I just finished Super Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The book was interesting; not as good as Freakonomics was, but still interesting. It wasn’t really a sequel either, more of a followup.

I’m just feeling good that I’ve read a book again. The last time I read one of these things was back in November. Up until then I was going through about 2-5 a month. And then Modern Warfare 2 came out.

So I think I’ll stay off the video games today and keep reading. Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” is sitting there on the coffee table so I guess I’ll just dig into it. Time to put on my bad-writing-glasses!!

NPR Reports that Reading Rainbow is coming to an end after 26 years.

Man what a bummer. I mean, I know I haven’t watched the show in about twenty years, but I’m still a little sad about it. The show was a huge part of my childhood; it was one of the few shows that mom would tune in for us.

Tomorrow’s kids will never have it as good.

It’s been a while since I last updated - We had out of town visitors last week, and spent a few days hanging out with them. We ended staying downtown over at the California, ate lots of buffet food, and I did a lot of reading (I finished Breaking Dawn [and subsequently, the Twilight series], and started reading another book called Greasy Rider.

It was fun, and a little hectic. Coming home almost felt like a vacation, except we came home to a hot, stagnant house with dishes still in the sink. It’s all good now, though.

I’ve been taking it easy this week. My Xbox redringed again a week ago and it took about one week for me to receive the shipping label (like I mentioned before, though, they stopped sending a box for you to send it in, so I had to find a spare box and buy some bubble wrap). It’ll take probably another month or so. Good times.

Not much else to write about right now. I finished reading Greasy Rider this morning. It was good; it was about a guy who buys a car, converts it to run on vegetable oil, and drives cross country with an old college friend on a sort of environmental quests, making stops along the way.

In other news, I started looking for a car. You know, I’ve never owned my own car before in my life… I’ve owned about eleven motorcycles (I should sit down and get pictures one day), but not one car.

Kerri turned 27 this past week. For dinner, we all met up at BWW and had some hot wings.

The rest of the week was pretty tame. I stayed at home for the most part and wasted my time playing Prototype, and then Red Faction, Guerilla. They were both decent, but I guess I was hoping for a little more. I was actually looking forward to Red Faction; I played one of the earlier RF games all the time when it was out on the PS2. The new one was…decent, but not enough to hold my interest for more than a few days. Plus, I hate multiplayer achievements (another reason why I think COD4 is one of the best games ever made, and I hope Modern Warfare 2 continues with the the no-online-achievements tradition).

My Xbox also red ringed a few days ago, so I had to port my profile over to Kerri’s console and I’ve been playing in the bedroom. The console’s right at the tail end of the 3 year warranty, but unlike the first time it bricked, I have to find my own box to ship the thing up to MS now. This would have been a lot easier if I were still living in Hawaii.

In other news, the weather’s been slightly cooler this past weekend, thanks apparently to some storm system around California right now. It dropped all the way down to the low 90’s, which meant that we didn’t have to use the AC yesterday. We also took a walk up and down the strip, stopping at good ol’ Casino Royale so I could double fist it with $1 Michelob’s. That stuff’s nasty!

Kerri had a hankering for poke today, and I realized I did too. When I was back in Hawaii, I didn’t really have too much, except this one time Lane and I went to Champions, and that other time, at Joel’s company party, which they let me crash. Kerri heard about this new place that opened, so we took a half hour drive up north.

The poke there was about $10-11/lb, which is a little more, but the stuff was really good. Plus, they had limu in their poke, which is way better than the chopped-fish-salad we tried back at L&L when we first moved here.

Other than that, it’s been a pretty tame weekend. The last time we were at the library, Kerri picked up this book called I Love Yous are for White People, based on the title, and I was reading it yesterday and just finished this afternoon. Real good read. It’s a memoir written by a guy about my age who escapes Vietnam with his family as a child, and grows up in LA. The guy’s been through a lot, and seems to have made so much out of himself despite all the opportunities he’s had in life to mess up. Shame on me!

In an effort to bring people in, the Palms has been mailing postcards to residents announcing random giveaways. The past few months, we’ve gone down to pick up sunglasses and a sweatshirt. Today’s giveaway was beer. Well, either beer or soda, so you know which one we’re picking up.

I also may have mentioned that they just opened a Lee’s Discount Liquor down the street from our house.

Not only is it a Lee’s Discount Liquor, it’s a Lee’s Discount Liquor Liquidation Center. Lots of 50 cent beers there. We’ve got a new favorite: Rolling Rock Light. Stuff goes down like water.

Anyway, we made a beer run today. First at the Palms, then we walked around the strip and did some walking (Casino Royale’s $1 beers included Bud Select today, which is a step up from the Michelobs they usually have). Then at LDL’s on the way home. Behold the fruits of our labor:

It’s not all for us. That big box of Miller is Reid’s birthday present when we see him tonight. Happy birthday, Reid!!

…In other news, I finished reading The Wauchula Woods Accord today. In the book, Siebert takes you on a very introspective and almost metaphysical journey as he attempts to connect with a captive champanzee named Roger, who seems to know him from somewhere before.

It was pretty deep stuff, and made me feel like I shouldn’t have been reading it at a pool full of screaming kids, girls in skanky bikinis, and old dudes who hike up their shorts when they lie face down on the lounge chairs. Oh well.

Sorry it’s been a while since I updated. I blame Facebook, which JoelC reminded me yesterday about the time he said:

“Hey Eric you heard of Facebook?”

And I said “Yeah I went on once or twice it’s kind of lame”

And he said “Yeah I’m with you” then deleted his account.

But ever since I uploaded the Malaysia pics about two weeks ago (because my free Flickr account is almost maxed out), and finally bothered to add the rest of my cousins, and other people I know, it’s been hard for me to stop going back. That, and they have a pretty evil Bejeweled game, that I can’t seem to stop playing.

Anyway, this past weekend went fairly well. It wasn’t a rager like the few weekdays before it. We went downtown on Friday night, and again on Saturday, and I ate saimin and zippy’s chili again.

On Sunday night, we met up with Reid for dollar bowling/dollar drinks down at the SouthPoint Casino. We had about 16 cups of PBR and I got blasted!

There we are. That’s me drinking one of the $1-dollar Pabsts’ and Kerri trying to steal mah drank.

For some reason, I ended up going home with Reid instead of with Kerri. We ate at In-N-Out burger for lunch the next day, and for the rest of the time, I sat around watching G4 TV’s coverage of ComicCon. It was good times.

Except that for the next several days, my thumb hurt, and (don’t ask me why) so did my inner thighs.

Of course that didn’t stop us from going back again last night. Woo!! My thumb hurts even more now. The thighs are okay though (again, don’t ask me why they hurt. I have no idea. Maybe I run funny with the ball or throw it weird?)

In other news, I just finished reading The Numbers Game, and left feeling underwhelmed. I guess if I never paid attention in high school stats, it would have been a more eye opening experience. But whatever.

I’m reading The Wauchula Woords Accord next, though. That one should be good. It’s about the Human-animal link.

So my flight was supposed to leave at 2:30 yesterday morning. Around 2:31, I was wondering why no one was boarding, and an announcement came up apologizing and stating that our flight would be delayed until 8:30.

Apparently something was wrong with our plane and ‘for our safety’, they were going to wait for the next one to come in.

On hearing that, I walked over to the bookstore and bought a copy of The Last Templar, which I hadn’t heard of before, but who’s cover touted that it was being adapted for an NBC TV series. I thought it’d be a nice, easy, trashy read.

It wasn’t. The book was poorly paced and boring at times. Thanks for nothing! I read it for most of the 6 hour delay, but toward the end, I put the book down and blew a few dollars on the airport video poker machines.

Anyway, I’m back home now! At least until Tuesday. There’s a lot of stuff mom needs help with - and I never realized how cluttered our house is. I really took for granted how much neater of a person Kerri’s made me (even though I’ve still got a long way to go).

Weather’s a bit cooler so far this weekend. It’s been up and down throughout the week, from the high 60’s to the low 80’s. It rained last night though, and cloudy today. It’s real nice and chill.

Reid called yesterday, to my surprise - he found himself with a ‘half day’ at work, being able to get off after 7 hours instead of the usual 16. I invited him over for beers and some dinner.

He kind of had ‘tha fevah’ so we went downtown afterwards. Kerri and I lost a couple bucks on slot machines at Main Street, and on the other end of the spectrum, Reid walked away a few hundred dollars richer from the blackjack table. Then we went to the Cal for dinner afterwards and stood in line with the Vacations Hawaii people who had just flown in, and hungry for the after-11pm oxtail soup. While we were there, Kerri saw her cousin’s grandparents. It’s a small ninth island.

In other news, I just finished reading Appetite for Self Destruction by Steve Knopper just now. The book’s about how the music industry got totally blindsided when Napster came around, and handled top executives handled things the wrong way time after time while they tried their best to maintain their greed, which ultimately screwed them over.

In the end, created a great opportunity for Steve Jobs to come in and totally play them out and boost sales of his iPods in one deal. It’s a nice tale of the undeserving powerful getting pwn3d.

Yeah, I know. Don’t laugh.

This is going to be a looo-ong story (or posting):

So I’ve been reading a bunch of books with long paragraphs and small typeface. Among my last four:

• Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things, by Laurence Gonzales (this one was a BIG WASTE OF TIME, but more on that later)
• Why Choose This Book, by Read Montague
• Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by Sam Gosling
• Don’t Stop Believin - How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed my Life, by Brian Raftery.

All good books - EXCEPT for “Everyday Survival” - that book was a total waste of time! It was interesting for the first few chapters, but the author suddenly started going severely off-topic, rambling about the environment and getting really preachy, while bragging about travels that he’s gone on. Toward the end of the book, he offers some half-assed explanation about how he’s still on topic (I didn’t buy it).

When I checked out user reviews on amazon.com for his book, I found that most everyone else felt the same way about the book. I kind of wish I knew about that sooner, but I guess that’s the risk you run when you randomly pick a book off the shelf. (an interesting aside - when I looked back at the blurbs on the back of the book jacket, they were all praises for one of the author’s OTHER books!).

Anyway, so I read such a crappy book and follow it up with the three other books, which were way better, but I still had that bad taste in my mouth. I was going to start up on a book I’ve been eager to read ever since I heard about it on NPR last year - The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. It’s a hypothetical situation about how the nature would recover the earth if all human beings suddenly disappeared overnight.

I was on one of the early chapters, about how most modern houses would probably fall apart in 50 to 100 years without maintenance, starting near the chimneys and nails (where there are holes or punctures in the materials). And I realized that I still had that bad taste from “Everyday Survival” on my mind (I only finished that book last Saturday - I finished the other three all this week. Yes, that’s how much time one has to read when one has no job).

(I’m totally ruining my own paragraphs with all these parenthetical notes).

Anyway, realizing I still had to get my mind off of last week’s book, I put down the one I was reading this morning and was going to play video games, but lying on the coffee table was that copy of Twilight that Kerri checked out from the library. I picked it up, wondering what all the hype was about.

The book’s pages have a narrow text area, the typeface is large(r), and the paragraphs are short. Man it was such easy reading - now wonder all the little girls liked it so much! I just kept going through it.

I started reading it this afternoon. I just finished all 499 pages about an hour ago. What the heck just happened?! I somehow feel guilty and ashamed about this…. but what the hell, I’ll just categorize this one as a fail AND a win, and click “publish” anyway.

HERE IT GOES! WOOO!!!!

I spent all day playing deBlob on the Wii yesterday. My arm hurts - and the only swinging movement required is to jump! The game’s good times, though; kind of like doing a coloring book, but without the crayons, or the creativity.

Gamefly’s taking forever to send me another game. I sent Prince of Persia back to those guys two weeks ago. They said they only received it last Tuesday (8 days later), and only shipped out my next game yesterday (6 days later).

I’ve pretty much had an empty slot with them for nearly half a month now. Wtf?!

Anyway, I’m trying my best today to not play video games, and to catch up on my reading. I finished Brain Rules by John Medina yesterday and I’m going through Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky now. Both good reads. I think I found out about both of them through NPR’s book reviews site.

And um… I guess that’s about it. Okay I’ve caved. I’m gonna go turn the Wii on now. I think I just started writing this entry to avoid playing video games today, but it just got me thinking about doing it even more.