One Year of San Jose Kaakun of Provo Kobe Provo Las Vegas Huntington Beach

So 366 days ago, I took a look around my empty apartment, vacuum'ed and threw what remaining possessions I had into the car. And made my 24242 time of driving between Vegas and California.

Time Flies....

So yesterday, The Cheesecake Factory had $1.50 slice cheesecakes.

I went.

Me: We're going to split a Hot Spinach and Cheese Dip appetizer and I'm going to get the Adam's Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple.

Waiter: like everyone else in the world, cheesecake...

Was the waiter giving me attitude for getting Cheesecake... at THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY?!?!?

After he left, we took a look around, there were a lot of people just eating cheesecake...

So instead of anger, I felt sorry, so I tipped him a big nifty tip.. because.. I dunno.

Batman

Ellie: it was abbalicious
btw..did you see your twin in batman?
i didn't know you were an actor

10:13 PM me: yes...thats the true reason i went to vegas
was to whore myself out for movie roles as they came to play in vegas
i have hit the big time
imdb says the dark knight is the best movie of all time
i'll be getting royalty checks til 2056

Ellie: haha
10:14 PM the security guard in hong kong totally looked like you

I don't know who she is talking about...


him?

him?

maybe him?

him?

him?

Who knows... they all look alike.

And The Dark Knight is NOT the best movie of all time... I used to have high respect for the imdb community... now it's shaken a little bit. It was a very good summer blockbuster. But just a good movie... I think I liked Batman Begins a tad bit better.

I think it was a good movie with excellent performances by Ledger and Eckhart.

Wanted

So there is quite the mid-life blog crisis...

I want better content.
Better content = more readers.

So I'm willing to give someone EXCLUSIVE syndication rights on my blog.

Yes friends/family/whatever/lurker.

You'd get to publish whatever you want on my blog as my out-sourced corespondent.

I can't really pay you.. but the perks are awesome...

I'm not quite sure what the perks are.

So looking at my blogging buddies/former bloggin buddies...
some of you don't even blog once a month... Matt... Sierra... Jason... Jordan.

hmm... obviously I don't need pictures of your offspring...
you could review media... or I duuno. or post fab pictures of fab places.

and you'd need a blogger account... I guess.

hmmm... the hunt begins...for the next (well actually first) Kaakun corespondent!!!!

applicants just leave a comment... you may be required to submit a sample of your work... this really has been a half-thought out adventure.

Blast From the Past... or something.

Maureen
i haven't talked to you forever!

Kirk
like april 04
maybe

Maureen
ahaha yeah!

Kirk
oh and the shinanigens of us wanting to borrow you and your costco card
which led to leeelle and john marrying us off
i suppose i should keep better tabs on my arranged wife

Maureen
ahaha thats right....so ummm i just got back from my mission last night
i am not even released yet....i am still a missionary
ahaha

Kirk
and you're on the Internet?!?!
hmmm

oh and I talked to my MTC comp for like 15 mins last night... crazy. He's a high priest... a high priest. he was old to begin with... like 26? 25? whatever is the last year they'd let you go on a mission.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

So I read about it on Kevin's blog. Link

I watched it during lunch. It was entertaining. I was like, "HEY its Capt. Reynolds!!!". I give it my stamp of approval just for Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion.

There is talk maybe of a sequel? Interesting...

Tuesdays with Kaakun

Hahah
So I read Larrie's blog while I stuff my face at lunch. Today's post is about a question her niece asked.

“Larrie, when can you get married?” ~Emma

Now... I'm only able to get a handful of chips in my mouth and call it good when the post is that short...

So I'm going to blog. because... what better things do I have to do?

For some reason... When you're closer in age to 30 than 20. People feel concerned about your marital status.

Much like post-dating a check, I've post-dated some engagements. Do they all remember? maybe?
Do they all think its serious? maybe.
I think one of them will pan out.

In the meantime, I think most of the needs are met.

I have bossy female friends. They tell me what to do... Sometimes I comply... Sometimes I do not.

I have picky female friends. Really I'll do whatever, eat whatever, pretty much whatever. They get mad because of the indecisiveness.

I have female friends that have not hit menopause... hit the hammer square on the nail once at the wrong time of the month and watch their anger flow...

But what about that intimate knowledge and sharing and blah blah blah.

I have Google.

I used to be on hotmail, now Google handles my e-mail... So they know what I'm talking about... both through e-mail and chat.
I used to search via Yahoo... now I Google it
I used to use MSN spaces, now Google handles my blog... so they know details of the past almost 2.5 years of blogging.
Google hosts the pictures on my blog. So they have seen similar things to what I've seen.
Google handles my RSS feeds... So they know what I read
I used Google check out before so Google knows my credit card info... (I should probably remedy that)
I've used Google Apps to type things up.
I've used Google Finance to look up stock prices.
I use Google's calender/page maker/Google earth/Google maps/iGoogle/trends/Google Video.

I'd probably use Google Health to store my medical records once more people use it and say it will reduce the ED medication spam when they realize that I do NOT have ED.

About the only thing I haven't used is Google Desktop. Mainly because I don't want to add anything more to bog down my computer.

What doesn't Google know about Me?
Google and Me. Together since 2003

Baseball Sidepost
The A's are kinda sucking it up.
I guess I should be ok with it... because over the last 9.5 seasons. They still have one of the better records in baseball. (Only the stupid Yankees, the stuck-up Red Sox and the Braves have better records.)

I now know what its like to be like a Royals, Pirates or a Orioles fan... sad.

The Japanese Education of Alisa's Child Continues...

So this was the final hang out before Alisa goes back to NM. I've been culture-shocking her child for the better...

Curry at the Mitsuwa food court

An English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary... with hello kitty!

Alisa was like lets go to Milk and Honey. We split a Milk and Honey. Fruit, mochi, shaved ice, frozen yogurt, azuki.

It's quite the light summer treat.

Alisa: Can you hold her while I go to the bathroom?
me: uh...sure?
(like five minutes later)
me: that was fast.
Alisa: See she didn't even miss me... She likes you.

Yep kids heart me.
Probably because I'm just as mature as they are.

TANGENT:
Stacey: spencer found a pic of you and keeps pointing to you now

"uncle kaaku"

he needs to get over it

me: hahahahahahahahahab/c im awesome

Stacey: no no he just needs to get over it

the other day he was point to all the chairs at the table and then he said "uncle kaakun's" at the chair you sat at.

weird

End of tangent.


Isn't that just kind of asking to be stopped at a DUI checkpoint?!?

The car that almost hit me.. Apparently Mercedes Benz's is German for change lanes whenever I want.

Dark Knight/Kaakun/Alisa Go Obon

The Dark Knight Navigator


Lots of Japos and wannabe Japos
They had mugicha... It was kinda weak mugicha...



Alisa showing her Japo side and taking pictures... ^_^


A: What's the "Udoninside Gym"?
K: Probably means they're selling udon in the gym...
A: oooooooh I thought it was something else.

hahahahahahahahaa...


Taiko... San Jose's is better.


A real church's uchiwa. way to represent... old.. white (?!?) man.


K: This brings back memories... of seeing the Hanayagi group come down the line... the front people knew what they we're doing... the back people... not so much.
A: WHAT?! I knew what I was doing. I went to EVERY practice.



Sushi combo $6
spam musubi $2
udon $5
chicken teriyaki bowl $4
2 shaved ices $4
whole lot of plums $ 2
dango $2

wow we're a bunch of pigs...

It's still a little strange hanging out with Alisa the mom... mainly because of the "wow what a cute little girl" then the eventually looking at the both of us... like I had any hand in it.

Glow at Santa Monica 7/19/08 7 pm to 7 am

I dropped Alisa off at her brother's then picked up Jess @ 8:20

Got into Santa Monica @ 9:30

Found a parking spot at 11...

Yes that was 90 minutes of looking for a parking spot... Seriously there was probably hundreds of thousands of people milling about on the beach/pier.


The packed beach parking lot

Greenmeme's "The Migration of the the Marine Tumbleweed"

It could have been so much cooler....


Arthur Nakame's "Solar Koi Parade"

eh...


The ferris wheel in the background

with Infranatural's "The Amazing Mental Scope"

could have been cool?


Usman Haque's "Primal Source"

I lot of water being shot up in the air... with a Mac OS X screen saver looking projected on it....
hmm



Nova Jiang & Michael Kontopoulos' Moon Theater...

Ok this was kinda cool at the bottom pic you make a shadow puppet and it takes it and broadcasts something on the moon looking screen.


I dont know if this was part of it... it was a bunch of candles in brown bags shaped as a heart..

The Primal Source again...


Some random people... with wings....

So this is pretty much what I over heard people say all night.
"What the F#%# is the point?!?!"
"Do you get it?!?"
"What the F$#@ is that?!"
"I think this was more about the hype than the art..."
"This is kinda cool... but kinda not"

we did not stay til 7 am... more like 2 am...
dropped her off at 3am got home at 3:30... hmmm awesome.

The Dark Knight

So I got to work today. It was dark. Like power outage dark.
So this is what I did today
played mailman and took the mail to the UCIMC mailroom (due to the strike... seriously people... if you're only making $9 an hour... paying union dues seems a bit silly. Get a job that pays more somewhere...)

On my way out.. "WHO THINKS KAAKUN SHOULD GO ON A STARBUCKS RUN?!?!"
me: uhhhhh...
"will you?!?!"
me:"sure whatever"

I give the starbucks lady my list.
me: "Is that sorbetto thing good?"
"yes!"
me: "whats your favorite?"
"they're all good but the mango one is my favorite!"
me: "shoot get me one of those too, I'm not paying for it"

off I go... carrying 10 various coffees/teas/whatever with two hands... I'm amazing.

you hear a lot of things at a Starbucks when you're carrying $31 worth of drinks in three trays.

"Thats the difference between Northern and Southern CA... they don't know what water polo is up there..."
OH heaven forbid... we don't have enough school run kiddies out in speedos to be a legit water polo playing half of the state.

"Someone must like a lot of coffee"

"Oh you poor dear I worry for you"
me: "uh, me too"

"Hey let me get the door for you"
me: "uh thanks"

anyways. Turns out they're testing the Sorbetto only in Southern CA.
Its alright... nothing I'd be dying for later but whatever.

I get back.

"So does everyone know what they're going to do?"
me: "what do I do?"
"you can go home."
me: "do i get paid?"
"you'll be paid for the hours you were scheduled to work"

1 hour of work, paid for 8... sweet. Spent more time driving to and from work than at work.

So I went home and got the Dark Knight.

We watched some tv.



While I went home earlier, the tv died. So my roommate decided he needed to replace it. It's kinda big... like eyes struggle to focus on its mammoth-ness. yep 72 inches from point A to point B... ridiculous..


Yet, if I take out my contacts and don't put on glasses... thats what it looks like... "I think the TV is there..."


The Dark Knight didn't want to watch TV... so he looked at the newspaper and decided after crushing on Tina Fey for five minutes...


walk down to the pier and watch the US OPEN of surfing...





It's hot... in the 70s... I'm getting paid still... there are a ton of people at the beach.. Does no one work in this state?!?! What do you all think of that bottom pic? Over saturation of color is the latest craze so I over-saturated.

That's Funny, Interesting?

Thats a Lot of Sixes
I was looking over a credit card statement on 6/06 I spent $6.66 on food.

Haunted
Cold's basement is like out of control haunted?

Jamba
I found the buy one get one free coupon for Jamba this morning... e-mailed Jen and told her.
1 pm- K:want a jamba?
J: I didn't eat lunch yet.

3 pm (she walks by) I need a break, lets go

on the way to the car. Me: "Hmmm maybe one of these days I'll have a job where I don't walk out and go wherever during work hours"

I should probably work on that... I'm sure I'd get paid more.
or something. hmmm

anyways we go to the Block and there are all these other office type folks with coupons printed out on office printers standing in front of us...

everyone in business casual. there with their co-worker and coupon in tow.

half-off jamba rocks.

Penny Stocks
Jordan and I had a conversation about penny stocks earlier in the year.
A co-worker said she wanted to invest $1k in this Canadian hydrogen company.
I laughed, I told Jordan, he laughed, the co-worker laughed saying if she turns 1K into $10k she'd be laughing too...

Jenny
Jenny so gets married on sat. I so never got an invite. She asked for the address and never sent it. or it got lost? or something??

Maybe its b/c I offered to buy her stapler so she could cherish it and remember all the times I shot staples in her general direction...

Heck whats wrong with a stapler? It would be more useful than that 15th toaster oven....

Thats A BIG Box

This Weekend

My ethernet...
card was fine... I figured this out after I bought and installed a new card... turns out it was the firewall... which I had a feeling it was... but I kinda half assed it see if it really was. Went and bought something. and... yeah...

My Mexican friend...
asked me if I was watching the Miss Universe Pageant.
I said no
he said four of the top five were latinas.
I looked it up.
It hadn't started yet.
He was like Miss USA fell in the evening gown portion.
WELL... NOW I have to watch.
She falls... like you can't even see her anymore...
They still give her over an 8....
she fell...walking.
this isn't gymnastics/diving/figure skating complicated stuff... this is walking... WALKING... and she fell... and they still give her an 8...

The A's...
blew it today. Seriously fell flat on their face.. Freaking piece of crap. Sure going into the break with the 6th best record is better than I thought they would do... but still there was NO REASON they should have lost today.

In Priesthood...
someone talking about missionary work... "Back to the flirt to convert... I find that I talk a lot about my mission on dates with non-members... the five or six I've been on... I've found that thats mostly what I talk about"

hmm awesome... I never got the kids that talked all about their missions to members... then this kid does it to non-members... awesome.

THE BABY BORROWERS... It's not TV it's birth control...
um... awesome? I guess.. yes... reality tv is not getting out of control.

Random

HAHAHAHA... So I was flipping through the paper.

and I saw this, "Mormon missionary calendar-maker facing discipline"

link

Good times... I posted about this calendar after Jordan told me about it, almost a year ago. Link

Sierra later told me that she got a good laugh about it at work, and bought one was as a gift... So I contributed to one of the 10,000 sold.

whoops.

I don't see whats the big deal. I mean its not like church members don't have questionable pictures of themselves (not that I do...unless being topless...is bad... topless and wet? double oh no?).

Apparently we can't take off our shirts... or at least sell shirtless Mormon pictures for a profit? Dang it... all those Havasupai pictures... I were going to sell 8x10 glossys of on the world wide web... My plans have been foiled... because I'm sure the world wants to pay $9.95 for a glossy photo of my friends. They're that hot.

Bootcheck is gone?
The Angels DFA'ed Chris Bootcheck last week. Dang it. He pitched awesome against the A's. A 23.18 ERA and 4.50 WHIP in 4.66 innings against the A's... If we weren't winning before he came in... We were after he left the game... Chris... you will be missed.

The End of the Safari.

So I had been using Safari on my work computer for almost two months... it started acting strange the past week or so. So I finally said goodbye to it. Goodbye safari, it was a fun two-months... but I guess firefox is just the way to go on a Windows-based computer.

I liked safari...not any more than firefox... but a lot more than Internet Explorer. It may have been the windows update that the computer did that made it go funky... I don't know. Oh well.

Oh and my ethernet card died on my desktop at home...piece of crap.

and I guess I can use my Sony Eye Toy as a web cam?

jaja and on my work today... I saw all the people lined up outside an AT&T store for 3G I-Phones... jajaja

The TAG... AGAIN... JAHO Edition

Apparently I owe Jessica?

2- Kirk...DO IT...you owe me.

Hmm... I'm not sure how I owe her... but this tag is dedicated to JAHO. thats like two posts in a row.

3 JOYS
1- Jake brought JAHO taffy cookies... we ate cookies and drank XanGo. work at will call was hard.
2- I like hockey and baseball. and soccer. those are three joys. I think cold was willing to take me to a baseball game? If so... thats swell of her. x10.
3- Jessica's friendship... because without... I'd probably be LRRMRF/cold-less. jajajaja.

3 FEARS
1- a tsunami... kills me... living at the beach... this is a 24/7 fear.
2- I offered JAHO a box of cookies in exchange of middle name-naming rights to her child... she denied me. So I upped the anty and offered two boxes and a gallon of milk for first name-naming rights... that was denied too... the fear is she'd name a household pet after me... then would kill it.
3- JAHO will hit me over the head with a blunt object... and kill me... slowly. then drop me in a field... dressed in drag.

3 CURRENT OBSESSIONS/COLLECTIONS
1- So I was watching the Food Network like two weeks ago and these people were talking about their Coke collection. Then I remembered the Final Fantasy figurine set that Jason and I were trying so hard to collect while on the mission. We drank a lot of coke to get those figurines... yes tithing payers/missionaries in crappy third-world countries... your money was hard at work. (Does tithing pay for missionaries? maybe not. maybe just the missionaries?... thank you John and Kevin.)

2- Collecting facebook messages from LRRMRF... yes... for some reason we have a LONG on-going facebook conversation. Its almost at 1000 messages... not too shabby for two people that never talked to each other in person as co-workers...

3- I have a lot of XanGo crap... not as much as JAHO... but thats a collection... right?

3 SURPRISING FACTS
1- JAHO and I are friends... she's actually the only person I talked to at XanGo and post-XanGo. It's not even like we were buds. I asked if she and her husband-to-be wanted to see an Owlz game with me and she quickly denied me on my post-work invite... I saw her like five times while being an XanGo employee. (going to SOJO when she was like, "what the crap does will call do here and why is it so messy?" (you should have saw both will calls post-Travis), worked together two days, xango summer party, dropping off her wedding invite)
2- One customer wondered why JAHO carried his juice out to his car instead of me.... that was fun.
3- JAHO and I can fit in the same skirt (not at the same time geez)... which is why fear #3 is a legit fear.

TAG 5 PEOPLE
1- SAPY!!! you can do it.
2- ugh.
3- Jessica, jajaja do it JAHO.
4- No one does these... do they?
5- umm..

Operation "Replace JAHO"

Monday: waitress @ BJ's: "The Pizookie will be out in a few minutes. Somebody dropped it... We have a couple new people here."



Cold and her salad... it looked like a mess... kinda like emptying out your garbage disposal into a plate. then her mixing it up more made it look worse. it actually didn't taste bad, it was above average I thought.



We later found this guy back on the beach.



It didn't look like it had been on the floor.. maybe it had... maybe we got a new one



See... it looked very similar to cold's salad...



The tower thingy...



walking away from Cold.



Cold pointing out to me where the ocean is... oh thanks.



Picture of feet...check! well sorta..



Cold getting washed out to sea... and thats the last I ever saw of her.



Trying to be a beach bum... its not very comfortable... if you become homeless... don't sleep on the rock love seat at Victoria Beach.

Tues:... Mamma! Mia > Wicked.

yes I said it.

Maybe its because there have been half ass plans to see this musical for like three-years now.

Finally I got Cold to pile into the car and up to Hollyweird we went.
We got to see someone LeeElle'd on the 5... the guy that got LeeElle'd did not look happy.

Anyways, back to the Mamma! Mia > Wicked,

Here are my reasons
1) I didn't have to pay for parking to see Mamma! Mia
2) Wicked did not have 50-year-old people dancing in the aisles singing along with the cast to "Dancing Queen" at the top of their lungs.
3) ABBA rocks
4) the company was better... Ellie doesn't complain about the lack of 24/7 conversation. just kidding cold geez.

The LeeElle 1 bad thing= 3 good things apology.

Three nice things about cold since I was a jerk and said her company was not enjoyed as much...
1) The girl to the left front of me had a really big nose... Cold has a perfectly fine nose. If there was such things as nose-models. She could nose model. At least part-time model.
2) the lady on the right of me fidgited like a four-year-old. Cold doesn't fidget.
3) She likes to share stories. but only 50% of the conversation should be her stories. I lacked in this aspect. It was probably 60 cold/30 me/10 dead air...


random pictures in a car... check... hmmm... five megapixels is maybe four too many.



There was a picture of the both of us... but it was deemed unworthy and promptly destroyed.

Disclaimer:

1) I'm not really trying to replace JAHO. No need to get your panties in a bunch Jessica.

2) Ok, Wicked is probably on par with Mamma! Mia. The lead took the night off. SO we got the understudy... she was fine though. above-average I'd say.