Weekend Bonus Feature - Ku Hye sun

Weekend Bonus Feature
These are the last of the Ku Hye sun Weekend Bonus Feature photos. I do have a new one for next week. Enjoy your weekend.




Future Weekend Bonus Feature Women
I was impressed with Li Man in CURSE OF THE GOLDNE FLOWER. She plays the Imperial doctor's daughter. In one comment, she is positioned as the next Zwang Ziying or possibly the next Li Gong. Comments like those remind me of the "Pepsi Challenge" from PULP FICTION, those are mighty bold statements. These photos do not do her justice; you really need to see the film.




The future Weekend Bonus Feature woman is Yohana Cobo from VOLVER where she played Penelope Cruz's teenage daughter. For the record, Yohana is 21. I liked her performance in the film.




Be well and stay happy.

What happened to the Weekend Preview?

What happened to the Weekend Preview?
Quite simply, I went to the movies yesterday for the first time since early March when I saw V FOR VENDETTA. I saw a double feature of sorts; two films and two screens and two venues. The second film ended at 6:00 PM and I was in Costa Mesa. It took me an hour to get home and by the time I finished with my dinner it was just after 8:00 PM. I didn’t feel like starting the Weekend Preview then.

For those of you that are interested, I saw two really great films that I would highly recommend that you strongly consider seeing.


The first film was Zhang Yimou’s CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. The film is rated R, primarily for violence. This is Chinese historical epic drama and there has to be the requisite battle scenes and assassinations. Zhang also directed HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS.

The film has elements of King Lear and Oedipus Rex if you want to look for literary references.

The King Lear aspect comes from the aging warrior emperor, played by Chow Yun Fat, as he decides who will succeed him to the throne. The eldest son doesn’t want the job; the second son is the most capable but not really interested in succeeding dad; and the youngest son is sort of the family joke that everyone ignores.

Oedipus Rex, interesting connection in a Chinese film, arises from the Empress’s three year long affair with her step son who is the Crown Prince and eldest son. It gets better with more of the typical Greek tragedy interfamily relationships but I won’t spoil it for you by telling you.

Telling you would be so wrong.

The film revolves around the Empress who is played by Gong Li. If you saw her in MIAMI VICE or MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, I think you will enjoy her performance in this film. I think she is more at home playing this sort of role as opposed to being a Columbian drug lord’s girl friend.

Most all of the women in the film are shown in somewhat skimpy costumes with their breasts about to pop out as it were. I think this severely stretches historical accuracy. While I will never claim to be an expert on Chinese dress, I do not believe that the film accurately portrays the women’s style of dress in the late 10th Century.

I don’t think I could have lived in the palace in ancient China. The film showed servants who went through palace banging gongs and chanting slogans while announcing the time. I think the noise would wake me from a sound sleep.

That would be so uncool.


The second film was Pedro Almodovar’s VOLVER that stars Penelope Cruz. If nothing else, this film will help you forget her horrible role in SAHARA from a couple of years ago. This film is also rated R for language and sexual content.

VOLVER is a much smaller film about a mother and her two daughters and their reconcilement. It has a number of humorous and interesting plot points and twists. It is a film that should be seen.

I think Penelope Cruz works better with European directors, especially Almodovar. Almodovar brought out of her ability as actress in this film. She seemed to play a wide range of emotions, from cynical to desperate, very well.

I would love to write more about the film but I am afraid that I might say too much and then spoil the film for you.

These are two films that you can go see and enjoy. Doug really liked VOLVER and had been urging me to go see the film. I would do the same.

Weather
I see where Denver, Colorado is getting more snow this weekend. I wonder if my Brother will be able to get out of Denver and home this weekend. For that matter, I wonder about the rest of his family getting out of Denver and heading home this weekend.

Our weather in Southern California has generally been very nice. The storm that is dumping snow in Colorado only left us with a small amount of rain and a lot of wind. I could feel the wind pushing the Pathfinder to the side when I was driving on the freeway yesterday.

There are a lot of the really tall palm trees in Redondo Beach where I live. The winds were blowing the dead palm fronds off of the trees and into the streets and onto rooftops. It was a mess trying to drive in the debris on the roads.

I was looking into the park this morning and noticed that a tree limb had been blown off of its trunk. The limb looked like it was eight or nice inches / twenty or twenty three centimeters in diameter. That seemed like wind gusts were very high that day

But, I was luckier than 150,000 electrical utility customers who lost power when the winds knocked over power lines or had tree limbs fall on them. While I do have a very nice UPS system in the house, it would have only been able to provide power to the laptop and not much else.

Woman of the Moment
I did see two potential Women of the Moment in the films. I think that maybe Li Man and Yohana Cobo could end up as future WOTMs; but I will first have to wait until there are more than two images of them posted on the Internet to work with.

Until then, we will have Kyoko Hasegawa as the current Woman of the Moment.


Very nice bird of paradise flower


Dancing on a table, perfect.

Programming Notes
There will be a Weekend Bonus Feature, probably posted on Saturday.

I am uncertain when I will write my Weekend Update and Year End blog posting. Right now, I am leaning towards posting on Sunday since Monday will be full of opportunities to watch American football on television.


I hope you all have a wonderful and happy New Year’s Eve.

Be well and stay happy.

The Day After

The Day After
It was a quiet day for me; this being the day after the Princess and the Boy Friend went back to Atlanta and Winter. I believe that they got an early morning wake up when they landed around 5:30 AM in Atlanta. I know it was cold for them as they stepped off the plane after being in comparatively warm Los Angeles for a week.

The Princess asked me to mail a package for her when she arrived at my house last night. I went to the post office this morning and I had expected it to be crowded for some reason. The post office crowds seem to have departed for now. I was in and out in a couple of minutes.

Weather
It rained in Los Angeles late last night and early this morning. I am told that there was thunder and lightening. I slept through the rain and thunder. I did notice the ground was wet when I went out this morning so it did rain.

One of the benefits of rain in Southern California is the air is cleaner. It is also very windy today. I was driving the Pathfinder and I could feel the wind pushing on the sides of the truck. I had thought about taking a photo of the area but the clouds were covering the mountains and partially hiding downtown Los Angeles so there wasn’t all that much to see.

The winds brought a bad hair day for me. My hair was a mess when I was outside this morning. I do not mind bad hair days because I have an almost full head of hair and that is so much better than a simple ring of dark hair that goes around my ears or a patch of hair at the back of my head that is long and then combed forward to cover the bald patches.

My nicely swept balcony is also a temporary thing of the past now. It is covered with leaves and small branches. I won’t bother to sweep again until after the storm has blown itself out in a day or so.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when the Los Angeles City Hall was the tallest building in Southern California.

My Brother
I know my brother had a White Christmas. He and his family are spending part of Christmas in Colorado; assuming, of course, they were able to fly into Denver from San Francisco.

The local weather news reader said that there was another major snow storm headed for Denver. The new storm could drop up to two feet / sixty centimeters of fresh snow. The storm was leaving Northern California late today and may be in Colorado by Friday. I hope he is not stuck in Denver in the snow.

Food for Thought
“A kind word can warm three months of winter.” Japanese proverb.

Woman of the Moment
It is time for a new Woman of the Moment. She is Kyoko Hasegawa. I first saw Kyoko Hasegawa in a Japanese weekly drama over the Summer. She played a confused and idealistic school teacher in the series Dragon Zakura.

At the time, I did know her name since I do not read Kanji.

I saw her in a new weekly Japanese drama series as the leading actress in a program called Delicious Proposal. She plays a chef in an Italian restaurant in Tokyo. Her company is acquired by another Japanese company that plans to shut the restaurant. The son of the new company’s owner and the chef appear to be falling in love with each other in spite of their outward dislike for the opposite. It is sort of like Romeo and Juliet meets Pygmalion.

Saeko, don’t ask me why she uses only one name, plays the bad actress as a spoiled celebutante, sort of an Asian version of Paris Hilton. Saeko also was in Dragon Zakura.

Moving on to the statistics, Kyoko is 28, having been born on July 22, 1978. She is 65 inches / 166 centimeters tall and measures 31 – 22 – 32 or 80 – 55 – 82.




Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - December 26th

Weekend Update
I finished my Christmas shopping on Saturday afternoon on my way back to the beach from lunch in Westminster in Orange County

The good University of Utah football team showed and played very well on Saturday night in Fort Worth, Texas. They clearly covered the one point spread. It has been a very good post season for the Mountain West Conference; Utah, BYU, and Texas Christian University all had impressive wins while New Mexico was outplayed by San Jose State University. Three wins in four games is very respectable for any college conference.

If it weren’t for the periodic commercials, you would have thought you clicked into a three hour long military recruiting program. I thought the best military commercial were from the Marines. They always seem to do things like this best. Their commercial caught the image and vision of the Corps. The Air Force ones were nice visuals of planes flying around.


Utes Stretch Bowl Winning Streak To Six Games With 25-13 Triumph Over Tulsa Dec. 23, 2006
Fort Worth, Texas (AP) - Fittingly, the ball was in Utah defensive standout Eric Weddle's hands when the Armed Forces Bowl ended.

Weddle had an interception on the final play Saturday night, only a minute after scoring on a 4-yard run, to cap the Utes' 25-13 victory over Tulsa. Utah has won six straight bowl games, matching the longest active streak.

"Having him end his career with that pick, you couldn't have scripted it any better," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said.

It was Weddle's final start at Utah, where in a 48-game career he was a two-time Mountain West Conference defensive player of the year who also got plenty of snaps at quarterback and running back while also holding and returning kicks.

"I'm going to cherish everything I've gained here," Weddle said. "I'm going to be a Ute forever."

The Utes (8-5) have won all of their bowl games since 1999, including two years ago when they were the first non-BCS team to play in the Bowl Championship Series and beat Pittsburgh 35-7 in the Fiesta Bowl to cap an undefeated season.

Weddle was the holder on all four field goals by Louis Sakoda -- who was actually selected the game's MVP. Weddle also ran 10 times for 56 yards, including two runs to set up the other Utah touchdown, recovered a fumble and had six tackles.

"We are losing some guys that have just been instrumental in our success, starting with this guy," Whittingham said, as Weddle sat to his right still in his grass-stained uniform.

Brett Ratliff was 23-of-34 passing for 240 yards and was credited with a 10-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter, though it was actually a designed catch-and-pitch similar to a score the Utes had in their Fiesta Bowl romp. Brian Hernandez caught the ball near the line of scrimmage and pitched to Brent Casteel, who ran around the left end and leaped into the end zone.

Boston College also has won six straight bowls. The Eagles have a chance to extend their streak next Saturday against Navy in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

Paul Smith scored on a pair of 1-yard keepers for Tulsa (8-5), which finished a once-promising season with its fourth loss in five games.

Sakoda kicked a 41-yard field goal on the final play of the first half to give Utah a 9-7 lead. The Utes put the game out of reach by scoring on their first two possessions after halftime, the second when they started at their own 1 after a punt.

"Those were big momentum points. They scored 13 unanswered points," Tulsa coach Steve Kragthorpe said. "We would have liked to get off the field with a 7-6 halftime lead. We had chances to get some turnovers. The guy threw it to us five times. If we had gotten those turnovers, that might have changed game."

Utah's latest bowl victory came on the TCU campus, where it played for the first time since a September 2005 game when the Utes' school-record 18-game winning streak ended in a 23-20 overtime loss against the Horned Frogs.

On the opening drive after halftime, Weddle took direct snaps on consecutive plays for runs of 7 and 10 yards. That set the Utes up at the 10 for the catch-and-pitch TD that made it 16-7. He carried six straight times on the final offensive series.

"Hammer it into the end zone. We stumped that mud hole dry and kept giving it to him," Whittingham said.

Weddle also threw a touchdown pass this season and scored three times on defense -- two interception returns and one fumble recovery.

After Utah started at its own 1, Ratliffe threw a 7-yard pass to Derrek Richards and ran for 12 yards on the next play. The Utes actually gained 92 yards on the drive, making up for two 5-yard penalties, before they had to settle for Sakoda's 34-yard field goal.

Sakoda kicked a career-long 45-yard field goal on Utah's opening possession of the game. He added a 39-yarder midway through the second quarter.

The game provided a first-time matchup of head coaches who were childhood friends. The fathers of Whittingham and Kragthorpe were on Lavell Edwards' staff together at BYU from 1973-79.

Smith's 1-yard keeper put Tulsa ahead 7-3 early in the second quarter, only after the play was reviewed to confirm the ball didn't pop out of his hands until after he stretched it across the goal line.

That ended an 80-yard drive that almost never got started for the Golden Hurricane after punt returner Idris Moss fumbled. Two Utah players missed chances to recover before freshman linebacker Mike Bryan emerged from the bottom of the pile with the ball.

Tulsa finished with only 254 total yards -- 146 below its season average that was second-best in Conference USA.

"I felt pretty positive. We've been in bad situations and came back and won," Smith said. "No elements during game surprised us. ... We didn't our job."

The fourth-year game, formerly known as the Fort Worth Bowl, was sponsored by Bell Helicopter.

Giuliano’s and Me
I was in Giuliano’s on Friday as usual to pick up my sandwich for dinner order. I stopped by when it was crowded and that happens often with me. Today, I came in at lunch time because I was at the end of my errands for the day and the sandwich could keep for a few hours in the refrigerator before my dinner.

After placing my order with Lucy, my favorite counter clerk, I had to wait for it to be made. I had on my University of South Carolina Gamecocks sweatshirt that the Princess got for me when she earned her MBA from the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. It was cool and windy on Friday and I was dressed for the weather.

A young woman asked me if I was a Gamecocks fan. I said that I was indirectly. She was from Columbia, South Carolina, where the University is located. There is a plaque in Columbia that commemorates the time the Yankees under General William T. Sherman burned the town during the War of Northern Aggression.

For a moment, I thought about talking to the young woman since she was attractive and apparently single. Things were going along well until she mentioned that she was moving back to South Carolina to take a job in Charleston in about six weeks.

Obviously, there was no future with her.

Why would you want to leave Los Angeles for a small town place like Charleston? I guess she must like the life in the really slow lane.

The Original Tommy’s Hamburgers
I took the Princess, the boy friend, and Doug to Tommy’s for chili burgers, fries, and sodas on Saturday. Mostly, it was to take the boy friend out to have lunch with Doug and me. The Princess wanted to come along because she had heard Doug and me talking about Tommy’s. She wanted to see what Tommy’s was all about.

To her credit, she did have a single chili burger with cheese fries. She has never been much of a meat eater so Doug and I were surprised when she managed to finish it off. Her boy friend did finish off his Mega Combo chili cheese burger but hit his wall when he came to the chili fries.

Doug and I had no trouble with our Mega Combos. We go to Tommy’s regularly and we know not to have a large breakfast on a Tommy’s day.

El Gringo
I went to El Gringo for a small dinner on Saturday. It was a small dinner because lunch was at the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers. Mostly, I went to say Merry Christmas to Whitney the server. I had a nice and well prepared dinner of two soft chicken tacos and water to drink.

El Gringo was crowded because I went later than I usually do. I needed some time to let my lunch digest before even a light dinner. It is nice that Whitney remembers me and greets me by name. This makes El Gringo more like a Mexican food version of Cheers from television.

Woman of the Moment
Here we have a holiday gift, some Kandyce Marie photos. I will add some photos later on to round out the posting.





Visitors
We had another good week for visitors. We had visitors from Japan [8], Viet Nam [2], France [2], Argentina, Hong Kong, Poland [4], United Kingdom [2], Italy [2], Philippines, Venezuela, Serbia & Montenegro, Tunisia, Ireland [2], Korea [2], Malaysia, Germany, Taiwan [2], and Spain.

This was the first visit from Tunisia and Serbia & Montenegro.

We had two curious visitors who were here for sixteen minutes and eighteen minutes.

This week, we had more lookers including one who has to be the all time looker [so far]. This visitor hit 49 pages in sixteen minutes.

Incredible.

We also had two lookers who stopped by twelve pages in two minutes and in four and a half minutes. There was a fourth looker who stopped by and viewed eleven pages in three minutes.

I do appreciate all of the viewers who stop by the blog.

Cleaning and Cooking
One of the good things about Christmas coming on a Monday was that I had all weekend to clean and cook. I don’t mind the cooking so much. I just don’t really care all that much for the cleaning.

I did manage to have the flat clean and reasonably presentable by Monday afternoon when the family showed up for Christmas. It is times like these that I sometimes think I should sign up for a cleaning service or maybe even find a women who likes cleaning and would be happy as a stay at home wife and get remarried.

Everyone liked what I cooked for Christmas dinner. Doug had both turkey legs for his dinner. He must have been hungry. The Princess surprised me this year by drinking Pinot Noir wine instead of the Sauvignon Blanc that she has had in the past. Then again, she did have a chili cheeseburger at Tommy’s so maybe she is coming around to the carnivore way of eating now.

Komyo Ga Tsuji
My Japanese historical drama took a surprising plot turn on Saturday.

The samurai lord, Yamauchi, was rewarded for changing sides and supporting the Tokugawa clan at the crucial battle. He received the province of Tosa as his reward. Unfortunately, none of the people who are living in the province want to be ruled by him and he has to pacify the province to please Lord Tokugawa.

Lord Tokugawa placed him in the province because he wants him to act as an expendable buffer. As a buffer, Lord Yamauchi will be expected to prevent any rebellion from starting.

The pacification task was able more difficult because the samurai who administered the province were either dead or expelled from the province and are now ronin. Tosa was home to what we would call guerilla fighters who have no loyalty to the new province governor or his predecessor. They just want to be left alone and allowed to live according to their own ways and customs.

Yamauchi’s wife Chiyo had advocated that he take a gentle approach in the pacification task while his vassals wanted to take an aggressive, scorched earth approach. He was more or less following his wife’s suggestions in the initial stages of the pacification effort.

As the episode closed on Saturday, Chiyo was shot by the guerilla fighters and collapsed in his arms. It is an interesting plot twist since she is the leading actress in the series and the leading cast member. I suppose this action will set up a potential reign of terror and blood bath in the province since most of the vassals were devoted to his wife. The shooting of his wife by the guerillas will grant Yamauchi all of the moral support he needs to justify using extreme measures. Lord Tokugawa does not care how Yamauchi pacifies the province so long as he achieves his goal.

The next Saturday’s episode should be fascinating.

Christmas Day
Christmas Day is usually the longest day of the year for me. I start cooking around 7:00 AM and then I am in and out of the kitchen for the rest of the day. I finished the clean up around 9:00 PM last night. I did take a break for a half hour to watch my Korean soap opera drama that stars the current Weekend Bonus Feature actress Ku Hye sun.

After washing the pots and pans and rinsing off the plates, I can safely say that I went to bed with very clean hands. I also had absolutely no trouble falling asleep.

I did have a very nice and warm personal Christmas with the family over to my house. I received several DVDs including five that were on my list of Missing Academy Award Best Film winners.

With my DVDs, I started off collecting the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Films. I think I now have 93 or 94 of the 100 Greatest American Films. It will be a while before I round out this set because at least two have been released on DVD and the others are out of print.

With the AFI 100 list filling up, I switched over the Academy Awards Best Film list. There are only 75 films currently on the Best Film list and one would expect that the AFI and the Academy Awards Best Film lists to be almost identical. They aren’t. I think I have around 25 more to go with the Best Film list. I know that at least film one has never been released on DVD so this collection will not be complete anytime soon.

I like to organize things. The lists are a reasonable and thoughtful approach to collecting DVDs. I am by no means an expert at picking what DVDs should be in a collection. I think the AFI and Oscar list are a sound basis to start collecting.

ICQ and Me
You all know that I have an ICQ account and have had it since 1996 when my oldest Internet acquaintance urged me to sign up for it.

I will generally chat with anyone who seems modestly interesting to me. I do require that they speak or understand English since I have no foreign language skills. I know I should probably try to learn a foreign language but at this stage of my life I don’t think so.

On Friday and Saturday, it seemed like it was find an American husband weekend. I had four Chinese women contact me in ICQ. Most were all looking for an American or at least a Western husband who could offer them a one way ticket out of China to the good life in the West. One of the women was only interested in marrying an American who would be willing to live in China with her and help her build her private school business in Hong Kong.

I never knew that I was all that handsome or desirable as a potential husband.

I don’t see myself leaving the good old United States of America for anything except short vacations. I love living here and I love our form of government that has survived for 230 years with only one attempted and subsequently unsuccessful overthrow.

Woman of the Moment
This concludes the brief run of Kandyce Marie from Speed Options magazine. I will have a new one tomorrow for you all.



That was my long weekend gentle readers, I hope your weekend was as satisfying as mine was.

Be well and stay happy.

Greetings

Merry Christmas

May you and your family receive all of the joy and happiness of the Season.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Ku Hye sun

Weekend Bonus Feature
I thought I would post another Weekend Bonus Feature since I will not have a regular blog posting until Monday night if I am not too tired but more likely the next posting will be Tuesday.




Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Ku Hye sun

Weekend Bonus Feature
I knew there was something I should have finished off on Friday. I remembered that I did not post the Weekend Bonus Feature on my way back to the beach from having lunch with the Princess, her boy friend, and Doug at the Original Tommy's Hamburgers today.

It was another epic meal for Doug and me. I think the jury or the stomachs are still out in the case of the Princess and her boy friend.




Be well and stay happy and Merry Christmas to all.

Weekend Preview - December 21st

Weekend Preview
This is the long Christmas Weekend for me, my family, my friends, and many others throughout the world.

It also means that the next posting will probably be December 26th. I am undecided about putting a posting up on Sunday the 24th. I know that I will be too tired to put a posting on Christmas Day after spending several hours cooking and serving and cleaning up.

I finished the last of my Christmas gift shopping today. That felt good so now I do not have to brave the malls at the very last minute. Tomorrow, I will pick up the last of the food for Christmas Dinner. I just need some rolls and milk.

Tonight, I will send out my email Christmas card to my friends who haven’t shared their snail mail addresses with me. This is something to do tonight since it will be the 23rd when some of my friends in China receive it and I want to make sure they have before they leave for a long weekend.

Doug and I talked at lunch yesterday about the trip to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers on Saturday. The original plans were for the four of us [Princess, boy friend, Doug, and me] to go to the first Tommy’s at Rampart and Beverly and stand in the cold parking lot and eat our chili cheese burgers and chili cheese fries.

Doug felt the Tommy’s ambiance might get lost on the Princess and the boy friend. I tended to agree with his proposal that we instead go to the one in Westminster and eat of meals inside. This made more sense since the Princess wants to visit her friend from graduate school on Saturday afternoon. I could understand the Princess wanting to see her friend but that left Doug and me hanging on the outside.

If we go to the Tommy’s in Westminster, I can meet the three of them and then drop Doug off at his home in the South O.C. while The Princess and boy friend can go on to see her friend. Since I will be in the South O.C., I can watch a showing of CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER on my way back to the Beach.

Our Utes will be playing [American] football on Saturday so I need to fit their game into my schedule. The University of Utah will be playing Tulsa in the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas. The last time I checked, our Utes were favored by I think seven points.

Indulgence
I did manage to indulge myself today. I bought myself some poultry scissors this morning. They look like they will be able to cut the turkey leg joint and tendons rather easily. I had been frustrated for years over the mess that became the turkey leg when I attempted to cut it off for Doug’s meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas. But, from now on, I will no longer be frustrated.

The scissors are high carbon, stainless steel and have nice, heavy feel to them. They are made in Japan for change and not China. The scissors are more like a Swiss Knife version of scissors; they have screw driver blade in each handle, a bottle opener, nut cracker, and a bottle opener.

I am looking forward to cooking and carving the turkey on Christmas now.

Woman of the Moment
It’s Christmas time so why not have three photos of our Woman of the Moment.




Gentle Readers
Merry Christmas gentle readers. May the spirit of the season reach each and every one of you and your families. I wish you all of the blessing of the holiday.

Be well and stay happy.

The Princess, the boy friend, and their luggage all arrived on time

The Princess, her boy friend, and their luggage all arrived on time
Actually, they arrived ahead of time which was a surprise because the later flights in any given day are usually late from earlier delays. Her flight was scheduled to arrive at 7:32 PM and it landed at 7:15 PM.

Arrivals are measured by when the plane lands and departures are measured from when the plane pushes away from the boarding gate. Thus, a plane can arrive early and still have to sit on the tarmac until another plane leaves the gate. This tends to frustrate the passengers, especially when they see an empty gate. The gate is empty because the plane can not fit at the gate.

Even more amazing was their luggage was on the plane.

We were out of the airport before 8:00 PM and that was a miracle for us. The traffic was light.

The Princess said the flight was relatively smooth and there was only one small patch of turbulence. You have to understand that the Princess hates to fly and has generally always hated to fly for some reason.

Dad’s One Bad Flight
I have flown all of the time. I have only been really nervous once on a flight and that was during the Vietnam War on a helicopter ride from my ship to the landing zone of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, a unit the ship was supporting with its guns.

Most all of senior officers dodged going to lunch with the Commanding General. As a junior officer, I figured I would have to stay on the ship.

Big mistake Chuck.

As the ship’s Gunnery Officer, I was one of the requested guests for lunch. I was the one, in the Army’s mind, who pointed and fired the guns that supported them. I missed lunch with the Commanding General when he visited the ship because I was checking my guns in preparation for an afternoon gunfire support mission.

Reluctantly, I went along to lunch. I wore my flak jacket [bullet resistant vest] and put on a helmet. I noticed the helicopter crew chief was sitting on his flak jacket. I asked why and he said it was to stop bullets coming up from below. I promptly sat on my jacket as well.

It was one of those events that one never forgets.
Lunch was Army rations that came from cans. It was all that they had out in the middle of less than friendly country. I think we ate better on the ship and I never complained again about our stewards cooking.

L.A. Food Show – Part 1
I took the Princess and the boy friend to the L.A. Food Show for dinner. The Princess had been to the Show before with me but never for dinner.

They both loved the Avocado Bacon Cheese Chicken eggrolls. We got the last two orders so we were very lucky and thankful for the early arrival and smooth baggage handling process. The Princess said that my brother was raving about the eggrolls and they were almost reason enough to make a trip to Southern California. She saw him last month in San Francisco.

The boy friend and I had Blue Crab Cakes with a small baked potato and grilled asparagus. The crab cakes were very good. The Princess ordered some fish tacos. The server brought out Fish and Chips instead.

This was not what I had expected to happen. I couldn’t get our server’s attention but the cook saw that we, the boy friend and I, were upset and he shouted at us and asked what the problem was. He sent another server to our table to fix things. We told him the Princess had ordered Fish Tacos. The second server took the wrong plate away and promised the proper one immediately.

Our original server, Marissa, said it was the kitchen’s fault for the wrong order. I thought that was shameless and improper blame shuffling. If she had been doing her job, she would have checked the order before she brought it to our table.

But, why point fingers or forks?

We shared a molten chocolate cake which the Princess said was nice but no where close to the Morton’s Godiva Cake. She was right as usual.

On a side bar, I do like the boy friend.

L.A. Food Show – Part 2
Doug and I went there for lunch today. He had another meeting up in Los Angeles and he was finished just before lunch.

We decided to pass on hamburgers since we are going to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers on Saturday for lunch. We each plan to have a Mega Combo. We also passed on El Gringo because I usually go there for dinner on Wednesdays.

We had an order to the Avocado Bacon Cheese Chicken eggrolls. Doug said he would try them because he loves eggrolls. He pronounced them very satisfactory and tasty. He would probably have them again except that Manhattan Beach is a very long drive from the South O.C.

I had a cheeseburger and fries. They do serve a lot of fries with their meals and that was nice. Doug had a roast beef sandwich that he really liked. We ate at the counter because it was quicker and we had a chance to see what some of the entrees were while we made up our minds.

We did pig out over dessert. I had a three scoop, ice cream sundae that I could have easily passed on but I didn’t. Doug had a chocolate banana cream cake. I just it was good because it was gone almost immediately.

Christmas
I got my artificial Christmas tree up today and it looks fairly nice. I have to go buy some string so I can hang a half dozen more bulbs. I can do that tomorrow and then I will almost be done.

I still have two more gifts to pick up and wrap. I don’t think that will take too long. I hope it doesn’t take too long. I also need to swing by my local Cheesecake Factory and pick up a couple of slices of their White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cheesecake for the Princess. She says this is the traditional Christmas Dinner dessert. The rest of us will have either pumpkin pie or mince pie instead.

Woman of the Moment
Here are two more photos of Kandyce Marie. I sometimes get suspicious about people how spell their names in an odd manner, like Kandyce for example.



El Gringo
I went to El Gringo tonight for dinner.

Tonight was a disaster for my dinner. Valerie the Server was more interested in her boy friend than she was in the customers. It should not have taken almost twenty minutes to prepare two soft chicken tacos. When Valerie brought the two tacos, they were fried and not soft.

Valerie took the tacos back and replaced them with the two soft tacos that I had originally ordered. I was surprised that it took less than five minutes to replace the fried tacos. The indifferent and chaotic service left me upset and anxious over my food. I was upset and only managed to eat one taco.

I’m not sure what is so difficult about making a soft taco. I guess the cooks decided that I was wrong and that I should have the hard fried tacos.

Big mistake.

I’ll give El Gringo one more chance to get it right when I stop by this weekend. Let me down one more time and I am gone forever.


Be well and stay happy.

Chuck hedges his bet with a midweek Weekend Bonus Feature

Ku Hye sun
I'm hedging my bets and my time today with the substitution of a Weekend Bonus Feature segment.





Be well and stay happy.

Oh happy day!

Oh happy day
I had a great start to my day today.

I had to swing past my credit union to pick up some money. I usually go straight to the drive-up ATM and get my cash there. The ATM was broken so I had to go inside to get my cash. The teller remarked that I looked like I had lost a lot of weight.

That was sweet. So was the piece of dark chocolate candy I took with me.

Today was Christmas shopping for me. I managed to get all but one gift purchased today. I will knock the last one out tomorrow along with putting up my small artificial tree. I may post a photo of the tree if it looks nice.

I noticed that piercings seem to have become an important part of young women’s dress. One of the store clerks who helped me today had her lower lip pierced. The stud was about midway between her lip and the bottom of her jaw. If I was her boy friend, I would feel apprehensive about kissing her good night.

As I wandered through the mall, I noticed more and more young women were opting for multiple facial piercings. I saw one clerk, she was helping someone else, who had piercings in her nose, lower lip, and her tongue. I was taken back by this. I wonder if these young women have any tattoos.

Programming Note
There may not be a blog posting tomorrow night because the Princess and the boy friend are flying into Los Angeles and Dad, that would be me, is picking them up. If I can’t get a regular posting up, I will put up a Best of the Women of the Moment feature. I will be the first to admit that a Best of the Women of the Moment is far cry from my usual droll commentary.

Woman of the Moment
The new woman of the Moment is Kandyce Marie. Kandyce appeared in the August 2005 Speed Options Model of the Moment feature. According to Speed Options, Kandyce is 67 inches / 170 centimeters tall and measures 34C – 23 – 35 or 86 – 58 – 89. She has a web site, http://www.kandycemarie.com, but it appears to be out of service.

I have no idea how old Kandyce Marie is. Is knowing her age all that important in the grand scheme of things anyway?



I wonder what Sony was thinking?
I wonder what Sony was thinking when they approved a promotional insert in Sunday’s paper that featured the young golfer Michelle Wie. I think Sony was smart to use her to catch attention to their advertisement. Ms Wie was dressed in very attractive red outfits which seemed logical for this time of the year.

What I didn’t understand was why Sony allowed the art work to go to press with her finger nails being painted black or some other dark color. I just don’t see black finger nails at Christmas time when you are wear red a dress.

Black nails look fine in this photo from Forbes Magazine.


Maybe I’m getting too old for the younger generation’s choices. If I get ambitious, I will try to scan the photo from the advertisement in the next day or so.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - December 17th

Weekend Update
We had something that was close to Winter weather here in Southern California on Saturday and then on into Sunday. We had some rain; not a lot of rain, mind you. It was enough rain to make the Pathfinder look really ugly.

Our local mountains got about a foot / thirty centimeters of snow. The snow boarders and skiers loved that snowfall. The swells were up and running at five to seven feet / one and a half to two meters. That is great surfing.

I should get it washed but why take a chance on more rain happening.

My Friend Vivian

Vivian and I were going to have lunch today at our favorite restaurant, L.A. Food Show in Manhattan Beach.

I would have shared an order of the eggrolls with Vivian and had a large salad for lunch. I’m pretty certain Vivian would have had a sushi appetizer and possibly bar-be-qued ribs for lunch. I know we would have split the molten chocolate cake for dessert.

Unfortunately for both of us, Vivian got really sick last week. I found out when she emailed on Friday after she got out of the hospital after suffering from a nasty bout of food poisoning or stomach flu or something else that was just as evil. Vivian was on a semi liquid diet then and didn’t feel very confident that she would be up to eating solid food by today. She suggested that we have dinner one night next week.

I said any day next week was fine except for Tuesday when I pick up the Princess and the boy friend at the airport.

I am an optimist by nature. I try to find a positive result in every event.

When I replied to Vivian about having dinner next week, I said that she could always look at the bright side of her recent illness. Now, she won’t have too much trouble fitting into her slinky New Year’s Eve outfit.

Woman of the Moment
These are the last of the Oksana Mazurovsky photos. I hope you enjoyed her photos.





Sunisa Kim
I know a number of you are Sunisa Kim fans. I would like to mention that she has revised and launched a new web site. It can be found at http://www.sunisakim.com. The web site is still being completed and it did have an outrageously long load time over my high speed connection. This could have been a result of high traffic volume or a slow server.

One of these days, I’m going to have Doug show me how to setup slick links to web sites so I don’t have to type in the complete URL like I did here.

Visitors
This was another good week for foreign visitors to the blog. We had visitors from Japan [10], Canada [8], Spain [2], Malaysia, India [2], Ukraine, Singapore [2], China, Germany [3], United Kingdom [6], Australia, Thailand, Poland [3], Argentina, Italy, Iran, Burkina Faso, Switzerland, France, Bolivia [2], Taiwan, Hungary, Hong Kong, and Mexico.

This was the first visit from anyone from Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is a land locked, West African nation that was a former French territory.

We had a couple of curious visitors this week. We had one visitor stop by for 18 minutes; another for 15 minutes; and a third for 11 minutes.

We only had one looker last week who viewed nine pages in nine minutes.

I do appreciate all of the visitors to the blog.

Doug
Doug arrived on time on Friday to help me move some old furniture out of the flat.

We carried an old bookcase out. It was easier than I thought it would be for us. After we removed the old bookcase, we decided to go looking for a new bookcase that was smaller than the seven foot one we carried out. We managed to go to two furniture stores and didn’t find anything that caught my attention.

By then, it was lunchtime.

We headed to Giuliano’s for sandwiches. I had a small submarine sandwich and Doug had a hot pastrami sandwich. We split a bag of Kettle Chips. Doug picked the honey Dijon flavor and it was rather good. It was salty as it should be. I think this was the first time in a long time for me to have a salty snack like potato chips.

El Gringo
I went to El Gringo for my dinner today. I had thought about going there on Saturday for dinner as well but decided to cook some fish at home instead.

Jess was the server tonight, filling in for Whitney who was in New York City. I really like Jess as a server because she remembers me which is really nice for me. She knew that I would drink an Arnold Palmer and brought it to my table without having to ask for it.

An Arnold Palmer is a mixture of half iced tea and half lemonade. It is a very refreshing drink. I am always amazed that the drink is served with a lemon slice. Why do you need a lemon slice when the drink is half lemonade?

I had a Number Two Combination with soft chicken tacos, rice, and beans. It was a rewarding and filling meal.

I did notice that I need to get organized for next weekend and the following one. El Gringo will close at 4:00 PM on the next two Sundays. I think I will make it to El Gringo on Saturday nights instead since both Whitney and Jess should be there. I can go to El Gringo all day on New Year’s Day.

The Armed Forced Bowl with Utah and Tulsa will be on television next Saturday. I obviously need to be able to watch that game and cheer our Utes on to victory, assuming the good Utah football team shows up for the game.


That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you had an enjoyable one as well.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - December 15th

Weekend Bonus Feature - Ku Hye sun
Well, here it is, the weekend. That means it is time for the Weekend Bonus Feature. Ku Hye sun is an actress in a Korean drama on my local cable service. At Episode 100, she had her first kiss. These photos, I believe came from the drama series, Pure in Heart.




Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - December 14th

Weekend Preview
This looks like this will be a slow weekend for me. My big plans include working on my dissertation and that is about the extent of things for me aside from having lunch with my friend Vivian on Sunday.

Doug called me this morning to let me know when he planned to get here to help me move some stuff. We also talked about where we ought to go for lunch. I suggested that we either go to the local delicatessen, Giuliano’s, or California Pizza Kitchen. Doug decided to go to Giuliano’s and get a large, hot pastrami sandwich and then come back to the flat and have lunch here.

Vivian’s Man of the Moment
Vivian made up for being absent from her Man of the Moment postings by selecting the group, Snow Patrol.

I have to admit that I have never heard of Snow Patrol before nor heard them sing to the best of my knowledge. I will take Vivian’s statement that their song ‘Run’ made her very happy. Vivian said she saw the group perform earlier this month at a local radio station’s annual holiday musical event, KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas.


Woman of the Moment
We are getting down to the end of my supply of Oksana Mazurovsky photos now.




Job Searching and Interviewing
I had a job interview today that went fairly well for me.

The job is a teaching position at a trade school and I might end up teaching three or four classes. Granted, a trade school is not Harvard but it is a teaching start for me and I can build this up to higher levels of education.

My job interview consisted of me giving a mock classroom presentation to three department heads, none of whom were from the Business Administration Department. I talked about planning because it seemed like a topic that would reach across department boundaries because every academic department has to plan and organize. I guess I did fine on the presentation as the school wants to have me start teaching in January.

Nice for me.


Have a great weekend gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.

Woman of the Moment

Woman of the Moment
I felt very good about myself today.

I made some decisions about the future Women of the Moments. I decided to stay with sources for Women of the Moment like Speed Options since the women they feature in their model of the month section have a gazillion photos floating around the Internet.

I also decided to stay with foreign actresses since they seem to have lots of photos on the Internet as well. I was looking for the next Weekend Bonus Feature Woman last Sunday. I saw a Japanese actress on a Japanese language broadcast on Saturday and thought I would see what the Internet could produce for me in terms of photos of her. I found lots of photos; I ended up keeping I think just over fifty of them so she will be around for a long time.

The current Woman of the Moment will end on Sunday. I have a new one ready for Monday. I don’t have a lot of photos of her so I plan to run out the year with my favorite photos from other Women of the Moment.

Now would be an excellent time to drop in today’s Woman of the Moment.



El Gringo
I went to El Gringo for dinner tonight.

Valerie the Server was back from taking her final examinations last week. She said she stayed up all night studying for two examinations. I never understood the concept of cramming everything that you should have learned during the course into a few hours just before you take the examination. Valerie said she was really stressed from the examination pressure. That makes sense to me.

Dinner tonight was another grilled, blackened mahi mahi burrito with a side order of guacamole. I made the mistake on having the burrito upside down on my plate so it sort of fell apart while I was eating it. I thought it was very good tonight and enjoyed my meal a great deal.

Helping Students
I was a struggling student once.

I have been willing to help students with their papers and projects. Most of you know about me helping my son with his papers. Doug told me that he got an “A” on one of his papers that I had helped him with.

I am no longer a struggling student; I know where all of the problems and troubles are by now.

My friend Xue sent me an urgent email today. Xue is a Chinese graduate student studying in America. She asked me to review, edit, and revise a paper that she is working for one of her graduate school classes. I should get it after dinner and then I will turn it around before I go to bed and send it back to her.

I sent my new friends Lifang and Xingzhu a CD today of downloaded material for their master’s theses. It was my initial cut at getting information for them. I think most of the 45 MB of data will be useful. I want to gauge the usefulness of the material before I spend a great deal of my time searching for them. If I know what I have found so far is usable, then I ought to be able to generate another 100 MB or more of material for them and improve their chances of getting a high mark on their theses.

As you might imagine, Xue, Lifang, and Xingzhu are not Irish.

ICQ
I noticed the other day that ICQ is getting close to registering its 500 millionth user. I had someone in the 498 million block add me to his or her contact list. I didn’t add the person to my list because he or she didn’t indicate if they spoke English of not. It doesn’t make any sense for me to add someone to my contact list if I will have trouble communicating with them.

When I first signed on with ICQ ten years, I thought my registration number of just under 3,000,000 was about all the people that could ever want to use the program. I am amazed then that there were this many people out there who would want to use the program to chat with other people including complete strangers.

Food for Thought
I have an old graduate school classmate who sends me a daily email with a quote of the day. My classmate and I worked on a group project in a class and both did very well on it. Some of the quote authors are obscure for me. I liked the one for today.

“Courage is being scared to death – and saddling up anyway,” John Wayne.

Cool.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers

What Did I Do Today?

What Did I Do Today?
What did I do today?

That is an excellent question.

I don’t think one could say that I did a lot today. I did run a few errands. I went by the ATM for some spending money. I picked up some cleaning and shirts at the laundry. I did make it to the Post Office and mailed the coffee beans and tea leaves to the Princess. I was more surprised at how uncrowded the Post Office was this morning.

I got gas for the Prelude this morning. I paid USD$2.57 for a gallon of gasoline at an Exxon Mobil station. I know what I paid isn’t all that much compared to places like Europe where a gallon is about USD$8.00 or so. What did surprise me was the gas at an Exxon Mobil station on the company’s refinery grounds was USD$2.65.

How can you explain the fact that gasoline costs more at the refinery and less at a station two miles / three kilometers away from the refinery?

I’m certain the oil company would have a slick explanation.

Doug will be out on Friday to help me move some stuff. One of the big questions was where do we go for lunch. I managed to figure that out and we ought to be to my favorite Italian delicatessen, Giuliano’s, and pick up some sandwiches for lunch. We haven’t been there in several years now so the time is ripe for another visit.

I spent a couple of hours doing research for the dissertation. Doing research work is like playing a game. You try to think up great short phrases that relate to the topic and then you see if there are any documents that use these words. Sometimes, you get lucky and find 3,000 documents and other times you only find two documents. Just because you find 3,000 documents, that doesn’t mean that all 3,000 will be useful to you. Some are eliminated because they are too old and some are eliminated because they don’t actually relate to what you are searching for.

Last night, my daily Korean drama, “Pure in Heart,” that features Ku Hye sun from last week’s weekend Bonus Feature reached Episode 100. The big event of the episode was the heroine and hero finally kissed each other. At the rate they are progressing, it will be sometime next year before they get engaged and married. I’m assuming that is the end point of the series.

Woman of the Moment
As I mentioned last night, we are down to only bikini photos of the Woman of the Moment. I will toss in an extra photo tonight to make up for the duplicate from yesterday.





Be well and stay happy.

Small World

Small World
It is a small world and I am not referring to the Walt Disney song or the ride at any of the Magic Kingdoms.

Last month, I got picked up by a new chat acquaintance from China. Like the majority of the Chinese who have wanted to chat with me over the years, Emily is a student who wanted to practice her English language skills in a static online sort of way. It is easy to be friendly so I participate in the exchanges.

I offer to chat with them and correct or rather suggest better ways to say something. The students learn text book English which is fine except that it is not recognized by most English speakers. Emily, for example, used the term ‘salary earners’ which was correct in her context. I suggested that she consider using the term ‘workers’ since that word was more commonly used in every day English.

Emily asked me if I could help her with her master’s thesis project that will be on American health insurance programs. I won’t write her paper. I will offer her explanations of our health insurance programs and look up information for her and locate appropriate web sites for her to go to on her own and discover the answers to her research. I have sent Emily about 7MB of material that I had on my hard drive so far.

Emily lives in a dormitory at her university with three other women. One of her roommates also wants my help with her thesis project on the American retirement system. Fortunately for me, there is an overlap on the subject matter so the work I do to find articles is reduced.

Last night, I was chatting with Emily and her roommate Sunny at the same time about their research projects. This was the first time in my ten years of dinking around ICQ where I have had multiple conversations when the other parties have been in the same room.

I thought this was fascinating. Alternatively, I have a very low threshold of intellectual excitement.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon and I talked for about an hour and a half over the weekend. Sharon had lots of questions about an issue she ran into at work.

I try to be helpful and friendly to all so I tried to answer her questions.

Unfortunately, Sharon did not have all of the most useful, and therefore the most helpful, information available to her when we spoke. Answering questions without all of the information is like working in a vacuum. The answers are valid and correct under a very limited set of conditions and circumstances.

Sharon wanted to know why I kept changing my answers.

I said I changed my answers because you provided me with new information and therefore changed the factual set of conditions. In the end, I think I helped her to understand the answers.

There are the unanswered questions of why the program was allowed to go forward, what were the objectives, and why were the objectives set so low?

Doug
Doug’s cancelled meeting from last week was rescheduled for this morning. He stopped by my flat for lunch on his way to school. Since we went to El Gringo last week, we went to Fatburger today.

We had Kingburgers with cheese and fat fries for lunch. One of the first things I noticed when we walked in was the price increases, up about 20% or so from the last time I was there. It took for what seemed like an eternity to cook and prepare the meals. I think we were waiting for close to twenty minutes which was much longer than what I have experienced normally.

The longer than usual wait can be attributed to two areas. The staff is not very efficient or the number of orders was just too much for the staff of four to process effectively. I have seen other work groups in the local Fatburger who were much more organized and effective.

All of this leads me to a gnawing question, where will Doug and I eat on Friday when he comes out to help me move some heavy furniture around? Fatburger is out since we went there today. That leaves us with El Gringo, always a sound and spicy choice, and an In n Out Hamburgers store, another good choice.

I will leave the food venue selection up to Doug.

Cleaning
I did some cleaning around the flat today. I took two large boxes of books out to my storage unit and that made my bedroom seem less crowded. I also tossed a bunch of old and no longer needed papers in the recycle bin.

Doug and I will get rid of some old furniture on Friday and that will be nice. Of course, once you get rid of the furniture, you do have to replace it so that will be something of a chore but the furniture store will deliver the new stuff in their big truck that will be driven by a crew of workers with the proper handling equipment.

Woman of the Moment
The remaining Oksana Mazurovsky photos are of her in bikinis or similar attire.

I mentioned this to Doug at lunch. He looked up from his Kingburger said, “And your point would be what Dad?” That does make a great deal of sense to me. It certainly is not our fault that Oksana chose to be photographed in bikinis a lot of the time.




Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - December 10th

Weekend Update
It was supposed to rain on Saturday night – Sunday morning. I don’t know if it rained or not. It could have rained when I was asleep. I think we had a storm front come through here today because it was windy this afternoon.

Christmas Cards
I finished and mailed the last of my Christmas cards on Saturday morning. I think this is the earliest that I have finished the cards in a long time.

The only other time that I could recall sending them out earlier was when I was in the United States Navy. I mailed them early because I was on the ship and the ship was at sea. Hard to find a mailbox in the middle of the South China Sea. The one good thing about mailing from the ship was that, if you timed the mailing right, you could mail for free from the combat zone.

I did mail a couple of my cards that went overseas right after Thanksgiving.

This was also the first year that I put a letter in two of my cards. I’m not sure why I did this but it seemed to be a good thing to do this year. Maybe next year, I’ll include a letter with most of the cards.

Of course, there will always be the one that I forgot to send out with the bulk of the cards but mailing out one or two more cards is not much of a task during the next week.

El Gringo – Wednesday Night
As usual, I went to El Gringo on Wednesday night. I was prepared for my regular discussion with Valerie about what I was going to have for my dinner. I had my logic well thought out and I had plenty of analogy ammunition. I was ready for bear.

Valerie was not working in Wednesday because she was studying for her finals. So much for planning ahead and preparing for an argument.

Aleesa was the substitute server. I did not recognize her at first because her hair was dyed black instead of the light brown that she had when I first met her. She also had removed the piercing in her nose because some customers where upset with it. I don’t think she liked that.

I wasn’t particularly bothered by the piercing that was “U” shaped and went through the middle part of her nose. I was tempted to ask her how her boy friend liked kissing her with the nose piercing. I decided against learning more about Aleesa than I really needed or, perhaps truly, wanted to know.

I had a Number Two Combination but I substituted the grilled, blackened mahi mahi for the beef in the soft tacos. I like to think that balanced out the rice and beans and all of the chips and salsa I had with my meal.

Visitors
We had another good week for foreign visitors. We had visitors from Texas [2], Canada [6], Japan [7], Iran, Taiwan [2], United States Virgin Islands, Hungary, Poland, Costa Rica, Venezuela, France, India, China [3], Mexico, United Kingdom [2], Netherlands, Spain, Macau, Thailand, Korea, and Malaysia.

This past week were the first visits to the blog from residents of the Virgin Islands and Macau.

I guess I can say the visitor from Iran didn’t come here by mistake.

We had fewer curious visitors this week. We had one who stopped by for 14 minutes.

There were no looker visitors this week.

I do appreciate all of your visits to the blog.

Social Me – Part 2
Haven’t gotten an email yet from Jennifer Aniston asking me out.

I figure that I’ll give her until the end of the week to make her mind up about us getting together. If she doesn’t email me, then I’ll be moving on to someone else. Don’t take too long with the email Jen.

Time Warner Cable
It’s been over a week since the TWC representative promised to call me right back.

I don’t think she’s going to call me, ever.

I can get over the lack of the promised call back. I can even offer a reasonable explanation of why she didn’t call me back. If you recall, she was going to speak to her supervisor and ask the supervisor to make some phone calls to move my service call up on the list of unhappy people.

Her supervisor probably said something like, “Look, we got thousands of unhappy people. We can’t go around calling the service people every time we get an unhappy customer.”

Then, she was probably afraid to call me back. She didn’t want to have to face an unhappy customer who was calmly assessing the merits of satellite television. She probably didn’t want to say that they tried to improve my service call position but they had no luck immediately but possibly an opening might happen where they could slot me in for service; assuming, of course, that I would be home when they wanted to come out early, an unlikely event.

I also have promise for a month’s credit on my service from when I first called in to request a service call. I wonder if TWC will keep that commitment to me.

What most customer service people don’t understand is the horrific affect on the company’s business reputation the broken promise has on an unhappy customer. That was the near fatal flaw in her reasoning.

In my case, several hundred people have read the blog postings where I ranted and raved about the poor service and the lack of commitment to the customers by Time Warner Cable. That has to be bad for the company’s reputation.

How many readers were influenced by my experience? I don’t now and any guess would be purely speculative on my part. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some readers may have changed their minds about TWC and opted for video service from their local phone company or considered going with the dish and satellite television.

Pop quiz hotshots: How likely I will be to include a positive comment about TWC?

Ummmm, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim will probably play in a freeway World Series before I say anything nice except maybe that I have dumped TWC.

For those of you that are not fans of American baseball, hell will ice over first before I say anything nice about TWC.

El Gringo – Saturday Night
Normally, I swing by Fatburger for a Kingburger with cheese and everything else and fries for a Saturday night meal. It is a fine meal and one that Doug and I will enjoy during the traditional Douguary 2007 and Chuckay 2007 celebrations.

Lately though, they have tasted on a blah side and seem to grow pale in comparison to the Original Tommy’s Burgers Double Chili Cheeseburger and fries. That plus the fact the cooking staff seems to have a continuing degree of difficultly in producing a consistent product.

Of course, one could certainly argue that when you cover the meal with a full ladle of chili, it is difficult to determine if there was any consistency.

All of which explains why I ended up at El Gringo on Saturday night for my meal. I had a blacked, grilled mahi mahi burrito for dinner. It came with no sauce or rice and beans. I had my dinner earlier than normal but I was full for the night. I did meet the Saturday evening server; Jess, which I believe is short for Jessica. Jess was very attentive and friendly.

I may end up visiting Fatburger only for Douguary and Chuckay now.

Komyo Ga Tsuji
I really missed a lot last Saturday when the cable was not functioning.

Apparently, the samurai, Lord Yamaguchi, [and I might have misspelled the name] decided to follow his wife’s recommendations and join forces with the Tokugawa clan. The episode revolved around the Battle of Sekigahawa in 1600 when the Tokugawa forces defeated the Regent’s forces decisively. From the show’s depiction, it was a very bloody, five or six hour long battle. Yamaguchi managed to distinguish himself in the battle and can therefore look forward to a reward of a larger castle and fief.

The one unusual feature for last night’s episode was a table top explanation of the battle. It was the first time in the series since I started watching that the broadcast was interrupted by a special segment within the primary show. Obviously, the table top display certainly helped me understand the maneuvers and positions.

Last night was Episode 48 so the series should be coming to close in the next few episodes. Japan is about to experience almost 260 years of relative peace.

Woman of the Moment
The blog wouldn’t be complete without a Woman of the Moment posting. This is an excellent location for the feature.



El Gringo – Sunday Night
The weekend would not be complete without Sunday night at El Gringo for me. This weekend was no exception.

I said good bye to Whitney who will be in New York next weekend. She will return by Christmas weekend but I wonder if she will be working then. Plus, I will be suffering from a turkey hangover.

Yesterday’s blackened grilled mahi mahi burrito was so good that I decided to have another one tonight. I added some guacamole. For those of you that are not in the United States, mahi mahi is a member of the tuna family and is caught generally in the mid-Pacific waters. Guacamole is avocado beaten into a paste; it was particularly tasty with the burrito.

Whitney started as my server and Jess ended as my server. That was a nice combination and a wonderful way to end to day for me.


This is me in my University of South Carolina Gamecocks sweatshirt that I got from the Princess. I was enjoying the chips and salsa.



That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you had a great weekend.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Ku Hye sun

Weekend Bonus Feature - Ku Hye sun
The new Weekend Bonus Feature person is Ku Hye sun. She is a Korean actress and I ran across her one night when I was channel surfing. I stumbled on a Korean soap opera that starred her. I think she has some of the most fascianting eyes.




Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - December 7th

Weekend Preview
Yeah, it’s almost the weekend now.

I have a few things to do this weekend. One is to finish mailing my Christmas cards; my cards going overseas have already been mailed so I’m optimistic that they will arrive before December 25th. I also want to spend a lot of time on the dissertation project.

The weekend weather promises to be Winter like, cool for us in Southern California.

Pearl Harbor Day – Freedom Is Never Free
I hope you all took time today to pause, reflect, and remember the brave men who died at Pearl Harbor, sixty five years ago today. I always was emotional whenever my ship would enter or leave Pear Harbor because we always passed the USS Arizona.

The Arizona was commissioned in 1916 and took part in the Great War, serving as part of the Sixth Battleship Squadron attached to the Royal Navy. After the War, she was assigned to the Pacific Fleet. The ship was modernized in the mid 1930s. The Arizona was allowed to remain in commission following the attack and subsequent sinking.

A visit to the Arizona Memorial is something every American should do once in their lives.


This is the Arizona in 1916 or 1917 after she was commissioned.


The ship was modernized in the 1930s, primarily she had a larger superstructure and masts.


This is the Arizona today, at anchor in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Doug
Doug stopped by for lunch today. He was on his way to his meeting when it got canceled on him. We ended up going to lunch at El Gringo a bit earlier than I thought we would. It also meant Doug got off on his other errands earlier in the day and may have missed some nasty traffic.

I had a chicken burrito which was modestly healthy for me. Doug had a Number Two Combination with two soft carnitas tacos, rice, and beans. It was a very filling and satisfying meal for both of us.

Doug and I talked about the new David Lynch film INLAND EMPIRE. He plans to see with on the opening weekend. I like David Lynch films but the initial screens here are in West Los Angeles with crummy parking. I’m hoping to see it at a local cinema with better parking and a shorter drive for me.

Woman of the Moment
Here we have some related Oksana Mazurovsky photos; by related, I mean they seem to go together. We will have a new Weekend Bonus Feature tomorrow.




I could write some more stuff but I think I will carry that over until the Weekend Update on Sunday.

Be well and stay happy.

I'm Bored

I’m Bored
Wednesday is a boring day when you stop to think about it.

It’s in the middle of the week without anything exciting around it. Well, Friday is exciting but it’s not next to Wednesday. It’s sort of close. You are closer to the weekend on Wednesday than on Tuesday and that is good.

Doug
Doug called me this morning.

He got his grade on his paper on George Takei. He got the highest grade in the class.

This was a project that we had worked on over several iterations and lengthy telephone discussions. It was a difficult paper to write because of limited size and the paper had two major elements in it. Points were taken off from other student papers for going over the maximum length. Don’t ask me to explain the rationale for limiting students’ expression.

We both felt very good about the grade.

Doug has to come up into Los Angeles tomorrow for a meeting. It should end a little before noon. Neither of us know if the meeting includes lunch or not. I asked Doug to stop by my place and we could go have lunch at El Gringo.

I will be full of El Gringo food if we do go there tomorrow for lunch since I will be going there tonight for my dinner and to see Valerie the Server who argues with me over what I should order.

Social Me
I think most of you know by now that I am single and that I am between girl friends now.

I was reading in my Verizon.net news summary this morning that Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn have broken up. That was a smart move by Vaughn; he doesn’t get stuck with the expensive Christmas gift for the girl friend that would probably be looking for an engagement ring.

I was heartbroken for about thirty seconds and then I was over it. Of course, it could have just been some acid reflux from drinking too much strong coffee this morning as well. I do enjoy the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf coffee.

Anyway.

Jennifer, I’m not doing too much on New Year’s Eve.

I’d even be willing to drive over to your place in Malibu for a modest, simple celebration, assuming gas prices aren’t unreasonable. You can contact me here if you want to talk about your plans.

Woman of the Moment
Why not here? I was going to have some pithy comment for you but I lost it when I was out in the fog this morning.




Be well and stay happy.

The Moment of Truth

The Moment of Truth
Today was the moment of truth for Time Warner Cable.

As it turned out, TWC lucked out. My trouble resolved itself sometime yesterday after I posted my blog. I turned the television on to see a daily [Monday – Friday] half hour Korean soap opera drama. I can suffer through the crummy visuals for part of the show. It is too bad for anything more than a half hour show.

I turned on the television and everything was clear and the ghosts and demons from last week were gone. I wonder when the change or repair happened. It would have been nice to know if TWC did something to fix the problem.

While I don’t have a definitive answer, I would guess the problem was caused by radio interference somewhere either in the building or in the car park below me.

I had to call TWC to cancel the service call. For some reason, this required that I speak with someone. I was connected to a live operator almost immediately.

Strange.

She was happy to cancel the service call. Then she went into a sales speech that said I could add a feature and lower my monthly bill. Granted my savings will not be large by any measure, less than a month’s charges for a year’s worth of the new service savings.

I was furious at the idea of having to request them lower my billing rate. If the sales operator had not tried to get me to buy a new service, I doubt good old TWC would have ever contacted me and said I could lower my monthly charge.

I was proud of myself for not exploding. That took strength and self control and I amazed myself that I could remain calm at all times.

So, at the end of the day, when I head off to bed tonight. TWC will still be the lying miserable snake in the grass. For the record, we are now at the Day Four and the six hour mark of the phone call that I was promised for last Friday afternoon.

My Name
A friend of mine sent me an email that had a link to a web site called http://www.howmanyofme.com. It is has a simple feature that will tell you how many people in the United States have the same name as you.

Curious, I typed my name in and found out that Reinhardt is the 3,013th most popular name in the States. There are 12,209 Reinhardts according to the site which gets its information from the United States Census Bureau.

Some much for being unique.

There are 92 with the same name as me. There are only 22 with the same name as Doug, only 20 have the same name as the Princess, 14 have the same name as my ex-wife, and only 1 other person has the same name as my brother.

Major ego blow for your humble scribe.

Woman of the Moment
The Woman of the Moment is always a great way to change the subject and relax at the same time.



Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember black and white television sets with no remote controls.

I have one and it still works. The only problem is the screen is really small so I don’t watch it very much anymore.


Be well and stay happy

Whole Lotta Shakin Going On

Whole Lotta Shakin Going On
We had an earthquake this morning at 6:19 AM.

As California earthquakes go, it was a modest one with a magnitude of 2.6 on the Richter Scale. I checked my Southern California Earthquake web site after the event. I think I was maybe 3 miles or 5 kilometers away from the epicenter. The epicenter was off the coast, no tsunami warnings because the fault was fairly deep under the ocean floor.

The earthquake appears to have been along the Palo Verdes fault line that runs almost under my building. The quake, if nothing else, will relieve some of the tension on the northern end of the fault line where I live.

Always a positive outcome for me.

The quake itself was more like a sonic boom; a loud noise or bang and then some limited window shaking. There was hardly any of the usual rolling motion that we have with many earthquakes.

You could tell it was not a major earthquake because none of the cars parked in the building had their motion sensor based alarms go off. I went about my normal morning business which was reading the paper at the time.

Woman of the Moment
This is a good spot for this feature.



Time Warner Cable Update
It’s now at the Day Three and five hour mark and I still have not received a phone call from TWC that was promised to me on last Friday morning. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable since it was the TWC representative who said she would call me back in half an hour.

I think I can rightly conclude she lied to me. I think I can also rightly conclude that she merely said she would call me back to shut me up.

I guess there are several kinds of lies in the world; there are the plain and simple lies; there are damned lies; and there are TWC lies, the worst of the lot.

For the record, I did get a phone call today from TWC. It was an automated call that reminded me I am scheduled for a service visit tomorrow afternoon. I don’t think that counts as my promised return phone call from last Friday.

Haircut and Hair Styles
I got my hair cut today. I was starting to look on the seedy side and was overdue for a cut.

Naturally, Michelle the Stylist is still out on maternity leave.

The woman who cut my today was a new one to me. I have seen her in the salon before but she has never cut my hair. She is an all business stylist and doesn’t like to chit chat or talk or maybe doesn’t like to chit chat with me. That is a possibility.

I think she cut off more than she had too. I had only asked for a light trim all over. Of course, once the hair is cut you can’t glue it back and have it look nicely. I guess no one ever taught simple marketing to these stylists when they learned how to cut hair. If they only cut a small amount of hair off, the customer is more likely to return for another cut to maintain a neat appearance. As it is now, I will just stay away longer, like around six or seven weeks instead of my normal four weeks between hair cuts.

I went to the post office this morning to mail the last month’s Los Angeles Times Sports Sections to my brother. I do this because my brother lives in San Francisco and the local paper there does a terrible job covering the Los Angeles teams. That seems rather logical to me.

There was a young woman in the line in front of me. I am positive that her hair was shorter than, even after the visit to the salon this afternoon, mine. I think the only time my hair was that short was when I served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and I had what all Marines know as a “high and tight” haircut. A “high and tight” haircut has essentially nothing on the sides and very little on the top. If you have seen a young Marine in his dress blues, then you have seen a Marine with a “high and tight.”

I am left to wonder why a young woman would want to wear her hair that short.

I suppose that she is trying to make some sort of a statement. Maybe she is trying to say that she doesn’t need a man in her life for example. I know I would give her a very wide berth. I did find it fascinating. Someday, I may even have an answer to my question of why.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - December 3rd

Weekend Update
Crud, it’s December already. Where did the year go to?

Visitors
We had the second best month for visitor traffic in November. October was so skewed by that hoard of Germans that rushed in for a few days and then left. I think that October was an outlier month, nice to boost the averages but nothing to sustain the blog’s traffic growth.

We had 487 visitors in November. That was nice.

We also had another good week for foreign visitors. We had visitors from Canada [6], Taiwan [3], Indonesia [2], France [4], Singapore, Japan [8], Korea [2], China [2], Australia [4], Malaysia, Iran, Romania, Netherlands [2], Vietnam, Mexico, Lithuania, and Hong Kong. I think this is the first week where we have had visitors from Lithuania and Vietnam.

Personally, I think the Iranian visitor was lost. The blog doesn’t feature much Iranian specific content and I know the Woman of the Moment is not up to Iranian standards of dress.

We also had our usual crop of curious visitors. We had one reader who stopped by for forty minutes and viewed fourteen pages. Fascinating. Another visitor was here for twenty six minutes. We had one more reader who was here for seventeen minutes, one for fourteen minutes, and one for eleven minutes.

There were only two lookers this past week. One covered fourteen pages in four minutes; obviously he or she knew what to look for I guess. The other looker covered eight pages in six minutes which is semi-borderline but I will count it in the category.

I do appreciate all of you who took time to stop by the blog and see what was scribbled for you.

Woman of the Moment
Now is as good a place as any for Oksana Mazurovsky.



College Football
All in all, it was a good week for me and college football. Our Utes are going to a post season bowl game. Navy beat Army this week and won the Commander in Chief’s Trophy and will be going to a post season bowl game.

Excellent

The University of Utah Utes football team has accepted an invitation to play against Tulsa in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas, on December 23rd.

Utah [7-5 season, 5-3 Mountain West Conference] is making its fourth straight bowl appearance. Utah has won its last five bowl games, dating back to a 17-16 win over Fresno State in the 1999 Las Vegas Bowl. Other bowl wins during that span for the Utes included a 10-6 win over USC in the 2001 Las Vegas Bowl, a 17-0 shutout of Southern Mississippi in the 2003 Liberty Bowl, a 35-7 victory over Pittsburgh in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl (2004 season) and last year's 38-10 drubbing of Georgia Tech in the Emerald Bowl.

The Utes are 8-4 all-time in their bowl history and have made one previous postseason appearance in the state of Texas--the 1939 Sun Bowl, when Utah recorded a 26-0 win over New Mexico in its first-ever bowl appearance.

Utah and Tulsa have played three times but never in a bowl game. Tulsa has a 2-1 series advantage, including a 21-13 win at home in their last meeting in 1997, a year after Utah's 45-19 victory on its home field.

The Armed Forces Bowl, formerly known as the Fort Worth Bowl, is sponsored by Bell Helicopter. This is the fourth year it will be played.

Navy can hook an anchor to that Commander-in-Chief's Trophy.

With a pair of rushing touchdowns, and a defense that produced two scores, the Midshipmen sent their seniors out with another win over Army and a career sweep of the service academies.

Navy captured the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, awarded annually to the winner of the football competition between the three major service academies, for the fourth straight year. The win also made Navy's senior class the first in team history to finish 8-0 – a clean sweep, hoist that broom to the mast, against Army and Air Force. This was a win that would be savored from the gridiron to "Old Ironsides."

Next for the Midshipmen is the Meineke Bowl against an opponent from the Atlantic Coast Conference on Dec. 30.

I never attended the Naval Academy but I did serve as an officer in the United States Navy. Once you serve with the Forces, you almost automatically adopt your service’s academy and team in the service academy contests. When my ship was operating in the waters of South Vietnam during that war, our officers placed bets on the game with Army officers from the units we were supporting with our ship’s guns.

For the record, I did watch the glorious Army – Navy game at a local sports bar. It is not my favorite sports bar but it is within walking distance so I did not have to worry about drinking and driving on my way home after the game was over.

It was only a short four block walk. Going there is all down hill so that meant the walk home was all up hill. I perhaps should have had one or two less beers while I watched the game. I think I should have drunk the light beer but that has such a vile taste to it. Heineken’s doesn’t make a light beer and I don’t think Guinness does either. That should tell me something about light beer.

I also watched a little of the USC – UCLA football game. My brother went to USC so I am a vicarious USC fan of sorts.

[Full and Fair Disclosure] I copied this from a Utah press release and ESPN.com. I got a little lazy plus I’m not very good at writing about sports.

My Friend Vivian
Vivian and I exchanged post Thanksgiving emails and concluded we both probably over ate just a bit. Vivian was a more ambitious cooker than me when measured against the volume of food that she prepared. I get score or calorie points for cooking a whole turkey with stuffing.

We agreed to meet in mid-December for lunch. I think we agreed on a date and time although Vivian may have been looking at a November calendar date. Naturally, I will reconfirm the lunch with Vivian.

Cinema
I wonder who was the non-creative genius who greenlighted the upcoming Rocky film.

Does the world need another Rocky film?

I think not.

The franchise was extremely narrow and limited to begin with. I doubt that there is anything new that can be added to what has gone before. Rocky comes out of retirement for one last fight is hardly a compelling plot line.

I went to the Internet Movie Database and discovered that the film was written, directed, and stars Sylvester Stallone. That makes this a vanity film for almost certain. The last Ricky film, in 1990, grossed about USD$41 million in the United States.

Are there that many fans who will pay close to USD$10 for a repeat of the 1990 film. Why not rent ROCKY V for a few bucks and watch the same plot line from the comfort of your own home? It’s certainly cheaper and less embarrassing if you want to turn it off half way through the film instead of walking out of the cinema and asking for your money back.

Time Warner Cable Update
I got a call from an airhead TWC representative on Friday morning.

She asked how I was and, big guess as to how I felt. I said lousy because my TWC had failed on last Tuesday and that I wasn’t scheduled for a service call until next Tuesday afternoon. I told her that my plans to spend the weekend watching [American] football went down the toilet with the cable failure and that I was waiting to hear from Direct TV [satellite television services] about using them.

I think this must have upset her somewhat. She became flustered and said she was going to speak to her supervisor as soon as she hung up with me and ask him or her to call dispatch and see about getting me an earlier service call. She said she would call me back in thirty minutes.

As I write this blurb, I am at the two day and five hour mark of waiting for the return phone call from Friday morning.

Of course, I missed my Saturday samurai drama. It was supposed to be an important show with the civil war in Japan about to start over again. I’m guessing that the historical timeline for the show must be around 1600 more or less.

I will miss another show tonight. It is the last episode of a cheesy Japanese soap drama about a couple of lawyers in a small Tokyo law firm. I have enjoyed it. I haven’t written about it because it doesn’t offer any useful insights into Japanese culture and society.

I do enjoy watching the bumbling, brand new lawyer who is in love with an older woman lawyer in the firm. He seems to have a remarkable ability to get drunk when he has a drink after work with the older woman and then have the older woman bring him home to his cramped little flat. I wonder if these two will connect and live happily ever after or not.

I won’t know because of Time Warner Cable’s failure

Pop Quiz Hot Shots: How can you tell when a TWC representative is lying?

You can see their lips move or hear them breathing.

El Gringo
I went to El Gringo for my Sunday late lunch – early dinner as usual. It was warm [73F – 22C] here today so I was wearing my shorts and a sweat shirt and enjoying what we call Winter.

My lunch – dinner was the Pollo Negro Salad. It was spicy as always. I think my mouth will be burning for a couple more hours. If I didn’t care so much about what I eat, I might have gone to Coldstone Creamery for one their three scoop mounds of blended rich ice cream as a way of cooling my mouth off. Aside from the gazillion calories, it would have been loaded with sugar and carbohydrates that would have driven my blood sugar count right off of the charts.

It was busy again today at El Gringo.

I wonder if my blog comments have had any affect on the customer traffic there. It could also be because I go there around 3:00 PM and this is when Whitney doesn’t have a busser [high school student] to clean the tables. Whitney had to clean up from a big family party of about a dozen with a handful of small children so there was a fair mess.

Whitney told me that she was going to New York City to visit a friend for four days and, naturally, one of the days is a Sunday. I suppose that I have two options open to me now. First, I can go to El Gringo on Sunday afternoon and see how it is there and take my chances with a new, temporary person. Whitney knows what I drink and how I like my salad [no corn]. Second, I can go to Fatburger and have a Kingburger with cheese and a fat fries to go and come home and have my lunch – dinner meal.

Fortunately, next weekend Whitney will be there so that is all good for me. The weekend she is gone is the weekend I am supposed to have lunch with Vivian so I could have lunch with Vivian on Sunday and not have to face the new, temporary person at El Gringo.

In any event, I have two weeks to make up my mind.


That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you had great weekends also.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - KT So

Weekend Bonus Feature - KT So
This is the last the Weekend Bonus Features with KT So. I don't know who I will select for next week. KT So will appear from time to time in the blog. She is just all to attractive to not have her here.




I threw in an extra photo for you.


Be well and stay happy.