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crap, the journal has yet again fallen to the wayside.  i'm going to blame....*spins the wheel-o-blame"...my job this time.  for inundating me with short deadlines and then making me tired once i get home.  ya.  for real.

i had on the agenda a massive post ala anna's year-end photo recollection, but that's turning out to be taking muuuuuch longer than anticipated.  so fuck it.  i'll post it when i post it.  in the meantime tho, a recollection of the year thus far.  it's already halfway thru january...time just continues to fly right by.



JOSIE ELLA
first and foremost...welcome josie ella to the world!  my new niece. ella was my suggestion too.  she rocks.  niece's rock, because i get to be a proud uncle without having to deal with the actual parenting.  it's a win-win situation.  a concern we're having at the moment however is, given her older sister's astonishingly advanced developmental state (i know parents/uncles/whatever always say this...but seriously, this is not hyperbole), we've postulated that she may in fact turn out to be functionally retarded.  or something.  too many awesome genes were invested in may.  we don't know what was left for josie.  i know...feel the love emanating from her uncle.  just kidding, we <3 josie.

REWIND
two weekends ago was hot pot at my place with jen di, sarah, and crew.  i'm very much liking a semi-regular hot pot to be honest.  it's a social activity that involves everything i love...eating, drinking liquor, and watching movies.  we followed this up with thursday noodling at the excellent pork chop house with di and em.  they'd never been, so i felt like it was my obligation to wise them to the goodness that is taiwanese cuisine.  we headed next door after dinner to apotheke, which was hilarious considering two drinks cost more than the entirety of our dinner a few feet away.  they however did send us free rounds of their mulled wine, called gluwein.  very soothing.  after apotheke, we migrated to the whiskey tavern to meet up with more people and continue our drinking (with the addition of tater tots).  i felt like shit the next morning...it was super.

and hmm...yea, i didn't do shit this past weekend.  doh!

super fascinating look into the origins of one of the most sampled drum loops ever.  this is all news to me...had no idea whatsoever they're pretty much all sampled from one b-side from 1969.  yay for new trivia!

originally from the cracked article "6 inventors who got jack shit for changing the modern world"

i'm home! and when i say "home", i really mean "home"...as in "mi casa". it's been nearly a full year since i first started looking for an apartment to buy...but now i've finally closed, moved in, started piling shit into my place...etc. and its been pretty good so far. the apartment is nearly fully furnished. there are only a few pieces left to either build or put up, but hopefully by the end of this week i can say that my apartment is 99% done (with only random household doodads left to buy). k, now i have to backtrack (per usual) since it's been a while.

FURNITURE SHOPPING
the saturday before i moved in, i headed out in the shitty weather to furniture shop around manhattan with ky. i had an entire list of shops to check out...for some reason i thought i'd actually hit all the stores. ha! we spent most of our time browsing cb and cb2, who are admittedly straight up my alley. cb2 more than cb...but i dig both their stuff. i ended up ordering a couch set from cb, along with a number of other pieces of furniture from cb2. by this time it was already well into the evening...bugger. we ran thru the rain to have dinner at blue ribbon sushi in soho, followed by drinkies at little branch. then i had to dart back to port authority to catch the bus back to joisey (i won't miss those)

MOVE-IN
i moved in the following saturday...and then pretty much spending every day after that picking up extra household necessities and assembling the furniture i'd ordered (with a ton of help from g+r). they were pretty much over every night helping me assemble furniture and setting up my apartment, so mucho thumbs up to them...you two rock. <3 friends as neighbors. i made a trip out to ikea in red hook too on sunday to pick up some book shelves (and other random shit i happened to come across). i met up with ky again afterwards for dinner at cube 63 in...whatever brooklyn neighborhood we were in. lets be honest...i know shit about brooklyn.

FIOS
the verizon people swung by wednesday to set up my fios cable and internet....fuck yea! wednesday nite was also g's big berfday bash at kanvas! except kanvas is gone! so we relocated to la bottega instead...woots.

FUGIO DIEM
thursday was steph and jj's premier party for their short film fugio diem at the knitting factory. very cool...there were even boobies. boobies!

MARISOL'S WEDDING
i continued picking up more things for my apartment all week long...eventually leading up to saturday...m's wedding. omg! i met up with sean and anna saturday morning at grand central to catch the metro north. m and chris were having their wedding at a water-side park in connecticut, so we took the train out to new haven, then caught a taxi to the wedding site. the ceremony was held out on the beach (should've brought sandals...doh) and the reception was held in a carousel house next to the beach, replete with a working carousel. very cool. it was a nice and not-too-formal wedding...word. grats you two. considering my currently-broke nature, i took a ton of photos for them in lieu of an actual wedding present. only a few hundred photos left to photoshop...whew.

SUNDAY REMAINDERS
...and ideally i wouldve ended the post there. but hey...the fun continues. sean and anna came over for brunch sunday morning after they got out of church (they were already uptown). i made them home fries and my specialty omelettes, feta and chorizos with cilantro, basil, pepper, and other random spices. the home fries came out especially good...yay! they headed home to rest after brunch, while i headed down to soho to pick up extra things. i actually ran into ky and her friend outside of cb...which was a nice coincidence. we talked for a while before they headed back to brooklyn and i went into cb to find some nice coasters. i decided to continue south towards muji, and while waiting for the lights to change at prince st, i thought i spotted another friend of mine and called out to him. holy fuck its brad! brad not only went to cornell with me (one of only a few non-architect friends of mine), but is actually from my hometown also. he wouldve even been a frat brother if i hadnt come to my senses and wondered to myself "wtf...did i just rush a frat?!?" i hadnt actually seen brad since he graduated from cornell and headed off to tulane for med school. we had just gotten back in touch thru facebook about a month ago, but shit...this was just freaky coincidence. we grabbed coffee at cafe angelique and caught up on about 8 years worth of stuff, which was pretty nice.

i headed off to continue shopping after coffee and met up with di later for sunday night ramen. shoyu char-siu ramen at setagaya...yum yum. we grabbed a round of drinks at angels share to round out the night, since i hadnt actually seen di in a while and had a ton of stories to tell. woot.

k, now im shit tired. ive gone thru only about 10 photos so far from saturday. *sigh* so many...

i wonder if 30 is even considered the "mid-life" anymore. doubt it, right? so yer...um, im "officially" 30! official as in ive made peace with it. shit, its not that bad. actually, its just another day i get an excuse to throw a big party for myself. but i have to rewind a little bit because while ive (surprisingly) been posting, they havent actually been journal posts. whups.

for the most part i cant remember what i did...but last week greg did come up to visit noo yerk from austin. woot! the g-man was my roommate second and third year of college, and is honestly the only friend i kept from my freshman year dorms (class of '22 word!) and one of the few non-architect friends from college in general. wahoos! he came up with his friend tom, and we hit up the moma with some other friends of theirs to check out the prefab exhibit. we pretty much just bummed around central park afterwards, then headed to croxleys for stonkin' wings and to watch michael phelps win his 8th gold (which he did...yay!)

THE BIG 3-0
fast forward a wee to this past week. my official partying started friday. lysha and alice were visiting from amsterdam, so i took the day off to show them around this ginormous city. the "day off" seemed a little inconsequential tho, considering by the time we got out of brunch at delicatessen, there wouldve only been about an hour and a half left of work anyway. we had a half day and a company picnic that day (it was originally the friday before, but got rained out). fuckers. well, it was all good then because i brought lysha and alice to the great hill in central park for some bbq, frisbee, and soccer-ball kicking into sides of peoples heads. it was super.

we lazy'd around in the sun for a while, then headed back down to marisa's place so they could prep for the big partying. steph and kyoko were already at en when we arrived, followed by a long and steady stream of people showing up...wee! it was a pretty big gathering of friends from a variety of circles...cornellians, ex-coworkers, travel friends, and shit...even random coincidences (terence had reservations there that night anyway!) all coming together to get drunk with me. =) we eventually took over the entire front bar area with a ton of sake, food, and good vibes. big big big thanks to everybody who came out to have fun with me. best. berfday. evar.

as an aside. everybodys told me plenty of times before, and its not like i didnt know this already...but shit do i have a disproportionate number of female friends to male friends. it was made all the more apparent with everybody gathered in the same place for once. the night btw, actually started with five girls...and me (not that im complaining!)

THE BIG 3-0, PART DEUX
ya we're not done yet! saturday was my original party day! except alot of people either couldnt make it, couldnt afford it, or were just scared off by the whole thing...hence how friday came about. ;p burlesque, word! and not just any burlesque, this is burlesque with murray hill and the pontani sisters! and i have to say, everybody who wasnt there missed out. not only did the performances rock (miss saturn...wow), but i got a free birthday cake! it came with tassles. it was pretty good too.

pictures! yay! thanks everybody!

extra special hai fives to steph for friday, and gina and renee for saturday!

last full day in tokyo...sigh. we started it off with a trip to the tsukiji fish market. yea...not at 5 am or anything. sorry...i dont do that. it was more like 10am. chika had offered to take dano and i around the fish market, since she was familiar with the market, having shopped there numerous times before as a chef. the fish (and various aquatic species) area was still pretty busy, even at 10 am. when we werent dodging giant fish heads on the floor, we were dodging the carts that darted up and down the aisles. and it all surprisingly didnt smell fishy!

we headed back to the hotel to rest and eat lunch, and then i headed back out to akihabara for some last minute perusing. friday was the release date for the new dvd of the evangelion reboot...so i went looking for it. well it wasnt that hard to find...the shit was all over akihabara. but when i finally did check out the special edition dvd, i found out that it didnt have any english subtitles. fuck! argh...suckage. so i decided not to pick it up. *sigh* i continued roaming around some more, then roamed shibuya for dvds and music. i rejoined g+r at g's house in shibuya for some home cooking with her family...yum! nice way to cap a vacation.

we wandered around ginza the next morning before heading back to our hotel to catch the shuttle to narita. and then we landed in newark airport, i fucked around doing nothing for a week, and now here i am...back home and not in tokyo. *sigh* <3 tokyo.

REMAINDERS
and now to tack on what i did since getting back. i met up with steph and jj er...last week...at oh taisho. then i had ippudo with jess sometime last week...whatever day...cant remember at this point. friday was mario karting at sean and annas. i visited my sister and my niece sunday, since i had a ton of toys from japan and i hadnt seen my niece since before heading off to amsterdam. and yesterday i had din with di and her friend sara in fort greene (brookyln! omfg!) at ici, which was yum.

*full set already up on flickr eh.

coming down to the last two days of the trip...pooters. thursday was started with haircuts for g and dano. g needed a trim, and dano wanted a super-japanese haircut. some of the styles he was looking at in his hair style magazine were pretty frightening...ranging from glay, to emo anime character, to jesus hair. yea, curly jesus hair. he picked out one of the better (ie: normal) styles...pointed to the picture, and away they snipped. me and r headed off to wile away the time why they got their hair snipped. in the span of half an hour wandering shibuya, i managed to blow $300+...fuck! after hitting the $300 mark, we scurried back to the salon so i couldnt do any more damage. shit shit shit i was doing so good til now.

after g and dano finished their swishy hair stylin', we caught a nice japanese lunch, then went sneaker shopping in daikanyama. after everybody (literally) got a pair (or two), g+r and dano decided to go rest up back at g's house in shibuya, and i decided to continue roaming daikanyama (one of my favorite neighborhoods). it started raining tho...so yea, that was the suck. i roamed a bit, checked out the various stores (while hiding my cc), then grabbed a late afternoon snack at the mermaid cafe before hustling over to shinjuku to meet up with the crew again. chika found me at the station, and we waited for the rest of the crew to get there before wandering into the golden gai area for dinner reservations at cha-cha (name...? guess so). which was swishy. after din, we roamed shinjuku and hung out at advocates bar, which for anyone who does their homework, does NOT in any way, happen to support your theories. ;p

*full set already up on flickr eh.

wednesday was our long-awaited onsen roadtrip out of tokyo. g booked us a relaxing day at the amagi-so onsen three hours outside of tokyo. so we headed oot in the morning out of the dense cityscape into the countryside. we had a huge kaiseki lunch when we got there...sashimi, boar meat, grilled fish, the list goes on...yum yum. we rested a bit after lunch before going to get changed and head out to the outdoor springs. amagi-so is a unisex onsen that also lets you wear swimsuits, for those of us that are a bit prude...or just want to hang out with our friends of the opposite sex. we went thru the range of temperatures, from lukewarm to omfg. the omfg didnt actually feel too bad since we had been hopping from spring to spring. but after relaxing next to the waterfall for a bit, then going back in for a dip, the actual temperature became apparent. holy shit hot. we rested a bit after our dip, then started our three hour ride back to tokyo. we made a pitstop at a wasabi center...that was interesting. but then we got back to tokyo! yea!

we dropped our stuff off at g's parents place before heading out for an italian dinner at capricciosa nearby...where we ordered like a pizza, three pasta bowls, and a bunch of other dishes we probably shouldnt have. ugh...stuffed. we continued on afterwards for an end-of-the-night drinks at an izakaya in omote-sando. wew!

*full set already up on flickr eh.

tuesday was jane's last day with us, so we got an early start to akihabara, since neither jane nor dano had been before. we roamed thru the arcades and electronics shops, and ended up going thru the 8 flrs of the akihabara mandarake. woot geek. jane left us at tokyo station in the afternoon to catch the shink back to ishinomaki...*sniff*, bye jane! we soldiered on and met up with g+r in ebisu to take a day-trip to yokohama...woot! yokohama was a short ride south, and we visited the yokohama docks first, called the osanbashi and designed by foreign office architects. very nice. we then roamed up and down the disturbingly clean streets of yokohama chinatown. for those that haven't ever been, imagine your typical chinatown. now take away all the filth and garbage on the streets and the smell of fish in the air. yea, thats yokohama chinatown...a surreal super-clean version of the chinatowns you're used to. we had a nice big chinese dinner (i even had shark fin soup...yum), then hopped back in the car to head back to tokyo. on the way back, we stopped by odaiba to scope out the rockin' night views of tokyo. we made our way thru the various shopping decks including a whole section made to look like vintage 1960's tokyo, then hopped back in the car and went home. whew!

*full set already up on flickr eh.

monday was a free day, so jane, dano, and i took the yamanote north to roam ginza and the tokyo forums. as much as i <3 tokyo, the one thing that irked me on each visit was their habit of not opening anything til 10am. crissakes why?? im oot and aboot...open your doors damnit! let me waste my money! blah, so while we waited for stores to open, we wandered the halls of the tokyo forums. up and down, over and under...the forums still an amazing place. we took a breakfast break at a coffee shop across from the forums, then headed over to harajuku. we grabbed a ramen lunch from jangara, then wandered aimlessly thru ura-hara. after getting pooted out from all the walking, we took a break back at the hotel before meeting up with g+r in nakano for dinner. we headed to one of g's favorite spots that we just referred to as master's (the head honcho's master...never even got the name of his restaurant). anyhoo, he served us every kind of chicken dish possible, roasted, sashimi, etc. it was all yum. we even tried out his custom shochu drinks. the first batch...mixed with coffee...was pretty good. he ran out of that tho, so we switched over to his other shochu batch, which put me to sleep. like seriously, not trashed...just sleeeepy. *gurgle* the rest of the nites sorta blurry...

*full set already up on flickr eh.