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.

Living in the Lap of Luxury

Since we obviously get our money's worth at my apartment (you know, my rent for half a bedroom is almost as much as the rent on our old house. Cool.), we have super-responsive maintenance workers, just like you'd expect.

Our apartment even comes with a skylight.

That gaping piece of happiness used to just be a bulge in our ceiling, that we reported to the management right after we moved in about 7 months ago. It never really posed a problem, until it started raining like all hell had broke loose this week.

Then things got fun.

Two emergency maintenance calls, an angry email, and a note left in the manager's office later, we got someone (the next day) to come up, put a cat litter bucket (replacing our pot) under the leak. By then, the paint/stucco on the ceiling had completely ripped off. He said he'd be back later, cause he had to work on the roof. Cool.

The push pin in the picture is my attempt at at least some prevention- I tacked a piece of plastic completely over the hole so at least it would help a little if it got worse. We moved the TV and Tivo to the other side of the living room while we wait for our ceiling to be..... intact?

Thank goodness I'm moving into a University apartment next year.

Birthday Girl!

Jehan turned 20 last week, so I threw her a birthday party at my apartment. Apparently the girl is ridiculously popular, so my apartment was PACKED! I dunno... maybe 40 or so people were there at a time, in our tiny apartment?



A bunch of my coworkers... they're out of control.
We made lots of goodies for the birthday girl, and one of our friends brought a cake. People from RSS showed up too, since Jehan works with me and is in RSS too.



Things are finally settled for housing next year, too. I'm going to move with Jehan, Jeraldy, and Jehan's current roommate Roxie into a furnished apartment owned by the university. My job at the desk gets me priority housing, which is why I can get into housing again after moving off campus. At least this year I won't have to find a subletter for the apartment!

Coming soon: I ordered a camera charger from Amazon, so I should be back in business soon. I've almost finished Kelli's baby shower gift, so pictures of that will be up soon. I'm coming home to give it to her next weekend (President's Day) so I'd better hurry and get it done!