last night i invited a bunch of people to come over for poker and mroe than a bunch of people showed up. it was actually rather crazy. people who didn’t respond, people who were maybes, everyone who could have showed up. it was pretty cool to be able to see everyone again. there wasn’t much poker play, but it was fun and we had a good time just hanging out.

one of the things that i wondered about last night was when the last time all of us were able to hang out like this before. it has been a long time, longer than i can remember. it was fun and nice to have everyone around again, though.

“i can’t make it to volleyball tonight. i hurt my foot during a wedding over the weekend.”

when i hear about stuff like this, it makes me wonder how dangerous a wedding could possibly be. is it really that dangerous?

i dunno, ask diana.

yesterday was week two at city beach. we were coming off a 4 game loss last week so this week was our chance to redeem ourselves. the first team that we played against was a pretty new team to the sport and they had a lot of difficulty playing. i feel bad for these teams because it must be disheartening to play week after week losing every single game.

the second team we played was a better team and the games were close. i didn’t eat much for lunch and i was really running out of steam in the first match. i started to feel light headed towards the end of the match and let three consecutive balls sail over my head and land into the court. i knew that they were in, but i just couldn’t do anything about it.

we were starting to lose our lead and the game was getting really close. the setter had motioned for me to hit a 10 and i wasn’t sure if i had the energy to do it.

it was sheer will that was keeping me standing and now he wanted me to run, jump 5 feet, hit a ball, and rush back to my defensive position?! i knew that if i didn’t win the point, i’d have to endure more torture.

so when the ball came to me, i ran, jumped, and hit the ball as hard as i could and miraculously it landed in the opponent’s court. the game was won and we could finally all rest.

the next match, i was still rather exhausted. i didn’t know how i was going to survive another 20 points. the game wore on and i got my second wind. we managed to win the second game and as soon as it was over, i headed to my car.

i ordered pizza on the way home and it was delicious. i stopped after eating half a large, not because i wasn’t still hungry, but because i have found that when i eat more than half a large pizza i usually start to feel ill.

i tried to fall asleep early last night, but something had prevented me from finding the slumber that i yearned so much more. instead, i ended up watching tv until i finally fell asleep.

one of the ways that i know what work to do is to check our bug tracking program, bugzilla. it’s a pretty common piece of software used to submit bugs that then tells developers to do work.

after i push a button in bugzilla, i get a brief message saying “Bugzilla is pondering your query…”

i’m waiting for the day that i get the message, “After pondering your message, Bugzilla has decided to ignore you. Please try again.”

i like software with personality.

i went to watch the cal/wsu game on saturday. night games have always been a little tough for me because of how cold it gets. the first night game i went to was a 49ers game that my dad took me to. i remember being so excited going to my first game. i asked how long it could be and my dad told me that it could be all night long if they went into overtime.

before we left, i remember telling my mom excitedly that i was going to go watch the game and not to stay up because i might be out ALL NIGHT LONG. it was really cold that night, but my dad bought me one of those big blow horns and i kept blowing that thing all night long. it was a lot of fun and though i didn’t know too many of the rules back then i think it was that night that began my interest in football.

the cal game was more emotional than it should have been, the bears were leading by quite a large margin at the half. then they slumbered for the next quarter and a half and wsu came back with many unanswered touchdowns. they were down in the 4th, but finally cal managed to come back with a final drive that clinched the win. very exciting, but very scary too. both cal games i’ve gone to this year, they’ve won. let’s hope they keep up.

yesterday was one of the busiest days i’ve ever had at work. every time i thought that i had a spare moment someone would come up to me and tell me something that needed to be done.

sure enough, lunch time came and went and i didn’t have an opportunity to eat. instead i was busy coding away trying to get some stuff done. it’s crazy how much work there was and it was crazy how quickly the end of the day came.

it was a nice feeling, though, to finally leave the office with all of the issues resolved and to just enjoy the rest of the day. there’s just this kind of peace that settles over me knowing that everything is settled and i can just rest easy and relax.

i have been forgetting about de and kim’s wedding all the time. i keep making plans on the day and then i have to cancel because i forgot that the wedding was that day. the most recent plans i made was to have ramen with dardy in mountain view. i was really bummed out when i realized that i had the wedding to go because i was really looking forward to ramen at ryowa. it’s been forever since i’ve eaten there.

the wedding was pretty fantastic, the couple never looked happier. i had a lot of wine at the wedding, more than i usually ever have. it was pretty good wine, though. i’m usually not a fan of wine so i wasn’t sure if i was drinking the wine because it was good or if it was because i just had nothing better to do.

as the couple was coming around toasting the tables, i noticed that the groom was drinking what looked to be tea from his cup. he cannot handle his liquor very well and having to toast 30+ tables would surely have gotten him drunk. the bride was drinking a clear liquid and someone asked if it was water. i couldn’t imagine that it could possibly be water and i told them that it HAD to be grey goose. she loves the stuff and sure enough, she had been toasting the tables with a wine glass full of grey goose.

the wedding was lively and fun and it was a blast. i really enjoy seeing deliriously happy couples on their wedding day. it’s all one could ask for in a wedding.

jen and i went to stacks on saturday for breakfast in campbell. we put our name down at the restaurant and heard that there was a 40 minute wait. we walked around downtown campbell and checked out oktoberfest. it was just by chance that it was being held there, neither of us knew that it was going on. i was at first disappointed that we didn’t go on sunday where there usually is a farmer’s market, but the oktoberfest was pretty cool, too.

we finally got to eat and i ordered a full stack of blue germ pancakes. i don’t know why i always do this, but i order the full stack and i never finish it. the two pancakes are more than enough. but the pancakes were still good. i have never tried anything else besides pancakes there. maybe one day i will, but it’s hard to stray from them.

my company observes columbus day as a holiday so i don’t have work today. i don’t know how many people have this day off, but i suspect that most of my non-government employed friends are working today. i’m not really sure why my company observes this day as a holiday, but i guess that’s one of the perks of working for a japanese owned company, you can tell them that these are days that we should have off. =P

i’ve been in the process to redecorate my room a little. i’ve bought my mat cutter and i’m now choosing pictures that i want to mat and frame. i’m not sure which picture i want to blow up a lot, but i think i’ve found a panorama that i want to blow up BIG and frame. we’ll see how much framing a picture like that will cost. i wonder where i can get custom frames made on the cheap. i’ll have to pop on by aaron brothers to find out.

one of the biggest difficulties i’ve had while sifting through these images is trying to decide what is really print worthy or not. i’ve got thousands of pictures to sift through and it’s hard to decide which images make the cut.

we celebrated john’s birthday by going to andy’s bbq on friday night. i don’t think that i’m really a big fan of bbq restaurants. the food was ok, but wasn’t really amazing. i don’t think that i really like places that rely heavily on the bbq sauce to make the meat good. i’m much more of a dry rub kind of a guy, i think.

speaking of which, i think that i’ve had a bit of an overdose on red meat lately. it may be time for me to moderate a little. the strangest thing is that i’m sort of craving pasta right now. i NEVER crave pasta. what is wrong with me?

last night was the last game that my team we’ll hit on you played. it was playoffs and our .500 team ranked 7th went up against the 10th ranked team in the first round. we were short a player and played with 5 people. we barely beat out the team in three games and then we had the long wait before our next match.

our next match was against the #2 ranked team that was a solid team. we also went three games with them and finally took them out at the end, close games all around. our team played better than it ever had before and though the season felt like we never really gelled last night it felt like everyone was working together as a cohesive unit.

after upsetting the #2 team, our next match had the strongest hitters that hit with a voracity that i’ve never seen before in this league. our team stepped up and in three games again we dealt another upset against the #3 ranked team.

we had made it to playoffs and things were looking good, but alas we just couldn’t quite finish against the #5 ranked team and we lost in the finals. considering that our team had struggled all throughout the season, making it to playoffs, playing as well as we did was really quite amazing, fun, and wonderful.

it was the perfect way to finish off the season. i don’t know if i will play with these people again, but last night was memorable and great.