themovies

a couple of weeks ago Jill and i took a little trip down to Chinatown in LA, hoping to find some things for our wedding, along with a few items of Chinese food we had missed since being back in the States. though we were largely unsuccessful in our stated aims, we did stumble across an unexpected treasure at the sweet Neo Happyland store:


Takumi (Jay Chou) in the 藤原とうふ店 (Fujiwara Tofu Shop) car, the Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno.

頭文字D, or Initial D, as it's known in English, is the first feature film of Jay Chou (周杰倫), or thejayfather. some of you may remember that Jay, "the king of Chinese hip-hop", served as the inspiration for the title of this very weblog.

though there may be a little too much vomiting (projectile even) in the film, Jill and i agreed that Jay acquitted himself well in the role of Takumi, the drift racing prodigy son of a local tofu man in Gunma Province, Japan. Tofuman was himself a great racer back in the day, and Takumi learns the skills of drifting almost without being aware of it, while making early morning tofu deliveries around Mt Akina in the AE86. based on a series of anime cartoons of the same name, the movie came out just as we were leaving Taiwan, so we missed it there and were glad to see it now; we were also happy to see it with subtitles and to see that Jay was considerably better at acting than he had been in some of his music videos.

on the flip-side, however, the movie Jill gave me for Valentine's Day was just as bad on DVD as it had been in the theatre.


Transporter 2: Transport More

i really enjoyed the first Transporter movie, but somehow this one wasn't up to scratch, being, inter alia, even less plausible than the original. still, it was good of Jill to sacrifice like that--she even offered to watch it with me--and now my DVD library is two movies stronger. well, bigger anyway.

theChristmas

a few pictures from the Christmas holiday (or vacation, if you will) were too good for me to pass up on posting. particularly this first one, which appears for no other reason than that i thought this cat was pretty much the sweetest thing i've ever seen. look:


roar...

Jill and i spied this king of the jungle reposing atop the physical therapy stairs at the VA nursing home in Salt Lake, where Jill's grandpa was residing. somebody either had a strange sense of humour or is very enamoured of petite lions.

one of the really nice things about this holiday was that thanks to my boss at work it was a long one, and so we got to relax quite a bit. well sort of. we did find ourselves bouncing around from one family function to another a lot, but it's nice that the families live so close: Jill's in Provo and mine 30 miles away in Salt Lake. in another stroke of good fortune, somehow just about every member of Jill's family was born right around December 25th, so we got to have Chinese food with her dad at the most authentic place in town, attend John's baptism, and go bowling with Wendy and all her 12-year-old friends. some of the pictures we took on that occasion were quite instructive, or could be if you're a sports coach:



bowling technique. clockwise from top left: Jill's brother Scott's, her sister Andrea's, hers and mine. below we are showing off the sweet More Cowbell shirt she gave me as an early Christmas present. if you don't get it, check out the video. if you still don't get it, then i don't know how to help.



other than that, we attended a number of Christmas and Christmas Eve parties, including one of the latter at my aunt and uncle's house in Draper. they have this small spiral staircase in one corner that Jill and i thought would make for a nice picture, which i think it did; but then it just got a bit too popular:



a nice looking place for a picture... until someone comes along and takes it all a bit too far. way to work it Kim.



unfortunately all on this trip was not fun and games, however. on Christmas morning Jill's great-grandmother passed away, and her funeral was held on New Year's Eve. it was a very nice service with a generally upbeat feel--she was 92, so had enjoyed a long life--and since we were all dressed up we couldn't help but pull out the camera. one of the pictures we got is among my favourites of us:


Jill and i at the cemetery with an umbrella doing its best windbreaker impression.

then there was this pic that i had wanted to post that had been taken outside the LA Temple, overlooking Beverly Hills, just before we left to go to Utah. Jill and i have spent a lot of time recently considering the blessing of being able to go to the Salt Lake Temple in May to be sealed to one another. since i began writing this post, Jill's grandfather, who had been at the VA nursing home with the lion pictured above, has passed away also. with this in mind, and knowing that our sealing will not just be "till death do we part", it brightens our hopes for the (hopefully distant) future and makes our smiles at the funeral seem much less out of place.



outside the LA Temple: overlooking the Beverly Hills skyline; an earlier picture in front of the Temple itself.

theengagement

mine, that is. yes, a long wait for Jill ended last night when i proposed marriage to her, so we are now officially engaged. i'll leave it to her to blog the details of the proposal, should she decide to; i just want her to know how happy i am she said yes.

i love you, sweetheart.