but damn, lets go guys. They started the day with a 1-6 record, one Detroit win away from being tied for the worst record in baseball. I am OK with the small ball approach they have taken with the line-up, but small ball only works if the pitching can hold the other team to under four runs. Lincecum starts tonight, he is on my fantasy team. See, tied it back together.

The Shoobidoo'op Hop Strictly Hardware

Headed back to SF on the shuttle right now. Traffic has been pretty light so I will try to do a brain dump here pretty quick.
Today was fairly unproductive. I am feeling quite Spring Feverish at this point. Its a good thing I am going camping with some of my knuckleheaded coworkers this Friday or I might just be completely useless for the coming few weeks. Work is pretty busy right now, I guess it usually is. Kia and I went to Green's on Friday and had a delicious dinner. I had a cheese plate, some risotto and an apple tarte for desert. Kia had a salad, bbq tofu and chocolate pudding, it was pretty much fantastic.
Spent the majority of Sunday packing up our living room. We got some boxes from Kia's old work on Saturday and promptly ran through all of them packing our books and living room stuff. My lower back is already sore from moving boxes of books, getting old. Our move date is a couple weeks out but we need to get our place packed and ready to go because I am out this weekend - see above - and Kia is headed to Asia right after we move for about a week.
Albert is back from Beijing - he seemed to have a good time which is not unexpected. He brought back some of the Chinese hats with the braid sewn into the back for the team. In my opinion this is not as good as the duck tongue, yak meat and fake leather hats that I brought back. I mean, I brought three things.
Made some seafood for dinner last night. Boiled shrimp and pan-fried scallops. It was pretty tasty if I don't say so myself. We also roasted a chicken last night so that we would have food ready to go this week so that's what we will probably eat tonight. The wife and I have been shopping a lot at the semi-close Whole Foods, its been responsible for a major upswing in my willingness to cook. Also a major upswing in my expensive cheese purchasing. Mmmm, expensive cheese. I feel like Groo the Wanderer - picture included for reference in-case you are unfortunate enough not to know what I am talking about - although Groo's obsession was with cheese dip, not expensive cheese.


Yeah, that's two comic book references in two posts, so what?
Keep it really real.

Vanglorious

Man, I got some flak today at work about my blog. Top complaints:

1. I don't have my own domain (I think the implication was I can't afford one - this is actually kind of true if I got my name thanks to the actor who plays Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter, what a tool. I have been thinking about getting a domain but then again it would cost me money while blogspot is free....)
2. Prevalence of YouTube videos on the blog (Come on guys, even I bust on myself for this one)
3. Use of default Blogger template (Uh, have you seen the latest updates? They are looking bad ass)
4. Quality of my plug-ins (OK, this one is just painfully nerdy)
5. Something about ghostriding the whip (I am pretty sure this came from Pat and he thought it had something to do with the guy below)


Thats a pretty sick image. Actually, now I kind of wish ghostriding the whip did have something to do with that guy.
Other than verbal abuse from my coworkers, things are good. We got approval on that apartment we are looking at so that's pretty exciting. Move in date is the 19th of April. Pretty pumped about the extra space. Maybe we will get a new living room chair. Yeah, that sounds good.
Dinner reservations tomorrow evening at Greens. Looking forward to that. We haven't been out there for a while and for veggie cuisine, hell cuisine in general, they do it up. I have been meaning to try Suppenkuche too so we may have to hit that this weekend too. Other than that I have big plans to pack up/go through and take to Goodwill a ton of the stuff in our apartment.
Giants pulled off a win yesterday so they went 1 and 2 for the opening series. In my opinion this is not a bad start. Considering they were tied in the 9th on the second game, I kind of feel like they split the series. Stupid Dodgers.
Bonds has been in the news. I did the ESPN survey (mostly to see the results) and 55% of responses felt that Bonds is a hall of famer. I don't disagree.
Getting close to the my stop, sort of.

If it were a dog our relationship would be 70

Still waiting to hear back on that apartment. I wouldn't normally be anxious about this but we put our notice in a couple days ago so I am feeling a little bit up in the air. I am sure it will be kosher though. Trying to figure out the moving thing. Kia is headed to Asia in a couple weeks so if and when we get the apartment we will have to hustle on the move thing. Oy.
No new Lost tonight which is pretty obnoxious. I kind of feel like that show is popular enough at this point that they can kind of do whatever the hell they want.
Things are pretty good. Fairly insanely busy right now and trying ot fight off a cold. These things tend to be in direct opposition to each other and one, usually the cold, wins out. Extra sleep should help with this.
So today is Kia and my anniversary, well our second anniversary, we keep track of both the wedding and the dating dates. This one is the dating anniversary and its actually our tenth anniversary which is pretty awesome. Its making me feel a little old though, but its exciting. Actually, Kia and I have lived together for the vast majority of this our time together so its beginning to rival the time I lived at home. Its pretty amazing to think back over the last 10 years.
My boss said today that my wife must have great patience. Uh, duh.
Love you wifey.

*Update - Special thanks to Seth who said he would be watching Lost tonight, misleading me into thinking it was Thursday for the last 2 hours. Jerk!

Rep Yo City!

So I got an email from Sara today - well I sent her an email and a I got a response - anyway, she asked something to the effect of: "Is there anything going on in your life that you aren't blogging about?" It made me a little sad that people could consider the sum total of my life happenings to be contained in the blogosphere. It made me think that I should begin to take my blog more seriously and put some effort into genuine consideration of my life. Basically it made me think, maybe I should stop posting videos of Kweli and the SAS crew blazing and talking about reality tv and stop posting about ODB. Then, in my moment of contemplation (it wasn't actually this moment, but go with me here) I read Dougherty's blog post about the University of Florida moving up three spots in the national MBA school rankings. Uh, yawn. Dougherty, buddy, I know this thing is linked off of your resume, but come on, spice it up a little. I am going to stick with ODB.
Speaking of hip-hop, I have been abusing my ear drums the last few months with any songs I can find from Sean Price. I was a pretty big Heltah Skeltah fan back in the day but Sean P.'s new albums are basically insane. Get that mess.
OK, going to round out the Dilla interviews with the last few here.





The fifth one (first one above) is actually not posted by Stonesthrow directly on Youtube, but somebody else threw it up there. Not sure why. I will avoid speculation. The last video is pretty entertaining but features drug use - not for the kiddos.
Pulling into my stop so I am going to wrap up.