Irv’s Journal

Yeah, the 5.4 quake was centered about 5 or so miles from the house.  I’ll have to check everything out when I get home to make sure there’s no suspicious leaking and whatnot.

Pretty funny though.  I guess growing up in Southern California, I’m a bit used to it, but we have some newer people here at work that are from the east coast, their reactions were quite interesting.

So indeed it is wedding season.  Two weddings, two weekends in a row, two mini-road trips.

Highlights:

• Flew Virgin America for the first time.  Interesting layout in their plane.  Seatbacks are white hard plastic, the seat material is black leather, and the lighting is provided by purple neons (vs the standard white lighting in the ceiling).  Pluses: everyone gets their own TV screens.  Minuses: Delayed due to waiting for a flight crew that was flying in on another flight (WTF, talk about tight scheduling!), everyone gets their own TV screens.  Why?  I got airsick (a little bit) for the first time in a long time.  As you frequent flyers might already know, the ride tends to get bumpy during landings.  They do not switch off the screens at any time during the flight, so if you are sensitive to motion, don’t watch the screens during takeoff/landing!
• Charles Schulz Museum.  Yeah, one of the wedding trips was to Santa Rosa (Sonoma County), which happened to be where Charles Schulz spent the last three plus decades of his life.  This museum is a cozy little place where his art (Peanuts strips) is featured.  It really details his life and how the idea for his Peanuts comic came about.
• Santa Barbara.  The roadtrip up to Santa Barbara was definitely a fun little trek.  Admond and Cristina had a really fun wedding, the sights along the drive were scenic as usual.

Two more weddings to go (so far?) this year.  If I remember correctly that will bring the number for this year to eight(?) including my own!

Darren, Joanne, Eugene, and Craig had made plans with us for Saturday ahead of time, so they spent the night after the barbecue.

I got up around 8:30 (Not happily, considering we probably got to bed close to 4) just before the gardeners arrived to do their thing.  I found Craig already sitting on his bed with the door open, so we headed downstairs…to find Darren sleeping on the couch.  Apparently some combination of the air matress and his previous late night trip to the gym did not mix, so he couldn’t get too comfortable and decided to move down to our cushier couch sometime during the night.  Of course we woke him up, and next thing you know, Ninja Gaiden was being played while we waited for the others to get up.

Eventually, we made our way to Old Towne Orange, where we had brunch at The Filling Station.  This is an interesting cafe, in that it is a converted OLD gas station.  I had the chorizo and eggs, but whoa, the French Toast was made with Hawaiian sweet bread!  Nice.  The food was good, but the best part was that Darren couldn’t finish his omelette.  Not that there was so much food, but because he was so tired!

After lunch, we made our way back to the house to lounge around, since we were all pretty drained from the late night/early morning.  Craig and Darren took naps, Joanne and Eugene watched TV, and Esther and I jumped in the spa.  I must say it was really nice to have a relaxing Saturday.  Seems like most of our weekends are packed with activities.

Sometime around 6 or 7, we headed out to Mugaboka, the all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ place we had introduced the group to for my birthday this year.  The food was good as usual, but the drive is rather far now that we live in Anaheim.  We’ve got to find something closer sometime soon.

Properly stuffed, we met up with Miyoshi on the way home at Guppy House and proceeded to end the night with some more Ninja Gaiden action.  Whee!

Independence Day.  Nowadays, it’s just an excuse for people to get together for barbecues and fireworks, right?

In that spirit, Esther and I decided to open up the house and have people over for a 4th of July barbecue.  We got up rather early and had a whirlwind of housecleaning in preparation.  I fired up our grill and let all the crap on it get nice and ashy before going after it with the brush.  Meanwhile, Esther took care of the inside of the house.

Sometime after 1, Craig became the first arrival.  On the guise of helping out, he came early (I suspect part of the real reason was to get himself a better parking spot, since he was going to spend the night) and did a quick stop by the store on the way over.  By that time, we were just finishing up the preparations so I fired up the PS3 and FINALLY beat GTA4 (Woohoo, now time to go back and do the other story arch).

After the prescribed 2pm start time, people started arriving.  Gin and Ana brought over a ton of drink mixes, hotdogs, and buns.  Darren, Joanne, and Eugene showed soon after, with massive amounts of beer and some marinated chicken wings.  As is the case with typical potluck style barbecues, the flood of food basically began flowing at that point.

People were trickling in at a steady pace now, so I fired the grill back up and began cooking.  The real life of the party (AKA Rock Band) arrived with Dre, so the fun really began.  Anne, being the resident filipino of the party, took over the mic and sang a bunch of songs (well, on top of the fact that the majority of the other people around didn’t want to sing).  I must say, I’ve never had my TV speakers up loud enough to feel the vibrations on the couch…until Rock Band.  I escaped some of the noise by hanging out with the non-gamers in the other room, or outside by the spa/grill, so all in all it wasn’t too bad.

As it approached sunset, the crowd thinned out to head to other parties, or fireworks events, but Esther and I decided to stay in to avoid the crowds.  Since fireworks (of all kinds) are outlawed in Anaheim, we had talked about heading out to the local public show, but when the time came, most of the remaining guests weren’t too enthusiastic about heading out into the crowds to see it.  It was also feeding time again so I did some more grilling in the dark.

Most of the guests were gone, so we switched out Dre’s Xbox for Craig’s and let Darren hack away at Ninja Gaiden II.  Next thing you know it was 2am and time to hit the sack.  Maybe Ninja Gaiden was a bad idea after all…

Dang, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people pulled over in one day.  That $20 fine turns into 80 or 90 really quick with fees and taxes!

BTW did you hear the news guy riding along in the cop car interviewing people who had just gotten cell phone tickets?  Funny excuses…