Where's my damn tablet!?

I unpacked and my tablet is somewhere in my house. The reason why I haven't put up my sketch yet! I'm sure I'll find it, and find out my dad put it somewhere that seemed reasonable at the time. It's not like we have a big house, but we have clutter. When I come back from India in March, I'm going to clean this place up!

So, on the side I've been catching up with my friends, getting a little drunk and the usual reminiscing of the past. Still more of that to do, not the getting drunk part that is. So if you want any gifts while I'm in India, post a comment, and I will try to accommodate.

I'm Home!

So I spent another day with my dad on Monday, and I think I had enough of hanging out with my dad. We went to Alcatraz Island, which is a National Park now, and I highly recommend it. Especially the audio tour.

I flew in on Tuesday, and just hung around the house, transferring all my Bleach fansubs from my laptop to my desktop. But now, I've already got to get ready to go to India on the 30th. In the meantime, I intend to do some catching up with people, including karate. I went to karate today, and I'm beat. Gotta work on getting rid of the fat along my sides :P

Tomorrow, I'm going to do some sketching, so be ready!

Probably should have introduced myself

Greeting and salutations. I'm Ryan. Arun and I met at UIC. We made a webcomic called Oddballs for a few months a few years ago. I just moved my website (landek.com) to GoDaddy and haven't gotten a chance to reupload Oddballs so...I can't link to it. I thought it had promise. But we were both to busy so it kinda faded away. I had some guest artists draw a few of my panels (including myself. stick figures! yikes.) but it was too hard.

ANYWAY, Arun invited me to post on his blog and so I have. Not sure if I supposed to fit a theme but that previous post was my latest "bit" that I've been mulling over in my head for a few days. There it is in the flesh. Yes I aspire to be a stand-up comedian. I've even graduated from the Second City writing program. But, alas, being a Network Administrator pays slightly more. Maybe someday.

Silly Yogurt People

Have you noticed the proliferation of yogurt-based products?

I’ve seen several ads for this product called Yo-J. Have you seen this? It’s like some sort of yogurt/orange juice hybrid?

Now I’m not one of those yippie-dippy smoothie drinking people but I can’t imagine ever having a desire to drink this product. Never in my life have I been eating yogurt and drinking orange juice and thought to my...actually, I’ve never eaten yogurt and drank OJ at the same time ever but…even if I had at some point, I can’t imagine saying, “Man. I’m really going to have to mix these together before I can continue.”

Or how about this one: Go-gurt. It’s yogurt in a squeezie tube for people who need their yogurt on the go. Seriously. How long does it take to eat a cup of yogurt? A yogurt cup is what? 2 spoonfuls….maybe 3 if you scrape the bottom and sides? Who doesn’t have time for this? I’d like to meet the person who has a job that prohibits them from spending that much time eating yogurt. Here. Watch how long it takes for me to eat a cup of yogert. Time me.

Ok. Go in the fridge here and grab my yogurt.

Over to the spoon drawer to get my spoon.

Alright. Lets open the top here……man these are hard to open……ok. There.

Scoop 1. Mmmmm…..

Scoop 2. That’s good. Man I wish I had some OJ.

*scrape* *scrape* Scoop 3….

Done!

How long was that? 30 seconds? I don’t get it.

Day with Dad 2...

Wow... what a long day. I got up at 7am so that my dad and I would have enough time to get ready and pick up my friends from work. I think he was still confused with the time zone difference and was still groggy, which surprised me because Chicago is 2 hours ahead.

My father, two friends and I left for Monterey Aquarium in Monterey, CA. It took about an hour and a half to get there, plus we parked a little walk away from the aquarium. It was nice, and a good change of scenery for my dad. While Santa Clara & San Jose county is nice, it's still a giant suburb like Naperville, IL. Monterey is by the coast. We got there in time to see live penguin feeding, and then we went to the other side of the aquarium and saw the live fish feeding. If you've never seen tuna in real life, let me tell you... they can get FREAKIN' HUGE! There were tuna in there that were purportedly more than 400 lbs! Can you imagine how many cans that tuna would be turned into! It's amazing. What's also amazing is the Sunfish. This weird, slow as fish that in the wild eat slow ass jellyfish. Speaking of jellyfish, there were many tanks of them and the lighting was such that they expected people to be taking pictures to be the new desktop wallpaper of the month.

After the aquarium we searched around for a sports bar, but we eventually just got too hungry and went into a restaurant by the shore. Fortunately there was a t.v. in there, and we started to watch the Bears' play the NFC championship. And they kicked ass. Sorry New Orleans.

Following the feast, we took our time getting to Santa Cruz, and the nice beach they have. There was also a great sunset. Eventually we started to head home, and made a stop by to visit a family friend that was moving out to Texas. Now, I'm home and I'm exhausted. It's time to go to sleep... today Monterey... tomorrow San Francisco. I'm actually not looking forward to it. I don't know why, I'm just not.

Great, my dad is snoring.

Time with dad... day one

I picked up my dad from the airport today. He was pretty surprised by the nice weather here, which didn't surprise me. We spent some time hanging out and I took him to a nearby sushi place. It was his first time and it was entertaining watching him try to eat sushi with chopsticks. These were really good, easy to use chopsticks too, as far as I know.

Afterwards we went to downtown San Josa, via the VTA. I figured it would be a nice way for him to see some more of the area while riding on the train. So after we got there we basically took our time walking around because downtown San Jose is teeny. When I looked at the city map and saw blocks, I always confused myself in thinking they were Chicago sized blocks, but they are not even close. That or maybe it was because I wasn't wearing ankle weights all day long, so it didn't feel long. Yeah I've been wearing 5 lbs. on each leg. I even played some basketball with them on, for about 30 minutes.

At the end of the day, my dad and I went to the Improv. We had some good food for dinner, including a generously portioned Improv nachos, and ended by watching three comedians from the "Young Comedians" tour. The tour is lead by a Mike Young, and they were all pretty funny. I grabbed Mike Young's comedy CD at the end of the night. The great thing about the night, aside from being seated up front by the stage, was that my father was laughing more than I was.

End of days...

So it's my last few days out here in San Jose. My dad's coming to visit, which is good because he's never left the Chicago area for about 10 years now. He really needs a vacation. I'll be taking pictures and posting them up. He's over 50, so if we're at home and he's taking a nap, I'll just do some doodling.

More to come.

To art...

Ok, so I used to do some blogging and I gave up mainly cause I don't think people were actually reading it. Much to my surprise, some people were. However, that blog is discontinued because the premise was that I was located in San Jose, CA, but now I am headed back home. That being said, it's time to start a new blog.

Since I happen to have a nice Wacom tablet, which I hope to upgrade with a tablet PC or a Wacom Cintique monitor, I will start posting my doodles. I used to do a lot of drawing, and some of it is visible here.

More to come... end transmission.