Saturday, November 17, 2007

I went to San Diego last weekend to visit Jenny and go to Caroline's wedding. It was a short trip; I got there Friday night and left early Sunday morning. Here is a picture from the reception of me and Jenny through the water-filled centerpiece at our table:

Wow, that sentence had a lot of prepositional phrases: a picture (from the reception) (of me and Jenny) (through the water-filled centerpiece) (at our table).

My return flight had a stop in Houston. It turned out that the first officer on the flight from San Diego to Houston was retiring, and that flight was his last one. So I got to be part of a water cannon salute, where they have a couple of firetrucks spray an arch of water, and the plane taxis through the arch. Actually, it was kinda funny; the landing was pretty rough, and the guy sitting next to me said "man, he should be retiring." Haha.

Here's something sort of interesting. Several months ago, I was looking for time-lapse videos on youtube, because I think time-lapse videos are cool. I found this one where a guy takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years. So you see him age 6 years in 5 minutes. It's pretty cool. I really liked the soundtrack too; it was this piano track that was simple yet mesmerizing. In the video, the song was credited as "original music by Carly Comando," and I saw that she was one of those artists trying to make it on myspace. Fast forward a few months... earlier this week I was watching TV, and an NBA commercial comes on. The music is that same song! I guess someone who works at the NBA publicity office saw the same video. So, I guess she is at least enjoying some success from that.

Anyway, I bought the sheet music so I can learn it.

There's another video that's been circulating recently, which is of Cal's marching band doing a performance of scenes from 8-bit Nintendo games like the original Super Mario Bros., the original Zelda, etc. I got a kick out of it, remembering the days when I was 10 years old and playing those games, and then I realized something. Students in the band now were probably born around 1986. When they were 10 years old, they weren't playing these games. Sega Genesis, Super NES, Playstation, and N64 had all been released by 1996. In fact, the original NES was released before they were born. It made me feel old.

One more thing. We have a cat! We are taking care of my roommate's girlfriend's friend's cat for the next several months. Yay. I'll post some pictures of him when I get a chance. His name is Beanie.

Ok, one more thing after that. Tomorrow I'm going to see the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. I've never seen them and I don't think I've listened to more than one or two of their songs. But I bought tickets anyway, because they were only $10 and I'm pretty sure I would enjoy it.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

I'm psyched because yesterday I bought airline tickets to go home for the holidays, and they only cost me $199. I've never seen it that cheap, especially during the holidays -- in my experience, flights between Detroit and LA are typically around $300, and can go over $400 during peak times.

Oh, I just checked the prices again, the same flights on the same days are now $310!