- So I guess Arnold Schwarzenegger is officially running for governor in California. Man... whoever is running against him better win, or else I will definitely have lost all faith in our system of democracy. You wouldn't even need a campaign team to come up with ads against him, just run clips of "Jingle All The Way" and see if people still want him to run their state.

- I think I should take a moment to pay tribute to a severely underrated asset to all of our lives: the Sun. Sure, we all like the Sun a lot already. Everyone enjoys it when it's "nice and sunny" outside, many of us desire to "get more sun" whenever we can, and it's almost never used in negative context. But too often we think of our Sun only in terms of its role in weather, while forgetting its much more signifcant role as the source of all our energy.

Other than some scattered obscure undersea ecosystems that rely on the heat of the earth's core, everything that has ever lived on this planet depends in some form or another on the energy of the Sun. It's easy for us humans, being at the top of the food chain, to lose track of this fact. But everything we eat, whether we are vegetarian or carnivorous, contains energy that was somehow harnessed originally from sunlight. That steak you eat comes from a cow, which ate grass, which was able to grow because of the Sun. The exact protein chains that end up in your body may chemically change along the way, but every last calorie you burn can be somehow traced back to the process of photosynthesis, which gets 100% of its stored energy from the Sun.

Not only this, but when you drive a car, it is running on gasoline that has been processed from fossil fuels. What are fossil fuels? None other than decomposed organic material. Though heavily compressed over time to become liquid form, all of the energy in this organic material once belonged to a prehistoric plant or animal that inevitably derived its energy from sunlight.

So as you can see, the Sun is much more than a mere glowing object in the sky that provides us opportunity to tan or gives us warm weather. It is no less than the very key to our survival. Bless the Sun and its all-sustaining light. Showering us generously day after day with its glorious photons. And even when the Sun sets, it provides us ample light throughout the nighttime hours by reflecting itself off the moon. Seriously, what a trooper. What else can I say? I'm in awe.

- A few days ago I went with Cindy to one of those Japanese restaurants where they cook the stuff in front of you (teppan?). Across the table were these two ladies that were probably in their 50's or so, and one of them asked me how old I was, so I said 23. To which she replied, "I've got shoes that are older than you". All righty then...