As I continued to read equipment reviews, I ran across this very interesting article (and also this one).  It should be a good site to revisit now and then to keep my wallet in check

Hachitarou is a relatively new all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant, located at the NE
corner of Hwy 7 and McCowan.  After seeing it being featured on a Chinese TV show, my family decided to go there last Sunday night for dinner.  We made a reservation for 6:30pm for 6 people.  When we arrived the restaurant was already packed, and we were offered a table that normally seats 4.  Honestly even for 4 people the table was darn small.  We were basically distributing the food as soon as they came so the waiter could take the empty dishes away ASAP.

None of the food is worth mentioning, which is not the worst part, as most all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurants are not that great anyway.  The service was extremely poor, as one can guess from them trying to cram so many people into the restaurant  At one point I had hot water (from condensed steam) drip onto my shirt as the food was being delivered.  The washroom was rundown even for a normal restaurant, let alone a new one.  As hand wash soap you’re given detergent - that’s definitely a new one.

All in all it was probably the worst dining experience I had in a long time - bad enough to make me take the time to blog about it.  But if I can just save some of you from making the same mistake, then maybe it wasn’t a completely worthless experience

Step 2 - gutter ball, gutter ball

Step 3 - spare, strike, spare, strike, spare, strike

As any of my team members can attest, I’m known for rolling at least one gutter ball on any given night.  But I don’t remember having rolled two of them in a roll in recent memory.  This is definitely one to remember.

Andy and Eugenia, for going the extra mile.  You were the first ones at the ceremony and at the banquet.  What you’ve done was way beyond what we expected of you, especially Andy, running around the whole day and night making sure that everything went smoothly.  And of course, delaying your vacation just for us.  Hope you’re enjoying Paris.

Josephine, for organizing the surprise video montage.  That was very
thoughtful of you.  Dom and Emily, for gathering the videos.  And Matthew
(my new brother-in-law), for putting it all together.

Maverick, whom I’d thanked at the banquet, but forgot to emphasize
that he’d worked 2 long nights prior, and was getting through the day
with Tylenols

Charles, not only for being my photographer, but also for putting together my slideshow with very short notice.

Vincci, for sharing your story of my storage rental business :)  And for being the biggest contributor to winning the Q&A contest for table 10.

Jeff, Annie, Sharon, and Jimmy, for taking care of decoration and sound at the banquet.  All your hard work is behind the scene, but it’s just as appreciated.

Emily and Monica for MC’ing for us, and thinking up all those questions.  I heard that there was supposedly another game that was planned but was skipped due to time constraints.  I wish we could’ve played it.

CC for bringing us the floral arrangement to the ceremony - not the easiest job with low vase full of water.

Thank you all for making our big day a success.

I didn’t play particularly well at the beginning, but a string of strikes gave me a first game score of 199.  Between two gutter balls, a 7-8 conversion,  a couple of pin 7 spares, and a streak of strikes (some ugly, some lucky), I ended up with a total score of 611!

If this continues I don’t think I’ll ever go back to World Bowl

If you look hard enough you can see a minor dent.  But hey, for $4.99 + tax I can live with that

Well today, I got no one to blame.  Through pure inattention, I rammed my Miata against one side of my garage.  I’ve always bragged about the width of my garage.  So to do this, especially with a tiny car like mine, is embarrassing.  And of the four corners, I did this to the front driver side, arguably the easiest corner to judge.  Arrggghhh… I am pissed!

Sometime between 1998 and 2000 - my very first stone chip on my very first car (MX-3).  I tried to fix it with some DIY kit that did not help a bit.  Luckily the chip did not spread before I traded the car in.

2002 - two years after getting my new MX-5, I got a stone chip that was repairable.

2004 - two years later, I got hit by a fist-size rock falling from the top of a truck
traveling on a different lane ahead of me on the highway.  Needless to say, that wasn’t repairable.

2006 - another two years later, I heard a pop while traveling on the highway, but did not notice any chip on my windshield.  Turned out that the chip was hidden behind the rear view mirror.  By the time it was noticeable, the crack has spread too much for it to be repairable.  I tried to live with the crack but had to eventually replace it in before I traded the car in.

2008 - two days ago, I heard a loud pop while going to work.  This time I actually got a double whammy - I don’t know how I could’ve gotten two chips when I only heard one pop.  I had them repaired today.

Looks like I’ll be due another hit in 2010

The cold and snowy weather continued to the following week, but apparently that wasn’t enough to stop a guy from riding his motorcycle!  I wish I’d taken a pic.  That week I was invited and then uninvited to the Eason Chan concert, which I heard was pretty good.  For V-day Chris and I decided to go out for dinner the day after to avoid the crowds.  That night she surprised me with a homemade steak and lobster dinner! Very impressive and delicious.  I had more seafood the following night at The Doctor’s House in Kleinburg.  We walked into a virtually empty restaurant and was seated right by the window with a beautiful view of the adjoining chapel.  I had tiger shrimps which came with Oreo-sized scallops!  Even in the cold and dark of night Kleinburg looked quite nice.  It’s only 20 minutes from my place so it’d definitely make a good destination for a bike ride there.  I can’t wait until the weather gets warmer.

This past weekend I accidentally took a chunk of my middle finger off with a putty knife.  Yes I screamed like a girl.  Yes I need a letter opener.  Luckily that was with my right hand.  Because days later, I used my other hand, with all fingers intact, to bowl a 223 at our weekly league.  I can’t quite remember if that was my personal high - it was either 218 or 238.

I hope it was just a coincidence that the lunar eclipse happened that night, cause I don’t want to wait for 2 years before breaking this high score.  I took my first attempt at photographing the moon and have noticed 2 interesting points. 1) It is a lot brighter than you think so you don’t need a good fast lens to photograph it, which is a good thing because 2) its movement is very noticeable when you’ve zoomed up close to it.