Weekend Bonus Feature - Choo Mi-young

Weekend Bonus Feature - Choo Mi-young
Hello weekend visitors.

Here is your reward for stopping by when there was no regular blog posting. As you can see, Choo Mi-young is an attractive Korean model.



Amazing isn't it?

Choo Mi even makes a Ferrari look better.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
Part of my weekend is up in the air as of now.

Doug and I had talked past week about getting together to grab lunch while I pick up some new Lakai skateboard shoes. Last Friday was bad for him so we talked about this Friday as an alternative. I told Doug I would call him today and let him know how my schedule was for Friday.

Friday is good for me. Doug has to stick around and wait for a serviceman to show up at his house. He won’t know when the service man will show until 7:30 AM tomorrow.

I said that’s ok; you can call me when you find out what the schedule is. We can go a little later in the day and everything is fine. If the service call is too late, we can always go next Friday if our schedules mesh.

The only other event for me for the weekend is the dissertation writing.

Epiphany
I had one of those “shaft of sunlight” moments this morning when I was taking a shower.

I realized that there are two ways to get rid of the Coca Cola Blak in my refrigerator. One is to drink them. The other method is to empty the bottles in the sink and then toss them out. The idea of tossing a possibly good product down the drain bothers me. I really hate to waste stuff.

Vivian’s Man of the Moment
This week, my friend Vivian the Credit Analyst picked Robert Hoffman who was in the Amanda Bynes film SHES THE MAN. Vivian said that she went to see the film because her group financed the production. Vivian likes tall men and since Hoffman is 74 inches / 188 centimeters tall; that may have influenced her judgment.


Woman of the Moment
Salma Hayek is the new Woman of the Moment. Salma Hayek is 62 inches / 157 centimeters tall. I like shorter women. According to the Internet Movie Database, she measures 36C-25-37 inches or 91-64-94 centimeters.



Some of the photos are the artsy type where the image is off-center. Personally, I hate that style of photography. Why take a photo unless you are going to show the primary image so everyone can see it?

Salma Hayek turned 40 this month. She does age well.

I like older women also.

El Gringo
I will be going to El Gringo on Sunday for a middle of the afternoon lunch and early dinner. I think I may have something that is modestly healthy for me for my meal. I’m leaning towards Grilled Mahi Mahi Fish Tacos have them with rice and beans.

So far, I’ve been to El Gringo and every time I have been there, I had a different server. I wonder who will be my server on Sunday.

Odds and Ends
I received my California General Election Voters Booklet in the mail yesterday. It is over 190 pages long and a lot of the pages are awfully small type fonts. I may try to struggle through the booklet this weekend as a writing break if the sun is out on the balcony.

My wrist tan line from wearing a watch is about gone now. I am comfortable going around without a watch on. I have gotten used to checking the cell phone for the time.


Be well and stay happy.

Farewell Yukie Nakama

Farewell Yukie Nakama
Today is the last day for Yukie Nakama as the Women of the Moment. I like her and I probably will bring her back from time to time for encore appearances. Tomorrow is the start of Salma Hayek’s time as Woman of the Moment.




Doug
Doug called me last night after he got out of his class.

He was in a poor mood because he only received a grade of 90 out of a possible 100 on a paper for his American Television class. As we talked, I also was in a poor mood. I had proof read the paper and thought it was a solid piece of critical thinking, something any college senior should be proud of and what should be expected in an upper level course.

All of the points he made were supported and amplified by facts. The conclusions were drawn from the supported facts. This was a very good paper.

The reason for a grade of 90 was he went over the maximum length for the assignment.

That is stupid.

Students should be learning to think critically and not base their papers on simple unsupported conclusionary statements. The best grades went to students whose papers were clearly conclusionary.

I urged Doug to have a meeting with the professor and ask for a better explanation of the grade. I think the grade is sending the wrong messages to students.

[Dad gets down off of his soapbox.]

Coca Cola Blak
The Coca Cola Company has a new product out there called Coca Cola Blak. Coca Cola Blak is a combination of Coca Cola Classic and coffee.

I have drunk hundred and maybe thousands of gallons / liters of Coca Cola Classic and coffee in a variety of forms, flavors, and brews in the course of my sometimes misspent life. I had a coupon for a USD$1.00 off of a purchase of a four, individual sized bottle package of Blak.

I figured, why not through a few more dollars down and try a four-pack?

Big mistake.

Blak is a big mistake in my mind and was a horrible experience for my tongue. The advertising company that went along with the coupon made it sound like the drink combined the best parts of Coke and coffee. I guess Coca Cola was trying to capture some of the coffee drinking market and appear to be more modern and youth oriented.

Either it was wrong or my taste buds have been so corrupted with everything else I have consumed in my life. After carefully reflection and consideration, I’m tending to go with what my taste buds told me that this drink tasted like carbonated burnt French roast coffee.

It was bitter and unpleasant.

It had an ugly after taste that lasted until I went to El Gringo on Taco Tuesday [buy one taco and get one taco free] and buried the taste with my dinner of two beef tacos, rice, beans, chips, and salsa.

I only have one problem now. What do I do with the three remaining individual sized bottles of Coca Cola Blak in my refrigerator?

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when Coca Cola only came in 12 ounce / 35 centiliter glass bottles and that it only came in two versions, warm and cold.

I can remember having contests with my friends to see whose bottle had come the farthest too where we drinking the Coke. The bottling plant’s city and state were on the bottom of the bottle.


Be well and stay happy.

Phone Calls

Lisa the Matchmaker
Lisa the Matchmaker called me last night after I posted the Monday blog; otherwise, I would have included her phone call in the blog.

Normally, I don’t like to talk to people when they are in their cars and they are using their cell phones. I made an exception for Lisa because I knew she was driving home on one of Southern California’s slow moving non-Freeways. You can still get in an accident but you’re not going fast enough to injure yourself. Bent bumpers and fractured fenders can always be fixed.

Yesterday was Lisa’s first day back to work after her most recent round of surgery for the blood clot in her arm. She has another surgery in connection with the blood clot in about a month but it is a relatively minor one that won’t knock her out of work for two weeks like the last one.

Lisa wanted to know what was happening with me and her friend Liz the Lonely. I said that she must have forwarded my last email on to Liz because she called me that day. I said it was a good conversation [see Lisa the Matchmaker – September 19, 2006 blog].

I was waiting for Liz to call me some time next week and make plans to meet in person. I told Lisa that I thought we would probably have coffee and chat, sort of one of those get- to-you-know-you-better meetings.

Personally, I have never really cared much for one of those types of meetings. But, I’m willing to go forward with one if it will advance things with Liz the Lonely and me. Besides, Liz the Lonely said she would drive more than half way to meet me and that is worth something with gas prices as they are.

Lisa said that we were a lot alike.

Naturally, I asked how so.

Lisa said we were both people who planned our lives and our days. I agreed that I certainly do that with some degree of success. Lisa laughed when I said that perhaps Liz and I can organize a spontaneous event sometime.

Planners do things like that you know.

Doug
Doug called me while I was at Barnes & Noble, picking up some books to read while I wait for Liz the Lonely to call me. I don’t watch network television for all of the obvious reasons.

Of course, Doug would be quick to tell me about all of the good shows that are on network television. One of his courses last semester was American Television. I find it amazing that the university has a course on American Television and that this can be a major area of study and the university will grant a Master’s degree in American Television.

Doug was calling to check in with me and see how things were going. I said I was doing ok and that life was treating me well. I told him that I did enjoy a successful meeting with my Dissertation Committee and that the Committee accepted my first chapter and that the Chair agreed to a change in part of my research work.

That was pretty good he thought.

Doug asked me if I would have time to review a paper he has to write for his Directing class. I said that I can do that but I won’t know if what he is saying makes any sense or not. That was fine since he knew what he would be saying was correct; he just wanted me to look at the grammar and sentence structure.

I told him that it should be an easy paper to read and comment on. I ought to be able to turn the paper around overnight for him.

Job Searching and Interviewing
I had a call this afternoon from another search firm that was looking for someone like me with solid credit skills for a bank in Orange County. We talked for a while and I seemed to be what the bank was looking for or so the recruiter said. It remains to be seen if the client will share the recruiter’s enthusiasm or not for my candidacy.

Coupons
I got an email coupon from Office Depot today for a USD$10.00 discount on any purchase of USD$50.00 or more. I knew I was running low on black ink in my printer so this was a jackpot for me. Two black ink cartridges and maybe a color cartridge for the printer would be over the minimum purchase amount to qualify for the discount.

The local Office Depot was not that far away so I combined a trip there with a stop on the way back at Barnes & Noble and the market.

I got to the Office Depot and found they were out of my printer cartridge size.

That was so discouraging for me. I guess I will go back this weekend and see if they have restocked the shelves with my size printer cartridge by then.

Woman of the Moment
The Woman of the Moment is never discouraging to me; maybe that is because I pick all of the Women of the Moments.





Be well and stay happy.

Mondays are always a letdown

Mondays Are Always a Letdown
Mondays are always a letdown after the weekend. The blog is a lot like that. I write a lot about the weekend and then there is nothing much to say on Monday.

Woman of the Moment
Led with the good stuff when you don’t have too much to say. The Woman of the Moment is always good stuff.





Job Searching and Interviewing
The bank hiring manager from Friday called me this morning without any advance notice. It was lucky I was around to answer his call.

We talked for about an hour or so. I don’t think I’m what the bank wants for the position. I have a lot of other components and experiences that are valuable but he seemed to want some skills that I lack.

That’s ok with me. I’m not bothered by rejection; this wasn’t the first rejection and it will not be the last rejection in my life. I’ll live and survive.

The hiring manager did say one thing that was out of character after just telling me that I lacked the specific skill set he was looking for. He said he was going to discuss our telephone conversation with his immediate boss who was the head of the division when the hiring manager goes to the head office later this week.

That was not logical but I will see what develops from today’s phone call.

I won’t hold my breath until the bank calls me again.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me this morning. She was back in town after her trip to Wisconsin. She had a good time and enjoyed herself but was glad to be back home.

Sharon told me that she had been having dinner in Wisconsin on Saturday. They were eating outside because it was warm and not too sunny. She heard some sirens going off and her cousin said that they sounded like tornado warnings. They went ahead and finished their meal. Some of the others who were outside went inside when the sirens went off.

Another cousin called her on the cell phone and said it was pouring rain and very windy where he was and that tornado warnings had been issued for his area.

Then, it suddenly turned dark and became very windy and the sky opened up with a downpour. They went inside and discovered the sirens were tornado warnings.

I said that sounds so Wizard of Oz like.

Sharon laughed because they were on their way to see the musical, “Wicked,” which is about the Wizard of Oz.

Sharon obviously had a much more exciting weekend than I did for sure and certain.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

Visitors
I decided to put the Visitor comment section in the front of the blog so I wouldn’t miss it or forget to put it in the blog.

This past week was good for foreign visitors. We had visitors from Israel, Texas [2], Philippines [2], Canada [3], United Kingdom [4], Italy, Taiwan [2], Hong Kong, Germany, Costa Rica, Chile, Romania, Belgium, Japan, Turkey, Singapore and Spain. I think this is best foreign viewership week since I began to keep track of this sort of thing.

We also had a larger number of curious viewers.

I define a curious viewer as one who spends more than ten minutes on the site at any one time. I don’t count cumulative visits because that would be too time consuming for me. We had four curious viewers lat week; one was here for eleven minutes, another for twenty one minutes, an amazing third visitor who spent thirty three minutes reading five blog posting, and the fourth who spent an incredible thirty four minutes reading ten blog postings.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you went away feeling happy.

Tech Support
Pop Quiz: How many of you out there have ever had the urge to just want to pop someone in tech support?

Just raise your hands.

I though so; every one of us has had the urge at one time or another. It doesn’t matter what company was involved with the crummy tech support issue. The feeling is universal.

A friend of mine sent me a video clip of an unhappy HP printer customer in Iraq this morning. The customer complained on the clip that he was mad about HP wanting him to pay them so they could tell him how to fix his all-in-one printer wouldn’t print. He made the excellent point by saying that he was in Iraq defending their [HP’s] freedom.

I was completely sympathizing with him. I knew his frustration and I could feel his anger. I resolved my personal HP p-o-s printer problem by driving over to the local Office Depot and picking whatever was on sale at the time. The customer, being in Iraq for a one year tour of duty, didn’t have the luxury.

The customer, a United States Army infantry captain, being in Iraq, could also vent his frustration far, far better and much more effectively than you or I could ever do.

The clip showed him taking one of his unit’s M-73 light machine guns and blasting the printer to pieces.

That was so, so completely satisfying for me.

I laughed.

I cried.

I applauded.

The final scenes of the clip showed the printer in pieces with a voice over that said something like “that was a piece of shit printer.”

I wonder how the folks at HP in Palo Alto feel about this commercial that is probably going all over the Internet by now. I have already forwarded to a dozen of my friends.



The University of Utah won again last night in Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. Yes, I know it is now called Qualcomm Stadium. I just can’t get used to the newer name so don’t everyone write in and point out I got the stadium name wrong.

Our Utes, our being the Princess and me, beat San Diego State University in a Mountain West Conference game 38 to 7. It looks like it was a defensive football game with Eric Weddle, the Mountain West’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2005, returning two interceptions for touchdowns. San Diego did put together a better rushing game than Utah and San Diego had a slightly longer time of possession than Utah.

Brent Ratliff only had one touchdown pass in the game where the defense bent but did not break except for a first quarter touchdown.

In the end, San Diego could not push the ball across the goal line.

Next week is Homecoming for Utah. They will play Boise State University [4-0, Western Athletic Conference] at Rice Eccles Stadium. It should be a high scoring game.

Woman of the Moment
I decided to include a couple of my favorite photos of other Women of the Moment today. I’m sure you will recognize Cora Linn and KT So and the Hankook Tire Girls. It seemed like a nice way to start of Fall.









My Brother
Happy Birthday. Enjoy your life and be well and stay happy.

El Gringo
I decided to go to El Gringo earlier in the day for a combination late lunch and early dinner. I think I will be less bloated by the time I go to bed tonight.


This was my lunch – dinner today,a Mexican Pizza. A Mexican Pizza is made with layers of fried tortillas filled with ground beef, cheese, enchilada sauce, beans, and topped with cilantro, tomatos, onions, and sour cream. As you can plainly see, this is a large meal and one that had to be eaten with a fork. There was no way you could pick it up with your fingers.

This is me enjoying my meal.


This is Aleasa, the El Gringo Girl, who was my server. She was impressed enough with the Mexican Pizza to try it for herself. She shared with her girl friend and said it was very good. I thought so too.


Oh, for the record, Aleasa, and I don’t know how to spell her name properly so this spelling is a guess, said she doesn’t smile for photos. I can accept that. Aleasa also likes heavy metal music.


Dissertation
My Dissertation Committee meeting went very well for me on Friday.

My Committee Chair accepted my revised Chapter One. That was a major accomplishment for me. I now have an idea of what he wants in my dissertation. He is only one member of the Committee; but, since he is Dean of the School of Business and Information Technology, his opinions do care some additional weight with the other members.

We talked about one of the potential problems that I saw earlier. This had to do with a secondary survey question. There were a number of solutions and he accepted the one that I proposed and that was to narrow the scope of the research project to only consider community banks in the state of California or Kallyfornya as our Governator likes to call the state. This was great for me because instead of having to survey around 425 community banks in eleven states I only have to survey 190 California community banks.

I won’t bore you with a longer explanation of the dissertation because I doubt any of you would be interested in it. Further, it is on a very narrow banking topic so some of you might fall asleep if I wrote about it.

Lakai Skateboard Shoes
I didn’t get to the Lakai Skateboard Shoe store at Laguna Surf & Sand on Friday. Traffic was borderline crummy on the 405 non-Freeway on Friday afternoon. I had one other stop make in addition to LS&S.

As I was stopped for a moment on the non-Freeway, I did the mental calculations about time, speed, and distance and concluded I could not do all three activities in one trip. Since my current pair of Lakais was not falling apart, I decided to forego them for the time being. I have plenty of time to purchase a new pair.

Job Searching and Interviewing
I received a call from the bank where my friend Sharon used to work on Friday. The hiring manager wanted to set up a telephone interview. As it turned out, our schedules were a mess and I suggested that Monday or Tuesday might be better times to talk.


That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope your weekends were good and I hope you all have successful and productive weeks.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Choo Mi-young

Here is your Weekend Bonus Feature of Choo Mi-young. Your reward for stopping by on an off-day.




Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
It’s that time of the week, Weekend Preview time.

This will be another slow weekend for me.

The big day will be Friday. I am driving out to the Aliso Viejo Mall to stop by the Laguna Surf and Sand store to buy some new Lakai skateboard shoes. I had planned to go out on Saturday and possibly hook up with Doug for lunch but he had other plans.

On Friday afternoon, I’m having a meeting with my Dissertation Committee chair to review the changes I made to a chapter. I also have some other concerns to talk to him about so I will kill two errands with one driving session. Doug also had other plans for his Directing class for Friday so we won’t meet for lunch at Fatburger at the Aliso Viejo Mall.

The drive home from the Committee meeting will be marginally terrible. My meeting is at 5:00 PM so, by the time I get out of the meeting, the freeway should be jammed with traffic of workers going home and others heading out of town on the last weekend of Summer. Technically, Summer ends sometime tonight I think or is it tomorrow night.

One of the nice results of my friend Sharon’s trip to Wisconsin has been a substantial drop in phone calls from her. So far this week, she had only called me once and that was nice. I expect to hear from her the first of the week when she returns to town.

Woman of the Moment
Of course, the day and the weekend would not be complete without the Woman of the Moment. There’ll be the Weekend Bonus Feature on Saturday for those who venture in here.




Vivian’s Man of the Moment
This is my friend Vivian’s idea. I think she would approve of the selection of Brad Pitt. Although, I ought to ask her for her ideas. If Vivian is out of ideas, I can always ask the Princess.


Dissertation
Obviously, I will be working on the dissertation. Hopefully, my chapter revision will be acceptable and I will not have to rework it again to gain the required approvals.

I’m concerned about one small aspect of the potential research. I feel it may not be adequate. I don’t want to add another 30 subsidiary surveys to the research project. That would make it too long and too involved.

Then there is the value of the extra research as well. For example, Hawaii only has two community banks in the entire state. I sort of question the possible need to survey small business owners in Hawaii when the two banks may not respond to the primary survey. I think I may want to change to focus of the primary research to make it more manageable for me and to reduce the need for numerous additional subsidiary surveys.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers and have a wonderful weekend.

Wednesday

Wednesday
It’s Wednesday today and that means the week is half over. That’s good. I didn’t get very much accomplished today. I did get out to the market and I did buy food and other stuff. I feel really good about cashing in coupons today. I saved almost 50% of the total price of the food.

Michelle the Stylist
Michelle the Stylist has been cutting my hair for almost four years now. She says she styles my hair and then she says I wear it in a boring, old man style. I pointed out that I am old. Michelle ignores my logic and arguments.

More to the point, I had to get my hair cut today. It was getting on the ratty side and really long. I was not looking forward to this because I would be having my hair cut by a stranger who had no idea how I liked my hair.

Sure enough, the woman who cut my hair was a complete stranger. I had never seen her before. I knew that I was going to be unhappy with the result. When I sat down in the chair, my hair was just the way I like it.

That was not good enough for her. She proceeded to change my hair to a style that she must have liked.

So much for thinking about the customer.

Then she asked me how I wanted my hair cut. I said that I wanted a trim all over because I was satisfied with the way it looked. I said to cut off about a quarter of an inch / half a centimeter. She proceeded to cut off, on average, more like an inch / two centimeters, based on the cuttings that I could see. This was not what I wanted to have happen.

On my way out of the salon, I did learn that Michelle had a daughter, Isabella Rose, three weeks ago today. Her daughter’s name struck me as unusual and older sounding. I suppose there were some family names involved.

Woman of the Moment
Today marks the half way point in Yukie Nakama’s tour of duty as Woman of the Moment. I have five more days after today until the next change over.





My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me this afternoon from Wisconsin. She was having a good time on her trip so far.

Sharon mostly wanted to know how my interview went. We talked about it and she shared my views that it appeared to go well and that things looked promising for me. She wants me to get hired so I can hire her to work for me in the department.

I told her that I would have to grow the function before I could even think about hiring her or anyone else. A lot of time and water may pass under the bridge before I can grow the business large enough to be able to add anyone else.

I asked Sharon for her thoughts on Vivian’s idea of having a feature for the female readers once in a while. She thought it was a good idea; but, when asked for a name of a male actor, she needed more time to think about whom to nominate.

The Navigator
Doug calls me the Navigator because I know my way around Los Angeles.

Back when he was in high school and before he had the Marissa Couper [his Honda Accord Coupe] with satellite navigation, he used to call me for directions on how to get somewhere. He used Map Quest.com but didn’t trust their directions because they were based on the straight time and distance involved and did not consider the subtleties of time of day and direction of travel.

Doug called me this afternoon because he wanted to know where California Highway 70 is located. His Monday class was cancelled because his professor was stuck on Highway 70.

I told him that I had never heard of Highway 70 and suggested that it might be typo and that his professor meant to type Highway 60 and hit the wrong key. Highway 60 would have made sense assuming his professor was going to campus from the Westside of Los Angeles.

Later, I checked in my version of Microsoft Streets and Trips and my print copy of the Los Angeles Country street maps. I was unable to find any Highway 70 in Los Angeles County.

I wonder where his professor was.


Be well and stay happy.

Lisa the Matchmaker

Lisa the Matchmaker
For those of you who are new to Balancing Checkbooks, Lisa the Matchmaker is a co-worker from the bank where I used to work. I used an office in her department for eighteen months.

That was great for me.

Lisa has decided that I should no longer be single and has become a matchmaker of sorts. She introduced me to Nurse Beth and some of you may remember how much of a train wreck that introduction was. I prefer to not go there anymore.

About a month ago, Lisa asked me if I would be willing to try the matchmaking game again. I said sure; what did I have to lose?

Lisa said that her friend Liz was a much better choice for me. She said that Liz actually had a cell phone, email, and an Internet connection; all things that Nurse Beth did not possess. Lisa also said that she met Liz through work and not in a surgical recovery room so the aftereffects of surgery did not cloud her judgment.

I forwarded Lisa a recent photo of me and my Essentials of Charles Reinhardt with the idea that Lisa could forward these on to Liz.

Well, it had been a month since I sent the information and photo to Lisa so I sent her an email on Monday. I was looking for some new information and wanted to know if anything was going to develop. The theater season will be starting soon and I wanted to have an idea if Liz had any interest in me so that I might include Liz in some of my plans or not.

I guess Lisa forwarded my email to Liz because I got an email from her yesterday that said, “I’m leaving work now and I’ll call you when I get home,” or words to that affect. This was some movement and that was desirable; I might even have resolution.

Anyway.

Liz called me last night after she got home from her job. We talked for about forty minutes or so. She is from New York City or the surrounding area and she works for a film studio. The conversation sort of went in a circular direction with little movement beyond the exchange of minor information.

I decided to force the issue and bring some closure to the conversation. I asked Liz when was I going to meet her? Liz said that she was busy for the next two weekends but could slide me into her schedule in the third weekend. That will work for me and she even agreed to drive more than half way towards me; saving gas is always cool.

If things come to pass, we ought to meet on the morning of October 7th for coffee and if things go well maybe an extension into lunch.

I think Liz likes to be in control of things and have a great deal of order in her life. I think this is workable for me. Of course, control can become a divisive issue if one is not careful.

Doug
Doug called to say hello and ask, “What’s up?”

We hadn’t talked in about a week and a half. He has been busy with school, his friends, his blogs, and whatnot.

I mentioned that my new potential female partner, Liz, worked for a movie studio. Doug was very excited about that and wanted to know which one. I told him the studio. He seemed impressed. He said he may have a script for me to pass on to Liz.

I said that I was going to be out in his neck of what passes for woods locally next Saturday. I have to go to the Laguna Surf and Sand store to get some new Lakai skate board shoes and asked if he wanted to be part of the trip. He was unsure and said he would get back to me on that before the end of the week.

Full and Fair Disclosure
I’m not a skate boarder. I just happen to like the Lakai skate board shoes because they are unobtrusive and not showy plus the laces are a reasonable length. They are also comfortable and durable. These shoes are probably four or more years old now so I got my moneys worth with them.

Woman of the Moment
Another day and more Yukie Nakama photos.




Be well and be happy gentle readers.

Dinner at El Gringo

Dinner at El Gringo on Sunday
I decided to have a chicken burrito for dinner on Sunday at El Gringo. As you can plainly see, it is huge, just like the menu states.


A chicken burrito is not a small burro but rather a large corn tortilla that has chicken, rice, refried beans, tomatos, lettuce, onions, cheese and served with sour cream and guacamole [mashed avocados, diced tomatos, onions, and spices]. El Gringo serves their burritos wet; the wet is the brown colored sauce that is all over the plate.

I should have gone to El Gringo for a late lunch instead of dinner. When you add in the chips and salsa before the meal is served, you end up stuffed. I will go to El Gringo earlier in the afternoon next Sunday so I will not feel as bloated by the end of the day.

Woman of the Moment
Since I haven’t received any comments about the next two Women of the Moment, I’m going ahead with them. In the mean time, we have Yukie Nakama as the Woman of the Moment.




The Princess
I caught up with the Princess on Sunday afternoon.

I was anxious to see how she enjoyed the wedding in Jamaica. Apparently, it went very well and there were no problems for her and her friends. Luckily for the wedding party, there were no adverse weather troubles.

The Princess was happy that he uncle is going to take her out to dinner when she is in San Francisco for a wedding in November. I think she will end up at a seafood restaurant since she likes fish and there are a great many good restaurants in San Francisco and my brother and his wife like seafood. Of course, they could end up at an Italian or Chinese restaurant as well.

The Princess was telling me that she liked my friend Vivian’s idea for an alternative version of the Woman of the Moment. She thought Orland Bloom was a very nice start and that I should continue to do this.

Job Searching and Interviewing
Today was a day for job searching and interviewing.

I had an hour long phone interview with a recruiter from the bank where my friend Sharon used to work. I think it went well. I seemed to have all of the right answers and made all of the correct observations and I knew the target market dead solid cold. It will be interesting to see what develops with this bank. Sharon wants me to get hired there so I can build the business and then hire her to work with me.

About forty minutes after I hung up with the bank, I got a phone call from a search firm that had found me on the Internet. The recruiter did not have any open jobs that I could fill. The call ended up being a body search call where the searcher banked my information for future reference. I don’t think too much will develop from the call because I did not meet the searcher’s requirements. Search firms only tend to focus on the mess on top of the pile on the desk or the position that will pay the biggest fee to the search firm and everything else gets shunted aside. I doubt that they make an effort to build a database of people who have responded to their job posting.

I went out for a short time this afternoon after lunch. I had just stepped in the door when I got another call from search firm recruiter where I had registered before. This recruiter wanted to know if I was interested in a Temp-to-Hire position.

I said that I might be interested. We talked for a while and I ended up saying thank you because the job wasn’t right for me, it was accounting work and I do not like accounting work. The pay was on the low end of the desired range. The work location was a long drive away in heavy traffic both ways. It just did not sound like a lot of fun for me.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

Weekend Update
My weekend has turned out about as I predicted on Thursday; dull and boring.

Woman of the Moment and Weekend Bonus Feature
I plan to continue the Weekend Bonus Feature for the time being and show a couple of images of the current Weekend Bonus Feature Woman, Choo Mi-young, each week for the next few weeks. I hope you like Mi-young because I downloaded a bunch of her images.

Yukie Nakama will be the Woman of the Moment for the next two weeks or so.



I was watching my Japanese samurai historical drama last night and discovered that Yukie Nakama is playing the female lead in the series, Yamauchi Chiyo. I had not recognized her before but then when I saw her in TRICK she was wearing contemporary clothing and she is wearing traditional period clothing and hair styling in KOMYO GA TSUJI. I looked her up in the Internet Movie Database to see if this show was listed in her credits. I was surprised that it wasn’t because her other television work was listed.

Some of you may know that I tend to plan ahead. I like to have order in my life and planning brings that to me. I found the next Woman of the Moment who should appear around the end of the month. I decided to pick Salma Hayek. She is an older actress and I happen to like her work.

After Salma Hayek, I plan to feature Doug’s favorite driver, Mercedes Terrell. Those of you who are longtime Skeetshooters will understand that obscure reference.

Visitors
The foreign visitor volume picked up a bit last week. We had visitors from Korea, France, United Kingdom, Canada [2], Iran [must have been lost], Poland [2], Malaysia, Brazil, Spain, and Thailand.

One visitor spent over fourteen minutes reading my ramblings in one session. That was just absolutely fascinating.

University of Utah Football
For you new readers from the last college football season, the Princess and I both graduated from the University of Utah.


My University of Utah football team opened their season over Labor Day weekend with a game against UCLA at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. They were not successful and seemed to be overawed by UCLA, played uninspired and flat, and ended up on the short end of the scores at the end of the game, losing 31-10. You can’t win every time your team takes the field.

Last week, the Utes badly beat Northern Arizona 45-7. I think the only thing you can say about the game was that Northern Arizona was apparently overmatched. Of course, it would have been a very nice game to see at Rice Stadium in Salt Lake since this was the Utah home season opener.

Then, yesterday, Utah shut out its second in-state rival, Utah State University, at Logan 48-0. This was the worse loss in the history of the series. I supposed that it was not a pretty game if you were a Utah State fan. I think the starting quarterback Brett Ratliff for Utah could have sat the second half of the game on the bench. The Utes were up 24-0 by then and there didn’t seem to be any doubts about the outcome, only the final score.

Brett Ratliff is looking like a mad bomber with six touchdown passes in the last two games. I don’t think he is another Alex Smith but it appears he can pass the football down the field.

Utah is now 2-1 on the season with the Mountain West Conference games starting this weekend with a game against San Diego State University in San Diego.

UCLA will play in Salt Lake City next year so the Utes may have an advantage by being accustomed to the thinner air. Salt Lake is almost a mile high in elevation. The Utes will also have a stadium full of their fans to support them. Northern Arizona, not surprisingly, is not on the 2007 schedule for the Utes.

The Laptop
I did some long overdue cleaning and maintenance on the laptop yesterday. I did manage to go through and clean up the Internet cache files and dump about 100 MB of stuff. That ought to improve performance somewhat.

I also defragmented the hard drive. This was really long overdue. It has probably been six months or more since it was last done. It is interesting to watch the file color bands change from red to blue and watch the white increase as the process goes along. It took about 100 minutes to complete the task; that was longer than I had expected it would take to complete.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me on Friday. We talked for almost an hour. It’s not that I am a great conversationalist. Sharon was bored and stuck in traffic. I was a convenient distraction for her I guess.

Anyway.

Sharon told me that she is going out of town again this week. It must be nice to have time to go out of town while you are in the process of looking for a new job. She keeps saying that I need to find a great job that will allow me to hire her and then let her work from home instead of coming into the office.

That doesn’t seem like a very sound idea for me. I cam imagine the conflict from the other staff members about not being able to have the same work schedule.

Working with Sharon again does hold an attraction for me but only up to a point. She is good at what she does and that is nice. Unfortunately, that is often not what the organization needs. Sharon doesn’t like to manage others but still wants to be paid at a high level. Managing others is one way to support a high pay level.

One of the thoughts on Sharon’s mind was the job she said I should I apply for where she used to work. She told everything she knew about the job and what the company seemed to be looking for in a candidate. I guess she wants me to succeed.

Sharon also asked me about how to get customers and potential customers to visit a vendor’s booth at a trade show. I said that she should find blonde booth bimbos with big breasts. That will always get men to stop at the booth and listen to what you have to say. She thought I was wrong and that my suggestion was stupid.

This is a blonde booth bimbo from the Berlin Auto Show.

Sharon called me back a little later on. She had talked to another friend who works in the specific industry. He suggested that Sharon hire Hooters girls to work in the booth.

It’s nice to see that your ideas are not completely off base.

This is Ashley. Ashley is a Hooters girl from Arlington, Texas. She may not know much about commercial real estate financing but I can almost guarantee that she would draw a crowd at any trade show booth.

El Gringo
I plan to try El Gringo for dinner tonight. I think I will try a chicken burrito. The menu says they are large so that ought to be a complete meal for me. I’ll post my stomach’s reaction to the meal tomorrow.


I hope you all had interesting and exciting weekends, gentle readers. Maybe I will have an exciting weekend this coming weekend.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonuse Feature - Choo Mi-young

Choo Mi-young
I found Choo Mi-young when I stumbled across thre Hankook Tires Women. I thought ought to feature her as the Weekend Bonus. I have developed a greater fondness for checkerboard patterns now.

It works for me.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
This looks like it will be a very slow weekend for me, especially so when you compare it to last weekend when Doug was out on Friday for lunch at El Gringo and we had the churrascarria dinner on Saturday.

I have my dissertation to work on and that is always a challenge and it is something that I must finish.

There are some emails that I should send.

I should see how the Princess is doing after the wedding in Jamaica over the Labor Day weekend.

I finished the review and editing of Doug’s most recent paper this morning. It is a good paper and he should do well with it. Doing really in the class gets a student a perfect score on the paper and then the opportunity to make a presentation to the class. I’m not certain that’s a sound educational reward. I know I would not be thrilled to know that I would have to make a presentation in class as a result of doing well on a paper.

There is always laundry and cleaning to do and that is not very exciting.

Woman of the Moment
We do have a new Woman of the Moment, Yukie Nakama, a Japanese actress.





I first saw Yukie Nakama in a three part mini-series program called TRICK. It appears that TRICK was originally a 2002 Japanese made for television film that had been cut down for three, one hour episodes to fit the American time slot.

According to the Internet Move Database, Yukie Nakama has twenty two credits that are a combination of film and television work so far in her career.

The fan web site, where I found the bulk of the photos, had listed her as being 63 inches / 160 centimeters tall and measuring 32.3 – 23.6 – 34.6 inches / 82 – 60 – 88 centimeters. The fan web site did the conversion to inches. She will be 27 in October.

The primary reason for selecting her is that she smiles in her photos. That was important to me. I went back and looked at some of the other Women of the Moment and, for some of them, a smile seemed like it was the farthest idea from their minds. Aiko Tanaka did not smile in any of her Woman of the Moment photos for example. Of course, that may have been the photographer’s doing and not necessarily the model’s.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these photos.

I am open to other suggestions for the Woman of the Moment so you can nominate your candidate simply by posting a comment at the end of this blog.

My Friend Vivian the Credit Analyst
My friend Vivian the Credit Analyst, from where I used to work, is one of those rare, fascinating people that cross your path in life and change it forever. I would say that even if she was not an occasional reader of this blog and has laughed at some of me better jokes.

Being an independent, thoughtful, intelligent, and progressive young woman, she suggested that I included her version of the person of the moment. Vivian is also very attractive but you could see that without my aid. I can obviously tell she is happy and this is an excellent reason to post her photo version.



Airbags on Motorcycles
I read a news report this morning that said Honda and Yamaha were working on airbag technology for motorcycles. It also reported that Honda had produced a number of its Goldwing touring models with air bags in the 2006 model year.

Absolutely fascinating.

An airbag on a motorcycle must be outrageously expensive to install and add gobs of money to the price of the bike. The airbag equipped model starts at USD$24,000 and goes up from their.



That’s more than a 2006 Honda Accord Coupe EX with automatic transmission that starts around USD$22,500. It also comes with a steel cage that surrounds the driver and passenger.



The whole idea of an airbag on a motorcycle seems strange to me. I can see it with a car since the driver and passenger usually remain within the vehicle in the event of a crash. It seems to me that a motorcycle rider is very unlikely to remain on the motorcycle in the event of an accident.

I can remember my high school Physics and the laws of motion and kinetic energy about a body in motion will want to stay in motion or fly over the handle bar. I can also remember being in a motor cycle accident when I was much, much younger. I stayed with the motorcycle in the accident but that was only because it was on top of my leg and my leg was still attached to me.

This all makes me wonder if I will live to see Harley Davidson offering air bags on their motorcycles like this one.



Naaaa, I don’t think it will happen anytime soon.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.