I am hanging out at Radley Acura dealer using complimentary wireless Internet, blogging and listening to jazz-instrumental ballads I have selected for the wedding. Art Pepper’s “História De Un Amor” is now playing. Thanks to TTBlue for this stunningly beautiful track. I wonder if Radley has complimentary car wash like Heart Acura in Wappingers Falls, New York. I hope it does because it charges forty bucks plus tax for an oil change. I might have to change own oil next time for this high price.

Last night, three of us finished two fat-ass fish for dinner. Overstuffed and a bit buzzed is not a good combination. Once again, I ate more than I could take. I was enjoying it too much. Grilled fish rolled up with lettuce, herbs, cucumber, apple and dipped into mam nem. With a bottle of Korean raspberry wine to wash down the saltiness of mam nem and jazz ballads to mix up the mood, life can’t get any better than this.

The weather is so nice today, I can’t wait to get home and do some jogging. From eating right to running up and down the six-story building at work to jogging a mile at home everyday, I dropped 10 pounds in three weeks. This is a good sign.

Update: Not a good sign. Radley’s recommendation on my car, including motor mounts, alignment and power-steering fluid, runs up to a grant. What the fuck?

Pimp C actually had something nice to say:

If you a bitch and wanna switch it ain’t to late to change
It’s all about how you carry yourself and how you handle thangs
So say that hoes and pimps is born I don’t believe that shit
Cuz anytime you wanna stop it ain’t to late to quit
Just cuz you sold your body don’t mean you a hoe for life
I got to speak it right for all the ones that paid the price
If you in it to win it go ahead and live the life
But baby if you aint in it you could still do it right

Still rocking the Underground Kingz on my MP3 player.

As I was eating lunch, I couldn’t help but thinking and thanking my ladylove who packed my lunchbox with organic veggies, pineapple, tangerine, lean chicken and her very own savory, fat-free dressing. Let’s not forget a banana and a yogurt for snack. Don’t you love a woman who feeds you good?

After the fantastic lunch, I headed over to the music department for some jazz’s jam session. They covered the blues today. A cool-dressing, hip-looking, African-American singer and professor came up and rocked the mic. She covered a fast-tempo bebop blues and her technical skill was exceptional. Her voice was not outstanding (could be the cheap amplify), but her scat and interaction with the group made up for it. Highlight of the session was “West Coast Blues.” The students brought down the house.

It is now three thirty and the office is dead quiet. Let me shut the door and crank up some of that Jay-Z shit.

Another great jam session at GW. Another great chicken salad at lunch.

I am putting together a jazz-ballad compilation to be played during intermissions. The Magic Night band and Thu Hoai will be performing at our wedding reception, which will be held on Sunday, May 25, 2008. I also am keeping my hope up for a special appearance. Even if that very special guest can’t make it, I won’t be disappointed. The circumstance is understandable. I have nothing but love for you.

We’ll also hand out a Vietnamese CD to our guests at the wedding. The album featured a simple design, seven ballad tracks and our love notes reflecting on the memories we have shared.

Washington Post‘s “New High In U.S. Prison Numbers,” N.C. Aizenman reports:

About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction. And the report also documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they devote larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased 127 percent; spending on higher education rose 21 percent.

Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige on “You’re Welcome“
Jay-Z and Rick Ross on “Maybach Music“

An interesting conclusion from Karrie Jacobs:

If Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House fails, it will not be because her logo looks like a thousand other flag-wrapped identities, or because her typeface bears a strong resemblance to Kerry’s wimpy serif font. No, it will be because she couldn’t quite whittle down her message into a single forceful idea. Obama’s sunrise speaks eloquently of “change.” McCain’s star and bar shout warrior. By contrast, Clinton’s stars and stripes are not that different from Mike Huckabee’s stars and stripes. Maybe they’re intended to speak of her “experience” but they also send an unwanted message: “more of the same.”

An excellent piece from David Wolman on Autistic:

By the mid-1990s, [Laurent] Mottron was a faculty member at the University of Montreal, where he began publishing papers on “atypicalities of perception” in autistic subjects. When performing certain mental tasks — especially when tapping visual, spatial, and auditory functions — autistics have shown superior performance compared with neurotypicals. Call it the upside of autism. Dozens of studies — Mottron’s and others — have demonstrated that people with autism spectrum disorder have a number of strengths: a higher prevalence of perfect pitch, enhanced ability with 3-D drawing and pattern recognition, more accurate graphic recall, and various superior memory skills.

Chris Anderson’s “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business“:

The rise of “freeconomics” is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore’s law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.