Daily ramblings and interesting things I find.

Friday, November 30, 2001

Harry Potter

We saw Harry Potter tonight. I thought it was a really good movie, and not as long as I expected. It went by pretty fast for me. Tricia was a little disappointed because she just read the book the previous weekend. When is the movie ever as good as the book?

Monday, November 26, 2001

Fantasy Football and Vipers

I ordered the Viper today for our wedding!!! Oh, you're gonna see some smoke alright.

We also had Monday Night Football at our house tonight... Good thing we cleaned up. It turned out to be a great night because my Fantasy Football team won again, and it depended on one of the players that was playing in tonights game. I usually don't care who wins, I just like to watch a good game, in any sport. But I was really getting into it. I mean, I was actually hoping that this other player would get hurt so that my player would pull ahead. Pretty scary huh?

Sunday, November 25, 2001

Dreamcast Shopping Spree

Jordan and I took on the crowds at Best Buy this morning to get some killer deals on Sega Dreamcast games. I bought NFL Blitz 2000, Championship Surfer, and Test Drive 6, all for 8 bucks each. I absolutely love Blitz! And Surfer is really, really cool. I also picked up a 17" monitor for Kevin for $75 and was tempted to get an $80 DVD player, but I just don't trust the no-name brands when it comes to electronics.

Christmas Decorations

Got out the Christmas decorations today. Usually that would be no big deal, but let me tell you about Tricia and her Christmas decorations. When I moved in with her I organized all of her holiday decorations in storage boxes and the Christmas stuff alone took up a nice-sized portion of the garage. Now, the garage is kinda far away from the condo itself, so I had to actually load up my truck, which has a long bed, and it was basically a FULL load. That's my Tricia!

She decorated the place while we both cleaned up and everything actually looks really nice. We'll probably go get a tree next weekend.

Saturday, November 24, 2001

Sleeping In

I wanted to meet Tricia at home around noon, but it was raining so hard I had to wait until about 1:30 to hit the road. By the time I got to LA, the freeway was so packed it took me forever to get home. Tricia and I just lounged around the rest of the day. Ryann was with her dad, so we ended up falling asleep around 8:30. I woke up an hour later, but Tricia slept the whole night till about 9:30 the next morning... Which is VERY strange because sleeping in to her usually means an extra half-hour or so.

Thursday, November 22, 2001

Turkey Day 01

Today is Thanksgiving. Tricia left with her family to Arizona at 3:00 am this morning, and I took off to Toni's house in Oxnard around 7:30am.

Thanksgiving dinner was great! Kevin cooked a big fat turkey with some ham and all the goodies. He is such a good cook.

Wednesday, November 21, 2001

Sick in Bed

Both Tricia and I are starting to feel a little sick, so we ordered some Olive Garden to go, and ate in bed with a bottle of wine. It was nice.

Monday, November 19, 2001

Another Good Day With Dad

Took a day off from work today to hang out with my Dad some more. We didn't do much... Went walking around downtown Huntington Beach in the afternoon. Today was a beautiful day, I must say.

We then met up with Tricia's family at a restaurant to watch Monday Night Football. That was the first time they met, so it was cool.

After that, I drove him to Scandia in Ontario to meet my sister Cathy (which is about half-way to Victorville). Hung out with them for a little while, playing video games with Jordan, then took off.

Sunday, November 18, 2001

A Good Day with Dad

Today Tricia and I took my Dad to the Orange County Swap Meet. It's pretty cool there. We found a little something we might use for the wedding favors.

We then went over to The Block and saw Heist with Danny DeVito and Gene Hackman. I thought it was pretty damn good. Great acting by DeVito, I like that guy.

Tenacious D was on Space Ghost tonight. It was great!

Saturday, November 17, 2001

The Minister

Tricia and I met with one of the ministers at The Wayfarers Chapel to talk about our ceremony. He said we're getting married by the head honcho himself, the president of the congregation who will be in town from Canada. I guess that's a pretty big deal.

Picked my Dad up from LAX today. He's in town from Florida for Thanksgiving and to look around because he might be moving here in a year or two. So I need to get busy and do some research.

Friday, November 16, 2001

Jack Black

Ryann is with her dad this weekend, so I took Tricia to see Shallow Hal with Jack Black. I'm a huge Jack Black fan and I think he did great in this movie. The problem is that I'm a little too familiar with his character from Tenacious D, so I tend to expect that kind of craziness whenever I see him. I thought he was great in High Fidelity, but just Ok in Saving Silverman. I guess it's not his fault, these are just the roles he's playing.

Oh yeah, today I finished the new redesign of my company's site: theSupplyChain.com

You can find screenshots of some older versions on this page.

Thursday, November 15, 2001

The Meeting

Tonight Tricia and I had a little sit-down talk with her family about the wedding. Turns out Tricia isn't having much fun. In fact, everyone is pretty much stressing her out. When her and I have to do something for the wedding, we make sure we're having fun while we're doing it. But with everyone else, my family included, there's always an issue of money, time or inconvenience. And everyone has been complaining to Tricia about it and we finally had enough. We got everything straightened out and got a lot of crap off our chests. Now let's have some fun damnit!!!

Afterwards, I did homework with Ryann for the first time. You wouldn't think that drawing the letter "d" would be so complicated until you try it with a kindergardener.

I've had a pretty stressful evening. I'm gonna kick back, relax, and watch Space Ghost on Adult Swim. I don't watch much TV, but I think that's my favorite show right now.

Tuesday, November 13, 2001

Wedding Stuff

Today we knocked off a couple more things off our wedding to-do list. The first thing is my dad's plane ticket to come out here. It was pretty tough because he can't stay that long and it's right after the holidays. But I got a pretty good deal on it.

And a huge item from our list is the honeymoon! We're going on a 7-day Mexican Riviera cruise... and Tricia managed to get the whole thing for free!!! She's been collecting American Express points for the last few years and ended up with about 225,000. No, she didn't buy $225,000 worth of stuff, this is from the companies she's work for and the stuff they bought on her card. Cool huh?

The cruise is 250,000 points, so Ian gave us 10,000 and Debi gave us 15,000 as their wedding gifts. These are such great gifts. Thank you so much!

Now, the actual transfering of points is a whole different story. It turns out that AMEX doesn't allow the transfering of points. Why not? Who in the hell knows? With any other program like this, you can transfer points till you're blue in the face. Any ways, Tricia convinced them to make an exception because it's our honeymoon (and because she's spent a butt-load of cash with this card). So, they eventually made the exception and allowed us to transfer points.

We leave at four o'clock the day after our wedding.

Saturday, November 10, 2001

The Wedding Shower

Today was our wedding shower, or uh, Tricia's wedding shower. I guess it's more of a chic thing. Anyhow, we got some really cool stuff. Now I can start bugging Tricia every day to write the Thank You cards like she did with the invitations. Ha ha ha... sweet revenge!

During the shower I watched Ryann with all the other guys and their kids. We went over to Mike Dyson's, hung out and watched some college ball. Poor Ryann was bored out of her mind, so I started to make up games with the drink coasters.

Toni, Cathi, my Mom and Julie all stayed the night at our place, so it had to be *spotless*. I watched Memento for the third time with them. I think that is a great movie! Probably my favorite movie of the year.

Thursday, November 08, 2001

Let's Get Physical

Went in for my once-in-a-while physical with Dr. Punim. He didn't give me the ol' cough test, but everything else checked out ok. I should get blood test results in about a week. Dr. Punim's a pretty cool guy. I've been looking for a doctor ever since I've been in California (since 1990), and everytime I find one that I like, they move. This guy has been Tricia's doctor and her mom's doctor for years. So I think he'll be around for a while.

Tuesday, November 06, 2001

Chuck E. Cheese and Cheap Gas

Took Ryann to Chuck E. Cheese's tonight because she got 10 "blue days" in a row. She's in kindergarten and they give the kids blue days if they are good. Let's just hope she never gets a red day.

Of course, on my way over there, I run out of gas. What an idiot. I thought I knew my gas gauge well enough to run it low. I guess not. AAA saved my ass in less than a half-hour. I've been with them for 11 years, it's about time I use them. I think I ran out of gas maybe once before.

I can't believe gas prices are back down to $1.15 per gallon. That is so awesome! It's only awesome because my friggin truck gets only 12 miles per gallon. It really sucked a couple months ago when it was around $1.80.

Monday, November 05, 2001

Invitations, Unpacking and Flip Books

Mailed out the invitations this morning, so keep an eye on your mailboxes and let me know what you think.

Finally finished unpacking our bedroom. Yes, I moved in a month ago, and yes I'm still unpacking. Between designing the wedding invitations and working on the Surrex web site, I've had absolutely no time to finish unpacking. So, now I'm done... except for the pictures I have to hang... Damn! I have to get this done before this weekend when my sisters come over for the wedding shower. We also have to clean. It it VERY important that the house is spotless when my sisters come over. They are very meticulous when it comes to cleanliness... but I love them any ways.

Tonight I also taught Ryann about animation with a flip-book I made with extra paper from the invitations. I drew the stick (for the body) and she drew the head, arms and legs. I started each page, moving the stick over a little on each page. After she drew in all the body parts, we had a very cool animation of a stick figure dancing across the page. It is so awesome! Tricia got a big kick out of it.

Saturday, November 03, 2001

The Wedding Invitations

Finished the wedding invitations today... F I N A L L Y ! !

This project has been so stressful for me, I'm not really sure why. I guess it's from the pressure of designing something for my own wedding. I was going to just buy them, but I had a feeling that everyone just expected me to do them myself. So I basically had no choice.

I think they turned out pretty cool, but I'm usually pretty critical about my own designs. They will be mailed out Monday morning, which is only 5 days late. Not too shabby!

A big "Thanks" goes out to Tricia, Emily, Marlene & Mitchell for helping me put them together. And I just have to say that Marlene is the fastest envelope-licker I've ever seen in my life.

Tricia and I treated ourselves to a movie for working so hard. We saw From Hell with Johnny Depp and the lovely Heather Graham. It was pretty good but a little slow, which made it a little hard to follow. Plus I was just exhausted to really enjoy it. It was, however, a nice treat away from today's typical movies crammed with special effects.

Thursday, November 01, 2001

Tool and Tricky

Just got back from one of the best shows I've ever been to, and my favorite band, Tool. They played at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre in Irvine and just rocked for two hours straight. It was great. They had huge screens in the back with the videos, animations and claymations of Adam Jones playing. The stage setup was kinda weird. They had two platforms in the back; one for the drummer, and one for Maynard, the lead singer, and the two guitarist were up front. I just thought that it was an interesting layout. Plus these two "performance artists" came out a couple times contorting and hanging from the rafters... very disturbing, but intriguing at the same time... much like a car crash.

Oh yeah, Tricky opened and joined Tool for a song or two. We got to see half of the opening show and that was pretty damned good.