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Went to bed quite early last nite in hopes of getting rid of my jet-lag, only to wake up at 4:30am from my apartment shaking from an earthquake. Funny thing is I had thought it was a bad dream and checked yahoo, cnn and google for "earthquake los angeles" under "news". Nothing. An hour later while still laying sleepless in bed my phone chirped from Facebook updates from friends' posts about the 4.4 quake...

When people get updated information quicker on Facebook or Twitter faster than from the "traditional" Internet sites - the web as I knew it sure has changed...

Screw trying to sleep while I type this on my phone. Gonna go make myself a latte and get some work done. Earthquakes suck, while jet-lags suck even more.

With the earthquake last night I failed in getting rid of my jet-lag, after my record-breaking shortest-trip-abroad over the weekend. Tonight I fell asleep for about an hour on my couch, then decided to bake my first whole-wheat bread (see above picture). Combine 100% Wheat Flour, Honey, Milk, Salt, and some button-pushing on my Kitchen-Aid mixer, and the result so far LOOKS great. Will report on the taste tomorrow morning when I eat it for breakfast :)

Good night! (Aiming for at least 6 hours of non-stop rest tonight)

Spent this past weekend in New York visiting my god daughter Megan. It was supposed to be her birthday party but unfortunately with the storm last week a tree fell on top of their house. The party will be postponed so I won't be able to make it, but she seemed to like her present from me :)

More pictures later. Gotta get some sleep tonight.

John Mayer, that is. Just came back from the concert at Staples. Awesome show, even if the lesbian couple directly in front of our seat got drunk, constantly swayed side-to-side and jumped up-and-down...

Don't people care that we all paid good money to watch and listen to John Mayer in concert, and not two girls make out and dance in front of (read: BLOCKING) us? Courtesy, people. Courtesy.

No I didn't buy the T-shirt.

One more thing - Julia Muenkel I love you too :)

Driving home the other day I saw this black smoke far ahead on the freeway, and knew that I should get my camera out. This is the result (Cue in this song.Repeat chorus until we pass the accident site). A ella le gusta la gasolina! Da me mas gasolina!... Glad no one on site was hurt though.

Finally done with work myself and looking forward to an end to all the cr@p this week. More posts to follow, as I am really back-logged on updates to this web site :)

Decided after three months of hoopla I finally decided to go watch Avatar, according to some friends as the best movie, ever (supposedly even better than LOTR!) So I head out to the theater, just to realize that I misread the show time and missed the movie by 20 minutes. Oh well maybe I will try again later...

The picture is of my dinner tonight. Decided to make a quasi-German dinner, as it is Julia's mom's birthday (and party) tomorrow, and somehow I miss the schnitzels she make when I visit.

The 'quasi' comes from what I ate it with - Chinese cabbage and rice. I know it is probably blasphemy to mix these dishes in one single meal, but I like them all, together...

Oh yeah and to make it even more 'international', I had Sauvignon Blanc and an espresso afterwards:)

Back to my P90X routine tomorrow.

I have known this little girl for a few years now, and from all that she has been through it wasn't until last week when I got to take my first picture of her SMILING. The-cutest-smile that I have seen from her.

Though she ignores me most of the time, even if I am jumping up an down right in front of her (I got this picture while she was temporarily mesmerized by my camera), I am happy she is doing well to enjoy all the fun things that are around her.

Hello Lucy!

Beautiful weekend so far (I got to wear shorts for the first time this year), but somehow I overslept both Saturday and today - both days I was in bed for at least 10 hours...

Then it dawned on me - despite sleeping for so long I still wake up tired. The sneezing, itchy nose and eyes were also symptoms...

It is allergy season again.

Woke up this morning feeling totally sick. I guess my allergies may not have been 100% the reason why I was so tired all weekend. Rested all day and took meds and drank tons of water. Hopefully tomorrow I will feel much better to get some work done.

The picture above is an experiment at tilt-shift photography, from a picture I took a few years ago in Tokyo (original here) - the effect is supposed to make a real life scenery look model-like. Pretty cool for a first-attempt but I think I have to practice more :)

Another variation of the same photo is here, and a larger version here.

Going to bed early tonight... Zzzzz

During dinner tonight I looked up some more pictures I have taken over the years since I started taking pictures (and posting them to this web site), and post-processed them as tilt-shift, miniature-faking shots. I am quite proud of my semi-artistic accomplishments*. Here you go:

Union Square San Francisco, California
Hoover Dam, Nevada
Monterey, California
Sunset Crater National Park, Arizona
Bryce Canyon 1, Utah
Bryce Canyon 2, Utah
Grand Canyon North Rim, Arizona
Somewhere Over New Mexico
Great Wall, Badaling, China
Minneapolis 1, Minnesota
Minneapolis 2, Minnesota
New York City 1, New York
New York City 2, New York
New York City 3, New York

Yes.Proud.I.am.*

Oh yeah - just realized that I've done quite a bit of traveling :)

*Because otherwise Lewis has no artistic skills whatsoever.

Yeah I know I know, what the heck am I doing spreading rumors about the unavoidable 'A' word? Last weekend I watched 2012, and last night it was "Armageddon" on TV. On the internet there are reports of record-breaking floods, and then I hear the swarms of grasshoppers are taking over farmlands in the next few weeks... Today I log on to my internet portal and find that now unknown scary sea monsters with names like Bathynomus Giganteus are coming up from the bottom of the ocean.

Although it's been a while since I read The Bible, but aren't these all signs of our imminent doom?

Otherwise I just need to go find my REM CD from my college days... :)

I have had several TV shows that keep me company when I am bored or working late at night... One was canceled, one ran its entire, awesome course, one is still running, and one just started. After the previous depressing post I figure I should end on a happy note: three out of the four of my favorite shows in the past 5 years are COMEDIES :)

Have a good night! Finally I am feeling better than any of the other days so far this week. Work work work.