Weekend Bonus Feature - June 29th

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eiko Koike
It's Weekend Bonus Feature time and I am posting blog in a timely manner for a change. I tried to put together a themed set of images for you. I hope you have a great weekend; I plan to have a great weekend.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - June 28th

Weekend Preview – What Happened to Tuesday?
What happened to Tuesday?

Lots of things.

First, I didn’t sleep all that well after class on Monday. I finally got in bed a little after midnight and then was up around 5:30 AM on Tuesday. Obviously, I was tired and not moving around to well.

I had lesson plans to work on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and evening classes. It takes between an hour to two hours to complete a lesson plan and lecture notes. I figure that was close to four hours right there.

The place was very low on food so that meant a trip to the market. The market that I have been going to recently is in the middle or maybe end of a major face lift – remodeling project. Aisles are closed or changed and food is not where it was last week. It takes longer to find what you are looking for.

In Southern California, we are facing a grocery strike – lockout potential. The markets plan to stay open with strike breakers and management personnel. The only two clerks at the check out when I was there were suit and tie managers. Judging from their speed at processing customers through a bar code reader, it has been a long while since they worked in a market.

I left for class early so I could avoid most of the traffic on the 91 Freeway so that cut into my time to create a blog entry. Leaving early was not too much of a solution because there was an accident on the freeway.

I didn’t learn about the accident until I was almost on top of it. The traffic reporters – readers on the local radio station apparently didn’t think it was as important as a problem with a surface street [non-highway or non-freeway] accident in the San Fernando Valley.

This brings up another grip of mine. It seems to me that the majority of the radio traffic reports favor coverage of the San Fernando Valley to the general neglect of every other area in Southern California. Of course, it could just be that the Valley has more bad drivers than the other areas.

Those of you who live in Southern California or who have driven here can voice your own opinions and they are probably correct.

Weekend Preview
I do have some things to accomplish this weekend for a change.

I plan to drive to DVD Planet.com and pick up a couple of DVDs. I have a few dollars left on my Cingular rebate VISA gift card. It expires soon and I do not want to lose the value on the card.

Of course, there are the usual errands to run like going to the cleaners to pick up my laundry.

Hopefully, Jess the Server will be back at El Gringo on Sunday for my usual late lunch – early dinner meal. It is possible that Jess may have moved on to another El Gringo location or just moved on since it is the Summer and I believe that she enjoys the beach.

It seems hard to imagine that the year is almost half over but here it is, almost July now.

Vivian’s Man of the Moment
One of the outcomes of my lunch last weekend with my friend Vivian was her willingness to provide me with some more names for her Man of the Moment project. The project started last year when Vivian said that there ought to be equal representation and exposed skin. Vivian pointed out that a young woman, much like herself, could read the blog and probably would enjoy seeing an attractive male once in a while.

The Princess thought Vivian’s Man of the Moment was a good idea. But, that was before the Boy Friend came along.

Vivian works in the entertainment industry and helps arrange loans to produce filmed entertainment. This work environment naturally produced a selection that runs towards young actors.

This week’s Man of the Moment is Henry Cavil. Cavil played one of Henry VIII’s boyhood friend in the made for television miniseries THE TUDORS. I didn’t watch the program since I do not have the Showtime programs on my cable service. Surprisingly, I could only find a very limited number of images when I did a Google search for images.



Teaching
Yesterday, I had two students get dropped from my evening class. The school has a policy of automatically dropping students who miss three consecutive class sessions; actually, it is twenty two without being in class. That seems reasonable and these students have never shown up for any classes.

I am going to lose two more students from Wednesday night. They have missed two consecutive classes already and the third class session will be next Wednesday which is the Fourth of July holiday. There will be no classes but the twenty two day rule still applies.

I am truly saddened because I will also lose another student in my Wednesday morning class because she has missed two classes in a row and be affected by the Fourth of July class cancellation.

I have had her in two other classes and I know she wants to go to school. She does her assignments and works hard to learn. It is hard for her because she is the first in her family, I believe, to go to college and her family does not recognize how hard it is to work and go to school. I am afraid that she may drop out of school and not continue with her education.

I spoke to the dean about her situation to see if there was anything that could be done to help her. Unfortunately, this is one of those rigid, black and white policies that the school has no option or leeway to work with.

Woman of the Moment
This is the last regular Woman of the Moment appearance for Bipasha Basu. I will have to look for some more South Asian actresses for Women of the Moment in the coming weeks and months.




Sharon Tay
I happened to see Sharon Tay on the local news show today. She was reporting on a solar power equipped back pack that could recharge your hand held electronic devices like cell phones and MP-3 players. The back pack came with a bunch of adapters so you could use with a variety of technologies.

I wasn’t excited about the idea of wearing a black back pack to recharge my cell phone but I would suspect it would be good if you were traveling on vacation in the Summer and you were in a foreign country.

Sharon was wearing a nice sun dress but she didn’t look like she had been out in the sun and had acquired a Southern California tan. The Summer is still young and she has time to develop a nice tan.


Be well and stay happy.

Tuesday Make Up

Tuesday Make Up
I think I'll just post some of the Bipasha Basu images that would have gone up with the regular Tuesday blog posting.







Be well and stay happy

Back to Class and Other Events

Back to Class and Other Events
I did my laundry on Sunday morning. I like to hit the building laundry room on the weekends since I wake up at about my usual time of 5:30 AM. The washers are almost always not in use then so I can get in and out early in the day.

I am bothered by some of my neighbors who like to do their laundry late at night. I have no objection to doing your laundry late at night. It is the opposite of what I do.

What does bother me is some of their late night launderers are incapable of getting their collective sorry asses out of bed in the morning to empty their laundry from the machines. I find this to be a thoughtless lack of consideration and pure ignorance of common courtesy.

I had to unload an overloaded washer when I started my laundry and I left the damp clothes on the laundry room table. They were still there is a damp, moldering pile when I folded up my clean clothes ninety minutes later.

I wonder when the owner of the clothes finally got out of bed and took care of the damp mess.

I like my new flash drive. I finally got it on to my Upper Deck Entertainment leash. I got the leash at Comic Con 2006 in San Diego. I really like the larger in use light than the one on my old flash drive. Of course, my old flash drive was a free one so I can not complain too much about a free flash drive.

I spent a good part of the weekend grading papers for two of my classes. My Strategies for Technology Professionals students all turned in their homework. Actually, not all of the students turned in their assignments; only those students who have been in my classes turned in any homework. This is logical since you have to come to class to turn in homework assignments.

The Introduction to Project Management class is doing better than my other classes with about half of the students turning in homework and course project work on time.

This is the third week of school. It is school policy to automatically drop students if they miss three consecutive classes. I may lose a student in my Monday night class, one student in my Wednesday morning class, and several students in my Wednesday night class.

When I was watching the last episode of Stargate SG-1 on Friday, the Sci-Fi Channel played a promotion for a new Fall series, Flash Gordon. It sort of looked interesting to me up to a point. I suppose that I will watch it when it debuts and decide whether to watch it or not.

I was happy that another Sci-Fi Channel show Eureka is coming back for another season. I liked the show and its characters, all of whom seemed to have several flaws. Hopefully, it will not start until this term is over since I have a Tuesday night class and would be unable to watch the broadcast.

Yes, I know my television viewing troubles would disappear if I purchased a digital video recorder [DVR]. Doug has been urging me to get one for months now. He says it will make my life so much easier.

Woman of the Moment
We will end this blog version with the first Woman of the Moment for the work week, Bipasha Basu.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - June 24th

Weekend Update – The Agony of the Calf
I woke up this morning at 4:47AM; well before I wanted to even think about waking up. I was woken by an incredible shooting pain from a very nasty cramp in my right calf, just below my knee. I was in such pain that I was crying. It was all I could to stretch my leg and minimize the pain.

Finally, I was able to massage the cramp and the pain eventually went away so that I could get back to what I had planned for a nice, restful, full night’s sleep.

This was definitely not how I wanted to start my weekend.

I had planned to see if Doug was open for lunch on Friday. That fell through because he and his friends decided to go to Las Vegas for the weekend and they were leaving mid-day on Friday. Doug said that he didn’t plan to gamble. He wanted to get away for a few days and hang out with his friends.

Friday was a good day for me with the sudoku puzzle in the local newspaper. It was rated as being a “diabolical” puzzle. I was able to finish it. It did take me longer than usual but that did not bother me because of the degree of difficulty associated with the puzzle.

It looks like the paving project in front of my building is about to come to its final conclusions early next week. The contractors finished paving the street on my side of the road on Friday and they only have a small strip left to finish off on Monday. I am guessing that they will paint the lane marker stripes on Tuesday.

It will be nice to have them gone from in front of the building and the road back to normal.

Speaking or typing of the building, it looks likes there are seven or eight units for sale or rent in the place. That is almost 25% of the building’s total units. I don’t think there have been this many units for sale or rent at the same time in quite a while. Someone was moving out this morning so that means someone will be moving in this afternoon or tomorrow.

Visitors
We had visitors from Canada [5], Czech Republic, Japan, Texas [3], Singapore [2], Iran, Poland, France, Malaysia, Russian Federation, and Ireland.

We also had visitors who stayed around the blog for seventeen minutes, eighteen minutes, and one visitor who stayed for forty eight minutes. I guess that visitor found some photos to enjoy.

I do appreciate all of you who took time to stop by the blog. I know it is Summer and that you have other things to do instead of visit here.

Weekend Bonus Feature
I decided to use one of my favorite actress – models for the Weekend Bonus Feature. Eiko Koike will be the Weekend Bonus Feature for the next eight to ten weeks, depending upon how many images I put up each weekend.


My screen saver has been improved with the addition of the new images that came from her web site. I think I have close to 70 images on the hard drive now. The screensaver features a rotating series of Eiko Koike images.

Excellent.

Last night, I discovered a minor problem with the screen saver program. It no longer shuts itself off after a certain period of time like it did before. I can think of two changes that may have caused this event. First, and the most likely, all of the images that I downloaded on Saturday from her web site are designed to be wall paper so this may have caused the continuous play of her images on the screensaver.

Not an all together bad outcome in my mind.

The second cause could be from the last series of Microsoft downloads and updates. Anything is possible with a Microsoft update.

I resolved the problem by switching the laptop into the “Sleep” mode.

For those of you who want to have your own copies of the Eiko Koike wall paper, you can find them at http://www.eikokoikeonline.com.

Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1 ended its final season on television Friday night after ten seasons.

The final episode was sort of a “how of we end the series but still keep out options open to start it over again” show. Only a few of the plotlines were tied up and those were only done as part of a time travel gimmick to keep the principle characters alive.

I will miss the show since it has been part of my Friday nights for years now.

Of course, the show will be in re-runs for an eternity or even longer in television times. I know that I will tune in for some of the re-runs.

I know that one character will be spinning off into the Stargate sequel program, Stargate Atlantis. That means the other characters can appear in the sequel program from time to time as well.

My personal jury is still out on Stargate Atlantis. Maybe, it will return with a verdict soon so I can decide what to watch in the Fall.

Sharon Tay
I caught Sharon Tay as a weekend fill-in news reader for the local network news program on Saturday. She looked very nice and I enjoyed seeing her on the screen for an extended period of time instead of the usual minute or less as a free lance news reporter.

Sharon was dressed conservatively than she did when she was an early morning host – news reader for another local television station. She looked as if she has lost some weight from when she was on the other local television station.

I thought that she looked excellent tonight.

She will be on again at the 11:00PM local newscast.

I don’t think I am willing to stay up that late as much as I like Sharon and as much as I would like to see her. I need a good night’s sleep after that disaster from last night. Plus, I have to get up early and do some laundry as well.

Teaching
My Friday class was interesting.

One of my students said the first week’s class was on the dull side. I asked her if she had read the text before class. She said no. I suggested that the class would be better if she read the text so that we could have a more interesting discussion about the subject. She agreed with me that reading the text in advance of the class would be helpful.

Naturally, no one showed up on time to class. This group of students is incapable of arriving on time to class. I wonder what they will do when they are out in the workforce and have to be at work and ready to go at 8:00AM

Lunch with Vivian
I had a perfect lunch with Vivian today. Of course, we went to the L.A. Food Show because we love the food there.


It is also very convenient for both of us too.

Our meal was predictable for the most part. I ordered some Avocado, Bacon, Cheese and Chicken egg rolls to share and Vivian ordered a Poke Martini to share. A Poke Martini is chunks of sashimi [raw tuna] with cooked shrimp and avocado on a bed of shredded lettuce with a poke sauce and served in a large martini glass.



Yummy.

I wanted something light for lunch so I had a L.A. Food Show Salad Bowl. It has lettuce, obviously, chicken, bacon, avocado, cheese, and a dressing of your choice. It is more like a serving bowl than a salad bowl. I passed on the fresh beets in my salad. It is more than a meal and will be the bulk of my dinner tonight. Vivian surprised me by ordering the same salad except that she didn’t want any chicken, bacon, or fresh beets in her salad.


Naturally, we shared our dessert of the Molten Chocolate Cake.




We talked about the Princess’s wedding plans. Vivian knows the Princess and is very happy for her. Vivian thought the idea of not having special bride’s maid dress was really neat and very thoughtful for the Princess.

Somehow, I think Vivian wants to get married but at the same time does not want to get married. It is one of those sitting on the fence all alone decisions that she is wrestling with now.

Vivian must have had a wonderful time at the Cannes Film Festival, based on the photos she shared with me. There seems to have been a lot of partying and having fun going on at the Festival. Vivian is looking forward to going again next year.

It must be nice to be Vivian.

Woman of the Moment
Our Woman of the Moment is still Bipasha Basu. I think I will run out of her images this week. That will be sad because I find her very attractive.




But, do not despair; she will be replaced by a model from Speed Options.com, always an excellent source of Women of the Moment. I have two models to select from and I don’t know which one I will select.


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

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eiko Koike

Weekend Bonus Feature - Eiko Koike
I decided to go back to Eiko Koike's web site and see if I could pick up some new photos that I could use as the Weekend Bonus Feature. The Internet gods were with me and I found about 36 images that I can use. The web site is located at http://www.eikokoikeonline.com.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - June 21st

Weekend Preview and Happy Summer Solstice
Happy Summer Solstice; Summer started today and that is just great. The high temperature at the beach will be about 80F / 27C with a nice breeze off of the ocean to keep things feeling cool and comfortable.

I was running some errands today and I had on some shorts and a short sleeved shirt. That was excellent.

During my errands today, I stopped at an electronics discount store and picked up a new 2GB flash drive. It’s not one of those flashy drive with a lot of features like fingerprint recognition. It just stores information and is compatible with the Windows Vista operating system.

Of course, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, it is Happy Winter Solstice and stay warm and dry. Huddle up with a friend.

I need to swing by my local donut store and pick up some donuts for my Friday morning class. I only need to get six; it is cheaper to buy a half dozen than it is to buy five which is all that I would need for the class.

I also need to post the Weekend Bonus Feature in a timely manner. This week will mark the start of a new Weekend Bonus Feature woman; that alone should be reason to stop by and see who she is.

The only scheduled event that I have for the weekend is lunch with Vivian and maybe Lisa as well. This will be on Sunday so I will have to skip out on El Gringo because I will be full of food. We will have lunch at L.A. Food Show. The portions there are always on the larger side; even for Doug and me when we have been hungry.

I know Vivian and I will definitely share an order of Avocado Bacon Cheese Chicken egg rolls and the molten hot chocolate cake for dessert. We do love those selections.

Wednesday Make Up
It looks like I made a minor mistake with image selection for the Wednesday make Up session. I should have chosen them a bit more carefully. I decided to have a replacement session with a different prior Woman of the Moment for those of you that may have been frustrated yesterday.

This is Choo Mi-young, a Korean actress and model




76 emails and Teaching
I had 76 emails in my in-box this morning. That is close to a three day supply of new emails.

The majority of the emails, 42, were from students in my Wednesday evening class. Their exercises for the day were about sending forwarding emails. I had them send me emails so I could see that they were able to accomplish the tasks. I think I went through a quarter of my black ink cartridge printing them out for grading purposes.

My Wednesday classes are becoming better. The morning class is all students I have had in a class before so I know their abilities and weaknesses. Their big trouble is they do not read the textbook ahead of the class session. The class is on Business Law and Regulation so it is difficult to discuss an important Supreme Court case with them.

The evening class is shaping up to be a fun one also. The class roster keeps changing and I hope it stabilizes out now. Since last week, I had six students drop from the class and six were added including one that day. Of the six that were added, only two showed up for class.

Not very promising.

If everyone stays and the ones who did not show up drop, I will have a nice class of around 22 or 23 students; small enough so that I can give them a lot of individualized attention and help. Of course, I may end up with everyone on the roster showing up and then I will have 30 students. With 30 students, the only way some will be able to get the individualized attention is to come in to see me before class. I am happy to come in before class since I am at the school anyway.

I offered to come into school on a Saturday for my Introduction to Project Management so they could have a chance to work with Microsoft Project 2003. There is no scheduled time during the course to go to the computer labs and work with the program.

Then, I realized that we live in Southern California and it is Summer.

It is highly unlikely that I will be able to find a student who wants to give up part of his or her Summer weekend to spend time in a school computer lab, learning a new program. In the end, I will probably stay late one or two nights with a handful of students that want to learn how to use Project.

That will be fine with me.

Woman of the Moment
It looks like this blog has come to an end and I have written myself out of ideas and things to comment on. Bipasha Basu is a very nice way to end the blog and the week.






I will be back on Sunday with the Weekend Update for you.

Be well and stay happy.

Wednesday Make Up

Wednesday Make Up
This is my Wednesday Make Up blog posting. Because it is a make up posting, it only contains images of past Women of the Moment. The prior Woman of the Moment for today is Miki Black.







Be well and stay happy.

Another Day in Paradise

Another Day in Paradise
It was sunny and clear and great at the beach.

Today was one of those days that explain why I love to live here at the beach. I did see some young women walking around in bikinis. This is an excellent sign that Summer can not be far behind.

Actually, I think Summer starts on Thursday around 11:00 AM.

Perfectomundo.

My class last night was pretty good. Two students who missed last week showed up; they said they thought the class started last night. Nice excuse but one that does not hold up to a close scrutiny. They received a schedule in May that said when the course began.

I think they just wanted to take a longer break between terms.

Naturally, not everyone stayed around to the end of the class session. One left after the first break and two more left after the second break. They missed out on the instructor help with their current homework assignment.

Prelude
I have been watching the Prelude mileage or kilometerage or whatever is the proper term performance lately. I was motivated by the price of gasoline that is high for us but not that high in comparison to other places in the world.

I drive the Prelude because I know it gets much better performance compared to the Pathfinder.

The Prelude has been averaging around 28 miles to the gallon. I have no idea what the comparable is with the metric system. This performance made me feel very good because the car is rather old and the traffic on the way to school is anything but light.


Epic.

Vivian and Sunday Lunch
I got an email from Vivian yesterday that confirmed, for right now, she will be joining me for lunch on Sunday afternoon.

This will be a great lunch. It’s been almost six months since we last had lunch. We both have a lot to catch up on. I know Vivian will want to know all about the Princess’ wedding plans. I want to see how Vivian likes her new position at the old bank and how the trip to the Cannes Film Festival went for her.

When Vivian emailed me, she didn’t indicate if Lisa from the old office would be coming along as well. I guess I can be surprised and find out for sure on Sunday.

I’m sorry that I won’t be seeing Jess the Server on Sunday, assuming she is working then.

Programming Note
I will have a Wednesday makeup blog posting for you sometime tonight or early tomorrow. I will be at school all day and unable to get a posting up. I don’t get home from school until 11:00 PM and I am in no mood or condition to write a blog posting then.

Woman of the Moment
I looked around to see if I could find any apparent photo series in the remaining images that I have for Bipasha Basu. I did find a couple of sets of images that seem to go together. I picked this group because I liked the black and white image contrast with the other, highly colored images of Bipasha.





I will be back on Thursday with the usual Weekend Preview blog posting.


Be well and stay happy.

Back to School

Back to School
I have my Accounting II class tonight. It is a small class; seven students if everyone shows up. This is not my favorite class because I do not care all that much for accounting. I didn’t like it when I took the courses as an undergraduate or graduate student.

So, you ask yourself, why teach the course?

Simple and short answer is there are not enough accounting instructors at school so someone has to teach the course. While I reluctantly teach the course, I am not reluctant about picking up my paycheck for teaching the course.

Logical reasoning isn’t it?

Amy the Server
Amy the Server phoned me this morning.

Her phone call was a great interruption in my lesson plan work. The lesson plans were not coming together very well for me. I was working on the lesson plan for Introduction to Project Management. I think this could be a good class for me to teach since most of the students are not from the business school.

Amy also gave me her new cell phone number. This would explain why I had trouble calling her yesterday while I was out on the balcony in the afternoon sun.

Amy said she was back serving at a nice restaurant out in Orange County in the 949 Area. The new restaurant is a sea food establishment. This will work out well for Doug and me since he is cutting back on eating beef. He does like some types of fish like salmon, halibut, ahi tuna, mahi mahi, and pacific snapper. We could go there for dinner and see Amy and have a meal that Doug would not feel guilty about eating.

Doug would also be happy because Amy’s new restaurant has valet parking.

My Watches
I took two of my watches into the watch store on Saturday to have their batteries replaced. It is difficult to teach class without a watch since none of the classrooms have clocks in them.

It is possible to use one of the cell phones as a clock but they are cumbersome and inconvenient to use as watch replacements.

When I got home, I took my dress watch out of my pocket and the back of the watch popped off. I couldn’t figure out how to get it back in place. I will go back to the watch store on Thursday and see if they can fix it without a lot of time or money.

Woman of the Moment
I did make some decisions today about the future Women of the Moment. I decided that I would not use either Denise Richards or Paula Abdul. They just did not strike me as fitting into my vision of the Woman of the Moment.

I decided to go with two models from Speed Options.com website. They have youth and photos in bikinis going for them. They also have all of the statistical information readily available except for the metric conversions and their ages. You can tell that they are young when you see their images.

For now and for some time to come, we will have Bipasha Basu as the Woman of the Moment. I have 24 images of her left and that works out to about a week and a half more for Bipasha to be the Woman of the Moment.






Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - June 17th

Weekend Update
Doug and the Princess called me on Fathers’ Day within about fifteen minutes of each other. They wished me a happy and relaxing and great day.

On Friday, I wore one of my Tommy Bahama aloha shirts to class. Instructors can dress in business casual in the Summer. That is a really nice gesture on the part of the administration; who wants to wear a suit in the middle of Summer. Two women who work at the school said that I looked very nice in the shirt. I felt very nice after they said that to me.

I managed to do some cleaning but not as much as I had planned to achieve. I will be bale to catch up on what I had missed during the week and on the weekend. I will have some laundry to take care next weekend.

Visitors
The weekly visitor traffic was off again this past week. I think this is a combination of weak writing on my part and Summer vacations distracting the visitors. I expect to have a better June 2007 than I did for June 2006 when the final tally is made at month end. Right now [Saturday afternoon], we only need another 42 visitors to the blog and we will surpass the 2006 results. I am confident that we can achieve that goal.

We had visitors from Cote D’Ivorie, Australia [3], Canada [4], Germany [2], United Kingdom, Italy, Iran [2], China, Hong Kong, Somalia, France [3], and Ireland. I wonder what the visitors from Iran were looking for or at.

Do you suppose the Iranian visitors wanted to see what a women looked like without the burka or chador or whatever they call that head to toes robe their women wear?

Naw, they wouldn’t do that.

This was the first that the blog has had a visitor from Somalia.

We also had two visitors who stopped and visited more than one page. One was here for sixteen minutes and the other was here for ten minutes.

I do appreciate all of you who take time out of your schedules to visit the blog.

2LDK [2 bedrooms, living room, dining room, and kitchen]
The title of the film comes from Japanese newspaper advertisement for a rental. I would have never guessed what the title meant in a long time.

This is a film that stared Eiko Koike, one of our Women of the Moment, as one of two struggling actresses who share an apartment. The two roommates are complete opposites in almost every respect. One is a borderline obsessive compulsive and the other one is a borderline slob. Not the best matching for a successive space sharing arrangement.

One of the actresses is one her way up and the other is on the verge of falling into oblivion and failure. They are both the finalists for the leading actress role in a film that will make or break their careers.

They both love or want to love the same man.

What starts out as a simple roommate annoyance over labeling food in the refrigerator and using the other’s soap quickly escalates into deadly violence with swords and chainsaws.

It is a short film, only about 70 minutes. It takes place after they both had their screen tests and read throughs for the film and covers that night and into the early morning the next day. There are only two actresses in the film with a couple of telephone voices.

It is an interesting film and one that I enjoyed. I’m not sure if I am recommending it. I think I will watch the DVD again in a few months.

I won’t spoil the ironic ending for any of you decide to watch the film.

MOONCHILD
MOONCHILD is one of the other films in the Danger After Collection.

I liked the film but I want to have Doug’s impressions and reactions before I recommend it to anyone. He seems to like films like this one. This film is just under two hours in length.

I guess the best way to describe the film, in a thumbnail sketch, is to call it a film that John Woo might make if we wanted to make an existentialist vampire film set in Japan. It is not your run of the mill vampire film with the requisite fountains of blood and sleeping in the caskets.

At best, this is not a film for everyone.

Doug
Doug and I went to Albertacos on Friday for lunch after my class.

We also celebrated Father’s Day. Doug got me some unusual DVDs that included SAMURAI 7 – Volume 3, an anime based on Kurosawa’s classic SEVEN SAMURAI. He also picked out another Japanese film, THE GLORIOUS LIFE OF SACHIKO HANAI. This film is from the Japanese pink genre. It is on the short side and it was interesting.

Doug certainly has unusual taste in films

We were successful in finding an old movie poster store that has posters for films that he loves for sale. Most of the posters appear to be in good condition. Now, all I have to do is to make some selections on the posters and go forward from there.

It looks like I may not being going to Albertacos that frequently in the near future. Doug said he was cutting back on his beef consumption and this would be his last No. 8 Combination for a while.

I certainly enjoyed my No. 8 Combination and cleaned my plastic meal box.

I suppose that Doug will be cutting back on going to Fatburger and to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers now as well. If he is cutting back, then it looks like I will be going there alone for the foreseeable future.

We will be able to continue to visit El Gringo and El Burrito Junior since they both serve chicken.

Doug and I talked about his job searching. He seems to be getting interest since he has been going out regularly and has gone back for second interviews with the decision makers for two jobs. Hopefully, he will be able to find a good job soon.

DVD Planet
I stopped at DVD Planet on my way home from Doug’s house on Friday. I wanted to cash in my Cingular cell phone rebates. They came in the form of a VISA gift card so I decided buying DVDs would be a good use of my time and gift card. Stopping at DVD Planet of Friday was even better for me since they were having a 20% off sale.

Sweet.

I picked up five more DVDs. My collection is slowly growing and it looks like I may have to purchase some DVD racks. If I buy some more racks, I will have to rearrange the paintings in the living room to accommodate the extra racks.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me on Friday, just as I was sitting down to my dinner. I picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”

“Where were you last weekend?” was all that Sharon could say. Then, she went on to say, “I’ve been trying to reach you all week long.”

“Ummmm, I was out. I would have called you if you left a message. I’m pretty good about returning phone calls.”

Since she has her boy friend, I think I can go out by myself when I want to. It seems fair to me. I don’t ask her what she does when she is with her boy friend.

Anyway, Sharon wanted to talk and complain about her work. She also wanted to tell me about a couple of job openings at her company. She thinks that things would be better if she could work with me since we get along well professionally.

I will send her my resume so she can turn it in.

Knowing Sharon, she will claim any company referral fee.

Sharon also talked about the Princess’s bridal shower that was here. Sharon had made plans to go out of town and couldn’t attend. She said she wanted to go but had made the plans.

Woman of the Moment
We will start the week with a new series of Bipasha Basu images. This is always an excellent way to start out.




Teaching
My new classes seem good so far. Three of the five classes have prior students; there is only one new student in these three classes. This helps reduce my work in the classes since I know what to expect.

For example, I know not to expect the students to show up at 8:00 AM for the morning classes. 8:00 AM is just the suggested, but not mandatory, starting time for the class in their minds.

One of the other two classes is composed of all new to the school students. These students seem to arrive on time. This is my largest and I think I will have about thirty students. I could be wrong because the roster was fluid all week long last week. Hopefully, class attendance will sort itself out this week.

The other class is mostly all technical types and none have been in any of my classes before. It remains to be seen how this class will turn out. I think I have close to twenty students in this class.

El Gringo
Jess the Server was not at El Gringo today. Jessie the Server was filling in for her. Jess the Server was away for Fathers’ Day.

Jessie the Server wished me a Happy Fathers’ Day; that was very nice of her although she did not know if I was a father or not. I guess she just assumed that I was since I am an older man and I was eating along; the children having grown up and moved on. I will admit that it was a highly reasonable assumption on her part.

Jessie the Server was well rewarded for thinking of me on Fathers’ Day.

Jessie the Server also said that she thought Jess the Server would be back next Sunday.

I tried something new today for a change. I have been going to el Gringo long enough so that there are very few items on the menu that I have not tried before. I usually skip over the ones that have no appeal for me. Today, I had a grilled mahi mahi burrito that I asked to be served “wet”; that is, served with a burrito sauce on the burrito and with a small side order of sour cream and guacamole.

On balance, the burrito turned out very tasty and I am likely to have it that way again when I feel like a grill mahi mahi burrito.


On balance, that was my kind of boring weekend. I don’t think next weekend will be much more exciting for me.


Be well and stay happy.