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why am i not hopeful? because i'm trying not to get so emotional about sports anymore. all my favorite teams have broken my heart this year. stanford. the niners. the sparks. and i know it's early in the season, but the giants will probably suck.

so i'll read about the warriors tomorrow.

why yes, i am a glass half empty kind of person, why do you ask?

it was nice to have him come for a visit, but a whole lot of work! we spent part of last night out to dinner with friends and a lot of it uploading the last of the pictures and finishing the storybook for the class. and we wrote a postcard to every kid in my cousin's class from stanley.

the girlfriend is wondering if anyone else's flat stanley will have as much stuff as this one did: a 16 page booklet of stanley's adventures, brochures from the places he visited, stickers, postcards, etc. i don't think there are many out there as crazy as us. then again, we're probably wrong.

Who's this? Why, it's Hans Christian Andersen! He wrote those really happy fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling (which supposedly was in tribute to others who were like him and had "deviant sexual feelings" towards other men, according to something I read on wiki).

no, we're not including this in the Stanley storybook. It's purely for our amusement. The jail is in Half Moon Bay.

the girlfriend thought it'd be cute to have Stanley write postcards to my little cousin. we sent them from Solvang, Santa Cruz and Monterey.

yup. Stanley got to eat breakfast with Ernie. Now he's really done it all!

Fergie - The Dutchess (catchy, yet annoying. what a combination)
Leonard Bernstein - Mass (sang most of it in high school. ah, the memories)
Radio 1's Live Lounge
Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae
Muse - Absolution
The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
The Kooks - Inside In Inside Out
Robin Thicke - The Evolution of Robin Thicke
James Morrison - Undiscovered
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Paolo Nutini - These Streets
Lily Allen - Alright Still
Nerina Pallot - Fires
Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Tracey Thorn - Out of the Woods
Mika - Life in Cartoon Motion
Lucinda Williams - West
Kings of Leon - Because of the Time
Rich Boy - Rich Boy
Musiq Soulchild - Luvanmusiq
Timbaland - Shock Value
Jennifer Lopez - Como Ama Una Mujer
Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob

i also downloaded some new age-y stuff to listen to when i want to be still for a while, and a couple of singles by other artists. phew. looking at the list, i'd say i have enough to keep my ears occupied for a while.

i've decided to listen to the full albums instead of always skipping to the one or two songs i know. feels as if i'm getting more out of each artist (or in fergie's case, listening to the same song over and over) that way. really enjoying it, although i find i don't listen to as much music as i used to. just at the gym and in the car, mostly. it's hard to put on music at home when the walls are so thin.

if anyone has suggestions about a particular artist, band, whatever that they really enjoy, let me know. i'm always interested in hearing new (to me) stuff. much thanks to JR, who told me about the kaiser chiefs tonight. i'll be downloading their first album when i add more money to my account...

Sunday, I sang at an Easter service in the morning (which I'd blog about but I'm not so sure I won't get on some weird right wing hate list or something because I got weirded out by the whole religion thing) and then the girlfriend and I (and Stanley) went off to Orange County to visit The Mouse. And also the girlfriend's brother. I'm blogging from my desktop and all my pictures are on the laptop, so here are a few of the pictures that the girlfriend's brother captured:

Stanley posed with the Lego Darth Vader inside the Lego Store at Downtown Disney.

It was dark and kind of hard to make out the "snow" angel that Stanley made on the table outside of Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen, where we had dessert (beignets and bread pudding, yum!). the "snow" is powdered sugar--I showered the table with it as I was shaking the paper bag that contained the beignets--had to cover them while they were still warm! Ended up covering more of the table and myself with the sugar than the darn donuts.

Here are the pictures for my little cousin's project:

these are some of the medals awarded to the members of the 442nd regimental combat unit, who fought during WWII. They were "the most highly decorated unit of its size and length of service in the history of the U.S. Army, including 22 Medal of Honor recipients."

Flat Stanley found some friends in the museum store.

so here are a few pics i took last night and today of Stanley's adventures.

Stanley traveled first class to get to Los Angeles.

Stanley has luxury accommodations--an Amazon box and bubble wrap mattress topped with a pillow case. Note the bedside table with the shot glass of water, just in case he gets thirsty.

Stanley's transportation is top of the line, inside my computer backpack.

This is a replica of the American Mastodon. Kinda like a woolly mammoth--they're distantly related to the mammoth and the modern elephant, but they were on the planet earlier than the mammoth (by about 15-20 million years).

Stanley's in front of one of the kinetic sculptures in the sculpture garden at LACMA. Do you think a third grader will understand what a kinetic sculpture is?

So that was my day with Flat Stanley. I'm sure there will be more pictures tomorrow.

our concert with GMCLA, the LA children's chorus, and the USC percussion ensemble went really well, here's what roger bourland had to say about how we performed his pieces, which vox commissioned for this year.

so how great was it that we were mentioned in the "get a life" section of variety? also the la weekly, ventura county star, la city beat, and zvents.com.

phew. what a weekend. not to mention all the other things that happened this weekend, which i'll post about sometime.

does not add up to ability to sweep the dust off the floor in the kitchen, though.

and, although it adds up to all those abilities, i've not yet accomplished some of them...

the rest of the house is equally bad, i will clean the bathroom tomorrow, since i can't stand it anymore. but for now i'm going to bed. had to pick up my brother and sister in law at the airport this morning--their plane got in around 6 am, it took me almost an hour to go 14.3 miles to the airport. and then! i went to work. ACK! work! me! and i ate all the candy the girlfriend was supposed to put in the candy jar at work, too. so it was a pretty down day. glad to see it go so tomorrow i can start over--better outlook on life in general, back on the diet, go to the gym. CLEAN!!!!!

by the way, there are bad things about HDTV. for one, seeing the jeri curl in greg gumbel's hair. eeew.

[/]rant[]

i'll be fine after i've slept for a good 12 hours.

anyway, wednesday i get on a plane bound for my parents' house (the airport near my parents' house. it doesn't really stop at my parents' house) and a 60th birthday party for one of my uncles. should be fun. then it's off for another trip when i return to lala land on sunday. that's me. jetsetter. HAH!

on a side note: just what kind of mask does one wear to remove mold from a shower? apparently, i wore the wrong one. and no, it wasn't my shower. seems as though those crazy ladies--the ones who tell of all the horrors that mold spores are capable of--are right, mold, if inhaled, may make you sick. at least that's my theory as to why i've got this little cold. happened the last time, too. maybe i'll just give up cleaning. can you imagine what my house would look like if i did that? that would give me nightmares for months.

watched the da vinci code today. pretty good, can't remember enough of the book to say whether or not it stayed true to it. actually, the book was hard for me to read--thought dan brown was an awful writer but a great idea guy and able to make it a page turner, even if it was a tad predictable.

want nothing more than to sleep for about 4 days but i've so much to do in the next few days. buying stock in kleenex is at the top of the list.