The ultrasound today revealed that Baby Shih is a boy! But more importantly, everything indicates that he is healthy. Now we have to get used to referring to him as “him” rather than “it.” And now begins a hard part…names. At least there will be no Sue Shih.

I upgraded my photo gallery software from Gallery 1.5.1 to Gallery 2 and didn’t have a chance to fix up the theme to my liking until now. I found a neat user-contributed theme called splatbang. I really like the wide thumbnails and header images, but I haven’t quite figured out how to lay out the album pages to incorporate the photo titles yet. The theme expects there to be no titles so everything lines up in a clean 3×9 grid. Unfortunately all my titles throw things out of line. I’ll have to figure something out, but in the meantime, I’ve left the existing 8×5 grid in place.

I went to my first Golden State Warriors game this evening and had a “great time out,” as it were. The last time I went to an NBA game, I was still living in LA…much too long ago. The Warriors were on a gnarly losing streak until tonight, where they outlasted the Celtics in a game that didn’t feature much defense. How crazy was it? Well, Boston was leading 38-37 at the end of the first quarter. It was a very closely contested game every step of the way so it was quite entertaining to watch.

Two noteworthy items about The Arena in Oakland:
1. the mid-court big-screen and advertising LED marquee boards that encircle the arena are really, really, really bright
2. the seats are actually quite nice and comfortable, unlike HP Pavilion

Here are some photos from section 208:

On the plus side, the Warriors escaped with a win, taking it 111-109.

The last house we put in a bid on at the beginning of the month was in our neighborhood and it was a single family residence. It happened to have a detached cottage with just a bedroom and a full bath, nothing else. We figured we’ve been getting blown away on duplexes and the like, so we ought to try our hand at this one. They wanted $699,000 so given the supposed market correction coming, we tried $719,000.

My agent informed us that there were 9 offers and the sellers were countering 6 of them, us being one of the 6. They wanted $780,000, a 15 day close, and all contingencies removed. Gulp. Thanks but no thanks. We’re talking about a sub-1700 square foot 3 bed, 2 bath in a crappy school district!!! I guess someone wanted to pay a premium on the place since the inspections came up clean because I found out today that it went for $785,000. Good luck to whoever bought the place!

For some bizarre reason, my WordPress blog stopped functioning a few days ago. Judging from the “Where’s my damn site?” thread on the WordPress Support Forums, I’m not the only one.

Fortunately, WordPress 2 was released. Rather than putzing around to figure out where my damn site went, I just upgraded and everything seems to be working again…save for some of the WP plugins that aren’t compatible with this version yet. But that should sort itself out over time.

This week, we’re coming to you from Long Beach.

In preparation for an assault down I-5 tomorrow to Long Beach, I stopped by Costco to fill up the EP3. I was running pretty low, but the fuel light hadn’t come on yet. So I should have had at least 2 gallons left. When I pulled up to the pump, I was surprised to see Regular Unleaded selling for $2.039. It hasn’t been this low since who knows when. Fill ‘er up!

I wasn’t fooling around so I filled it up all the way to the cap, all the while eying the “please do not top off” sign. The receipt tells me that I crammed almost 12.5 gallons in. Honda specs show that I have a 13.2 gallon tank. I guess the fill tube has a lot of capacity!

I tried Blockbuster Online months ago when they were relatively new and didn’t like their delivery times, especially compared against the speed of Netflix deliveries. I hear that they’re better now that they’ve got everything ironed out. And then this shows up in my inbox yesterday:

A buck for a month? Hello, DVD? Sign me up!

She claims there were some growth spurts during the past week. Either that or the prime ribeye made a dent.

The main event of the evening was attending a performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo. The Canadian-based troupe brings yet another jaw-dropping performance of human feats and acrobatics, wrapped in visually stunning sets and imagery, to the road. The custom stage inside their mobile big-top is right down the middle, keeping everyone close to the action.

Just like when we saw their performance of Alegria the last time they were in town, the seats were rather cramped and uncomfortable. My butt was somewhere south of numb partway through the second act. At $85 a pop, you’d figure for a bit more comfort, but what can you do? Oh, the $18 parking charge courtesy of SBC Park and $3.75 water didn’t help matters much. On the plus side, we got seats 5 rows from the stage. Because the seats tier up from ground level and the stage is raised, sitting closer didn’t seem to have much advantage.

When I heard that the theme for the show was a dead clown’s funeral, I was wondering about the state of mind of the writers. “What are you doing tonight?” “Oh, we’re going to check out a show about a dead clown.” Morbid much? All that aside, the show was a fun time out. From the giant chandelier acrobatics, to the trampoline-esqe bouncing beds, to the high-flying human trapeze act, the degree of difficulty was definitely high. The comedic interludes were a bit too long and corny for my taste, but they’re a signature component of their shows.