last weekend i went to chicago to see my junior high/ high school/ texas buddy roumany get married to his long time girlfriend and fiance wendy. i hadn’t seen roumany in like 8 or 9 years since his job had transferred him to texas. now we live less than an hour away from each other, however in the months that i’ve been here he’s been busy with the wedding planning, and seeing him chicago was the first time we’d hung out in a really long time.

it was a bit of high school reunion weekend since eva lives in chicago, pavnit was in indiana and dan flew out from california. i didn’t really do much other than drink and party all weekend, the only site seeing experience was the adler planetarium which i hadn’t seen the last time taka and i were in chicago a couple of years ago. i was also going to try to go to the sears tower to try those glass boxes that you can walk out on but never made it.

it’s weird how lately different cities and states don’t seem that different anymore. being in dallas or la or chicago all kinda feel the same, especially when you’re hanging out with friends and family. it’s also sorta strange how much dallas feels like home now, particularly after a weekend away from it.

i’ve had a lot of time on my hands this last week or so, but haven’t really wanted to do anything since i need to stay close to home and can’t really drink. on saturday for the first time in a while i went out to the movies with ben to see terminator:salvation. i enjoyed it more than most reviewers and it was just nice to get out of the house and not just be waiting for babies.

on sunday again with all the time but limited on what i can do, decided to build a mini picnic table for the little one. taka and i spent about 6 hours on it and it came out really nice. it’ll probably be a couple of years before our daughter can use it, but it looks nice in my mom’s yard until then.

man, i ended up having a really busy weekend even though i didn’t have much planned. i pretty much got everything in that i wanted to, but it all felt pretty rushed. i never look forward to monday, but at least it should be more restful than the weekend was.

on friday taka and i went to an all you can eat korean bbq restaurant called furusato only a few blocks from our house. it has a big sign that says “$11.99 all you can eat” so i figured it would have to be terrible, but it ended up being really good, and we ate way too much. but the wife wrote it off to being pregnant and i’m trying to make muscle so it worked out. You can read my yelp review here.

on saturday morning taka and i woke up pretty early and went to this park near our place that has a huge pond with an island in the middle. i took my helicopter and crashed it pretty bad when a servo went out. she did manage to take some video of me hovering the trex 450 around before i wrecked it, although she didn’t film the crash. you can read my writeup about the crash and see some footage from my sony mhs-cm1 on my miniheliblog. Be sure to click the “View in HD” tab in the corner to see it in all it’s boring HD glory. So after my short flight we walked around the park and left when the geese started giving taka the stink eye. We had a valentines lunch with my mom in long beach and saw her newly landscaped yards which looked fantastic. Finally we had a quiet/romantic valentine’s dinner at home… we’re getting too old to go out and wait in the restaurant madness on v-day.

then today eric and i had an early gym session and then i went up to see my old buddy ken from elementary school who was in town for a convention. this is the guy that got me into cycling and radio control everything and was/is an all around cool guy. I gotta say a lot of the things I do and even part of the way I act has been influenced by him. He moved up to Reno, nV in the mid-nineties, and i hadn’t seen him for like 7 years so it was great to catch up.

…and on with the week

there were all kinds of things i was thinking about blogging about over the thanksgiving weekend and just never got around to it. i hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving. me and taka had dinner with my mom and dad and did the standard thanksgiving dinner thing. we were noticing that next year the table will be a bit more full with my sister coming back from cambodia in March, and us having a little one this time next year.

taka and i saw role models before we went to dinner on thursday and it was pretty damn hilarious and was a feel good/ light hearted/ laugh-out-loud kinda movie.

on friday after an early workout, me, eric, ben and stephan had lunch in little tokyo at this ramen shop where they have really spicy ramen. If you eat the spiciest ramen and drink all of the broth, they take a photo of you and put it on their wall. I pussed out and had the #3, “impact” ramen, which is actually only the 5th spiciest ramen they have, although the other guys were eating the 7th and 8th spiciest. Next time I’m going for #1 and the damn photo. afterwards we went to the la auto show and spent a few hours gawking and sitting in the latest fancy cars.

on saturday eric and i went to the costa mesa gun show and looked around. it was busy as ever and prices on everything have skyrocketed. since obama was elected president-elect, people have been buying guns in a frenzy. aside from the kooks who think that they’re gonna have to defend themselves from a non-republican government, there’s lots of speculation that obama might reinstate the federal assault weapons ban, and start naming semi-automatic rifles by name. the last time that happened, it meant that people that already owned the weapons could keep and register them so people assume the same thing will happen again this time so of course gun shops have doubled their prices. it’s pretty ridiculous. later that evening we went to lauren’s 25th birthday at costin’s place and chilled with old and new friends for a bit. taka’s belly is starting to poke out a little, and i was proud to show it off.

and on sunday, other than doing a bit of christmas and going-out-of-business sale shopping, i did absolutely nothing until we met up with eric and tina at lucilles for dinner and lots of ribs which was a nice, relaxing way to bring a fun and exhausting weekend to an end.

being busy when things have to be done suck, especially on the weekend. but when i have a lot of things to do that don’t have to be done, i usually enjoy doing them. eric and i had a strong chest workout in the morning, and then did some shopping. after that i watched tv for an hour, then went and hit golf balls for about 2 hours and am finally getting my swing back. two things that seem to be key to me having a consistent swing is paying more attention to the angle of the club face and not pulling up right after my swing. my dad’s talking about getting back into golf, so maybe i’ll finally take it seriously this go ’round.

taka had to work today, but for the first time in a couple of months she wasn’t feeling nauseas when she got home, so we went and had dinner and saw zack and miri make a porno at the ghetto galleria. the movie was pretty funny although it got a bit too sappy for me at the end. at least there were some boobs. here’s to future saturdays being as unproductive and enjoyable as today’s.

on friday night, me, eric and ben went out drinking and 2 bars (well, restaurants), 2 beers and 3 martinis later i was pretty obnoxiously drunk and don’t remember much. what i do remember is waking up with a terrible hangover on saturday morning. luckily it wasn’t a sick-to-my-stomach hangover but just that foggy slow motion action that keeps you from doing anything. so after walking to store to get some rockstar i just watched tv for half the day until eric finally convinced me to go to the gym around 2pm.

so i got around to watching 2 dvds that i got from blockbuster last week. eastern promises is a movie about the russian mafia in london doing mafia things and having the typical internal mafia power conflicts. i swear half the cast were people that i’ve seen at dave’s parties. the plot line was a bit complicated to try to explain, but trust me it was a really good movie (88% fresh).

after that taka and i watched feast of love which i hadn’t even heard of, but the dvd cover had morgan freeman and greg kinear so i figured it had to be good. later on i looked it up and it actually was in theatres, but only made about $3m and was 41% fresh on rotten tomatoes. the story is just about a bunch of different people in love and different kinds of love. the thing is, it’s about intense, complicated love, kinda like closer, but a lot more tittes and a little bit of heart-warming morgan freeman thrown in.

eventually eric dragged my ass off my couch and another rockstar and back workout got me back to normal so the day wasn’t a complete waste. but yeh, definitely not as young as i used to be.

what the hell is going on with the weather? it was about 100 degrees yesterday and it’s april! although looking at the 10 day forecast, yesterday was 98, today is supposed to be 88, tomorrow is supposed to be 78 and wednesday is gonna be 68? very strange.

i don’t have air conditioning in my apartment, so i didn’t sleep very well last night. it was too hot, so i would turn on the fan, but then it would get cooler and i was too lazy to turn it off so i’d be cold, then i would turn it off and it’d be too hot, so i’d turn it on at a lower setting, etc. stupid f’ing al gore.