For me, it's nice to look at something at the end of the day and see that I actually accomplished something. When I was working construction for a few short summer months in high school this consisted of digging a ditch or something and then being able to observe the place where the earth used to be, and the pile I made with the stuff I removed. This is one thing that makes starting a new job frustrating. A good example would be spending 4 hours trying to order business cards. It's like ditch digging in a swamp. Thankfully, I was able sit back and scroll through a deck of slides at the end of a day this week and think that I had actually accomplished something - always a good feeling, although I acknowledge that creating a powerpoint deck is not nearly as manly as raising a barn (for instance).

A quick aside - I'm really enjoying my job, and am thankful that I get to do what I'm doing now. The people I work with are great. It may just be that I have lower expectations after my last job, but I think this job is exactly what I wanted coming out of bschool; it just took me a year and a half to get there. A quick aside on that aside - I got word from an old colleague this week that the department I used to work in has been dismantled. Some of my former coworkers have been shipped off to other units, and some are still in limbo. Makes me glad I left.

Fingernails have always bugged me. Whenever I have a lot on my mind, cutting my fingernails just seems like a colossal bother. When they become embarrassingly long, I often have difficulty locating the fingernail clipper, causing me to go a week or more with nails so 'beautiful' that Mari asks if she can paint them.

At work I often have to research companies that we compete with, or that are in adjacent markets. Some of these outfits are based overseas. One annoying thing my brain does - when I find out a company is in England, the voice in my head insists on reading all of their materials with a British accent. What's up with that?

At church today we sang a hymn with a little ditty where only the women sing, and then the men come back in later (He Died, the Great Redeemer Died). There are lots of hymns like this. I hate them. I think they sound bad, and are prejudicial. I have yet to see any 'men only' sections in the hymns. Today our organist, who is a woman but apparently agrees with me, just barged through the offending section, bass notes and all. It was great.

This week's Sunday school scripture reading has been less than uplifting. During reading Genesis, 35-40 or so, I found myself yearning for the comparative calmness and high moral standards portrayed on network TV today. This section of the bible should be referred to as 'desperate concubines of the Pentateuch'. The unsavory-ness of these chapters has only been enhanced by the fact that I'm reading the NIV. With the King James Version, the flowery language is ambiguous enough to sometimes gloss over what's really going on (at least for me). The blunt NIV leaves no such wiggle room. It's nice to finally have Joseph's story roll around.

Speaking of network TV, an actual excerpt (as best I can recall) from a TV show called CSI Miami:
Horatio Caine : Marisol, what's wrong?
Marisol Delko: (staring out huge window) During my fight with cancer, I was trying so hard not to die, I forgot how to live. There are so many things I've never done. I've never traveled. I've never had a baby.
Horatio: Marisol, it's not too late.
Marisol: (In a whisper, as though not daring to believe her ears) What did you say?
Horatio: It's not too late.
Marisol: Oh Horatio, if you say it is true, I believe you!
Horatio: That's because it is true.

As Dave Barry (from Miami!) would say, I'm not making this up. For Nig and Stu – perhaps Clive Cussler is now doing dialogue for CBS TV shows.

I object to the use of the phrase "various and sundry". First of all, it's repetitive (m-w.com says so). Second, it's often used in presentations and talks by someone trying to sound smart. Lastly, if these two words were nation states, "sundry" would be a small, mostly useless protectorate of the word "various". I say this because "sundry" is almost never deployed without being paired with "various". Same goes for "trials and tribulations", although I don't think these two are quite as bad. Props for the person who reads this blog and comes up some more good word pairs.

That's it for now.

I find it interesting that when one attains a certain position in a company, one can haul off and yawn in one-on-one meetings whenever one feels like it. By "one", I mean "not me" because as a peon in corporate America, I have not had meetings with people whom I out-rank. Just this last week, though, I had 2 meetings with VPs at my new company, and both of them were apparently sleep deprived and had forgotten to take their Provigil. So they yawned six or seven times. The implication is that they have been slaving away at their jobs and haven't had time to sleep. In reality, they probably stayed up because they wanted to see Oprah on Letterman. The hard thing about big-wigs yawning is that yawns are contagious. Just by seeing one, or hearing a yawn-moan, or writing about yawns, one tends to yawn (heck, I'm yawning right now). This, however, is unacceptable behavior for small fry like me. It's ironic that if anyone should be sleepy, it's the guy who just pulled an all-nighter to get the presentation ready for the (yawning) execs. I hadn't pulled an all-nighter before these meetings, and was able to suppress.

An anecdote illustrating the importance of marketing: In going to a Japanese restaurant this week, I remembered how two foods that are exactly the same can be perceived in very different ways. For example, Billy-Bob can walk into the local greasy spoon and order pounded, breaded pork deep-fat fried in lard with onion rings. A yuppie can go to the local Japanese food joint, and ask for Tonkatsu with Tempura and get the exact same thing. Both can feel that their food selection is consistent with their own self-image. Great that international cuisine can be so accommodating.

This last week, I went out surfing. Because the waves were really small, I had some time to think. One thing that occurred to me is that boards are really fragile equipment. Here are some things that can be hazardous to a board's health: sun, saltwater, rocks, reef, sand, and heat. These are also the basic ingredients of surfing. It's like having a baseball bat that degrades in the presence of pine tar, skoal, and Stanozolol.

So my family's gone this week and next enjoying sunny Hawaii, while I am stuck in sunny San Diego. This may not seem like a crock to you, but the fact that all the Ohkis are gathered for the annual family reunion there makes me mad that I can't go (gotta work). It's strange that when my family is gone, I turn into a totally different person, not unlike the guy to the left. It's hard to explain, but here are some symptoms:

• Inability to leave TV off
• Affinity for otherwise objectionable hard rock bands like Creed
• Aggressive driving
• Inadvisable purchasing behavior (Jack LaLane Juicer was lookin' good yesterday)
• Bizarre eating patterns

An episode which occurred mere hours after my family left: Upon returning home Friday night, I ate 9 frozen cookie dough balls Marie (unwisely) left in the freezer, washed them down with some milk (swig taken straight from jug), watched basketball and went to bed.

Enough for today.

This week, Marie's parents finished their visit and left for the Morinda conference in LA. I am forced to admit two things:
1. I love it when my in-laws come
2. In-law visits can be hazardous to one's health

As usual, we ate way too much, and stayed up way too late each night. The staying up late finally caught up with everyone on Monday evening. After Marie and parents and kids had shopped all afternoon, we had a huge dinner and returned home. On the way back the main van went straight back, but I stopped by the grocery store and purchased duraflame - a synthetic wood-like log substitute that's great for people w/fireplaces like us. I figured it would be perfect for Mari and Mom because they like sitting around and talking late into the night. Also, Mom and Dad had already expressed fascination with our non-fake fireplace. So I put the log into the fireplace an light it. No sooner is it away crackling contentedly than the dancing amber flames trigger a long-overdue narcoleptic episode among those gathered. I'll remember this for next time - a useful trick for times when we really should go to sleep but wanna stay up talking.

Visiting us has also been hazardous for my Mom in law. She saw our "ab-lounge" and wanted to give it a shot. Mari warned her to take it easy, but to no avail. She ended up doing quite a few crunches, which it turns out, has given her severe abdominal pain while she's been in LA this week. Kinda reminds us of the time she paddled out in double overhead surf at "tracks" in Hawaii. Or for that matter, the time she put our treadmill through its paces at our apartment in Philly.

One interesting note on Jerome. We caught him writing a letter to Jerome Bettis this week in which he proclaimed: "Did you know that I'm named after you?". Actually, he's not. The fact that, after 1.5 years in Pittsburgh Jerome is a rabid Steelers fan is a testament to the lack of separation of Steelers and State in the North Allegheny School District. It is also obvious that most children in Franklin Park Elementary were wild with envy that Jez got named "Jerome", and this may have contributed to Jerome's affinity for the Steelers.

I can't really think of anything interesting to write this week - enough for now.

WOW - my fifth post. I have been shamed into returning to the blogosphere by Julia, who has promised a reciprocal post. That's worth it in my book, so here goes.

First of all, I just want to cover a few important but weird topics. The first is the alarming appearance of a word that I have been misspelling my entire life. It is: "raspberry". When it was rejected by spellcheck, I knew at once that it fell into an elite category of my misspelled words. That would be the "Gosh - I've never spelled this word correctly, and it's so easy, I really should have learned and remembered how to spell this in the 4th grade" category. I've got other categories available:

• "I seldom use this word and it's so hard that I'm just going to forget it and let spellcheck catch it every time". Examples: daiquiri, colonel
• "This might be tough, but I really should learn this in case I'm authoring a hand-written note to a superior at work, and don't have access to spellcheck". Examples: personnel, millennium.
• "i before e except after c exceptions". Examples: weird, foreign (ok, fine. I've never had a problem with "foreign", but there aren't that many words that violate the rule)

The strange thing is, I really like raspberries, but just never have had to write the word on a computer. I'd like to point out, though, that nobody goes around saying "razP-baireez", which is part of the problem. I suppose that overall, the word "raspberry" is not as put upon as "worcestershire", which for centuries has been robbed of multiple letters in its actual pronunciation for no particular reason. It's also hard to spell.

Because we've just moved, I'm again writing my signature on the back of the new bank cards I get. This process is absurd. Why do I have to try and sign a little box the size of a toothpick on the back of my card in order to make it valid? This reminds me of another silly ritual: signing the electronic pads at the store after swiping my card, or for that matter, signing anything at all. I think it is time to start using some of my favorite names instead of my own, just to enjoy the process more. Some names I have liked for some time:

• Milton Flinders
• Joyce Frankenberg
• Boutros Boutros Ghali
• Deco (famous soccer player AND saves time in checkout line)

Here are some recent pictures - from TODAY in fact. Gpa and Gma Ohki are here for a few days before a Morinda conference in LA. We went for a walk in Torrey Pines State Reserve, and it was gorgeous. Amazing views of the ocean and the "badlands"-like cliffs. We are loving having Gpa/Gma here, as always. Too bad they have to go to LA on Wednesday.






Here are a few other pictures from last week. We finally took Asha to the beach, just to show her that it is as cold as we're telling her it is. We also went to a free Aviation museum run by the Marines. They had lots of new planes and helicopters there, but Kai mostly just liked being in the backpack.