화요일 오후, tuesday afternoon: i neglected to mention in previous entries that on thursday night (last week), the beautiful kaela hwang n' i took duk and his girlfriend yuna out to dinner at cascal the great latin-american tapas restaurant on mountain view's castro st. we enjoyed a variety of tapas, their seafood paella (with black squid ink), a pitcher of sangria, and a plate of asado (grilled meat). wow, what an excellent dinner. i wanted to treat duk and yuna to dinner for all the times they dogsitted sooni. they're great. that was my third time at cascal. each time has been great.
last week, i spent much of my time cleaning up the house. despite that, last week was a relatively exciting week. otherwise, my life is always decently exciting... at least to me. i don't know if i need to mention that work has been busy, but it has been very busy. last week, i tried to get some exercise during lunchbreaks at my company gym but i didn't get to go as often as i had the week before. so far this week, i haven't gotten any real exercise. last week was exciting because i got my skateboard. i got to ride it a few times. i got to ride with my brother-in-law steve and my nephew mason. well, mason doesn't ride a skateboard yet but a three-wheel scooter. still it was fun to ride with them on the sidewalk outside my mom's house. i hadn't ridden those sidewalks in many years, so that evening brought me back some fifteen years! last week was exciting, as i mentioned, because we found a beagle on friday but returned him on saturday morning. last week was exciting because we hosted our bible study group on friday night. other couples in our group have bigger, more luxurious, and cleaner homes. however, kaela and i wanted to share our space with them for at least one evening. we actually wanted to do this back at the end of autumn, like soon after thanksgiving; but the opportunity held out until now, giving us ample time to mess the house back up after thanksgiving. our house was cleaner at thanksgiving. well, as i put it to kaela, i'm glad no one made fun of our humble dwelling. we love our house. we thank god for it.
i can't believe how little i've gone snowboarding this year. i'm glad i made the most of my day at heavenly that last time we went with kaela's classmates. i'm glad i spent a decent amount of time riding rails and the like. i'm a bit upset that all sorts of random activities keep popping up that prevent me from going snowboarding more. already, i make a rule not to go snowboarding on sunday in order to go to church. however, now, lots of church activities are popping up on saturdays. i'm afraid my next day on the slopes won't be until presidents day! perhaps at that point i can go on monday and then again on the following saturday. we'll see. i'm supposed to plan a weekend trip for our bible study group. i guess i'd better jump on that. i shouldn't let myself get so depressed over not being able to go right now that i forget to plan this end of march / beginning of april trip. yeah, since i plan to help out with the church pack-up on saturday of this week, i hope i can go snowboarding on the saturday after presidents day as well as on presidents day. that would be cool. well, at least i have my skateboard now. i can participate in some boardsport while stuck in the bay area. (it is funny to say that i'm "stuck" in the bay area because the bay area is a wonderful paradise.)
of course, i still feel a little self-conscious about being a 30 year-old man on a skateboard, while most other skateboarders are in their teens. last week, i saw webpages that talked about recent activities of all the famous pro skateboarders from my youth. many of them are still skateboarding and doing it well! i saw a webpage that had many pictures from a recent "masters" competition at a southern californian skatepark. all these 30-something veteran pro skateboarders ripped it up! i read about christian hosoi. my first skateboard was a christian hosoi pro model. i read about spencer fujimoto. okay, he's not an old guy; rather, he's younger than me. he probably doesn't remember, but i skateboarded with him on a few occasions in the almaden valley, sometimes at our high school leland high school. he hung out with salman agah, another pro skateboarder at our school. i remember running into the two of them at showgi, a korean sushi/teppan restaurant in almaden that had a good lunch buffet back in the days. anyway, it's crazy how he turned into a bigtime pro skateboarder. i'm glad he seems to have managed to avoid getting into some kind of really drug-filled life. at least, it seems that way. i read about other pro skateboarders that ended up being total druggies. that's a bit sad. it's like being a rockstar, of course. yeah, unfortunately, tony hawk's been divorced twice. san josé's steve caballero's been divorced and has a daughter named kayla. well, why is it that pro skateboarders are treated more like rockstars than like pro athletes even though they are pro athletes? in my opinion, they should get n.f.l. treatment.
n.h.s., inc.: my dad likes to joke that when i was a kid i always bought n.h.s. skateboard products like my christian hosoi deck, independent trucks, and santa cruz wheels. he likes to joke that i always bought n.h.s. skateboards as a kid and then now buy n.h.s. snowboards. that's true: the two decks that i have owned have both been santa cruz decks. now, on my new skateboard, i put on bullet trucks and wheels and independent risers. bullet is the cheap line of n.h.s. / santa cruz products. actually, bullet was originally just a line of santa cruz wheels; but now it seems to be more of a spin-off brand. thus i'm still buying n.h.s. products. that is funny. however, for my deck, i opted to save a few bucks and bought a mini-logo deck. i researched the company and felt they make a good product and sell it for a decent price. later, this week, i discovered that mini-logo is made by powell peralta; it's their cheap brand. powell peralta is probably n.h.s.'s biggest rival in the skateboard industry. in the snowboard industry you have burton as the big name. i think powell is like the burton of skateboarding. back in the 1980s, both tony hawk and steve caballero were on powell peralta's pro team, which was then called the bones brigade. this is the first time i owned a powell peralta skateboard product. the deck seems to be fine. i like my skateboard and hope to ride it more.
[later] 저녁: you have heard read me say mention in previous recent journal entries that, as the month is now ending, i'll soon have the option of reverting to my benospelling habit as opposed to writing in plain american english. i mentioned before that i wondered if my current use of plain american english would trigger more hits from search engines. i also wondered if my use of plain american english would affect the google ads on the archive page. well, so far, the google ads i get all relate to southern california and the film industry because my first entry of the year talked all about being in southern california and also referenced an interesting article about asian-american cinematography. *sigh* i wish the ads would change.
today for lunch, i picked up kaela from home, and we ate at thai chili on halford and el camino real. the food was too spicy for kaela, so she ordered a thai ice tea. later, since the food was still too spicy, we ordered a cocounut ice cream with sticky rice dessert. we used this "buy one get one free" coupon from the gift checks book i bought at the santa clara farmers market a couple of weeks ago. did i mention going to the farmers market a couple of saturdays ago while kaela was at her chiropractic seminar? that day, i went to the farmers market and then to almaden valley to pick up my uc berkeley diploma from my mom's house just because i noticed that kaela put up her uc berkeley diplomas on the wall of our computer room.