Weekend Bonus Feature - Hankook Tire Girls

Weekend Bonus Feature - Hankook Tires Girls
Since I am going to be busy tomorrow, I thought that I would post the Weekend Bonus Feature earlier than usual. I hope I am not upsetting anyone.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - May 31st

Weekend Preview
Well, here it is the weekend already and the first of June as well.

This year certainly has flown by so far for me.

The sampler pack of cigars arrived today. They look very interesting. The ten cigars are mostly all with the medium brown wrapper although two have the very dark maduro style of wrapper. Some are short but most are the length that I usually smoke, around six inches / fifteen centimeters.

Fifteen centimeters seems like an awfully long cigar.

I will take one with me to Atlanta and try it there. Hopefully, there will be no rain since I am staying at a non-smoking hotel. I should be able to light up outside and enjoy the cigar before dinner.

Tomorrow, I am scheduled to have my hair cut by the new stylist who came back to Los Angeles. I am hoping that she does another good job for me. I want to look nice when I am in Atlanta. She did a great job the first time out so I am hoping that she can duplicate her earlier success with my hair.

In the event the new stylist lets me down, I do have a back up plan that will work fine. My hair won’t look as nice but that is the price one may pay to go to a stylist who is not as reliable as I would prefer.

Oh well, life happens and I made a choice here.

Today is also the end of the month. I will post the monthly visitor totals on Monday with the Weekend Update. The month for visitors is turning out to be one of the better ones this year.

I will not be posting the Weekend Update on Sunday as I usually do. I will be flying back to Los Angeles from Atlanta. One never knows for sure and certain whether the flight will be on time or some other time in arriving.

I can be happy with a smooth landing. I just have carry on bags so they will not get lost along the way home.

I went to the cinema today and saw HOT FUZZ. This film is from the same people who brought us SHAUN OF THE DEAD. HOT FUZZ is an English parody of the police action adventure films. I think this film parodied mostly POINT BREAK and BAD BOYS although you can probably add LETHAL WEAPON as well.

It is a very enjoyable and rewarding film with that underplayed British sense of humor. Bill Nighy from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN AT WORLD’S END has a very nice cameo appearance in the HOT FUZZ.

I will admit the film has a slow start but it does gather momentum and finishes off nicely with a wonderful gun battle and car cash. There were some very nice explosions.

I can recommend the film and I would encourage you to see it if it is still playing in your home town. I will be adding it to my list of films to be acquired and will be putting it on the shelf soon.

The film has been in the theater locally for some time now. I expect that this is the last week for the film in my local cinema multi-plex. All of the film trailers were for films that had already opened and, in one or two cases, had folded.
Doug is going to get the DVD before me because he has a multi-region DVD player. He is going to get a Region 2 [Europe and Africa] version of the film. I will be content to wait for the North American version that will be out by the end of Summer with any luck.

I still have two or three more films to see. I plan to see SPIDERMAN 3, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and maybe WAITRESS. Doug has been talking about only wanting to see three films this Summer, KNOCKED UP, NANCY DREW, and the Simpson’s Movie.

I am going to Atlanta to celebrate the Princess’s birthday. Normally, I do this in March, her birthday month. This year, I had a Saturday afternoon class so it was impossible for me to teach and be in Atlanta.

We will go have dinner at Morton’s in the Buckhead section of the city. We go there because I love to eat at Morton’s and the Princess loved their yummy crab cakes and hot chocolate cake for dessert. We also go there because I am flying out and flying back over the weekend so the Princess allows me to pick the place.

That covers the Weekend Preview.

Woman of the Moment
I did make some progress with my future Women of the Moment when I went to Speed Options.com yesterday. I found a future Woman of the Moment and close to 45 images of her in a bikini or other tight fitting clothes.

That should work out nicely for you readers out there.

Having said that, I still do like Ryoko Shinohara for a number of reasons. One reason why I like her is that she has some talent beyond being able to stand upright in a bikini and smile.




Nice lips.


Enjoy your weekend and stay safe

Be well and stay happy.

Bad Timing Today

Bad Timing Today
I drove to Hollywood this morning on a mission to find some movie posters for Doug. He indicated that he would like to have some posters framed so he can have some art on the walls when he gets his apartment.

Doug gave me list that had sort of ranked the posters in order of their desirability. That would make my job easier.

I got to the poster and book store around 10:55 AM. It was closed and locked up tighter than a drum. It didn’t seem logical to me to wait around and see if the store would open; especially since the parking in the immediate area was limited and scarce.

It was 11:00 AM when I got back in the Prelude and headed back to the beach. The store was still closed when I drove past it.

I should have given them a few more minutes since the store is supposed to open at 11:00 AM.

Oh well, life happens.

I will talk with Doug tonight when we have dinner about how we go forward with the poster search. We have a couple of options that we can pursue either this week or next week.

Programming Note
The usual Weekend Update will not appear on this coming Sunday. Sunday I will be flying back to Los Angeles from Atlanta. I may or may not be tired from the trip so I will avoid any pressure and post it on Monday.

Future Woman of the Moment
I had been giving some thought to the dancer – singer – American Idol judge Paula Abdul as a future Woman of the Moment.


For someone who is almost 45, I think Paula Abdul is in very good shape; one would expect that of a former dancer. I had gone to Google Images to see what was available in the way of Paula Abdul photos. There are plenty of images but they all tended to be of her in an evening dress at some event. Perhaps this was not the best possible dress choice for her since it shows off her age poorly.

I couldn’t find any bikini photos. I assume they are out there somewhere. I did not want to spend my afternoon looking all over the Internet for them. This is why I like to use Asian actresses and Speed Options models for the Woman of the Moment since photos of them in bikinis are usually available without much of a search.

Woman of the Moment
Having observed that Asian actresses tend to have bikini photos available, I discovered that I have used all of those images from Ryoko Shinohara. Oh well, life happens doesn’t it.

I guess that we will have to make do with these images today.





Be well and stay happy.

What Were You Thinking?

What Were You Thinking?
I was watching the local television news last night. This is one of those programs that sort of fill space in the daily programming schedule. The only real news they broadcast is a high speed police chase on the freeways.

These are really fun to watch, especially if it is close to where you are driving. You can see all of the television news helicopters hovering over the chase. It sometimes looks like a scene from APOCALYPSE NOW.

Anyway, they were showing a feature on healthy ice cream.

I have no idea why. I have only been concerned with how cold and how good the ice cream tasted. When I came home from Viet Nam for the first time, I ate a whole half gallon / 1.9 liters of ice cream. It tasted so good and was so cold.

Perfectomundo and back to the story.

The news story started off with a woman going into an ice cream store and asking how many calories were in a serving of the store’s ice cream.

What was she thinking?

Ice cream has calories. Accept that and move on so the next person in line can place his or her order. If you are concerned about calories, you should not even be in an ice cream store.

I usually go to Cold Stone Creamery for an ice cream cone about three or four times a year and get one with two or three scoops of ice cream and some toppings like M&Ms mixed in. I consider the visit a complete success if I can walk away with no ice cream on my shirt.

The best way to end a meal is with a large dish of super premium chocolate or coffee ice cream, a twenty year old single malt Scotch whisky, served straight up, and a fine well aged cigar.

The Brother
I was talking with my brother today about hamburgers and how Atlanta is supposed to have the best hamburgers in the country. I told him the Princess has never heard of the place but then that is not surprising since she is not a burger eater by nature.

Then, we talked about our Memorial Day weekend. I said that I taught class on Saturday afternoon and that was about it for me.

My brother and his wife saw three films over the weekend. They must have had time on their hands I guess. He can recommend seeing two films, WAITRESS and GEORGIA RULE. He said that he really couldn’t recommend the third film BUG unless you happen to like suspense – horror films. His wife wanted to leave half way through the film. She stayed around because she wanted to see how it ended.

WAITRESS and BUG did well this past weekend. GEORGIA RULE looks like it is fading fast although Lindsey Lohan who was in the film may generate some business as a result of her bad driving in Los Angeles over the weekend.

Teaching
I turned in my grades for the current and soon to be last term at school this morning. I was not the only teacher who was busy submitting his or her grades. In the end, I had five students who did not pass their courses. Since all of the students who failed could have pasted the courses if they had completed their homework assignments and writing and research assignments in a timely manner, I do not feel badly at all.

I suppose that I should have nagged more and been more insistent on getting the assignments turned in. I will do better this next term.

While I was at school, I picked up the course outlines and instructor syllabi for my five new classes for next term. Each one is over a hundred pages long. That will be a lot of work for me to create the lesson plans for each new class.

One of the things that I learned was that my Monday and Wednesday night classes are five hour classes. That means they run until 11:00 PM each night. I won’t get home until very close to midnight. Those will be long days for me. The school expects the students to be kept in class and learning right up to the 11:00 PM mark on the clock.

Woman of the Moment
We are in the winding down stage of Ryoko Shinohara’s time as the Woman of the Moment. I think there are enough images left after today for four more postings. I am still debating what to do about the next Woman of the Moment.




I wonder when Ryoko visited California.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - May 28th

Weekend Update
Today is Memorial Day, a day that we honor all of our fallen service men and women. If you enjoyed your freedom today, be sure to thank a veteran.

Freedom is never free.

Veterans are the one who purchased it for you.

For the most part, I had a relaxing weekend where I did not do a great many things. I enjoyed myself.

My oldest Internet friend Lara and her brother sent me a gift certificate for cigars for my birthday. I ordered myself a sampler gift pack and I am looking forward to smoking in the coming week.

I figure that Doug’s graduation from university is a big enough, special occasion to enjoy one of those fine cigars.

It has been over a year since I had a cigar. I consider myself as having stopped smoking. There will always be events that call for a cigar and, since I do not inhale the smoke, I feel I am not harming myself.

Besides, when I was growing up, my mother smoked a pack to a pack and a half of Lucky Strike cigarettes a day. There was plenty of unfiltered second hand smoke in my early life.

Of course, I did go to school on Saturday for my last class. It was group project presentations. I got to sit back and relax. The presentations were on the rocky side because the students have had very little opportunity to practice with them before my class.

I also talked with another teacher about the issue of failing students. He asked me why the students did not succeed. I told him it was because they did not complete the written assignments.

He thought for a moment and said the students failed themselves. He pointed out that they knew what the assignments were and when they were due in class. He also pointed out that I nagged them about turning in the assignments. I had done all that I could do to have the students pass the class.

I felt better after the talk.

I was watching one of my Korean or Japanese drama serials over the weekend. There was an advertisement for tofu. I usually ignore these ads. This one caught my attention when I displayed a suggested use for tofu as the main part of a hamburger or, to be correct, a tofu burger.

That was just so wrong.

There is no way that any one could consider using tofu in place of ground beef in a hamburger.

Tofu burgers should never ever be.

I was watching the early [before 7:00 AM] morning local news program this morning. It was a holiday show with some of the regulars taking a day off.

Sharon Tay was filling in as one of the co-hosts. This was a real surprise since she had only been doing infrequent free-lance news reporter spots. At 41, she was probably the oldest on-air person on the set. The other two women are probably in their late 20s or early 30s. Sharon was also dressed much more conservatively than she is in this photo. The photo came from her under construction web site http://www.sharontay.com.

It was very nice to see her back on television as an early morning news show co-host.

Parking will be tricky for Doug when he comes over to my house tonight. There are more cars out in front of the building because of the holiday. Tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.

My building has an elevator. It is not a very fast elevator. Glacial is too kind of an adjective to describe its speed or lack thereof. I normally do not use the elevator unless I have a guest with me. I like to walk up the stairs. When I do take the elevator, I always ask the person in the lobby if they want me to hold the elevator for them.

Holding the elevator is inconsequential in the grander scheme of things. I do it because it is the right thing to do; it is called being courteous. It requires no additional work on my part.

This week, I was down in the building lobby picking up my mail. Nothing unusual about
it; I do that several times a week. I was really irritated when two new tenants did not even bother to ask if I was interested in using the elevator. They just hopped in as soon as the door opened and pushed the close button as soon as they could find it.

I hope they receive the same treatment some day very soon. I wonder how they will like being treated so poorly.

They deserve it.

Visitors
We had another good week for visitors to the blog.

We had visitors from Canada [6], South Africa, Latvia, Korea [3], Texas, Mexico, Brazil [2], Singapore [4], United Kingdom [4], Malaysia [4], Japan [5], Australia [2], Greece [5], Spain, Germany [2], Thailand, Portugal, France [2], Poland, Netherlands, Taiwan, China [2], Argentina, and Ireland.

For some reason, I seem to have picked up a modest following in the Middle East. We had visitors from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait.

We only had one, long stay visitor who was here for almost nineteen minutes.

I do appreciate each of you who time from your schedules to stop by and visit the blog.

Cinema
I plan to visit the cinema this coming week. I could have gone over the weekend but the crowds were a bit much and who wants to sit next to someone who can’t stop talking or sending text messages on a cell phone. If I go in the middle of the week, I can avoid many of those people who make watching a movie on the big screen a pain.

Right now, I am planning to see PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, SPIDERMAN 3, and HOT FUZZ. I will go see HOT FUZZ first because I know the other two films will still be showing in another week to three while HOT FUZZ will be gone.

Food
Doug and I went to Albertacos after my class on Saturday for a late lunch or early dinner, depending on your point of view. I viewed the meal as an early dinner. We had our usual order of a Number 8 Combination with a medium drink to eat in. The Number 8 Combination consists of two carne asada soft tacos, rice, and refried beans.


It is a tasty meal indeed.

We also talked about meals at my house for the coming week. I mentioned that we could have some fish one night and maybe go out to Giuliano’s for a pizza on another. Doug thought that made sense. I told Doug that I was scheduled to teach on three nights in the coming term. I said that I might grill up a platter of chicken and have that available along with some bar-be-que baked beans and potato salad. It would be an easy meal for Doug to reheat when he got home from his internship. Doug thought so too.

I had time to think about that idea on the way home. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to have it now and not wait for a couple of weeks. The frozen fish will keep in the freezer for another two weeks without any significant change.

I will be cooking the chicken today for dinner during the week.

Then, on Sunday, I went to El Gringo because Albertacos is too far away to drive to just for a meal. Jess the Server was working on Sunday. We had a chance to talk for the first time in a couple of weeks. Like most of the servers, Jess is a student. She is majoring in nursing and will graduate with her Registered Nurse degree in about a year.

Good for you Jess.

I said that I would not be coming to El Gringo for the next two weeks because of the trip to Atlanta this coming weekend. The following weekend I am supposed to have a latte lunch at L. A. Food Show with Vivian and Lisa from where I used to work.

I had a Number 2 Combination which is two, shredded beef soft tacos with rice and refried beans. I had a root beer to drink.



All things considered, I prefer the Albertacos Number 8 Combination to any similar combination from El Gringo.

Woman of the Moment
This is a good way to end the blog with Ryoko Shinohara. Tonight is another black and white photo session. This type of image is sometimes more effective than a color image.





I hope you had a great weekend.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Extra Bonus Feature - May 27th

Weekend Extra Bonus Feature
I decided to have a Weekend Extra Bonus Feature primarily for those readers who missed the Programming Note about the holiday blog posting earlier. You can never have too many Hankook Tire Girls photos.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - May 25th

Weekend Preview
I knew there was something I forgot to do yesterday.

I remembered that I had forgotten to post the Weekend Preview blog edition for this weekend a little after 11:00 PM last night. I had trouble sleeping; this was probably because I had another sugar low and took a nap in the afternoon for about two hours. The nap disrupted my sleep and took the time that I would have used to write this blog edition.

I suppose that I could have gotten out of bed last night or very early this morning and pounded out the Weekend Preview. If I had done that, my sleeping patterns would have been a mess. I would probably spend all weekend getting back on schedule.

This coming weekend will play havoc with my sleep schedules when I take the red-eye [midnight flight and very little sleep] to Atlanta to see the Princess. Fortunately, I do not have any classes in the week after the Atlanta trip so I will have time to recover and get back on track.

Today, I have to finish grading homework assignments for my Accounting I class. Hopefully, I can be finished in an hour or so.

I plan to visit the cinema this weekend since I will have the time and I do not have any lesson plans to prepare or homework to grade. I am not going to go see PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN AT WORLD’S END this weekend. I will go sometime during the week when the crowds will be smaller and I can find a good seat in a large screened theater to enjoy the film more.

I would also like to see HOT FUZZ if it is still in the local cinema and maybe SPIDERMAN 3. There are a number of other films that look interesting but I am not all that excited to thirty miles to see them.

Doug says that there are only one or two films that really interest him. One of them is William Friedkin’s BUG.

I also have my Journey to the West novel to read and the balcony in the sunny afternoon is a great place to read.

Programming Note
The Weekend Update will be posted sometime on Monday, May 28th because of the Memorial Holiday weekend in the States.

For those of you who are not in the United States, Memorial Day originally was organized to honor the Union forces during our Civil War. The Southern states adopted the holiday also. The four year long Civil War was the bloodiest war in our Nation’s history.

I once asked the Princess, partly in jest, if the South celebrated what was originally a Yankee holiday. She said, “Of course Daddy, we always remember the men who died in defense of the Cause.” The Cause was the right of the Southern states to secede from the Union.

Teaching
I had my Thursday morning class yesterday. The class took their finals and made presentations on a group project.

I learned they will all be in my Business Law and Regulation class next term. I said, “Good, I won’t come to class with any expectations of everyone showing up at 8:00 AM then.” Everyone laughed at my comment.

It looks like I will be teaching a fifth class next term. I guess the Dean approved me to teach Strategies for the Technology Professional. This is a first year course on how to use the personal computer and the Microsoft Office programs. It does not sound too difficult to teach.

It seems that I am teaching new courses each term. I have five new courses this term. Two of the courses, Consumer Behavior and Business Law, will be easy and a lot of fun for me. I think Introduction to Project Management will be a bit of a challenge for me. The last two courses, Accounting II and Strategies for the Technology Professional, ought to be time consuming when it comes to lecture presentation preparation.

My schedule is not what I would like. That happens and I am over it now. I have classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights and I have classes on Wednesday and Friday mornings. Obviously, Wednesdays will be long days for me.

I failed my first student yesterday. It was an easy decision since he did not take the final examination and he did not turn in any of the written assignments. Those areas amounted to 85% of the total course grade. I will fail another student on Saturday. She has missed six out of ten classes and only turned in one written assignment. This will be another easy decision for me.

I was talking with one of the department chairs on Thursday about failing students. He said I was making much ado about nothing. The school expects to see failures in the 5 to 10% range. He said that not taking the final and not completing the assignments were pretty easy reasons to fail a student. He said it was not like I had a student who was struggling and trying hard to pass the course and one I wanted to see pass the course. He said these students just gave up.

Besides, there would be more room in the parking lot for the students who want to learn now.

Road Rage
Road Rage happens for a number of reasons. It is a way of life in Southern California.

I try to drive responsibly when I am out on the freeways [high speed highways with no tolls]. This means I do not use my cell phone unless I am stopped in traffic because of an accident. I think it is safe to use cell phone when you are stopped.

The highways have posted speed limits, usually 65 miles an hour / 105 kilometers an hour. Most of the time, I drive a bit faster than the speed limit because the traffic around me is moving at a higher speed. The Prelude is a small car and I do not want a much larger vehicle to hit me.

That seems very logical to me to say nothing of self preservation on my part.

I have noticed that there is a class or group of drivers that must feel they are invincible and the greatest drivers that ever lived.

I had one clown on Thursday who tried to follow me as close as he could. Traffic was moderately heavy and the idiot, driving an SUV, behind me could clearly see that there was a large truck in front of me. I was leaving some room between the Prelude and the truck. That seemed like a safe thing to do. I guess he thought that by driving as close to me as he could that I would increase my speed. The laws of physics say it is impossible for me to pass through another object, like the truck in front of me, so speeding up was out of the question for me.

If I had suddenly slowed or touched my brakes, the idiot behind me would have either crashed into the Prelude or lost control of his vehicle and crashed.

Sometimes, I think people like that deserve to be removed from the gene pool permanently for the overall betterment of society.

I am convinced that cell phone usage while you are driving is inherently dangerous unless you are stopped for some reason or are driving at a very low speed, something at a rate barely above a brisk walking pace.

I was watching a driver who was talking on her cell phone yesterday. I had to watch her because she was moving all over the road. If I watched out for her, I could avoid having her hit me.

I thought her actions were rude, selfish and highly dangerous. She also deserves to be removed from the gene pool permanently as well. Society will be better off for it.

It is people like these two that bring about road rage. Their actions are so callously self centered that they will push otherwise seemingly rational people to violence that can take the form of car rammings or car to car shootings.

People need to think first before they engage the transmission.

Woman of the Moment
I think ending the blog with Ryoko Shinohara is a good way for me to start my weekend.





I hope you all have great weekends and I will be back on Monday.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - May 25th

Weekend Bonus Feature - Hankook Tire Girls
It is always a good time to check your tires. You can also check the Hankook Tire Girls as well.




Be well and stay happy.

Watching and Waiting for the Weekend

Watching and Waiting for the Weekend
Doug and I didn’t watch too much of American Idol on the television last night. Mostly, I watched my Korean serial. We plan to watch the last fifteen minutes tonight to see who wins. I may, on the other hand, bail out early and go to bed instead.

I thought that Paula Abdul was more pathetic than usual last night. She couldn’t pick a winner between the final two contestants.

Hello Paula, this is what judges do; they make difficult decisions between multiple choices.

I am still sitting on the fence over Denise Richards and whether she should be in the blog. This makes me feel like a cheap politician who is out trying to gather votes. I ought to be able to find a few photos that are worth tossing up on the Weekend Bonus Feature at least. I will put a little effort into this project over the next few days.

This is likely to be a short posting since Wednesday is generally a slow day for me.

I checked the visitors to the blog for the month to date yesterday. It doesn’t look like the blog will have a big month in terms of visitors. That happens sometimes; what I am writing about may not be all that compelling. The visitor count may also be a reflection on my choices for Woman of the Moment and Weekend Bonus Feature Woman.

I had ordered another Chinese classic novel. It arrived today and my reading is set for the next month. Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng’en in the 16th century. The novel is based on a historical journey. The novel has 100 chapters and is about 2,100 or so pages long.

That is a lot of reading.

Woman of the Moment
This is a good place for Ryoko Shinohara. I know that she is a singer from reading the Internet and seeing some ads to purchase her CDs. Naturally, the ads were in Japanese so I have no idea if she is a good singer or just an average singer. One of these days I may figure that one out.





Slow days produce small blogs.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update Carryover - May 22nd

Weekend Update Carryover
I had thought that Doug would be staying with me on Monday in preparation to work at the Sony Studios. He is continuing to work until the end of the month; he wants to finish the month out and help with training the new interns that started this week.

He called me on Monday and said that he would be crashing at his friend’s Rob and Derek’s place in Hollywood so he could go work at a casting agency at the Sunset Gower Studios. The production company where he normally works on Tuesday sometimes shares Doug’s time with the casting agency.

Doug thinks this is a good idea since it will allow him an opportunity to widen his network of contacts in the industry. I tend to agree with him.

I just got a call from Doug saying that he would stay here tonight.

That leaves dinner somewhat up in the air now. We’ll find something to do for dinner if we end up at El Burrito or El Gringo or Fatburger or Giuliano’s or Burger King.

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun
That is the English translation of the new Japanese drama serial that I started watching on Sunday night. If you wanted to be technically correct, it would be machine pistol.

Anyway.


The show is about a Japanese high school girl who becomes the head of a minor yakuza family following the deaths of her great uncle and her father. It is an interesting premise; Japanese high school girls, yakuza, and machine guns.

Sunday’s show just built the background about how the yakuza came to her school to ask her to come with them. The yakuza, dressed like they were stand-ins for the Reservoir Dogs, caused a major commotion when they arrived at her school.


Masami Nagasawa plays the teenage student. I first saw her in Dragon Zukura maybe a year and a half or two years ago. I will try to add some more information about Masami in the coming blogs.

Woman of the Moment
This is a great time to toss in some more photos of another Japanese actress, Ryoko Shinohara.




Perfectomundo.

El Gringo
Jess the Server was back at work at El Gringo on Sunday. Her hair was also back to its normal blonde color.

Jess gave a big, “Hi Charles. How have you been?” when I walked in. It is really nice to be greeted like that whenever you enter a place of business.

I asked Jess where she had been the prior Sunday. She said she went out to lunch with her mother for Mother’s Day. Good daughter, Jess. I said, “Good for you Jess. I missed you last week.”

I felt like having chicken and eating healthy for a change. I had a very tasty chicken burrito. It was very filling and satisfying. The soda machine was working so I washed the burrito down with a frosty root beer.

Teaching
I was talking to the teacher scheduler on Monday morning after I finished a substitute session for another teacher. I wanted to tell him that I was happy with my tentative class assignments. I think that made him feel good.

The scheduler asked me if I would be interested in teaching Accounting II instead of Accounting I. The class would be on the same day so there would be no change in my schedule. The instructor who was originally penciled in for the Accounting II class said that he wasn’t that confident about teaching the course. The scheduler said I was the only other teacher who could teach the class.

I agreed to help out and teach Accounting II. This means that I have four new classes and four sets of new lesson plans to prepare over the next three months.

Life happens; you learn to deal with it.

The scheduler also asked me about teaching another new class. I forget what its name is; it is essentially teaching new students the ins and outs of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and the Internet. I said that I could do that. The dean has to make the final decision so I won’t know if I got the fifth class for another few days.


I think this just about closes out the Weekend Update.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - May 21st

Weekend Update
Well, I finally got the Weekend Update out for you.

I was busy with Doug’s graduation and grading papers. Those activities sucked almost all of my time on Sunday. The graduation ceremony lasted something over four hours. Then, there was the drive back to his mother’s house in Angel baseball game traffic and the post graduation glow of it all.

I think most of you know that I watch local Korean and Japanese language television broadcasts. The shows are subtitled with fairly good English. I have had a chuckle with one commercial for a food company. I think it is a food company but I could be wrong.

I think it is very funny that the background music for the commercial is either Scott Joplin or W. C. Handy. Somehow, early New Orleans style jazz does not connect with me for Japanese food.

I did enjoy the music and spend most of my time listening to it. I might as well since I do not understand Japanese.

Visitors
We had another good week for visitors. We had visitors from Canada [6], Australia [4], Japan [3], United Kingdom [4], Korea [2], Hungary, Italy [2], Germany, Texas [3], Israel [2], Ireland, Venezuela, China, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, United Arab Emirates [2], Poland, Singapore [2], and Russia.

We also had a great week for visitors who decided to stay around for a few minutes. One visitor each stayed for 26 minutes, 23 minutes, 17 minutes, and 12 minutes. Two visitors stayed for 13 minutes each.

I do appreciate each of you who took time from your schedules to stop and read my simple musings and observations.

Weekend Bonus Feature
I decided that I didn’t want to have Denise Richards as the Weekend Bonus Feature woman. There was something that did not sit well with me in having her as the WBF Woman.

I went back into the archives and pulled out one of my favorite set of Weekend Bonus Features, the Hankook Tire Girls. When you are in doubt, go with your strength. I went to my bench and pulled a power hitter with Hankook Tire Girls.

I hope you approve of my decision.

Woman of the Moment
Ryoko Shinohara is a product of my viewing a Japanese language broadcast and getting hooked on her limited series dramadey. A dramadey is a combination comedy and drama. It is a word that I picked up from Doug.

I was pleased with finding her and her show.




Graduation
Doug is finally a college graduate now and the family is very proud of his accomplishments.




The main ceremony took place at 8:00 AM on Sunday morning. The university had to schedule a two part ceremony because there were over 9,600 students receiving their degrees this month. It took the 5,000 or so students close to forty minutes to walk in.

The other reason for the early start was the weather. May can be very hot and it would have been unbearable if the sun had been out.

As it was, the sky was heavily overcast and there were intermittent mistings. It was cool but not uncomfortably cool. I wore a Tommy Bahama shirt the Princess gave me for Christmas.

The ceremony was overly long with too much time spent on announcing awards to the faculty. No one there cared a tinker’s damn about the faculty awards. They were concerned with the students naturally.

The commencement speaker, Dr. Lucy Jones of the US Geologic Survey Earthquake Center, was sort of an odd and poor choice. I didn’t want to hear her talk about earthquake preparedness. That is very old news in Southern California by now.

Doug felt the same way.

After this waste of time, we had to walk about a half mile to his school’s commencement proceedings. This part was really poorly organized. There were not enough chairs for the students and there was a woeful shortage of chairs for guests with tickets. We ended up standing for over an hour while we had to suffer through more faculty honors.

I took some photos as you can see. Doug told me that he took around 100 photos.

In case you are wondering why Doug is wearing the white sunglasses, he said he wanted to be different and not wear black like everyone else. He picked the white sunglasses up on his trip to New York City.

When all of the dust had settled for the day, we were a very happy and tired family.


I think I will finish off the rest of the Weekend Update tomorrow. Tuesday will be a slow day I think.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Hankook Tire Girls

Weekend Bonus Feature - Hankook Tires Girls
I kept thinking about putting Denise Richards up as the Weekend Bonus Feature on Friday and most of Saturday. In the end, I wasn't able to embrace Denise as the Weekend Bonus Feature. I decided to go back to 2006 and bring back one of my favorite Weekend Bonus Features, the Hankook Tire Girls.



Last year was when I decided to buy Hankook Tires the next time I need tires for the Prelude or the Pathfinder.

Programming Note
I will be busy with Doug's graduation on Sunday and I have a stack of homework to grade. I will post the Weekend Update on Monday.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - May 17th

Weekend Preview
I was greeted with the satisfying smell of hamburgers and French fries when I got in the Prelude this morning on my way to school. I left for school earlier than I normally would because I had heard that there was an accident on one of the freeways that I take. The accident had been cleared up and there were no delays in reaching school.

I got to school in about 45 minutes and had to wait for another fifteen minutes until someone came to unlock the doors. I listened to the radio while I waited.

I have my next to last Saturday class. I will not miss these classes, especially during the Summer. I should have a close to full class because it is the last day to turn in homework and group projects. It will be difficult to pass the class if the students do not turn in the assignments.

I may go to the cinema over the weekend. There are some films that I want to see. If I go now, I should avoid some of the crowds since the films I want to see have been out for a while.

The only other activity will be the Sunday meal at El Gringo. Hopefully, Jess the Server will be there on Sunday.

So far, I have only one complaint with the new laptop. I have loved the track ball feature since my first ThinkPad. The new one has a track ball function as well as the finger mouse. I sometimes let my hand rest on the finger mouse pad or the right or left buttons. This often results in unplanned and unexpected results. I just need to be more careful with my hands. It is part of the learning process for me.

Teaching
My Thursday class was a bit of a disappointment for me. My students never arrive on time. They finally showed up and I went over the final examination with them. They all ought to do very well on the examination.

It is now about 7:15 PM here. The students have until midnight to turn in all of their assignments and projects for the class. Like my Saturday class, it will be difficult to pass the course without completing the assignments. I hope that none of them are expecting me to extent the time limit for submitting the assignments because I won’t do that. They have known since the first day of class when the assignments are due.

For some reason, I do not feel badly about the prospect of failing more than one student in the class.

I got my tentative teaching assignment for the next term today.

I am scheduled to teach four classes and no Saturday classes. I am going to teach Accounting I on Monday night; I won’t have to create lesson plans for this class. All I will have to do is change the due dates on the assignments and I can use the outline from the current term.

The other classes are all new ones to me. I am scheduled to teach Introduction to Project Management on Tuesday nights; Business Law and Regulation on Wednesday mornings; and Consumer Behavior on Friday mornings. I am really excited about the business Law and Regulation and Consumer Behavior courses. They should be a lot of fun for me. I think the Project Management course ought to be a good one for me as well.

There is a strong possibility that my current Thursday morning class will be the Wednesday morning class for me. At least, I will know the students names when class starts.

Lunch with Vivian and Lisa
I am going to have lunch with my friend Vivian in June, after I go to Atlanta to see the Princess. This is something we do a couple of times a year. We will meet on a Sunday since that days tends to work best for both of us.

We have a favorite restaurant that is sort of halfway between our two houses. We also love the food, especially the Avocado, Bacon, Cheese, and Chicken egg rolls. Vivian loves the Poke Martini which is a large martini glass that is filled with raw fresh fish and then covered with a poke sauce.

One of the other co-workers from the old office may join us for lunch in June. That would be great to see the two of them.

We have to wait until June because they are going to Cannes Film Festival for work. I wish I could find a job like Vivian and Lisa. Then, when they return, I am off to Atlanta to see the Princess.

It all makes sense to me.

Woman of the Moment
I enjoyed seeing Ryoko Shinohara in Bad Luck Bride which is why she is here as the Woman of the Moment. This is an eclectic collection of images tonight.




Stop bye over the weekend for the new Weekend Bonus Feature Woman.


Be well and stay happy.

The New Woman of the Moment

New Woman of the Moment
The New Woman of the Moment is Ryoko Shinohara. Ryoko Shinohara is a thirty three year old [August 13, 1983] Japanese actress and singer. The Internet Movie Database shows Ryoko with credits in twenty five films. Wikipedia says that her singing career has languished and that she has concentrated on her acting, becoming a leading Japanese actress.

I came across Ryoko Shinohara when the Japanese comedy Delicious Proposal, I had been watching, ended. She starred in a comedy called Bad Luck Bride. She seems to have a good sense for comedic acting. The comedy is worth watching; the translation is fairly good and even, the cast has a nice range of odd ball characters.

For the statistically inclined, Ryoko is 64 inches / 162 centimeters tall and measures 31 -22 – 33 inches / 80 – 56 – 83 centimeters.

There are a large number of photos that are available at Google Images. I try to limit the size of the images so they will show nicely in the blog. There is one image of Ryoko with a “wardrobe malfunction” floating around in the ether.




Weekend Bonus Feature
This week will also mark a change in the Weekend Bonus Feature. I think this is the first time I have changed both image sections in one week.

Ominous Thoughts
I was reading the weekly automobile section of the local newspaper today. It must have been a slow news day. There was an article about how difficult it had been to find a replacement part of a 1996 Lincoln Mark VIII vehicle.

The part is no longer produced and, after what appears to have a very extensive search by the Ford Motor Company, is not available anywhere.


That got me to thinking. The Prelude is 1989 model that I bought new in September of 1988. It will be nineteen years old in a few months. I may be facing the same problem with the Honda. Parts may no longer be manufactured and none may be available anywhere in the country. My only source for parts could end up with the automobile junk yards and I do not envision myself crawling about wrecked Preludes, looking for a specific part.

I am leaning towards replacing the Prelude in 2008 right now. This seems like a logical course of action. I know the repair and maintenance costs are only going to increase between now and whenever I stop supporting the Prelude. I recognize that I will have some short term expenses for repairs but I will come out ahead in the long run.

Interesting Visitor
I had an interesting visitor to the blog yesterday.

Yesterday was the first time that I can remember that a visitor from my old home town, San Marino, California, where I grew up came to visit the blog. That was fascinating for me. I was more surprised to learn the visitor came from the Huntington Library and Gardens.

I wonder what I wrote that would have triggered such interest.

Oh well, it must have been good, whatever it was.

Chuckay Dinner – Part III
Doug and I decided to go to the local Fatburger for dinner tonight.

While this is not truly a part of the Chuckay Celebration, we do enjoy a hot greasy Kingburger with cheese and everything else every now and then. I don’t think we have been to Fatburger in more than five or six months.

I think I will be having a Kingburger with cheese and Fat Fries. This is a Kingburger with cheese.


Fat Fries are just thick cut French fries instead of the small ones most places offer. I have tried their chili cheese fries but they are not anywhere near what the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers gives you.

Fatburger is a Southern California tradition. It serves mostly beef with one chicken item on the menu and one salad item. Everything is made to order and you can have the hamburger grilled if you want. The hamburger comes wrapped in paper that serves a nice catch basin for the drippings from the hamburger.

Perfectomundo.


Be well and stay happy.