Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

So before this becomes irrelevant, I wanted to note that I made it out to the National Mall again on Tuesday.  I really wanted to be part of the crowd to watch and witness Obama making history.  It was a really surreal and wonderful experience.  It was such a huge crowd.  Picture fireworks night on English Bay, times 10.  No drunks, but a lot of very happy cold people.  I took a bunch of pictures, and if I haven’t shown them to you yet, you can check them out from my picasa album.

Also, here’s a video of the nation’s favourite President and the warm reception that he received:

The crowd was also singing the Na-na-nah Heyy Goodbye song.  Funny stuff.  As I alluded to, it was another cold friggin day.  It wasn’t so bad until the sun hid behind the Washington Monument for about 40 minutes.  That’s when my ass nearly froze off.  It was supposed to be about -4, but with the wind, it was more like -12.  When the moment was over, we thought about heading to Pennsylvania Avenue to check out the parade, but considering it took us over an hour to break away from the crowd, we didn’t bother.  We got some food, got some hot chocolate from Starbucks, and headed home.

I was most impressed by the way Metro was able to handle the volume of people. I believe they estimated that ridership was close to 1.4 million people that day. It wasn’t that bad at all.  Rush hour on a regular work day can be much worse or even coming out of a sporting event from the Verizon Center can be way crazier.

Anyhoo, I’ve got some more topics to cover, but I’ll wait a few more days.  I promise that it won’t be 6 months again.  Peace!

Today is MLK Day, the eve of Barack’s inauguration to be the 44th President of the United States.  It’s been fun to work and live in this part of the world as it’s been a unique situation.  Did you know that Barack has a lookalike?  This guy could make a tonne of money.  It’s been ass cold here (it’s snowing as I’m typing) and there are a tonne of extra people in town.  1.2 million people is the record to beat for inauguration day, and we should be able to shatter that tomorrow.  Yesterday I stood for 9 hours to be part of the We Are One concert outside of the Lincoln Memorial.  I virtually got as close as I a civilian could get on the mall.

My vantage point early on.

They barricaded access to the memorial and unless you had a special ticket to watch on the elevated platform, you couldn’t get within 120-150 feet from the show.  We got to watch on giant screens amongst hundreds of thousands of people though.  It was a fun event and most people were very pleasant.  People started climbing trees and taking pictures with other people’s cameras.

Not a protesting tree-hugger

There were, however, some disrespectful people, kids swearing and being little fuckers.  Where we were standing, it was really crowded and there were tonnes of idiots trying to get a spot near us.  There were LOTS of people wearing fur coats.  PETA would have had a field day yesterday.  Two such people were right behind us.  There was a family of 4 that had laid out a couple of blankets and they were taking up a lot of space, just so they could literally lie on the floor and nap while waiting for the concert to start.  Here’s a picture of the two adults:

Remind anyone of Coming to America?

These two fur coat wearing bitches were nasty, selfish, unpleasant people and I was glad as shit when someone decided to walk right over them and onto them.  The culprit (hero) decided she needed to get through them.  It was hilarious to see a huge dirty footprint on the black fur coat.  Man, the woman wearing the black coat was pissed.  And the offender was giving them shit for wearing fur coats too!  Haha!  I wanted to clap in applause and I wasn’t the only one thinking this too.  The other people around me thought the same thing.  To further describe how brutal this family was, when the concert was about to start, they stood up, packed up, and left the spot.  They pushed their way past us to get closer.  The audacity!  Everyone started looking at each other to ask if they were for real.

I was a little choked about the organizers and security because they had issued a list of items that were prohibited at the show; things that would have made life easier while waiting in the cold.  I complied and did not bring anything that was not allowed, but apparently I was an idiot cause everyone was allowed into the venue with all sorts of these prohibited items.  And I know they weren’t sneaking them in either because they were items like: tripods, thermos’, backpacks.  WTF??!  You weren’t allowed strollers, but I’m sure there were some that got through.  Chairs weren’t on the list, but why let a chair in and not a stroller?  Then again, I didn’t see too many young children/babies there.  But anyway, I would have brought a tripod, and a backpack, and a thermos if I knew they weren’t really enforcing their bullshit list.

Anywya, for those who didn’t hear about this free show, there were a lot of big names that showed up: U2, Beyonce, Tom Hanks, Tiger Woods, etc… Even George Lucas was in the crowd.  If anybody has seen footage of the show, did anyone notice the little girl sleeping being Barack?  When someone was performing a song, they would cut cameras to Barack every once in a while, and directly behind him, was a little girl in fuschia colored jacket, snoring away.  The crowd got a kick out of that.  I think Usher, Shakira, and Stevie Wonder was my favourite collaboration.  Overall, it’s cool to think that I was able to see all of those great performers, as well as the soon-to-be President of the United States.  It’s probably as close as I will ever get to seeing one.  That’s good enough for me!

Hours before show started

So I had originally started this posting about two months ago.  I never really finished it and at this point, I’m not going to bother.  Time to move on to more current events.  Anyway, I’m going to publish it for you to read.  More to come as there’s been a lot going on these days.

I kept putting this off, day after day, week after week, and suddenly it was four months later.  I think that I’ve kept in touch with everyone over this period of time anyway, so I don’t feel too bad about slacking off.  And not that the world has stopped moving in the process.  America finally smartened up and elected Barack Obama a few weeks ago.  Two years ago, I thought that it would be mighty interesting to be in town if it came true.  Well, we’re less than two months away from the inauguration now and word is that there might be 4 million people descending on Washington, D.C. to witness the historic day.  My understanding is that every hotel is booked around January 20th and people are starting to rent out their homes for big coin.  I am more than likely going to check it out myself and I’ve put my name into a draw with my local Congressman for a ticket to see it up close and personal.  Worse comes to worse, people are allowed to watch it on big screen at the National Mall.  All I know it’s gonna be nutbar crazy that day.  Long lines and jam packed public transit.

I just came back from Toronto for the US Thanksgiving long weekend.  I was lucky enough to go to a Leafs game cause good ol’ Henry scored some tickets from work.  Thanks again Henry!  All the rumours are true.  All the people that show up to Leafs games are stuffy corporate adult bores.  The arena is very similar to GM Place, but they have plenty more luxury suites.  There aren’t many families there either.  Families cannot get tickets or they cannot afford them.  It’s a damn shame.  Anyway, they won.  Big whoop!  Losers!

I was watching Survivor a couple of weeks ago, and someone accidentally knocked over some uncooked rice and it landed on the ground.  And these nimrods felt that it had gone to waste cause it touched the dirt.  These people are retarded.  I don’t know if it’s an Asian thing, but they could have just washed it or give it a nice rinse when they were ready to cook it.  What a bunch of idiots.

Finally I’m free!  In a few weeks, I’ll officially be out of Support!  Woohoo  I’ve been waiting to report this forever, but nothing really seemed official until today.I guess it’s worth the wait though because I’ll be moving to our Business Development department and I’ll get a new title: Client Care Manager for our publishing partners.  I guess this position was created for me so I’m feeling pretty stoked about it.  Life should be different and improved.  I hope!  Let’s put it this way, I was not thrilled for various reasons the last few months, so this is really a breath of fresh air.  It’s the light at the end of a very long dark tunnel.  The other option was to quit and go home, but I’m not exactly ready for that yet.  We just moved into a brand new building in Chinatown and the new space has been nice.  Everything’s new and there’s way more space now.  We went from 6/7 small floors to 3 big ones and I even hear we’re trying to get one more floor below us.  So if anybody cares, things are going pretty well.

Speaking of work, I was christening the toilet last week when I heard someone come into the restroom.  He kinda swung open the stall door next to me kinda hard, muttered something, and then walked out of the stall and headed towards mine.  Well, I guess the violence of his door opening knocked the lock of my door open.  So when I thought he was about to be denied entry to my stall, I was completely caught off guard when he was able to swing the door wide open.  I don’t know if this has ever happened to anyone else, and I highly doubt it, but it’s a really odd and fucked up feeling to have some stranger (the janitor) looking at you with your pants at your ankle.  He quickly apologized and I quickly lept to the door to re-lock it.  Honestly, I was really too shocked to have a reaction, but I bet the expression on my face was priceless.  So my next move was to get the fuck outta there.  The funny thing is, the guy stayed in the room to finish his maintenance.  As I washed my hands, there was this awkward silence in the room.  I kinda wanna bring up the problem with the lock with the building people, but I really don’t know how to approach them with my concerns.  Do I tell them what happened?  Fucked up eh? 

Alright, moving along.  So what else is new?  It’s been a couple months since I updated this blog.  I won’t bang out everything cause that’s just boring.  So let’s see.  I celebrated Independence Day for the second time.  Some of us called it America Day for fun.  I think it sounds better anyway.  I have pictures!  See how beautiful the fireworks are here.  I also went out to the Canadian Embassy on Canada Day.  It’s only 5-6 blocks away from the office and it was a perfect way to spend lunch.  They had this huge party going on with free burgers, hot dogs, poutine(!!), Kool-Aid, pop, juice, water, and beer!  That was totally worth the walk.  We got there at a perfect time too.  Any later and we woulda been screwed.  By the time we left, it was really hard to get food. 

One of my buddies here, knows a girl that works for WB.  He hooked me up by inviting me to the big premiere showing for The Dark Knight.  Man, am I so glad that I got to see it.  Not only was it free, but we got to see it in advance, AND we even got to skip the line.  So while hundreds of people were lining up in the heat for hours, we got to walk right in before all of the general admission were admitted.  Brant, you are da man!  Please thank your friend Jordan again.  If you haven’t seen the movie yet, it’s pretty damn good and it lives up to most of the hype.  It’s not a perfect masterpiece by any means, but it’s got a great story with lots of cool twists and surprises.  I originally thought that the Batpod looked really stupid, but after seeing the movie, I think it’s the coolest Bat vehicle ever.  To avoid spoiling anything for anyone, I encourage everyone to see it!

As some of you know, I’m heading out to San Diego in a couple of days.  And I wanna make one thing clear, I am NOT dressing up like He-Man!  I’m not dressing up at all!  Don’t listen to anything that that fucker Wes has told you.  That bitch!  I’ll be taking lots of photos I think.  I don’t really know what to expect, but I know that the convention is completely sold out.  So it should be quite the eye-opener.

Lately, it’s been hot here.  We’re talking about mid 90s, or for you Canadians, about 35+.  So when I got home, I took off my shirt and chilled out in front of the TV.  I heard a knock on the door and I immediately thought it was FedEx because I’m expecting a package.  I quickly grabbed a shirt that I had ironed and I didn’t want the guy to get away so I didn’t bother buttoning it up.  Well, I opened the door and it wasn’t FedEx at all.  It was my two hot neighbours that were standing there.  WTF??  This is like a nightmare.  These two women are very pretty and I’ve always had limited conversations with them.  So I don’t really know what kind of impression they have of me, but I’m sure it was greatly enhanced when I opened the door with my gut hanging out and American Gladiators going off in the background.  Oh well, they had swung by to ask if I smelled gas in apartment.  I said I didn’t, and our conversation ended quickly after.  Shit! Fuck! Crap! I started walking around the apartment, and indeed there was a foul smell coming from the bedroom and the bathroom.  I buttoned up the shirt and decided to go back over to tell them that I did indeed smell the gas now.  I got a good look at their apartment.  Very nice and clean and totally representative of two females.  Candles, art, and a generally nice homely feel to their place.  They called the building maintenance guys to report it and that was the end of that.  Swell eh??  I can’t wait to see them again.

I guess I’ll have more stuff to talk about soon.  Drop me a line some time people!  Bye for now!

On my way home the other night, I was on the train and I noticed a man trying to wake up a guy riding the train.  The unresponsive guy just sat there as his phone rang 3-4 times.  They shook him over and over again, but the guy wouldn’t respond.  Another concerned guy came over and started checking for his pulse.  They took someone’s glasses and placed them under the man’s nose to see if he was breathing.  So they pretty much determined that he wasn’t breathing or that he was in serious trouble.  So people picked him up and put him on the floor and I couldn’t see what they were doing to him, but they may have been giving him CPR.   At this point, everyone on the train was quite concerned and for the first once, people actually used the emergency phone/intercom at the end of the train.  The conductor was asking stupid questions like "which train are you on?" and not surprisingly, nobody knew what the number of the train was.  People started calling out "8" and "1" cause the doors were numbered 8 and 1.  Around this time and to everyone’s relief, the troubled guy started to respond.  One lady started to ask "what drugs did you take?".  I’m not sure if she wanted to know because doctors/paramedics might want to know later on or because she wanted to know what drugs or concoction she needed to avoid.  I cannot imagine what the guy was thinking though; one moment he was sitting on the train, the next moment he was waking up on the floor with 5 or 6 people over him.  The person speaking to the train conductor on the intercom reported that the man had started to respond and the conductor closed the door at the station and just kept on going.  No paramedics or nothing.  Sweet!  No more delays cause I was one stop away.

Earlier in the week, I was heading home again and this crazy Texan army dude started talking to a bunch of us that were (unfortunately) in proximity.  He was loud and talking in tongues  mostly.  But I believed him when he was telling us that he was heading towards the Bethesda hospital to pick up some medication.  Meds for being unstable I reckon.   It seemed like it was the longest train ride ever cause the guy just wouldn’t stop talking.  What was normally a 20 min ride turned into an eternity.  As we got closer to Bethesda, the people started to get off and eventually, I was the only one standing there with him.  Fuck!  Luckily it was only one stop away again, but it was also the most awkward ride ever.  I had thought about getting off along the way or switching trains, but I knew he was getting off in Bethesda eventually, and since I thought he was crazy, there was a good chance he’d be lingering around the station if I had gotten in one or two trains later.  And besides, I didn’t wanna waste time trying to avoid him.  Maybe I should have though.  Cause we both got off at my station and he followed me, and he kept talking, and he started asking me questions about where I worked.  I answered him vaguely and then he threw me for a loop when he said "Well, looks like you’re my guide now.  Where are we going?"  Fuck!  Are you serious dude??  I laughed it off and as we neared the turnstiles, I finally shook off the nutbag cause he had to show the station manager a pass or something.  I picked up the pace and b-lined it to the escalators hoping he wouldn’t catch up.  Lucky for me, I didn’t see him again.  Score one for moi!

Last night was the DC101 Chili Cook-Off.   It’s an annual event pairing a chili making competition with a rock concert, all to raise money for the National Kidney Foundation.  A few of us set up a team.  Awesome Town consisted of Ben, Brad, Brant, Aaron and me.  We had a bunch of other people that said they were interested in participating, but ultimately, they didn’t show up or bailed.  The plan was to serve up some chili, enter it in the competition, and drink lots of beer.  This was the first time any of us had entered or even attended the event so we didn’t know what to expect.  It was drizzling and a tad cold and when we got to the event, we quickly noticed that we were total amateurs.  Everyone had a tent/canopy.  We did not.  Everyone had huge tables.  We had a 3′x3′ table pulled from a Honda CRV.  We were relatively unprepared.  So here’s a picture of us amongst everyone else.
We’re the tent-less little pile to the left of the Extoic sign.  But we made the most of it.  We obviously didn’t have much to set up so we made breakfast and then 4 of the 5 of us went for a beer run.  Yes, we wanted beers for breakfast!  It turns out that the beer lines weren’t opened yet and when we got back, we found Aaron sitting in the chair enjoying his punch, not noticing that our chili was burning smoking like crazy.  We had burned our chili!  It was pretty good too.  Well, we tried to save it by putting in Hershey Kisses and to some degree, it helped a little bit.  It still tasted burnt though.  So we made up some bullshit story that we had used smoked bacon in our recipe and we marketed as Smoked Bacon Chocolate Chili.  And some people actually believed our story, which goes to show, that people will believe anything you tell them.  Some of my favourites quotes from the day:

"I really like the smokiness!" - that’s burnt chili you’re tasting!

"You guys need to expand! Cause you guys got the best shit in the house but nobody knows you!" - in reference to our tiny stand and lousy signage.

"It tastes like cigarettes."  - one we couldn’t fool…

Surprisingly, some people actually liked the chili.  Even some of the judges liked the ’smokines’.  Hahaha.  Suckers!  Well, we managed to use it all up so I say that we were quite successful overall. How the event works, is that you hand out samples in little taster cups.  If people like it, they are supposed to donate to the Kidney Foundation.  We were pretty focused on getting rid of the chili, our donations suffered.  I think we ended up with about $4 in donations; not that that is a good reflection of our chili.  We just didn’t push for donations.  The event itself was pretty crazy.  The line-up to get in wrapped around the entire block.  And this isn’t a normal small city block.  This is a huge giant enormous block.  Think of a line up wrapped around Costco for 4-5 hours.  I have more pictures on Picasa and Facebook.  All in all though, we had a great time and we met a lot of interesting and cool people.

I wasn’t going to join Kickball this Spring, due to various reasons (Thursday night is a big TV night, hate heat, exercise is not my friend, previous season wasn’t anything special), but for another set of reasons (something to do socially, leave work early, exercise is good for you, new league, cheaper), I decided to sign up again.  So far, the new NAKID league is miles better than WAKA.  WAKA was so poorly managed and I hated that douchebag Law Dog who ran the WAKA league.  Anyway, our first game was Thursday and it was pretty fun.  I don’t know if it was the excitement of the first game, or the closeness of the game, but I had a great time.  Somehow I made it from First to Home in one play and everyone was surprised that I was able to motor around the bases.  I’m telling ya, underneath this fat suit, there is a dormant six-packed athlete.  I even showed up to the bar to play flip cup and I felt I brought my A game, usually flipping my cup with only 1 or 2 tries.  To cap off the day, our captain named me Player of the Game.  Impressive eh?  Well, with all that effort from kickball though, my knees reminded me that my body is just a vessel for my spirit and that I am just around the corner from turning 31.  Ack!!

I’m cool with it though.  I’m not going through any crisis’ or anything like that.  To celebrate next week, I’m going to attend the DC United soccer game.  It turns out that the NAKID kickball league is sponsoring a big event there.  There’s gonna be kegs in the parking lot, food, jell-o shots, the soccer game, and more post game drinking festivities; all of this for $27.  I think it’s quite a bargain.  I don’t think I’ll get too wasted, but then again, when I least expect it, that’s when I get in trouble.  I just gotta remember to tell myself to pee before I trek home on the Metro.  There won’t be any toilets for 45 min while I head home.

I dunno why, but it feels like I’ve been really busy lately or that I have a lot of stuff lined up.  Or perhaps I don’t know how to say no when someone asks me to join them.  I’ve agreed to go to Delaware in a couple of weekends to watch Craig Ferguson perform some stand-up.  In May, I joined a Chili cooking contest with some peeps from work.  I guess it’s all good.  It gives me something to look forward to each week and it keeps my mind off of stupid fucking work. 

Alright, before I sign off, here are a couple fresh movie reviews.  The Other Boleyn Girl is a waste of time.  Not even Scarlett’s great assets could save this film.  It was just boring.  Queen Anne was a retard, willing to commit incest to pop out a son to the king.  Her brother was even more of a retard to consider it.  The Tudors TV series is a much better show about the same period of time.  I also saw The Forbidden Kingdom.  The (white) kid in the movie is terrible.  I recognize him from Almost Famous.  He’s kinda grown up now and he is super scrawny and totally awkward throughout the movie.  All of his fighting scenes make him look slow and untalented, and hence unbelievable as any martial arts hero.  I hated everything about his story arc.  The rest of the fighting is really impressive though and showcases some of the best fight scene in a while.  It’s pretty cool to see Jackie Chan and Jet Li in a movie together.  I’m sure most of you will see it just because of Chan and Li, so you be the judge.  Be warned though, it’s super corny; especially you August Rush haters.  Peace!

So I returned to Vancouver again.  I think this has been my 7th or 8th trip back home in 14 months.  I don’t plan on coming back again until October though, unless circumstances lead me to return earlier.  Oddly enough, it felt like I had to beg to work from home this time around, which boggles my mind.  I had a legitimate reason too.  I needed to renew my passport and the time allowed me to take care of a bunch of other things.  Anyway, I ended up burning up a week of vacation in the process and I suppose that isn’t such a bad thing. 

‘Cause I guess I needed the vacation to take care of this fucking cold that I have.  I don’t know why, but I always get sick in Vancouver.  It never fails.  I think it’s the climate that induces illness.  I was cold and miserable for a few days and now I have a craptastic cough as a souvenir again.  I blame Wanger for getting Hank & Lina sick, who in turn, got me sick.  Bastards!!  But a little cold/flu isn’t going to keep me down.  I just took drugs every two hours for a few days and now my head doesn’t feel like shit anymore.  This brings up an annoying pet peeve that has started to pick my bum.  Have you ever noticed that when people take pills, some (most?) people will tilt their heads back in a quick motion as to help the pills go down.  What does that really do though?  I mean, when I’m eating a meal, I don’t cluck back my head like a chicken to help my food go down.  I just swallow and down it goes.  But people who whip their heads back while taking pills just look strange.  Do you do that?  Anyway, like I said, this illness didn’t slow me down.  I continued with my daily activities, and by activities I mean eating.

I think I’ve actually eaten out every day since I’ve been back.  Honourable mentions: Hapa Izakaya (first time eating there and I was totally impressed), the McRib (which wasn’t actually that great, but it was cool just to have one again), Pit’s mushroom burger, Deli’s samosa and chicken panzzaroti, dim sum (twice), Joey’s, Sushi House, Thai House, and etc…  Despite all this eating out, I’ve managed to shed 5 lbs since I’ve been back.  I cannot explain it.  I have a lot of good meals planned for the next few days, so I’m looking to lose a few more pounds before I fly back to Glutton Nation aka the United States.

My nephew is friggin adorable.  The times I’ve seen him, he’s almost always sleeping.  Which makes me think he’s a well-behaved little boy, but his parents know otherwise.  Apparently he’s a bit of a night owl and his favourite past-time is crying all night.  What fun!  I’ll follow-up with a picture of him later.  Peace out and see ya’ll at dinner in the next few days.

Despite what some friends might say, I don’t need anybody to bring any kind of good karma.  Everyone knows that I am a lucky son of a gun, so it shouldn’t be anyone’s surprise when eBay decides to send me a $750 credit for a bad experience I had with them.  I don’t see how that translates to ‘we visited, we brought good karma’.  Also, everyone knows that I’m a charming young man too.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise when I go out for dinner and the waitress and manager decide to treat us to free dessert because we are good guests.  So don’t believe anything that some people (Lisa!) have been saying about them bringing good karma.  There’s nothing true about it.  They’re just trying to take credit over my own awesomeness.  If anything, they should feel lucky to be around to witness to my good fortune once again.  I’ve been having a decent week.  I filed my taxes last week and two days later, my DC tax return was in the bank.  Out of the blue, Best Buy suddenly announces they are giving previous HD-DVD player buyers a $50 GC; score, free money again!  My European VAT tax refund arrived this past week too.  So obviously, they had nothing to do with that.  Most of this happened prior to their arrival.

So I just wanted to air that out there.. I am my own good karma.  Besides, there’s nothing karmically wonderful about bringing your smelly gas-producing husband.  Gesus, stop the farting!

On a side note, my nephew is one month old today.  I cannot wait to meet him.  For those of you that know Dom and Lieny too, their baby girl Evana arrived the other day.  I am looking forward to meeting her one day too.  Dom is a daddy!  Who’da thought?  It seems like everyone I know is having a baby.  I’m very happy for everyone.  Anyhoo, I’m back in Vancouver in a week.  I’ll see most of you then.  Peace!

I’m back in Somerset again.  This time around, everything is the exact opposite.

It’s cold here now and the weather report calls for a couple inches of snow later today.  I can’t wait to drive 15-20 miles on the highway in this shit weather.  I hope my Kia Spectra rental can handle the conditions.  The car is practically brand new (only 500 miles on it), so hopefully that will translate into decent tires.  I flew into KY this time around with very little trouble.  I had to rush to my connecting flight because my first flight was delayed about 45 minutes.  I was the last one to arrive to the gate for my connection and everyone else had already boarded the plane.  That was the only minor hitch.

For my first meal here, I decided to try out Cracker Barrel; a country style restaurant.  It showed promise but alas, it was crap too.  I shoulda known better.  $13 doesn’t get you a good ribeye.  It was cooked to my liking, medium rare, but the meat was chewy and tough.   The worse part were the vegetables.  I ordered corn, green beans and carrots.  Surprisingly, the carrots were the worse.  They tasted like they had been prepared in sugar water.  They were wayyyy too sweet.  The green beans were out of a can or frozen.  They were all mushy and tasteless.  The corn was by default, the best of the lot.  I tried this coca-cola fudge cake that was apparently their signature dessert; it was chocolate cake made with Coke.  It was good, but wayyyy too sweet too!  I couldn’t finish it.  I had a few bites and turfed the rest.   Food here sucks and as adventurous as I’ve been, I think I’m going to stick with places that I know are good for the next couple of nights (like Papa Johns or Pizzahut).

My stupid mouse is broken.  I brought my Microsoft wireless optical notebook mouse but it doesn’t work.  The optical light will not turn on.  So I went out to Wal-Mart after dinner and bought the cheapest one I could find for $10.  I brought it back to the hotel, only to find out that it was a PS/2 mouse.  Fuck!  I wanted to do some work and I hate using the pad cause it slows me down.  So I dragged my ass back out to Wal-Mart to return it and buy another one.  This time I spent $20 for a basic wired optical scroll mouse.  Man, I hate that.  I have had way better deals than that before.  For $20, it ought to be wireless, laser, and have 5-6 buttons.   What a scam.  That’s my quick update for the day (week, or month even).   Perhaps more will follow.

I cannot make up my mind as to whether I really liked Maui or not.  I think the trip was pretty fun in the sense that most of my good friends were there and spending time in a foreign place is always a rare treat.  Gladys and Adrian’s wedding was great too!  I really enjoyed the intimate approach of their wedding.  No presentations like videos, skits or anything fancy; just a straight forward wedding, gathering and celebration.  I loved it!  Maui itself was dreary.  It rained a lot!  And when it wasn’t raining, the clouds threatened to piss on us.  Everything worth seeing seemed really far away too. 
Volcanos and black sand beaches were hours away.  We even drove 1.5 hours away to find a fruit stand along the highway.  I’m glad I got to experience it though. 

The luau was the first big event.  It was really cool.  The food wasn’t too bad and the show was quite enjoyable.  I wish I had brought out my camera, but I forgot to bring it out with me.  Rain looked imminent all evening, but miraculously, it held off and the night went very smoothly.  The next day was the wedding day, we arrived at the hotel and promptly boarded a shuttle bus that took us to the chapel.  The problem was that no one told the driver which chapel.  So he brought us to the wrong one.  After a 10 minute wait, we felt it didn’t feel/look right.  The chapel door were closed and not a soul was in sight, so we walked back to the Ritz to double-check things.  Lucky for us, it was right next door.  Thankfully we went back otherwise we would have risked missing the whole darn thing.  Gladys looked beautiful and their
ceremony proceeded without a hitch.  Pictures and champagne followed and then it was off to the hotel for an open bar session before dinner.  The bartender was this woman who sounded like she smoked 6 packs a day; very friendly but obviously a bit crazy.  It turns out that she was a recovering alcoholic!  Oh the lunancy of the situation!!  Let’s just say she was very happy to be pouring us drinks.  Dinner was awesome.  The food was terrific.  The dancing was a lot of fun too.  Adrian, your sisters are wild!  We apparently scared the shit out of the hotel too.  I don’t think they had ever seen Asians drink the way that we did.  At one point, they made us take a 15 minute break because we were taking way too many shots.  Petron is so delicious!  All in all,
it was a great evening.  We wrapped up the night in one of the hotel rooms, drinking, and chilling.  Adrian’s family entertained us with kung fu, a hula-hoop, and spot-on re-enactments of various 80s music videos. 

Our favourite place to eat was the Paia Fish Market.  It was about 40 minutes away from the hotel but totally worth the drive.  I ended up eating there 3 times.  The fish plate was great, and a big hit with most of us.  Their ahi sashimi was pretty damn yummy too.  I pretty much tried everything on their menu in my three visits: deep fried shrimp, fried calamari, the chowder, the fish burger, etc.. I never tried their seafood pasta though.  Drats!  We also went to Roys steakhouse.  I thought their food was pretty good.  Una said she didn’t like it.  I thought she was crazy.  My ribeye was great!  Their sushi was decent.  And my banana crisp dessert was
fantastic!  Becky and Darren went earlier that night and said they enjoyed the banana crisp a lot too.  I told everyone to try it but they didn’t.  Their loss. 

The 5 nights flew by quickly.  Before I knew it, it was time to go home.  Most of the gang were headed home early in the afternoon.  Only Becky and Darren were moving on to Honolulu.  I was in a terrible position of being alone on the island for 5-6 hours because my flight wasn’t until about 10pm.  Darren told me about this awesome sushi place he had been planning on going to when they landed in Honolulu and he mentioned that I should extend my trip and go out there with him.  Well, I didn’t really extend my trip, but he did convince me to fly out there to have dinner with them.  So that’s exactly what happened.  I checked in my luggage 6 hours early, and then I bought a round-trip ticket to Honolulu.  It’s only 30 minutes away from Maui and although I was cutting it close again, it really solved the problem of finding something to do for a few hours.  In the end, I was in Honolulu for 2 hours, where I enjoyed a kick ass meal at Mitch’s Sushi. 
Hamachi, lobster sashimi, and monkfish liver were so good.  As soon as I passed through security in Honolulu, the plane had started boarding.  That’s how close it was again.  It worked out perfectly though.  Great idea Darren and thanks for dinner again! 

In one moment at the airport, we were going through the airport security check and Becky was nailed for leaving her water bottle in her bag.  I was right behind her and giving her plenty of grief because it was in plain sight.  Well, just as I was doing this, they called out ‘Bag Check!’  Apparently I had some contraband item in my bag.  They opened it up and pulled out a bottle of water that I had conveniently forgot about.  Deservedly, Becky took the moment to give me ’shit’ too.  The security guy thought it was kinda funny because he knew I was giving Bex a hard time about her water just moments before.  My bad, my bad!!  My foot tasted great in my mouth.

It seemed that we were always missing a room card or two during the trip.  As we boarded the plane, Darren whipped out a room card for our hotel.  Becky accosted him but Dar insisted this was one of the two that we had been using all week and he failed to hand it in during check-out.  I distinctly remember making a comment that someone would find another card in their pockets when they got home.  Well, a day later, I was unpacking my luggage, and low-and-behold, guess what I found in one of pants pockets?  Now I have a plastic souvenir. 

Fun times.  Good seeing everyone!  The Super Bowl was decent, but I lost some money on that stupid game!  Oh well.  The rest of my pics can be seen here:  http://picasaweb.google.com/biganthony/MauiFeb200802. 

Next stop, Kentucky (groannnn)!  Cya’ll in March!