Celebration Day

guess what happens in a month... give up? thomas turns twenty. BFD. anyways, i was thinking of doing something along the lines of what nathan did... setting up a big group movie thing. (though i promise i wont use movifone) anyways, i was thinking of doing this either the weekend of or the weekend after my birthday. i was also thinking dinner and a movie.. though not necesarily in that order. as far as movies at that time... it looks like either "Ray" (Ray Charles story) or "The Incredibles" (Pixar) will be the movies of choice, unless you guys know something i dont. so... do you guys have any thoughts on that?

as for dinner, im thinking whatevers close. if we go to the usual theater, i wanna try Fudruckers as i have yet to eat there. came close twice, but never had anything. everyone who reads this is invited, you just have to find some way of getting to the SF bay area... and of course, leave me a comment as to whether or not you can make it and stuff. i will also invite a few friends who DONT read my blog... (and they call themselves friends) also, lemme know if you wanna bring someone with you, which is cool too.

speaking of which, i was also thinking of maybe bringing a friend down to the city with me to join in the madness. anyways, thats my story. so.. any questions? comments? concerns?

Are You Gonna Be My Girl

friday was chica's final visit to the vet for vaccinations. she is officially vaccinated. we cant get fixed yet since they require the dog be at least 2 lbs. (shes only 1.8 lbs. at 4 months old!!!!) so yeah, that was basically the highlight of the day as the restt of the day was spent at work and then at home making dinner, and then eating it. dinner that is.

saturday was spent doing DUM DUM DUUMMM chores. mainly cleaning up around the house. mowing lawns, cleaning rooms, and the like. the highlight of that day was when my dad brought in a laptop that he picked up at work. its a few years old. its got a pentium 2 with 256 megs of RAM and a 10 or so gig HD. its a toshiba, so i'm pretty happy, eventhough its a little old, it should be able to handle web browsing, chatting and MP3 playback no prob. problem is that its got win 98 so iTunes wont install and when i tried to install SBC Yahoo!, the brogram is under the impression that the computer has only an 88mhz processor. which is impossible. arash advised that i grab the newest game i had and install the newest version of directx so i can see the real processor speed. i grabbed warcraft 3 and installed directx 8... and it says its got "~166mhz Pentium II" WTF is ~166??? and i know its more than that!!! WTF!??! and on top of that, the laptop has a built in modem, as in, not a PC card or external one, its got the socket built right into the body... yet the computer has no idea. it wants drivers. BLAH! so yeah. thats the "highlight"

today family came up from SF and we just hung out around town. i spent the morning more or less lying out in the hammock enjoying some tunes, but once the family was over, we headed downtown for w/e the hell was going on down there, which as it turned out, was the tail end of an antiques fair. oh joy. my bro sis and i hung out mostly in the comic store as they looked at magic cards and manga and stuff and i just kinda wandered around, listening to my iPod. we grabbed some shoes at Deaf Dog (translates to blended chocolate/ice drink... think Frapuccino w/o coffee... but mine had coffee) and then grabbed some Fish -n-chips to go from Fourth and Sea and that was pretty much that. just got back about an hour ago from walking the dog. that was my weekend.

oh wait.... the title.... its in refernece to Eurotrip, which i saw Saturday night with my friend Lacey and some friends of hers at the house where she is house sitting. that was really fun. i say saturday night.. but we watched it at like 11:30 and i didnt get home till 1 AM sunday. o well. they played "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" several times over the course of the movie. i like that song/group... Jet's a real throw-back to bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Kinks... my kinda music. that is all.

Keep Talking

decided it was time for a blog update, thats the song that was on iTunes, and it works well, especially after reading the lyrics.. more on that ater...

i have decided i am definitely dropping philo. i have to turn in my drop gcard tommorow. i also have an appointment with a councellor for tuesday so i can figure out what the hell im doing next semester and beyond. one thing is for sure, it looks like i will be sticking aroud here for next semester. o well. i dont lament that fact all that much, as i like the place, its conveniant and cheap, so i might as well do what i can here, while i'm here. in the meantime i have biology to deal with (i got a 71 on the test i DID do.. im not all that happy abut that... but i guess thats what happens when you dont study.... at all) as well as sociology and art history, all of which have big essays due in the next month. sociology's is actually due tommorow, and im about half done. but due to my lack of printer, i may have to borrow one of the ones at work. ugh.

anyways, back to the topic at hand... is it just me or did blogging take a dump as of late? updates have gone down and comments are being made by the same couple people.... whats up people? not only that, but people are signing onto AIM a whole helluva lot less lately... i dont get it? schools been going for a good month for most of us, i think we should all be pretty well adjusted.. no? i duno. the internet just seems real quiet lately. gettin a little cabin-fever-ish i guess.

[update] on a side note, during work today, as i was heading out to run some errands, Eric, one of the realtors in our office, ran out and stopped me and handed me 50 dollars. he called it a gratuity. or w/e. he is an old school classic rock listening, surfing, tequila drinking kinda guy. when i first met him, we drove out to some remote photoshoot, and he had How the West Was Won in his car stereo.. and we listened to i think 2 CDs of that during our trip. it was awesome, he shared with me all kinds of cool stories from back ion the day. also, he is quite the tequila connoisseur, telling me about variour brands and what not. he also has a couple bottles at his desk. he also surfs.. in fact, as a side job he MAKES surfboards. his company is called "100% Agave Surfboards." a reference to his fondness for the cactus-derived liquer. anyways, hes a really cool guy.. and he just gave me 50 bucks cuzi emailed some pics for him to a magazine.. twice. not bad for 20 minutes work. i just remembered this event as my brother is now paying me for my iPod and i saw the tiny strip in the twenty glow under the black light. and remembered the money in my back pocket. anywho. back to the internet... *cricket chirps*[/update]

The Midnight Special

24 hours ago, i was sitting in a theater, watching an anime with Ken, Nathan and Crystal. we saw "Ghost in the Shell: Innocence" the visuals were absolutely fantabulous, and the story picked up relatively well from the first movie. and, with Nathan's help and my fresh biology knowlege, i was able to pick up on the story without having to see it twice, though i wouldnt mind doing so. the first one, which we saw before hand at nathan's house was pretty good. good visuals, deep story, intelectual plot. the second was just amazing to watch, the only problem, was that since it was shown in its native japanese, i think i missed out on some of the visual impact of the movie since i was reading much of the time, and sometimes its tougher to follow whats going on if i am reading dialogue while missing out on the action. i agree with nathan when he suggested that it be viewed twice, once in japanese for the superior voice acting and the visuals, and once in english to really grasp the story and dialogue. not necessarily in that order... anyways, if you are an anime fan, like a good action movie with great visuals, understand japanese or all of the above, i recomend this movie.

as for the rest of the night, it was spent either playing mario kart with Nathan and Crystal (Ken was.... "preoccupied") and at either Barnes &Noble or Burger King. and of course, in transit to and from the great cityt by the bay. i didnt get home til about 2:30 last night, didnt hit the hay until about 4. Margot was online so we chatted on into the wee hours of the morning.

today, i went into the city, yep, again. my aunt from McFarland (in SoCal) was in town and she made enchiladas at my grandma's house. mmm, mmmmm, good. we also saw the second half of "My Cousin Vinnie" followed immediately by the second half of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." whatever, it was good times. dogs sure had a blast. thats all for now.

Move On

i like wednesday nights.... its like thursday nights used to be.... you know, over the hump, the eve of friday, most of the week, and the shit therein, is behind you. since tomorow is my last day of school for the week and all. and, eventhough i have one of my busiest schedules (soon to be THE busiest) im not all that broken up about it. it is the 1 week anniversary of my day-o-hell... so im looking forward to getting over that.... moving on....

as i said, tomorow is one of my busiest schedules of the week... school from 9-10:30, work from 2-some time before 7, school from 7-10. i have the same schedule, basically, on tuesday.... but i also said soon to be THE busiest day of the week.and thats cuz i think i'm gonna drop philosophy. the bloody class has more political discussion than my Poli Sci class did!!! we spent the first 40 minutes of class last class discussing why Bush pocket vetoed the Brady Bill..... what in the name of Morgan Webb does the Brady Bill have to do with Critical thinking?!?!?! class ended up letting out at 8:30. now... after some quick math that equals an hour and a half of total class time. which means that nearly half the class was spent discussing A bill the President Bush ignored. wow. not to mention that we need to turn in a portfolio showing our progress on this bullshit research paper that i have done nothing beyond the intro to. and i dont have it printed out, and i need 2 drafts of it, as well as a peer review and some evidence of research, none of which ive done. so, fuckit. philo=done. moving on...

the rest of the week looks promising however. my night class tomorow is the ever enjoyable sociology. we will be filling out personal want ads. what do you guys think i should put on mine? i will check back tomorow before class to see what you people come up with. if you read this after 7PM pacific time, your suggestions will have no baring on my decisions in class. anyways, yeah, personal want ads. you know "i like long walks on the beach" that sort of thing. let the creative juices flow.

Time

this time of year is the anniversary of a couple relatively important events. so i thought it worth mentioning. first, 2 years (and like 5 days) ago i started this bloody thing. i got me a blog. and ive been here ever since. i just went back into the archives and man... did this thing suck. it takes a while to get the hang of it, but through reading other blogs and just plane getting better at writing, i can see that my bloging skills have improved in a big way. to which i ask nicely that you NOT go back into th archives and see for yourself how shitty my blog was. (which of course now you will.... why do i even bother). i started off excited, and in the first few mothes i had several blog posts a day every few days or so. but they were short, and often meaningless. after a while i got into school and my blogging took a hit. 2003 seemed like a slow year for blogging, but ever since this summer or so and my new musical fromat, i have found much inspiration and reason for sharing my life you people,. and myself. what do i mean myself? well, if you think about it, ive got 2 years of my life recorded and organized. i need only click back into the archives to re live events in my life long forgotten, in vivid detail. and i will even have accurate times and dates. i know people have been doing this for years with the use of a journal or diary... but i didnt. and this is just easier. plus i have reader feedback from you crazy people. makes for some fun reading.

and then there's 3 years ago. a chain of events that changed the world as a whole in a matter of minutes. the needless, tragic, violent death of thousands of people. the fearless, selfless acts of others. and some of them didnt make it either. some may see it as one of our country;s darkest hours, other, our finest. im not sure where i stand on that as theres alot of both. but it would seem to me that the true sprit of people shows best in the dark. in other words, it is our darkest hours that we often shine the brightest. and that was certainly true 3 years ago in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. i was going to continue on this thought until it lead to me bitching about how the effects of that fateful day 3 years ago are still being felt strongly, but i promised myself i wouldnt make this political. so.. yer just gonna have to figure out where i was going with that on your own. one thing that is a constant reminder of what happened for me is the show "rescue me" which had a very disturbing opening sequence this past week which reminded all too well of the events that took place, as well as the selfless acts of the firemen who were running up the stairs when everyone else was running down. or...... not using the stairs.

Life's Been Good

[/sarcasm]

lets recap my away messages throughout the day shall we?
- work
- following murphy's law
- cousin = awesome
- murphy's law enforced
- its been one of those days... only worse

explanation:

work - first one is self explanitory, i went to work as usual. it didnt seem like i would be that busy, but slowly the jobs came in. i was hit with a last minute request to go on a bank run. i go to my first bank: bank of petaluma, it closes first and its closest by. next is world savings since it closes next and it was close to closing, so i drove about a mile, at most, parked, did deposits. go outside, hop in the truck, turn key: nothing. NOTHING. not even an atempt at ignition. UGH. i call AAA.

following murphy's law - so my battery is completely dead. what great timing. i start to think of prospects for the evening: you know like my mom that i have to pick up, school i have to attend, perhaps my sisters soccer practice. i dunno. as it is the truck is the primary vehicle as my moms van is DOA AGAIN. so AAA calls up a local towing place to send someone over to jump the truck. 20 minutes later, captain asshole rides up in his bright yellow mazda pickup, parking literaly where a bush once was, as opposed to one of the dozen or so parking spaces around me. my hood already open, he applies some jumper cables and plugs the other end into some outlet on the fron of his truck. clever. i try to turn on mine. it tries, but dies. he says to let it charge a little, i do, i try again, it fires. but then dies. again, it fires, i give it gas and keep it revved to keep the truck from turning off. after a while i lay off the gas, the truck dies, captain asshole who packed up his jumpers already tells me to start it back up, nothing, "shit" he mutters as he unpacks them and we do it again. it fires, i keep it revved. he tells me to keep it revved, and drive straight home or to a service station as the battery is shot and i need a new one. gee ya think? what do i pay you for again? so i keep the engine revving, he packs up and speeds off... now the tricky part, getting going with the truck revved at about 2k rpm. i try and slid the gear selecter straight into reverse, but of course overshoot it and i go into drive, i jump into the parking thing in front of the wheel, hop back and the truck dies. SHIT. and captain asshole is already flying home. well that was an amazing waste of time.

cousin = awesome - my uncle's residence is contacted for assistance, and my newly licensed cousin chrisee is immediately dispatched. she calls to confirm my location, i have her meet me at a nearby Napa autoparts. during my walk i realize how much this situation sucks. i think to myself, all i need now is a ticket from a cop to cap off my wonderful day. i kid you not. by the time i get there, talk to a parts guy and he finds my battery and i buy it, she is driving by. notice i said DRIVING BY. in a moment of blondeness she drives right by the autoparts plavce and pulls over a block up the street. nice try hun. so she calls me since she couldnt find the autoparts place. i tell her she drove past it, but of course she has passed into an area which has becoe one way.. so she cant turn around, so i just tell her to stay put and that i would go to her. for those of you who dont know, car batteries are FUCING heavy. i eventually make it to her and we drive to my disabled dakota. i get the factory battery out eventually (it was like shackled into place) and it has no handle or anything its just a box... a 60 or so pound box. i put the new one in, lock it down, start up the truck and im off. thanks chrisee btw, you were the one thing that went right for me today. i owe ya.

murphy's law enforced - so with the delay i didnt get to finishbanking and an hour of my day went straight to hell. i had to rush through the rest of work and i got out at about 6. some of you may remember me putting off a hw assignement until between work and school (school starts at 7). it wasnt looking to promising for that assignment. now i had to pickup my mom from work. i call before i get there so she can be ready to go. which of course, she wasnt, i ended up waiting a good 15 minutes before she was finally in the truck. she promises me dinner. she said shed treat me to dinner. w/e. so i drop her off, she goes and gets a check she promised me and i grab my soc book and HW which i never got to and take off for school. its about 6:25 and i need to get to school at about 5:45 if i want parking. so i am in a rush.. i decide to overshoot the school and head for the grocery store next to it and grap a sandwich and soda or something, whatever is fast. speaking of fast, i am going about 60 mph in a 40 zone. i slow down once im done passing this ass and cruise at about 50 or so. and guess what? theres a cop waiting at a corner for me. as i aproach he blares his siren gest into traffic, i pull over in a busstop, he gets behind me. yay. now i get my ticket. i always wanted one of those. aperently i was doing 52. w/e. you know? i wasnt even pissed off or mad or anything. i knew i would get pulled over. it didnt surprise me in the least. so i went through the motions, got my pink thingy, and made a U-turn and went to class. no time for dinner anymore.

its been one of those days - only worse. this is my away message up through sociology. for obvious reasons. man, i couldnt believe my luck today, it was ridiculous. almost funny, til i realize its all true. so... i buy a battery, lose an hour of my day, walk a mile in 100 degree weather, change a battery (wearing white i might add) pickup my mom and have to wait as usual, didnt do my home work, got a speeding ticket and had Dr. Pepper for dinner. i got home, left two pink papers folded on the table. the recept for the battery and my ticket. i also left that check there. lifes been good.

The Dogs Of War

i have been inspired to speak my mind. from the title you can probably tell where im going with this.
thishas been one hellluva week huh? our troop casualties has hit the 1000 mark. over 350 inoscent people, including children, were killed in Russia, and Putin sounds like he wants to take the Bush aproach: blaim it on an entire country (or 2?) and we continue to bomb the living life out of Iraq.

so a bunch of chechen zealots stroll into a russian school and take it hostage, several hours later, the Russian miltary goes in and rescues a bunch of people... but many are kiled. over 350 men women and children. how sick is that. going after a fucking school?!?! not only that, but those who survived will be scarred with the traum of having to deal with the ordeal. events like this make me wonder only one thing? what drives these poeple to do such things? clearly this isnt a rational course of action... attacking a school. you wont gain a whole lot of popularity or mercy. and the act of attacking inoscent people, let alone children, just isnt right. its not somethng a reasonable human being should be apable of... so what in gods name has drivien these people to such insanity? i can only imagine..... or can i?

in other news the war in iraq continues, over 1000 american soldiers have died in the line of duty. which makes me wonder.... how long ago did the 1000th iraqi soldier die? i dunno, no one ever told me. it scares me cuz.. eventually, if this thing keeps going, we're just plain gonna run out of soldiers... and then they'll have to start drafting them. that doesnt sound like a great idea to me. i happen to be a huge fan of breathing... oh, and in the pursuit of some guy who i cant remeber... we blew the crap out of some building, killing 9 people today, including 2 kids.

tell me.. whats the difference betweed masacring 350 civilians and children oin a school over the course of a couple days and slowly killing a couple civilians and kids here and there over the course of 2 years? i dont see much of a difference.. except in tactics. they had the balls to walk into another country's school and take hostages and shoot them point blank. we launch jets and cruise missles from possibly hundreds of miles away. ok... so we're pussies. otherwise, i see no difference. sure, we claim its in the name of anti terrorism... no wait.. that was afghanistan... why are we in iraq again? i dont remember... anyways, im sure the chechens arent too happy about being owned by russia either, so they can claim that their needless killing is in the name of independence. something our country should be well versed in. i am not in any way condoning what they did. but im just pointing out... kiling is killing. no matter what the reason, it shouldnt have to come to that. and if you have to make war.. leave kids out of it. let them decide for themselves when and where to die. and on whose side of whatever line to stand on. im done with this.

Astronomy Domine

the stars are pretty. there are alot of them. i saw more today then i ever remember seeing. i may have seen more before, but not that i can remember. i just got back from walking the dog. i took her to the surprisingly dark airport, then i drove to a nearbye country road that is NOT lit at all. many stars were seen from there. other than that, my day has been relatively routine. (though i did skip out on philosophy on accident. i was in monday mode, and i completely forgot about it until it was too late. o well. i can only imagine what inteligent conversations i must have missed out on.) work was the usual.

the only actual out-of-the-ordinary thing i did all day was take my truck to the insurance guy to inspect and make an estimate on the damage done to it. he came up with 850 bucks give er take. so, with the 500 dollar deductable, the insuranccompany gets to pay 350 and i get to pay 500. at which point farmers will go after the biker and his insurance company to get our money back. either that or i can sit and wait for this kids parents insurance to make the first move and go ahead and pay for it. its pretty clear from the police report that hes at fault. either way, its getting messy.... god i hate this.

[update] check out "brain damage" for 5 new rounds of everyones favorite game
and also, new pic on "seeing things" [/update]

Mother

man it was hot today. the family minus my brother went down to milbrae today for some street fair thing. I dunno. anyways, from about half way down to SF all the way through till we left the fair about an hour or so ago the ipods been crankin out the tunes. I've been holding breif conversations, often sans one ear bud, but in general I've been musicly entertained all day. and man, it was great.

I was in the truck about half an hour ago waiting for the higher-ups to get some grub for dinner at safeway. suckin on a slurpee and listening to the radio. I caught the tail-end of Pink Floyd's "Mother" and took note of the lyrics. I thought wow, so it isn't just me eh? and then I thought about it. and I realized I know a lot of people with moms like that. Melissa & Arash to name a couple. that song pretty much sums it all up. its too bad also because in alll our cases the mother is clearly the ruler of the house, and its that motherly mentality that can really hinder one's enjoyment. melissa and I definitely feel the burden and want to break away a bit, I'm not sure Arash cares..... yet. I dunno. I'm rambling. just read the lyrics, pay close attention to the third
verse. and if you got it, give it a listen, (speak of the devil.... my mother just randomly walked out of my grandmas house and starts bugging me...) and by the way, if any of you people want (to hear) any of these songs featured on my blog, lemme know and I'll let you have (a listen) to them. ;-) ta ta for now.

~{ 8 new pictures @ "Seeing Things" }~

Is there anybody out there?

A Hard Days Night

it was requested that i go into work early today for a special photoshoot. i was to take some new pics of a property i photographed several months ago. its a farm house on a 105 acre plot surrounded by dairy about half way between Petaulma (where i live) and Bodega Bay (the coast, town where Birds was filmed). the property is off a one lane dirt road which is off a 2 lane road which is off the main hi way between petaluma and bodega bay. anywho, the land is mostly rolling hills covered in (dry) grass. last time i was there i took pics around the house and barn and other building (there is also a small cottage on the property) as well as interior pictures of the house. this time we never stepped in the house, instead we hiked around the property for about an hour looking for vantage points to get a good shot of the buildings from. we got some good shots, as well as some excercise. on top of one of the hills we came across the skull of a cow..... the rest of the bones were strewn about nearbye..... weird. (not when you consider it is dairy land) but still... weird there was also a sping on the property; the telling sign was the grove of eucalyptus trees and greenery in a sea of dried grass and weeds. the weather was nice, beating sun with a warm offshore breeze. it was generally good times. on the way out there, Eric, the real estate agent who is selling the property, and i listened to some velvet revolver. he had heard about them - a band headed by STP front man Scott Weiland and Guns n Roses guitarist Slash. cool band, he seemed to like them...

ANYWAYS. so yeah, we did the hike and shoot thing for a good hour and back to the office, where i had a solid lineup of tasks including 2 banking runs, a trip out to novato, the usual crap and even a trip to the groery store for some sugar (and a sandwich). when it came time to check out, it was 6 hours later. wow. havent worked for that long in a while. work wise, it was a long day, but not too hard. i forgot to email myself some of the pics from the photoshoot, ill have to do that monday, i'll post em over on :seeing things" and i'll post a message reminding you as well. :-P umm.... am i forgetting anything? the weather was awesome today... nice and sunny with an occasional warm breeze.... and when i took the dog for a walk at like 9 pm it was so nice outside. the ground was moist (from watering?) but warm, the air was still and warm and the sky was crystal clear. i lay out in the grass again talking to carinne and staring up at the stars..... good times. i then came home, lay out in the back of my truck for a while, then moved onto my backyard and the hamock. i must have been outside for a good 2 hours in all. its still prolly nice out. holy shyte.... its early. i just realized ive been saying today... when in fact its tomorow. just pretend im NOT writing this at 6AM.... man is my sleeping schedule screwed up. i went to bed early for a change cuz no one was online and nathan was bored and went to bed early as well, but i woke up at like 3:30 for whatever reason, and saw that crystal had left me a message, i responded and rolled over... no expecting her to respond. we've been chatting ever since, she finally just went to bed. lets see if i can get back to bed myself shall we?

Space Cowboy

just random updates...

i have been trying to send Nathan "Space Cowboy" by the Steve Miller Band since the day before yesterday. to no avail. i tried like 8 times over AIM. and once each using MSN and ICQ. still nothing. WTF!?!?? he has been sending me songs from the "Cowboy Bebop" sountrack and in turn i have been sending songs that were referenced by the show. if you have no clue WTF im talking about, look it up or something.

school: meh. i should be doing HW right now, but im not, as you can see. luckily for me, Biologu, Art History and Sociology have yet to actually give HW. wait... i did get that handout from Sociology. damnit.

work: i gotta leave soon to go take shots of this house that ive been to before. its way up on the hill and it has a breath-taking view. ill post pics if i can. see the photoblog. ("seeing things" ->)

life: sucks.

what am i missing? nothing? ok.

oh yeah. where is everyone? everyday its like the same 4 people. hello? anyone out there? anyone want gmail? i got 6 invites to give out..... so..... yeah. anyone?