Category: General

Recently I found a couple of unexpected presents in my mailbox at work, one of which was a free $15 Starbucks Card!  Why?  I have no idea… something about community participation, but whatever.  🙂  Karen conveniently relieved me of my Starbucks Card.

Then another day I was pleasantly surprised with the other gift in the mailbox–1 month free netflix subscription!  So I signed up.  With the exception of the one time my mailman completely missed the little red flag on the side of the mailbox and proceeded to stack the incoming mail on top of it, things are going smoothly.  With 2 weeks introductory offer plus 1 month from the gift card, that’s about 6 weeks of nonstop DVD action!

Without these subsidizing incentives, Blockbuster is a better deal.  If I had a sudden urge to watch Supergirl at 11:40pm, a quick visit to the local store will suffice.  With Netflix, however, I would need to take one of my DVDs, put it in the envelope, drop it in my mailbox, go online, log in, add it to the queue, move it up in the queue, and twirl my fingers for the next 5 days as I patiently wait for it to come in the mail.  Finally, I may end up getting Screwball instead of Supergirl if they ran out of the title!  Factoring in the fact that USPS slacks off on Sundays, that’s quite a bit of down time.

Still, can’t beat free DVDs even if it takes a while to get here.  😀

Here were my results…

American Cities That Best Fit You:

70% Austin

65% Atlanta

65% Honolulu

65% Las Vegas

65% Miami

Oh no!  Having a large majority of Happyfishers being Texas is one thing, but now the test claimed I belong in Texas!  While the prospect of owning a 1,000 acre yard is nice from a real estate perspective, it may take a slightly more excessive amount of time to mow that lawn or weed the field, and the closest neighbor may be 30 minutes away!  It’s uncertain whether I’m cut out for a life of raising cows for a living while wearing cowboy hats and swinging a lasso! The only lasso I want to see is in Photoshop. Nooooooooooo!

Initially Karen and I were planning to play some tennis on this gorgeous afternoon, but over lunch we heard about the super-duper July 4th deal at the Seattle Premier Outlets.  Figuring we have the rest of summer to play tennis but only one July 4th weekend sale, the balance tipped on the outlet side.

This mall was big, with a very good selection for outlet mall.  Take that comment for what it’s worth, though, because this is coming from someone who treats shopping at malls like a stealth mission.  You start with a target, you move in, acquire the target, and get out as fast as possible.  (Naturally, Karen is not very fond of this shopping behavior).

As for the July 4th sale, almost everything had a “sale” tag on it, so it wasn’t clear what was really for July 4th.  Also, at the entrance of Nautica, some lady handed us a coupon:

Not that we planned to spend $175 on clothes in one store, but we took a quick peek anyway.  Finding nothing of value, I tried to hand the coupon back to the lady, but she said, “Oh that’s okay, I don’t need it”.  Before I got a chance to say, “Well, I don’t want it either!” she continued, “It’s good until the rest of the year.”

So there you have it.  The July 4th sale is a sham, and the expiration dates are there to get you to buy compulsively.  That said, there are still deals to be had, but just like any mall, you still have to work to find them.  Just don’t buy anything you’re not sure of, because it’s a long way to the return line!

I noticed the little survey on theological worldview on Angela’s blog, so I decided to give it a try.  Here were is my result:

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 93% Fundamentalist 61% Charismatic/Pentecostal 54% Reformed Evangelical 50% Neo orthodox 46% Emergent/Postmodern 46% Modern Liberal 36% Classical Liberal 25% Roman Catholic 18% What’s your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

I don’t know who John Wesley is or what he did, but if he wants to believe what I believe, then hey, more power to him!

First of all, Happy Birthday to Karen this weekend!  It was a very hectic weekend, with a wedding, an open house, two birthday celebrations (Happyfish and Family), church, movie, and all the stuff in between, there was barely time for a breather!  I will get around to posting a few pictures on the blog soon.

Some of us watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith today, but before I get to that let’s go to a tangent on theatres.  First of all, the biggest screen at Crossroads is still my favorite theatre, even without stadium seating, because it has the best screen and sound combination next to Cinerama.  In case you’re wondering, you can always know which movie is on the big screen by glancing at the first entry on the ticket box movie list.  Karen and I tried the new Lowes up in Alderwood Mall, which also a decent-sized screen, but it was lacking in the audio department.  It didn’t pass my stringent aural litmus test: when explosions occur, my heart needs to feel the pressure and my butt needs to shake.  I felt neither, just loudness.  The conclusion–the theatre is no good.

As for the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I enjoyed it.  Sure, you either love or hate Brad Pitt, but who can dislike Angelina Jolie, who fits this Assassin/Tomb Raider type of role so perfectly.  The storyline is rather unique, as two assassins married without knowing about each other’s secrets.  Again, I will refrain from disclosing spoilers, but suffice to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Karen and I give it a two thumbs up.

As for the Magic Bean update that has been preoccupying all of your minds lately, all I can say is that there is disturbance in the soil.  Nothing worthy of a picture yet, but I have a hunch that something major may take place in the next few days.  Mark my words.  😉

The first time Karen and I went to Tapioca Express in Edmunds, we ordered a popcorn chicken at two-stars of spiciness.  Immediately after consuming a few pieces, beads of chili swet glided down the sideburns.  Last night, we returned to the store and witnessed Andrew making an order for four stars Popcorn Chicken!  Immediately everyone started cracking up, thinking Andrew will feel the anesthetic numbness from the extra spice.  Unfortunately the event never materialized.  Apparently they’ve normalized the spiciness chart, and four stars now taste like two stars!  They’ve wimped out!  Now I’ll never be able to experience the original five-star spicy Popcorn Chicken!  🙁

So Karen had already watched the Phantom of the Opera DVD just last week, but she insisted that I watch it with her again.  It was enjoyable, but one inconsistency really irked me.  For the first half of the movie, the Phantom looked like this stud with slicked hair and perfect facials.  At one point you could even see his entire flawless forehead.  Then when the mask is ripped off, half of the forehead is riddled with scars filling an area inconcealable with some of the masks worn.  Also, the eye suddenly resembles that of Tales from the Crypt!  What the heck?!!  Did they really think they could sneak this little detail pass the scrutinizing audience like myself?  Imagine me wearing a tiny snoopy band-aid on my hand, and when it is peeled off, my entire hand and arm is covered in leprousy.  Slight oversight?

That, along with the weak, untrained voice of the Phantom, are the only sore spots in the movie.  Despite those issues, I would still recommend this movie, especially if you’ve seen the musical as it augments the storyline.

My mom sent me some advertisements regarding health tips, and some of this seems to defy conventional wisdom.  It describes “how doctors stay well while treating sick people all day”, and the solution isn’t washing hands.  Many doctors take herbs but don’t recommend it to their patients because it’s unscientific.  Maybe they’ve been taking the same weird assorted bark and dirt puree that I was made to drink as a kid by grandma!  While the article is definitely advertisement, some of it is rather interesting.  Check this out:

Cold and flu remedy that fights cancer: astragalus (huang qi). Take it with your meals!

Pain remedy that works faster than Tylenol/Aspirin: static electricity. Go to Home Depot and get some generic painter’s mitt and a PVC pipe about an inch thick.  If you have a pain in the butt, rub vigorously for one minute, apply to the heinies, and voila!  Pain is gone.

How to reversing clogged arteries: vitamin C.  Simple.

What’s a heart attack trigger?  People who interrupt conversations!!  Oh oh… 😯

How to eat fiber without resorting to eating stuff that taste like sawdust?  Eat Avocados.  Some other stuff includes raspberries (8g), blackberries (8g), apples (3g), mangoes (4g), acorn squash (6g), black beans (8g), artichokes (6g), sweet potatoes (5g).  Darn, and I’ve been trying to get rid of the blackberries in my back yard!

Is Salmon is good for you?  Not from the supermarket.  Farmed salmon contains antibiotics and pesticides, and are fattier than wild cousins plus they have two-thirds less omega-3 fats!  Get wild salmon from natural food markets.

How to tell if you have bad breath? Lick the inside of your wrist, wait 4 seconds, then smell.  Typically Karen just stuffs a couple of mint pills in my mouth before doing any tests.  Guilty until proven innocent.

There are numerous other tips like these throughout the ad.  Now I’ve greatly simplified the text, so if you’re interested in verifying the original manuscripts, you can download secrets1.pdf (6.6 MB), or you can check out the web site at http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com.

That said, I can’t vouch the accuracy of this information.  After all, I’ve always thought static electricity is good for zapping someone silly than to sooth the pain.  If you know of whether any of these is fact or fiction, let me know!

This morning during my leisurely drive to work, I heard them utter on the radio about a new technology regarding sensing anxious support calls and automatically forwarding them to the supervisor.  Well, this reminded me of the days when I slaved away as a phone operator for National Dispatch Center back in the college days in San Diego.

It was a neat experience because all the cast of the show 90210 back then were on alphanumeric pagers, and so were many basketball players.  All the operators knew that Michael Jordan’s alias was “Chris Blackman”.  One time I actually received a call for Chris Blackman, and the caller left the message “Scottie won’t be at the camp Monday.  Call xxx-xxxx.”.  The only Scottie I knew on the Bulls was Scottie Pippen, but to this day I cannot verify the authenticity of this mystery character.  His impression of me wasn’t the best, as he kept calling me “Ma’am”, perhaps because my voice didn’t matured enough back then.  After that call I lowered my voice to a much lower register to circumvent these type of misunderstandings.

I wasn’t exactly the model operator either.  One time when I received a call when someone nicely asked me to send the rhyming message “Where the **** is my truck?”  I innocently sent it and immediately got a friendly visit from my supervisor, who wasn’t exactly thrilled about… the word being on the banned list.  How was I supposed to know?  Did the supervisor expect me to go through the training manual the size of the yellow pages?!

But the most interesting message I’ve received was when this lady left the message, “Left my underwear under your bed.  Get it before your wife comes home!”

I was at Bellevue Square the other day when I saw:

Borders, closing permanently on June 12th?!  Putting on my Sherlock cap, I initiated an investigation on this matter by questioning one of the prime suspects, the cashier.  After my extensive attempt at prying the cause of this operational shutdown, which lasted 3 seconds, she relented and disclosed the reason: “The rent is too high.”

What’s wrong with Bellevue Square?  We’ve already witnessed one of the greatest fiasco in Mall history when Disney decided to close their doors, but apparently that wasn’t enough.  At this rate, the mall will become the Rodeo Drive of Seattle with expensive brands and unaffordable merchandice!

To look on the bright side, I suppose it will put a damper to Karen’s compulsive, extravagant Bellevue Square shopping habits.  😆