Buddy reminded me that it was Leap Day today, so I decided to post because I won't get another chance until 2012!

Last night we went to Bucci's for Joe's birthday. I had a mixed green salad with pine nuts, and cassoulet, which was pretty yummy. How can you go wrong with sausage, bacon, lamb, and duck confit?? Mmm...

Otherwise, not too much new. I've found a new climbing nemesis in the form of an 11a that has a crappy move going over a lip, but I think I'm slowly getting it. It's nice to have a "project" to work on, even if it is just an 11a.

I'm trying to resist feeling mentally crushed when I think about how much there is left to do at work. I think I need to focus more on each task one at a time, rather than looking too far ahead and feeling overwhelmed. That, or I'll just curl into a fetal position and cry.

...I have nothing to say.

Instead, I'll post pictures of me acting like an idiot:

Uploaded to Flickr on 23rd February, 2008.

If you're reading this, leave a comment. Come on, I know you're out there, just do it.

For the children.

The morning I was driving to work when a car suddenly reversed into the street, causing me to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting it. Then it pulled forward a bit, and just stopped in the middle of the road.

As I honked and pulled around it, I noticed it had the following bumper sticker:

Why, indeed.

Last weekend Buddy and I watched King Lines, which I gave him for Christmas. It may be because it's the only climbing movie I've ever seen, but I thought it was awesome and very inspirational. Watching Chris Sharma climb is like watching Spiderman climb -- graceful and controlled, yet so powerful. It was also nice to see that things like fame and sponsorships were more like bonuses to him, and what really drives him is just a love of climbing. If I get to be a fraction of the climber that he is, I will be very, very happy. Now I just gotta go work on this 11a project at the gym...

(As an aside, while looking up info about Chris Sharma, I happened upon the website of Corey Rich, who has some really cool adventure photos, including the one that is on the cover on the King Lines DVD.)

Check out DJ Sara (age 9), and her brother DJ Ryusei (age 6):

People I was surprised to find out have accents

• Hugh Laurie, aka Dr. Gregory House in House M.D.. What? The gruff-yet-lovable doctor with unorthodox ways is a Brit? No way.










• Jamie Bamber, aka Apollo on Battlestar Galactica. This one really took me by surprise. We were watching some Battlestar DVD special features, and out comes Apollo's bangers-and-mash accent. It was surreal.

• Gwyneth Paltrow, aka Viola in Shakespeare in Love. They made fun of this on SNL once, but it's true that she somehow got big playing British people.










• Uma Thurman. This one's a little weird. I don't think I've ever seen her have a British accent in a movie, but my brain is convinced that she's British. Don't ask me why.

• Clive Owen, aka Dwight in Sin City. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out what accent he was supposed to have, when I realized it was just his poor attempt at flattening out his British accent.

• Kevin Costner, aka Robin Hood in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. At some points in the movie, he gives it the old college try, but at other times, his accent flounders or down right disappears. The sad thing is that you know what was put in the movie were actually the best takes of all, and that makes me wonder what they left on the cutting room floor. Maybe he was talking with an Indian or Chinese accent or something.

People who I was surprised to find out have accents, but then was surprised again when I saw them later and they didn't have their accents and now just confuse me

• Mel Gibson. I thought he was American for a long time, then I saw him in Gallipoli and learned he was apparently Australian, or at least grew up there, and I saw some interviews where he had an Australian accent. But I just looked up a recent interview on YouTube, and now his accent's gone. Then again, he's also crazy.

...but I guess he's wasn't.

WO BU XI HUAN NI NU PENG YOU!

Uploaded to Flickr on 10th February, 2008.

After a good 3-year run, my industrial piercing and I have parted ways. It had been getting infected on and off for a while, and a couple weeks ago it got especially infected, prompting a 10-day course of antibiotics. That combined with the fact that it has also scarred led me to finally take it out, even though I really liked it. Maybe we'll meet again later, or maybe I'll finally admit to myself that my body just doesn't heal piercings very well. But not likely.

Dear iPod,

You are so cute and shiny, and I can listen to podcasts on you, and even watch TV shows. I can also play Peggle on you. When I dropped you on the asphalt on Judah Street, you did not break, and barely scratched. I like this a lot.

But there are a few things, iPod, that I do not like. For one, why was your interface designed by retarded monkeys? Why, when I just want to shuffle all the songs from a particular artist, do I first need to go to the "Settings" menu and set Shuffle to "Songs", then find that artist in my library, hold down the center button to add the songs to a "On the go" playlist, and then find that playlist and play it?

And while I'm on the topic of shuffling, why is it that your "Shuffle Songs" feature is so very non-random? Why do I always hear so many Avril Lavigne songs, but only have about 25 Avril Lavigne songs in my collection of 4000+ songs? Did Avril pay Apple millions of dollars to bias your shuffling algorithm towards her songs? More importantly, why do I have so many Avril Lavigne songs?

iPod, I like you so much, but every day when I listen to you on shuffle on the way to work, and you play me 9 Fort Minor songs in a row, it hurts me. Please try to change.

Love,
Sha Sha

Happy year of the rat, everyone! I was a good Chinese kid and had fish last night for dinner (after being reminded by both my mom and my brother.) A special thanks to Yar and Jan for picking up my dinner for me from Pacific Catch. I was coming back to the city from climbing and wasn't going to make it back to the city before closing, so I called in the order had JanYar pick it up for me. I ordered grilled escolar which was actually really good, but if you check out the wikipedia article I linked to, you'll find some interesting information under the section titled "Effects of consumption". I did have some mild "issues" today, but I'm not sure if it was the escolar, coincidence, or psychological. In any case, I may be avoiding this particular fish in the future.

In climbing news, I had a pretty good night last night and did a 10a, a 10d, and two 11as. I'm a little sore today, but I'm glad that I'm getting into better climbing shape. I'm also going to run at the gym today, so this is shaping up to be a pretty healthy start to the (Chinese) new year.

Need I remind you all? It's the first time in a bajillion years that the California primary actually carries some weight, so get out there and vote!

Hey, I'm home sick today, and even I'm going out to vote.

If nothing else, if you are a San Francisco resident, please, please vote against the global peace center. Please.

Had a nice relaxing weekend. Friday night we finally watched The Simpson's Movie, which was good, but not best evar, which is about what I expected. Saturday we were thinking of going to the Japanese Tea Gardens in the park, but given the crappy weather, we decided to check out the de Young museum instead. For dinner we had Little Star, which was delicious as always, and watched Knocked Up, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It was especially novel because I got it on pay-per-view, which, at $4.99 was a bit more expensive than a normal DVD rental, but definitely beat going to the video store in the pouring rain.

On Sunday I played a lot of Hotel Dusk, which is pretty fun, but I think relies a little too much on the crappy adventure game mechanic of being able to pick up/do/see/talk to certain things only after hitting some arbitrary trigger. I also watched some of the Super Bowl, but equal amounts of the Puppy Bowl. I'll let you decide which I liked more.

For dinner Sunday night, we made corn and squash soup (much better than it sounds) and awesome biscuits. Mmmm...so buttery...