February I

Death
About a month ago, the guy living in the apartment below and to the right of ours died. He was an elderly gentleman in his 70s, apparently with a history of heart problems, and he died quietly in his sleep. The problem was that no one noticed until three days later. Our neighbors, the ones directly above his apartment, noticed a smell coming up, and they complained to our landlord, who discovered the body. I arrived from work just as the police were cleaning everything up.

People live at this apartment complex a long time. The guy right below me has lived here for ten years, and the woman next door to me, fifteen. Its definately a strange mix of characters. Most of the residents l00k over 40, there are some like me who are younger city people, and a lot of gay people.

Superbowl
About a month ago, my friend Chase came back into town to visit his grandmother and see what was the valley was like in the throes of Superbowl fever. While the event took place in Glendale, all the action was in Scottsdale. We walked around the new Optima Camelback apartments, one of the "Best Buildings in Arizona for All Time" (but Hoover Dam and a children's hospital also won), and actually it is kind of cool, if not incredibly expensive. From there we walked over to the Riverside development which has lately sprung up around the unpicturesque canal near the Scottsdale Fashion Center. There were booths, tons of crowds, several stages, and unbelievably expensive parties going on in bars that looked like you'd be beaten for ordering anything more sophisticated than a Corona.

There was a celebrity poker tournament going on, and so Chase and I joined a small crowd to see which celebrities would walk past on the red carpet on their way in. It was actually the highlight of my day. The way the setup worked was: celeb would arrive, sign in at the celeb desk, and then meet two young women escorts. The entourage would proceed to the photo point where the photographers waited, and then they proceeded onward, waving to the crowd until they reached the end of the carpet, where the two escorts would retract, like an aircraft carrier deck launcher.

It was wildly funny, especially the fact that nobody in the crowd recognized the majority of the celebrities. I thought at first that it was just my lacking cable that I didn't recognized anyone, and gradually realized that NOBODY recognized these people. I recognized a total of three celebs who arrived out of the two dozen we watched walk by. Jared, from the Subway ads, still looking trim, Paris Hilton, who actually looked better in person than most print media I've seen her in, and Alice Cooper, who looked like this whole event was kind of hazy.

All the while, some clever marketer was dropping what looked like folded $20 bills but were actually ads for some business. People were constantly picking them up off the ground, looking at them, and dropping them again. Others would pick them up without looking at them closely, and offer them to people standing nearby who probably dropped them in the first place. One man, who came across a pile of at least 10 "bills" quietly scooped them up and quickly walked off. People even picked them out of the garbage.

I didn't see the game, just the end at Mom's house, after dinner with Sally and Jonathan et al and Grandma. It was a good ending, especially since I didn't give a flying dime about either team.

Grad School
At this point, I'm studying for the GRE and researching colleges. I'm looking at Stamford, Yale, Berkeley, MIT, Columbia, Rice, and a few others. I'll take the test later this month.

Valentines Day
Valentines day I took Saori out to dinner at Coronado Cafe. She got me the boxed season of Cowboy Bebop and the Cowboy Bebop Movie.