i don't need to fight to prove i'm right i don't need to be forgiven don't cry don't raise your eye it's only teenage wasteland

While waiting for Gary and Leah on Friday night, V and i passed the time before dinner shopping on Irving St. While meandering through Wishbone, the source of much of Veronica's Paul Frank paraphernelia, she found a set of cockney rhyming slang flash cards. As i've mentioned before in this journal, right up my alley. I annoyed everyone a bit over our dinner at Pomelo, trying to work "noah" (Noah's Ark = shark) and "porkie" (pork pie = lie) into conversation. Unfortunately a lot of the terms in the cards refer to jail, the legal system, or crime (hmm, whyever is that?), but there are some gems in there. Keep your eyes peeled for my newfound vocabulary.

For starters, i'm gonna be using these for donkey's, even if i am a sherman.

Seeing as i just got a new 250 GB Lacie external firewire hard drive, my mp3 collection (at 110 GB pushing the limits of my old 120 GB Iomega firewire/USB drive) is now free to expand at will again. To celebrate this event, last weekend i ripped another 60-70 albums from V and my CD collection. This represents basically whatever was left that i hadn't yet mp3ified and was even remotely interested in. Dunno how often i'm going to be listening to 70's female punks X-Ray Spex or Scottish pop star Lulu, but there's a sense of comfort in knowing they're only a click away. I'm up to 24476 songs and 119.96 GB now, with room to grow even further. Yay for technology.

By the way, if anyone knows where i can find the out of print 1987 Etienne Daho singles compilation, aptly titled Collection, please let me know. I'm out of ideas.

No excuses: just haven't been in a posting mood lately. From trying to get up regularly at 7am or earlier to get an early start at work, to dealing with more political b.s. at Stanford, to coming home to resume the disheartening process of finding and buying a house, i just haven't been compelled to sit down and record my travails. But now that a wave of inclination to write has hit me, let me summarize the last ten days or so.

After finishing my grant, i didn't get to relax immediately as i had to prepare a two hour lecture on 3D fluorescence imaging for the following Monday. The lecture was one of two for me in a team-taught course on molecular imaging. My first teaching role ... again, the authority doesn't seem to go with me. Anyhow, after sleeping in and playing some Burnout 3: Takedown, i headed down to Stanford at churned out 56 slides from 3pm until 8:30pm. Not the Saturday i'd hoped for. When i got home, Veronica had left to meet Marcus and Javier in the city for dinner and drinks, so i occuppied myself with more Burnout before falling asleep. What a brilliant game. I just finished the race and crash modes yesterday, and was a bit saddened that no further challenges awaited me. I could try accomplishing all the signature takedowns, but that might take a very long time and be very frustrating so i think i'll pass. Great game though ... definitely the funnest driving game i've ever played. And that's saying a lot, because for years i was in love with San Francisco Rush 2049 on the Dreamcast.

After Burnout, my Gamefly subscription has served up a few duds ... Max Payne 2 is a pretty ho-hum first person shooter (albeit with a stylish film noir, comic book storytelling style), while Deus Ex: Invisible War just didn't do anything for me. Lousy controls, unimpressive visuals, and a silly intro ... three strikes and you're out. Currently i'm working on Second Sight, a third person shooter about a paranormal researcher who gets sucked into an international plot to develop telekinetic soldiers. It's not mind blowing, but it's decent and the story is developing nicely. Just yesterday i received X-Men Legends, for which i have high hopes. Of course all these will be tossed aside on October 25 when i can claim my preorder for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Back to the title of this post, over the weekend i saw an ad for the new Ren & Stimpy - The Complete First and Second Seasons DVD set. When Ren Hoek and Stimpson J. Cat premiered on MTV and Nickeloden i loved them, so this week i kept an eye on the online inventory of our local Borders, and yesterday picked up the set. It's great to see the unique animation style and offbeat humor of John Kricfalusi again, even if certain reviewers on Amazon have noticed that the set isn't really "uncut" as it claims. I made Veronica watch "Sven Hoek" ("So, you whizzed on the electric fence?"), then let her fall into a disinterested nap while i watched "Space Madness" ("You coveted my ice cream bar!").

More of the same in the housing market lately. Our realtor Joe did find a beautiful two bedroom house in Redwood City that was listed for $549k. As bids were due imminently, we put one together and Joe presented it the next day. Unfortunately somebody else came in with a "no contingency" bid ... as i understand it meaning they essentially said "here's $X, we'll take it now. No wait to see if our loan gets approved, no wait while we inspect the house, just give us the keys". Can't compete with that. Such is that brutal Bay Area housing market. Two weekends ago Joe took us to four houses, each of which was crap. Then last weekend we saw four houses that were all very nice. We're debating putting in an offer on one in Redwood City. It's a craftsman home from the 1930's, only one bedroom but a good size and very well kept. I'm not sold on the neighborhood or the amount of storage space but the house has been on the market for a few weeks, which suggests that the seller may be willing to negotiate (an extreme rarity in this market). Alternately, we saw a beautiful completely detached townhouse in Foster City that has Veronica second guessing her anti-townhouse stance. I really don't want to submit 100 bids knowing that eventually the law of averages will prevail, but i think that's the way it's going to work. But that means i'm going to end up becoming totally pessimistic about each bid we submit. No fun, this Bay Area house hunting.

Last Friday V and i met up with Gary and Leah for dinner at Pomelo, followed by a few rounds of Donkey Konga on Gary's GameCube. Donkey Konga follows in the footsteps of Dance Dance Revolution in being a physical, rhythm-oriented game. You bang and clap on a pair of conga drums according to the rhythm of the selected song. The game scores you according to how well you keep the rhythm. A lot like Samba de Amigo, which did the same thing but with a pair of maracas. The next day while V took me clothes shopping, we took a slight detour to EB. We then returned home not only with three new shirts, some nice jeans, and a black harrington jacket for me, but also with Donkey Konga and two pairs of drums. The game is great, but your hands hurt after a few of the speed clapping segments.

We've now had konga battles with Gary and Leah and also Naomi and Geoff, who came over to try it out after we had dinner with them and Naomi's family at Gordon Biersch on Embarcadero in San Francisco. While waiting for a table i got to take Naomi's new Vespa for a spin. And much to Veronica's disbelief both the scooter and i made it around the block no worse for the wear. The last time i rode a Vespa, i crashed into a curb and went over the handlebars into a bush. I then had to push the scooter five blocks home since i'd knocked the front wheel out of alignment. With no clutch to worry about, Naomi's ride was much less stressful to operate. Hrm ...

Off to LA tomorrow for this year's installment of the SMFA Cup with Matthew, Gary, and Sean. Matthew and i are gonna do a bit of open sea fishing beforehand, hopefully catching a nice fish fry dinner. Look Monday for pictures of the boat-sized fish i expect to catch.