the snowboard that mike gave taka is almost complete. just have to clean and mount the bindings and she’ll be good to go.

just to remind you how it started off as:

yep, she passed her test. it apparently doesn’t take much to drive here in california ;)

when 24 hour fitness tells you that you have to leave because they’re closing ;)

… and then you go to bally’s to finish your workout.

we took the two tacos III out to cruise the naples channels and see the holiday decorations. i bought a 700 watt inverter and hooked up 50 feet of christmas lights to add to the festivness of the evening. we popped a few bottles of champagne and had a great time. hopefully this becomes a new christmas tradition.

it’s been pretty cold here the last couple of days, but it’s nice that it’s actually feeling a bit like winter. thankfully, today is the shortest day of the year, and from here on out the days’ll start getting longer again. i’ve been getting tired of it being dark by 5pm.

ben invited us up to his christmas karaoke party at some trendy looking korean restraunt in k-town. the food was great, but the restraunt was eerily empty. i think our party may have been the only people dining in the entire place. ben said that they had just filmed an episode of csi earlier that week, so keep your eyes out for that epi.

the karaoke was a lot of fun. shali and i finally got to sing ‘forgot about dre’ since i’ve never seen that at any other karaoke place here or in japan… ironically that was just about the only song they had, and their selection of songs was the only thing that kinda sucked… that and the fact that the mics were wired? wtf?! towards the end some douchebags that jean brought kinda took over and by then i and most of us were done so we left around 1a.

i brought my digital camera and took tons of pictures. none of them look that spectacular since it was dimly lit and almost all pics have a flash. click the link to see them all (i also have hi-res pics if anyone wants any of them).

chrismas karaoke 2006 link

to this:

she would have let me have this cake at our wedding:

it’s supposedly entirely edible too.

i’ve done most of my holiday shopping online this year, which has made it a nice hectic-free experience. most stores have free shipping promotions, or paypal or google discounts which make it much cheaper to just order online than to bother with b&m’s. i also check up on slickdeals.com a few times a day, and there’s always a 10% or 20% coupon for some store (today i used a 20% macy’s and a 12% staples) that i regularly shop at.

even the typical nighmare stores like fry’s haven’t been so bad. today i went there to pick up a power supply for my pc (i think the ps is the problem, i’ll come out +$15 ahead if it’s not…) and found a fancy super quiet one for $50. fry’s has started to discount their open box items, so it had a sticker for only $40. there was also a placard saying that there was a $30 mail in rebate, but when i paid for it, she said there was no rebate. i was like ‘gah, f’ing fry’s’ and went and pulled the placard and took it back to the register. the manager came over and said that the rebate had expired (it said so on the placard, but that’s not my problem), and would just give me $15 cash instead. that was actually fine for me, since i hate mir, and only seem to actually get the money half the time. anyway, the $15 he handed me was completely seperate of my cash receipt for the power supply, so if it turns out the ps isn’t my problem and i have to return it, i’ll actually make $15 :)

this is so fucking insane. i could only listen to the first 11 minutes before i was so embarassed for verizon that i i couldn’t stand it. i’m not sure if this is old or new, but it’d be great if it gets wide coverage, ’cause i hate verizon and their ‘it’s the network’ commercials.

http://media.putfile.com/Verizon-Bad-Math