Party! Party! Party! Yay, college.

Ok, so where did we leave off those long 2 months ago?

Yeah. Pretty much doing the same old stuff, who am I kidding.

Summer basically consisted of work, more work, visiting work when I wasn't working, hanging out with the people I work with, dealing with work stuff from my room, and... classes. Or something. This weekend is move-in weekend, so we've been dealing with ridiculous common sense questions like no other. I've officially decided the worst part of move-in is suffocating parents. Today's shining star was a mom who marched down to the housing office after they closed, made them open back up, so she could demand a room change for her daughter who "lived too close to the elevator". She was ADAMANT that we must get that complaint every year.

"No ma'am... actually, you're the first."

Ah. I can't wait til all the freshmen are moved in and figure things out. Geez, was I this bad 3 years ago?!

..Probably.

Anyway. The only big excitement was my birthday, which I survived, no worries mom! We got about 20 people together for Korean bbq, and then came back to school to throw a party.

All my deskers! Plus Alex. Her mom sent along a "gift" for me- a tequila flavored sucker with a worm in the middle. I really don't know what part of that disgusts me the most, to be honest.

We'll leave that as the only picture I put up. You know, the still classy one?

Anyhoo. A couple weeks ago we went with most of the deskers to a gay club in Hollywood, called Tigerheat. Every week there's a theme night, and that week was Whitney Houston night. It was perfect for all the divas in the room, but not exactly very good for dancing.

We'll leave out the guys' pictures. I dont think they want those floating around.

And since apparently all I do is work and go to parties, the girls at Rieber have the Pink Party tradition to uphold. This year is the party's third year of being hosted in the girls' lounge during the summer. It was created 3 years ago by the summer staff, so it'd be a huge letdown to let tradition die! We spent most of the day decorating the lounge, and all the guys and a few of the former deskers showed up later that night. We had individual pink hearts with our names and pictures on them, that we all took home after the party.

Some of the girls, re-enacting our faces from our hearts. Most of our food was pink too- one of the girls put some red food coloring in a pot of water for rice, so it ended up as pink sushi. We also had pink dyed dip, watermelon, cookies, and cupcakes.

the cupcakes were made by one of the Rieber deskers... she melted pink Laffy Taffy and then molded it into the shape of roses for each cupcake. She then spelled out pink in icing, and did a layer of sprinkles around the edge. I do NOT have the patience for that, so I made my spinach artichoke dip as per usual.

All of the ladies in our finest pink attire.

Also going on lately- we all moved into our new apartment on Tuesday. Everything's all settled in, with just a little bit of decorating left to do. Our apartment is REALLY nice- there's a ton of room and the furniture they provide is pretty nice. I'll eventually post pictures- check back in about 2 months or so.

At least I'm honest!

Hello? World? Are you still there?

Despite popular belief, I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I've had to work over 40 hours for the past few weeks, and in between shifts I like to spend about 95% of my time sleeping. Yesterday we went out for the 4th of July weekend to Venice beach, and just walked around for a few hours looking at all the little stands and playing on the beach. I went with Jeraldy, Valentin, and Shahin, another of the deskers from Rieber. The last time I'd been in Venice was when I got my nose pierced 2 years ago, so it was fun to go back.

We stopped these police officers since we were so amused by the horses. :) The one we were petting was named Jimbo. Anyway, we watched some of the street performers and got some shaved ice, and headed out to play in the sand.


We didn't stay too long, since all the beaches were completely packed. We want to go back soon though, and rent some bikes for the path along the beach. On the way back, we went to Islands for dinner, and saw some fireworks on the way back to school.

Today, we did most of the celebrating, since yesterday a lot of people went out with their families. We went to one of the bbq pits on campus and had a barbeque with all of the deskers from Rieber. I didn't there til about 4 though, since I had work at 7 am and didn't have a chance to do much else. Everyone ended up playing a makeshift game of soccer, which ended in a few injuries on both sides, you know, the usual. To recuperate, we went swimming and had dinner back in the dorms. Pretty uneventful, but a little more exciting than my usual days of working and sleeping.

Lets see... going back a little farther in time, Casey came to visit the day after finals ended. He was planning to visit for a couple days, and see a couple other people in the area before flying out to Texas to see Anthony's graduation from air force basic training. It ended up that most of the people were actually out of town, so he ended up staying here on and off for a couple weeks, all said and done. I tried my very best to bore him to tears, since I had work nearly every day he was here. He ended up finding his own excitement, as it turns out...

Casey had just finished the fire academy a few weeks ago, and was coming for a vacation before he started back at Mt. Mike's this Monday. One of the days he was here, I had gone over to Jeraldy's apartment to talk to her for a little bit, and had accidentally left my phone in my car. While I was gone, my neighbor, Esmeralda, and her boyfriend were in their room when her boyfriend slipped and hit his head on a small table. Apparently, he had been in a car accident a few years ago and had a head injury, so when he hit his head this time, he had a convulsion. Esmeralda ran over to get me, but only Casey was in my room. He ran over to help, and had to hold down Rich's arms and legs to keep him from biting his arms and thrashing around. At one point, Rich seemed to stop breathing, and Casey had to give him CPR. They had called 911, but Casey doesn't know the area at all so was having trouble explaining how to get to the dorms. When Rich had been taken to the ER, I saw all the frantic missed calls, and rushed back to pick up Casey and meet them at the hospital. To sum up, Rich is completely fine now, but it was a pretty terrifying night. I realize this would likely work as a post of its own, but it actually happened a couple weeks ago, and I'm so used to seeing Rich around perfectly fine, that I'd almost forgotten about it. Since then, he's been kind of the hero around the Hedrick deskers, and my boss told me to give him a thank you "from the bottom of the Hedrick desk's heart." I doubt any of my other friends will make such a splash when they come to visit!

Golf and Guitars

Last weekend, I went up to Davis to spend the weekend with Raquel, since it's easier to avoid studying when you drive 400 miles away from your school supplies. The plan was to go to a concert in Sacramento along with Shannon, so we headed out for that on Friday.

It was called Golf and Guitars, because you could either pay $250 and play golf with some semi-famous country singers in the blistering heat, or pay $20 to watch them play a small concert after. Difficult decision, obviously. There were about 14 artists, who all played for 15-20 minutes or so each. It was pretty good, and Chuck Wicks had one song during which he had one of the people he had played golf with earlier come up to "help him sing".

Steve's job was to chime in every time Chuck sang "That dress looks good on you for sure..." with "but even better on the floor" as a dedication to his wife. Pretty funny. The only bad part of the concert was the last act, a combination of John Michael Montgomery and Bucky Covington. The former was too drunk to remember the words to his own songs, and the latter seemed like a strung out meth addict with ADD. We were ready to leave.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching movie after movie, including Angels and Demons, the second National Treasure, and Star Trek (Raquel's 3rd time seeing it...), along with an all-day training meeting for the leadership conference she's been a part of since high school. I headed back home on Sunday... the 6 hour drive felt like a short jaunt compared with my normal trips home!

Other than that, I've just been working... we just found out that the three current supervisors all put in their two weeks notice at the same time, so we'll be the only ones... having only worked a couple shifts by ourselves, and still fresh out of training. So we'll just see how long it takes before the desk goes up in flames!

This picture is old... but it amuses me anyway. We had an upperclassman reunion at my friend's apartment across the street for RSS a while back, and everyone thought it'd be funny to take a "typical asian family photo". They had to explain to me what that meant... but we thought it'd be much better if I was the token white kid instead.


Peeeerfect!

Anyway, it's about time I pretend like I'm going to get anything accomplished today... or at least get ready for work.

...or something.

Me Too! Me Too!

Since I'm the baby sister wanting to keep up with the big girls, let's look at MY garden.


...Yeah. That's all.

Meet my baby Thai basil. I don't know what makes Thai basil different, or whether it should be leaning over like that. Probably not, since I'm an unfit mother. That little guy survived the trip to nor cal and back, which basically means I forgot about him in my car for a week. But hey, there's still green, so I call it a job well done. This weekend, my friend wants me to drive her to a nursery so we can buy a tree. Apparently, she has a trashcan and an excess of potting soil laying around. I chose not to ask too many questions.

In other news, I started my "new" job this week. Basically, it's the exact same job I've had for over a year, but I got a promotion and transferred. For some reason, they transferred me to Hedrick, and the Hedrick applicant to Rieber. So basically, we have two angry desks and two confused/sad supervisors. All in all, a pretty good choice, I'd say. I've been spending the last few days getting to know a bunch of new names, as well as all the new stuff I'm allowed to do now. :)

When will I be going paintballing again, you ask? When the bruises fade. Which should be in another 6 months or so. This is how my leg is doing...


For those of you keeping track at home, this is day 19 of the healing process. Kind of annoying that they decided to heal from the inside out... the outlines still get a lot of "what the hell happened to YOU?!?"s.

We went shopping last weekend (For things I can only wear once the bruises heal) and I'm sure to Susan's relief, I bought some new nose rings. You can stop looking at me in disgust every time I come home now... Thanks. Also last weekend (Gold Nugget Days) was Jeraldy's birthday, so I raced (er... drove the speed limit) back to LA so we could go out to dinner. We went to BJ's, and the staff nearly fainted from how cute we are:


Actually, I think they almost fainted out of sheer terror, since Roxie (far left), one of my roommates for next year, brought her boyfriend Tom. Tom's 6'10", so obviously we sent him in to check when our table would be ready. Speed up the process a bit, you know?
For her birthday I got Jeraldy a photo frame (kind of like the ones you got me, Jessie) where each letter is a spot for a photo. Only upon bringing it home from good ol' Gold Nugget Days and showing it to Mom did I realize that instead of "Nuestra Familia" it says "Nuestro Familia". Right now, it's still in my car until I can think of an explanation suitable for the sheer "diversity" that is Paradise. This is what I get for trying to have a culture that isn't Nascar and huntin'.

Anyhoo, it's time to do some homework or something. And by "something", I mean sleep. Which is probably going to win out. But stay tuned for next week's edition of cheap rip-off... when I try my hand at making Jessie's magical muffins.

She's Alive!!!!

And by she, I mean my laptop, Kylie. After a month-long hiatus in about every Best Buy in California, I finally got my baby back today. They managed to screw up almost every step along the way, but a new motherboard later, we're back in business.

The last month hasn't been too exciting anyway... so no worries. I have no backyard, so its not exactly like I'm trying to keep up with the Jones' (er.. Hartmans. and Freeses.) and build my own fence or anything. Hell, the most exciting thing I have to report doesn't even have anything to do with me.

Kelli had her baby Friday night, Noah Christopher Thomas Giden. I spent most of my chem lab getting text updates from Joan, and a picture message of my new "nephew", who I get to come home and meet this Thursday. (Who am I kidding. I'm only coming home for Gold Nugget Days.) In my own life, pretty much the most exciting thing was our paintballing trip on Sunday.

And by "exciting", I mean most recent event that made me look like I was clubbed to within an inch of my life.

Yeah. Looks like I was prepared, right? This was instants after being pelted repeatedly when my "cover" deflated. The gun up means I am basically crying for mercy.

On the less cry-baby side of the field, the guys had some brilliant plan to prove their manliness by going shirtless and wooing the ladies with their resultant battle wounds.

Stupidity gets all the girls, right?

Here're the happy campers once it was time to get the hell out of there.

I don't know how I got talked into doing this a second time. Memories of pain and near heatstroke fade, I guess. This time though, I'll have plenty of bruises that will likely fade long after the memories. Apparently, I bruise like a peach. And have the ninja skills of a sleeping elephant. So for now, I have 6 bruises (and counting) 4 of which have at least a 2 inch diameter. Pretty cute, if you ask me.

Food Coma

I write this while hoping I don't explode. Today was our second big trip for Korean BBQ, so we loaded up a bunch of deskers and headed out to Koreatown. 11 of us went, and got a sweet private dining room. Which was good, since most of the guys aren't fit to be seen out in public. Anyway, we stuffed ourselves until it hurt to move, then ate a little bit more just to make sure we got our money's worth. We went to a different place than last time, so obviously we had to try everything just so we could compare the two, right?

Anyway, Howard asked at one point if we could get "all beef", which was heard as "can we get every single style of meat available"? They weren't kidding. Bring on the cow tongue! Being obnoxiously white, I was oblivious to what I was eating. Tongue is not a favorite food of mine, surprisingly. I kept faaaaaar away from that platter for the rest of the night. We rolled out of there three hours later, and I mean rolled. Good thing I found a parking spot nearby, cause I would have happily curled up on the curb for a nice after-dinner nap.

In other news, we have our apartment squared away for next year. We already had our plans set, but now we actually know our exact apartment number, so we can stalk the girls living there now and mentally feng shui the place. We've already started discussing ground rules, so that we won't kill each other in a passive-aggressive rage gone terribly wrong.

As Mom already knows, my boycott of Mountain Mike's has begun as of Friday. The owner and manager fired Jenny, after another employee completely made up a story about her giving out free food to one of the other supervisors. They couldn't find proof she DIDN'T do it (not that there was any possibility of proof she did do it, but who cares?), so out she went. Now that Janis is on her way out too, there's not anyone left there that has a half a brain or that I ever truly want to see again. Jenny worked her butt off there for three years, but apparently "loyalty" is too big a word for their vocabulary. From now on when I come home, Round Table it is.

Tu Carnaval

I've been a little busy lately, getting destroyed by my chemistry class and all. I've had a little time to go out and do other things... but in reality I should just be getting cozy with my o-chem book every night.

Last night was another party hosted by LASA, since I am so into my Latin American roots and all. It was hosted at a club in Artesia and was called Tu Carnaval, and I got dragged into going by my future roommate and a few other friends.

I'm still ridiculously tired, since we got back at about 3 am and I had class at 10 the next morning. It was a long night of annoyingly loud music and crowded people... I think I'll make up a better excuse not to go next time!

The end. Supporting each other to make it up the hill. Luckily, I was the only one smart enough to not wear stilettos... I can still feel my feet today!

Reaching a little farther back, I organized a work potluck at Valentin's apartment last week, just for the hell of it. People brought some REALLY good food, and I contributed my spinach artichoke dip (someone begged that it be there, I was scared to disappoint) and also a pan of the lasagna florentine that Jessie gave me the recipe for. Other people brought enchiladas, chicken adobo, korean bbq chicken, and a whole bunch of sides. We hung out and watched the Lakers game (I think I did a pretty good job of tricking them into thinking I was interested!) and attempted to play pictionary before everyone's attention span ended.

Today, we went out to the mall to pick up a card at Hallmark. Our manager, Janet, is leaving Rieber front desk to work at Hedrick front desk, since apparently everyone working up there is a hot mess and can't handle doling out trash bags. We got a giant Snoopy card to put in her new office for her first day up there.

As for right now... I have to go pick up the roommates from a late night Denny's run.