This last week has been fun. Wednesday morning I left for Glenview, Illinois, where my cousin Jenny was getting married. To help alleviate the boredom that is apt to happen while waiting for plane flights, and the flights themselves, I brought several gadgets: my nintendo ds with a cyclods, and a portable dvd player with Noir. The CycloDS is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen for a handheld device, and it turns the DS into something so completely beyond it's original form. It lets you play just about any DS game (you really should only use games you truly own), lets you watch movies, listen to music, browse the web, and play emulated games from NES, SNES and Genesis. As for Noir, I really like the series, but John has informed me that the first episode may have the best action sequence of all, so I'm somewhat bummed about that.

The flight was uneventful (but fun with my toys), and arriving in Illinois was pretty awesome. It was rainy (which is great for us Arizona people), but extremely humid. We unpacked our stuff, and got settled at the hotel. This trip was challenging for my sister Julie and brother in law Steve, as this was their first trip away from home with their baby Kiara, who is only 6 weeks old. They had to manage constant feedings and diaper changes while still conversing with our relatives, having fun playing games (when possible), and participating in the wedding. I'm really proud of them for handling it all so well. Kiara was a trooper, and I think she'll be a pretty easy-going kid.

The first day, we didn't do much. We went over to the Volocyk household, met with the family, and just sort of hung out for awhile. I didn't stay too long though, as Steve took me downtown to pick up Susan, who was spending the weekend with everyone. I got to see city all lit up and it was quite beautiful. There is a lot going on in downtown Chicago, and I only wish I had more time to appreciate it.

Thursday was also fairly uneventful. I woke up sort of late, and had to rush to get continental breakfast (they were ready to rip the food out of peoples' hands if they weren't fast enough). I also managed to continue my 100 perfect push-up routine, but I failed day 2 of week 5. Looks like I'm going to have to repeat week 5... So hard to do 160-170 perfect push-ups, as they are supposed to be worth like 3 regular push-ups. At some point, we went back to the Volocyk household, watched some stuff, got lunch/dinner at TGI Fridays (The All American Chicken Sandwich RULES), went out and saw some of the expensive houses and relaxed most of the night. It's amazing how much we all laugh though when you get us together. We don't need much to have a great time, and that's what makes our family great.

Friday was jam-packed. I started off the day with the infamous 5-mile run. We had to wake up extremely early, which gave me about 4 hours of sleep, so I wasn't exactly energetic. I rarely run 5 miles either, so it was an interesting experience. The run started out fine, and I seemed to adjust to a slower pace than I'm used to, but very quickly the humidity started to take its toll. To make things worse, I would perform quick 2 second stops to take pictures (yes, a lot turned out blurry and not exactly usable), and would have to quickly catch up. I'm definitely glad I got the pictures though, as the area was like heaven for a person used to seeing thorny bushes and cacti. Above 3 miles in, I really started to feel the strain through. Slowing my pace actually made it harder for me, as it didn't feel natural. It was too late then to do anything about it, and I didn't want to ditch my mom, so I would just run my speed, then wait, run, wait, all the while dodging the weird red spider things (supposedly a variety of daddy long legs)... Needless to say, I was drenched in sweat and feeling somewhat disgusting. "At least I'm in the woods alone though" I thought. Just as I'm thinking that, who else would show up but THE ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS CROSS COUNTRY TEAM. Perfect timing, but hilarious none the less. I'm sure my white shirt drenched in sweat was HOT. I eventually finished the run though, and was really happy that I did it.

A couple of hours later, after recovering, I went to lift weights with Steve and his long time friend Josh. Josh is a really nice guy who is currently working as a personal trainer, but trained as a marine and is getting a mechanical engineering degree. He is extremely ripped though, which made me think the workout was going to be tough. Boy was I right. He made us work to exhaustion doing variations of lifts that I didn't normally do either because I didn't know about them, or I didn't have access to them. After working really hard at lifting, we then did a little sparring with pads, which was some intense cardio considering how tired I was (Josh punches hard... it was a shoulder workout just absorbing his punches and trying to stop my arms from flying off). I felt so exhausted by the end, but I didn't realize just how sore I would become. I'm still aching while writing this, and it hurts to even lift my arms over my head. It's a good kind of pain though The intense workout has definitely motivated me to work harder at lifting though. I wish I had a buddy like Josh to train with here, but I will have to just manage myself.

After lifting we headed to the Wedding which was nice. It wasn't perfect, as some things had to fall by the wayside (a little laziness on Jenny and Jeff's part... okay, a LOT of laziness and procrastination), but it still turned out great considering.

Afterward, we hit the reception, and had fun for awhile. Steve was put at the head table, so we had some text messaging going back and forth that had us all laughing so hard. The food was pretty good too. We took some pictures as it started raining, people loved Kiara, and all the normal stuff happened (cutting the cake, the dances, etc). The music turned out to be too loud, so Steve and Julie had to leave the room, which killed most of the fun for me. I managed to accidentally drop my cousin Kate on her butt by standing up as she pulled on my chair, and eventually got cornered by Keith, who seemed to want to talk about his camera quite a bit, so I tried to politely leave to find Julie. I found her out in the hall, and eventually more and more people found their way out there. We had our own mini-party out there, and with Julie and I doing goofy dances and such, I was laughing and having a better time than I ever could have had inside. We ended the night a little early for Kiara's sake, and headed back to the hotel.

Saturday was a day filled with relaxing. We played amazing card games including golf, Egyptian Crypt Rats (something like that, it's like Slapjack but with lots of people and more interesting rules for when you slap), and another game that would take too long to explain. We also wound up watching Saw 1 and 2, which I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would, having seen them several times before. We played Tetris DS and Mario Party on our DS's, and I managed to write some new guitar that I really like. My Aunt made a great dinner with dessert, so the day was truly a success. It was probably my favorite day of the trip.

Sunday, we flew home early and I got back in time to visit my house. I now have cabinets! I can't wait for the tile and granite counter tops to go in. Then it will truly seem complete. I also had time to watch Origins: Spirits of the Past and The Brave One. Origins was decent, nothing too special, but I really, REALLY liked The Brave One. I thought Jodie Foster did an amazing job, and somehow the story just captivated me and grabbed my attention. I definitely recommend it.

Check out the links below for all of the pictures! I'll post again next weekend!

Pictures of Chicago
Pictures of the House

Pictures: Anime Expo 2008 Pics
Movie page: Anime Expo 2008 Movies
A youtube video I really like from the expo: A fun clip
Captain Jack Sparrow getting people to dance the caramelldansen: Caramelldansen!

Where to get started? I think I will just go day by day and explain all the things that happened:

Wednesday July 2nd

Early morning start. I tried to pack up everything the night before and thought I did a fairly good job. I bought a new 50 dollar swiss army backpack, which had like a bajillion compartments, so I shoved just about everything I could fit in there. I had tons of food ready to go, and the only thing I got ready in the morning was all the drinks. Which of course was the only thing I forgot to bring with me when Andrea and Jen showed up It actually worked out for the best though, as we had to pack 5 suitcases, and 5 bags into John's trunk, among other things. While it was a decent size trunk, it was amazing to fit that much. If only I had taken a picture... Even though we fit most of the stuff in the trunk, I still had to sit in front with a backpack between my lags and a bag of food on top of that. The cooler would have never fit...

We still managed the 6 hour car ride without incident, and after navigating the horrible LA freeways, and busy streets, we found our hotel. A big sign said over 40 bucks a night for parking... Give me a break... We later found out that it was dropped to 24, but still, it's ridiculous how badly they can rip people off. The hotel itself was very nice (150 bucks a night, it better be...). While everything looked nice, they didn't offer a lot, like continental breakfast or a TV with a video input ( come on now, seriously?! ). After getting situated in the room, we began our walk over to the convention center. We immediately noticed how ridiculously nasty the air was, and how much we didn't like walking around LA. I was happy when we arrived at our destination (which was very nice, check out the pictures). We found the pre-registration area, and thus began the waiting in lines. That's pretty much a rule for anime expo - every day, no matter what you are going to do, there will be a line. That's what happens when 45,000+ people gather in one place...

After about an hour of waiting, we got our badges, and returned to the hotel. John went and had an expensive dinner with his dad, while the rest of us ate at the California Pizza Kitchen. After we all met up again, we journeyed into the ghetto area to find a grocery store to buy supplies for the week. After stocking up, we prepared to go to sleep (at least some of us... John can't sleep at all on trips, and I slept pretty badly too).

Thursday, July 3rd

The first event of the day was the opening ceremonies. We didn't have tickets, so we decided to wait in line to get tickets. We stood outside in the sun for well over an hour, and had a blast with our Nintendo DS's. Almost everyone has a DS at anime expo, so it's easy to find people to play games against, or the easier option, Pictochat. For those of you who don't know, pictochat is basically a chatroom program that let's people draw in combination with writing text. It's a lot of fun when you get like 20 people you don't know all drawing and saying random things, and playing tag (trying to find the other people waiting in line based on clues). The only bad part about all the waiting, was that we wanted to make it to a panel on the death of anime, and it was supposed to start like an hour after the ceremony. Because of the line, and the staff starting late, we were only able to stay for like 10 minutes before having to leave. Talk about a waste of time... It was cool to see Nokia theater at least, and be exposed to pictochat for the first time.

Next came the panel on the death of anime. It was an interesting look at how fansubs are really hurting anime production, because people just download the shows on the internet instead of buying dvds. They never got around to answering fan questions though, which really sucked.

Next came our trip to the showroom floor. There were so many people doing the same thing, so it came as no surprise that we were waiting in line again (a theme for the expo it seems). We got to see some cool cosplay (people dressed in costumes representing characters in anime or games, or even cartoons) while waiting. Once inside, the showroom floor was pretty amazing. There had to have been like 50 vendors there, each with a big stand set up. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of crowds, there was something so cool about being a part of something that big, and there was a lot of energy in the air. I didn't wind up buying anything the first day, but saw lots of cool dvd box sets, samurai swords, paintings, figurines, games, etc. John did all the buying for us though, picking up a fair amount of stuff. Afterward, we just walked around the West Hall taking pictures of all the Cosplay groups. There is something so cool about seeing people dressed up as characters from shows you really like. After awhile, we returned to the hotel. After dropping off our stuff, we went back for a screening of Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 and Ninja Nonsense. Bubblegum Crisis was very entertaining, albeit a little old. I'm definitely going to watch the entire series though now. Ninja Nonsense surprised the hell out of me. It was by far the funniest anime I have ever watched. I liked it so much, I went back to the showroom the next day and bought the box set. I can't wait to show it to people.

After the showings, we went back to the hotel, but it was obvious that there were still a lot of people just hanging around at the convention, which operated almost 24 hours a day. Pretty crazy...

Friday, July 4th

This day was nice because we had a somewhat later start due to nothing going on. We decided to see Jyukai and Yoko Ishida in concert though, so we headed over to Nokia theater to get tickets. After waiting around for like 30 minutes, we find out that there was absolutely no organization or communication to people about the process for getting tickets. We were sent back to the West Hall to wait in line there. We then proceeded to wait in line for like an hour, which gave us plenty of time for pictochat. We then got into Nokia Hall (after annoying bag checks) and watched a pretty fun concert. I didn't know any of the songs, but they were good. John informed me of what shows most of them came from. Yoko Ishida and Jyukai tried hard to communicate with the crowd in English, but it wasn't easy (Raise your clap!). Both were cute though, and Yoko Ishida even did some Para Para dancing. Jyukai was entertaining, but I definitely wasn't blown away.

After the show, we ate some lunch and watched some more cosplay groups and returned to the showroom floor. I saw a 50 dollar functional (translation:sharp enough to cut) sword that came with a box. I almost bought it, but it would have caused some headaches having to carry it around and find room for it in the car on the way back. It was so awesome though... Maybe next year. I also found some paintings by Nene Thomas that were exceptionally good. I decided I would buy them and came back a few days later and purchased a couple (John got one too). To avoid complications, we had them shipped. I will put pictures up of them when they come.

If I remember correctly, this was also the day we went to a panel and found out that all of the Geneon titles were picked up by Funimation. Great news! The only down side is that Funimation now controls a large portion of the market. They also announced that a screening of Hellsing vol 4 would be shown that night, so we checked that out as well. Other than the speakers being RIDICULOUSLY LOUD, it was awesome. Hellsing is a really fun series, with lots of gore and great characters.

Afterward, we returned to the hotel and watched a somewhat boring movie called Caramel and some Fooly Cooly before heading to bed. Fooly Cooly is INSANE but kind of cool at the same time.

*Note* I can't remember which day it took place on, but I think it was Friday. At some point during the day, we decided to walk to a market to find some water, as I forgot to buy some at the grocery store. We walked forever, through some grungy parts of town, while following Jason's Iphone and found ourselves at this market that was baffling. It was like we had walked into another country, and we were surrounded by stalls selling all sorts of random things. We even found a bakery. Luckily, at the end of the market, down some stairs, we found a small store that sold some water, so it was a success. Crazy little place though... I expected to see chickens running around, and maybe a cockfight...

Saturday, July 5th

This was probably the busiest day of them all. We ran around all day finding Cosplay groups and taking pictures. We also encountered the Caramelldansen. I didn't know what the dance was at the time, but it was hilarious to see everyone getting involved. They even started a train at one point. I will be posting movies from the whole expo at the link shown at the top of this post, so check it out if you want to see the dance. Jack Sparrow was going around getting people to dance. So funny This was also the day (I think) pikachu did a backflip off the wall and put a hole in it. He was trying to be cool like the MFH group which did aerobatic stuff, but he ran off in the funniest way. The whole scene was hilarious and a highlight of the trip. Check out John's Youtube video below to see what I mean.

After tons of cosplay groups, we prepared for the Masquerade. This event is where groups of cosplayers either perform skits, or show off cool costumes. There were some really fun skits this year, and you can see them on my movie collection page. The funniest part of the entire show was the MC's. There were three guys who took turns announcing the groups, and they were so funny. I wish I had recorded them talking, as they were the highlight of the show. At one point, one of the guys was advertising this tea that supposedly sucked. The whole crowd yelled at him to drink over and over until he caved. While drinking it, the entire crowd, we are talking like 20,000 people at least, started shouting chug, chug, chug. It would have put any college party to shame. He downed the entire thing and spilled on his jacket and in good humor said, "My dry cleaner thanks you." The crowd then yelled at the other two guys to drink when they came on, and each one drank the tea. It was amazingly funny. The MC's also made references to "%#$@ it, we'll do it live!" and *techo sound* "The system is down". If you know what these are from, awesome, if not, it would be hard to explain concisely. Let's just say the MC's knew a lot about anime, and things that have shown up in the internet. Near the end of the show, a group of middle schooler's came out and played Final Fantasy music on lines of xylophones and marching drums. It was pretty amazing, and my description doesn't do it justice at all. Good for those kids.

Sunday, July 6th

This day was short, as the showroom floor closed early, and not many events were going on. We spent most of the day at screenings. We first saw Appleseed: Ex Machina which was freaking awesome. I seriously enjoyed this movie, and wouldn't mind owning it on Blu-ray. It had a very unique style that blended anime and CG. They didn't go for completely realistic CG either - it was like it was a mix of normal CG and video game CG. Hard to explain. The second showing was for L: Change the world. This is the sequel to Death Note, so there was a LOT of excitement over it. I got in line an hour early, which was a dang good thing, as the line wrapped around several times, and the room filled up quickly. It was so much fun to see the movie in such a big crowd, as people added ooh's, ahh's, and sympathy cries all over the place. People laughed at parts that were done poorly, and cheered when L did stuff. The movie was pretty good too, although it could never top the original Death Note. This was actually another highlight of the trip for me...

We finished off the day by going back to the hotel, getting some food at the California Pizza Kitchen (John hadn't been there, so we went again), and playing cards all night. Playing cards was actually a blast, and we had a ton of laughs. That was the first time all 5 of us really hung out as a group( other than being forced to in the car ), and I'm really glad it happened. People were slightly shocked to find we weren't leaving Sunday though, as they had work that needed to get done Monday... Miscommunication... not good...

On a side note, I found time Friday and Sunday to lift weights, and did the perfect pushup on Thursday and Saturday, so my workout routine didn't skip a beat. They had a great workout room at the hotel. I wish I had access to it all the time...

Monday, July 7th

We packed up our crap, headed home and play DS Tetris almost the whole way. There was some heated competition, and some smack talk, but we managed not to kill each other. After arriving home, I caught up on all the stuff I had missed over the week, and the reality of no more anime expo sunk in. No more fun events, or seeing crazy people dancing or being dressed up. I felt like I could have done more, or seen more, but I guess it's always that way after a good trip. There is always next year! I plan to go with John again, and Mike Verret from work. John and I will cosplay walls one day, and Verret will be the Kool Aid guy and smash through the wall. Should be hilarious, and maybe we can make it on youtube if we do it well I also plan to possibly buy some more box sets next year, if they have them on blu-ray. I hate buying dvd's now...

Anyways, to wrap up, the trip was great, and an eye opener for me. I learned about a lot of stuff, and saw a LOT of beautiful women going all out for anime. Definitely makes it seem less nerdy when there are more women than men, and some of the women are gorgeous.

In other news, as I mentioned in my last post, I visited the house after getting back. I found that John had a garage door and doors everywhere else! Awesome! Except we were locked out with no way to get in. My house had no garage door, but doors everywhere else. They were locked also, but I found that one of the windows had a broken inner pane, which stopped the window from closing. I jumped in and took some pictures. Good thing too, as it was brought to my attention that they may have screwed up my laundry room cabinets (it looked like they put in a shelf instead of cabinets). Time to figure out what's going on...

Until next time, when I show more house pictures, and talk about some of the movies I rented on blu-ray.

Ahh, another 3 day weekend. Plenty of time to "waste" just relaxing and having fun. Let's cover what's gone on so far:

Friday:

- Saw Wall-E. Freaking loved it. Such an awesome movie - I will definitely buy it on Blu-ray. Pixar movies are always great though.
- Played Team Fortress 2. I'm really loving this game again. I need to find someone else who wants to play too.
- Watched The Other Boleyn Girl. It was okay... nothing special. I was somewhat bored by it all, but I especially hate that time period where the church and monarchy had way too much power. They abused it and normal people suffered so much. Give people power and they become corrupted...
- Watched tons of anime. Really good stuff. I will try to complete a list of all the stuff I have watched, so check the movie database if you are curious( more on that later ).
- Wrote some cool piano. I even have a melody sort of worked out. Too bad I have nothing that I really feel like writing about at the moment. Guess I will have to wait until inspiration hits me... I've also decided that I'm gonna try to write an instrumental album, because it's a completely different approach to music, and I'd love to have some of my own stuff on hand.
- Tried in vain to lay down some drums for Maybe. I hope Todd can hook me up soon... Once I adjust some settings, I think I will do the drumming on my keyboard through the drum sample on the computer...

Saturday:

- Slept in for 8.5 hours. Felt amazing. I wish I could do this every day.
- Worked on my movie database for about 6 hours straight, and finally finished it. Go to the movie page to check it out. I've only put up 6 movies for now, but I will be adding them very quickly. I have over 100 movies to catalog I believe, and a lot of ripped anime, so I will do my best to chip away at the mountain of media. I really like the movie database though, and it was a great introduction to working with databases. My next project will be insane, and I'm kind of overwhelmed with everything I want to do with it. It will be a tracker database that lets you enter all sorts of foods you eat, and it will track not only your caloric intake, but vitamins, protein, carbs, etc. Basically everything that's on the label. I want to see how I'm really doing when I break it all down. As part of this, it will also have an exercise tracker so I can see how much I'm burning, and also monitor my progress with lifting weights. I'm also considering being able to share results with others. Lots of stuff to plan out.
- Went to visit the house. They've finished the sheet rock walls, and started the dry walling. There was even a guy working today. You can find all the pictures here:

House Pictures

I probably won't go back for a week and a half because of Anime Expo, so I imagine quite a lot will change by then.

- Played games and watched anime. Sooo nice to do this. Also maxed out on pushups as I work towards 100 in one set. Hundredpushups.com for the win. Tried to not be lazy, and burned about a hundred calories on the treadmill. My ankle still hurts though, so I'm taking it somewhat easy.

As I mentioned before, I'm going to Anime Expo this week, so I won't update until after that. I should have all sorts of fun pictures and videos, so check back. I hope everyone has an awesome 4th of July!

Well as I mentioned, I played in a volleyball tournament in Flagstaff today. Here is how the day went down...

I wake up in the morning and feel refreshed. That's odd, I think, as I should have been dead tired. I turn over and look at the clock. Ah, 7:30 AM... WHAT!!! It was one of those moments where time stops, your brain explodes, and you have no clue what to do. I was supposed to wake up at like 5:45 AM. I had a 2+ hour drive, the tournament started at 9 AM, and I hadn't gotten everything ready to go. Needless to say, panic ensued. I managed to leave in about 20 minutes and thought I did a pretty decent job of not forgetting anything. Only later did I realize I forgot one, SLIGHTLY important thing - glasses. My eyes hated me for that...

Anyways, I drove up as fast as I could, and listened to the Dark Tower Book 7, and had a blast hearing about Roland and the ka-tet nearing the end of their journey. I managed to get to the tournament by 9:45AM, and jumped in during the 2nd game. I had high hopes for the day, until I jacked up my ankle like a moron that is. I ran down a hill for a ball and hit a hidden rock and twisted my ankle. It didn't stop me from playing, but I sure couldn't jump at first. I taped it later, but it bothered me all day. Right after that game, thinking about my ankle, I walk back, and my good friend Julia had twisted her ankle badly. She was not only unable to play anymore, but in a great deal of pain all day. I felt horrible for her. In the end, we got 2nd place in the lower division after a long battle - we had to defeat the winning team twice in a row in the tournament as they were undefeated( double elimination ), but was only able to beat them once. After the volleyball ended, there was a barbecue, but I felt tired, disgusting from the sunscreen/sweating, and I wanted to head home before it got dark, so I just left.

So you are probably wondering, where was the irony in all that? Well the prizes we got for getting 2nd, were...drum roll...travel alarm clocks! Perfect for the guy who oversleeps and shows up late

Time for some movies/anime/games/writing music. Gotta enjoy the weekend while it lasts. If you want to see pictures of where I played volleyball in Flagstaff, click the link below.

Volleyball pics

Well the pictures of the house are up as promised. Most of the wiring pictures are pretty boring. The structured wiring is pretty cool though( look for the picture with all the wires going into this panel near the garage door ). I also stopped by the house today, and got pictures of the insulation. I had expected them to do more, but I guess I've gotten kind of used to them working at an insane pace. I also got a couple of pictures of John's house, because his is really moving along. I can't until I have walls inside too

In other news, I'm going to play in a reverse coed tournament in Flagstaff tomorrow. The weather should be a relief, as its been like insanely hot here( highs around 110-115 ). The only sucky part is the driving - it will cost like 40 bucks to drive there and back, and I get around 30 mpg. I wanted to carpool, but I'm not sure I really want to camp overnight. I guess we will see... Stay tuned for tournament results and pictures...

Oh, and on a side note, Lars and the Real Girl is an interesting movie... My family said it was funny, but I found it hard to watch. It just seemed really awkward and embarrassing, even though it truly was sad at its core. I definitely wouldn't call it a comedy...