Journal

Howdy!

Aylin and I will be in Plano, Texas next weekend to visit our dear friends Alek and Liz. Plano is just outside of Dallas, so we will be doing a lot of sightseeing in Dallas. We’ll have plenty of pictures to post after our visit. We can’t wait to see Dallas, but more importantly, we can’t wait to see Alek and Liz!

Last night we went to dinner at my parents’ house and they surprised us with having over a friend of my dad that we hadn’t seen in almost 30 years! He was a close friend of my parents who now lives in France. It was so nice to see him and to see my dad with such a huge smile on his face.

After 5 ½ years at Preferred IPA/TMS, I was promoted to Chief Financial Officer (CFO) effective July 1. Feels good to be recognized and rewarded. There’s one guiding philosophy that I adhere to when it comes to my professional life: do a good job and everything else will follow.


He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. - Immanuel Kant, philosopher (1724-1804)

Las Vegas was awesome… Gambling, drinking, smoking cigars, pigging out… Won some money and I kept it! We stayed at the Flamingo. I had another celebrity run-in in Vegas. This time it was Clyde Drexler, ex-basketball star with the Portland Trail Blazers. He was playing blackjack at the $15 minimum bet table right across from my table. He likes cigars like I do; he bought himself a Portofino cigar while gambling. A real class act. Man, these old school b ball cats are class acts.

Aylin and I are on our way to Las Vegas this weekend and we can’t wait! Hilton wants to sell us a timeshare. For that, we got a decent deal at the Flamingo plus a bunch of gift certificates and gambling money for next to nothing. We just have to sit through their 2-hour sale pitch…

We’re also planning on a trip to Plano, Texas to see our good friends Alek and Liz. I haven’t confirmed for sure but I think it’s going to happen. We can’t wait to see them and we’re looking forward to all the awesome Texas BBQs!

See y’all!

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair, novelist and reformer (1878-1968)

Aylin and I were struggling to find something fun and “different” to do today. So, we decided to go to 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica and see what happens. After dinner, we went down to our favorite cigar store in that area called Lone Wolf to get a couple of cigars, enjoy the evening and watch the Lakers game. We sat down by a bunch of guys who were intently involved in a conversation with a dude in multi-colored dreadlocks… They were talking about music and the guy in the dreadlocks was talking about putting down vocal lines, attorneys, etc. I figured that the guy in dreadlocks was a musician or somehow involved in music. After a couple of minutes, I began to wonder why these guys are were so intently engaged in this conversation… All of a sudden I realized who this musician in dreadlocks was: it was Axl Rose and I was sitting not two feet away from him! I turned to Aylin and told her in Armenian: “Do you know who this is??? It’s fucking Axl Rose!” We were in total disbelief! Here we were sitting not two feet away from the guy who was the lead singer of one of my all-time favorite bands! Aylin told me to talk to him but I didn’t know what to say. Besides, those other guys had monopolized the conversation. After a while, these guys left. I thought that if I don’t talk to him now, I’m never going to get this opportunity again. So, I went up to him and said, “Axl, I’m a little slow but I just realized that it’s you and I just had to tell you that I’m a huge, huge fan of yours and Guns n’ Roses” What followed was an awesome conversation that lasted nearly two hours. Out of respect to Axl, I am leaving out the details of our conversation. Imagine: me sitting right next to Axl talking about music, his new band, his new album, Guns N’ Roses, music, songs, music business, the break up of GNR, and whole lot more. The best part was that he was a totally cool guy: very approachable, friendly and down to earth. He is a total pro and loves music. Aylin thought that he seemed to be totally into it and enjoying the conversation. In fact, we were so into our conversation, that we totally missed the end of the Lakers game! I could have talked to him for hours but I didn’t want to take up more of his time.

Well, Aylin and I were struggling to do something fun and different today… We found something fun and different all right!