Well, my week of vacation is over. As is usually the case, I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. I had planned on recording several songs (including some covers), and possibly arranging instrumental only pieces. Instead, I'm not even completely done with 1 song. In my defense, the song has a full arrangement, and I had to spend a good number of hours studying drumming, and learning to drum well on my keyboard. Hopefully I'll finish up the song and have it out soon. I also wanted to practice guitar using some of the guitar books I have, but I didn't wind up doing that at all. At the volleyball tournament yesterday, I had a good time, but we wound up losing very early on. I also planned on doing some programming, and while I did get quite a lot accomplished there, it still wasn't as much as I would have liked.

One thing I did do, is fully complete the Japan Trip Articles. If you go to http://www.zubersoft.com/Japan09, you can read all about the trip. It's nice to have some context while looking at the pictures. Also, this is a way for me to document the trip for myself so I never forget about it.

I watched several good movies over the break, and I have Braveheart on blu-ray waiting for me. I truly love that movie, and it will be even better in hi-def. Well, it's back to normal living now. Until next time!

It's been awhile since the last time I posted. I've been working extremely long weeks (60-70 hours), and spending the rest of my time with miscellaneous activities like working out. This last weekend, I went camping with my family up in Flagstaff. Although the location was amazing (Dairy Spring Campgrounds), going camping on a holiday weekend is not a smart plan. We spent at least double the normal amount of time driving, and the campers around us were noisy and inconsiderate. That aside, spending time with the family is always great.

I've decided to take this entire next week off, so I have a lot of big plans. I should be putting out lots of music, and finishing up the Japan trip articles. I also have a volleyball tournament Saturday. Wish me luck on a great week!

What an eventful weekend I just had. It's probably easiest if I go day by day:

Friday

I had to wake up at the break of dawn to get my car to Tucson to get my windshield replaced. I failed to factor in morning traffic though, and wound up late. Luckily, the people at Ventana Auto Glass were able to swap appointments. I then went back to my parent's house, where I was surprised to see my Aunt Laurie there, and what a nice surprise it was! I was able to just hang out and play music for awhile, and then I went out on a mountain bike ride with my Dad. The ride was pretty uneventful, other than a rattlesnake getting a little angry at us, and me feeling completely sick from having a mountain dew and hot dog before riding (yeah, I know, stupid idea). I returned home, spent some time in the spa, and had a really relaxing evening.

Saturday

I started off Saturday by shopping for frames and mattes for the pictures I bought last July at anime expo. My mom and aunt joined me, and it was great to have their opinions as we sorted through the rows of frames. The pictures from anime expo are beautiful (I will post pictures of them once they are in the frames) and I got compliments on them, but they are a weird size (20x30). This required some interesting decisions, and we wound up staying at the store for several hours before finding wonderful frame/matte combinations. I can't wait until they are done!

I then proceeded to do some clothes shopping, as I really needed to get a larger wardrobe for Japan (packing a minimum of one weeks' worth of clothes). I started off at Macy's, and spent at least 3 hours going through piles of clothes. My ears actually burned from changing shirts so much. At the end, I walked away with some crazy deals ($30 shorts that rang up for $2.99?! Sweet!), but I didn't feel like I quite had enough. I had some nice new shirts, pants, and shorts, but I thought it would be worthwhile to check out Kohl's. Having never shopped at Kohl's before, I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the best stores I have ever shopped at. The selection was incredible, and I couldn't see to grab enough clothes to try on. After several more hours at Kohl's, I had more clothes than I could carry, and I was going to get 20% off of all of them (on top of the individuals savings and deals going on). So after all that, I basically had a completely new wardrobe. I haven't had this much fun or success shopping ever!

After retiring back home, weary from all the running around, I sat down and started writing a song (somehow I ignored all the craziness with my nephews causing havoc around me). I've been trying to write a song that my sister and I could record together, and it needed to be a fun duet. After a couple of hours, I put together something that I think will turn out great. I haven't shown it to her yet, but I think she will love it! It's called, "Friends Forever."

Sunday, doomsday

As the section title would suggest, this is the day where the craziness truly went down. My Dad and I woke up really early on Sunday, and headed out for a mountain biking ride. We went to the 24 hour trail out by the Biosphere, which is truly awesome ride. As we arrived, my Dad realized he forgot his cell phone, and I didn't bring mine. You can hardly get signal out there anyways, and I mean, heck, nothing bad is going to happen right? (famous last words, and a lame attempt at foreshadowing). We started out on the ride, and we were cruising along at a pretty decent rate. My Dad is a very good rider though, so he had to stop me for me a few times to catch up. One time, we had to stop because my seat was knocked loose somehow. Upon trying to help me adjust the seat, he accidentally backed into a nasty cactus that embedded a painful needle into his Achilles heel. Needless to say, it hurt a lot, and I couldn't really get it all of the way out with the crappy tweezers we had on hand. So he bared the pain and rode on (still riding way faster than me up the hills). Eventually, we hit this one section of the ride where you have to climb four series of hills followed by fast descents. These hills are huge, and very steep, so it's easy to get hurt if you aren't a very experienced rider or you are reckless. We have done this ride many times without any injuries though, so neither of us is concerned about that usually. Anyways, we got to the fourth hill, and my Dad had a decent lead on me, and as I got over the crest of the hill, I saw him on the ground. Apparently, he had been going nearly 25 mph and hit a jump and got quite a bit of air. He landed mostly on the front tire, and wound up sliding. When I got to him, he seemed pretty stunned, so I skidded to a stop to see if he was alright. He turned to me and sort of gathered himself and then showed me his arm. He had ripped open the skin on his arm, and his bone was exposed. The cut was about 4 inches long and it was bleeding (but not nearly as much as you would think). He also chewed up the side of his hip pretty badly, and he had cuts all over. He immediately pinched his skin closed on his arm, and proceeded to take off his shirt (not an easy thing to do while trying pinch off a wound). I tied the shirt around his arm, and we tried to decide what to do next. We were approximately 9 miles into an almost 18 mile ride - not much choice there. We decided to ride and finish, as there wasn't really another option. The thing that amazed me though, was that he didn't slow one bit after getting injured. He seemed completely unphased, and I still struggled to keep up with him. We finished the ride without any additional problems, loaded up the car, and headed to the hospital. I tried to take some pictures with my phone at the hospital, so take a look below at the wonderful wounds.

Visit the gallery if you want to see the pictures full size.

My Dad was still cheerful and tough while they treated his wounds. In fact, the only thing that bugged him was the tetanus shot they gave him. He really didn't like that one bit! He said it hurt worse than any of his other wounds.

I finished up the day by getting a haircut, having a nice steak dinner with my family (parents, aunt, and grandparents), and watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which is a terrific movie that covers a lot of the aspects of life that we all have to deal with - namely love, family, aging, and death. While some people may be turned off by the speed of the movie (it is somewhat slow I suppose), I thought the director did a terrific job on it and there is a lot to think about with this movie.

I headed back to Phoenix this morning, and waking up at 5:15 for that especially sucked. Only four more days until Japan though, and I am psyched! I just hope I don't forget anything!

Life can be pretty hectic sometimes. I've definitely been filling my days to the brink. For example, this last weekend I cleaned my house for a gathering of friends to watch the U of A basketball team on Friday( Go cats! ), did a two and a half hour mountain bike ride with Tom( more on this later ), sprayed my weeds, trimmed my trees( after buying shears ), studied Japanese vigorously, prepared my house for my sister and brother-in-law staying here, went to olive garden with them, watched a movie, drove to Tucson, did a 50 mile bike ride with my dad to Biosphere, got a haircut, and came back. Phew! Let me cover some of the things that have happened, as well as covering some of the things from this weekend in more detail:

- Played in a sand volleyball tournament and had a great time. I originally was going to play with Adam Welch, who is an awesome partner, but he was unable to start his car. I showed up to the tournament unsure if he was going to be able to make it, and wound up playing with a guy nick-named Shaggy. I didn't know what to think based on the name, but he was a well known player and is very good. We had a great time playing together and will probably play again in the future. As for placement, I think we were somewhere in the middle( 13th? 11th? I'll have to check the website ).

- Wrote a new song called Can't Be Wrong. It's a really catchy song and I'm excited about recording it. If only I could find more time for music!

- Went on the previously mentioned two and a half hour mountain bike ride with Tom. The two of us ventured into Estrella Mountain National Park, paid the entrance fee, and proceeded to the rodeo grounds. The guy at the entrance, upon seeing that we were serious riders, told us about the competitive track. We acknowledged this, but the competitive track was a ways away, so we decided to chance whatever tracks were around the Rodeo grounds. We started off the ride, and it was fairly flat and uninteresting. The suddenly there were extremely rocky descents that turned quickly. This was followed by extremely steep uphills with loose/sand rock. Needless to say, Tom and I didn't manage to get up a single one of these downhill/uphill pairs all day. They were just too insane. In fact, we had to walk down some of the hills as they were just plain dangerous. These were obviously horse trails. At one point, there was a branch off to a different trail, and I suggested we try it for fun. It wound up being the wost decision of the day. The trail eventually led to a wash. We had to get off our bikes and walk them as the sand was extremely deep, and it was impossible to ride through. Little did we know that there were several MILES of wash that we had to walk through. All the while, we were baking and there were flies galore from the horse manure. The ride turned horrible at this point, and we were lucky to find a hiker who lent us a map. We planned our route home, but it involved plenty more hiking through the wash. Even when we finally got back to a trail that we could ride on, it was littered with loose sand and huge packs of rocks. The riding was very, very difficult and tiring. We eventually got back to the cars, but we were definitely tired. I looked at the day as endurance training. I managed to only get burned a little during this, but this was nothing compared to today...

- I rode 50 miles with my dad in Tucson today. It was a great ride, but the winds turned VICIOUS on the way back. Even going downhill, the winds were so bad that we had to work extremely hard to maintain decent speeds. I was also very tired my mountain bike ride with Tom the day before, so my legs got very weak, very fast. My dad had to constantly slow down for me, which really bummed me out as I couldn't show him that I've actually gotten much stronger. After almost 3 hours of riding, we stopped at starbucks to get some drinks, and a crazy situation ensued. We sat at a table, and my dad had his bottle and helmet on the table. Suddenly a gust of wind flipped the helmet and half full bottle off the table. We were seriously surprised by this, and no sooner had we recovered the items, that gust of wind came at us so hard that it knocked my dad's bike over( thank goodness it wasn't hurt ). I immediately rushed over to my bike to prevent a similar occurrence. Right at that moment, a gust of wind blew so hard that it flung the umbrella covering the table into the street. The crazy part is that the umbrella was held down by a metal base that had to have weighed around 60 pounds. The umbrella and base barely missed hitting a car. The starbuck's employees rushed out, amazed at what just happened. I'm just glad my dad and I weren't sitting on the other side of the table... Other than being exhausted when we got back, I found out that I had gotten burnt pretty badly. My face, legs, and arms are now red all over. I hadn't planned for a 3 hour ride, but I won't make this mistake again.

- Resident Evil 5 came out. This game has co-op and it is so much fun to play with a friend. John( my neighbor) and I have been playing it whenever we get a chance, and it's been a ball.

So as you can see, some fun stuff has happened. The next few weeks and weekends will be full as well( table tennis tournament, volleyball tournament in Colorado, indoor volleyball tournament, etc ). Wish me luck!

It's been a long time since I last posted. A lot of things have happened since the last post, so I'll try to summarize them:

- I've ridden several hundred miles more on my new bike. I've posted pictures of the beauty at the bottom of the post. I feel like I'm getting a lot stronger, and I'm hoping at some point that I'll be able to keep up with my dad. He is a monster though, so I really need to work hard to get as tough as him As part of the training to get stronger, I bought an axiom trainer for my bike. It's pretty incredible, as it lets you ride through courses that were filmed in other countries, and it changes the resistance based upon what is actually happening in the video. It makes riding so much more interesting.

- I competed in several indoor mens 6's tournaments and one coed double sand volleyball tournament. Of the mens 6's tournament, the only one worth mentioning is the 4th place finish out of 9 teams when we played in the Desert Thunder tournament, which was composed almost entirely of college club teams. The coed tournament was a blast, but we lost in the tournament pretty early on.

- I've upgraded my music studio with several things. The first, and most important thing to me, is a new taylor 914ce acoustic guitar. It's such a beauty, and the sound that comes out of it is incredible. I finally have an acoustic guitar that i can plug into an amp, and it sounds great. Dave Matthews owns two 914ce's, so you know its a great guitar if the big artists are using it. I also picked up a new midi keyboard to place underneath my monitors, so that I can work much faster with midi. Additionally, I upgraded my computer components. I switched from an AMD x2 3800+ with 2 gb of ddr2 400 RAM to an Intel Core 7 with 6gb of ram in Vista 64. The new setup seems to be about 10x faster( tasks that were taking 20 seconds took 2 ), and it makes working SOOO much better. I can now record at 2ms latency, making it possible to play drums with tracks using the keyboard without any lag. I can also load up projects, use tons of plugins, and perform intensive processing without ever seeing slowdown. I can't say enough about how awesome it is. To complement the computer, I also upgraded to Sonar 8 which has some awesome new features, and speed upgrades. There are pictures of the additions to my studio below.

- I competed in my first table tennis tournament( outside of the work sponsored one which doesn't count). As I was unrated when I entered the tournament, they have a policy where you aren't able to play past pool play, but they use your matches in pool play to rank you for future tournaments. I managed to win all 4 or 5 of my matches, which should give me a decent ranking to start. I'm set to get my official ranking tomorrow, so here's hoping... On a side note, I'm entering another tournament on March 27-28th. Here's hoping that I do well, as I'll be competing with much tougher competition!

- I went mountain biking riding with friends from work. I found out that there are some awesome trails up here in Goodyear. We went out to Fantasy Island North, and rode for several hours. I accidentally took my friends on the hardest difficult trail(it went up and up forever before descending on a small path down the side of the hill), which was ripe with opportunity for injury, but we all managed to make it out okay( except I think one of my friends was about to pass out due to not being conditioned for such extreme exercise ). I'm going out again on Saturday, but I think we will skip the insane trail this time!

Well that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Now it's picture time! Hopefully I will post more frequently from now.