Happy Anniversary and Milestone or Milestone and Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary and Milestone or Milestone and Happy Anniversary
Which is it?

Today is the second anniversary of the blog. Today is also the 500th blog posting. When I started Balancing Checkbooks, I never imagined that I would still be blogging after two years nor did I anticipate posting this many blogs. I never imagined that the blog would be read by so many people from so many different places either.

I suppose that I could do a retrospective posting of my best blogs but I do not know which ones those were. Plus, I’m uncertain if I want to bring up parts of my past life again like the break up with the last girl friend. [Probably a great idea for me given the amount of drama and tension that surrounded our relationship and her inability to get along with the kids.]

I do not plan to hold a big celebration tonight after I toss this posting up. I have to go teach in the morning. Driving into the rising sun is not my idea of a fun drive and it is close to impossible after a night of celebrating.

I do have a modest celebration in mind. [See Doug, below.]

School
I felt much better today and was not a pile of exhaustion. I finished the homework and in class assignment grading today. I also worked on my lesson plans and got those finished.

I think I will spend some time at school to finish building the online grade books for my classes. I plan to do this on Friday because it works for my schedule best.

Winter Weather of Sorts
We had some Winter Weather today.

It was rain. That’s all, just a little rain. I don’t think we received more than a tenth of an inch / quarter of a centimeter of rain.

This was enough to make the Prelude a little less dirty. It was heavy enough to wash some of the dirt and dust off of the car. That was good because the car looks a little nicer. Tomorrow, the Prelude will end up looking poorly from all of the water and crud that will be picked up and sprayed all over the roads in the morning.

Hollywood in the Hood
Hollywood was in the ‘hood today. I live across the street from a church. That means parking is bad only day a week.

Sweet.

When I went out this morning, I noticed a crew of technicians setting up for a location filming. The crew was dragging electrical cables from the temporary generator to some exterior light banks that were being erected. I hope the filming waits until after the rain has passed.

I am guessing that the filming will take place tomorrow, weather permitting. Parking will be bad I suppose. I wonder why I didn’t receive a notice about the proposed filming. It possibly will interfere with my day unless the crew and cast can use the church parking lot and not spill over onto the streets.

Oh well, time will tell.

Woman of the Moment
Tonight’s Woman of the Moment is Michelle Yeoh. I never knew she was so athletic either. Tomorrow, Gong Li will be the Woman of the Moment.




Doug
Doug came over last night after his classes so he could take advantage of the shorter drive to the studios. He can save about an hour on his drive and he can avoid the nightmares of the 405 non-freeway.

Tonight, I am fixing us an Italian dinner of spaghetti with chunky tomato sauce and a grilled chicken breast. We will have a small antipasto salad along with some garlic bread. I think Doug will either drink Sierra Mist or bottled water; I will have some chilled California sauvignon blanc wine.

Doug decided not to have any fresh grated cheese on his pasta. I grated some Romano and some Parmesan cheese on my pasta and salad. The cheeses were well aged and tasted wonderful.

I will have my blog celebration with my dessert. I am having a slice of chocolate truffle cake and Doug will have a chocolate éclair. Both are from Giuliano’s

I will place some dinner photos in the Weekend Preview blog posting on Friday.


Be well and stay happy.

Almost Longest Day

Almost Longest Day
Today seemed like the almost longest day to me.

I was draggin’ for most of the day.

I think it was the extra two hours that I spent at school working on learning how to use the school’s computer system. I was able to log onto the grade book and attendance programs. That was nice.

I am going to spend the next week building grade books for my five classes. I hope to finish this before the end of the term.

I was probably having a mild sugar low by the time I reached home. I had some iced coffee with a lot of sugar and things seemed to be much better for me.

Woman of the Moment
I decided to have a double Woman of the Moment for the next week or two. We will have Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh as Women of the Moment. I think alternating the two actresses made sense to me.

Gong Li is 41 and 67 inches / 170 centimeters tall. According to IMDb.com, she has been in 29 films.

Michelle Yeoh is 44 and is 64 inches / 163 inches tall. According to IMDb.com, she also has appeared in 29 films. Both women are of Chinese extraction.



Michelle Yeoh



Gong Li

School
I spoke to my department chair about the big failure rate for my Microeconomics mid term examination. He was not pleased with the results but, also, was not surprised at the high failure rate because of the erratic teaching schedule. Five teachers in five weeks are not conducive to learning.

I think his suggestions will improve the pass rate and not unfairly penalize the students. This ought to make things better for the students. On the plus side, the mid term is only 15% of their grade so they have room to improve.

It will be interesting to see how they react on Wednesday night and how my faculty evaluation comes in from this class.

Life happens


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

Weekend Update - January 28th

Weekend Update
We had a little rain on Saturday. It was not much of a rain fall; it was like a trace of rain on steroids. The rainfall was just enough to make a mess of the Prelude that I was driving at the time.

On the subject of the Prelude, it ought to roll over 339,000 miles or 545,500 kilometers sometime this week.

Woman of the Moment
This will be the last photos of Jamie Frontz for the time being. Monday, we will have a new Woman of the Moment.






Visitors
We had a good week for visitors. We had visitors from Canada [2], United Kingdom, Italy [3], Czech Republic [2], Spain [2], Texas [2], Australia [3], Finland, Turkey [2], India [2], Switzerland, Malaysia, Korea, Myanmar, and France.

I think this was the first time the blog has had a visitor from Myanmar.

We had no curious visitors this week.

There was one visitor who was interested in looking at a lot of things; the visitor covered eight pages in three and half minutes.

I do appreciate each of the visits to the blog.

Weekend Bonus Feature – Eriko Sato

I was trolling through IMDb.com over the weekend. I decided to see if Eriko Sato had been in any films. I knew that she was a model and I was curious. Eriko has been in eleven television or film productions, in a number of capacities, since 2001. She seems to be an active young actress.




Doug
Doug managed to see both SMOKIN’ ACES and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA this weekend. Of the two films, he liked LETTERS better I think. He was sort of non-committal about the films.

I had told Doug that I had invited Sharon to the Chuckay Dinner in May. When he called me today to ask for driving directions and time to get to Amoeba Records from his internship, I told him that Sharon had said that she would not be able to join us. His only reaction was a subdued, “Oh.” That means there will be one less place at the table and more elbow room for the rest of the attendees.

Depending on how Doug’s second internship works out, he may be staying with me for three or four night a week for the rest of the term and skipping the dreadful drive from behind the Orange Curtain to the studios on the Westside of Los Angeles. The commute from the beach is shorter and much less stressful for him.

Teaching School
Being teacher is not all that much fun anymore. When I taught before at the college level, the students were interested in learning and they came to class. They looked for the answers themselves and they did the assignments before coming to class.

In one of my classes, the students were too lazy to look up a definition of a term in their text book. They needed to understand the term before they could answer the homework assignment. Instead, they waited for class and asked me for a definition of the term.

I find this so distressing. Their lack of effort was appalling.

In one of my other classes, the students have to write a research paper on some socially relevant or significant and original topic. One of the students wanted to write about the correlation between smoking and illness. He was disappointed when I told him that was not an acceptable topic since the work has already been completed and the connection between smoking and illness is almost universally accepted.

My biggest disappointment with the classes is the students’ general inability to get to class on time. I can understand students who have to work late unexpectedly or get stuck in traffic.

What I cannot understand is the students who can not get to class at 8:00 AM. It is the first thing of the day. I know that when they finish school they will be working. Getting to work on time is very important to a business. All of the businesses I have worked at solved employee tardiness very easily with a termination.

My Microeconomics Class mid term examination did not go all that well. Only eight students out of twenty seven who took the test passed and that includes those who received a barely passing mark. That means I have nineteen students who are in danger of failing the class. This was after my creation of an examination study guide. I shuddered at the thought of what the examination results would have looked like without the study guide.

I will drop this mess in the department chair’s lap. The timing of the possible failures is not the best in the world since the accreditation committee is visiting the school on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I suppose that the classes would have been better if I had been the instructor from the first week. I could have set my expectations higher and demanded more performance from the students.

El Gringo
I went to El Gringo for dinner tonight as usual.

I learned why Whitney was no longer serving on Sundays.

She quit; her regular job and serving were too much for her so she gave up El Gringo and me. Well, I’m not certain Whitney gave up on me; maybe it was more like having a life and such like that.

Jess was the server tonight and she said she was likely to be the server on Sundays for some time to come. That was excellent news for me. Jess is the quintessential Southern California blonde; she is tall, probably 67 or 68 inches / 171 centimeters tall; shoulder length hair in a ponytail; and deep blue eyes or deep blue contact lens.

I also learned that Jess is a nursing student. I thought that was really neat; my grandmother was a registered nurse in New York City. I think nurses make good girl friends because they are used to dealing with unhappy people; I have never met a sick person who was happy at being sick.

I would be happy if I was sick and Jess was my nurse.



That was my weekend gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eriko Saito

Weekend Bonus Feature
The weekend would not be complete without the Weekend Bonus Feature. Eriko Saito is our Woman of the Weekend Bonus Feature today. I hope you like Eriko Saito since she will eb with us for a while longer.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - January 26th

Weekend Preview
I don’t have too much planned to do this weekend except work on school stuff. I may go to the cinema and catch LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA or SMOKIN’ ACES. Doug was very interested in seeing SMOKIN’ ACES.

Doug
Doug and I had dinner at El Gringo on Tuesday night. I had originally thought about going to Giuliano’s for our meal but Doug had a sandwich for his lunch so he wasn’t interested in another sandwich for dinner.

His internship is working out very well for him. Some days are better than others of course and he has more interesting work to do. We talked about internships again today. He may pick up a second internship which will look good on his resume when he graduates this Spring. The nice thing about the second internship is that it would be in the same building and on the same floor as his current internship so he would not be a stranger there. He ought to be able to handle a second internship since he is only taking two real courses and neither one of them appears to be heavy on papers or reading.

Since Douguary is just around the corner, we also talked about what would be an appropriate Douguary Gift and discussed who might be invited to the traditional Douguary Dinner at Morton’s. The tentative dinner list looks like the usual suspects from last year and the year before that.

Classes
I had my second instructor evaluation last night. The evaluation was by one of the department chairs. I am a business teacher primarily but I am helping the school out by teaching a General Education class so the evaluation was from the General Education chair. I think I did well on the evaluation. I received mostly all 1’s and a few 2’s. 1 is the highest score you can receive.

I found out last night that my Thursday night class had experienced some serious student conflict prior to my starting at the school. That was nice of the school to tell me this when I have to face a very hostile classroom of students.
I wonder what else the school didn’t tell me.

My Thursday class, Research Methods, is basically a writing class. The course revolves around the creation of research project paper. I have one older adult student who doesn’t seem to understand what I am saying in class. I told the students to take a very small subject because a small subject could be completed in the time left for the course. This student asked me to approve a topic last night that was so overly broad and could never covered in the scope of this course.

I was reading some student work for the Research Methods class today for grading. I ran across one paper that appears to be heavily plagiarized. It seems like one of the four pages was copied from the original material over 80% of the page without any attribution or identification of the original authors.

I will dump that issue in the department chair’s lap on Monday.

Microsoft Windows Desktop Search
I have valid copies of Microsoft Windows XP and Office so I get the weekly update notification from Microsoft. One that came out in early January featured Microsoft Windows Desktop Search.

I was intrigued by this program.

Desktop Search was presented as a way to find files and documents in your hard drive. It seemed like a good idea to download since I tend to store information. It would allow me to find a file easier.

Good idea.

Bad application.

Desktop Search slowed every single function down to a bare crawl. It was like downloading a two megabyte file over a 28.8K modem and phone line.

Painful was an inadequate adjective for me. Painful is an adjective that I can use freely in mixed company and in front of small children.

In addition to making the laptop being painfully slow, I could not run Symantec’s Live Update that would keep the laptop safe. I could not run the McAfee Site Advisor program either. This meant I could have blundered into an unsafe site and possibly downloaded something really nasty and evil.

After suffering for about two weeks, I pulled Desktop Search out this morning. My laptop is now running much smoother and faster and more responsively. I was able to download updates to my Symantec programs this morning. That made me feel more secure now.

I thought that I did not really need the search function since I like to use the full 256 character file label function. 256 characters is a lot of information so I ought to be able to find the files. I had to do this before I downloaded the Windows Desktop Search program.

News Item
Mexico burned four tons of marijuana that had been seized by their police today. I wonder how many people were standing or rather sitting down wind from the blaze.

Woman of the Moment
We are coming to the end of Jamie Frontz now. Sunday’s Weekend Update’s will be the last viewing. Of course, there are always the Best of the 2007 Women of the Moment retrospectives where Jamie and others might appear again.





I hope you all have a wonderful weekend gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.

Sunny and almost Warm

Sunny and almost Warm
It was sunny and almost warm today at the beach. This means it is almost time to break out my shorts and wear them until the Fall. I think the temperature needs to stay around 70F / 21C for a couple of days before I will be ready for shorts.

We are having a very dry Winter so far in Southern California. Our rainfall is only 1.4 inches or around 3 centimeters. Our rainfall total normally should be four times as much at this time of the year. I don’t think we will have water shortages because the snow pack in the mountains in Northern and Central California, where we get most of our water, is at or above normal. The rest of our water comes from the Colorado River and we know the Rocky Mountains received lots of snow so far this year.

So, what does this all have to do with the price of tea in China?

Largely nothing; but, it is very likely Southern California will have more brush and forest fires next year because the plants will be completely dead and dry for the most part. Those fires that do start will burn more aggressively, faster, and longer.

This is one of the prices we pay to live in Southern California.

El Gringo
I went to El Gringo on Sunday as usual.

Whitney was not the server again. I am guessing that she either has moved to one of the other two El Gringos or is no longer working there. I had a new server on Sunday and enjoyed a Number 2 Combination of two soft carnitas [pork] tacos with rice and beans.

I will not be going to El Gringo again tomorrow because of class. My class starts at 6:00 PM so I would have to leave El Gringo by 4:00 PM at the latest to have a decent shot at the traffic. Since my Wednesday morning class gets out around 1:00 PM that makes things difficult for me to get there and back in good order.

When I was leaving El Gringo on Sunday, I noticed Alyssa was coming in to work as a server. I think I will go to El Gringo a little later on this coming Sunday since there is no football to watch. Maybe Alyssa will be there; she is a fun server with an attitude.

ICQ
Do you participate in ICQ or one of those other instant messaging programs? If you do, maybe you can explain this phenomenon to me.

I am logged as being Not Available and people will add me to their contact list. Once they add me, they never contact me. Why add a person to a contact list if you don’t plan to contact the person? Is there a contest for the largest contact list and someone forgot to tell me?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Doug
Doug came over last night after class. His class got out earlier than usual because it was the first night.

We talked about his classes. They do not look too terribly hard. There are no long papers to write so that means I am unlikely to be doing much in the way of proof reading for him this term. I think one class limits the periodic paper length to one page.

This morning we talked about the Academy Award nominations before he left for his internship and I returned to my lesson plans. For the most part, we aren’t too upset. We thought CHILDREN OF MEN deserved a nomination for Best Picture. It was a more eclectic collection of films this that won the Best Picture nomination. There seemed to be more independent and smaller films being recognized this year.

Woman of the Moment
I was watching my Sunday Japanese limited series soap opera and picked up the names of two of the supporting actresses, Eiko Koiko and Mao Kobayashi. I found that their photos are readily available on the Internet so they will end up in the Weekend Bonus Features sometimes towards mid-Spring.

It looks like we will start next week, Monday actually, with a new Woman of the Moment. I am leaning towards a Double Woman of the Moment and feature both Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh. I like both of these actresses because they are able to play a wide range of roles and are still very successful and over forty. Forty seems like an expiration date for an actress. It is nice to see an older woman do well.

All of which leads us to the current Woman of the Moment, Jamie Frontz.





Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

It's Monday

It’s Monday
It’s Monday and that meant another class for me. I am one more week closer to the end of the term from hell. The term is troubling because I came in half way through the quarter and I have had to pick up all of the pieces. I think I am making some progress and I will be able to bring the term to a successful conclusion.

The school made some progress this week also. They have some passwords and access for me to the some of the school systems. Now, all I need is the network to accept me as a system user. Then, I can feel like I belong at the school.

I only have five students in my Monday class; they are the same students as my Thursday class. This is my favorite class group and the one that I put the most effort into making their lessons sound and intellectually stimulating. I think most of the students are trying hard so that is gratifying for me.

Monday is also a day of lesson plans. Actually, any day is a day for lesson plans for me or grading homework assignments. I hope I get to teach some of the same classes in the next term. That way, I won’t have so many lesson plans to write. Updating a lesson plan is relatively easy because the core material doesn’t change all that much.

I was able to get the study guide out to my microeconomics students by today so it looks like they ought to be able to do reasonably well on the examination. I would hate to see half of the class fail the examination, mostly because of prior poor instruction.

The Wedding
I spoke to the Princess for half an hour about the wedding today.

She had been out looking for a wedding and reception locations over the weekend. She said it went very badly. The visit to the one location where they really wanted to hold the wedding was terrible and very unhelpful.

One less location to consider I guess.

We talked about who to invite. It seems we had a common set of invitees; that was a good sign. We talked about who will be invited and who is not likely to show up. The Princess said she wanted Doug to act as an usher. She figured that he was not ready to be a groom’s man and wear a tuxedo. Doug will get to slide and wear a dark suit. I expect to be wearing a tuxedo; after all, events like this only happen once.

Woman of the Moment
Here we have three more Jamie Frontz photos to help you face the start of the week.






I wish I had more to say today. For some reason, nothing much happened in my life that I felt was noteworthy. Maybe Tuesday will be better for me.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - January 21st

Weekend Update
Well, I worked on lesson plans for next week for all five of my classes. This was not my first choice for a fun-filled activity for the weekend. I did get my study guide out to my students. Hopefully, they will apply themselves and I won’t have too many that fail the mid-term examination on Wednesday night.

Kindly Dr. Drill N. Fill
I went to see my dentist, kindly Dr. Drill N. Fill, on Saturday for my semi-annual tooth scrape and check up. It turns out that my teeth are in good shape. I do not need any corrective work and I am good for another six months.

That was nice to hear.

Visitors
We had an off week in visitors this past week. I think this is largely due to my schedule change and working two consecutive nights a week. My schedule will change again at the end of February so maybe we can get back to the regular posting schedule.

We had visitors from Poland [2], China [2], Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany [2], Spain, Texas [2], Singapore [2], Thailand, Philippines [2], Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom.

We had no curious visitors this week.

We had three looker visitors who viewed thirteen pages in six minutes; twelve pages in seventeen minutes; and ten pages in three minutes.

I do appreciate each of you that visit the blog. If you find the blog entertaining, why not tell your friends so they can experience the blog.

Woman of the Moment
I thought I would explain why I have a Woman of the Moment. I think this all started back when I served in the United States Navy on board the USS Leonard F. Mason, a destroyer from the Pacific Fleet during the Viet Nam War. When the ship was in the combat zone, the copies of Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper that we received, always had a black and white photo of a young woman in a bikini on the back cover.


This is a photo of the Mason from when I served on board her.

That seemed like a nice touch for those of us who were serving our country along way from home.

The current version of the Star Stripes young woman is Jamie Frontz. She will be with us for another week or so.





Komyo Ga Tsuji and Dae Joyoung
The Komyo Ga Tsuji series ended last night as I thought it would. All of the story arcs were nicely cleaned up and there was resolution. This now frees up some of my Saturday night time.

I made an interesting discovery with Dae Joyoung on Saturday night I stumbled onto an episode broadcast. It seems the show is being broadcast on Saturday and Sunday nights. This helped explain why last Sunday, in the middle of a major battle, the show jumped to a woman in labor. I think I need to spend another week with the program before I understand what is going on.


I wish I had more to say but this was a really thin weekend for activities for me. I hope you had a more exciting weekend than I did.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - January 19th

My classes and other man made disasters
Have you ever been driving on the highway and you come upon a wreck on the other side of the room and you slow down to take a close look at it as you drive past? You had a sort of sickly feeling and were so happy that it wasn’t you in the other car.

My two night classes, Wednesday and Thursday, are a lot like really bad train wrecks. This was the first time I had been in either class.

My Wednesday class is microeconomics. This week was supposed to be the course mid-term examination. The students were so unprepared that none of them knew they were supposed to have had an examination that night.

This is not the way to teach anyone. I ended up postponing the mid-term for one week and used the class session for a quick review. I am also going to give the students a study guide of topics to take a look at before the examination next week. I want to make certain the students have a fair chance at passing the examination.

Of course, there will be one or two students out of the class of 32 that I can not reach. I feel sorry for them because they will be so far in a hole that they will not be able to climb out in the remaining four weeks of class.

Thursday night was an almost mirror image of Wednesday night; students were unprepared and confused. Last night’s class was on research methods or how to write a research based term paper. I thought this was a rather advanced course for what the school is offering. But, far be it from me to question the efficacy of the course offering.

I have been teaching there only a week now. I really like a couple of my classes because at least some of the students seem to want to learn.

I have had a couple of instructors come up to me and ask me if I am going to be teaching next term. They said that I should stay around. One of the department chairs, who evaluated my teaching skills, said the school needs strong instructors like me.

That is scary for me.

I know I am not that good of a teacher but to be told this so early it scares me and makes me wonder.

The administration is like all administrations; it is mostly concerned with the paperwork and the details that satisfy the accrediting agency. The administration places more emphasis on taking attendance and then phoning the students who did not show up. I have never been in a college teaching situation where I have had to phone students who skipped a class.

I think I told you that I took over from a teacher who left the school on a medical leave. My department chair was grousing to me about the lack of grades for homework and such in the course records.

Hello.

I just started so any missing grades are not my responsibility. Why weren’t you checking on the teacher?

Anyway, I am finished in another five weeks and then I will see if I want to teach anymore courses for the school or just take my money and run.

Douguary
The long time readers of the blog know about Douguary. It is coming soon.

Douguary, for those of you who are new to the blog, is a month long celebration of all things Doug. Douguary traditionally ends with a dinner for Doug and some friends and Dad at Morton’s.

In the past, I have invited my friend Sharon to join us at Douguary. She has been to the last couple of Douguary dinners. Sharon is fun to be with and, as Doug says, “you can never have too many hot chicks around.” I phoned Sharon this morning and invited her. I know it is early but she has lots going on in her life. As it turned out, Sharon said she had to go a grand opening for a new branch on Saturday morning and afternoon and then she was going out to a night club on Saturday night.

Doug and I were talking later on today.

I told him that Sharon will not be able to attend this year. He said, “Oh.” I think he is over Sharon not being able to have dinner with us. This also means we may have a little more elbow room at the table.

Woman of the Moment
I thought about including the missed of the Jamie Frontz photos from Wednesday and Thursday so you won’t feel left out or you won’t go to sleep feeling that you missed something.








Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eriko Sato

Weekend Bonus Feature
I can get this posting ontime so the weekend will not be a complete loss to you. Eriko Sato photos are an excellent way to start the weekend. I hope you have a great weekend.

Changes

Changes
Life is full of changes. It can happen at any point in time. It happened for me this afternoon.

I guess the technical school where I started teaching last week is having more trouble with their teachers. I got a phone call from the human resources manager this afternoon.

He wanted to know if I was interested in teaching two more classes.

Not knowing any better, I asked what the classes were.

The human resources manager said one was Microeconomics and the other was Research Methods. My undergraduate minor was in Economics and I took some economics course in my MBA program. Since I am writing my doctoral dissertation, I should know something about research methods.

I felt like being a nice guy so I said that I would teach the courses for the balance of the term.

There are only three problems with these new classes. First, they are on Wednesday and Thursday evening from 6:00 to 9:20 PM so that means I will miss my Korean daily soap opera. This is not too bad of a burden since I can still see three other episodes. The show is coming to a conclusion with most to the primary story arcs. Last night was Episode 125 so I do not think there will be too many more; maybe another twenty or so.

Second, the students have been suffering with one new substitute all term long and this is the half way week. Third, I am filling in for an instructor who is out on medical leave. The instructor can recover and return to teach and then where am I? I don’t have an answer for that question yet.

I start my evening teaching tomorrow night.

I get to spend the day after the morning class in lesson plan preparation since it makes no sense to go to school for my morning class and then come home and drive back for the evening class. I might consider the drive if gasoline was going for USD$1.99 a gallon.

Programming Note
It seems likely that I am not going to be able to post a blog tomorrow or Thursday since I will not be getting home until sometime after 10:00 PM. I think it will take me a few days to get my life reorganized and back to being able to post a blog on the old regular basis.

Doug
Doug came over to Dad’s place yesterday so he could avoid the nasty traffic on the 405 Freeway in the morning on his way to his internship at the Sony Picture lot in Culver City. We had a take out dinner from Fatburger last night. The Fatburgers that I had were good; Doug liked his Kingburger.



Tonight, we will be having sautéed salmon with gringo rice and a tomato and lettuce salad. I will have a glass of wine with my dinner. I think Doug will probably have water although I may try to talk him into finishing the last can of Guinness that was left over from Christmas dinner.

Job Searching and Interviewing
I sent a resume into a search firm in response to an online job opening posting yesterday afternoon. I got a call from the recruiter this morning. She was excited that my background was exactly what the client was looking for. That was a nice phone call; I will see what happens next.

If the client likes me and I like them, I might have to relocate but still stay in California. The job location is three hours from my house so that is beyond reasonable commuting distance. I would have to leave my house around 4:30 AM and I would probably get home around 9:30 or 10:00 PM; just in time to hop into bed.

Woman of the Moment
Here are some photos of Jamie Frontz in bikinis. Somehow, posting photos of a woman in a bikini in the middle of Winter seems so odd and irregular.





Be well and stay happy.

The Monday Class

The Monday Class
Today was the last of my new classes. It is also the one that I do not really care for. It is Fundamental of Tax Preparation. I never liked taking accounting courses in college and I do not care to teach the course.

I am only teaching the course to help the school out of a bind. They have no one else who can come close to being able to teach the course. I can hardly wait until it is over. I do like the students so I will try my best to provide them with a quality classroom experience. I have the same students for the Thursday marketing class so we will get to know each other very well.

CAMELOT
I read the review of the play in the Los Angeles Times today.

It was not a glowing review. The reviewer saw the same performance that I saw. He was unimpressed with the microphone malfunction and the over amplified orchestra that drowned out the female singers. I was gratified to see the professional ended up with the same general opinion that I had.

In the end, I suspect that people will fill the seats based on Michael York’s name recognition. Most of the audience will not know any difference.

Bad Tat
This bad tat needs no explanation as far as I can tell. How do you explain this tattoo to your adult friends or your parents?


Woman of the Moment
One of the nice things about Jamie Frontz’s photos is that most of them are of her in bikinis. On balance, that is not all bad in my mind. Of course, you are free to adopt any opinion that you feel comfortable with.





This is a short blog tonight because I had other things to do today. A short blog is better than no blog I think.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - January 14th

The Princess
The Princess phoned me at about 5:20 PM local time on Saturday to tell me that she was now engaged to the Boy Friend. They were in Key West; celebrating I guess. She was very happy.

I thought she was calling to thank me for the M&Ms candy that I sent her. Dads are often wrong it seems.

Naturally, I was happy and congratulated both of them. It was noisy from the restaurant they were at, waiting for their table to open, so we did not have a great conversation.

The Princess said the Boy Friend wanted to ask me for my permission about marrying her when they were out here for Christmas. I took all of the surprise element out of the engagement announcement when I drove them to the airport at the end of their stay in Southern California at Christmas. I said that it was fine with me if they wanted to get married. Living in Southern California tends to give you a relaxed view of the world and life.

The wedding will be in Atlanta in October.

I will have a busy Fall this year for sure.

Weekend Update
It was a clear but cold weekend for me here in Southern California. The temperature got down to around 40 to 42F or 4 or 5C at nights and rose to around 58F or 14C. We also had some steady winds so the temperature seemed colder than it really was.

The Saturday night – Sunday morning low was 32F or 0C; in some areas, below freezing. Really, really cold for Southern California. It will get down to 38F or 3C at the beach tonight.

Not your typical Southern California weather.

I was out running some errands Saturday morning when I drove past a high school drill team car wash. For a moment, I thought about having the Prelude washed but then changed my mind. The thought of the students washing cars in the chill winds and cold didn’t set well with me so I drove on home.

I was also supposed to see my dentist this morning for the periodic scrape and clean. The appointment had to be rescheduled for next Saturday afternoon

I have been looking for a new bookcase for the second bedroom / office at my house now for a couple of weeks. I want to get a solid wood bookcase in the Mission or Craftsman style. The Mission and Craftsman styles were developed in Southern California. One of the things that Doug and I talked about was my inability to find an advertisement for solid wood furniture.

I finally found the ad I have been looking for on Saturday. I had planned to visit the store on Sunday and see what my options are for the bookcase and a bed. I changed my mind because I did not get all of my lesson plan work completed on Saturday plus I also had some unfinished stuff around the place. I will visit the store next weekend when I have some more time.

Woman of the Moment
The new Woman of the Moment is Jamie Frontz. Most of this information came from her article in the Speed Options Featured Model segment that was published in December 2004. For those of you who are fascinated with statistics, Jamie is 67 inches / 170 centimeters tall and her body measures 34C – 26 – 34 inches or 86 – 66 – 86 centimeters.




At the time of the Speed Options publication, Jamie was attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has a career as a model and actress. Jamie has a functioning web site of http://www.jamie.ws.

Almost all of the photos came from the Speed Options edition or her web site. There was some photo overlap between Speed Options and the web site. Since Speed Options photo layout was from 2004, some of these images are obviously dated. There are 33 images that will be part of the Woman of the Moment feature with three images a day so she will be around for almost two weeks.

Doug
I went out to see Doug on Friday so he could get a new Apple Mac Powerbook laptop computer and a Canon digital camera. He spent his own money; that was nice.

We went to two camera dealers first and they were both out of the model Doug wanted. We stopped at a Best Buy on our way to Albertacos for lunch on a lark more than anything else to see if they had the camera. Best Buy had the model he wanted and they also had a very nice female salesperson to help us pick out what to get to go with the camera.

The Mac Powerbook was an easy purchase because we went to the Apple Store at the Irvine Spectrum. Irvine Spectrum is a very nice regional mall in South O.C.

Our lunch was so predictable at Albertacos. We both had a Number 8 with a medium drink; you can have unlimited refills of your drink so size doesn’t matter much. I took a refill for the drive back to the beach.

I think it has been a couple of months since we went to Albertacos and it was good to be back there. We talked about the relative merits of the Albertacos and the El Gringo soft beef tacos. I liked the El Gringo tacos better because they tend to stay together. Doug liked Albertacos because the beef tends to fall into the rice and beans and that makes the rice and beans better. I can accept Doug’s reasoning. The extra meat mixed in with the rice and beans certainly is a pleasing taste.

Visitors
We had visitors from France [2], Korea [2], Germany [4], Poland [2], Netherlands, Finland, Canada [4], Italy, United Kingdom [2], China, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Philippines.

This week, we had more curious visitors than page lookers. We had several visitors spend some time with the blog. One visitor was here for forty minutes; another for twenty nine minutes; two for 25 minutes; and one for thirteen minutes.

There were only three lookers who managed to view fourteen pages in four minutes; eleven pages in four minutes; and ten pages in three minutes.

I do appreciate all of you who took time to visit the blog.

Theater
I went to see CAMELOT at a local theater on Saturday. This was the opening weekend of a national production tour.


The play featured Michael York as Arthur. I think the producers picked him for name recognition for more than anything else. He is not a singer and looked weak compared to all of the other singers who were in the cast. York is excellent as an older and sometimes confused Arthur.

The rest of the large cast is largely unknown youngear singers who have never been in a national touring production. There are twenty five in the cast. The younger cast members brought a higher energy level and excitement to the production. I think the production will do well on the tour.

I could see the producers put some money into the sets. They were very well done and they were very effective. The sets did not have the previously used look that many of the sets at the theater have had.

Moving on to the actual performance, I did not care for the first scene because Guenevere’s microphone was not working so I don’t think anyone could have heard her singing. Rachel York played Guenevere and she has a great voice once you have a chance to hear her sing. James Barbour played Lancelot and had a marvelous voice.

I would have not expected a trouble like this. This weekend was the opening weekend and the critics were in the audience. A microphone adjustment is not something that should have been a problem at this point.

As usual with a musical at the La Mirada Theater, the orchestra played too loudly again. They did an excellent job of drowning out most of the songs by female cast members.

I will let you know what the professional critics thought of the play performance when they are published Monday or Tuesday.

Going to the theater in La Mirada on the opening weekend is like going to the theater in Mayberry. You tend to get all of the “civic leaders and shakers” out for the performance. Women will think nothing of walking down an aisle and blocking it to speak to friend while others are trying to reach their seats in that row. Of course, the gentle burghers have their own opinion of when the play should start. The curtain time printed on the ticket is sometimes a suggestion or, like last night, an after thought. The play started almost fifteen minutes late last night.

Komyo Ga Tsuji and Jae Do Young
I was at the theater on Saturday night so I missed both of these shows. Doug would say that missing the shows was a perfect reason to get a DVR set.

JAE DO YOUNG was only the second episode so I don’t think I missed very much. It has been my experience with Korean historical dramas that these shows tend to have a very long series.

KOMYO GA TSUJI was a different situation. This series is reaching its conclusion. Saturday would have been Episode 49 so that makes it likely the show will end soon. All of the story arcs tend to point that in direction. I checked with the weekly television listing and it showed the program as being broadcast next Saturday night. I guess I will have to wait and see what develops.

My Brother
My brother went to Colorado during the week between Christmas and New Year’s for a family Christmas. When we talked about the trip before he left, I said that he would have a White Christmas. He was less optimistic about a White Christmas. As it turned out, Colorado was hit by a severe blizzard during the week before Christmas so there was plenty of snow on the ground.

When we finally talked, we only talked about the Princess’s upcoming wedding. My brother and sister in law had met the Boy Friend and liked him. My brother was disappointed the wedding was going to be in Atlanta; he had hoped for a California wedding. I explained that since the Princess has clusters of friends across the country, two thirds of the friends will have to travel somewhere. Atlanta is as good a place as any since the Boy Friend is from Atlanta.

The discussion of his White Christmas will have to wait for a while longer.


That was my weekend gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.