My dad and I get along pretty well. I inherited his genes for the most part. This is good for the survival part; in the beauty department, I didn't inherit my mom's hair-styling make-up-applying abilities. Still working on those - I do believe that they can be learned. :)

Well, every once in a while, my dad will say something totally out of character. Two conversations in recent memory stick out for me.

Me: Dad, do you have an extra hairdryer? My new haircut requires a hairdryer to make it look good. [sulk]
My dad: Oh, good! (runs off to get a hairdryer for me)
[ this is contrary to his / our nature because we are both really low maintenance when it comes to our appearance ]

Me: You know Dad, I went to this party the other night, and I was trying to make new friends and talk to new people, and there were all these girls who refused to talk to me because they were only interested in hitting on guys! Sheesh.
My dad: Well maybe they have the right idea!
[ ?!?! ]

Speaking of which, Father's Day is coming up. Hmmm. What to get the dad who no longer really cares about material possessions ...

Last weekend I headed out to watch Nancy's black belt test as soon as I got done with my patients. Unfortunately I missed everything except the last kick! Luckily her brother Dave got it all on video, so I got to watch Nancy's entire test later. Still got to take a bunch o' pics though. :)

Man, what an inspiration. Sweet, skinny lil' Nancy kicks some major arse, man. Her four years of dedication and hard work all showed through at this test. I got to meet her sensei Rick, who sacrificed a lot to teach Nancy, and I'm sure he knew it was worth it. Nancy, you rock. You are truly a testament to reaching your goals if you just put your mind to it.

Yup. It's happening. My friends are starting to have kids.

Annie's sister Stella and I have been plotting Annie's baby shower for the last month and a half, and basically what happened was I did the slideshow and emcee duties, and Stella did everything else. Considering the work load, I got off way easy. :)


If you look carefully, you'll find me in this lil' snippet. :) (WMV, 47secs, 3MB)

Some Factoids

Total DVD Running Time: about 4.25 minutes; the shortest yet
Total Hours Spent: 2-3 wks, in my spare time
Number of Major Revisions: One, while trying to re-organize the story layout. And then millions of minor tweaks to get it juuuuuuuust right.
Number of Pics I Personally Took that Made it In: 5 (woohoo!)
Programs Used:

• Adobe Premiere 6.5 (I finally forced myself to learn how to use the native title tool)
  
• Sonic MyDVD (for authoring to DVD and making a pretty animated menu screen)

Song Used (linked to Amazon, where they have the song clip):

• Love Of My Life - Jim Brickman feat. Michael W. Smith

At about 1:00am I had this terrible craving for hot 'n sour soup. And so I up and made some.

I'm sorry, but I think I might just make the bestest hot 'n sour soup in the world. I am sweatin' up a storm, it was so good and peppery. Thass what I'M talkin' about! Craving FULFILLED!!

I must give thanks to Chef Hugh for so kindly teaching me. But has the student surpassed the teacher (in just this one dish, of course)?

Looks like I've got lunch tomorrow. Add a little leftover restaurant rice in there, and I've got hot 'n sour rice soup. For dinner, I wouldn't mind having some hot 'n sour noodle soup ...

Can you tell that hot 'n sour soup is like my favoritest soup of all time? Hehe.

I just accidentally pressed ctrl-4 ... then I tried ctrl-1, -2, -3 ...

You can switch quickly between the tabs in your Firefox browser with this, ctrl-1 being the first tab (leftmost), ctrl-2 the second tab from the left, and so on. SWEET!!

Yes, I get excited over keyboard shortcuts. I love 'em.

If you don't know what Firefox is ... well, go get it. :) It's basically a replacement for Internet Explorer. I never thought I would dig the tabbed browsing experience, but I am totally a fan now!

First of all, happy belated Day of the Devil: 06/06/06. This is a good time to commemorate my Evil Twin Car. And almost forgot about this one.

Secondly, I've posted pics of my Memorial Day solo adventure. I went out to Caddo Lake in East Texas, which they claim is the only natural lake in Texas. I don't know what the definition of "natural" is, because there are tons of lakes in Texas!

Another draw to driving 4.5 hours out to this place is that on the shores of Caddo Lake is a city called Uncertain. Yup. Population 150. And I've got pics to prove it. Yes, I actually pulled over to take a picture with the sign! (Yep, I'm a dork like that.)

I've also got the bug bites to prove I was out in the wild. My feet are STILL covered with outrageously red, itchy bites. Argh! I have to muster all of my self-discipline to not scratch. Yargh.

As much as I was looking forward to solitude, I ended up meeting a photographer named Jessica (we started talking when I saw her toting her Nikon DSLR around) with whom I have probably physically crossed paths in both Austin and in Orange County (SoCal). The pic of me here taking a picture was taken by her. And THEN we met this crazy crew from Paris, TX. Alcohol was involved. That is all I'm going to say. What happens in Uncertain, stays in Uncertain! :) [ Jessica's Caddo Lake pics ]

Here is my assortment of pics from May. New friends, old friends, ebonics and perversion at the Chinese supermarket, Doggles, and all the randomness you've come to expect and love, um, right?

Random thought of the day / week / month: It has just occurred to me that I'm not really a photographer, but more a documenter of life. Does it really matter? Probably not. It's just that when I see some of the portfolios out there, I am deeply humbled. I gots no skills. Just lots of enthusiasm. :)

Photo-viewing hint: there's a slideshow button at the top. I actually really like viewing other peoples' pictures in slideshow format, with captions on.

Update - Bonus: if you go through the gallery carefully, you *might* find a funny video clip of me. :) (SmugMug doesn't have lots of support for videos yet, so I had to use YouTube.)

I came home from my little excursion last weekend with a cold and legs massively covered in red bug bites. My best friend right now is a bottle of Benadryl anti-itch gel. MUST ... NOT ... SCRATCH!!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!