October 28, 2008 – Lakers begin the 2008-2009 NBA season by soundly beating the young run and gun Portland Trailblazers 96-76. The hype built up with the hopes lying on both teams young big men. It started off with Andrew Bynum jumping it off against Greg Oden, but in the end none of the young-ins looked as impressive as the veterans.

Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, Bynum or any of the guys under 25 made a significant impact on the game, where as Pau Gasol had full control of the 1st half, and of course Kobe took care of the second half after getting fired up by being bumped by Joel Przybilla and scoring eight straight points in the third quarter.

Predictions of the year

NBA Champions: Los Angeles Lakers

Western Conference Champions: Los Angeles Lakers

Eastern Conference Champions: Boston Celtics

MVP: Labron James

Rookie of the Year: Derrick Rose

Defensive Player of the year: Kevin Garnett

6th Man of the year: Lamar Odom

Saturday Joy and I attended the dinner reception for Bryant and Kim. It took a bit of time to get all 300 people organized and seated to get dinner started. The menu was large ordeal with the usual ten courses but it just couldn’t keep up with the alcohol. By the time the 5th or 6th dish came out we were already out of beer, and running low on the hard alcohol really fast.

Everything was really well done from the slide show, to the tribute to Kim’s late father. I hope my events go through smoothly, and it was nice to see Kim loosen up for her big day.

I’m engaged.

I proposed to Joy back on June 22, 2008. I never wrote about it before because i felt it was too impersonable to have people find out about it via email, text message or blog posting, but i failed to be able to tell everybody in the time since we decided to move up our wedding date from originally the beginning of September 2009 to the beginning of March 2009.

I realized this with a posting i got from a good friend in New York that i meant to call, but through my inert unability to just pick of the phone to call, and the hustle of my day-to-day life i failed miserably to inform everyone that i wanted to.

So to you Berna and everyone else, I’m Sorry, my bad.

A few months ago i went to take some pictures for a client at work for their copper re-piping business. I was planning to use them all over their site, but for some reason they didn’t like any of them. With all these pictures lying around i uploaded them to iStockphoto just to see i could make a few bucks. Now those few bucks are paying off big time. I guess it makes sense since i normally go there to look for stock photos but couldn’t find any that i needed and therefor had to shoot my own. Eight pictures have yielded 68 downloads for $79.44 in four months. In addition to my other photos i’m going to break $50.00 worth of downloads this month alone.

I know a ton of you have spent good money on those fancy dslr cameras, so you might as well start to make some money with them!

Sunday we woke up at the butt crack of dawn (i guess even before dawn since the sun wasn’t even up yet) to head to Union Square to support Joy on her Nike Women’s Marathon. I figured that it wasn’t going to be a problem to run it since i already ran one last year, but this was a completely different race. There were hills and hills after hills. The views were much better and the weather overcast the whole time, and i didn’t take off my running jacket the whole time.

By mile 6 of 13.1 i started to feel a twinge in my hip, and i had to stretch it out every few hundred yards. By mile 11 i had to fall back and let Joy and my sister go on ahead of me. Its weird running by yourself as a guy in the largest gender specific race in the world, and especially at the end when you’re not technically suppose to be in the race and they tried to pull me out of the race right before the finish line, but i played deaf, and just ran passed the bouncers. I had no care to pick up a blue tiffany’s box being given away by firemen in tuxes. You kidding me?

Any ways i finished the race in under 3 hours, hurt hip and all, but Monday morning i totally thought i was going to die. My knee ached so bad i couldn’t even move it. I thought i was going to need to stay home all day, but i popped some advil, and a few hours later i was back on my feet. I’m going to have to think long and hard if i can do that again.

This weekend there was a bazillion things going on around the city. After sleeping in Joy and I headed down to Chinatown for breakfast, and afterwards headed down to the Fisherman’s Wharf to meet up with Ben who also happened to be in the city. We stumbled upon a part of the wharf that i’ve never seen before, full of souvenir shops, and cheesey restaurants. We stumbled upon a trolley pulling contest, but there was also a soap box race going on, and a ski jump contest near the stadium. Figured that since so many people were in the city for the Nike Women’s marathon, so thats why so many things were going on in the city.

We’re up north again, but this time not for the wine, but for the Nike Women’s Marathon. I’ll be “running” too, but i’ll be with my sister who’s also “running” but we’ll probably be drinking coffee and taking pictures the whole time.

So our dear chef Kobe has decided to take the next culinary step and is leaving his position as Chef De Cuisine of Mozza Pizzeria. Hopefully in the next few years i’ll be writing about the opening of his very own restaurant.

For a last meal as you may, I met up some of the guys from B’s bachelor party for one final meal of gluttony, and celebration. If you look closely on the table there are seven pizza pies ranging from clams, meat lovers, truffle cheese, anchovies, to a broccoli pizza. Strange? yes, delightful?, some of them. We finished off two bottles of wine, a glass of prosecco each, to go along with a bunch of appetizers, and desserts.

Its going to be tough to go back since once you’ve tasted extra special attention, its going to be hard to go back and not get the same attention.

Joy planned a day of shopping with her cousins which left me to my own devices. Meaning lots of football, fantasy sports, and of course bad sci-fi movies. Today’s selection was Starship Troopers 3 – Marauder. I’ve been a huge fan of the first movie, and watch it everytime it comes on TV. I watched about half of the second movie, but it was such a low budget movie i couldn’t finish it.

I didn’t have much of an idea of what the thrid one was going to have, but i have to say i enjoyed it, up until the end. They even brought back the original actor who played Johnny Rico, and seemed to actually spend a few bucks for location fees, and digital effects. The best part was close to end where they have the pleasure of getting three girls for a completely gratuitous topless sequence which i can’t really complain too much about. Really i liked it, all of it except for about 10 minutes of the end of the movie where they find “religion.”

Spent saturday studying the habits of a seven year old. I had to count backwards to figure out what grade you’re in when you’re seven. Then i had to remember what i was interested in when i was 2nd grade, and man i was still into all the Transformers or what ever cartoon was on TV at the time.

So Hannah Montana was the name of the game. Plenty of pink and cake to go around for everyone. I still don’t have quite the attention span to take on four kids at a constant pace. I obviously don’t have the energy that i thought i did to keep up with people half my size. I still have much respect to all those people with kids.

This past weekend was another busy one. Friday night i felt like going out to eat somewhere a little nicer than sizzler so i took Joy out to Literati2, but we ate so much that we didn’t get to enjoy the churros. It was a nice dinner before the start of the weekend.

Saturday i gave Joy a chance to get some studying done by heading out to Burbank to play golf with Roland and his brother Jeff. It was a good time, even with a light drizzle throughout the afternoon. Luckily i kept enough shots straight enough to overcome Roland’s last victory in Palm Springs. On the way back to the westside i stopped by and picked up some yummy mojo potatoes, and sure some pizza and chicken from Shakey’s, one of the few left in the LA area. It still soooo good, and lasted through Sunday too.

I was a bit tired after golf i needed an early evening nap but woke up in time to catch the dodgers finish off the chicago cubs to advance in the playoffs. Right after i had to change and head back to Artesia to celebrate Vince’s 27th birthday. You know it was a good birthday when you’re drinking the tequila straight from the bottle.

Sunday we slept in, and did 4 loads of laundry. It was really nice outside and we thought about taking a hike up in the Santa Monica mountains, but decided to go to Univeral Studios instead. The place was decked out for Halloween Horror Nights, including the backlot tour. They even had an actor to play Norman Bates at the Psycho Motel. I would really want to go, but Joy is a bit scared not to go in a large group that she could hide in. Finally we went to the semi-famouc Katsu-Ya for some Sushi. It was good and fresh, but not exactly spectacular.

Pictures from my birthday finally came back. Wow, i remember doing the double shot, but i don’t remember many of the images past it. Cheers from the left and the right.