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Showing posts from December, 2008
Good-bye 2008! While still 9 hours away, I'm wrapping up the year now. It's been a blur of homework and travel. 2009 is already better due to no school!
In this time of economic downturn and layoffs, I'm at motivated to put together my first full resume in years. Writing one totally is a sucky process and now I understand why the world is so full of bad ones! The hardest part is summing up your value with impact but without overstating facts. For all of you (including myself) who have often wondered how you'd sum up my career this is my life in one short paragraph: Accomplished people and special projects development professional with strong international operations background with successful negotiation and mediation skills between parent company and franchisees. Background includes key training role for major point-of-sale and back office software system-wide implementation. Adaptable to other fields by bringing new market to system with record first year sales. Strategic experience in adapting existing domestic programs and implementing in global markets.
Note to self: Don't use mouthwash and then drink from a water bottle. The next swig hours later will taste like mouthwash. Ugh. So the retail recession must not be in San Diego county. I've seen the news reports showing packed malls and thought it would be safe to go out on Palomar Airport Road today being a Monday and all. I even thought 4:00 pm would be a great time for a Rubio's run but the Carlsbad Outlet parking lot was still packed and overflowing into Armstrongs. Guess I'll steer clear another week. Another war is in place with wider implications than the parties involved, the Taliban is gaining strength in Pakistan villages, and random men in Kuwait have formed their own voluntary religious police group. I sometimes wonder if the entire region really believes that nothing like that will happen in their country? It certainly seems so. 2009 seems to be arriving on a tornado of change.

The Spirit

The Spirit is in the visual style of Sin City which gives you something to look at even during the slower paced scenes. Based on a comic book the story centers on a cop who came back from the dead and is now immune to death and his nemesis Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) who is a bad guy, also immune to death. The basic premise of the movie is about the two and their personal fight that involves the posse from both sides. I didn't love this movie and at best I can say I mildly liked it. The visuals were good, the side plots unique, and Samuel L. Jackson as Octopus was fun to watch. The movie itself plodded along and in no way was the Spirit believable as a ladies man. The character you're supposed to care about was dull and the bad guys outshone the good guys for entertainment value. What I liked - the visuals, the over-the-top bad guy storytelling (Nazi's & all), the mindless clones, and the music. You could look at this as a two hour music video I guess. What I didn
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Venice Beach, CA. Dec. 21, 2008
The Weather Channel has shown Carlsbad with a high mold spore count for the entire month of December. I travel, I can breathe. I come home, it's all over. No amount of allergy pills can fight this. My next home is going to be a concrete city. I'm grateful that I made it without any sneezing yesterday so I could enjoy the movie and eat my fill at the buffet. Yum - seafood stuffing dish! Updates: Sorry Homer, I'm not reloading the bar photos. Dark they will stay. Movie: Spirit review coming once I can breathe and think. I sort of liked it. Didn't hate it. Neighbors: New kids and dog playing on my yard right now. The kid must be visiting her grandparents a couple houses down. Christmas: It was good. I hope yours was too.

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I wonder where Homer is?

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I never see famous people on my own. It normally happens when I'm with people from other countries and then they think this happens all the time. This is from Sunday at Muscle Beach and was our Hulk Hogan sighting.
I have a picture but I forgot my camera cable. Venice Beach was the tourist destination of the day and I took a couple of people from China to check it out. As we drove in, I explained about Muscle Beach and how Arnold and other famous bodybuilders used to work out there. As we got out of the car and approached the gym, Jason gasped "Is that Hulk Hogan there?" Sure enough, the Hulkster was working out. Picture Tuesday. (It's not great but it counts)
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Dark restaurant - not the best for mobile pix. Aussie Mac is in town so we adventure ate last night at a Thai restaurant. The place was unique in decor, lacking in wine menu, and the sauces were the specialty rather than the food. I could have spooned the garlic sauce over anything and would have been happy. The red snapper under the sauce - eh. But I still ate too much and am full this morning. Not sure if I'd go back.
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Aussie Mac in a photo protest pose.
Unusual for the group as we had a birthday and Irish music happenings last night, not a single picture was taken. Tonight I must remember camera. Ms. Kitty had a birthday this week so we all celebrated at Nati's for good food, fun, and margaritas. As usual everything was perfect and the food nice and fattening! Ms. Kitty enjoyed her Happy Birthday chorus and polished off the meal with the birthday dessert. Later, Mondo and I headed over to Harp to listen to an Irish singer. The place was packed and after all these years, now I finally understand how they stay in business. During the day or early evening the place is always empty. The singer was great and fun to watch as he bossed people around to drink their pints and put the empty glass upsidedown on their head to prove they drained the pint. The surprise was when he told some girl to drink the last half of the pitcher and she did, including turning the pitcher upsidedown on her head. Most people fled to the other side of the roo
More hotels, more meetings. I should be back to blogging briefly this weekend but then it's a couple more hotel nights and then Christmas. I'm looking foward to some free time to jell.
I went to get the oil changed in the Subaru yesterday and I realized that my paranoia about taking care of the car resulted in two oil changes within 1000 miles of each other back in September! That's what happens when you travel all the time, you lose track of everything even if the records of what you've done are right in front of your face. Yesterday's change was late and needed as the oil was low and I'm doing the LA/Ventura routine again this week. Another boring routine of calls, hotels, long days, and driving.
The rest of the family is doing a mileage run to New Orleans this weekend but I'm good on miles and have no need to fly until 2009. Working on the last 4 nights needed to secure SPG status for next year. Go hotel points! I hope Homer, OB & Mrs. OB are staying at a point earning hotel. I'm going to enjoy a rainy (maybe) weekend in Carlsbad.
This is one of those boring weeks where I'm bouncing around LA, Ventura, & Carp. Minimal posting will be happening.
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Karl Strauss two weekends in a row! Yup, I'm back in town and it feels good. Too bad I have three hotel nights ahead of me this week. Oh well, those will pay off on later trips next year.
Life returns to normal after two exciting trips. Today was pretty good and busy! From a morning beach/stair workout, to Wal-Mart, Party City, Ralphs, then letters, and I even opened up a savings plan account with Ameritrade! Now I have a pile of photos from Malta facing me for cropping so I can start putting them in a scrapbook tomorrow! Rome! Those photos haven't made it to printing yet but soon...
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Limonciello - the innocent looking drink that comes in a collectible yellow bottle. The waiter was taken aback when we wanted to order these before the meal. (Who were we to know?) He quickly told us that these are after dinner drinks designed to make you not feel the snow and cold after two of them! So we waited until after dinner and before dessert to try the drink. It was full strength lemony-alcohol and hard to finish!
I also liked St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City but I couldn't get a decent photo. These 7 seconds of video shows some of the scale of the building.
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After the Colosseum, my second favorite stop was the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It probably had to do with something from my childhood and always hearing about it, but the Tower is as cool in real life as it is on TV. The Tower leans, we lean. I'm glad it got restored back to the imperfect status since that is part of the charm. And after 300+ stairs, it feels great to be at the top!
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Various sightseeing - we took a break from old building in Florence to look at Galileo's telescopes. Throwing the coin in the Trevi fountain. What tourists look like while listening to Rick Steves' audio tours at the Forum.
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We learned there are two kinds of trains in Italy. The nice high speed seat assigned trains without pickpocketers (pictured here) and the regional trains with pickpockets and scam artists. This is really Mrs. OB's story but you have to picture unsmiling us on a not as nice train as I tell the story. We got on the regional in Florence for our day trip to Pisa. Being an empty train, we spread out. I had my Carl's Jr. tote bag sitting next to me on the seat. After all, the train was empty so I wasn't concerned about safety. Then the gypsy dude came along with his full size paper of why we should give him money. He held the paper over my tote with one hand while reaching into the tote with the other. Mrs. OB saw this going on from her side of the train and she jumped up and quite angrily told the guy to stop that and to get his hand out of the bag. Gypsy dude was actually startled and turned around to confront her and got in Mrs. OB's face (without saying a word). T