Haven't written anything of substance in quite a while... still have the final WCC recap to write up as well as a personal update, but for now here's some thoughts from the past few days:

Cheers to the happy couple
- Congrats to Amy and Mike on their wedding. Both of them have the unique quality of looking exactly the same as they did in high school, and they've been together for a long time, so watching the slideshow, it was nearly impossible to tell at what stage of the relationship the picture was taken.
- Amy is now Amy Lee. Yup, like the lead singer from Evanescence. Would have been cool if she and Mike went into a spontaneous rendition of "Bring Me To Life".
- I'm sure the couple was quite pleased that my table at the banquet started 98% of the dinging. Hey, it's not our fault, bridesmaids Alice and Jean were the real instigators.
- Kinda amusing that Daniel (Amy's bro) was able to pick up on some Jars and Caedmon's influences in my guitar playing style. Either it's more apparent than I thought, or he has a sharp ear. Perhaps both.
- There's nothing quite as embarrassing as tripping and falling face-first into a wall, like I did at the rehearsal dinner. Well, maybe there are a few things more embarrassing, but in my case, I got my glasses bent all out of shape. I got them fixed, but now I'm thinking I should spring for those new glasses sooner rather than later (I've had these since early college). I tried on some frames while I was waiting for my glasses to get fixed, I've pretty much jettisoned the rimless idea and now I'm looking at frames that come with a magnetic clip-on shaded lens attachment. Unfortunately, these tend to be rather pricey, but if I'm wearing my glasses 75% of the time, it might be worth it.

The NBA playoffs are here
- This is probably the most fun time of the year for me as a sports fan. The Spurs lost the first game to the Nuggets, and they look kinda rusty... it'll be quite the challenge to try to get back into rhythm while playing the hottest team in the league.
- T-Mac is cold-blooded... so much basketball talent on both sides of the ball, now if he only had the motor running all the time...
- With such a wide-open field this year, I'll be rooting for the Spurs, but I'm honestly looking forward more to great competition with no clear-cut favorite. There aren't any insta-villains like in years past (Lakers).

On tonight's episode of "24"
- Audrey has very quickly become an unsympathetic character... the stereotypical "wet blanket" if you will... leave Jack alone! Chew him out tomorrow!
- Palmer's back. Now all we need is a one-handed Chase to complete the old CTU gang. Oh, but I don't mind if Kim gets eaten by a cougar... j/k.
- I laughed out loud when Edgar was essentially hitting on Chloe ("They didn't let me go because they said you're the best analyst we have... they're right"), being all sweet and sympathetic and she responds with a rather sardonic, "I know (I'm the best)". Great stuff. She also looked like she knew how to handle that rifle. Having shot a rifle before, I can testify that they're actually really easy to shoot accurately.
- The actor playing Buchanan (James Morrison) was a favorite of mine on an old sci-fi show called "Space: Above & Beyond" from the creators of the X-Files. He played a hard-nosed Marine colonel with a sensitive side, here he plays a hard-nosed CTU director with a sensitive side. That's range.
- The other CTU agents that go out on missions might as well be wearing red shirts. At least in today's episode they got names. If you were going to have 5 minutes of screen time in a non- or minimal-speaking role in a movie or TV show, what would you want to do? I'd have wanted to be one of the pilots in the original Star Wars movie attacking the Death Star. That would have been rad.

- Currently listening to: "The Waking Hour" from Vienna Teng, a local singer-songwriter who came from Saratoga (former classmate of Karen and other folks), then majored in CS at Stanford and worked at Cisco before turning to music full-time. Very melodic, lot of minor-key piano music... great stuff.
- Currently re-reading: Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future by one of the best military sci-fi authors around, Timothy Zahn. His "Heir to the Empire" books back in the early '90s hit the top of the NY Times bestseller lists and can effectively be credited with rekindling the public's interest in all things Star Wars. Too bad Lucas didn't hire him to write the script for the prequels.