Life is too short for traffic.
--Dan Bellack

Amen, brother. Amen. Shout it from the rooftops!

Work is back to normal; me pretending to work and them pretending to pay me. Seriously, though, now that billing and payroll is taken care of for the month, things have slowed down and we can kind of relax. I have another signing scheduled for today which puts my total up from the past couple of months...it's a sign the home market is improving and a certainty my wallet is improving with it.

After work, I headed back to the gym. My goal had been to get back into the shape I was in November when I was at my peak and I think I'm almost already there in only two weeks. All that crap about muscle memory is apparently true, thankfully. I want to get my body in peak condition, partly for basketball, but mostly because my big trip is coming up in under 2 months already. Yeah, yeah, tough life I live when I get to go on huge vacations twice a year. Still, I'm going into the actual third world and I do NOT want to end up dying over there due to some obscure disease that only affects red heads or something. The best way I can fight that is be in good physical condition so my body is ready to fight off all the weird new bacteria I'll be encountering in their food. Of course, Pepto is gonna come in handy, too. I ran into a couple of people at the gym, which was rather strange. I'm not very social when it comes to working out; I don't wanna know about your kids or how work was, I'm just here to exercise. Still, these were people I know outside of the gym so it was kind of strange that they would all be there at the same time. I thought people didn't start working out until March for the summer?

On my way back home, Chow left me a message to let me know that Fire Prince's family restaurant Red Tomato was officially open and to go try it out. He ended up heading over there with his family, so I met up with Jimmy and Andy instead. I have to admit, the food was actually really good. It's the home made specials of Fire Prince's mom, so I'm quite impressed. I wish my mom's food was half as good growing up. Instead, I get to have nightmares about being fed meatloaf that the dog wouldn't touch. I was really impressed with the sausage that was their specialty; I suppose it should be good since FP was stuck making it for the past 3 weekends. Poor guy; he had to take work off to help out his family in a business he wants no part of, yet, for some reason, he's the only one who could operate their cash register. That can't be good. Hopefully, they'll get it sorted out eventually. I wouldn't mind going back there.

To be honest, Jimmy and I finished eating before Andy even showed up, which is usual. That guy is going to be late to his own funeral, not that I wouldn't mind doing that as well. Still, he has to commute all the way to and from Westlake Village everyday, so I can't blame him for being late. He just broke up with his girl, so he's been basically up to do anything. It's rather funny; every email suggesting an activity is jumped upon by him now. "I'm in!" "Yeah, sounds good!" I don't blame him; you need to get back out on the market. Still, I can blame him for his poor taste in movies. If I have to hear about how good Underworld was again I'm gonna sock him in the face.

Afterwards, Jimmy didn't really want to go home, as usual, so he came over and we checked out one of my new anime shows called Samurai 7. It's on t.v. right now in Japan, so it's literally fresh off the oven, so to speak. They spent an enormous amount of money on the animation itself and it looks incredible, but they still managed to cut corners by having a recap every episode that seems to be as long as the new episode itself. It's utterly ridiculous, with samurais cutting giant space ships in half and shit like that, so it's quite a spectacle. The character designs were done by most likely the cracked out fiend that did the Fifth Element, so just watching what the characters are wearing is entertaining all on it's own. It's actually supposed to be a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, which I can vaguely see so far, but I don't think it's going to try and follow it too much. I mean, there weren't too many flying robots in Kurosawa's version. It's no Samurai Champloo, but it's pretty damn cool so far. I'll be sure to check out the rest.