nothing edifying

Does anyone else who watches Hell’s Kitchen think that Jean-Philippe (the maitre d’) is the best dude on the show? Seriously, he doesn’t yell at anyone, he always maintains his cool, and he’s got a dishy accent. That accent is definitely yums. So’s Gordon Ramsay’s, come to think of it:) That accent, it gives them an advantage:p

Anyhows, I haven’t seen today’s episode yet (DVR’d it), but shall soon:) No spoilers here:)

It’s cos lately, I’ve started to watch The Closer (starring Kyra Sedgwick) which is on TNT on the same timeslot as Hell’s Kitchen. It’s a scripted show which premiered this summer, which is great because there’s no re-runs:) (Re-runs are good for catching up on all those episodes of shows that we missed somehow — Law & Order, House, and Medium to some degree — but sucks when we’re all caught up:p) Plus The Closer’s been pretty good so far. So we’ll see.

This was like a birthday weekend:)

Happy (now belated) birthday to Yan:)

And happy early birthday to Al. Julie organized a bday bash for Al at this bar called EZ5 in the city. Yut and I rented a car cos we didn’t wanna be stuck with public transportation hours.

Anyhows, it was a pretty nice bar! Lots of different drinks, my fave was the flaming lemon drop:) I’ve never had one before, but it was yummilicious!

As usual, I took pictures of everyone’s shoes:p Okay, I am weird:p Anyhows, these are Al’s shoes:) I actually took it by mistake cos he was making a face and I missed it so I put my arm down but the picture went off anyhows.

Cliff’s shoes. (I hope I’m identifying everyone’s shoes right.)

Julie’s shoes.

More shoes:)

The place (which was pretty dim, and had a dj, but you can’t tell because of the flash, makes the place look lit:p) had cool booths, and in one corner…

an old Ms. Pacman/Galaga. Which of course, Yut played:p

Anyhows, it was a fun night:) By the time we got there, Al had had 9 or 10 or 11 drinks (the number fluctuated:D) but seriously, you could hardly tell he was more than buzzed, he was just more prone to yelling out, “BITCHES!” hehehe:)

Oh yeah, getting to the city in a car takes forever, cos driving on the Bay Bridge (or whatever it’s called) sucks. Especially the part where you have to go through the toll thing. Omg, maybe it was cos it was Saturday evening, but seriously, it sucked. Then traffic on the bridge wasn’t too great, but at least it moved.

We also went to the Metreon to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cos I been wanting to see it:) I liked it a lot better than the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which actually, I’ve never liked. I like the book, but not the movie. Til now:) They skipped a part (the soda) and added some stuff (about Willy Wonka’s dad), but overall, it was a much better movie. I thought Johnny Depp was funny:) He carries off the page boy with bangs look much better than I ever could:p Cos he’s v. pretty. I didn’t find him overly creepy like a lot of the reviewers. So yeah, obviously, to answer the question Charlie or Willy? It’s definitely Charlie for me.

A bunch of kids (maybe a church group? club of some sort? something like that) were posing together for a group photograph, and I overheard one girl say, “Oh shit!” cos she was trying to put a camera on the tripod, and maybe it almost dropped? I was trying not to stare:p

Anyhows, a bunch of the other kids started making the “awwwwwwww, you said a curse word!” type comments/sounds. The first girl said, “Oops, sorry!!!” Then one kid said, jokingly, “You know your mom doesn’t like cursing, it says so on our website!”

Hahahahaha! Doood, I’m glad I never had to deal with that:p

—Edited to add:
Also overheard:
little kid: “…then you click…”
mom, with a slight accent: “nono, how can you expect me to remember that? I only got the www dot part!”
kid: …
mom: “you need to write down the instructions step by step!”
kid, all resigned: “oooookaaaay” (think Eeyore:p)
teehee:)

We just ordered checks from The Check Gallery. They print checks using soy-based ink on recycled paper.

Surprisingly, there aren’t that many companies that offer checks on recycled paper. Two of them seem to be semi-affiliated (The Check Gallery and Classic Checks, both from Maryland:D), then there’s Message!Products which also uses recycled paper and soy based inks. They pay a royalty to a lot of organizations (like Greenpeace or NOW or World Wildlife Fund or whatever, but I think any check with logos or whatever from those organizations have to pay a royalty). Besides that, there’s Checks Unlimited, which has 3 designs on recycled paper. And that’s it, as far as I could find!

I thought there’d be lots of companies doing this stuff. Or at least a choice to get your checks printed on soy inks or recycled paper. Or a few designs from most companies. But not even. Well I guess three companies isn’t too bad, but it’d be cool if more companies did. And banks, too, cos the ones you get from your bank probably aren’t at all available on recycled paper. Still though, the places that do have the recycled paper and whatnot had some nice designs, so it was mostly fine. Except I couldn’t comparison shop and bargain hunt which was galling:p

Btw, you may be wondering why this is even newsworthy, but it’s cos when you open a checking account, the bank usually hands you a box of checks, but it takes a while to finish those. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever ordered a box of checks. Not Yut’s first time though, cos he’s the financially responsible, bill paying, old fogey type. How can y’not love that? :D

It’s like 11:30pm and we are admitting defeat!

All we’re trying to do is to set up the DSL connection so that we can both be on hosting games on Battle.net, but anyhows, after playing with it for a while, the DSL doodad doesn’t seem to have port forwarding options on its firewall, and it doesn’t assign local ips based on MAC/hardware address. Anyhoos, we’ll work on it s’more later. Hints welcome!!!

The damn SBC kit with the 2Wire thingie. Look at the smiling happy people… lies! All lies! Yut put me back on Comcast and he’s on SBC right now, and that’s how we’re gonna go try and get a game in:p

On a good note, we cooked up some chili and watched a re-cast of today’s Tour de France and watched some Jeopardy before we started trying this, so the whole night hasn’t been a bust:p

I know, I know, the chili has a lot of weird stuff in it. But we halve the amount of beans and dump in like celery and mushrooms and potato instead:p

We’ve been tired of cable for a while now (Comcast is expensive!), and so we finally signed up for SBC Yahoo! (or Yahoo! SBC? Whatever)

Anyhows, our service started like on Friday (the 8th) and we got all of our equipment Thursday or something like that. But somehow, since cable is still working, we kept on saying, “hrmmm, let’s play a game, do the dsl setup later” So then finally yesterday Cliffy came over and he set it up for us:D

He had to install the software that came with the equipment cos we were all in a rush to go play games:) Actually though, evidently you don’t have to cos you can do it online at SBC.

Oh well:) Tonight we are planning to finish setting things up so that we can completely switch and cancel Comcast.

Today is supposed to be one of the hottest days of the summer so far. Enough to merit comment on yesterday’s news broadcasts.

From weather.com

From weather.yahoo.com

Also from weather.yahoo.com, but in Celsius for y’all who like it.

Muahahahaha:) 80°! Not bad, eh?
Actually though, more inland away from the bay it is way hotter. Like close to 100°F.
Also, our old apartment building has a tar roof and like no insulation, and we’re on the second floor, so I really shouldn’t gloat cos it’s like an oven in there ’til 10pm or something like that:p But still, the weather today has been v. pleasant so far — not home yet:p

—
Btw, I posted these pictures using Blogger’s new “Add Image” feature. It tried to do some fancy formatting stuff, but I had to remove it cos it just made the post look weird. The words and pictures ran together a bit. Yeah, I’m low tech:p

We crossed the final frontier, online shopping wise:p

I mean, I think we’d buy anything online, but for some reason, we never tried online grocery shopping. Usually, I like to be able to look and touch and smell and stuff. But transporting groceries is a hassle with no car, and Safeway.com is doing this free shipping deal (over $50, I think), and we were running low on water (heavy to carry). Oh and we’re lazy and don’t like to leave our apartment. So we ordered all sorts of stuff yesterday and got it delivered today (just before 8pm).

The fridge, before… vast emptiness.

The fridge, after… lots o’ bags.

And that doesn’t even include the 12 bottles of seltzer water and 2 more big 2.5 gallon jugs of water. Oh and assorted chips and crackers and stuff like that:p

You know what? It was cool:) I’d do it again!

Okay, okay, so it’s a lil early to be talking about the next Harry Potter movie (out in November), but have y’all seen the teaser trailer?

Holy crap! It’s like growing up for guys involves bad haircuts (or maybe the problem is the lack of haircuts). Hermione is looking lovelier than ever, but Harry and Ron look like Shaggy1 and Shaggy2 (well maybe not quite lanky enough, but hair-wise).

Well anyhows, the next book (HP and the Half Blood Prince) is going to be out this Friday at midnight, so guess where I’ll be (Other Change of Hobbit is going to be open, oh yes!):)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory also opens on Friday. It’s v. exciting! I’ve been looking forward to this since I first heard that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton were gonna not-remake it! :) But still, probably not opening weekend:p

Oh also, one of my cousins sent Yut this:
Flash Flash Revolution

It’s a crazy flash version of DDR that you can play on your keyboard. I tried a medium difficulty one, which started out easily enough. But then it went crazy! Complete madness! I started hitting all the arrow buttons at once cos I couldn’t keep up. (miss… MISS… BOO… BOO…BOO!!! Score: 0!) This doesn’t really bode well for DDR with Mario, but I want it anyhows:p