my volleyball captain and i were having drinks at fridays the other week and we were talking about how life changes once you get engaged. he said that i’d have to dump all of my single friends and make new married friends. he said that it is the natural order of things. i hope that that isn’t the case.

i’ve been trying not be too obsessed with all of the wedding planning stuff, but when that is what takes up the majority of my brain power these days, it’s hard to find something to blog about. even when i’m hanging out with friends (it seems like half of my friends got engaged this year) i try to make an effort not to get too engrossed in all the details of the wedding planning that i’m sure the single folk could really care less about.

so i went bowling this week. i bowled a 153 and 163. i seem to be consistently there. can’t get any better, don’t get too much worse. i guess that’s about the limit of my bowling abilities unless i try something radically different. i’m a straight shooter. that’s my style. both in bowling and in life. but anyway, i digress.

the holiday seasons have come upon us and i’m really excited about the cayman islands trip that i’ve got coming up. i’ve started to make a list of things to pack and so far it looks like i’m already bringing too much camera equipment. i’m trying to go to the islands without a laptop, so my storage needs are stressing me out a little bit. i bought a new memory card to replace the one that i seem to have misplaced. i looked for it everywhere, but i cannot find it. =(

i’m jealous about the FABs meeting. the last time that i went on a big blogger meet, i met dardy and he’s became one of the bowling gang. maybe it’s time for me to string together some bloggers and make a meet. it’s just that a bunch of guy bloggers meeting for dinner and dessert sounds sort of suspect. =P and MAB doesn’t sound nearly as cool.

the tv repair guy was able to fix it. it turns out that the bulb was fine. it was the ballast that needed repair. an electronic ballast is a device that provides steady electical current for the starting up and operation of a lamp. it’s bad when this thing breaks. it also turns out that this repair is documented on the web. it doesn’t seem like a difficult thing to do, but the parts seem expensive.

anyway, the tv repair guy fixed the tv and all is well with the world again. the tv works, i’ve got netflix dvds waiting to be watched, and the living room doesn’t seem nearly as sad and quiet as it once had.

ah yes, life is good.

about a week ago, my BRAND NEW samsung DLP TV died. i turned it on and then it just wouldn’t go on. lights started flashing on the front panel, but no picture. i almost saw my life flash before my eyes. it was that bad.

the thing is that this TV isn’t more than 6 months old. how can it be broken already?? i haven’t moved it at all! so after my initial shock passed, then came anger. yes, anger. this is supposed to be a high quality, finely tuned instrument. i was all nervous about the tv breaking on delivery, but it was fine. i never would have expected this to be the problem.

i initially thought that the tv’s lamp had broken. those are expensive to replace, so i called up samsung’s warranty hot line and scheduled repair.

the repair guy is over right now and he replaced the bulb but the tv isn’t working still…this sounds like it’s a more major problem. =(

i’m glad that the tv is still under warranty though. samsung’s warranty service was painless and setting up the appointment was easy, so they get points there. i’ve never had a tv fail on me before so soon though, so i don’t know what happened there.

i hope the repair guy has enough parts to fix the tv. i’ve been without a tv for a week. it’s KILLING me.

we went to the big game over the weekend and watched cal narrowly beat stanford 26-17. i say narrowly beat because i think cal was a 29 point favorite over the trees. it was FREEZING at the game, i thought that i was going to become a human popsicle.

i also had a slice of fat slice pizza. that slice of pizza was a slice of heaven. de-li-ci-ous!

this weekend was jam-packed with stuff to do and i think that i need a break from all of the weekend festivities. i also went to bing crosby’s in walnut creek. it’s a little bit out of the way, but the food was absolutely delicious. i kept hearing rave reviews about the place and i was not disappointed. if you are in the area, or even if you aren’t, go check it out. you will not be disappointed.

i was driving to work today and while driving next to this car on the freeway, out of NOWHERE, this cop comes and starts flashing his lights and sounding his siren. it was a 50/50 shot at which one of us he was going to pull over and he pulled over the other guy.

PHEW!

let me say it again.

PHEW!!

i don’t usually speed (too much) anymore, but i just got lost in the flow of traffic was was going close to 80mph again. the one thing about getting into work at 10AM is that there never really is any bad traffic. back when i had a 50 mile commute each way, traffic was so bad sometimes that i would be deliriously happy if i was moving faster than 25mph.