on friday, [url=http://www.phamily.org]paul[/url], [url=http://leafee.ocliw.com]leeya[/url], mia, and i went to [url=http://www.asqewgrill.com/menu.html]asqew grill[/url] at bay street in emeryville for lunch. it was very good. i was actually surprised that the restaurant was an all skewer type of a place, but the salads and sauces were quite good. i didn’t like the beef as much as the chicken, but both were still quite tasty.

i may have to go there again some other time. good eating, indeed.

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ray, jen, courtney, and i played in the JACL grass tournament over the weekend. the last time we played in this tournament we were in the same pool, but the play was much more competitive. this time around, it wasn’t that competitive and i felt like the games were a lot easier than they should have been. we will definitely play up the next time around.

but we won and we got some t-shirts so that was good.

this is the last volleyball tournament of the season. i think that i will be playing a lot less volleyball now, though, and i still haven’t found anything to pass my time. not sure what it is that i’m going to do…i have to pick up a new hobby. hmmmm, i wonder if i should start hiking again. i do miss hiking.

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i made jambalaya last night. this is probably the third or fourth time i’ve made it and i made a slight change to the recipe this time around. i decided to not to use tabasco as the hot ingredient and used a blend of other hot spices. i thought that the jambalaya had a little bit of a kick to it, but [url=http://www.phamily.org]paul[/url] couldn’t detect any. i guess i’m just pretty sensitive to that stuff.

a bunch of people came over for lemon drop night, which morphed into dominoes night. dominoes was pretty fun, i must say…though we play with different and weird rules. i guess it just depends on however you want to play…

it was good to make dinner last night though. i feel like i haven’t cooked in the longest time and it was definitely a little relaxing to be able to make dinner. it was all eaten up so there were no leftovers to bring to work today. i’m surprised because i thought that the recipe usually fed around 10 people or so, but it only fed 4 or 5 last night. i guess we were all hungry.

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i’m feeling a little under the weather today. i think that i may be coming down with something but i can’t get sick with the volleyball tournament tomorrow…which reminds me i need to do some grocery shopping for food stuffs tomorrow. maybe i’ll bake some snickerdoodles tonight. i need to wake up super early for volleyball tomorrow, the captain’s meeting is at 7:45AM. just great. and just when you thought that you’d be able to sleep in…

i wonder if we have to ref during this tournament. i would imagine that we would have to, but i’m not sure. oh well. i’m looking forward to playing, but from what i hear the competition is stiff. our team ought to be alright, though. we’ll see.

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i know that talking about how excited i am about my spam filtering techniques is probably not the most exciting of topics to read about, but i did write a new web interface now to manage my spam filtering. i wonder just how far i am going to take this spam filtering before i lose interest. actually, my biggest fear is that i will be filtering out emails and losing some real emails. oh well, hopefully that won’t happen, but if i haven’t written back to you in a while, that’s why. =P

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it was a decent commute day today. still took about 10 minutes longer than i would have wanted, but that isn’t so bad.

yesterday was sort of a depressing volleyball day. we got eliminated in the first round. i don’t think that that has ever happened to me before this season and it’s sad to see that we just all had an off day.

i really do wonder what it will take for me to play better. i do feel sort of stuck at this level and i don’t feel like i’m getting better. hmmmmm, maybe it’s time to look for other things to do.

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one of my ex-coworkers came by briefly to chat it up with us. i really do miss her. having her around was pretty cool and she was fun to be with. now that she’s left the company, the person who has taken her job just isn’t the same. i guess change like that is hard for me to get used to. i’m trying to be flexible, but maybe i’m really becoming an old dog who can’t be taught any new tricks.

tonight is playoff night for my sunday night volleyball team. this reminds me that i want to get a new volleyball. maybe i’ll get a new white one, we’ll see. but i have been wanting a new volleyball for quite some time now. i guess i should start looking online to see if any good deals are out and about.

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i was not nearly as upset about my commute this morning than i think i ordinarily would be. part of it is probably because i had something to occupy my time. i was listening to the smallville behind the scenes episode. it’s interesting to hear how articulate some of the actors are, especially because i would have thought that they wouldn’t be quite so serious or devoted.

but i guess that’s just what happens when you take too much of an actor’s character and mistake it for who they really are. though, i still believe that rob lowe is himself in every role that he plays. he’s just quirky like that.

but now that it is getting late in the afternoon, i regret not being able to leave at my usual time. i sort of miss being able to leave and just enjoy the rest of the sun left in the too-short day.

oh well, perhaps it’s time to get afternoon tea. i haven’t made my way over to sweetheart cafe in far too long.

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i was in a hurry to get to work today because i was running a little late (which didn’t help, by the way because it took me a whopping 2.5 hours to get to work today…) and i threw on a shirt without really looking at it very closely. it turns out that the shirt that i am wearing is actually a little tight. as a result, it’s sort of uncomfortable walking around with this shirt on because i feel like it is rather constricting. grrrrr.

i wonder if i have another shirt in my car.

i wonder if anyone will notice that i changed shirts if i do have a shirt in my car and i do decide to change.

i wonder if i am obsessing too much about this.

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i’m not sure how [url=http://www.track15.com]dardy[/url] used to churn out 10 blog entries sometimes. i think this is my fourth blog of the day and i think i’ve run out of things to say.

well, that isn’t true.

one of the things that i’m starting to realize about myself when it comes to my nature is that i am particularly sensitive when it comes to people who i consider to be my closer set of friends. these are people who are closer than the outliers or acquaintences. in particular, i think that i’ve recently been exposed to people who seem to have a shorter temper than what i’m used to and they are not shy to express themselves. this has caused me some amount of angst because i think that when it comes from these people i take it pretty hard.

this is odd to me because i think that i generally tend to have a pretty thick skin, so i’m not sure why it is that i’m being so affected. usually i’m able to just brush things off and just shrug my shoulders and say, “whatever.” but these days i find myself obsessing more and more and i feel like i have to walk on eggshells around these people.

i’m not sure if this is something that is noticed by them or not. and instead of having to be super careful with everything i say, i think that what i do instead is that i try and distance myself away from these people so that i don’t have to deal with their outbreaks. if they are going to be unpleasant then i’m just going to stay away from them because i don’t need to deal with that kind of angst. i’m just too tired.

some people may categorize this kind of behavior as running away from your problems, but i don’t think that i’m running away from my problems. i have no desire to try and change these people (not that i think that they can be changed) nor do i feel compelled to call them on these outbursts because i don’t think that it’ll do any good anymore. i’ve tried and if history repeats itself, it just won’t make a difference.

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