Well, not exactly, which brings me to the story of the weekend.  I was originally planning a different blog for today, but that one will have to wait for tomorrow.  Jamie, Clinton, and I spent the weekend at the Siebers, and, as per usual, we took our skateboards with us to have some fun in their driveway.  On Friday, I decided that I wanted to try an 'Ollie', because Pro Skater 4 has inspired me.  Now, I should mention that I don't know how to do an 'Ollie', but I thought I'd guess.  So, I slammed down one end of the board and did some kind of jumping motion, and before I knew it, I was reeling backwards and landing hard on my back side, narrowly avoiding the side of my car with my head.  The most serious part of this injury was a little bit of skin scraped off of my elbow, but not enough to even be red.  Not too bad, but I showed it off for the rest of the day as my first skating injury.  I also decided to wait until I get pads and a helmet before I go down the road of really trying to learn to trick.

Then, comes today.  Clinton comes in and mentions that he had just gone down the street, venturing out of the normal bounds of the driveway.  He mentions that it seemed like it wasn't even as steep as the driveway, but that it was longer, so you build up some speed.  He took Jamie's deck down, but suggested that he thought my Sector 9 would probably have been smoother.  Well, I was ready to do my first run of the day.  I was even wearing my new skate shoes.  So, I grabbed my board and thought I'd try the street as well.  So, I hop on and start to go down.  Very quickly, the board starts to wobble pretty seriously.  This was not a foreign experience for me, because when I was new to the driveway, this happened a fair amount as well.  I don't care for the wobbliness, so when I realized that I wasn't going to be able to rein it in, I figured I should go ahead and bail before matters got worse and I wouldn't be able to choose the manner of my bailing.  So, the plan was to jump off and immediately start running to match by current speed and let the board fly down the hill all by its lonesome.  However, during all of this, I hadn't recognized just how much speed I had built up.  In fact, I soon found out that I was going faster on the board than I am capable of running.  So, after I hit about three strides running, I started to go down.  I'm pretty sure my elbow hit first, as it took the most damage, but I also caught my knee, hip, side of my stomach and shoulder before I completed my roll on to my back.  I remember being surprised that I continued to fall for so long.  Afterwards, we could see that the red in my shirt had actually rubbed off onto the pavement leaving a red stripe 10 feet long.  I got up and kind of checked to make sure that I wasn't so badly injured that I should sit back down or something, and Clinton zooms past me on Jamie's deck.  He thought that he could get down to check on me faster if he rode down, but then realized that if he tried to stop, he was going to be in the same predicament I was, so he continued on to the bottom of the hill.

I'm proud to say that now I have my real first skating injury, considering I bled from six different places.  The good news is that the injury hasn't scared me off from skating, though I am planning on investing in a helmet and some pads before I try too many new things.  One other ironic thing, the shirt that I was wearing is the shirt that I got from Jamie's cousins a year and a half ago that has some skate brand logo on it.  I wore it to ubc one Sunday morning while giving announcements, and mentioned then that I felt like a real poser for wearing a skate shirt, having never skateboarded before.  Perhaps, today was payback, although the shirt bore a fair amount of injury as well.

I'm proud to say that tonight, after Taco Tuesday, I reached the 75% mark on my career for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4.  The goals I have left to accomplish are remain unfinished for one of two reasons: 1) They are too hard, or 2) I can't figure out what the goal is asking me to do.  Now, I'm fine with not completing 100% of a game, as good as it would feel to see that happen.  The way I see it, I now have a solid C in Tony Hawk Pro Skater.  I'm used to being an A student, so I may have to keep going until I hit 90%.  It sure would help me get there if I could clear up the goal of some of those goals.  Which brings me to the idea of 'cheats'.  I don't like the idea of cheating.  I failed more than one student as a result of cheating.  But, is looking up what I'm supposed to do really cheating?  Your thoughts?  In the meantime, I guess it's back to Gran Turismo for a while.

Update - I hit 80% today, still no cheat/research.  Have any of you played Pro Skater 4?  How far did you get?

Update Anew - 87% without guidance...how far can he go?!?

This coming weekend is a big weekend for the Siebers and the West Coast Segues.  Friday night, we're going to see Bill Cosby out at the Pechanga casino.  For those of you who have seen him before, you'll know how awesome this show is going to be.  I've been looking forward to it ever since I saw the movie Comedian.  And speaking of Comedian, we are getting to go to Vegas for two days after Christmas, where we will see Jerry Seinfeld perform, followed by Cirque du Soleil's Mystere.  Not immediately followed by.  I mean, Seinfeld's not opening for Mystere.  Anywho, it's going to be a very Vegas Christmas.

I forgot to mention that Jamie and I went to see “love actually” this weekend.  You've probably seen the commercials for it, and you are probably thinking it's a feel-good, family oriented Christmas season story, like I did.  As it turns out, I think it also could have been called “boobs actually”.  I don't want to knock it as a movie, just because it had boobs, but I will knock the marketing of it.  Man, that would have been an uncomfortable movie to be in with a kid or a parent.

So, I slept in today after taking Jamie to work.  When I finally pulled myself out of bed, I knew that in order to stay out of bed, I needed to head directly to the shower.  So, I did.  I was just enjoying the hot water, when I distinctly heard the sound of failing water pressure.  And sure enough, moments later, the water slowed to a trickle.  I waited for a couple minutes, hoping that it would come back on, but alas, nothing.  Fortunately, I wasn't all soaped or shampooed up.  I got out, dried off, and went outside to see if I could find somebody working on the water or something, to let them know that some of us were showering.  There was nobody to be found.  I came back in and tried the water at the kitchen sink.  It came rushing on.  So, the water's back on now, but I'm nervous about getting back in to finish my shower, because what if it shuts off again just as shampoo runs into my eyes?!?  That fear did not keep me from brushing my teeth, who were threatening to leave my mouth if I didn't do something about the breath situation.

Big news everybody!  We've got a new blogger amongst us.  One Brandon Wilson.  Enjoy!

Yesterday was Jamie's day off, and we had heard from Scott Coones that he was in town, so we met up with him and went to Lulu's for lunch.  We recognized the guy at the table next to us as a waiter from the Mexican food restaurant down the street called Marix.  We've eaten there three times, and he's been our waiter all three times.  He was there with another guy, and the waiter seemed to be embarrassed about the fact that they were on a date.  In West Hollywood...embarrassed about being gay.  Dude, maybe you're not gay.  Oops.

Anywho, later that night Tony & Martel came over for dinner.  And just as Jamie was about to serve a wonderful dinner of salmon, pasta, caesar salad and cheesebread, we learn that salmon makes Tony break out in hives.  Oops.

Well, we dealt with the situation and put chicken in Tony's caesar salad to make it a bit heartier.  We watched some TV, so that Tony could see if they were still running promos for his show.  The ratings haven't been what they had hoped for, in spite of the critical acclaim, so he's a bit nervous.  After they left, Jamie and I were doing dishes.  She washed, I dried.  I was drying our big salad bowl, when all of a sudden, it slipped out of my hands, hit the counter, and smashed into a million pieces, while also slicing four cuts into my forearm.  Oops.

Well, Jeff has his excuses, and I have mine.  I've tried to blog several times this week, but I have run into errors when attempting a post.  Which is a shame, because I revealed several internationally important secrets in some of those attempts.  Oh well, perhaps the next time I'm bored, I'll throw those out again.

What was the error, you may ask?  Well, there were two things that happened that confused the issue.  One, my hosting company upgraded to Windows Server 2003, which effectively reset the permissions on my directories, making it impossible to post new blogs.  Two, I tried installing the newest version of dasBlog.  This actually caused no problems but distracted me from the aforementioned problem, which was the true problem.

So, now that I'm back in business, I'll rewrite the brief blog that I can remember from Saturday.  It went something like this:

Well, I finally knew ahead of time about a lunar eclipse and set my alarm to remind me to go look at it.  However, the clouds were too thick in Fallbrook for us to see.  The one time it gets cloudy in California!  Did anybody else get a chance to see it?

Hey everybody, Tony's show Arrested Development premieres tomorrow night after Malcolm In the Middle on Fox.  Don't miss it!  Yes, I know it goes up against Alias, but we found a way to watch both.  I'm sure you can too.

I went to see Intolerable Cruelty tonight in the rain.  I shall cherish the rain, as I will not see it again for months, I'm sure.  Jamie was working until 10:30, so I got an employee pass from her to go see a movie for cheap ($6 is cheap here) at The Grove's Pacific Theatre.  The word on the street is that this theatre is one of the top 5 grossing movie theatres in the U.S. or maybe even the world.  As a result, I'm guessing that this theatre is somewhat trendsetting.  Perhaps some of you have already seen the innovation that I'm about to tell you about, in which case, I guess it's not such a big deal.  Anyway, they have just installed automated kiosks for concessions.  You walk up to a touch screen, select what you want, insert cash or swipe a credit card, pick up your receipt, and then head to the express pick up stand, where your order is waiting for you.  It was pretty awesome, and tons faster than the lines one usually waits in for concessions, while you are nervous that your movie has already started.  This is bound to mean more money for theatres, which means either they could lower prices (fat chance) or they may take better care of the theatre or they might just pocket it.  Anyway, good idea somebody.

Intolerable Cruelty.  It might surprise some of you that I waited so long to see this movie as it is a Cohen brother movie, and my favorite movie is Raising Arizona.  It might surprise others that I went to see it at all as it didn't exactly gather acclaim or box office dollars.  Well, I went tonight and the verdict is 6034 Conan O'Briens, which is equivalent to pretty darn good.  I liked the movie taken by itself quite a bit, and it definitely had the distinct flavor of a Cohen brother film, in spite of the marketing campaign that did not have that flavor.

Just a quick note to let you all know that we are safe and sound from the fires.  Don't let the name "Firestorm" give you the idea that fire is raining down from the sky.  "Ashstorm" might be more appropriate from that angle.  We have smelled the smoke, and the ash has fallen on us, and we saw some flames north of Los Feliz, but we aren't in harm's way.  Also, Jamie's parents' home is not in danger either, though Don's school at Camp Pendleton was closed at least part of this week.

Today's a big day here in the Coulter household.  Jamie got a new computer, a Sony Vaio W510G.  It's pretty awesome for what she'll be using it for.  It's got a widescreen, and the keyboard flips up to cover half the screen, at which point the display switches to a clock/CD player.  It's also got the capability of recording television and such, but as it's right next to our TV at the moment, and we've got TiVo, there's probably not much point in hooking that up just yet.  We also got a new phone.  It's 5.8 GHz.  I've found that I use my cell phone enough for business, that it's cheaper to start using our land line, but I didn't want to start using it until I got caller ID and a digital answering machine, which this phone has.  So, I'll be sending out a mass email some time soon with that phone number, in case you don't already have it.