While in California I noticed that many of the auto ads on billboards were all about MPG. Here in Texas, it’s still about power and luxury. I want a Prius, btw!

Just a quick recap of the weekend. Saturday we had a visit from a guy who does residential and commercial window tinting. The Texas sun is a bitch, and we want to cut down on our A/C bill, plus keep the house more comfortable. The owner of the company came out and gave us an estimate and left us some samples. He was really nice and friendly. I think we will use him, although we probably won’t get as many windows treated as we had first thought.

After that, we went to Mariko’s coworker’s wedding. It was held at her house, and it was really nice. I missed the ceremony because I was in the minivan with “Mr. Meltdown” (Koa), who had a fit just before the ceremony. I decided that it would be best to just wait till the ceremony was over, then rejoin the festivities when it was ok to be noisy. The food that the family prepared was great: turkey, roast chicken, bbq chicken, mac n cheese, stuffing, potato salad, collard greens, sweet potato pie, and lemonade. It was all really yummy. In the backyard, there was a giant inflatable moonwalk thing with a big Spongebob on the front. All the little ones had a lot of fun. That night, the kids crashed early!

Today we went to Sakurakai (Japanese kids’ playgroup) which was at our friend’s house in Steiner Ranch. It was a pool party, and was great. The pool was awesome, with waterfalls and a beautiful view. We had pizza and beer (for the parents) and everyone had a good time. This evening we just relaxed and played around at home.

That’s pretty much it. Time to read a bit and snooze!

I am looking forward to some real DDR on the Wii, and Hottest Party seemed pretty cool. But I just saw the new screens and vids, and I don’t really like the character style at all. Enough with the big goofy heads already! I remember turning on the big head option on an old Star Wars fighting game on the PSOne, and it was amusing for about a minute. I am hoping they will put regular sized heads back on the DDR characters for this version. Otherwise they should rename the game DDR: Thunderbirds Version or something, cuz they look like goddamned marionettes.

On July 6th I went with my brother and my friend Tony to see the Dodgers play the Marlins at Dodger Stadium. I hadn’t been there for about 10 years, and a lot had changed. First of all, parking is still a bitch. I read about how it was now wonderful, and that you could get in and out of the parking lot in five minutes. That is BS. Plus, it now costs 15 frickin dollars to park! Goddam McCourts.

Anyways, the stadium is still beautiful at first glance. I actually like the color of the seats, which are muted blues, yellows and greens. It looks cool. But now there are advertisements everywhere! It’s pretty depressing. Everywhere you look, there is an ad. There is this video thing that goes around the entire infield that looks pretty cool, except that they put an ad up there for most of the inning, and it looks horrible. There was a State Farm ad on for an inning and consequently a big red bar was splashed across Dodger Stadium for 10 minutes. Blasphemy! One of the charms of Dodger Stadium growing up was the lack of ads. There was just a 76 and (later) a Coca Cola ad in the outfield. Goddam McCourts.

Another huge change is the addition of prerecorded songs for each batter, plus way too much video on the giant screen. I used to like hearing the organ music between innings, with maybe a little blooper vid or shots of the fans sprinkled in. But Dodger Stadium has just gotten too loud. At least they do still have some of the organ music played by organist Nancy Bea Hefley. I wish they would let her play more. I can imagine Jamie McCourt phoning up to the organist to stop playing and turn on the rap.

I had a couple Dodger Dogs, and they are still great. I was surprised that they are still under $5! But $10 for a cup of beer (large) is insane! And the peanuts are not the same. First of all, they are in plastic bags, and secondly, they cost $5.50! For peanuts! Frickin McCourts!

The field has changed a bit since the addition of those luxury box seats. It doesn’t look right anymore. The field is too “squished”. And it is not as much of a pitcher’s ballpark anymore because of the loss of some foul territory where fielders could make plays. That kind of thing makes me mad because now it’s just another thing that sets today’s stats apart from the old days. But at least there are luxury boxes! Woohoo!

I blame the McCourts of course. They must be getting rich. But at the expense of the fan experience. I guess I am just an “old-timer” and wish for the good old days. Kids growing up now will never know what it was like to go to see a big-league game that wasn’t tainted with the loud music or loud ads. A nice relaxing time at the ballpark is now a rock concert.

Lastly, this was the first Dodger game I have been to where I didn’t hear Vin Scully’s voice coming from a sea of transistor radios. I missed that. I guess a lot of the Dodger Stadium charm really is gone. Oh, the Dodgers lost it in extra innings. I blame the McCourts.

We are back home in Texas. Yesterday was crazy because we woke up at 4:30am to make it to our 7:25am flight out of LAX, so we were tired all day. I was falling asleep in the afternoon. But now it is back to work! 🙁 More on the trip to follow!

Today we started the day in Monterey and traveled up to San Francisco to meet our friends Yousuke, Yoko, and Emi-chan. We had an awesome dimsum lunch at Yank Sing at the Rincon Center, then went to Pier 39 to do a little sightseeing. It was crowded and windy, but lots of fun. After that, we went to our hotel, the Best Western Tomo in J-Town. It’s a great hotel! There is anime playing in the lobby, and the rooms have anime-style wallpaper, lcd tv’s, hi-speed Internet, iPod-ready clock radios, etc etc. I’d definitely recommend this hotel! After checking in, we went to the Japan Center and had some dinner. I ordered Kare Raisu, XXX-Spicy with chicken and shredded cheese. It was delicious, and just the right amount of heat. A nice big Sapporo biiru washed it all down. Now Mariko and the kids are sacked out, but I gotta get my Internet fix in since we were without it last night. San Francisco is a fun city and I wish I had more time here. I definitely need to check out a San Francisco Giants game sometime.

Check out my Trip to California Flickr set for pics!

Tomorrow it is time to head a little farther north to the Wine Country!!!

Had a good weekend! On Saturday I took Koa to his Tee-Ball game in the morning. He was kind of fussy, and didn’t want to get out of the car, but once we were with the team, he did great. He ran the bases better, and even picked up three balls while fielding. After the game, we got ready for Bay’s Birthday party, which was at Chuck E. Cheese’s. It was a small party, but everyone had fun. Bay got about 350 tickets from playing games, so he got to pick out some cool toys. The best one is this big black spider that is kind of sticky, so you can throw it on the ceiling and it slowly peels off and drops to the ground. It’ creepy. After the party, we came home and cleaned up the house because…

Sunday morning we had 11 families over for Sakurakai (Japanese Kids Playgroup) Tanabata celebration. It was a lot of fun. The kids did some crafts and played a bunch. For snacks we had grapes, watermelon, graham crackers with marshmallows, and popcorn. I think the kids had a good time.

After the playgroup was over, we headed over to the outlet mall to do a little clothes shopping. The boys had fun riding on the coin-operated vehicles. I only let them have one ride, but they got lucky and got the tail end of another boy’s ride since he left the ride early. I bought a couple shirts and Mariko picked up a bag and some sandals. The boys got ice cream.

For dinner we went to Korea House, which is a great Korean BBQ place on Anderson. We had spicy pork, chicken, tempura udon for the kids, and of course lots of little dishes filled with Korean goodies such as bean sprouts, sweet potato, seaweed, daikon, tofu, and of course, kimchee. It was all excellent and we got stuffed.

That was pretty much the weekend. Too short, but still tiring. Everyone except me is totally crashed out!

I bought a new LiteOn DVD burner the other day and hooked it up to my desktop computer last night. Our old burner was not burning nicely. I try to copy come files from dvd’s I have burned with it, and I am getting errors. I am not sure if the burn went bad, of if the reading back is bad. Anyways, the new drive is a lot faster, so it’s a lot more convenient. Plus being an external device, I will be able to use it on the laptop if I need to.

It is also a dual-layer burner, which means if I burn to a DVD-DL disc, I can fit 8.5GB of data. The discs are more expensive though, and it won’t burn as quickly, but it might be convenient for fitting a whole dorama series on a single disc. We’ll see if I end up doing it though. I did burn a backup this morning, and the 16x speed for DVD+R was great! My old burner was only 4x, so the speed increase is really noticeable.

This burner also has a couple of features that make it pretty convenient. One is the “EZ-Dub” button, which makes copying a disc super easy. The other is “Backup” which just kicks off the simplified burning software. I think Nero is pretty easy (a copy is included with the drive) so I usually just use that.

Appetizer

Name a funny habit you have.

I talk in my sleep (so I have heard).

Soup

If you could instantly know how to play a musical instrument, which one would you pick?

I’d like to be able to play the piano better.

Salad

How long is your hair?

Short. Probably ½ inch on the sides and back and 1½ on top.

Main Course

When was the last time you forgave someone, and who was it?

I can’t remember.

Dessert

What is your favorite kitchen appliance?

I like all of the normal ones because they make life easier. But I really like our food processor because it saves me from grating cheese by hand.

I can’t be the only one who thinks Rolls Royce’s are just plain ugly.