Get Back

weekend = officially over. went down saturday for my yearly visit to the San Francisco Internationl Auto Show. unfortunatley i got there like an hour and a half after ken and arash did. as soon as i got there i realized i forgot the battery for my camera. which means i was gonna have to walk around with a useless bulge in my pocket (yep... thats what i said). anyways, i met them by the honda wing , didnt even bother to go in as it appeared at a quick glance they had nothing special (as it turns out, when i walked by later, i saw that they in fact had their "Ridgeline" pick-up truck on display. oh well. we moved on and breezed through the GM exhibit )which was almost half the damn show) but concentrated mostly on the classic Corvette exhibit. we also spent some time in BMW criticizing the new styling direction.... which is, to say the least, contraversial. some of it i like, some of it i dont. but i think if you took some design elemnts from all their cars.. you would be able to make one really nice looking car... the problem is that they have those few good styling cues scattered through a lineup of at least not so great models. o well. we also spent some time gawking at the more affordable BMW branch: MINI. i wouldnt mind one of those. anyways, we eventually moved onto the rest of the show and walked through the other major brands. i tried to stop off in the dodge/chrysler section for longer than normal... given my liking for the brands. they had a few Magnums on Display, as well as a couple 300Cs... both really sweet rides. i also got to it in the new dakota. its about the same size as mine, interior wise. the interior itself is nicer looking, though it has fewer gauges. also, there still isnt a hemi in it. which sucks. o well. the rest of the show was more of the usual. nothing spectacular. unfortunately, since i got there so late, i only sat in the drivers seat of one vehicle: the dakota.

anyways, after the show we grabbed a burger at a nearbye burger place, then went to arash's for some file swapping. i gave both arash and ken my library of music, while, in the process, i managed to delete Coldplay, Offspring, Foo Fighters and the Beatles' Rubber Soul album, all of which i had just acquired thursday from Chrisee.... damnit! o well. maybe if i give her Velvet Revolver she will let me rip them again. anyways, after that we just did some random stuff after which i headed to nathan's (grandma's?) house. i dunno. all i know is that its a little roomier than his bedroom. for more on that, you can read all about it here or here. whichever.

i got home late last night with a headache. so i went to sleep. i should have stayed there.

Politik

so.... thanksgiving. turkey. mashed potatoes. cranberry sauce. stuffing..... of faces. but i didnt.. i restraianed myself. didnt go back for seconds. and i think im better off for it. i dunno. just didnt feel like eating myself into a coma. and luckily for my, since this was all taking place at mu uncles house, we dont have an endless supply of turkey-related leftovers. so.. all-in-all... it was a descent holiday. nothing like celebrating what was the beautiful begining to ana ugly and bloody relationship between Natives and White people. i know for a fact that i now liveon what was once Indian land.... especially since most of the names (like Petaluma) are all native ameican names. not to mention all the historical evidence we have of white people of some sort soming in and taking over in some way shape or form. and there was the disease. and there i went. off on an angry rant about our country... which, in a word, sucks.

ugh. i dunno where the hell i was going with this. i guess i just sorta started to drift off in a thought while i was typing and so dictated my thought process. whatever. today was boring as all hell. i drove people around to some stores... though none that i wanted to go to... so i dunno why i even went. i guess sometimes i just wanna get out of the house.. no matter where the destination. and then i went to work. which was weird. if ever there was a bad day to look at houses this was it. lost of people visiting family and looking for houses in the area.... and lots of real estate agents not in the office. we always have one agent in the office to handle calls and walk ins. today we had 2 serious calls and 3 walk ins. which..... is alot. (im sure we got countless more calls... but 2 were possible clients) in fact.. the second walk in decided to go out and see some properties.. .takaing the floor agent with them... and so when the 3rd walk in came in.... there wasnt a floor agent to help them. luckily thee was ONE other agent who HAPPENED to be in the office. i dunno what happened after that. i only worked for about an hour and a half. not a whole helluva lot to do for me.

anyways. tomorow we head into the city. me and my bro are gonna hit the car show with ken and arash and whoever else wants to go. my sister and dad are gonna go catch a flick. and, hopefully, i will be able to stay the night down there and hang out wwith nathan and crystal and whoever else. i really have no idea whats going on. nor do i care. i just wanna get my every-other-weekly visit in. we'll see how this goes.

Doctor Robert

this weekend litterally nothing happened. the excitement was going to borders saturday and buying nothing, and then going to target after finding out my mom would have paid me 25 bucks or so to buy stuff. luckily they had what i was inetersted in at target. so i got a couple CDs. i was thinking of linking to one as my title but one seem to be all that apropriate. so.. the beatles it is.

quiz i came across on someones blog. apparently once administered by Dr. Phil to oprah. the key is at the end. i'll post what the results mean in the comments later. good luck. i'll say that the results were pretty accurate.


1. When do you feel your best?

a) in the morning

b) during the afternoon & and early evening

c) late at night

2. You usually walk...

a) fairly fast, with long steps

b) fairly fast, with little steps

c) less fast head up, looking the world in the face

d) less fast, head down

e) very slowly

3. When talking to people you...

a) stand with your arms folded

b) have your hands clasped

c) have one or both your hands on your hips

d) touch or push the person to whom you are talking

e) play with your ear, touch your chin, or smooth your hair

4. When relaxing, you sit with...

a) your knees bent with your legs neatly side by side

b) your legs crossed

c) your legs stretched out or straight

d) one leg curled under you

5. When something really amuses you, you react with...

a) a big, appreciative laugh

b) a laugh, but not a loud one

c) a quiet chuckle

d) a sheepish smile

6. When you go to a party or social gathering you...

a) make a loud entrance so everyone notices you

b) make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know

c) make the quietest entrance, trying to stay unnoticed

7. You're working very hard, concentrating hard, and you're interrupted, do you...

a) welcome the break

b) feel extremely irritated

c) vary between these two extremes

8. Which of the following colors do you like most?

a) Red or orange

b) black

c) yellow or light blue

d) green

e) dark blue or purple

f) white

g) brown or gray

9. When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before going to sleep, you lie...

a) stretched out on your back

b) stretched out face down on your stomach

c) on your side, slightly curled

d) with your head on one arm

e) with your head under the covers

10. You often dream that you are...

a) falling

b) fighting or struggling

c) searching for something or somebody

d) flying or floating

e) you usually have dreamless sleep

f) your dreams are always pleasant

POINTS:

1. (a) 2 (b) 4 (c) 6

2. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 7 (d) 2 (e) 1

3. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 5 (d) 7 (e) 6

4. (a) 4 (b) 6 (c) 2 (d) 1

5. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 2

6. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 2

7. (a) 6 (b) 2 (c) 4

8. (a) 6 (b) 7 (c) 5 (d) 4 (e) 3 (f) 2 (g) 1

9. (a) 7 (b) 6 (c) 4 (d) 2 (e) 1

10. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 6 (f) 1

Now add up the total number of points...

Soul Sacrifice

umm.... not a whole lot new to report. just more of the usual work/school junk. i finally, at long last, wrote that damn essay for Sociology. and in doing so realized the magic that is Starbucks. yeah yeah yeah. i know.... supporting huge Seatle based corporation....... BUT! a sorta-friend works there. and i must say, the atmosphere is NICE. the main area is like any other starbucks.... with round tables and the couter and the shelf of stuff and of course coffee all over the place... but then there is a seperate room about half the size of the main area with 2 big comfy chairs, a coffee table thing, more tables and chairs and a big fireplace at the far side in front of the comfy chairs. while i have yet to try out the comfy chairs, i have rather enjoyed the last 2 days during which ive sat in that side room and worked on my essay. wait.. what? did i just say i enjoyed writing an essay??? well.. under the circumstances..... of all the ways to write an essay.. this was by far the most enjoyable. all i did was buy a beverage, sit down for an hour or so and start rambling on about whatever. i pumped out 4/5 of my essay this morning in an hour's time. and it only cost me 3 dollars. i may do this more often now.... i wish deaf dog had such a place suited for study.. but that room is just soooo warm and cozy.

aaaaaanyways, in other news, i had my soc class today. the topic today was dealing with family crisis. begining with dealing with loss. such as loss of home from natural disaster, loss of employment or loss of a loved one. this would have been real helpful a few days ago since on monday melissa told me that he grandfather died. she talked to me a little about it. i havent had to deal with a death in my family since my grandpa died years ago.... i was much younger and i wasnt particularly close to him. so.. i really didnt know what to say. however, i really didnt get a whole lot from todays class on the subject anyway so... i guess it doesnt matter. what we mostly focused on, for some reason, was dealing with infidelity. and of course we got to watch more Dr. Phil and him dealing with stupid people. good times. before that we watched a video about a kid with ODD Oppositional Defiance Dissorder..... means he doesnt listen to anyone and fights tooth and nail to have his way. the solution was basically to give him what he wanted by making deals with him. so like if he wants pizza for dinner... his parents basically HAD to get pizza and then tell him that since he was getting pizza he had to read a certain amount of pages in his book. and if it was bed time... they would let him spend a few more minutes on the computer and then he would agree to go off to bed. it may seem like giving in.. but compared to dealing with a screaming, cursing, kicking, punching 6 year old for 5 hours just to get him to go to bed... 5 more minutes on the computer is a small price to pay.

im really all out of stuff to talk about. i wasnt sure how this was gonna tie into my song selection for this evening.. but i just realized it works out quite nicely... and its a great song. but no lyrics, so dont click. instead go listen to it. right click, save target. or click and wait for it to play on yor default media player. your choice. hmm.. maybe i should change all the title links to links to DL the song instead of lyrics...... hmm....

Light My Fire

my mom informed me a couple days ago about how she was planning on heading down to SF to visit my grandma who had some sort of surgery thursday.i guess she took the day off and was planning on spending all of friday down there doing i dunno what, the plan was for her to take my bro and sis for the day and i would basically have the day and evening to myself. but of course, things changed and my brother was invited to a LAN arty, and my mom decided not to take him down. so.. .suddenly i had only the evening to myself.... so i made an executive decision, packed up all my laptop gear and stuff and took off to roam Petaluma. at first i was in search of free internet.. butwhen i realized that i cant even connect to my own freakin wireless network.... i had little hope of connecting to a random one.

i eventually decided to find a nice vantage point and settle in to write up that soc paper thats been looming over my head. but just as i started to think about it, and i started talking to a friend about the topic... who should sign on for the second time this week? but ene. RENE? yes..... rene. she wanted to know what i was doing tonight. just my luck. NOTHING. yay! so we quickly made some half-baked plan to go see the incredibles..... except it was anything but quick. its sort of hard for her to stay on topic and our conversation, as a result, was pretty scattered. but we eventually came to the conclusion that she would (maybe bring johnny) and meet me in mill valley and from there we would make our way to a theater of some sort. but, as it turned out, she was way ahead and i was way behind and we ended up converging upon novato instead. where there is a theater. and a restaurant.

so we ate at the restaurant, Moylans... and micro brew/sports bar/restaurant that i went to last year for my birthday..... i think. and the theater was conveniently across the street. this was the same theater at which i saw "sharks tale"... and just as it was when i saw sharks tale, it was frightningly abandoned. we got there about 30 minutes early and waited (alone) out in the lobby. we then went into the theater and sat alone for another 10-15 minutes before other human life decided to join us. i dunno wtf is wrong with that theater.... but there is never anyone there anymore.... its creepy. so yeah.. i think today was the last of my birthday dinners. ive had i think 5 now. and i only had to pay for one of them.... lacey treated me to Baker's Square last friday. i had a chicken ceasar Pita. on the tuesday before, melissa and i studied at Carows and she bought my dinner after realizing she missed my borthday. my family all went out to eat on the day of. and of course on saturday was the big dinner/movie thing with friends. which brings me to today when rene made up for missing the afore mentioned dinner and movie.

one of the things i wanted to do most for my birthday was to spend quality time with my friends... and i think ive achieved that goal pretty well. thanks everyone, again.

anyways, about tonight, rene and i saw the incredibles. yes, i saw it last weekend, but she still hadnt and its still prolly the best movie going.... for those of you who dont knwo her... .theres a pic in the moblog. anyways, after the movie we left the theater and, as if on cue, it began to rain. so we ran to her car and discussed what we were gonna do next. we eventually came to the conclusion that we would do nothing more. so we sat there for a good half our or so just talking about random (and i mean RANDOM) crap. it was awesome fun... but i had to let her go as she had an almost one hour drive ahead of her and she was tired and sick. anyways, i better wrap this up before it gets out of hand.... so... the end

Dancing Days

where shall i begin?

lets go ahead and skip the part where i spent all of saturday morning stripping the van of everything of value that i wanted to keep (like the radio, speakers and hi performance air filter) and cut right to the part with me driving away with my sights set on The City. i was a little saddened by the fact that i was making the trip alone... but i got over it. first stop was Nathan's house for some casual hanging out. he and Ken were engaged in a rousing game of MVP 2004 which i sat in on. Ken won. after that was a bunch of rounds of mariokart for all four of us to play (Crystal was there too). anyways, after a bunch of that we movd on to Super Smash Brothers (Crystal sat out on that) and we played that for a while before deciding to head to Fudrucker's for some grub.

Luckily for us we got there early because the line of people was 3/4 of the way to the door. Arash was supposed to meet us there at the restaurant but he (and his brother??) were running late. which was good cuz i hadnt bought a ticket for a brother (he wasnt technically invited and Arash technically didnt ask if he could come) but i had no problem with him being there.... we just had to get him a ticket. so ken went and did that while nathan and i stood in line and Crystal reserved tables. all went relatively smoothly once the four of us had sat down to eat and Arash and Ashkan had arrived and been informed of the concept of standing in line..... and then Nathan had some "milk shake" (see moblog) and Crystal went to join Nathan's sister who was already waiting in line (this was almost an hour prior to the movies scheduled start.. and already there was quite a line.)

oh yeah, we were going to see the Incredibles. for more on that, see either Ken, Nathan or Crystal's blog, should they choose to write about the film; or stay tuned to mine if they choose not to. anyways, after Arash and Ashkan polished off their salads we decided to join the rest of the group in line at the theater. and my god was there a long line. luckily we a fairly descent spot in said line. we stood out in the hall for a good 20-30 minutes just talking about whatever.... explaining binary and the like. we finally got into the (air conditioned) theater and got fairly descent seats (pretty much an entire row for what i think was a party of 11). the movie was excellent. after it was over i checked my phone to find that i had a voice mail. it was rene. she called sometime during the course of the movie and left me a message saying that she couldnt make it to do anything after the movie becasue she had to be home early for some reason. DAMNIT. i was pretty bummed about that. so anyways we left and set out for Nathans house for a bit of after movie goodness.

little did i know that i had been ninja'd. Ken decided to go with Arash and his brother to Nathans house while Nathan and Crystal went with me. we parked in the same area on nathans street and walked down together to his house. Ken got a phone call just as we reached the house. i thought nothing of it. we all began settling in when Ken came up the stairs announcing the "call girl," as he put it. as it turns out, it was Rene. the bitch lied to me! very clever, i must admit. since that voice mail was pretty much the deciding factor in going back to nathans house for a while, since i had actually planned to meet with her elsewhere so that she didnt have to drive all the way to Nathan's. that was pretty special since she and I had already gone through about 5-6 changes in plan involving whether or not she could make it or not. but they had something more special planned: a cake. sorta.... it was a cookie. a giant pizza sized cookie. a giant pizza sized chocolate chip cookie that read "Happy 10100th Birthday Thomas." how awesome is that? i dont like cake, so they got me a cake sized cookie. and had my age written out in binary. (i happened to be wearing my binary tshirt that day, which is what got Arash started in explaining the finer points of the binary system to his brother outside the theater. how perfect was that!?!?)

anyways, after several hours of sitting around nathan's dining room reminiscing about all kinds of good times (and i mean ALL KINDS.... dont ask) i cant even comprehend how we got onto certain subjects.... and that was all under the influence of Milk and Cookies. and no, thats not a euphamism... we were literally just guiddy with milk and cookies. at that point i was somewhat glad Melissa decided not to join us, as she would have forced me to miss out on alot of random insanity, not to mention we were disturbing the hell out of Arash and Rene... and they know you people... imagine what you people would have done to an innocent stranger!!!!.... we were finally kicked out by nathan's mom around 12:45. hehehe... woops, sorry bout that man.... but thems were some good times right there... so that was about the time that we (Ken, Arash, Ashkan, Rene and I) departed to go off on our seperate ways to go home. parting was such sweet sorrow. (Nathan, you missed Ken driving halfway up your street with Arash on the hood of his car.... wow.) the only time i really missed having Melissa there was the trip back home... i could have really used someone to keep me company on that long, dark, lonely, quiet trip back to Petaluma.

anyways, time to wrap up this novel with some than-yous. first, thanks to Nathan for hosting this whole thing. he pretty much orchestrated the whole thing, from what i understand, per his request. he likes to be in charge. just ask ken. also, thanks to crystal for getting me the awesome cake...err....cookie. thanks to Rene (eventhough she will NEVER read this) for lying to me about getting together.... you really made me sad.... but it was that much more awesome when you showed up anyways. thanks to Arash for explaining binary to your brother so he understood the cake. thanks to Ashkan for.... understanding you brother's complicated teaching technique (neither of them will prolly ever read this either...). thanks ken for being.... Ken and finding some way to take every subject that ever came up and twisting it in such a way that only you can to make it sick and disturbing. and hell, i'll even thank Melissa for skipping out and making those priceless hours of random insanity possible, cuz frankly, she doesnt read this thing either!!! oh and.... while i'm at it i'll go ahead and thank carinne for helping me come up with the phrase "skipped out" which evaded me so. dunno if she reads this anymore.... did i gorget anything? *head explodes*

Ohio

bet you think im going political with that title.... but it is just a coincedence that i have that song and that be a deciding state, i really dont care all that much, i have more iportant things to worry about. like biology. so this will be the last mention of politics in this post as i would rather not get into it... if you do, go check out kens blog.. hes sure to get political. ok that was the last one. i promise.

anyways... this whole daylight savings thing sucks. i didnt really notice it on sunday since it was a weekend and i wasnt paying much attention to the time, but yesterday i was filling in as resceptionist at work during the afternoon. so i got to sit there and watch the daylight slip away minute by minute. when i left work at about 6 it was already pretty dark. its kinda depressing and kinda cozy at the same time... its hard to explain.. but it feels holiday like.... reminds me of thanksgiving and christmas and all.... warm fuzzy feelings. but i miss driving home while the sun sets.

anyways, today was a normal day of work. did some banking, picked up some sign stuff, took some pics. i also helped my boss to a few random things nextdoor at our new building. nothing special. just as i was about to leae rene called me. she cant make it for the movie or dinner. since shes working till late. kinda sad about that. but she promised we could get together some other time.. on a friday when shes off. we'll see. but it was nice to just have one of those random conversations about nothng in particular. good times. after that i got a call from melissa.... sicne we have a bio test tomorow, i thought we should study again. this time we went to carrows since its closer to our houses. it went... ok. this is a rough section. no spontaneus conversations regarding beliefs or anything like that. o well. she also mentioned that she didnt really want to go this weekend. since she doesnt know any of you people (you people being the people who ARE going and are reading this) and that it would be weird since i am the only one she knows. i was kind of afraid of that... i dunno. we'll see.

i really have no idea how i am going to tie this all into my song selection for the evening, as the song is pretty heavy and deals with the Kent State incedent.... for those of you unfamiliar, go look it up. interesting chapter in our colorful history. give it a listen, its a good song. good night.