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It’s been a month since I last posted and I apologize. A lot has happened so there’s plenty to write about. Thanks to a nice comment from Bobby, I’m back in the game. So here goes!

Samantha and I spent the weekend in Greenfield with our friends Hope and Justin. I brought over my PS3 and my newest game, Soul Calibur 4. We played for a couple hours and created some pretty cool characters. My favorite character so far is Setsuka, the Flower Snowstorm of Killing Intent. She’s quick and fights with a hidden Iai sword concealed in the handle of an oil paper parasol.

Hope’s mother was so nice that she gave Samantha a coach purse and wallet for free. Samantha was very excited and happy. If you knew Samantha in real life, you’d know that she’s generally always what you and I consider "excited and happy", so just think of that and multiply it by ten, that’s how excited she was.

The next day we drove to Monterey Bay Aquarium where we saw sharks, large tuna, and all kinds of jellyfish! There are all kinds of jellyfish including egg-yolk jellies, upside down jellies, and baby jellies. They were all so very amazing and I doubt any picture or photograph could do their beauty any justice but I’ll post some pictures I took anyway.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends at Jamie and Brandon’s BBQ’s and parties. I’ve hung out with my old best friend Ashley Martinez a few times as well. We reunited. Ashley is a very good friend of mine from high school who took care of me since my junior year of high school. We went to Prom, Ozzfest, Six Flags, and a ton of concerts together. She’s like my big sister so don’t get any ideas. I know a lot of you already have, heh.

Samantha also bought a new car. It’s a nice little PT-Cruiser and she likes it a lot. We’ve been taking it everywhere and she’s been driving it a lot so hopefully she’ll be a better driver in no time, haha. One thing I do not like about it however is that the back window’s tint was done wrong so it’s kind of hard to see through and is very annoying (for me at least) when driving. It doesn’t seem to bother Samantha however, which kind of bothers me, lol.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have several little sisters and one big sister. Ashley is like my big sister because she takes care of me, gives me her advice, and is 6 months older. Hope is like my little sister, I’m constantly giving her advice, and taking care of her. Sometimes we rap. =P Lauren is like my little sister, except she’s taller than me haha, but she’s always there for me as I am there for her. Hopefully we’ll get to hangout more, but lately I’ve been hanging out a lot with Ashley and Hope.

Anyway, my final trip was to Half Moon Bay and San Francisco where I ate at the Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company and Sam’s Chowder House. Both were extremely expensive. I recommend Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company if you like seafood or a variety of shrimp. The coconut shrimp there tastes like candy. It’s very, very good. Sam’s Chowder House would have been better had we ate there at night and outside. Supposedly they light up the whole damn place. Oh, and they have indoor fireplaces next to each set of tables. That’s also nice.

Half Moon Bay was exciting and I walked pretty far into the bay via the stones that were conveniently stacked across the bay area. It was my first time there so I didn’t know there was a better spot where all the surfers went and the waves were much bigger, but that’s okay, I still had fun. If you ever go to Half Moon Bay, keep driving past Sam’s Chowder House and you’ll eventually see what I mean.

As for San Francisco, Pier 39 was fun. I saw girls wearing hardly any clothing, bikers, and transvestites. It was exactly how I expected it to be, lol. Since this was my second time coming to San Francisco this year, I had a better idea of where to park and where to drive. The streets weren’t nearly as packed as they were during the 4th of July and it wasn’t very cold at all. I didn’t need my jacket.

Well that’s about it for this month, there are a couple sad things I didn’t mention or bother to put in but maybe I’ll toss that in the next post. Until then, au revoir! =)

Well, I’m feeling better today. I just recovered from a horrible fever brought on possibly by salmonella. Thank you Mr. Double Whopper with cheese. More importantly however, thank you Samantha for taking care of me. =) I haven’t had time to update my web site as often as I would like but fortunately not a lot has happened in the past two months. In short, I went to Dublin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, started up Rek-Mud again, and I bought a double papasan chair.

  Samantha and I decided to spend our 4th of July weekend in Dublin and San Francisco. I took an extra vacation day from work on Friday and we headed out for Dublin on Thursday night. Luckily, Samantha has an uncle and aunt who live in Dublin so we didn’t have to pay for a hotel room. We spent our Friday exploring Dublin, enjoying the sights, and eating at a nice hamburger joint, however the cashier was somewhat rude. We saw the movie “Hancock” starring Will Smith and enjoyed a visit to Sybase Headquarters. Oh yeah, we bought some candy from the Dublin mall and spent some time talking to an employee at a Warhammer shop. Pretty cool stuff.

On the following Saturday we traveled by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) from Dublin to San Francisco. We enjoyed bread bowls, fried shrimp, fireworks, and drunk guys who kept talking to me. The fireworks were okay, but the clouds were in the way, so it was more like watching giant flashing colored clouds than watching fireworks. Still, the loud noise and tons of people made it great. It got really cold so Sam and I found a nice blanket and cuddled up on the curb of the San Francisco street sidewalk beneath the flashing colored clouds of 4th of July. Such an awesome night. My Affliction flip flops ended up ripping up and I had to walk with a bare foot all the way home. Pretty funny stuff. Haha.

On Sunday, we went to an island to go wake boarding. We took a pelican around the island, launched a few green apples on a makeshift trebuchet, had BBQ chicken, and watched UFC. Oh yeah, when Samantha and I were cuddling on a hammock, an eagle sitting on the large tree above us (approximately 20-30 feet) released from it’s talons the bloody corpse of a mouse which landed on my leg. At first I thought it was their dog’s chew toy because it was wet. *barf*

Ooh, I found a double papasan chair at Pier1 Import’s! It’s so comfortable and reminds me of my grandfather’s papasan chair. I used to fall asleep in that big satellite chair all the time at my grandma’s when I was a kid. I need to scan that picture of me asleep in grandfather’s papasan chair.

I went to Los Angeles to provide onsite training to LA County Fire Department’s Financial and Hazardous Materials team. Daniel and I stayed at the Hilton Inn, however they ended up charging my credit card instead of the company’s! But other than that, my co-worker Daniel and I had a pretty good time and got to meet some of the nice people at LA County Fire.

Well besides all that stuff, I started up one of my old games again, Rek-Mud 4: The Four Kingdoms. It’s doing pretty well and it’s slowly growing a player base again. You can find it at rekmud.com, port 5000.

This memorial day weekend was filled with surprises. The weekend began with Friday, as it generally does, and life at work was busy as usual. Samantha and I had planned a night with her mom for that night. We cooked Thai hamburger patties, fried rice, and Thai fried eggs. Her mom loved it. We watched “The Hills Have Eyes 2″ on blu ray, a fairly disturbing film to say the least. We had also made plans with Justin and Hope, however they did not come over as planned. We ended up going to Brandon’s party after Samantha’s mom was picked up by Craig. Craig’s a cool guy, he drives a white truck and likes to talk and make jokes. Plus he’s Japanese. 

Anyway, at Brandon’s party we met up with all the usual’s and unusual’s who generally attend Brandon’s parties. The party went pretty good. Andrew and I wrestled, I drank with some friends, and we called it a nighter. Justin and Hope decided not to spend the night as planned, however suggested that we spend the night on Saturday and that they would spend the night on Sunday. On Saturday we picked up Justin and Hope for our trip to the coast.

The beach was very relaxing for me and the sand between my toes made me feel very much alive. For Samantha and I as a couple, it marked another milestone in our relationship, and so it had much more meaning to us than most. We went through a few of the stores, ate at the Pier Side restaurant, and even walked on the pier. My mom had called us during our walk, informing me that she and my dad were also enjoying the beauty of the ocean. I grew surprisingly ecstatic and raced towards my mom, my dad, and my two twin brothers. I was happy to see them all again. My brothers had luckily found a camping reservation, or should I say, benefited from another friend’s reservation. My Samantha and I had been trying to reserve a camping site prior that week but were unfortunate in that most if not all the good camping sites were “booked”. Anyway, we also ran into Kevin and his boyfriend which was also nice to see some old faces. We all said our good-byes and went our separate ways after the small reunion.

The four of us, Samantha, Justin, Hope, and I, made our way to the beach and we walked for  a while aside the ocean. We found some sand that someone had written into which included the following text, “I love you Alex”. Another coincidence, or maybe Samantha performed a ninjistic maneuver and developed the sea-side art before I could notice her absence. Who know’s. We kept walking aside the beach until we eventually came across some miniature sand dunes. We played in the sand for a while using a piece of card board as a sand sled.

Eventually we ended up going home and finding ourselves at Justin’s place where we would spend the night and watch Dragon Ball. The next day we woke up and watched more Dragon Ball. Justin’s grandma cooked us all a very nice breakfast. Peter and Sebastian also came over and we all hung out for a while until we went to Brandon’s for a visit before going to my place. All in all, it was a fairly good weekend, and I had a lot of fun.

Before I end this blog however, there’s a special person out there who I want to give a shout out to, and that’s my favorite teacher, Mrs. Newton. I know you’re reading this, and I want to thank you for everything. I haven’t had a chance to thank you in person, but someday I will. A lot has happened in the past four years, but I think with all that has happened, there is one thing that has not changed, and that is my respect for you. Thank you for giving me the chances you did and being a great friend. Back then I was a rebellious kid with blue spiked hair and a bad attitude. Today I work for a database software company, I work with hundreds of Environmental Health employees throughout the US and Canada, and I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do, work with software, SQL/batch scripts, and people. Thank you for giving me the skills and knowledge needed to get myself started on the right path.

Well here I go again. First let me warn you that this blog entry is longer than most if not all that has came before it and with good reason. I spent this fantastic weekend with my beautiful (Samantha), but there’s more to it than just that, oh so much more.

My weekend began sooner than most weekends, it began on a Thursday. My birthday had fallen on a Saturday so I had the choice of having the Friday prior or the Monday after, I went with Friday. I rushed through Thursday (like I’m rushing through this blog) unlike other Thursdays because of the plans I had made on Friday. The clock struck five and I was out the door, racing towards my waiting love, Samantha. I picked her up and we drove to Save Mart and the 99 cent store to pick up some items. We bought a lot of junk food, candy, and more junk food. It was great. We took it all home and cooked chicken Alfredo pasta. We showered and hopped into bed.

Beep, beep. The alarm clock struck 2:00AM. Damn alarm clock. It always goes off two hours early. We slept it and woke up later at 4:30AM, got ready, and left for Anaheim. 15 minutes after our departure, we turned around. We forgot our hopper passes. That’s right folks, we were going to Disney Land and Disney California for my birthday. =) 

The drive wasn’t too bad, we did run into a bit of traffic, saw a funny company truck called “Bimbo”,  and made a pit stop for gas and coffee drinks. We mixed our cold coffee and chocolate drinks and drank up. It was good stuff. Samantha ate all the hot puffy Cheetos. Yum.

So we arrived at the Disney Land gates, found our parking spot at Mickey 4E, Level 3, red floor. We power walked to the escalators and soon found that our assumptions regarding the visitor count was wrong, Disney Land is always “jam packed”, Samantha’s words. That didn’t bother us, we both enjoy being around a lot of people anyway. We got into line and found ourselves in Tomorrow Land on Stars Tours.

Overall, the entire trip was great. I cannot speak for Samantha, but I can honestly say that I feel more closer to her after this trip. I depended on her for a lot of things, and she was there with me on every page, every step, and every leap of the way. She really is fantastic, and I think I’m only seeing the beginning. 

We stayed at Disney Land until around 3:00PM, left for our hotel to get our key, and then left for Disney California. Disney California was great and had a much bigger rides. We went on a few rides that Samantha had in mind, including a giant Ferris wheel. Samantha was dehydrated and therefore became quickly motion sick while on the tilting Ferris wheel. A bottle of water saved the day.

We headed back for Disney Land where we went on the Indiana Jones and Haunted Mansion rides. It was after the Haunted Mansion ride that I realized I had lost my wallet! Panicking, we retraced our steps to the Indiana Jones ride where Samantha’s logic and educated guess found my wallet. Yay. We continued to go on more rides, including Pirates of the Caribbean. It was during the Pirates of the Caribbean that we noticed a beautiful restaurant on the docks near the boats, the Blue Bayou. We ended up going there and found ourselves eating Filet Mignon and Island Chicken and drinking Pirate Punch which came with light up Captain Hook and Tinkerbell figurines.

The night ended with beautiful fireworks and Samantha buying me a Mickey Mouse hat and herself a Minnie Mouse hat. We went back to our hotel and took a nice candle-lit bath in our hot tub. Bubbles!

The next day, we raced to Hollywood and found ourselves surrounded by characters such as Super Girl, three Jack Sparrows, Darth Vader, Batman, and Mike Myers. We ate at a pizza shop, went to the Guinness World Records and Wax Museums, saw some art at an art show, purchased some chopsticks and a karate head band, and walked through all the stores on Hollywood Blvd. It was a lot fun. Except for the $8 parking, I forgot to get my parking ticket validated. =(

We then went to Ikea which wasn’t too far away where we did some shopping and found two sheepskin rugs, 100 tea cup candles, and a non-stick stir fry pan. There were a few nice lamps and paintings, but Samantha convinced me not to buy them within good reason. She’s awesome like that. We went to the checkout stand where the nice girl in front of us gave us the six dollars left on her Ikea gift card. Apparently, Ikea charges for plastic bags, so we carried our items to the car and headed for home.

We didn’t stay at home for too long. In fact, we skipped home and went straight to Chili’s. It was 56 miles before home where I became too tired and Samantha took over the car. I took a nap and Samantha woke me up at Chili’s. I had a sirloin steak there, Samantha ate spicy chicken salad, and the waiter (who was very very cool) brought me beer and his team to sing me the birthday song (complete with a chocolate milk shake!), it was great. I called my friends Carl and Brandon, and we soon found ourselves driving to Hanford! I was very drunk, so Samantha drove again and did the rest of the driving that night.

At Brandon’s house, we hung out with Carl, Brittney, Brandon, and Aaron. My friend Ben who I hadn’t seen for a very long time called me during the drive to Hanford so we had planned to leave Brandon’s at 10:00PM to go see Ben’s new place. We met Ben and his girlfriend Megan. Ben had dyed his hair blue, cut it into a mo-hawk and had grown a beard since I had last seen him. His girlfriend Megan was nice. We spent the night talking about the future development of Dead and Walking, and I briefed him on the possible development of a new game that Justin and I had came up with.

On Sunday, we relaxed and slept all day. And played Call of Duty.

This weekend’s "Beach Bro’s Pool Party 2008" turned out better than I had expected. And I had expected a lot. Let me start with the beginning of the weekend, Friday!

Samantha, myself, and Samantha’s grandma who I will refer to as "Nana" all went to the Japanese Kitchen in Fresno. Sitting and conversing with Nana was great, however the food was not so great. I believe the food wasn’t so great because we sat at the tables instead of the Teppanyaki bar. Not only was the food horrible, but the waiter took forever to bring back Nana’s chicken (white meat only!).

We then went shopping at the Fashion Faire mall where I purchased a black polo shirt, beige shorts, and some Affliction flip flops! Apparently I was the first person in Fresno to purchase these flip flops so they asked me some questions from their survey.

Later that night, Hope and Justin came over! We watched Clockwork Orange on blu ray. I had had asked Justin to pick them up from my mom’s house on his way here and like the great friend he is, he did! I purchased three movies including Clockwork Orange, Bram Stroker’s Dracula, and The Fifth Element. All great movies.

The next day I cooked ham and eggs for breakfast. We got the ice chest from Samantha’s other grandma, cleaned out the BBQ grill, and prepared the burgers. Jamie did most of the grilling and cooking, so thank you Jamie! Unfortunately the burgers ruined my pan somehow, but that’s okay, I bought a new one. Jamie brought over the Boca burgers because he’s a vegetarian now all of a sudden. We took some good pictures in the spa and had a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, some kids had brought in a ton of sand in the spa prior to us getting in and broke the damn spa. We cleaned it up as best as we could.

Later Lauren, Tasia, Hector, Sheree, Brittany, and some guy came over. That’s when the drama started between the Some Guy and Carl I believe. This guy said something rude to Carl and I’ll just leave it at that. We played rock band and Call of Duty 4 on the PS3. The night went pretty good.

On Sunday, Samantha and I went out to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the movie theater. It was a really great and funny and perverted movie. Go see it. lol.

It’s Tuesday today. Time to communicate with my apartment’s management and get my dryer machine right? Not so easy. I called them during my work break and was told that the manager needs to see some items of proof that my dryer was  ripping. No problem, I told them I’d visit them during my lunch hour since that was the only option. I arrived there and quickly collected two towels and my American Eagle Henley shirt, all of which had holes or rips in them in odd areas.

When I entered the office, it was my first encounter with the manager. I had been communicating with the assistant manager since day one, so this was an experience for me. I read her like a book upon first glance. She’s your typical short blonde haired 40 year old business woman who probably has two or no kids. She has that assertive attitude and forked tongue going on. So okay, that’s cool, I can handle these women, I’ve handled one all my life (Sorry mom lol, I love you.)

So the conversation begins with me walking into the room, gray Abercrombie polo shirt and blue jeans, holding the articles of proof in my hands and placing them on the brown table sitting in front of the manager who we will refer to as  Spam. I instantly let Spam know who I am and what I’m here for. I tell her I do not like green eggs and ham. lol, just kidding. Spam’s reactions let me know that she’s prepared for a fight. Spam stands up and begins talking and begins her examination of the items. She lets me know that the technician who visited me on Saturday had told her that there were no problems with my dryer. She begins spewing absurd logic to determine the reason behind the tears and rips in my clothing and bath towels. Bad sewing, bad material, acid related, it happens to a lot of towels, etc. She even felt the need to tell me how much the dryers cost (not much). I let her know that I had bought the towels from Kohl’s and the shirt from American Eagle. I told Spam that the shirt had not been ripped under the arm pit, where most rips occur due to removal of the shirt. I told her that the towel cloth was found stuck to the dryer in the area that I had assumed that the cloth was getting stuck to and then ripped. She asked if the towel cloth was still there for proof, I told her that it wasn’t due to continuous washes. She asked me how many times I had washed my clothing and suggested that we cannot know for sure if it’s the dryer since the issue is occurring intermittently. Regardless, I explained to her, my clothing was being ripped by the dryer, and I need a replacement dryer.

This conversation went on and on, and she eventually brought in the technician who claimed that the dryer was not broken. He tried to be the middle guy and agree with both of us, saying that he isn’t saying it’s not broken and he isn’t saying that it is broken. Haha. Long story short, I kept at it and ended with a, “Look, it’s not that hard, I just want a dryer that won’t rip my clothing.” I could tell this offended her, possibly because she felt it was an attack on her intelligence, based on her reply, “You don’t have to be mean about it, we will order you a new dryer.”

Today’s lesson? Being assertive gets things done. I didn’t yell, I didn’t cuss, I just told them the reality of things. I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t going to live with it. Yeah you can be nice to your land lord, and yeah they might be nice to you, but if they give you the run around, give them a round house. Or in this case, two Turkish towels and a Henley shirt.

Oh yeah, one more thing, when the assistant manager (Not Spam) called me 2 hours later to tell me that my new dryer would be installed tomorrow afternoon (April 23, 2008), she requested that the next time I enter the office to talk to them that I talk to them the way I would want them to talk to me and that I was very unprofessional about the whole situation. Funny, huh?

All of this over a cheap dryer.

I thought I could live without one, but quickly found that stuffing my socks and boxers into garbage bags simply would not cut it, so I bought a dresser. I like it. I like it a lot actually. It matches my room and has six large drawers that slide in and out smoothly and can even lock shut when fully closed. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case 74,800 letters (letters = characters = bytes = 74.8kb).  So here it is!

Anyway, this weekend was very nice. Samantha and I met up at the Fashion Fair after work where we did some shopping. Samantha bought this nice top from American Eagle that I helped pick out. Oh yeah, I went to Charlie’s at the food court for some Philly cheese steak and steak fries. It was delicious. Samantha had pizza. I personally think Quizno’s has a better Philly cheese steak, but Charlie’s isn’t bad at all.

The next day (Saturday), Samantha and I went to Hanford! Samantha didn’t get out of work until 5:30PM so we didn’t leave Fresno until around then. We drove to Hanford, which was pretty exciting. It was our first time traveling out of Fresno/Clovis. It was sort of an adventure for me, and definitely an adventure for Samantha since she is foreign to my home town, Hanford. We didn’t have much time and spent most of it filling up gas at Chevron and waiting in line for the car wash. We did however drive through downtown Hanford and my house. We also walked around my mom’s old flower shop, the court house, and the bastille. I showed her Superior Dairy as well. It was a very nice feeling, that whole “and here’s where my brothers and I would play” thing. And now I just barely realize that I should have taken some effin’ pictures!

The real reason we went to Hanford was to party at Brandon and his girlfriend Brittney’s house! We watched UFC, played beer pong, Rock Band, and I kicked everyone’s ass at Super Smash Brother’s Brawl. Haha. We also met some new people, Azneet and John, two totally cool people. Azneet lives in Fresno and John is a Correctional Officer. And of course, all the usual people were there also.

Oh yeah, Mrs. Stephens (aka Mrs. Soares, Brandon’s mom) made some really awesome dip. I mean it. It’s so awesome that Samantha and I are going to make it for our Beach Bro’s Pool Party on Saturday. We’ll have to ask Brandon to get us the recipe. All I know is that it has avocado, and I love avocado. Samantha and I were chowing down on it when we noticed some very pink flowers on the table.

I realized something tonight. I don’t know if it was when Samantha was dipping some chips into Mrs. Stephens avocado dip, if it was when Samantha drove me home since I was drunk (she’s the first to drive my car!), or if it was when she kept doing things to take care of me like holding my beer during rock band or keeping my pizza safe, but I realized how much Samantha means to me. She does a lot, really. She even has all my friends (guys and girls) adoring her. You know what’s funny? Several months ago I had the idea that a Marketing/Business/Sales girl would be the ideal girl for me, and here comes Samantha. A marketing/sales genius who won first place in her business plan competition. A girl who can talk anyone into buying anything. A girl who can make the gloomiest day seem bright and sunny. A girl who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, to smile at strangers, to be assertive and straight forward. She’s that girl. And she’s mine. And she even washes the dishes and cleans the house when I’m not looking. And that my friends, is totally awesome in my book.

Anyway, I mentioned the Beach Bro’s Pool Party I’m having on Saturday. We’re going to have a BBQ with pool deal. There will be beers and alcohol in the house, but please bring beers and food! Don’t be a moocher! If you need directions, shoot me an e-mail or message me on myspace.com/rekwan. See you then!

First off, let me begin by apologizing for not posting in over a week….I’m sorry. There, it’s done, it’s over with, we’re good. So let me start off by saying I finally found the perfect dresser chest for my bedroom. I purchased it at Fashion Furniture in Fresno and unfortunately do not have any photographs of it to show you, but while shopping I had several things I was looking for in a dresser chest and those things were:

1. Color
2. Wood
3. Sturdy-ness
4. Drawer sliding smoothness
5. Hardware (knobs, sliders, etc)

This chest scored high in all five categories, hence why it’s paid for and will arrive at my place on Saturday! Anyway, besides the awesome new chest, I also have a new matching book case which sits aside next to my television. I moved the lamp next to my sofa for better lighting. Oh wait. I forgot to tell you guys I bought a sofa which now sits in my living room! I love it so much. Well, pictures are more than words, so to the left is a picture of some of my friends sitting on my sofa with me laying on them!

I love these guys. My friends are seriously awesome. We played Apples to Apples which is a card game where players take turns being the judge and get to choose which one of the selected red apple cards best match the green apple card. Each player excluding the judge must pass one red card to the judge who then decides which red card best fits the green card’s word. The winner gets the green card and the first person to obtain so many green cards wins the game!

We also played Rock Band and Mortal Kombat II, both of which were really fun. Samantha and I went to PF Chang’s on April 14th which was quite an experience. We ordered spicy Chang chicken and Chang pork fried rice, Chang Chow Mein, and Chang Sweet and Sour Pork. We also had our waitress make our Chang Sauce extra spicy. It was real good. I love Samantha. She’s awesome. Okay, I need to go to bed, so I’m cutting this post short! Bye!

The title of this blog post probably makes absolutely no sense to you, unless of course you’ve been to Hooters before, then you might assume that it has something to do with their hottest hot sauce. Well, you’d be correct. But before I go into detail as to how the 911 hot sauce is involved, let me tell you about my weekend.

My weekend begin with Friday, since Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are generally the days I do weekend activities on. I met up with Samantha at Sweet Tomatoes and we had a nice lunch together. The soup and salad was good. Later after work, we went to Metro Park and Samantha introduced me to a few other stores I hadn’t been to. I bought a black Affliction shirt at Buckle and we left for home. Before reaching the Fashion Fair’s exit however, we were stopped by two people at a table who asked for our vote in a few dozen (or hundred) propositions. I didn’t really care enough to fill out any of the forms, but did so anyway with Samantha. I can’t quite remember what happened next, it was all a blur. I think I threw some round house kicks causing a tornado or hurricane or something that caused all the papers on that survey table to go flying into the sky. I just remember that filling out those papers took far longer than the two table people had suggested. Anyway, we end up going to some furniture store in my quest for a dresser but were unsuccessful in finding one I liked. We also went to Best Buy and purchased Pixar Short Films Collection and The Road Warrior on Blu Ray disk.

On Saturday, Samantha and I went to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo where we found ourselves to be surrounded by many other tourists. It was hard to find parking. The weather was good, perfect even. We ditched the map and papers and basically explored the entire zoo together. One cool thing we got to experience on Saturday was the "touching experience" that we had at the Stingray Bay.  It was basically a bunch of small and large stingrays with a group of small docile sharks swimming around. One of the larger sting rays attempted to stab me with it’s stinger while jumping from the water and in mid-air, but I quickly reacted and judo chopped it’s ass back into the water. We had a lot of fun at the zoo, and we pretty much laughed at everything the entire time we were there, including each other.

After the zoo, we went to Hooters for some hot wings. It was my first time at Hooters and I was aware that they were famous for their hot wings, so I decided to order a plate, along with some firecracker shrimp since I love fried shrimp. At Hooters, you get to select the degree of hot sauce you would like on your hot wings. We felt bold (and I felt manly) and decided to go with their hottest hot sauce, the 911 sauce. Bad choice. If you do decide to go with the 911 sauce, make sure that the hot wings are not your primary meal and that they are only there as a side order. Since as long as I can remember, I have been a huge fan of hot wings and spicy food. In fact, I pride myself on being able to handle extremely spicy food. However, these hot wings were the exception. The first few hot wings weren’t so bad, but we soon found out that after a couple more, our stomachs simply could not handle it. We were actually eating jalapeno’s and firecracker shrimp to cool down our mouths, but the 911 sauce was simply too much for us to handle. We boxed up the food, paid for our meal, and left.

Later that night, my friends from Hanford came to visit, and we had lots of fun. We played Scrabble and did the usual stand-around-and-make-jokes while drinking routine. Carl brought his Rock Band guitar, unfortunately we didn’t have time to play any Rock Band since we did everything else instead, including wrestle. So anyway, here’s a nice picture of this Saturday night’s group. From left to right starting from Carl (red shirt) we have: Carl, Andrew, Tim, Jamie, Jen, and Rekwan (me!). Samantha is holding the camera so she wasn’t in this shot, ha.

Well, that’s about it for this weekend. It was super awesome. I’m going to play some Mortal Kombat 2 on the PS3 and work on my fatalities, peace.

So today I decided to setup a new e-mail account on my new web server. Well actually, it’s the same e-mail address. It’s just on a different server. I followed the instructions found on my provider’s web site step by step, or so I thought, and I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working! It turns out I wasn’t following the instructions completely, which isn’t something new. A lesson learned, I think. Actually, I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn anything.

I’m using this really cool program called Windows Live Writer (thanks Chris) that lets me upload my blog entries from my workstation to my web site. It’s pretty handy. I usually avoid gadgets like these, but I figured I’d give it a whirl. And guess what? I’m still whirling.

I have to go pickup some envelopes tonight, I’ll probably end up going to Wal-Mart since I also want to pick up some V8 splash. That stuff is addicting. I just hate going to Wal-Mart because of all the long lines and the  people. It’s mostly the people in the lines. Well, it’s just the people. They’re usually mean or ill-mannered, or scary. They cut you in line, or cut you off in the food aisle, or stare. They probably want to leave Wal-Mart as quickly as I do. But who could blame them for shopping there? Wal-Mart is just too cheap to pass up sometimes. But other times, I just drive by and go to Target.

It’s Friday tomorrow and I’m partly excited. I’m probably going to spend my afternoon looking for a dresser for my socks and under garments, and then do some shopping at the Fashion Fair mall. I’ve been shopping at Buckle lately, it’s kind of my favorite clothing store at the moment. American Eagle still has them beat on jeans however. They’re just so perfect fitting and cool looking, and cool is definitely a reason to buy clothing.

Well, that’s all I have say for now. I’m going to pick up some V8 Splash and envelopes. See ya.