Piso mojado.

Kairi turned 2 on thursday. She was in a grumpy mood for most of the day, but you could tell that she had fun. She was excited as hell to sit in her car and go around the living room. She barely leaves it still. When we get back home from doing whatever, she goes straight to the car. She'll eat in there. Play with toys in there. And manages to lay down in there too. That was probably part of the reason she was so grumpy while we were out- she was probably thinking about her car the whole time. She was fine when we went to a park, especially since we were the only ones there and she got the whole thing to herself. But when we took her out for dinner at Red Robin, she was fussy and cried when everyone sang her Happy Birthday. Poor Kai. Even at Toys R Us we were going to let her get any one toy that she wanted, but she kept saying no to everything. She settled on a big paint set, but wasn't that excited about it until we got back home. Kairi fell asleep for about 35 minutes or so in the car and when she woke up, she was in a super good mood at Borders. It's so cool how kids can do that. But she still has a lot of birthday cake left. When she came home from getting her birthday pictures done, Kairi just ate the sprinkles, one by one, off of the cake. She didn't eat any of the cake itself until later that night. She's so cute.

Something else I noticed is so obvious, but it's not the kind of thing you notice much. I was looking at this foam elephant on a wire that she got at the zoo earlier this week. It's just a simple purple and yellow elephant shaped piece of foam that's connected to a long wire with a handle, like a dog on a leash. This is such a basic concept, and Kairi loves it. How she plays with it is equal to how a giddy teenager is when they get the newest model of phone. It really is the little things that give [most] people the most in life, no matter what their age is.

I ended up getting some water behind the LCD screen of my camera last night, and spent an hour looking up tips online for how to fix the problem. The most common solution I found was putting the camera in a bag of rice, covering it up with said rice. The rice should absorb the water, though I don't get how it'll absorb water that's behind an LCD screen when the rice is on the outside of it, unless the screen's just that thin. The camera works fine and all, but having this big spot on it that's lighter than the rest of the screen is annoying. Luckily, pictures and video come out normally, so it's not a big deal. I was planning on getting a new camera within the next couple of months anyway. My friend James is always up for whatever I sell, so I can probably sell this one off to him and buy a new one, only paying half of it with my own money. It's nice that good digital cameras for casual users are getting cheaper. Today at Target I saw a newer Nikon model on sale for $90. 'had equal MP to my camera, 8.1, but was faster and less bulky.

In the off-chance that things are going ok enough for me to get a new bass in the next month or two, I can't decide between the two versions of the same bass. It's the Schecter Stiletto Studio-4 Bass. Unlike my last bass, which was the Schecter C-4 Custom, I've actually played this one prior to buying it, and this sucker is incredible. The only thing I didn't like about it at first is that it has a multi laminate neck instead of a natural finish. On most basses that have the multi laminate neck, my hand gets stuck because of the gloss or paint, and I can't play some faster tracks as a result. But this one I got to play on didn't give me any of those problems, and here I hadn't played in almost 2 years. The problem of buying comes in on the color decision. There's honey satin:





and see through black:



The honey satin, even if it might look boring in those pictures, is gorgeous in-person. But I don't like the gold hardware since it tends to chip away over time, or just plain discolor. The black doesn't have that problem, as you can see, but...I really don't like black when it comes to guitars and basses. They look so boring. The one pro to this is that stickers and stuff like that don't look as weird since black goes with everything. And even if it'd mean spending extra on the sweet honey satin number, I COULD buy black parts and replace the gold ones, but I really want to just be happy with everything right when I get it. 'suppose that might be asking for a bit too much though since the bass sounds incredible as it is. I know I said that even with playing all the instruments I have over the last 10 years, that I never really enjoyed doing it, for some reason I've been really back into music lately and analyzing the hell out of some tracks that I want to learn how to play. Like Hot Cake by Dragon Ash, it's so easy but now that I'm in the mood, I'm picking up on a few little bits that I never heard before now. And here I've had Viva La Revolution since god damn late 2000!

'played the bass at Guitar Center though, and it always makes me laugh to see people really into their own playing no matter how bad they are. There was this one kid playing a really nice bass- the kind that a professional would use, and he was playing generic metal tunes, very sloppily. It was kind of embarrassing. Kairi could do better than him. In fact, she did, on drums anyway. She loves bongos, conga drums, anything like that. Since she loves the whole King Louie scene from The Jungle Book, she finally got to play out the I Wanna Be Like You number on bongos. It was so cute seeing her all happy while smacking the hell out of those things.

Oh, as I'm eating concha, I just remembered. If you can't eat a whole lot in one sitting like me, don't even try to eat a muffin from My Favorite Muffin. I tried to eat a chocolate one the other day and I felt sick within 7 bites. These things are the size of standard muffins you can get at Winco, but holy crap, they weigh at least twice as much. My cousin Daniel made these chocolate chip pancakes a few weeks ago, and I tried one, and couldn't go beyond 8 bites, and those at least had something other than chocolate in them. Though to be fair, I think he just added a little bit of pancake mix to a bag of chocolate chips. I swear to god, one of those things could kill a village of diabetics. These muffins? They're capable of taking out entire countries, easy. No wonder I find so many bags from there with half-eaten muffins at work when I'm emptying conference room garbage. I totally understand now.

Before I'm done with my little break before doing my sit ups and push ups again, I just figured I'd share what I ordered in the last 2 days with leftover money from the Muggs I sold. These are two figures I've wanted for a while, shirtless Kit Fisto ('comes with his lightsaber of course):



and the best IG-88 made so far:



I have an idea of something to do with a few figures that'd make a good picture, and these two had to be involved.

'back to working out and praying that no one else bids on either the Wild Thing Aaron or the super sweet Olivia figure. With the money I got for Rain ($168!!), I'm going to use $60 of it for the Mrs.' eye exam, $40 for my contacts soon, and the rest towards Aaron or Olivia. Ok, Aaron most likely won't go for THAT much (I think the average for him is $30), but Olivia's tricky. I really wish I'd did the Buy It Now for her a few weeks ago for $15 when I had a chance. It was 2 days before I got paid though, and the guy needed the payment within 3 days. Bastards. Originally, I wanted to use the money towards the Master Replicas Animal photo puppet, but I'm going to put him on hold for a little longer, if ever. I know a few friends on Flickr have shown some just amazing shots of theirs, but others look pretty bad. Animal's unlike Kermit- he requires some fixing up in order to make him look better. And if I spend $150+ for a replica, made by a company called "Master Replicas", it shouldn't require any fixing up. Then again, the Muppets line isn't looking good since there still isn't any new news on Fozzie, and I guess they only have another year left on the Muppet contract. All this time and we've only gotten 3. Wow.