Quarter Break - Part I & Weekend Preview - August 31st

Quarter Break Part I
Yes, I know that I was supposed to make a posting on Wednesday and Thursday.

But, this is quarter break and I took a couple of days off. I think next week will be better as far as blog postings go.

Burp
A lot of this posting is about food.

Food, after all, is very important to one’s life.

On Wednesday, Doug and I went to the local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for iced coffees. Actually, there are several local Coffee Beans. This one has better parking and that is significant for me. We left the Coffee Bean and drove to the local Burger King for Whoppers [large hamburgers with lettuce, tomatos, cheese, onions, and pickles] and fries. That was our lunch and it was a tasty and filling lunch.

I was not feeling like much a meal for dinner so I suggested that we have take-out from a local Mexican restaurant. I had a chicken tostado [salad in a crisp shell with lettuce, chicken, diced tomatos and onions and cilantro, sour cream, pinto beans, shredded cheese, and guacamole] and Doug had a taco combination plate.
Thursday was a continuation of eating for me.

I went to a breakfast meeting with a representative from my college fraternity. He was in town and wanted to meet me. He also wanted to ask me to make a donation to the current fund drive. This was probably one of the more expensive breakfasts that I have had in recent memory.

I did enjoy the fried eggs, hash brown potatos, fresh fruit, bagel with smoked salmon, and bacon. I think this was the first time that I have had breakfast without any hot coffee. It was a little unusual but I found that I could do well without the morning coffee.

After breakfast, I drove over to school for an in-service session; more about this later. This was a late morning to early afternoon meeting for the instructors. All of the full time instructors were supposed to be there but several of them were absent. Part time instructors, like me, were not required to attend.

We had a lunch that was catered in from a local causal dining restaurant. This was a much better selection than the usual order from the local pizza place. We had a choice of salads, pizza, bar-be-cued ribs and chicken, grilled chicken, brownies, chocolate chips cookies, and soft drinks.

That was a big spread of food and I was proud of myself in having only a cookie for dessert. I could have taken more than one and some brownies as well.

I ended up having a bowl of soup and cheese and crackers for my dinner. I was full at the end of the day.

Teaching
The in-service session at school is designed to improve our teaching ability. I picked up some new ideas and approaches of how t o make my classes better.

I also pulled one of my student’s failure out of the fire. She had forgotten to turn in some of her assignments before I turned in my grades. I spoke to the Associate Dean about whether or not a grade change was appropriate and if it could be submitted.

We discussed her situation and I expressed my belief that the student was being honest with me and that I felt she was otherwise a good student. The Dean agreed with me. Now, all I have to do is read her late submitted assignments, grade them and then recalculate her course grade, and submit a grade change request.

While I was having lunch, the Associate Dean asked me if I was interested in teaching another course. I said yes, depending on the course. He said that he was confident that I could do a great job in the course. I said I would be happy to teach the course.

The course will not be a difficult one for me to teach. The course is for students who are about to graduate. It teaches them how to prepare for a job interview and develop a resume. I don’t think I will have to spend too much time on calling students who missed class. That will be sweet for me.

Woman of the Moment
Today’s Woman of the Moment is Kang Jung. I think she is the most attractive of the three actresses from Korean serial. It is Episode 125 tonight. Unfortunately for me and the blog, she does not have many photos available on an English language web site.

Life happens.

I do like these two images though.



Vivian’s Man of the Moment
My friend Vivian and I and maybe our friend Lisa will have lunch on September 16th at the L. A. Food Show in Manhattan Beach. Actually, this is a tentative date and with Vivian, is always subject to change. I had suggested that we have lunch on the 9th but Vivian and I think Lisa will be in Toronto.

Vivian’s selection for her Man of the Moment is John Krasinski from The Office. Vivian said that she picked him because one of her girl friends has a crush on him. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.


Weekend Preview
This weekend will be devoted to odds and ends.

I plan to clean up and organize my teaching materials from the last term. I need to find my lesson plans from the two classes that I first taught when I started at the school. I don’t plan on doing any lesson plan work until next weekend.

It looks like I can catch a couple of films at the cinema. I will decide what to see when I wake up on Saturday or Monday.

Of course, I will be doing some cleaning and laundry.

I went online to Google Images to check out a potential Woman of the Moment, Tang Wei. Tang Wei is a Chinese actress who will be starring in Ang Lee’s new film, LUST, CAUTION. Unfortunately, almost all of the images are in the dwarf size, under 10 kb, and are ones from the period film set in the late 1930s.

Programming Note
The usual Weekend Update will not be posted on Sunday because of our Labor Day Holiday on Monday. The Update will appear on Monday.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - August 31st

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eiko Koike
Regrettably, this will be the last Weekend Bonus Feature appearance, for the time being, for Eiko Koike. She has been one of my personal favorites. I still have the Eiko gallery as my screen saver images so she is never very far my view.







Be well and stay happy.

Teaching Is Such A Pain

Teaching Can Be Such A Pain
I had to turn is my course grade books today. It is something that I have to do every term.

This term was my worst term for students who failed my courses. I had six students who failed my courses. Actually, I did not fail the students. The students failed themselves because they did not complete the required assignments. They were given the assignments on the first day of class and I nagged them regularly about turning them in.

The school requires the instructors to contact the students and tell them that they did not pass the course. For the most part, the failure is not a surprise because the students know they didn’t complete the assignments. Still, it is not a pleasant phone call to make.

On a positive note, one student expressed his appreciation in having me call him instead of getting the notice in the mail. He said he was looking forward to taking the class again from me.

That was nice way to end my school work for the day.

Thursday, the school is holding an instructor training day. I plan to attend. I want to ask one of the presenters who I can make my Fundamentals of Tax Preparation course exciting and interesting. I think that will be a challenging question. I get some professional development credit for the day and a free lunch. Lunch will probably be pizza.

I am not that keen on pizza for lunch. I had pizza from California Pizza Kitchen [bar-be-cued chicken] and a salad for dinner on Sunday. I had left over pizza and salad for dinner after I got home from school on Monday.

Doug
Doug stopped by today on his way to a free concert a record store in Hollywood. He gave me the name of the group but I managed to forget it in the few hours since he told me.

Doug said he may hang out with me for a few days.

The beach is a good place to hang out. He likes the walk to the beach and to spend time sitting on the sand and watching the young women in their bikinis while they are still on Summer Vacation.

Summer Vacation should only last another two weeks at most. Then, the beach will be almost empty on week days.

Woman of the Moment
Tonight’s Woman of the Moment is Yoon Hae Young. She is the oldest of the three actresses. In some respects, I think she is the most attractive, well, most attractive in an older sort of way.





Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - August 26th

Weekend Update
The road in front of the building got marked for the lane painting on Thursday morning. It looks like my forecast of having the resurfacing done by Labor Day, September 3rd is fairly reasonable. I will be very glad when the project is completed and the construction mess gone.

It had been on the really warm side at the beach this past week with temperatures up in the middle 80s F / 28 – 29C. I was almost looking forward to a warm weekend. As luck would have it, the weather turned in time for the weekend. Yesterday, it was around 73F / 22C and today it may be just a bit cooler with hardly any sun to speak of.

There is a possibility of rain today. It would come from what is left of Hurricane Dean. I am not expecting any real measurable rainfall. I know the weather news reader will excited about that in the local evening news show on television.

I went to the market this morning because I figured that if I went in the morning I would miss most of the crowds. I was right; there were no crowds. The construction is taking place at the market. I asked a clerk how much longer until the remodeling is completed. He said it should be another two weeks. It seems to me the store has reduced its stock since some of the shelf space is now devoted to table and chairs so customers may sit and drink coffee or eat sandwiches and salads.

Personally, I do not go to the market for sandwiches or coffee.

The market has installed some of those new self checkout devices. One of the managers asked me if I wanted to try one. I said that I preferred to old way of checking out from a market with a live clerk.

I did hear some distant thunder this afternoon and I looked out of the window into the park. There was an indication that there had been some rain, you could call it a modest trace. It was just enough rain to make a mess of your car’s appearance.

Flash Gordon
I gave up on the Sci-Fi Channel’s Flash Gordon on Friday night. The show was about a parasite. That lost me; I have seen enough parasites, good and bad, in Star Trek and Stargate SG-1.

The casting also lost me. The actor who plays Flash Gordon seems to be too much of a metro-sexual for my taste. He has no or at least I have not seen any overt, aggressive displays of emotion like you have with Captain Kirk or the original Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe. The rest of the cast borders on shallow to cardboard.

The writing also sucks for the series. None of the characters are really interesting or likeable.

But, what do you expect when you have two female writers trying to bring a classic comic book to television? I doubt the writers have ever read an action – adventure comic book.

The only nice thing that I can say about the film is the CGI effects are nice; only nice.

The Sci-Fi Channel could have sunk a few more dollars into the script and maybe even gotten a decent actor or actress to play one of the major roles. They got Richard Dean Anderson to star in Stargate SG-1 and that lasted for ten years.

Woman of the Moment
I decided to do something different with the Woman of the Moment for the next couple of days. I am going to post images of the young actresses in my current favorite Korean soap opera, High as the Sky, Wide as the Earth.

I do not have a lot of photos of the actress so each one will be here for only a few days at most. If I had been able to read Korean, I probably could have found more sites that carried more images.

I had given some thought to explaining who the characters are and how they relate to one another in the show. I gave up on this idea since the show is up to Episode 120 or so. That would be just too much to explain easily.




This is Han Hyo Joo.

Visitors
We had visitors from Nigeria, Israel, Australia [4], Japan [6], Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Cambodia, Brazil, Hungary, Canada [3], France, Taiwan, Finland, Hong Kong [2], Texas [3], Argentina, and Korea. There were no visitors who stayed around for more than a few minutes this week. There were no new national visitors this week either.

I do appreciate all of you who stop by the blog and see what is on my mind.

Teaching
I found out what classes I will be teaching on Friday.

The Associate Dean who handles the scheduling said I am scheduled to teach Principles of Marketing and Fundamentals of Income Tax Preparation. He said he was trying to see if he could find me a third class to teach. He has to place the full time instructors first and then see if there is a class left that I can teach.

I have taught the two classes before. Actually, I have taught only half of the classes before. I started out in the middle of the term at school with these classes and three others. It is nice since I have half of the lesson plans already written.

Another nice thing is that my classes, right now anyway, are morning classes. This means they will be smaller and probably more fun for me and the student. I will also be able to watch my Korean soap opera, High as the Sky, Wide as the Earth, every night of the week and Monday Night Football.

Programming Note
There will be no blog on Monday because I have two make up classes to teach. The school was closed for Fourth of July and the missed class session has to be made up so it will be done on Monday.

Thank goodness there is no Monday Night Football to worry about missing.


That was my weekend and I hope your weekend was more exciting than mine.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - August 24th

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eiko Koike
I just checked my inventory of Eiko images and it seems that I am about out of theses as well as the Masami Nagasawa images. I think I have enough Eiko images for one more weekend after today.





[Note to self: get busy and find some new images quickly.]


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - August 23rd

Weekend Preview
Doug came over to the place on Wednesday night after he went to a comedy club show with his friends. The drive to my house was easier than driving to his mother’s house. I don’t know when he arrived because I got home from school around 11:00 PM and then I went to bed.

We went to lunch today at his favorite local Mexican restaurant, El Burrito Jr. I had a chicken burrito; it was ginormous. I had no room for dinner at all today. Doug had a carnitas [pork] burrito for his lunch.

We agreed that the burritos were more than a meal and that they were freshly made and the meat was very flavorful.

I need to start working on my dissertation again during the two week break between terms.

Of course, there is some more laundry to do. I will leave that for the weekend.

Woman of the Moment
This is the last of Masami Nagasawa as the Woman of the Moment. I had hoped that Speed Options would have a new model of the month, for August, up by now and I had planned to tell you who would be appearing in the Weekend Update on Sunday.

Unfortunately, life happens.

Anyway, we still have Masami to help us end the week. That is not an altogether bad outcome in my mind.





Teaching
Some of my students never cease to amaze me.

I know they are paying around USD$1,500 for each course that they take. To me, that is a fair amount of money to toss away. I have one student who will fail two classes because he has not done any of the required work. One of his explanations was that he didn’t study one weekend because he hung out with his friends from high school and helped them to organize a social club.

I spoke with the student on Wednesday night. He said that he was looking forward to taking the classes again from me.

That was so depressing for me.

I do not know what classes I am scheduled to teach in the next term at school. One of the students in my Wednesday morning class said that, on his schedule, I was teaching an Introduction to Income Tax Preparation course for him.

I guess I should be happy that I am teaching at least one class in the next term.


Be well and stay happy.

Wednesday Makeup Feature - August 22nd

Wednesday Makeup Feature - KT So
The Wednesday makeup Feature, by now and especially with this woman, does not need an introduction. At least, I think it does not need an introduction.






Be well and stay happy.

Dog Day of the Week

Dog Day of the Week
I decided to take a break today. I deserve one. I'm hot and tired and ready to go to bed after a long class session tonight.

Woman of the Moment
Although I may be tired and hot, I will not leave the gentle readers without their Woman of the Moment. Tonight and Thursday's Woman of the Moment will not feature any themed image sets of Masami Nagasawa.






Be well and stay happy.

Leftovers

Leftovers
I made my travel arrangements for the Princess’ wedding today. It will be nice to fly in the front of the plane with the nice wide leather seats, plenty of legroom, free drinks, and tolerable food. I will be flying on my Delta Airlines frequent flyers miles so my trip cost me all of USD$5.00 for some fee or something.

All of those years flying in the cramped seats in the back of the plane have finally paid off for me.

The only thing I don’t care for with Delta is their choice of Scotch whisky in first class or business class. Delta serves Dewar’s Scotch; I have just never ever acquired a taste for Dewar’s.

Oh well, when you fly for free, it is difficult to complain about anything.

Now, all that I have to worry about is the weather in Atlanta in October.

I got my theater tickets for one of the theaters that I have been going to for the last fifteen years or so. I only recognized one of the five plays in the coming season. I have the same seats as last year. I guess I will have to wait for some other season ticket holders to die off before I can move closer to the center of the row.

Speed Options still has not found a new model to feature in August. One would think that by the 20th, they could have found a model that would happily provide a set of seductive images for the mostly male readers of the magazine to enjoy and a link to her web site.

I saw Sharon Tay briefly this morning. She was doing an early morning news report about commuter train crossing guard gates and accident avoidance. It was not what we would call significant news since the nearest cross gate is dozens of miles or kilometers away from my flat and where I normally travel.

Woman of the Moment
I am not sure what we will have for images of Masami Nagasawa today and the rest of the week. By my calculations, I ought to be out of images by Thursday which would be an excellent way to end Masami’s time as the Woman of the Moment.







Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - August 19th

Woman of the Moment
Why not lead with a popular feature in the blog?

Capital idea there Charles.

So, we now have Masami Nagasawa again in her bikini or perhaps several of them with photos being taken at various times. I took a look at how many more images I have left before I will run out of new ones to post. I think I have four or five days’ worth, counting today, depending upon how many I decide to post on any given day.






Sharon Tay
I was watching the local television evening news on either Thursday or Friday. I am not sure which day it was and it largely doesn’t matter all that much in the long run. Most of the readers do not live in the local television viewing area.

Sharon was doing a soft news report.

It has been warm to hot here in Southern California and, this past week, most of the local news shows were on “heat alert.” They were telling us to stay inside where it is cool and to drink plenty of liquids and to not exercise in the middle of the day.

This all seemed rather so obvious to me. It was more like common sense than anything else.

Anyway.

Sharon was making a report from a public pool. The report had her sitting beside the pool, complete with noisy kids in the background. Sharon was wearing a very nice but plain short dress that stopped around mid-thigh.

I’m certain that she had some really insightful observations. Unfortunately, I was not paying all that much attention to what she said; after all, one picture is worth a thousand words.

Sharon’s web site is still under construction.

Weekend Update
It was a slow weekend for me.

Doug was out until Saturday afternoon. On Friday, he saw the new film SUPERBAD twice, once in the morning and once again with his friends after a Dodger baseball game. He says it is a really good film.

I am so seriously missing the 18th Annual Tofu Festival and its tofu eating contest. That sounds so wrong for so many reasons. I wonder what Miss Tofu looked like?

Next week, we have the annual Nisei Week Festival in downtown Los Angeles. I suppose that I could go but I think I will stay out at the beach. It is a bit of a drive plus it is likely to warm to hot most likely. I think my friend Sharon was involved with it at one time or another.

I spoke with one the department chairs at school in Friday. I wanted to know if I was going to be given any classes in the next term or not. Next term’s teaching schedules are not out yet.

The chair said that she thought she saw my name down for at least two classes. The chair suggested that I talk with the Dean about teaching schedule since Associate Dean is on vacation until sometime next week.

I will speak with the Dean on Monday when I am at school.

I went to the Speed Options web site to see if they had a new featured model of the month up. I figured that they should since it is now well past the middle of August. No new model as of yesterday; I hope a new one, who can be considered for the Woman of the Moment, and many of the Women of the Moments have been Speed Options models, will be available soon.

Visitors
We had another good week in terms of visitors. We had visitors from Korea [3], Japan [7], United Kingdom [8], Spain, Singapore [3], China, New Zealand, Ireland, Texas [2], Canada, France [4], Sweden, Poland [3], Germany, Israel, and Anguilla.

I knew that this was the first time we have had a visitor from Anguilla to the blog. I thought Anguilla is a Caribbean island nation. I went to the Central Intelligence Agency Factbook just to be certain.

Anguilla is a Caribbean island. It is a dependency of the United Kingdom and has been part of the U.K. since it was colonized in the last 17th century. It is small and only has a population of just under 14,000.

We also had visitors who either liked my writings or my Woman of the Moment and Weekend Bonus Feature or Wednesday Makeup or any combination of the three features. We had one visitor stay for eleven minutes, two stay for twenty minutes each, and one who stayed for forty two minutes.

I do appreciate every one of you who take time from your daily activities to visit the blog. If you like what I am writing or copying [images], please tell your friends and encourage them to stop the blog.


I hope you all had great weekends.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - August 18th

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eiko Koike
I am running low on Eiko Koike images now. I think I have enough left for three more Weekend Bonus Features with Eiko before I exhaust my supply. I have to start thinking about the next Weekend Bonus Feature Woman now.







Be well and stay happy

Weekend Preview - August 16th

Weekend Preview
I need to finish cleaning the flat this weekend. I ought to have the time since I only have two lesson plans to prepare for classes next week and those classes are on Wednesday so I have a lot of time.

I will be grading papers and projects from my classes so that will take some time.

When I was driving to school on Wednesday, I saw a billboard for an adult entertainment event at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I wondered what that event would be like.

I think I will pass on the event. I missed Comic Con and the annual Anime Expo this year already.

Since I went to El Gringo this week, I think I will pass on going on for my Sunday late lunch or early dinner.

I still have the Weekend Bonus Feature to post and send out a couple of emails before I call it a night tonight.

The Stylist
I went to see The Stylist today. My hair was getting on the shaggy side. When I combed it forward, my hair fell into my eyes. I think that is the longest that it has ever been.

I really, really like The Stylist. I like her work because she makes my hair look so good. It is the best cut I have ever had. I also really, really like it when she massages my neck after she washed my hair.

I also liked and enjoyed the big hug she gave me when I left the salon.

Perfectomundo.

I do not like having a late appointment like 9:45AM; this is the first time slot that is available at the salon. This sucks up close to three or four hours of my time in the morning.

I have never liked to spend a lot of dead time in any circumstances.

Still, I am so very pleased with how my hair turned out. I made my next appointment for late September so I will perfect for the Princess’ wedding in the middle of October.

Doug’s Pizza
Ever since Doug went to New York City, he has had nothing but New York style pizza when he has been up at my place. He likes the thin crust, the cheese, and it is not overloaded with sauce. He says that it just fills you up perfectly.

I like it and enjoyed the one we shared on Wednesday night.

I really prefer the California style pizza with a thicker and chewy crust and the more exotic flavors like Bar Be Cued Chicken or Thai Chicken.

El Gringo
Doug and I went to El Gringo for dinner tonight.

Wednesday was Italian and tonight was Mexican food. I had a No. 2 Combination which is two soft tacos, filled with spicy grilled mahi mahi in my case, rice and refried beans. I washed it all down with an Arnold Palmer [half iced tea and half lemonade]. It was an excellent and filling meal.

Doug had an El Gringo burrito. It is a little on the spicy side and was filled with beef and pork.

Excellent.

We finished off the meal with a swing by the Starbucks drive-in. We both ordered a double chocolate chip iced drink. The drink was a perfect way to end my day.

Woman of the Moment
Time for another themed image of Masami Nagasawa to end the day and the week.






Vivian’s Man of the Moment
Vivian likes the cast of The Entourage. She likes Rhys Corio him although she says he is on the short side for her. Vivian will explain that to me later on in September when we have lunch again.

I had a difficult time finding a decent image of Corio. Google Images was not much help for me. I ended up going to IMDb.com and found this image.

I am absolutely certain Vivian has the most fascinating explanation that will probably bring a great smile to my face when I hear it.




Be well and stay happy.

It Is What It Is

It Is What It Is
This is one of Doug’s favorite sayings. He has several more I think. Today was another dull and slow and hot day here in Southern California. The forecasted high temperature for the beach today is or was 90F or 32C. Fortunately, it will cool off by the time I get home from school tonight.

My Friend Sharon called me this morning while I had my cell phone on battery charge. She wanted to know when the Princess is going to get married because she said that she might want to go to the wedding.

I tried to call her back but she had disappeared into management meetings that take forever. I will give her a call in the morning and let her know when it will be.

I made up a quiz for my Business Law class; hopefully they will do well on it. I also made up a sample of an essay question that will be on their final. I had felt compelled to give them a sample since I doubt that they have seen a question like it before.

Woman of the Moment
Today, we begin the bikini images of Masami Nagasawa. This is a good way to end the blog.






Be well and stay happy.

Slow Blog Day

Slow Blog Day
Yes, it is a slow blog day for me. I had a dull and uneventful weekend. I didn’t have anything to carry over into today’s blog.

Doug called and said he would be out for a few days this week. He had a job interview and then he wants to spend some time at the beach. We will probably have pizza one night for dinner. I am unsure which night it will be though.

Sharon Tay
I saw Sharon Tay on the early morning local television news show. Early morning was before 6:30AM so she was up very early to get out to the story location. The story was not one of those exciting ones that will get picked up by the national network or even make You Tube.

Sharon was doing a report on the increase in West Nile Virus in the San Fernando Valley. I guess the mosquitoes were out in some force. Still, it was nice to see hear this early in the day.

Like a good blogger that I am, I checked her web site to see if it had launched yet.

No, it was still in the under construction phase with a photo of Sharon on the web site. I hope it launches soon. Her old and now gone web site had some very nice photos of her.

Woman of the Moment
I think this will be the last series of images of Masami Nagasawa that do not include a bathing suit. Nothing lasts forever you know.







Be well and stay happy.