Freezing my balls off

Overall, Cali's weather has been pretty moderate for us. It hasn't been that bad at all. Slightly cool in the mornings and nights, while somewhat warm during the days.

But TODAY, I drove us up atop this hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge from Sacramento side and I swear my nuts wanted to crawl back into a warmer space. It was THAT cold.

I had quite a big accomplishment today *pat myself on the back*...I drove just the 2 of us all the way around San Fran and back in one piece. Hey that's quite a big deal for someone who's spent his entire life on an island let me tell ya. Here I was dodging crazy highway drivers and giant semi trucks just like the best of them.

Spent the morning dodging drug pot dealers in Haight-Ashbury, got a bit lost in the giant Golden Gate Park, and finally managed our way across and back from the GG bridge. I must say SF's road signs are fairly good except for one or two spots in and around the entrance into the city that are turned around.

Going good so far.... managing to stay out of trouble. I'll report back later.....

Lunch Break

Sometimes it's good to remind myself why it's good to live in Hawaii. It's easy to forget sometimes if I coup myself up in a house all day doing work.

Today I grabbed some lunch after a meeting with my buddy Kevin and we drove out to Diamond Head to watch the Kitesurfers under some shaded trees. I think we both needed the recharge as he's always indoors doing programming as well. I think he's been more stressed then me lately.

Anyway, about an hour sitting out there, taking some pictures, looking out at the ocean. AAAAAH. That's what we're here for! More pictures in my gallery....

Trip Schedule

I'll be out of town between Sept 24th - October 1st to San Francisco. Any of my existing clients will be notified for any shifts in schedule but I don't think it will affect anything too much. I'll have my laptop and cellphone with me in case of any emergencies, but I'm not sure there will be internet connectivity where I'm staying.

Hopefully I'll come back from SF with a lot of cool design inspiration!

Funkitudinessness

So I've been a little futless again these past couple weeks over work.

Once again I can't place it. It's not actually "slow" but, but I'm not producing at a pace that I want. I have a couple of web projects that are sitting in limbo waiting on my clients. It's cool that they've paid me portions of the project, and they're entitled to take it at a pace they want, but eventually frustrations at having things left open on my plate are getting to me. It's nice psychologically to get things DONE so I can feel like I can concentrate on marketing for more projects and I can celebrate the progression. Lately I haven't been able to do either.

Parts of my feeling could be me. I notice it's perfectly natural for other people to say "Business is a bit slow right now." I can't accept that yet. When it's not running full steam with a million things for me to do on a given day my mind wanders and I find I do things less efficiently. I don't think I'm a workaholic...I would much rather sit on a beach taking a nap then working, but there's security to be found knowing there's always something ahead of me to do is comforting albeit stressful.

That's the part about being self-employed that I find to be an interesting effect. I'm sure it treats people differently...but if you have my character type, you're always going to have that nagging voice in the back of your mind "How's business doing?" "What do you have lined up?" "Where are you going to pay for XXXX?" It's annoying...it's like I have my own boss that I can't shut up. Am I becoming schizo?

I have proposals out there... a few of them are fence sitting right now. Feedback on these proposal seem positive, but they aren't saying yes or no. Once again it's limbo.

So I've been in a little bit of a funkitude. I'm sure I'll eventually get over it. Kind of like exercising there are periods every now and again that are bad periods....I just work through it patiently and eventually it picks up again and I progress forward. Gotta just keep kicking myself in the ass. I need to print my "NO FUCKING AROUND" signs bigger in my apartment.

Visas

OK, to anyone looking to legally get a loved one over to the U.S. for marriage. Look out....it's not the world's easiest thing.

My fiancee and I are JUST starting the process this month....all this after a few months of reading law sites, researching the US Immigration Service website, and finally gathering everything that we need together.

First, I have to prove that I'm a U.S. citizen. So I have to copy my passports. "front to back". So I'm like killing a million trees copying every page of not ONE passport, but two of them going back at least 5 years. In my older passport I still had a picture of when I still had my long hair and mustache...so I looked like a chinese triad or something. That's not good.

I had to submit a copy of my Certificate of Citizenship...while it clearly says on the certificate itself that it's illegal to make a copy of that document. Errrrrrrrrrr..... so will I be arrested for making a copy of my legal certificate to send to them by their request? I'll be sitting in jail with my celly. He'll ask me, "I killed a guy...what are you in for?".

"Oh I made a copy of my certificate"

Next we have to prove that we've met each other within the past 2 years. I guess they're trying to sort out the fake marriages from the real ones. So now my fiancee and I are printing out our trip photos, our personal hallmark cards, our wedding receipts, ring receipts, etc etc. Heck, we must have like thousands of emails and telephone records shared between us. I think the immigration officer's eyeballs is going to pop out of his sockets looking at this corny stuff.

And then there are the application forms themselves. Not only do they have to be filled out in duplicate...I hear the immigration office picks these things apart with a fine tooth comb. So we're both making sure we fill out everything as directed....cross-checking dates, looking up records of where we've been or worked at over the last 5 years.

Why did the Spaceballs scene pop into my head? "We aint found shit..."

And finally, we have NO idea when they'll process this stuff. As far as we know, they have about a 5 month backlog at this time. So we won't even know this stuff is even all complete until 5 months from now.

Sick isn't it? I have this huge stack of stuff to send out this month. It's no wonder they're so backlogged requiring people to look through all this mess. I should invite the poor guy at the immigration office to our wedding.....this person's going to know a LOT more about us after reading through all that.

Doing business

You know, I'm getting to learn some things from watching some of these reality shows like "Miami Ink" and "Ace of Cakes". Who da thunk?

The thing about these shows is that it's an interesting snapshot of how other people choose to run their business. Sure it's all editted for tv entertainment, you don't get to see the boring stuff these business owners do like accounting and legal paperwork, but you still get an idea of their general work ethic and culture.

Ultimately I like how these guys make a point to do things their way, in a way that's how they set themselves apart from others. It's not necessarily true that they create the world's best tattoos or bake the coolest cakes (although a tattoo shop with cakes might make a cool business), but they show passion for thier work, they take time to have fun....

So I've been practicing some of that lately. I notice where I sometimes trip myself up in my business is by acting TOO formal and business-like. I'm still in my "downtown" work ethic, where everything happens to a standard....aloha shirts (ok this is Hawaii), formal proposals, lunch meetings, etc.

I've been doing all of this...dressing up nice, doing all this spit and polish contract and proposal work, etc., but when I look across all my regular clients, the ones I have the most fun and connection with are those that are the most informal. Some of these clients knew me from when I walked around with blue hair and ripped jeans and they tell me "When are you going to do that again....where's the Raph we knew?" They tell me they originally came to me because I wasn't like the rest....I was a "free spirit" one of my clients said.

And you know what? I think they're on to something. I could work my ass off all day to make a thousand websites that dissapear within a few months, but what makes a lasting impression is me and how I conduct my business either just like everyone else....OR, doing it my way.

I like it. The realization of this suits me. It feels so natural. From now on my proposals will be looser and friendlier, my email responses will be lighter and maybe a lot more relaxed and fun. Screw this downtown mentality. It's time to do it my way. *cue the Aretha Franklin song* R-E-S-P-E-C-T

If I suddenly turn up in my wedding with blue hair will my fiancee disown me?

It's all in the details...

OK, so I concede it's my fault by falling for a girl half way across the world....now I have to help more in the wedding planning then most grooms do. I think my fiancee is definitely more detailed oriented then I am about everything, but so far all I have to do is listen to her guidance and ask the questions she wants me to ask. I feel like such dummy sometimes about all of this, it's definitely outside the realm of comfort.

So it looks like we got most of the big details covered...

We got the date confirmed and the chapel ceremony booked. The deposit has been put down for a cool little glass "church" out in the West side of the island in KoOlina. Nice little place that primarily does weddings for Japanese couples, but my fiancee and I loved the KoOlina side scenery so much we decided that was a nice enough place to have it. The coordinator there is pretty hard working, but really "local-style" funny...I don't mean it as an insult but I can't help but think of "Aunty Marialani" from Rap's Hawaii when I talk to her. "We go COOK da chicken...go COOK em" She just has this very warm and old school local style to her... I like it.

It's pretty nice that it's all a package so that we really don't have to hunt around for the minister or do any setup.

Our day is going to be July 6th at 6pm. Not a bad date to remember...7/6/7 @ 6. Not bad huh? Apparently 7/7/7 is a very popular day for weddings... our day was relatively wide open for most bookings.

We booked the reception at Roy's. It's a nice fusion asian fine dining restaurant practically across the road from the chapel. Seems to be no problem there. Menu seems to look delicious....and the prices are actually quite reasonable for food that I think is quite nice. We'll have a little private reception room upstairs and I think so far it will be very casual for our party...no karaoke, no slideshows, no fancy speeches. Just EATS!

We booked our hotel stay. I figure my fiancee and I may be rushing around that day. So staying out in Ihilani resort the night of our wedding may be easier for us. Not too bad...they had local Kama'aina rates for us bit it still came out to about $299 for the night. Not too bad...I've seen the rooms there at Ihilani and they were pretty nice. I'll keep my fingers crossed the room has a jacuzzi *wink*

I don't know about our guests....many of them will be our overseas relatives so we may have to book some kind of bus shuttle for everyone. I have a friend or two that said they just might stay overnight at Ihilani as well. I told them that's fine....just don't come knocking on our door that night, we'll be in the jacuzzi.

We got our cake. Well, at least we have the person who can make the cake for us. She's a friend of a friend. I don't think we plan anything super fancy here...just something yummy to top off the dinner at the end of that night.

Photographer is somewhat taken care of. The wedding chapel requires that we use their photographers. Which is fine with us...less to worry about. I guess beyond that I may ask an associate to help do extra photos for us around the chapel ceremony if we feel like it. I know in Hong Kong we may end up hiring a photographer for the dinner. But personally I don't think that one is as big a deal....but it's probably more important for my fiancee because it's her relatives at that one.

I think my fiancee's just about booked our reception up in Hong Kong for her relatives. That's the one that's going to be about twice as large as the one down here. I'm a little freaked out about that one, but I'll manage. So I think that's taken care of. That's the dinner that's kind of grown in scope since we first thought about doing this.

Now we still got....the dress......the flowers.......deciding what I have to wear.....

Why do I have a nagging suspicion that there's still a lot more things to plan?

Steep mountain climp

OK...so the wedding plans are getting bigger and more complex.

I'm told this is common and natural. I think what started as a "simple" wedding ceremony and dinner is suddenly growing on scope before my eyes. My fiancee is pretty sly about it too, she'd be talking about something else and then suddenly slip in some new detail about the wedding plans that I didn't know about before as if it was all there to begin with.

So not only am I looking at the fact I may be in an uncomfortable tuxedo for the day we have our dinner in Hong Kong, I'll be sweating in front of 120 strangers trying to eek out a few comprehensible phrases to them as they talk to me in Chinese. I'm going to have to do a tea ceremony for her parents. We're going to have a fancy photographer, etc etc.

And that's just ONE side!

Now here in Hawaii -- we do it all AGAIN! Again I may end up in another tux, work with another photographer, do another dinner. Now suddenly all the relatives we were planning on inviting have already said they are coming...and I haven't even sent out my invitations yet!! OK, it's a big honor for all my relatives to come in from other countries to attend our wedding...but the stress level just jumps up a few notches just thinking about it. I think my original vision was of us standing on a beach with just a handful of friends...now it's going to be HUGE!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Well.....It's all just going to be one day worth of memories one day right? I've just conceded myself to just enjoy the process and let it happen the way it will happen. As long as it's not going to be crazy on our budget.

Gym and workouts have been good at taking my mind off of all of this. No, there hasn't been anything crazy at the gym lately. All the regulars I used to see all the time have suddenly dissapeared lately. I don't see Bermuda, The Brow, or SantaClaus at the gym anymore. I don't know if I'm getting any bigger or more defined. I still feel the same to me. My only goal is to prevent myself from getting that gut we all start getting around our 30s.

My fiancee once squeezed my tummy and said "hmmm....potential to get fat one day" WHAT!? That's it I'm writing that down as future blackmail material she'll have to make up to me when I get my smoking six pack stomach while she gains the pounds. "Who got fat baby!!?"

I think friends get a kick out of that. The two of us are probably the skinniest couple you'll ever see. hehe.

Dear God

Damnit someone opened my letter!!

Nah, a friend of mine sent me a bunch of funny children's letters to God and I found one with my name on it. Hey, God doesn't need money or a chess set does he?

I'm seriously in a snappy mood this past few weeks, I really don't know why at this point. I haven't gone out to be actively pissy at people yet, but certainly the barrier between what my mind is thinking and what comes out of my mouth is a lot thinner lately. I really gotta watch it.

I was watching this series called "Lockdown" on National Geographic yesterday where a documentary crew goes into several maximum security prisons to document life in there. I'm serious some of these guys are in there for the smallest of mistakes. This one guy, straight out a prep high school team, gets into a road rage accident with someone...runs them off the road and ends up killing a passenger's unborn child. So now he's in there for negligent homicide. HOLY BEESWAX...now he's in the pit with all these crazy animals just because he couldn't control himself on the road. Talk about being scared straight man.... I'm going to drive with my windows up and wear one of those blinders they give horses so I only stare straight ahead from now on.

It's strange that our justice system would toss a young guy like that into a pit with other murderers and gangsters though. Sure he did something wrong, but how does this help him? He's really going to be "ruff" when he gets out of there in 7 years. Or as my buddy Big Daddy might put it...he may get his O-ring investigated a few times in there.

I'm still getting over the Croc Hunter man..... yeah yeah I know it's silly. The world has one less happy guy out there. All we got left are the assholes.

See? Thin barrier.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

The Croc Hunter died?! From a stingray?! What in the world was he wrestling with a stingray for.... this isn't the Stingray Hunter damnit!!

Oh man, that SUCKS. I liked the bloke. He had a zeal for life, a good sense of humor, and he was a pretty strong voice for nature conservancy. I'm genuinely sad about it. He practiced what he preached....that's a rare thing in any individual, not to mention after acheiving the minor celebrity status he had.

So I guess I have to cross the Australian Zoo off my list of places to go to then. CRAAAP. I mean, "CRIKEY!!"