How I feel these days.

Norcal Pride.

Woot loot.

Got three random shirts from woot.com.  Overall, not bad at all.  Better than last time.   Check them out below. 

What is this shirt about?  Halp. 

Going bananas. I am going to wear this to my ochem (dum dum DUM) exam tomorrow. 

Zombeer.  This my favorite.  And just in time for Hollah-ween!

Bon Mots from English 1A

I was waived from taking English Composition at UCLA.  My IB test scores were high enough for the powers that be (heretofore in this blog referred to as the PTB) to decide that yes, I do know how to read and write English well enough to succeed in post-secondary education.  

Apparently this is not good enough for the PTB at San Joaquin Delta College.  

It's no real hardship or annoyance.  The class is easy enough, and I keep myself amused by coming up with silly titles to the assigned papers.  Case in point: 

"I Got It From My Mama: A study of matriarchal families and value systems." 

That tears it.

...I am so upset right now.  

There are two Canadian geese with their brood of five goslings running across the street in front of Java Aroma.  One is woefully slow, and is running to catch up!  The babies are so unspeakably fluffy!  The cars are stopping to let the geese cross!   Oh!  They are walking towards me!  ONE IS LOOKING RIGHT AT ME WITH HIS ADORABLE BIRD FACE.  

I am never going anywhere without my camera ever again.  

Boob toob.

I walked out into the empty living room and there was porn playing on the tv.  WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

Hit and Miss

The past month in Stockton has been nothing but a series of eye-opening mini epiphanies.  Revelations include the opening of Java Aroma's second branch in the former location of the old Stockton Royal Theatre on Miracle Mile.  These days, if I want to see a movie I have to go to the Octoplex on West Lane or the Multiplex downtown.  Stockton also celebrated the grand openings of a BJ's, Borders, Lollicup and Panda Express- all things that I had long associated with Los Angeles.  

Apparently everything that has changed in Stockton in the past five years can be visually reduced to a collage of my childhood memories papered over with newspaper inserts of chain outlet advertisements.  

The Nature of Sleep.

There was a recent article about a new chemical developed that would eliminate the need for sleep.  Used like a nasal decongestant, in animal trials it allowed sleep deprived monkeys to perform just as well as rested monkeys at cognitive tests.  Side effects appear minimal, especially compared to the alternatives (ex- amphetamines such as caffeine) already on the market.  Though it won't be ready for the mass market for at least another decade, the US government is looking towards this research with interest as a solution for pilots on long flights and other jobs that combine grueling hours and intense focus. 

Really?  I mean, really?  Is sleep such a bother?  

My dad, my chauffeur.

I grew up living in my grandparents house, because they lived down the street from my preschool.  Outside of my grans all adults were casual characters that I saw every once in awhile, when someone would pick me up from Gran's and drive me to this other house filled with adults and no toys.  Eventually, I was left there for days, and it dawned on me that this new place was home now.  It dawned on me that this person who drove me places was a parent and, inexplicably, I owned him.  He was my father. 

Most of my memories of dad involved a car.  My school was on the other side of town, so he was often roused at six thirty in the morning to take me to school when I missed the bus.  He dropped me off at Saturday marching rehearsals, and picked me up from after-school Science Olympiad.  He took me to study groups at Christy's house, and waited for me, car idling, when I ran into the library to pick up another source for my history paper.  He drove me to Fresno at  3 AM so that I could attend a "Visit the UCLA Campus!" workshop.  He loaded my things in the car and helped me move to my dorm Freshman year.  Six hour drive to Los Angeles, thirty minutes to unpack, six hour drive back to Stockton- he didn't even stay to have lunch.  

In his life he's tried the following professions: bus driver, semi truck driver, ice cream truck driver.  If the wheel was never invented my dad would be SOL. 

My sister's car is in the shop, and the BMW is on its last legs.  My dad's pick up failed to pass smog so many times that the state paid him one thousand dollars to stop driving it.  My car was considered most likely to survive a trip to my aunt's house this Christmas Eve, so I volunteered to drive.  As Patriarch, my father has never really experienced the freedom from responsibility that comes with not being the designated driver.  He really let loose: glasses of wine in one hand, bottles of Heineken in the other.  Drinks with appetizers, dinner, and dessert.  That evening I poured my dad into the back seat and the rest of our family of five squeezed in around him.  As I'm heading to the freeway, my dad picks his head up from mom's shoulder and says, "Ahhouy, you driving right now, I feel good.  I feel very good about this."  

Me too dad.  

Direction.

I was really proud of how well I was getting around Los Angeles.  I began to develop a reputation as the go-to gal for directions anywhere.  You know, the person they pass the cell phone to when someone is lost.  

I am back in Stockton, my home town.  I spent eighteen years of my life cutting class here, staying out past curfew here, generally being a wild and crazy kid running the streets here.  So why is it that whenever I step foot outside of the house I  can't find my way to the local Podesto's?  

Update

My wallet, it was found!  I received a very nice letter in the mail from someone who didn't want to leave it with the restaurant.  I am picking it up tomorrow!  Yay!  

The Other Shoe

Over the past ten years or so, I have had maybe 50 Lost Wallet scares.  I've never actually lost my wallet until now.  

As losing wallets go, it wasn't too bad.  It was after a long and full day of pedicures, shopping and farmer's market lunching.  I am relieved that I no longer carry my green card in my wallet- that could have potentially been disastrous.  I am relieved that I did not have my social security card on me- that could have really screwed up my plans for the immediate future.  I canceled my debit card and my one credit card within thirty minutes of its loss, so no identity theft or card fraud.  All I really lost were my two student ID cards (for which I would have had no use after December 14) and about $45 in cash.  Even the cash thing didn't bother me too bad.  Probably because I had accidentally parked my car an hour past the time we paid for on the Venice meters and we didn't get a ticket (practically impossible, especially on Sunday Farmer's Market).  

Besides, I was in too good a mood.  You would be too if you spent part of your day doing this: 

Learning curve.

I am a very trustful person.  My philosophy?  Trust a person until they give you a reason not to trust them.  It was a world view that was endorsed by my parents, and they live very happy lives with several wonderful close friends and family members to lend credence to the validity of this idea.  

I've been burned a couple times- a few roommates dent my car, a few buddies don't pay back money owed- but nothing as to make me genuinely regret living my life so recklessly.  

Until tonight.  

Should I have lent a near complete stranger my ID so that his underaged friend could get into O'haras?  Probably not.  However, he seemed trustworthy enough, and even left his wallet in my care as collateral.  I expected him back within minutes, with my ID and his thankful friend in tow.  After about twenty minutes, the crew wanted to leave, and so I went to track him down to get my ID back.  Obviously his friend flaked;  if she wants to get in later, she'll have to find another ID to use.  

He refuses my multiple requests to give me back my ID, saying only that he is trying to contact his friend.  "Dude, your friend is just going to have to find another ID to pawn off as her own." "I am trying to help you out here." "Wait, what?  You don't have my ID?" "...No."  

Apparently he gave my ID to his friend and walked off.  I suppose he assumed that the friend would be able to find me based on the highly miscolored and dated photo of me on the license.  He probably should have realized that his friend would go home with one of the frat boys celebrating Generic Sport Game Victory.  What with all the moaning and groaning, she can't hear his phone ring and rendezvous with us to return my license.  At this point I am a little upset.  

"You mean to tell me that you were irresponsible enough to let someone walk off with the ID of the person who is in possession of your entire wallet?  How much of an idiot are you?  You find my license NOW.  There is no excuse for such stupidity, such lack of responsibility, such absence of follow through- No, I will not calm down.  No, you shut up!  You have no right to try and shush me you fucking idiot!" 

Lydia Ma is a godsend.  She got me to calm down, she got Fucking Idiot to calm down. At this point, she negotiated a deal.  Fucking Idiot will give me his ID and passport (he is an exchange student from Spain).  I will hold these items hostage until he presents me with my ID.  Off I went to fume at Brew Co (where I subsequently lost my favorite jacket a few hours after this ID debacle).  The rest of the night was spent speculating about what I'd do with the money I could make selling Fucking Idiot's passport and ID.   

Luckily for him, he managed to recover my ID and find us before we left for home.  It turns out that Fucking Idiot was actually a kind of nice guy who is an excellent friend to his friends.  

But yeah, that's the last time I lend my driver's license to a foreign stranger in an attempt to aid and abet the corruption of a minor.  Just can't trust people to follow through in this situation.  

One week post- Wedding.

I lost five pounds for the wedding. I am pretty sure I gained it all back this weekend. A few contributing factors to my weakening self control:

-Food is a reward for me. I ate prime rib to congratulate myself on a job well done. It was a culinary pat on the back for the walking and flower holding and champagne drinking I did.

-Food is a rejuvenator for me. I had my first round of exams the past few days so there was lots of caffeine and lots of sugary junk food to keep me going. My personal favorite? A Honey Wheat from Stan.

-Food is a comfort for me. I curled up on the couch and tucked into a huge bowl of stew and short ribs straight from the crockpot. Slow cooked food reminding me to slow down.

Loving It.

The past few days have been pretty darn amazing. Old roommate Espy and Lauren got married on Friday, and I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the wedding as bridesmaid.

I drove to Burbank to pick up the bridal party for a 10 am hair appointment. I killed time studying here:

I found this in my mocha, which is a pretty good way to start a wedding day:


A little bit clearer than the Jesus on toast phenomenon.














Pictures of the wedding are forthcoming- this is pending permission from the bride. Suffice it to say that the groom was handsome, the bride was beautiful, and by the end of the night it was clear that both of them would do anything for love (they would even do "that").

All-Purpose

"When you were in high school, where did you see yourself in ten years?"
"Married and pregnant."

I honestly believed that I was going to be one of Stockton's young mothers. When we saw the young mothers with her baby in the high school day care center, I would ask young boyfriend jokingly "Can we have one of those?" He always knew that I was joking less than my tone suggested, and just said "Maybe later."

I look back now and wonder why I wanted that baby so badly. It wasn't because I thought I was mature enough for a baby. I didn't have my own home (heck, I didn't even have my own room in Stockton). I didn't have a job. I didn't have a line of credit. I had an S-Mart Foods membership card, but I figure that would probably not make any top ten "Must Have for Baby" magazine lists.

It wasn't because I was in a happy stable relationship. If we were happy, it was an "on average" happy- if you looked at the wild ups and downs of the relationship, you could take the mean of the given values of happy over the three years we were together and conclude that yes, this relationship was happy. In the same way that the temperature in Death Valley is, on average, rather tepid.

Leaving high school and venturing into the murky future of "What's next?" is scary. Even the simple idea of going to college was complicated with questions of which college, which major, which concentration. After twelve years of having my life dicated by the Stockton Unified School District, I was being let out on my own. It must be what lab animals feel like when member of PETA release them back into the wild- right before they get eaten by something that wasn't hand raised by humans.

Children tend to give parents an amazing sense of purpose- there is nothing that can guide a person more than the task of devoting eighteen plus years of your life to raising a functional, productive member of society. Life would have been much harder had I given in to my first impulse to have a child- but it would have been so much simpler. The next eighteen years of my life would have been decided and all I would have to do was live it.

Instead, life is complicated. Life is full of which job, which degree, which future- all choices that I have to make, all choices that I have to live with. And always, once I make one decision, there is another one I need to make right around the corner. After deciding against having a baby at the glorious age of eighteen, I find that I am happier for the choice that I made then, and for the choices that I make today.

Life is nothing but the choices that we make.

I got tagged (and it's Contagious!)

The Rules:
We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My Eight Facts/Habits

1. I don't have a desk at home for my laptop, so when I'm IMing you, or sending you and email, or reading online comics, it's usually from bed. I am lying prone, and my lappy is on my chest and I type with my hands near my face. If you remove the laptop, I look a little bit like an overturned turtle, or like the dead squirrel I saw in front of Mike G's place a couple days ago.

2. I used to spend tons of money on groceries, and then go out to eat. A couple of lifestyle changes have helped to curb this expensive and wasteful habit. Both changes focus on making food fun- I go out to the farmer's market every weekend, and I make bento box lunches for work. Farmer's market has good food, free samples, people watching, and all sorts of other wholesome shenanigans. To prevent food boredom, I make sure that I buy something I've never tried before. This Saturday I picked up some French purple potatoes and some sort of carrot-parsnip hybrid. The bento box makes packing lunch fun. I try to keep it fast by making portionable food over the weekend and freezing it. I also buy a lot of bento sized packaged foods I can just zap in the microwave or throw in my lunch bag in the morning- potstickers, diced squash, edamame, and sesame sticks come to mind.

Since I started doing this, I think I've saved at least a hundred dollars a month on my food bill. I think I'm even eating healthier. Last time I went out to eat I have Chili's southwestern egg rolls. I usually can put those away with minimal effort, but after two bites nausea set in fast.

3. I sleep with an elephant. I've had it for four years. It is my constant companion.

4. I like to read books, but often I'll opt to re-read an old favorite or a book I vaguely remember from my childhood than try a new one. They're less likely to disappoint. I recently picked up "Seven Brides and Seven Brothers," a fairy tale from Iraq I remember reading in the fifth grade.

5. The Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke is my favorite poem.

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

A close second is Langston Hughe's Mother to Son. I actually choreographed a dance to Mother to Son. I've never performed it, or shown it to anyone, but it's still in my head.

6. I sing along to songs on the radio. That's prolly one of the main reasons why I like driving by myself more than driving with passengers- I guess it's rude to suddenly spit "Baby Got Back" rhymes when someone is small talking to you about that weird dream they had the other night- or maybe it was yesterday?

Often I don't know the words, so I make them up as I go along. It gets to the point where I have completely forgotten that I made those words up in lieu of the actual lyrics, and I passionately argue with folks about lyrical content ("No, guys, it's totally 'I hope you Pray,' not 'I hope you Dance.' Don't be lame."). My lyrics are usually way better than the original. Trust. I'll prove it to you next time I give you a lift.

7. I once painted the house of a guy I was dating in an effort to get his mother to like me. Suffice it to say I will probably never ever do anything like that again.

8. I think ages 18-30 are when fuck ups are most forgiveable. Not just little fuck ups like "oops, I forgot to take out the trash." The big fuck ups like "Ooops, I majored in something I didn't care for and have wasted 30,000 dollars I don't have on a career I won't be pursuing." I definitely have had my share of fuck ups. I'm currently paying for all the things I've fucked up in the past, and I go forward in life certain that I will fuck up several more times in more debilitating ways. Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever been more at peace with my life than I have been these past few weeks.

I'm going to go ahead and not tag anyone in particular. If you want to participate, go ahead and leave a comment saying you've posted- I'd love to see which parts of your life you think are worth posting.

Cuz I can't get Simsponized, for whatever reason.

Southpark Kimmie!

Big mistakes.

I made the utterly huge mistake of borrowing Stan's copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book was very satisfying, it answered a lot of questions, it was very NEAT. All and all, a great read. Why the huge mistake?

I didn't sleep last night. I started reading at around 10:30 pm and didn't finish until a little less than eight hours later. Work is going to suck soooooooooooooooo bad.

I am going to do a post about how the Harry Potter series and I are a lot alike- we appear to have grown up a bit, but at the core, we are still the same as where we started over a decade ago. But not right now. Right now, I have to focus on being functional for the next eight hours before heading to bed and crashing tonight.

Creative experiment.

Yumi and I have a new blog to chronicle our latest creative experiment- check us out!