A hilarious blog that Ngoc recently turned me onto:

Stuff White People Like

I link you to this as I sit in my cubicle, drinking coffee from my environmentally conscious coffee mug, wearing my fleece jacket, with my half-full nalgene sitting next to me. Also, I bbq'd last night, and we ate hamburgers and salad.

What's the ratio of whites/minorities in this picture? Any guesses? #DIV/0!?

So last weekend, as I mentioned, we went to South Lake Tahoe and stayed here. In attendance were myself and Ngoc, Mark, Giselle, Marina, Vic, Dan, Julie, and Giselle's cousin Tina part-time.







Mark took the following shots back at the cabin. Yay Mark.





Take a look at Giselle in that last photo. She wins the award for best weekend ever. On her first day of boarding at Sierra, she caught an edge at a purported 35+ mph, separating her shoulder and banging up her face. I thought the shoulder injury was a'ight, but the snow rash on her face gave her total street cred.

Changing gears, I want to take a little time to rant about my car, if you can spare a minute or two. Yesterday I had to change a tire at Ironworks. While, yes, I did have a full sized spare in the trunk, this is the latest in a list of unfortunate events that take away from my supposed "luxury experience" (I have a 2006 A4, btw. MUYOM [can you decipher my hot acronym??] as to whether that constitutes "luxury"). On top of this, my parktronic sensors kicked out about 6 months ago. I feel like I'm getting wise to the game here; I doubt my next car will have the same price tag as my A4.

As promised, here are some juicy morsels from the Berkeley Bearathlon two weekends ago.


The team circa 6:30AM.


First was a ??1 mile?? swim. Buoys were set up at the four corners of Spieker pool and entrants did four laps around the perimeter.




Then a ride up Centennial [WTF?!?!] and back down Claremont.












These last photos were taken from the run-out/finish area where all the staging took place.

All in all there were about 400-500 "keeper" photos...these are only a small taste of the excitement. Check out my Flickr for more. I'll post a link to the rest of the pictures, if they ever get put online.

Not dead, just lame

ok, so it's been a while since my last post...to my reader-base (all 3 or 4 of you), my apologies.

I'm going to have to defer a more illustrative description of the Berkeley Bearathlon to a later post, as I still have yet to finish processing the 500+ photos I took. Dan'l recruited my efforts this year to help take snapshots of the team and competitors from a delicious cornucopia of other CA schools. Pictures (and good ones, if I may say so myself!) to come!

Secondly, Ngoc and I went to the old SLT this weekend with Mark&Co. to shore up additional wedding plans for August. In between cake and flower appointments, we somehow managed to end up $50 in the black on craps and table blackjack. Go us! Thanks in no small part to Michael G. (October '07 employee of the month) at Lakeside! Again, some pictures of the weekend to follow.

Sorry for the lameness. My photoshop has been tied up w/ Bearathlon photos, so nothing is really getting processed :(

Ngoc's grand ol' job change party was last night, and we ended up performing a truly sold out show. There were even a few times when I was scared that we'd exceed the weight limit threshold of our second story apartment's living room. We had a great time, and tried our hand at putting together a truly authentic spread of pan-European appetizers (well, except for the deviled eggs!).




These babies were a simple crostini w/ chopped black olives, cherry tomatoes (nothing else in season, really), and fresh garlic...topped with a strip of marbled domestic prosciutto.


We lined up this platter of olives and salumi, including prosciutto, molinai italian salame, and sopressata salame.

Also worth noting, had good success with posing the notion of a recurring poker game with good friends in the near future. Not sure why I'm so stuck on the idea of Hold'em lately, maybe it's post-Tet syndrome, but I am very motivated to get a small-stakes game up and running maybe bi-monthly.

New discovery: I love Tet! We had a Nguyen family + 4 get together yesterday at Ngoc's house in El Sobrante. It was Mark's introduction to uncompromised Vietnamese culture, as well as the return of Sambo. After gorging on noodles and duck and soup, Ngoc's oldest brother Kiet rolls in with red envelopes for all [see above].

Afterwards we partook in a seriously intense game of Texas Hold'Em. Ngoc's brothers play for keeps, by the way. Come ready to destroy or be destroyed.

That's Qui on the left. He's going to be one lucky son of a bitch this year, as he was putting us all to rest last night hand after hand after hand.

***UPDATE***. Apparently Qui lost everything to older brother Dinh after we left. Cocky bastard.

Ngoc and I made the trip to Megan's place up in Napa for a very productive wedding invitation jam session on Saturday. Definitely, definitely must thank Megan's good friend Sarah for all the awesome work she is putting into our invitations. She also taught me a little bit about a program known in many popular circles as Adobe Illustrator. Vector images? who woulda thunk??

Secondly, and prepare yourselves, I didn't watch the superbowl this Sunday. Does this mean I will be deported? We climbed instead and dabbled in the fine craft of tapa'ry at our favorite local Fonda with J-Fire and Mark. This was also the first day of climbing for my recently de-commissioned left thumb. No problems to report.


Finally, interesting news over the weekend. Actually, this happened a few weeks ago, but I discovered it myself only this weekend, Lisa Rands becomes the first female to send the Mandala. Go Lisa. Speaking of climbing, I churned out my first 1-arm pullups this weekend. So, Go Me too. I miss Bishop oh so much...and Portland.

Lost

Well what would this blog be without a few posts in tribute to my favorite show (possibly of all time...you heard, aaaaaall tiiiiiiime).

For the season four premiere, good ol' boys JJ and Lindelof have wasted no time introducing new mysteries. Whether or not you like it, the show is definitely on course to milk this science vs. faith deal more rigurously, spearheaded by poster boys Jack and Locke, respectively. Lines are being drawn in the sand, and characters are already choosing camps. It seems that eventually 6 islanders escapes, and each regrets something or another, be it leaving the island, or standing on the wrong side of that line in the sand...except Kate of course, she's the only one who seems to have her screws in tight post-escape.

Ok Dave, you say, that's all nice and squeaky clean, but what are you're thoughts and feeling about the show? Well, let it be known, there are a few specific issues that I have yet to hear much about. First of all, what's the deal with Libby and Hugo at the same mental care facility pre-crash? Luckily, I recently read that Libby's past will be explored (posthumously, i might add) in season 4. Well, its about time. Also, lets see some more Desmond back story! This gf-millionaire Penny on a worldwide hunt to find Dessy doesn't sit perfectly well in my stomach. Hard to buy. And what's the deal with his pre-cog visions? And the magnet! Please don't tell me we won't learn what the magnet really was. And the monster! And who is Richard? are Jack's dad and Jacob in cahoots???!