I have to say that I had one of my best birthdays this past year. A lot of great new changes occured in 2009: I moved out to Hilo to start Pharmacy school and I'm in the best relationship I've ever been in :) I also got to share my birthday with my roommate Andy since our b-days are only a week apart. The picture at the left is at the very end of the night at Ken's pancake house. We're both plastered at this point, but you probably wouldn't even be able to tell without the cool paper hats the waitress gave to us with our birthday pancakes. All in all a great way to end 2009.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

One thing I like about the holidays is the extra time you get to catch up on things. Now one of the things that I like to do when I'm bored on the internet is browse through food blogs and recipe sites. As you can imagine, I come across a lot of different recipes that I wanna try, but getting the time to do them is a lot harder than you think it is. This pumpkin cheesecake that I made for Thanksgiving just happens to be one of them. I've been meaning to make this one for a while, so I figured what better time than the biggest feast of the year.

The funny thing about this cheesecake is that I've never made it before and I kinda tinkered with the recipe, which I usually only do on the second go. And since it is a cake that's to be served at Thanksgiving lunch (my family has always done a lunch, then we have more leftovers for dinner) I couldn't cut into to get a taste, so my first try will be along with everyone else's. As long as it tastes half as good as it looks, I think I'll be ok though.

Christmas Creep

So i usually have very strong feelings against Christmas creep. And in case you're unfamiliar with the term, Christmas Creep is used to describe any situation in which Christmas is celebrated prematurely, namely before other holidays, and includes acts such as putting up a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving, stores displaying Christmas related decorations, and the sale of Christmas related items. But since I am going back to Oahu for Christmas break, I figured that it would be ok for me to break my own rule. I wanted to celebrate Christmas with my new friends from pharmacy school and since we're all leaving on about December 17th, I decided that it would make sense to start a little earlier so that we would have to time to enjoy everything.

We also decided to do secret santa this year. I can't quite say who I've gotten cause it would ruin the whole point of secret santa, but I can say that I am happy with who I got since the person is pretty easy to please. Here are some pictures of what we've done so far:



So there's the Christmas tree. Almost finished. And we each did our own stocking. Justin's is still a work in progress (hopefully!).




And I thought it would be funny to put our pictures in ornaments so I got some pictures from everyone's facebook page. And I figured that since I put some funny ones of other people, mine had to be the worst so here's mine (bottom right):

:)

This time I mean it

I'm gonna start blogging again, even if I really don't feel like it that day. Well at the very least I'm gonna try and post anything that I think is interesting whether it be on the internet or something going on in my life.

Quick updates: I'm currently living in Hilo, attending pharmacy school. I have to say that I've really been enjoying living on the Big Island. There's a great farmer's market twice a week, no traffic to deal with, and everything within a 15 minute drive. I have been cooking more that I used to, but I still find that I'm eating out a lot more often than I'd like. I've made a lot of great new friends in Hilo whom I've been able to study, chill, and party with. That's about it for now.

I'm in

So I just got word back from the UH Hilo College of Pharmacy and I have been accepted into the school. WOOOHOOOO. I'll be starting this Fall '09 which means that I can officially start my life after Spring '13, but I'll still be under 30 so I'm ok with that.

Wish me luck

So I finally got my apps all finished for pharmacy school. I only applied to two schools, University of Washington and UH Hilo. I just heard back from Hilo and I have been invited for an interview for the school. I was actually pretty surprised at how fast they got back to me. PharmCAS sent out my application last Monday and Hilo reviewed the application and got back to me by Friday. Honestly, Hilo is my first choice for a number of reasons, so I'm pretty excited about the interview. My interview is either going to be Jan 20, 21, or 22 so I'll be in Hilo around that time. I know that they offer interviews on Oahu, but I figured that I could go and check out the area once more and visit my family in Hilo. I'm just relieved that the application process is pretty much over and that it's now out of my hands. Hopefully I'll have more good news in about a month.

I hate being ripped off

So I was checking across my usual blogs that I read everyday, Lifehacker and Consumerist, and they had this interesting article. Now it has been a while since they posted a story about that company, but it reminded me about why I will never, ever, ever buy anything from them. Just reading about it just gets me so frustrated, so writing about them is kind of helping me to vent out. I just really don't understand how this is even able to proceed to court. Obviously something is wrong with the justice system and copyright infringement laws. I mean who the hell in their right mind cannot REASONABLY differentiate between AV cables and mini-golf.

One thing that did put a smile on my face was this article. I'm glad that someone was able to stand up to that ridiculous company. It is just absurd in my mind how it works. And their products are ridiculously marked up, upwards of 1000% sometimes. So please please please do not purchase anything made by them. There really is no reason, unless you got it for free somehow, in which case I would just not use it. And if you really need cables, I would say purchase them from monoprice, an amazing site that sells pretty much any kind of cable that you need, and more. Plus shipping to Hawaii is actually pretty decently priced.

Made it on the site

So as you may know, I enjoy cooking and baking from time to time. I recently saw this and got inspired to try it out myself. I give all credit for this idea to the guy from the other site, but he was missing the ghosts after pac-man devours a power pellet. I am also a member for allrecipes which is a great site to get recipes. I have the link in my sites that I frequently visit pane to the right and you should check it out when you have the chance. Well at the site, you can submit pictures of recipes that you have tried so I submitted the following picture and it got voted as a favorite to be shown on the main page for tomorrow (today). I have to say that I'm pretty proud of that since it's a pretty well known site.

Another thing is that the cookies didn't taste that bad either. I'm not a huge fan of sugar cookies, but these were alright...I'm sure the icing had a lot to do with it. I'm trying to come up with other video game ideas, maybe iconic powerups from other classic games.

True geek

Here's a super awesome video that any true geek could enjoy.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Halloween Night

So here are some pictures from Halloween night. We first started off in downtown at the Hallowbaloo block party and I gotta say that it was probably the best part of the night. It was a good crowd, we could drink on the street, ran into a few friends, and I got to be on the news (K5 news at 9). There was free entertainment and I really didn't have to do much walking around, which was really really great since I had to walk a little weird. I really hope that they have this block party again next year because I'll definitely go.

Wonderwoman, lego man, and cavegirl. Watch out Justice League.

They put my drinking wristband on the lego hand. Classic.

Once we left there, we headed down to Waikiki. As usual, there was a lot of traffic, and even more people. We headed down to a friends party near Kings village, and I swear to god it took us about an hour and a half to get there. I got stopped a lot for pictures and I really couldn't walk that fast. I really have to give props to my friends that I was with for dealing with that all night. I'm sure that it got really old. We hung out there for a while and then took our drunk friends away and headed back to the strip. We finished walking to the other end of the strip then called it a night. I was kinda relieved to get the costume off and walk normal for once in the night. My legs were sore for the next three days and I had a bad rope burn on my neck since it was holding up my legs. The things you do for Halloween. Oh well...it's still my favorite holiday and I can't wait for next year. I've already got my costume planned as well.