November 2003 Archives

Yesterday, Marc, Kenny and I went to the 106th Big Game between Cal and Stanford. Leslie (my other brother) went too, but ended up sitting at a different section than us, because the lamer didn't get us the cheapie tickets he got. If you're not familiar with the Big Game, it's basically the big rivalry football game that's held each year. The winner of the game gets to take home "The Axe." This year was a blast. The game was held at Stanford, but Cal fans easily outnumbered Stanford fans. Cal started out looking pretty crappy, fumbling the ball a few times. Luckily Stanford was even more inept, and didn't do much with the turnovers. At the half, Cal was down 10-0. The second half though, it was like watching a different team. They came back and scored 4 touchdowns, and gave Stanford a good beatdown, winning 28 to 16.

I love going to college football games, because there's just so much more energy there than a regular pro game. The students go nuts, and doing all the school cheers is a ton of fun. It never gets old. The one thing that sucked this year was all the cops they had. It's tradition that at the end of a big game, the students for the winning team will rush the field and tear down the goalposts. This time they had a whole bunch of cops in riot helmets standing around and blocking the bleachers. At the end, a couple students who tried to get on the field got wrangled down by a group of cops. It was all pretty lame.

Other than that though, it was a lot of fun. I cheered my lungs out, even though we were sitting in the nosebleed seats (the stadium on our side was PACKED). Even better, with the win, Cal gets to go to a bowl game! Go Bears! Stanford sucks!

Snuggles

Last night we were watching TV in our bedroom, and I was getting ready to go to sleep. I closed my eyes, and as I was lying there, I heard Snuggles jump into the bed. I knew it was her because she likes to sleep with us at night. A few seconds later, I feel what seems to be fur brushing my lips, and there's this horrible smell. I opened my eyes to the sight of her butt. SHE ALMOST SAT ON MY MOUTH! I was totally horrified.

Sunday and Arby's

Today we went out a bought a seat cover for the Rav4's back seat. We put Bandit back there a lot, and there's always tons of fur on the seat, which is gross, especially for people who have to sit back there. So we picked up one at Petsmart, and it fits and looks okay.

I also broke down today and had Arby's for lunch. I've been avoiding it ever since the band-aid incident. But I got hit with a really bad craving today. Marc went to pick it up, and said that they're wearing gloves now! I don't know if I had anything to do with it, but I'm glad to hear it! I still plan to check for band-aids everytime though.

Other than that and some football, it was a pretty uneventful Sunday. Except when Bandit went out and had diarrhea and stepped in it and then came inside. That was kind of not fun.

I went out with some of my coworkers for lunch today - we were going to have pho (Vietnamese soup noodles, which I try to eat as much as I can at work, since Marc hates them, and I loooove them). I drove the RX-8, and as we pulled up to a light, we spotted a silver RX-8 across the intersection. It was being driven by an older gentleman. My coworker says, "You should give him the 'Mazda Wave.'" I used to get thumbs-up from people all the time when I drove my Mustang, so I figured, why not? So when the light turned green, I drove by the guy, and gave him my best, biggest smile, and a big 'ol thumbs up. I don't know whether he thought I was crazy, or if he was scared by the sight of a young Asian woman driving a fast car and not watching the road, but he didn't give me a thumbs up in return. He didn't even wave, just kind of stared at us. Yeah, maybe I looked a little crazy (I took a picture of myself giving a thumbs up, and it was kinda creepy), but what happened to comraderie? I don't get it. It made me sad.

Rental Car

Tonight I dropped off the RX-8 at the dealer to get detailed and have Lo-Jack installed. They gave me a Ford Focus as a loaner car. Man, is this thing a pile. I swear it has rotors made out of pizza pans.

Been busy working on my assignment for my class (essay questions are teh suck), so I slacked on my updates this week. Which is probably not a big deal, since not much happened this week. But now that's I've turned in my assignment, I can get back to wasting time. :)

On Friday night, Kenny (my brother), came over for dinner and to hang out and spend the night, since my parents are gone for two weeks in Taiwan and Hong Kong for my grandfather's 89th birthday. Which is cool, since my parents haven't been on vacation in like, forever.

We ended up watching "Dreamcatcher", which was horrible. It was based on a Stephen King novel, but instead of being great and ending in a really lame way as usual, it got lame pretty early. In the meantime, Bandit kept busy with a rawhide bone, which we found out the next morning was a Bad Idea.

Saturday morning I woke up, and let Bandit out to pee - when he was done, I let him back him and went back to bed to resume my peaceful coma. I made the mistake of letting him stay out of his crate. When Marc woke up later, he found mucho diarrhea on the stairs. Rawhide doesn't agree with the dog, apparently. It was even splattered on the walls. We didn't dwell too much on how that happened.

Kenny let Bandit outside, and since it had been raining and our backyard was totally muddy, we were greeted by the sight above. Muddy, muddy dog, and muddy, muddy door, thanks to muddy, muddy paws.

RX-8 Fun

Even though the weather wasn't great, we decided to wash, clay and Zaino the RX-8 anyways. The car had a lot of rail dust on it, so it was good to get it nice and smooth. We spent all afternoon on it, and when we were done, it was shiiiiiiny! Sunday morning we took it out and took a bunch of photos.

It seems that we not only bought ourselves a car, but a flamethrower as well. Ever see the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious? If you haven't, please spare yourself the pain. Basically, the movie has all these suped up cars in it, and one scene has one of the cars spouting fire from its tailpipes. When I saw that I was thinking, "oh great, another silly mod that kids are doing these days."

However, as I learned this morning, this is something that seems to happen naturally, at least with the RX-8. It has to do with getting the engine really hot, and revving it wide-open throttle to get the exhaust to pop, and apparently that causes excess fuel to ignite and throw flames out the exhaust pipes. Crazy!

Here's a video I found of someone demonstrating this. (You'll need Quicktime to view it.) I don't think we'll be trying this at home.

We'll need to go somewhere with more space, of course. ;)

Mods

Speaking of mods, I think Marc and I have already been bitten by the mod bug with this car. We know that's I'm already highly susceptible to this bug - well you know if you ever saw my Mustang GT. :) One of these days I'll get some pictures up of that car - I had so much fun modding everything I could on it. Marc is starting to get the itch on the RX-8, although he's still thinking small at the moment. I'm working on getting him to think big. ;)

Saturday I had to drop off my Rav4 at the shop to get some brake work done. Afterwards, since we were in the area, we decided to stop by Costco. Of course, we went meaning to just buy some meat and stuff for lunch, and ended up leaving with over $200 worth of groceries. Costco is evil!

Problem with Costco is that everytime you go, you find all sorts of neat stuff that you just HAVE to have. One of them was a big plush Nemo for $18.99. It was so cute! Marc reluctantly grabbed it and put it in the cart, but in an amazing display of willpower, I took the very, very cute Nemo and put him back on the shelf. Did I mention it was really cute? Well it was. Really.

Another really cool thing I found was a dog goodie pack that they had. For like $20, you got a whole bag of toys and treats and all sorts of other goodies, which normally would probably cost you at least $40 at Petsmart. It included a soft frisbee (we needed a new one), some rawhide chews, a Kong tennis ball, treats, and a plush tiger toy. Bandit was pretty excited about all his new toys. Costco is so awesome - but evil!

Zoom Zoom

After our little shopping spree at Costco, we were driving along and we spotted a blue Ford Lightning. The Lightning is from Ford's SVT division (Special Vehicle Team), which is the same group that designs the Mustang Cobra. It's basically an F150 truck that's been modified and supercharged. It gets 390 horsepower and goes from 0-60 in about 4.5 seconds. Marc said, "let's go test drive one of those." Of course, I'm not going to say no to that, so we went to the Ford dealership right down the street.

The truck is a monster. Putting the pedal to the floor literally plants you against the seat - Marc test drove that truck with the biggest grin plastered on his face. We got back, and were really starting to consider buying it.

But, for the past couple of months, we'd been talking about either buying a Honda S2000 or the Mazda RX-8 (I wanted a Cobra, but Marc wouldn't hear it, the pooper). So we decided to go test drive the RX-8 also (the Mazda dealership was right next door, and owned by the same people). Marc really liked it, moreso than the Lightning. I never test drive cars - usually I just decide on a car I like, and that's that. :)

We hadn't gone with the intention of buying a car, but after haggling with the salespeople for a while, we got a pretty good deal on the car. The fact that it was pouring outside and we were the only people in the dealership probably helped. We traded in Marc's Integra, and drove home with a red Mazda RX-8! When the weather improves, we'll get some Zaino on this puppy and get some nice pics. In the meantime, here are some crappy garage pics.

Whew! Busy weekend. :)

Last night was my night to cook dinner. So, being the ambitious person that I am (I better not hear laughing), I decided to try two new recipes, both cassarole dishes. Nothing special, just some pasta and green beans.

It was all going well until I learned that when opening pasta, it's best to use scissors. (Click on the pictures for larger versions.)

However, this little setback did not deter me from completing my meal. I moved on, and continued making a nice little mess in the kitchen.

I also tried to make some toast to go along with the meal (yeah, we're weird like that, we like toast at dinner - carbs = bad!). I'm not very good at making toast.

Still, I pushed on. And at 9 pm we sat down to a nice dinner. Also, since I have no clue how to reduce a recipe, we also have leftovers for the rest of the week.

Marc's story of the week - Marc apparently has too much free time at work. So while one of his coworkers (who loves the movie Office Space - it IS a pretty awesome movie) was out of the office, they decided to fill his entire cubicle with boxes (you'd have to see the movie to understand). So Marc, also known as He Who Has Too Much Time, put together a Power Point slide show to document the prank. Click here to see it. :)

I got my pre-ordered copy of Finding Nemo! Blockbuster has this pretty cool deal, where you can pre-order a movie on DVD for $29.99, and you get 7 free rentals (one each week for 7 consecutive weeks). We did the same deal when I pre-ordered The TWo Towers. It's nice, since we rent movies a lot.

So Marc and I watched it last night (even though we've seen it like 2 or 3 times already). It's still funny. The whale singing just never gets old. :)

Now I just have to wait for X2 to come out. ;)

Bandit graduated from Advanced Obedience today. We've been taking these classes at the Petsmart in Dublin ever since he was 12 weeks old. We started out in Puppy class, which went over some basic things like sit, down, stay, and a lot of socialization. It was always tons of fun to watch all the puppies play together. After that was the Basic Obedience class, where they went over the basic commands more intensely, as well as learning new commands. Advanced Obedience was a lot of heeling, staying, and learning to work with distractions. Bandit can stay like a pro, but getting him to come when called is definitely still a work in progress.

After class, we were pretty much unproductive. :) I ended up playing Dark Age of Camelot while watching football, and Marc watched football. The 49ers won, so I think he was happy. I'm pretty sure he was, since I didn't hear any of the swearing and screaming I did last week when they TOTALLY CHOKED against the Cardinals.

We're trying to figure out what to do with this one part of our yard. We don't have a very large backyard, but there's basically a porch that's surrounded on three sides by dirt. We've put down grass on two sides, and left the third alone. Problem is, from watering our lawn, and possibly poor drainage, it's turned into perma-mud. Perma-mud + Border Collie puppy = BIG MESS. So we're trying to figure out what to do with that spot now. We've talked about grass (which probably isn't good to do in the winter), rocks (which I don't want), or pine bark/wood chips, which I'm sure isn't going to stop a dog that wants to dig. I hate thinking about things like this because well, I'm lazy, so if anyone has any ideas as to what we could/should do, please share!

Marc and I went to eat at Mimi's Cafe for lunch today. We sat down next to these two girls and noticed that one of them was wearing a Roche badge, which is the company I work at. What a coinkidink! Marc and I both order French Dip sandwiches, which weren't that good, although my French onion soup was pretty good. It was a French kinda lunch for me. Anyways, after we finished, as we were leaving, I realized that my sunglasses had fallen out of my purse. So I head back to the table, and Roche girl is sitting there holding them and looking at them very intently. I go up to the table, and she says to me, "are these yours?" I tell her yes, and she goes, "wow, that's really weird, because I have the exact same sunglasses, and I thought they were mine." So I retrieve my sunglasses, and we head out to the car, and parked right opposite us is a blue Rav4, the exact same car we were driving. It was like Twin Day or something! Neat.

We found out tonight that putting on a Halloween mask totally freaks the dog out. Even if you put it on and take it off and put it back on again. He goes from freaked, happy, and back to freaked again. You'd think with that great sense of smell he'd catch on at some point that it's the same person, but go figure.