BlaringSmelly

The redneck in Paul had him all worked up on finding a shooting range in or around Seattle. He managed to find one in Bellevue so we went on to check it out last Saturday.

At the shooting range, I noticed an interesting mixture of gun nuts and tourist type Asians. I shouldn’t be too surprised as in several Asian countries, civilians are banned from possessing firearms.

Paul picked a Glock 17 to start with. He did fine on his first try, then it was my turn.

Wholly shit, the recoil had me look like a fool! I am no body builder but I ain’t the “oh protect me I am so weak” type of girl either. But the 9mm appeared to be a bit more than I can handle. After we finished shooting all the ammo, we switched to a .22. Guess what? I can finally shoot things. During one round I hit the bull’s eye not once, but 4 times.

There was a group of Chinese occupying one lane. Judging from their accents, I believe they are from China. They were pretty loud the whole time, and the one girl in the group was significantly louder than the others. During the shooting practice, we wore ear plugs to protect our ears from the loud gun fires. But I can still hear her as if she were inches from me. And because she wasn’t doing any shooting herself, her laughs were nonstop and really obnoxious the whole time.

Play the video above, you can hear her and her fellow friends in the background.

My order of Invader ZIM Vol. 1, 2 and 3 have arrived! This strange animated series were first aired on Nickelodeon but was short lived after one and half seasons.

The human world portrayed in the animation is this errie and dark environment. Everything seems a little off at first glance and very wrong if one was given enough time to observe.

Did I say I enjoy the show a lot?

Today’s morning traffic was so bad took me almost an hour commuting on my bike. It was backed up 1 mile before I can reach the carpool lane. What the…??!! And there was absolutely no reason the traffic was that congested…unless…it was too sunny this morning!!

Check out my new bike!!!

Haa haa just kidding, I was only posing on this BMW R1200 Geoff rode in to work while his bike is in services. My palms were sweating when I was on it. The bike’s gigantic, and yet when Geoff fired it up, the engine was not loud at all. It was almost a smooth quiet vroom sound, very classy.

Here’s me being a poser, then a close up, and another close up.

2 days ago when Geoff told me he is going to ride his brand new Aprilia RSVR Factory to work on Wednesday, I told him I’ll ride to work too if he does. So today I geared up and hoop on 520 morning traffic. This thing about motorcycle has the right using carpool lanes are just news from heaven. Cursing by the long line of cars waiting to enter 520 entrances, I felt very special.

Geoff showed up a little after I did. His bike is quite a beauty. When he fired up the engine, man that thing is LOUD! His Aprilia is a total race bike! It’s probably not as comfortable as his usual commuting BMW one, but sure looks good. We were hoping Jeff would show up with his Kawasaki ZX6R. But apparently he didn’t get the “memo”… So it’s one member missing from the company motorcycle club…

Going back home, the traffic was again really bad near the 520 bridge. I was not shy about exercising my biker privilege. It took me 5 minutes passing all that congestion that would otherwise be at least 30 minutes if I were driving.

Check out more shots here… pic 1, pic 2, pic 3.

Last Friday I was casually playing Halo2 campaign at work. Matt walked in and casually told me the level I was playing, where the Convenant troops were pouring in from this pipe shape alien spaceship, was very difficult to pass if I were to play in legendary level. Later the day I mentioned it to Paul, then forgot about it.

Saturday night got a call from Paul, asked me to play co-op with him to finish that Chapter in legendary level. He had tried many times but couldn’t do it. I was pretty tired coming back from the wedding at the time. So I put it off until Sunday.

Good thing I did. That co-op turned into a 7-hour marathon of Halo madness. Freaking Convenant kept pouring out from the alien spaceship. And grenades seemed to do very limited damage to them. What’s worse was the co-op mode, unlike the original Halo, had no respawn! When one player died, the battle started over from the last checkpoint. And we must complete the whole chapter in order to save our progress…that means if we don’t finish the chapter today, we’ll have to leave the xbox on so we don’t loss our game play. Paul will be flying to DC the next day so that’s really not an option.

For hours, we were barely making a dent to that tightly packed enemy troops. During one of the bathroom breaks we checked online for tips and chapter walk-through, and then we started making some progress. But we were still taking turns getting killed under heavy fires by swarms of Convenant that just won’t die.

To make story short, we finally beat the Chapter at about 2 am Monday morning. I was in disbelief when Paul stuck the last Elite and ended the battle. The moment of victory was glorious but short, we were exhausted.

4-hours later I’m up and ready for work. I’m sleepy as hell but dang, that was a heck of a campaign level!

So last night Paul and I were on Halo2 Live. We started up with some team slayer games. Onto 2nd map, I noticed one of our team mates’ tag names sounded really familiar…”undertone dj”… That’s DJ from work! Haa haa…small world!

Normally I don’t talk during a Live game because lots of assholes do trash talk like there’s no tomorrow. But that time DJ and I were hollering at each other like we haven’t seen each other for ages. In fact, it’s being a while. He is now working at some fancy 360 game…

I have a theory the logic behind Xbox Live matchmaking is that it started by matching you with players that’s geographically closest to you, and of course, similar levels. I think I am right about that. That’s why I got teamed up with someone locally, and happened to be someone I know!

Oh by the way I was on fire last night, dominating 2, 3 games of the winning team. That’s right, moi!

I’m going to add a link here to a very funny Stuart’s blog entry of our Halo play at work.I really like it ‘cause Stuart really nailed it my battle trash talks…

Last week went out for a night riding. I was doing fine heading north. On the way back, I ran out of gas on Aurora. This was 10pm at night on the lovely Aurora which is known as prostitutes hang outs and frequent crime scenes. I had to call Scotty to beam me up some gas (Thank you whoever invented cell phone!)

How do you suppose one should know when to get gas when there is no fuel gauge on the bike?

Spent the weekend at San Diego for the Comic Book Convention, also to meet up with friends back in the old days in Oregon. Convention was overwhelming but very fun, met my dreamy hero Hell Boy and had my picture taken with him.

At evening we would hang out at Gaslamp district which is only few blocks from the convention center. The place went crazy after dark. Bars, clubs and restaurants and the street were packed with party people.

We were not very impressed with the beach area we stayed at. However I did manage to spend some time sun bathing at the beach. When we got back to Seattle, the weather was nice and warm near the 80s. We spent couple hours at Golden Garden Beach to make up for what we missed in San Diego.

Some more shots from the convenstion… pic 1, pic 2, pic 3.

Sunday morning bike ride to Shoreline was so enjoyable I ride to West Seattle again at the evening. On the way back I was expecting the same joy ride. But was stop shortly at the entrance of West Seattle Bridge. Not sure what was going on but I can see bunch of police cars blocking the bride going back to Seattle completely.

Hot-dang… I was stuck in the traffic for god knows how long. It was getting hot and sweaty in my jacket and helmet. The constant stop and go on the up and down hills of the bridge were really testing my gear shifting skills. To make matters worse a creepy Asian guy was staring right at me in the comfort of his Honda passenger seat.

This morning I woke up with a serious back sore on the right shoulder. I suspect it has to do with the traffic stop. My excessive braking using my right arm probably triggered it. I think I’m going to hold off the plan commuting on my bike for a while because I am a wuss to bad traffic…