(for your enjoyment and my later reference)

Recent Newsworthy Stuff:
    *Got my massive poof sheared by my sister Annie. My head is incredibly tiny now.
    *The entire Tran Family is home! Along with Kathy’s fianc?, one rockin’ Caleb. The household is happily bustling.
    *Mike’s headed to CSU Long Beach in a few weeks, and hopefully I’ll be seeing him there Fall 2004.
    *I’m the only single Tran right now. Heh.

Currently reading:
    *A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers) - excellent. His style is everything.
    *Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) - not bad.
    *The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac) - excellent, kinda like On The Road but cheerier.
    *The Town & The City (Jack Kerouac) - meh. Kinda interesting, but this one’s probably going back on the shelf soon.

Recently (re)read:
    *Lullaby (Chuck Palahniuk) - takes a second read to gather all the details, not his best (that’d be Fight Club) but still quite good.
    *The Client (John Grisham) - pretty much any Grisham book I can read a thousand times over. Great book, but not as fantastic as The Rainmaker.
    *The Dark Elf Trilogy (R.A. Salvatore) - I’m usually somewhat fantasy-wary but I love Salvatore’s simple but rich way of action-storytelling.

Recent Movies Seen:
    *Return of the King - Fantastic. Duh. Except, the ending drags on like when a gorgeous girl is telling you about their boyfriend.
    *The Last Samurai - Great. Much better than I expected. Thank god Tom Cruise is not the last samurai.
    *The Breakfast Club - Between good and great. Eye-opening yet laugh-provoking. Does Anthony Michael Hall ever get the girl?

Bands (Albums) of the moment:
    *Early November (Room’s Too Cold) - Emo that’s good for a change.
    *Beatles (All of ‘em) - The Beatles. Enough said.
    *The Rapture (Echoes) - Dancepunk!
    *Story of the Year (Page Avenue) - finer pop punk
    *Thrice (Artist in the Ambulance) - just incredibly written music
    *Saosin (Translating the Name) - SCREAM! This is the music that crazy goes crazy to.
    *Brand New (Deja Entendu) - Also finer pop punk/emo.
    *Jimmy Eat World (Static Prevails) - The nice thing about Jimmy is that one of their albums always fits my mood at the time. Static Prevails = forget the world and rock out, Clarity = melancholy and searching for inspiration, Bleed American = whatever’s inbetween.

Other stuff:
    *Chicken in a Biscuit is bad for your soul.
    *Rizza the Whizza-Fizza C. (not her real name) and I recently (tonight, actually) went to Starbucks and talked about stuff for an hour. It was fun, like rock-climbing, except without a safety harness to restrict blood flow to your groin. She’s good people, we should hang out more.
    *With my new tiny hair, now when I put on my nice brown beanie, it looks like canteloupe feces.
    *Life is pretty good right now.