thank god it’s finally friday. The week has been weird for me because i’ve been jet-lagged and because taka’s still in japan (she has a friend’s wedding to go to on Sunday and comes home on Monday). While I was there last weekend, everything was so busy that we had little time to enjoy ourselves so I’m glad she decided to take the extra week.

Anyway last night I had steaks, beers and played poker with the boys till almost 2a, so today I’m feeling the pain. This is gonna be a long day.

i went home early on friday because i felt a cold coming on, and it ended up being a doozy. i’ve seriously just been laying on my couch for the last 60 hours with a 101/102 fever and the worst headache and sore throat evar. i haven’t had a really bad sore throat in a while, but i remembered and googled a digg article that i read a while back that suggested to gargle cayenne pepper in warm water and it really works. i’d been taking cough drops, chloraseptic spray, and tea with lemon and honey with little relief, but gargling a teaspoon of cayenne pepper stirred well in very warm water really works. i have to do it every 15 minutes or so before the pain comes back.

i was bound to get this cold since costin, lauren, ben and most importantly taka had this in the last couple of weeks. at least i’ll hopefully have it done with before mike’s wedding on saturday and japan next wednesday.

i had planned on taking the boat out and doing some wakeboarding last saturday, but costin was sick and as it turns out, marine stadium was closed. taka was off and the weather was hot, so we met up with shal and sanam and went kayaking.

we kayaked around naples island and went to a cove where there were sting-less jellyfish that we could touch. we stopped at jamba juice and then headed back home. we were out for about 2 and a half hours and it was a lot of fun but i got pretty sunburned on my legs. my shoulders were pretty sore too since taka was only pretending to paddle.

kayaks on the water is at the end of bayshore off of 2nd st and costs $15 hour.

check it out here: http://www.kayakrentals.net/

sorry for the lack of posts lately, but this weekend i moved and most of you know how crazy that always is. aside from the usual perils of moving it was raining, and for a while it was coming down really hard. there was water shooting out of the sewers and it was windy and i had all my shit out there in the rain inbetween my old apartment and the truck. luckily there wasn’t any rain related damage in the move, and when we got to the southbay the rain had completely given way to blue skies. it was a welcoming way to come home.

thanks to the homies that helped out. that’s gotta’ve been the most intense move yet.

drowsy driving is dangerous, and for me it’s a lot more scary than drunk driving. when i’m buzzed, i’m paying extra attention to my driving, well aware that my reflexes aren’t as good, but when i’m drowsy i’m not paying attention to anything, and that whole almost falling asleep thing is fucking nuts.

so today i left work at 11am because i’m getting a cold and my nose wouldn’t stop running. i figured that i would stop by the ralphs near my work and pick up some benadryl, pop 2, and in the 15 minute, traffic-free drive, i’d be getting drowsy just as i got home and and could just pass out. so after 5 minutes on the 405, traffic is stopped. the caltrans sign says that it’s 65 minutes to the 605 freeway, and google maps on my iphone says its more like an hour an half! anyway, i made it home, but it was a hell of a long and groggy drive. i can’t wait until i move to the southbay and have a 5 mile drive to work.

i’ve loved r/c cars ever since i was a little kid, and after not having one now for a couple of years i’m back into it. i’ve had electric and gas in the past and this time decided to go with good ‘ole electric. gas is fun and definitely fast, but so damn finicky and messy that it just wasn’t worth it. batteries are also up to 4800mah these days so run times are almost as long as a tank of nitro.

one of the largest r/c tracks in so cal is going to only be about a 10 minute drive from my new place, so i plan on doing some actual racing and showing those 13 year olds what’s up.

the chassis design is well organized. here it is being attacked by the monster from cloverfield, rawwwr!

i guess jury duty now is “1 day or 1 trial” meaning if i don’t get put on a case today i’m done. I actually wouldn’t mind getting on a case since it can’t be more boring than work. I’ll keep you updated on what’s going on with my day since i’ll have nothing to do until i get a case.

wrap-up – well that was my first time live blogging. hopefully next time i do it, i have something more interesting to live blog about. i waited the whole damn day and never got called for anything. i just sat all day long. at least my company paid me to do it, on top of the court paying me $15 to be there. god bless america.

3:10p – well that’s it they released us! Thanks for reading!

3:04p – took a 1 hour nap in a chair, now I’m drinking a redbull on the roof of the building and feeding chips to the pigeons.

2:09p – the aquarium of the pacific guy made a presentation which was pretty much just a live commercial trying to get us to become either volunteers or members or just visit the place. It was more boring than when I was doing nothing.

1:34p – some guy from the aquarium of the pacific came in and raffled off a pair of tickets. I didn’t win.

1:32p – I had lunch at some Chinese restaurant in dowtown long beach. Dowtown near pine street is really nice now. The “city place” area has lots of nice shops and places to eat, and i just wandered around for an hour. I’m back at the courthouse now and am back to my waiting.

11:31a – first panel was announced and I wasn’t called… The waiting continues.

11:16a – another hour of absolutely nothing, not even an announcement. This is actually more boring than work. There are some weird people here and some of them are staring at me. Hey eric, remember that weird retarded family we’d always see fishing a few years ago? The mom is one of the people staring at me!

10:05a – yikes 45 mins of doing nothing. The break is over but everyone is just reading books and magazines.

9:22a – after almost 2 hours of filling out forms, listening to rules and watching instructional videos, i’m on a break. We won’t start getting called in for jury selection for another 20 mins.

jury duty that is. i was on-call, and had to phone in to the system on sunday and monday night, when they told me they didn’t need me to come in, but when i called this evening they said i have to report at 7:45a on wednesday morning. at least it’s at the long beach courthouse and only about 10 minutes away from my place. my company pays for up to 10 days of jury service, so while i’m not particularly looking forward to it, at least it’s not costing me anything. and maybe i’ll get lucky and get to sentence someone to death or something.