Category: Daily Life

I’ve learned that if I’m buying kezuribushi to make dashi with, to not buy packages that say otokuyou. They don’t make good dashi.

Starting to get burned out, but I’m one of the lucky ones.

There are only 7 more weeks left.

Adam started working on Sundays. He’s not sure if he can get away to attend my friend’s wedding with me this coming Saturday (oh, hey, tomorrow).

Rumor is, the rest of the team will start working Sundays as well soon. Nothing official yet.

My sister also asked me if I wanted to arrange a baby shower for her. I said, YES. She wants it the weekend before Halloween. I don’t know where I’ll be finding the time to plan it. My only hope is the small amount of time during compiles, and at the end when the game is submitted.

ツカレタ。

On Sunday, I woke up at around 4:30 AM, got dressed, ate breakfast, and headed out to San Diego for the last day of Comic-Con. I took the train down. I didn’t think there were going to be a lot of people there especially on a Sunday morning, but just in case, I got there a full hour early. Train took off at 7:20 AM.

I arrived in San Diego at 10 AM. I met my sister and her husband at the convention center.

Since Sundays always have crap events (which turns out it’s because it’s kid’s day), I stuck to the exhibit hall. Somewhere nice to spend my hard earned cash on things I do not need.

We ran into the the Yama-Taka gang. I got to hold Popo and she fell asleep in my arms. So adorable.

Best thing I bought this weekend? This.

Comic-Con is where I’d be if I wasn’t at work. Please read previous entry about crunching.

Anyway, it wasn’t a complete waste of money because my sister and her husband are there right now! And they seem to be having a good time.

Since I don’t have to work tomorrow, I’m going to check out Comic-Con on the last day. Not much left to do at that point, but maybe I could haggle down the prices of things I want.

One of my friends from UC Irvine got married this weekend. Kinda weird to think that he got married because he never brought his wife around to band events except for one.

Anyway, it was a long Catholic wedding with lots of rituals and stuff. Adam and I barely made it in time. That was kinda my fault as I took too long getting ready. (I got hungry so instead of getting ready, I was making hiya yakko.) There was also a blackout in the area, so the only lighting the church had was the light coming in from the outside through the stained glass windows, the open doors, and the candles.

Did I mention that L.A. was experiencing a heat wave at the time? Hot. Melting. Adam made a makeshift fan with the donation envelopes. Although, I doubt the A/C would have done much to help in such hot weather.

After the ceremony, the band kiddies went to Rock Bottom since it was near the hotel where the reception was going to be. Appetizers and such since there was an hour and half before the next event of the evening. (Ok, so it really didn’t make too much sense to be purchasing food when we were going to be getting free food in less than 2 hours, but we had to do something. We’re used to going out to get food after band events.)

(The beer there is tasty, I told Adam that we need to go there again so I can order beer. Mayhaps recruit one pregnant sister and her non-alcohol drinking husband… I is ebil. I know.)

The reception had a cheesy photobooth. I took a few pictures. Free alcohol for an hour.

Nothing really out of the ordinary for the reception. Food, dancing, cutting of the cake, etc. There was a candy buffet, which Adam insisted on calling it a candy bar (har har). I forgot to take pictures of my dinner. Oh, well.

And I caught the bouquet.

My sister is going to have a girl! No cross dressing boys in the future as I’ll get to make plenty of cute girly things for my niece. I’m sure there are plenty of cute patterns to knit and sew. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t go too overboard.

I need to get her a new nickname as Laurven sounds too boyish. Larvina is definitely not cute. I’ll have to think about it.

No, I don’t mean crunches as in sit ups. Saturdays, too. For the next 14 weeks. This is the 3rd week now, first Saturday was just this past weekend.

Now it’s time to sleep.

I finally uploaded my pictures from E3 onto Flickr.

I only went on Tuesday as that’s the only day the company gave. Some people went for an additional day, but I kinda felt that 1 day is good enough. I must be getting old.

I think the only game I really wanted to see was Final Fantasy XIV. My friend at SE let me in to play the game since there was a seat that was open. Woohoo! :) Ok, so the game was confusing, but I see the awesome potential there. Pretty, too.

MindHack is a WTH game. As in, this is not fun. :\

Medal of Honor’s multiplayer was kinda fun, but it felt like MW2.

Legend of Zelda’s controls were confusing.

Didn’t see Nintendo 3DS. The line was long and the wait could be anywhere between 30 minutes to over an hour. At my age, anything longer than 15 minutes better be worth it. I don’t find trailers and demos as worth it anymore. :P

The 2nd floor area was blocked off to exhibitors/2nd floor access badges, so I couldn’t get myself free water and food. My badge was exhibits only. That made me sad. Next year I need to figure out a way to upgrade my badge. :|

After E3 was over for the day, Adam and I tried to get into Wolfgang Puck’s so I can see the Lakers vs Celtics game. The restaurant was booked solid with RSVPs. :( We ended up walking around downtown Los Angeles looking for this one place that’s supposed to have a party, but we couldn’t find it. Turns out there was an intermediary location that we were supposed to go to first, but I never got the text because of AT&T’s network failure. -_- Anyway, at the party, I met up with people that I haven’t seen in a while. Pretty cool.

At a little past 9 PM, I was hungry and so was Adam, so we walked back to our car, stopping at the Panini Cafe for some grub. It was delicious. :9 Then back to the LACC to get my car and go home!

This year’s E3 started off with a bang tonight with a special Activision event at the Staples Center. Lots of music and guest appearances.

Let’s see if I can remember all the famous stars…

Usher
NERD
Rhea
Jane’s Addiction
Soundgarden
Eminem with Rhianna
Bohemian Rhapsody dude who’s name I don’t know…

Here’s an article about ATVI’s E3 event…

Ok, so I think the best part was Usher and Eminem. I don’t think I really cared about the rest, although Bohemian Rhapsody was fun.

When Call of Duty: Black Ops came on, there were fire coming out and fireworks! Crazy. That’s when Eminem got on stage, too. Pretty awesome.

Since the show started late, it ended late. I am so tired right now, but I’m really pumped about Black Ops and the event tonight that I had to make a blog entry.

According to the article above, the entire thing cost at least $5 million. Crazy.

The last time I went camping was back in the summer of 1995, right before I went off to Purdue. I can’t remember where we went or what we did exactly, but I remember it was a lot of fun.

Ok, the only thing I remember about it was that the girls tent was really cold, so we piled into the boys tent. I used a friend’s leg as a pillow. Very uncomfortable.

Memorial Day Weekend, one of my friends wanted to go white water river rafting near Sequoia National Forest. I’ve never gone white water river rafting before, so I was kinda nervous and I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to go.

I went.

Adam went with me as well. We drove up on Saturday morning and came back to Los Angeles on Monday. Rafting happened on Sunday.

When I saw the rushing river water, I thought to myself, why did I agree to this? I didn’t think I would die. I knew how to swim, and I had a life jacket and a helmet on. Surviving it wasn’t the issue. Coming out unscathed and in one piece was what I was worried about. I refused to sit at the front of the raft as well. More responsibility? On my first time? No thanks!

It’s actually a lot more fun than I expected. At least, after I got over my initial fears about it anyways. I got knocked out of the raft 2 times, and fell out once when we were doing a trust exercise (we stood on the edge holding hands while the guide spun the rafter around).

Another coworker went rafting, too, but I didn’t realize he was there until he saw me on Tuesday morning. He saw me and my Treyarch towel at the raft company’s parking lot. I had to go look him up in the office directory when I got back to my desk because I really didn’t know who he was.

Anyways, I think I might go rafting again next year. It was that fun. :)