seattle recap, and...*gasp*... p90x?

Hey everyone, back from Seattle!

First, I'd like to thank Justin, Andy, and Marisa for chiming in for my last blog post regarding finances. I appreciate you taking the time! That's the beauty of finances — there really isn't any "right" or "wrong" way for anyone, and everyone's mileage is sure to vary.

Well, I'm back from Seattle and I suppose I owe you some recap. Most of it was site-seeing so I probably won't go into too much detail, but rather give you a nice overview. Pictures will be posted on Facebook later, mostly because I'm too lazy to upload them right now.

Thursday/Friday
We arrived Thursday night and Travis dropped us off at our hotel. That was about all Thursday entailed. Friday morning we got ready and and walked around downtown some, including the Space Needle. When I say we walked, I mean it. For the majority of our stay in Seattle, we walked everywhere. It was a lot of walking, and it might have been more than we walked in New York, solely because we didn't use any mass transportation.

At any rate, we walked down to the court house to meet up with Travis for lunch, and we ate at a nice seafood joint (this will be repeating theme). After lunch, we went to the top of the Columbia Tower, which has a really great view, being the tallest building in Seattle. Next we went back to Travis's court house where he gave us a grand tour, and we met Judge Richard C. Tallman, a federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Needless to say, I was very humbled shaking the hand of a man who, in my opinion, is very important.

We left Travis to wrap up his day at the court house, and went on to Pike's Market. It's a very cool market with tons of fish and other shops. To compare it to something in Austin (albeit with some futility), it would be a combination of the South Congress shops/booths, and the Whole Foods fruits/veggies/butcher sections. Their produce selection was what I was hoping to see when I went to the Austin Farmer's Market downtown, but frankly the selection was rather underwhelming, especially compared to Pike's Market. As any first timer should, we went to the first Starbuck's location and got some coffee and souvenirs.

Later, we met up with Travis again for dinner, and ate more seafood. Taylor and I were incredibly exhausted and could not stay out very late, due in combination to the time change, endless walking, and an early morning.

Saturday
Saturday morning we went on the Underground Tour, which was pretty cool, funny, and entertaining. Our guide was hilarious. Apparently, when Seattle was first constructed, they did a very poor job because they didn't take account the hills and the impact they would make. They decided they needed to relevel the ground to even it all out, but they couldn't just shut down the businesses for years while they did this. Instead, the businesses continued, and the streets and land around them were slowly raised. This resulted in the first floors and sidewalks of businesses becoming underground basements and walkways, while the rest of the land around them became the new "first floor." Very strange.

Next we hit up the ferry to Bainbridge, mostly for the ferry ride and the views. Once we got back to Seattle from our round trip, we went to a Texas bar and watched our pathetic football game. After that shit-tastic "competition" we hit up yet another seafood place, and I had a delicious, thick-cut salmon fillet. Another early night due to exhaustion (early being 10 PST).

Sunday
Today was mostly a travel day, but we did have time to hit up the EMP/SFM, which is a music/sci-fi museum. It was pretty cool, and they had a Battlestar Galactica exhibit setup right now which was also cool to see. Before Travis dropped us off at the airport, we had lunch at some Thai/Pho place. It was good.

That about wraps up my trip, and despite this entry being long enough already, I have another topic to share.

P90X
This will be the first of hopefully some future P90X blog updates. Well, for starters, if you don't know what P90X is, check out this link. In a nutshell, it's an intense 90 day workout that combines cardio, strength training, plyometrics, and yoga. There is only 1 optional day an entire week, so I will be working out for about an hour almost every day for that time period. Yes, this sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Why the hell do I want to do P90X? I don't even really know. Nah, just kidding, I do know. More than anything, I want to challenge myself and my willpower to see if I can take on something like this. It takes a heavy commitment to work out almost everyday for an hour for 90 or so days. I want to challenge myself to see if I can meet that commitment if I really put my mind to it. And, if I do manage to last, I will be very proud of myself. Hell, to be honest, I'll be proud if I even make it half way, but half way is still quitting and I won't have achieved my goal. All or nothing!

Where did this come from? Well, recently I was talking to Andy about his friend Matt, who has been bulking up for body building competitions or what not (I don't remember the specifics). I remember saying something like, "Man, he must have some will power/commitment, there is no way I could do that." Saying that displeased me. I want to be able to commit to something like this if I really wanted. I don't expect to bulk up from P90X, however, and it's not designed for that (just increased physical fitness). But Matt's accomplishment(s) has spurred me to do something of my own.

So now I'm challenging myself and letting everyone know. That way, if I decide I want to quit, I won't be the only one who knows I've quit — so will all of you. And I don't want to let you guys down, right? I've ordered a couple more things I need to begin (pull-up bar, exercise mat), and those should arrive Wednesday. Sometime in the next week I will begin day 1, and I will periodically keep you guys updated. I'm also going to blog about it just so I have a personal record of my progress, too. If you don't care about the P90X updates, feel free to skip them.

Wish me luck guys, I think I'm going to need it.

edit: I encourage all of you to leave me a comment with your guess on how many days I will last. 1? 5? 30? All 90? 

vacation!

Last Friday was my two year anniversary with Taylor, and we went to Uchi to celebrate. It was delicious as expected.

The rest of the weekend was filled with hanging out and sports. The hanging out part was good. The sports part was very, very bad. Both the Longhorns and the Cowboys embarrassed themselves for the umpteenth weekend in a row. Sigh...

[this portion was written Monday night]
I have three presentations tomorrow which will wrap up most of my duties for this charity campaign. I'm less nervous than I was about the leadership presentation, but there will be many more people at these presentations. I'm going to prep for the presentation tonight and tomorrow morning, and we'll just see how it goes. I have a presentation at 9:30, 10:30, and 5:00. What sucks is that usually when you make a presentation, you're relieved and done. In my case, I have to make it again two more times. I'm sure it'll be much easier each subsequent time, though.

[this portion was written Wednesday]
Well I'm done with the presentations and they all went well - except for attendance. Not sure what happened this year, but I only talked to about 60 people total across the three meetings. Oh well, it's still an accomplishment, just not as big as I was hoping.

I need some financial advice from my readers. I am almost done with my car payments, and I have two options for what to do with the extra money: put it toward my student loans, or my savings. The typical financial advice that you would receive is to put it toward your loans because of the interest rates. My savings account has an APY of 3%, whereas my student loans have an average rate of about 4.5%. However, I'm hoping to have a solid enough chunk of money saved up in the next one to two years such that I can make a down payment for a house and afford all the necessities involved. I would like to put the extra money all toward my savings, in order to boost that account. Of course, the smart compromise would be to split it up - maybe half and half? All I know is that if I put it all toward my loans, my savings account won't be able to grow as much and I won't be as financially ready in the future for a commitment such as a house.

I wish I knew some financial experts.

Tomorrow I leave for Seattle with the always-beautiful Taylor Yowell. We're going there in part to celebrate our anniversary, but also to visit a good friend who left us for Seattle a couple months ago — Travis, of course. Should be a fun weekend, and relaxing if nothing else. I need the break.

Two years!

It's our two year anniversary today. We're going to Uchi tonight. It's gonna be a good day.

The love is strong

woo-wee

Today was a fun day for me. As part of my community fund coordinating duties, I had to give a presentation to our leadership today, or at least to those who had time and weren't out on travel.

I was a bit nervous about it this morning, but after a few dry runs I was good to go. The nervousness subsided and I gave a pretty good presentation, and I even got some praise afterwards.

I don't normally like to brag about my accomplishments, but I am particularly proud of this one. It's also an important part of growing as an individual, and trying to take on things outside of your comfort zone.

My duties are not quite over, though. I have two more presentations to give next week (duplicate presentations to different groups of people). These presentations will be for the general masses at work, and while they'll be larger scale in terms of audience size, I think it will be an easier presentation overall.

Once I'm done with that (next Tuesday), I only have another day of work and then I leave for Seattle with Taylor for the weekend!

Gorillaz videos

I went ahead and uploaded my iPhone videos from the Gorillaz concert, if you're interested.

Click the links above the vids to go to the YouTube page, where you can see the HD versions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fB4jRTSBxk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFXcz6Uflyg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZvVjD75awE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avC_0a45_oo

Man oh man oh man

It seems like a lot is going on lately, but really I don't think that's the case. Maybe just a lot going on in my mind.

Last weekend I went to see the Gorillaz, which was one of the best concerts I've seen. I wasn't sure how I felt about their newest album, but it's grown on me quite a bit. As for the concert, it was simply a lot of fun. They had a huge screen behind the stage where they played animations and music videos, and they never had less than 10 people on the stage performing. They had a strings section, the occasional brass section, an Syrian/Arabic music group for a couple songs, a couple drummers — you name it, they probably had it on stage. When they played their singles that had corresponding music videos, they were always timed well. When people were singing live, it was correctly matching up with lip movement in the videos. The animations really raised the fun factor in my opinion. Not to mention that everyone on the stage (including Damon Albarn) was having a blast and was very energetic.

I took a couple videos on my phone, but I have yet to really figure out the best way of uploading videos to YouTube. Strange that I've never done that before. Fear not, though. They have live performances on YouTube already for your viewing pleasure!

For no reason other than to make my blog post longer, here is the setlist for their concert (notice how many guest artists they had):

-Orchestral Intro (Extended)
-Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (with Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
-19/2000 (with Rosie Wilson)
-Last Living Souls
-Stylo (with Bobby Womack and Bootie Brown)
-On Melancholy Hill
-Rhinestone Eyes
-Superfast Jellyfish (with De La Soul)
-Tomorrow Comes Today
-Empire Ants (with Yukimi Nagano)
- Broken (Extended)
-Dirty Harry (with Bootie Brown)
-El Mañana
-White Flag (with Kano and Bashy and the American Syrian Orchestra; extended)
-To Binge (with Yukimi Nagano)
-DARE (with Rosie Wilson)
-Glitter Freeze
-Plastic Beach

Encore:
-Cloud of Unknowing (with Bobby Womack)
-Feel Good Inc. (with De La Soul)
-Clint Eastwood (with Bashy and Kano)
-Don't Get Lost In Heaven
-Demon Days (with Bobby Womack)


That's quite the setlist, don't you think? If they ever come back to Austin in the future, I will definitely go again. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that N.E.R.D. was the opener! They were also good, but unfortunately they played 90% new songs of their upcoming album which I didn't know. I wasn't able to get into their songs as much because of that. They performed well, though.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. The Longhorns lost to a terrible team Iowa State and people are really beginning to question what our coaching staff is doing with our players. Cowboys lost on Monday to the Giants.

I had a midterm in my class on Tuesday and it went well enough. It was a hard test to study for in that there weren't many things to study for. We've only learned a handful of concepts, and the rest of the class has been learning how to apply those concepts. At this point, you either understand it or you don't. Most of the test was easy, but he did design some intentionally hard questions to throw some people off. I'd assume the average on the test was a mid-to-low B, and that I scored somewhere around average. I'd be surprised if I eked out an A, and I'd be equally surprised/upset if I got a C. I'll find out next week, I suppose.

We had our last kickball game last night and we finally won again! It was a really good game. Both teams were into it, but were still having a good time. Both teams respected each other and showed great sportsmanship, too. After a hard fought battle (where I injured myself as usual), we sneaked out a win in the last inning, 6-5. We are likely not in the playoffs, but we still finished out the season with a win, bringing our record to a respectable 4-3.

Today is the last day of my work week, and I'm ready for it. This weekend is Halloween weekend and I don't have any solid plans, but there are a lot of potential things going on. We also have a game against Baylor which we will probably lose. Losing to Baylor, the #1 team in the Big 12 South — what is happening to the world?

Other stuff probably happened in the past week which I forgot to mention, but that's what happens when you don't update in a while.

update forthcoming

Just give me a day!