I’m posting this because, I like to give into peer pressure and I believe in not breaking chain letters, email forwards… no not really

Actually I’m physically exhausted it’s been a long few weeks of cleaning, shopping, moving stuff around, wall paper stripping, entertaining an out of town friend (which was an awesome break from all this) and now tomorrow begins PAINting!

So without further a due…

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven. You aren’t concerned much with theories or dreams… only what’s true or untrue. You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched. You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren’t subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

Ha… A Colon!

Today marks one year since my grandmother passed away. Some of my family took my grandfather up to Rose Hills to visit her crypt. It was a good trip up to the top of the hill and to be able to spend some time with my family. Afterwards we took grandpa home so he could take a nap and we went to lunch.

Today obviously brings back a flood of memories. As I look back at the last year I’m reminded of some of the things which are lacking.

I’m sad she’s not around physically here. I miss her so much. I still think of her often. I find it hard to be and my grandparent’s house because I still expect her to come walking out of the kitchen and sit down next to me on the couch. I miss her cooking. I miss her advice. I miss her voice. I’m sad she is not going to be apart of our son’s life…

Reading these back one thing is obvious, I still hurt and will probably still hurt for a long time.

Being just past easter and *celebrating* her passing (and seeing the irony in the situation of her passing and the timing)… instead of focusing on things which encourage sorrow, when I think of my grandmother I’ve been trying to think of the legacy she has left with us.

Love. A grandmother’s love is amazing. It’s like a mother’s love on steroids. I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandparents and they did help raise me. Her love was strong, unconditional and accepting, no matter how many times you messed up or were wrong, she just LOVED you.

Generosity. I’ve been told on many occasions that I’m generous, or that I have a generous heart. Those words are nice but I can’t take credit. It’s obvious I learned this from her. I’ve never witnessed someone be as generous in all that they did, give and serve people as much as my grandmother did.

Strength and Sacrifice. My grandparents have a traditional ethnic emigration story. They both worked hard to do the best they could for their children and grandchildren. My grandmother did all that work plus raise children, grandchildren and battle illness. Her strength and will to move forward despite all the hurdles and continue to improve herself and provide for her children is amazing. I will never fully understand how she did it.

Encouragement. She just always seemed to have the right encouragement for me when when I was confused or unsure. She was honest and always encouraged us to do the same thing. I wouldn’t have graduated college it it wasn’t for her encouragement and help.

Intelligence. This one is eye opening. You see my grandmother never did schooling past the 3rd grade in Italy, yet she was one of the smartest persons I’ve ever encountered. It just goes to show you that being good at memorizing times tables, knowing historical facts/trivia, knowing how to read or spell properly doesn’t make you Intelligent. Though she only made it to 3rd grade due to circumstances in Italy at the time, she still encouraged ME to get an education and it wasn’t to become smart, it was to allow myself more opportunities in life.

Faith. Knowing her life story, you can see that faith was a HUGE part of her life. She went to church, she believed in Jesus and she served people.

Food and Entertainment/Welcome. No one can cook like my grandmother could. This is a fact, if you’ve eaten at the restaurant and liked it, you’ve really only taste maybe 25% of her cooking knowledge. She also loved to entertain and host people and would always welcome the ever so popular *uninvited guests* as if they were invited. I never understood it but it must’ve been the right thing to do.

I find it amazing that her passing came as a result of doing something she loved, she was serving spaghetti at her church, something she did every year and she happened to slip, fall and break her femur. She laid in a hospital for a week and that was the end. She died serving food! She LOVED to make people happy!

I can go on… and while tears come out I’m also beginning to feel much better. I want to not forget the many good and positive things Giuseppina (Teti) Persico, my grandmother, has done in and for my life. I will make sure our son knows about her and I hope to instill some of these qualities in his life.

Was watching the new Discovery Show, Smash Lab (oh how it wants to be Mythbusters!) and I kept noticing something familiar about “The Smash Lab.” Half way through the show there is a wide shot of the two of the hosts walking towards *the lab*:

I guess that UGLY mural is finally good for something!

There’s only been one episode of the show and so far I’m not sure about its longevity as the show’s premise and first topic weren’t that great. There are 4 hosts and I don’t think they have much of a personality yet. I’ll give it a few more episodes though.

Welcome to 2008!

Be sure to check out panoramas.dk for their latest New Year’s panoramas!

I don’t know how to greet / wish people a *good* Kwanzaa… ah who cares, it’s not a real holiday anyway! Also today is Boxing Day! Besides… I’d rather just post about our Christmas experience this year.

We got up, Lori made breakfast: bacon, potatoes and omelets!. We ate in the living room and watched the Revolution Christmas DVD. After breakfast, Lori opened her large present which was hidden behind the couch. It was a guitar, finally after 4 or 5 years of me wanting to get her a guitar for Christmas, I did.

As for me, I got Guitar Hero and Rock Band, that was our agreement. Oh yeah, and a baby for Christmas!! We also talked about how this would be our last Christmas with just us and how next year we’d have a baby (who’d have no idea what was going on) to open gifts!

Lori played with her Guitar for a while, which brought back many memories for her and within a few minutes she found her old chord and Beatles song books and was playing again. Not to feel left out, I decided to bust out my Axe and play some online Rock Band!

We went over to my Grandfather’s house for lunch and hung out with my family. After that we headed over to Holly and Jim’s house for desert. We made our way home and I started to pull out the Guitar for Rock Band. It was then Lori said, I wanna play the drums. I said sure lets do it.

Well, it turns out Lori has great rhythm and loves to play the Drums in Rock Band. Finally I got her to play this game and she enjoys it. She created her own (fem) drummer character and we played a few songs then jumped into some online band play adding another guitar (bass) and a singer.

Lori was feeling good about her playing, so I decided for our final song to play Run To The Hills (which is my favorite Iron Maiden song) This is supposed to be the hardest song on EXPERT mode. She played it in EASY and did super. I was impressed.

Today I went to see Walk Hard, which was funny! After coming home, we jumped back into some Rock Band, this time with special guest vocalist Donovan and we jammed out on a few songs. Later, Lori and I started our own band, played some local gigs. We’re on our way to tour the world!

I finally got around to doing this:

What do you think?

UPDATE, I Took the Multiple Intelligences Test:

I thought the structure of this test wasn’t as good, though I do like music a ton!

Continued from here…



Today after church and lunch and since we were in Downey, Lori and I headed to All American (we were 2 of maybe 5 there) Home Center. Now it’s Sunday, after church time and the Christmas shopping season so you can imagine they were busy. I found a good parking spot in the front and met Lori in the garden / tree department. We picked a tree to our specifications pretty quickly this time. Being busy, I grabbed the tree and asked the guy if Lori could just take the tag and pay for it while I wait with the tree so it doesn’t have to go into the rack and then I’d have to wait in 4 lines (to drop off tree, to pay for tree, to wait in my car to enter the “tree pickup area” and to wait for them to find my tree again.

The kid seemed confused so he brought his “manager” to answer the question who said no, but I could take the tree to the register and take it out myself. I said fine and lunged the tree overhead and charged into the store! The store was BUSY filled with huge families most with 6 - 12 per group (and the kids rolling all over the floors). Most of the people didn’t get that I had a tree and was trying to get through or just didn’t care, so I announced tree coming through move or you’ll encounter it, Merry Christmas. I got quite a few open mouth / confused looks from people who just decided to stop in front of me so like a logging truck just rolled through. Lori jumped in front of me and cleared a path. We made it to the register, paid and I loaded my truck and left for Lakewood. Record time at the AAHC, I was proud and laughing at how funny the situation was and what I did to get through.

We came home and began to decorate the tree. This tree fit perfectly (against my fears) in the corner and does look nice. We also hung up the pine lights which suck to make look nice because they store as a nice flat roll! Maggie is still not too happy with the tree though she’s now beginning to warm up to it. I predict she’ll knock off at least 2 or 3 ornaments by morning.

Last year our trees were named Grimmace (and 2.0). This year our tree is named Townsend Tree, due to it’s tall slender appearance. thought it was almost named Wallace (because of the tall/slender appearance and it kind of rhymes with Grimmace).

Some photos here

Being the day after Thanksgiving, Lori and I seem to have a tradition of decorating for Christmas. Last year we got a tree the day after Thanksgiving. This year, since we are in a house it made more sense to use the day to focus on outside decoration, lights. I can remember being a kid and getting excited to put up lights at my parent’s house and then my grandparent’s house, which usually was a HUGE project.

Though it wasn’t as elaborate as i’ve done in the past I think the lights turned out well and there are quite a few more than we’d put up on our balcony at the apartment. I’m still debating if I want to put a net of lights on the big bush tree thing between our house and the neighbors. All of the non icicle lights are LED, and had we not had the icicle lights already I’d have bought those as LEDs also. I really like the look of the LEDs and they use like 3.2 watts per strand!

Big thanks to Timbo for the help. Here are some photos.

Up next will be more interior decorating and then maybe (if I can delay it) in a week or so we’ll get a tree. I will admit I’m a little sad being not as close as we once were from All-(far from)-American Home Center because they really did have the best trees and the most decoration elements. Though, I’m sure we’ll find a decent tree lot around here.

Kind of late to write about last week, but if I’m keeping a journal of some sorts here it is:

Julie was in town to spend a few relaxing days in SoCal and up in Solvang (where she had never been, a few photos are here). Friday was a nice day of catching up, Lunch at Super Mex and then dinner at the Yaki Tori side of Sushi of Naples. After many Saki later we returned home for sleep.

Saturday Lori and Julie left for Solvang leaving poor me to be home alone! I did some odds and ends around the house and went with Tim to meet up with Jason to bottle our beer at the Brewbakers. The beer, a Cream Stout turned out well! Tim and I returned to my place for some GH III action and then we met up with Jason, Andrew and Kevin (the Camion) at (mother)Fudd Ruckers for dinner.

After dinner we returned back to my house because I had a BluRay copy of Live Free or Die Hard we were bent on watching. Well that proved a challenge but after an hour or so of *tweaking* my system I found the proper combination to play the movie. The PQ was perfect and the surround was booming (it was after midnight by now so i turned down the bass a bit not to scare/piss off the neighbors). Man I really NEED a 60” TV!!! I enjoyed the movie and was very happy I was able to play a BluRay film on my HTPC.

Sunday morning came pretty quick, Tim and I did some setup at Lakewood and then I took off to Downey for our setup. It was acoustic Sunday so not much for stage setup and it went pretty quick, though the lack of sleep and lingering cold did catch up with me and I was pretty grumpy. Sunday after church I went home and took a nap. Woke up ate some dinner, watched the Pixar Shorts and Ratatouille BluRay discs I bought until Donovan came over. I had a great time hanging and talking with Donovan and then playing some GH3. Richard came over with leftovers from his new favorite BBQ restaurant obsession and we took turns shredding at the GH3.

Monday afternoon delivered back Lori and Julie we planned a little Carnage Asada BBQ in Julie’s honor and invited over a few people. The BBQ was fun we all ate like pigs! Fire pit started and some went in to play GH3. Donovan, Julie, Lori and I ended up staying up until 1:30 or so playing the GH3 and talking. Made for great times!

Tuesday was a sad day because we knew Julie was to leave soon. We ended up getting lunch with Donovan in Costa Mesa and then took a trip to Hi-Times to show Julie. After returning home Lori and I took Julie to the airport and bit farewell to her.

Thanks to Ian for planning the surprise trip and lending us Julie! We need to plan these cross trips more often, once or twice a year just doesn’t seem often enough!

After a busy week I was looking forward to a hopefully less busy weekend…

Friday evening I sort of surprised Lori with a sporadic (I planned it) dinner and movie (outside the Home Theater even!). We saw Across The Universe.

The movie is great if you’re a Beatles fan. It’s sort of cheesy, the singers are great and there are a ton of little references. There is a loose storyline and along the way they’ve taken a song and interpreted it into a scene in the movie. We both really enjoyed the movie and it really makes me want to go back to see the Love show again in vegas.

Saturday I did some cleaning up around here, talked to Jason L. Parks, and ran some errands until we left to go to the Revo Downey pumpkin carving event. This brought us to Eric and Ashley’s place which happens to be located on the Peacock farm in Norwalk next to the Target. It was fun to be on the farm, eat chili, hang out and watch people carve FAKE pumpkins! The pumpkins were fake so we could give them to the children of city of hope where Ashley works. Later a few of us continued to hang out and have some cocktails at the Chili’s at the Landing…

Sunday morning started out with me somehow sleeping through my alarm (a super rare occasion… Kevin I must be catching this from you!) I raced over to the Lakewood campus and helped finish the setup, troubleshooting and educating the band on operating the new system. Still half-asleep I raced over to the Downey to start our setup. After church I took a mid-day break at home and then met up with Paul at the Lakewood campus to educate and observe the night service.

The sound at Lakewood has improved so much, the range and clarity was staggering. However, the new amp was failing so I decided to stay and pull it out after the service so it could be exchanged for a newer one with room for a bit more overhead.

Overall it was a busy and eventful weekend. I had fun, worked hard at times and I learned a few more things about myself that I’d like to continue to work on improving.