today started off with a slow start. i had a bad night’s sleep, but i’m not sure what it was that caused the lack of sleep. yesterday was a semi-productive day, and i had a bunch of people over for dinner. i made tri-tip and pork chops with the last of my propane on the grill. it’s been a while since i’ve grilled anything so that was kind of nice. with about 9 people in attendance, we managed to polish off two big cuts of tri-tip and a good portion of the pork chops. it was quite the meaty dinner.

[url=http://www.track15.com]dardy[/url] was one of the attendees and he was catching us up with the goings on of his life. it seems that there are a lot of changes in store for him. but it was good catching up with him, i haven’t really hung out with him in a while.

it was good to be able to catch up with people in general, i sort of feel a little disconnected with certain people lately. i don’t know what it is, but it just seemed like i’ve not hung out with some people for quite a while.

i went hiking on saturday at castle rock. i got a little lost on the hike, but eventually found my way back. there were some rock climbers climbing goat rock, which was on the hike that we went on, so i sat there for a bit watching them climb the face of the rock. yeah…rock climbing is definitely not a sport for me.

all in all the weekend was restful…i have a ton of laundry that i need to do, though. i probably should have done it this weekend, but oh well.

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i was at the farmer’s market today and there was a long line at the kettle corn booth. this booth is always a popular pick at the farmer’s market. today, the line was extra long because there was only one person working the booth.

the guy in front of me goes and asks, “you think this guy needs some help? maybe i’ll go and help him out and i’ll get a bag of free popcorn.”

so the guy goes there and volunteers his services and gets to filling the popcorn and selling it to the folks waiting in line. i thought that was kind of cool of the guy to go up and just offer help like that.

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i decided to check out the open gym in milpitas to see if this was something that i wanted to do on a more regular basis. the last time i went to open gym was many, many years ago. and the last time i went, i remember that i played in the beginner’s court. the middle court was too intimidating for me and i didn’t want to feel like i was messing up the game.

but this time around, i signed up for the middle court and it was just fine. i felt pretty comfortable playing there and the play was decent. but i did feel that something was missing from open gym. there just wasn’t a sense of team spirit there and i thought that i was just playing for the sake of playing. i didn’t really get the ball as often as i would have liked to, as the regulars tended to involved more of their own than newcomers.

still, it was alright. if i couldn’t play anywhere else, then i think that i would have liked to have played more there, but i don’t know if i really find it fulfilling enough for me. that being said, i think that i probably won’t be going regularly unless i go with a big group of friends.

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i’m making the trek into the city tonight to do some product photography for a friend of mine. it appears that she’s the pastry chef at this bakery in the sunset district and they are going to have a chocolate truffle tasting tonight. i’m going to go and check out some of the confections that they have and also get an idea of what kind of pictures they want for their shop.

i’m not really too keen on taking pictures of food. it’s still a bit of a mystery to me how to make food look tasty. there’s something that seems to always be lost in translation when it comes to food photography. i don’t quite know what the secret is, but i’m sure that it’ll be a lot of work to get it to the pro level.

i’m just going to try and wing it and do a few test shoot to see how it works out though…and besides, a free truffle tasting can’t be SO bad.