193 Hi there friends! Just finished watching tonight's episode of "American Idol." The theme of tonight's show was "Favorite Movie Songs." The theme kind of threw me off at the start of the show. The contestants would talk about their favorite movie, and then they would sing a song from a different movie. There were a few, "Was that song really in that movie?" moments before I finally figured out what was going on. The guest judge was Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino came off as p...
Well, just got the news that the President is doing a news conference tonight. That stinks. I was looking forward to watching my favorite television program tonight. Of course the broadcast networks are going wall-to-wall with it. I wonder whether the President on television draws better ratings than regular programming. With cable and public television, the general public could have access to whatever the President will try to do to untarnish his image in order to get himself re-elect...
190 Hey there friends! I hope that you're having a happy weekend. My wife and I enjoyed a quiet day at home with the baby. The only significant thing that we did was to go to the grocery store. We will enjoy the evening watching some stuff on television. My biggest project of my (soon-to-be-completed) spring break was to trim the hedges in my side yard. After working quite hard on three seperate days, I finally finished cutting them down to a respectable size. When I was finishe...
**For up-to-date results, please visit my "main page" at: http://jamieburnside.joeuser.com Thanks!* Hey there friends. Tonight's American Idol was a results' show. The final result of the show was that Camile (my hitherto favorite) was eliminated. I am now a George Huff supporter. Camile, Jasmine, and Diana were the bottom-three contestants this week. I don't think that Diana has too many weeks left in the competition. That's too bad as she is one of my favorites too. N...
Hello friends. Well, we've got the koinobori up. Koinobori are fish-shaped windsocks from Japan. If you hang them outside, it means that you'll have a strong and healthy boy. I still have some landscaping do do around the pole, and I need to improve the way that we secure the rope, but I think that they look pretty well out there in our yard. Here are the koinobori on a not-so-windy day. We took this picture yesterday. I am working on doing some of the landscaping ar...
186 Hey there friends. I hope that the day was good for you. My wife and I had a nice day. We visited the immigration office to get my wife's green card extended. After that, we had a nice lunch at a Vietnamese restaraunt. Once we got home, we put up our koinobori (Japanese carp streamers on a flagpole.) -I will post pictures of the koinobori once the wind picks up. They're not so impressive when they lay flaccid. We finished our daily activities in time to watch the final ...
Well, the Twins won their first game. They won it in extra innings with a walk-off homerun by Shannon Stewart. I was especially impressed with the Twins' rookie catcher Joe Mauer. If one game is an indication, he is really good at discerning balls from strikes. That young guy seems to be able to smell a strike quite quickly. It may be a bit early to say, but we may have the next Frank Thomas on our hands. I doubt that he'll have the power, but I'd bet that he'll draw a lot of walks. ...
Kenny and I are getting ready to watch the first game of the year. It starts in about ten minutes! Let's hope that we'll be able to see more games this year. Tonight's game is on broadcast television. Subsequent games will go unseen due to a conflict between the startup Twins television network, and all of the major satellite and cable providers in the Twin Cities area. Let's hope that Dish Network can iron-out an agreement with the Twins. (I am sort of anticipating an anno...
Hey there. I hope that you're all having a nice day! I have been enjoying myself today. The thermometer on my garage reads 70-degrees (~21C.) It was a nice day for a walk. My wife, the baby, and I strolled down to K-mart (department store) and Cub Foods (grocery store) to do a bit of shopping. I was a bad boy today. I didn't get any yardwork done today. That'll wait until tomorrow. My biggest accomplishment of the day was renewing my driver's license at the county office while m...
Hey there, I have a few projects planned for spring break this year. One of my main projects is to trim the hedges on the north and east sides of my house. I have been "blessed" with about 20+ yards of hedges that have been unkept and are terribly overgrown. It is one of my goals for this vacation to get those god-awful things trimmed down to a respectable height. The tough part is that there is a lot to do, and the hedges are awfully pointy. (My arms are all scratched-up!) Over ...
Hey there friends! I hope that you've had a happy Saturday. Kazuko and I had a good day. After sleeping in, Kazuko, Kenny and I went to have lunch at the Hong Kong Buffet in Elk River. After lunch, we bought the materials that we will be needing to install the pole that we will use to install our Koinobori (Japanese fish streamers.) I bought some cement and a mounting tube to put the pole into the ground. In about three days (once the cement has finished setting) I will post a p...
181 Hello there friends! There is only one day left until Spring Break! Yay! I have lots of plans for my lawn. I am going to dig a garden plot, start working on putting a path from my garage to my house, and I am going to make a cement base for a flagpole. (We are going to put Japanese carp streamers -koinobori- on the flagpole. We are doing that to celebrate the Japanese Children's Day holiday.) What comes with Spring Break? Spring time! With the arrival of Spring, we get to ...
180 Hey there. We just finished watching the results' show on American Idol. It turned out that Amy Adams, LaToya London, and Jennifer Hudson were the bottom three vote-getters. Amy Adams -one of my favorites- was the contestant who was ultimately voted-off. Conspicuously absent from the bottom three were Camile and John Stevens. John's performance last night was absolutely horrible. Camile's performances have never been as good as they should, but I think that the audience notic...
179 Hello there friends! My wife and I have just finished watching tonight's episode of American Idol. It was an interesting one, even though the performances in general were not all that special. I am changing the format of my weekly recaps. It turned out that as I was spending so much time writing critiques of each of the performances, I was losing what I liked most about the show. I enjoy just watching the people sing, and listening to the judges. A few miscellaneous comme...