weekend update

Not too much to report:

- Saturday night was CIM Ball, Kellogg's first formal of the year.  Unfortunately, I totally thought my KWEST preparty started at 6:30, when it actually started at 5:30PM, so I missed a large portion of the hanging out beforehand :(  I also used iMovie and iDVD for the first time ever to make a DVD slideshow and it was both easier and harder than I thought it would be.  I think the hard part was organizing photos and learning the software, but once I figured those two things out, it was fairly simple to put together.  I'm hoping to stream something online soon, and will post a link once I've found somewhere to upload it.

- On Friday I caught a matinee ($8.50!) show of Ghost Town, which I actually thought was pretty good.  I can't believe how much movies cost now!  Or maybe I'm just more surprised that the AMC by my house has eliminated the student discount down to only Thursdays!

In other news, the Dodgers won the NL West division and made the playoffs!  They'll be playing the Cubs, so I'll have to refrain from wearing my Cubs hat even if it rains (at least until after we beat the Cubs).

exhausted...

Wow, I can't remember the last time I was this physically beat.  It's definitely a great feeling, although it makes for me moving around and walking much slower than usual.  It all started with the Define & Refine class at Holmes Place.  I took one of these last year and got my butt thoroughly kicked, but I thought I'd try it again.  Once more, I was reduced to using lower weights than most of the seventy-year-old women in the class.  My body is just not built for stamina.

I've been a regular online shopper since my freshman year of college, but I thought I had slowly weaned myself off impulsive online purchases.  The peak was the summer I spent interning at a GPS company where Gerald and I easily spent maybe $50-100 a day combined buying random stuff online.  My purchases had slowly cut back, until Amazon introduced their "Gold Box" specials.  Now I check every day multiple times what they have "on special."  Recent purchases have included three seasons of X-Files, a storage ottoman, Rock Band for PS2, Trivial Pursuit Digital edition, and much much more.

early weekend update

It's been a few days since my last post, so here's what I've been up to:

- Playing Capcom Classics Reloaded.  I've finished Street Fighter II and King of Dragons, am working on Street Fighter II Champion Edition, and Knights of the Round.  Ghosts and Goblins is way too tough for me, and I haven't gotten around to any other games.

- Thursday night was bar review at Funky Buddha - my first time there, and definitely the best hip hop club that I've been to in Chicago.  The only bad news is that the bar held up a bunch of my friends in line, so the birthday boy and girl that I went out to celebrate with ended up at a different bar :(

- I took Lauren, her brother, and his friend to a short culinary tour of Chicago.  We started off with Giordano's upon their arrival on Thursday, then Friday we had Hot Doug's (for their duck fat fries on Fridays), and today we started off with dim sum at Phoenix Restaurant in Chinatown and closed out dinner at La Pasadita.  In between we also stopped by the Shedd Aquarium, where I was extremely disappointed to learn that their Oceanarium is closed - and that's a good third of the entire aquarium!

t.g.i.w.!

Woo hoo!  T.G.I.W.!  This has been a pretty solid week:

- Last night a bunch of went to Quartino to celebrate Andy N.'s birthday and followed it up with Berry Chill!

- Tomorrow morning I have a massage appointment at the New School for Massage!

- Friday I'm going bowling at Lucky Strike and hopefully getting lunch at Hot Doug's!

- Today I completed Final Fantasy 1 on my PSP.  Time for a new game!

my back, my butt

I woke up this morning with some weird tightness in my upper thigh/butt.  I have no clue how it happened, but it's definitely strained in some odd fashion.  In addition to my ass pain, my back has also been hurting this whole semester due to carrying humongous law school books again.  To alleviate my pain, I've been meaning to get a student massage, but it appears both student clinics in Chicago have raised their prices to nearly the cost of a non-student massage:

Cortiva Institute

The New School for Massage

This upcoming weekend, I'm hoping to catch at least one night at the Hideout Block Party - either Saturday for Neko Case or Sunday for New Pornographers!

silver spoons

One of my dreams is to someday own my own arcade video machine.  It always makes me think of Silver Spoons.  I couldn't remember much of the show (until reading about it on Wikipedia), but I always did remember how awesome I thought they were for having real arcade games in their mansion.  Maybe someday...

chicken and waffles

Last Friday, I went with some friends to Chicago's Home of Chicken and Waffles as a goodbye lunch for my good friend Nan who will be studying abroad in Spain this semester.  The place was down in Bronzeville, which was a bit of a trip, but definitely worth it.  I think all of us were surprised by how nice the interior was - nothing at all like the Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles I grew up with in Pasadena.

music genius

Genius, a new iTunes add-on is awesome! After iTunes 8.0 was released, I thought it was just another standard update that followed an iPod announcement.  However, once I read a little more about Genius I decided to give it a shot.  It takes a while to install, as it have to sync with the iTunes store, but now that I've got it all set up, it's made some fantastic playlists for me!  This is especially helpful as I've got a ton of music given to me by friends and family that I've never even listened to.  

Also, I've pulled out my old Grado SR60 headphones.  I purchased these almost 10 years ago, but ended up breaking one of the speakers off.  10 years later, I've been bringing them with me every time I move, even though one headphone was unattached and the pads had deteriorated beyond belief.  However, in a spurt of productivity, I superglued the headphone back on, and purchased new earphone pads and am now listening to an awesome set of headphones!

I also realized recently how much I use the word awesome.  Alot.  I realized this after instant messaging with a friend and using the statement "that's awesome" three times in a row without thinking about it.  I'll try to reference my thesaurus more, but no promises.

blogging decision

So, it's already week four of law school and I haven't been blogging as much as I would have liked.  The main reason for the lack of posts is probably my desire to write good posts (rather than short blurbs) coupled with my procrastination and inability to spend more than ten minutes writing a post.

Therefore, I will experiment with a new blogging method - namely treating it as a twitter/status update type of blog.  I'll try my best to really just post my random thoughts on a daily or more frequent basis.  This way, I hope to add more posts, but probably at the expense of the well-written posts you have come to enjoy once a year or so (maybe even longer.  probably even longer.).  <--  How do you treat periods within parentheses?  Should they never be in there?

t.g.i.f. (hopefully first of many)

It's going to be a nice semester, what with my four-day weekends.  I'm sure they'll get busier as the semester progresses, but this week I seriously had nothing to do.  In fact, if I wasn't volunteering at CIM today, I'd have no clue what to do today since I've already done my share of errands, exploring the city and playing video games on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday:

Howard came over to help me set up Rock Band, which we played for an hour before heading out to the law school's welcome back party.  It was great to catch up with everyone, and then unexpectedly, I decided to extend the evening by going to the bar review at Sheffield's.  It was lots of fun and we closed the bar down, but I'm probably still trying to recover from that late night.

Friday:

Met with the school registrar to make sure I'll be able to graduate - thankfully I only need 26 units, which shouldn't be too bad.  Lauren and I went to Crisp for lunch, which was not only good, but eerily exactly like how it is described in its Yelp reviews (Doug, the owner, really is unbelievably helpful and friendly).  After lunch, I did some t-shirt shopping at the Threadless retail store, and we also dropped by Pastoral, a cute little cheese shop.

Following Lakeview, we walked down to Lincoln Park to visit the zoo.  On our way, we also stopped by the Lincoln Park Conservatory, as well as the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool.  We walked past the Nature Museum, but we decided to save that for another day.  Finally we made it to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  By the time we got home, I was so pooped from the food coma and all of the walking that I slept from 7:00 - 10:00 pm, before waking up for dinner and then going back to sleep again until the morning.  I can't believe I slept for so long!

Tonight I'll be headed to Millenium Park for a free event held by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company - "Dream Chicago."

back in class - basic federal income tax

boo :(

congrats pac-10!

Although I missed the game, Cal's completely revamped offense delivered a great win against Michigan State on Saturday.  Go Bears!

Also, great job to UCLA last night on upsetting Tennessee and representing the Pac-10!

:( vacation's over

Today marks the end of my last summer vacation and the first day of my last year of school ever.  I know, that was probably a horribly written sentence, but I'm sad and depressed from having to go back to school again.

Reflecting back on this summer, I've had a wonderful time:

- Summering at Cooley: I don't think there is a thing I would change about my experience.  The firm was exactly what I was looking for - great people, ideal work, pleasant culture, etc.

- Being back in the Bay Area: There's no where else I would even consider going.

- KWEST Portugal: I was initially a bit worried about KWEST, as it can be a crapshoot who you get in your group.  Thankfully, we had an awesome assortment of diverse personalities and cultures that blended perfectly.  The spirit of the trip was a perfect blend of relaxation, culture, nightlife and personal interaction.

Here's hoping my last year of school goes as well as the first 18 years of elementary/middle/high/undergrad/grad school!