thanks shereen for visiting me yesterday!
and BIG thanks to david and kat and jake for helping me move out to my new place. (if you want the address, send me an email.) it only took two trips with the band van! woo!
i'm really really tired, but today was a really good day what with the move and everything being finalized. (by the way, kat just asked to see some porn. just thought that was somewhat momentous in our, uh,
experiences together.
anywho. go bears! beat the
moving! unpacking!
sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
it feels good to feel like you're here for a purpose when you hang out with the right people.
no, i didn't just get converted, but i did sleep on a bed again last night. first time in a week and a half, and my back was rejoicing this morning when i woke up and had a mattress behind me and pillows and a stuffed doggie.
breakfast at noon was also a wonderful invention. eggs benedict, albeit the least healthiest combination of cholesterol, starch, and things that don't burn off as quickly and clog up your arteries real fast, is a divine dish. the ham, the hollandaise sauce, and the muffin. but it's the runny egg that gets me every time. so good.
i feel like this is going to be such a busy weekend, since i'll be heading another student orientation, playing for gavin newsom (woo!) and nancy reagan (woo!) -- which i guess will make up for my not getting to meet bill clinton this tuesday -- along with the move, the lease ending, and of course, packing all my shit up. (i mean, how cool would it be to get myself in a picture with a former first lady, and with the mayor who said same-sex marriage is the best thing ever to come out of san francisco?)
back to bill clinton: he'll be visiting the san francisco bay area starting on monday, when he'll be in the city for a while, then on tuesday he'll head over to berkeley (cody's! which is a block away from my house!) to sign more books, and on wednesday i believe he'll be in san jose. it will be ridiculously packed with people come the weekend, too, since pride is happening this saturday.
for those of you who don't know, pride would be the san francisco gay pride parade. from 12-6 on saturday and 12-7 on sunday, all of san francisco will be celebrating freedom in sexual orientation. (not to mention all the floats this year concerning themselves with the same sex marriage issue -- can we say swing issue for a voting year?) the news have been running bits and clips and montages almost on overkill now for the past week or so. can you imagine watching the news at seven in the morning only to find men in bikinis and feathers jangling their packages in front of a camera? basically, that's what i've been waking up to for a good part of the past week. the anchors seem to enjoy it a lot, though.
speaking of voting, i'll be watching the highly anticipated and well-touted
fahrenheit 9/11 by michael moore this evening. i hear there's disturbing iraq images, even a rare dead baby, but i'll review it come tomorrow since, well, i figure that's what i'll do tomorrow after i sign the lease. in any case, i'm excited to see what all the hype and buzz is all about, and if it really is the "outraged patriotism" the
new york times said it is.
jay "my big little brother" is here at berkeley visiting the campus and touring and such. he took a tour today with paul (whom kaeli says is HOT), and this afternoon i showed him around and took him up to the campanile. tomorrow they're heading to the farm, and maybe even hit up cal poly slo and ucsc. tonight, though, they will get to experience the gourmet ghetto. afterwards, jay will be smothered by berkeley friends of mine, as we head on over to gelato and movies, and maybe even a milvia house party.
on other fronts, work's been going great. i've met a lot of the tourguides who are on summer duty, and most of them seem pretty chill. i finished my last shadow on wednesday, and the only thing i have left to do is schedule my one-on-one with jason and then i'm home free.
also, i'll be living in a studio on addison and milvia next year, two blocks away from mondo gelato and the bart station (ie downtown berkeley). i think i'll coerce my brother to help me move and pick up stuff from ikea, since he'll be moving too. (if you didn't know, he'll be doing research at stanfurd, so he'll be living in palo alto.)
mm. the grumblings of my stomach signal the coming of dinner time. i'll see y'all soon.
ka-CHA!
holy shit, it's been a loooooong time.
i've been back in berkeley for over two weeks now, and every chance coming gets crazier and crazier as the days seem to get more and more mundane. it's actually a bit of a relief seeing everything happening for once, and not worrying over summer school (since i'm not taking any classes). i did get the tour guide job i wanted, and so far i've been shadowing people left and right to get a feel for what i should eventually be doing.
i never learned so much about the school i go to, and the facts and statistics are all mind-boggling. it's pretty cool to find out really random facts about a university -- let alone berkeley -- and the more tours i shadow, the more absurd the facts seem, yet so credibly pertinent. (plus, it's cool to get paid to walk around and spout off about something you love, so it's a win-win situation, i guess.)
everything else is going fine. the reason i haven't been writing in this damn thing is that i don't have internet at my apartment anymore, so i have to go on campus and look at stuff when i work, or god forbid visit someone else's house since i'm so ghetto like that. (mind you i don't even have a bed anymore at my apartment, so i've been sleeping on a blanket, three pillows and a comforter on hardwood floor every night for about a week now.) yeah, i guess you could say everything's going fine, since i'm only moderately going crazy.
it actually is a bit challenging living by yourself, as so cruelly demonstrated by my current living situation, and things have only been getting weirder. i get really random bouts of that aforementioned clinical depression -- which is good that i realize it, i guess, but still, realziing something that makes you horribly sad is another thing -- and so sometimes i just really do want to just curl up in the corner with my blanket and fall asleep, but i can't since i can't even motivate myself to close my eyes and start dreaming.
i've been watching movies a lot lately to take my mind off of things, which is also good. i've rediscovered matt damon (
good will hunting,
the bourne identity, and even
the talented mr. ripley), applauded michael moore again for
bowling for columbine, laughed and cried with seasons one and two of bbc's
the office, and found out over and over again who keyser soze is (
the usual suspects, for those of you who didn't know). it's nice to escape once in a while.
but when the movie's over, it's tough to fathom that i still have to do my stuff here at berkeley, to continue on however boring my day was. despite the lack of things to do, i found myself ridiculously busy because i've made myself decidedly so.
i haven't hung out with anyone, really, since i've acted so busily recently. rest assured, i'm going to need a break really soon --
really, really, really soon -- so you'll hear from me yet.
it's been a good sort of summer so far, despite the june gloom settling over the bay area (on the first day of summer, it was actually only about seventy degrees in the east bay). i've been content. but things can definitely get better, and i really hope that they do.
sigh. go bears? give me a call, we'll hang out.
and oh yeah. it's my cousin's birthday today.
happy birthday, walter.
woo.
ok, i don't know what the hell is going on, but i think my entire neighborhood decided to barbecue today, because every time the wind blows, we smell charred meat.
so, yeah, how's about that ronald reagan, huh?
the news aren't even trying to get us over it. it seemed like every hour on the hour yesterday, it was some commentary on ronald reagan's presidency. nbc and abc and cbs all ran talk shows with significant people from the reagan administration. which makes me wonder: if they can scrounge up that much stuff within the span of a few hours, toss it in a computer and make it look pretty, how come they don't do that every fucking time?
and don't get me started on those clips i've seen over and over again: "the gipper" and more notoriously, "mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall."
honestly, i don't remember much of the reagan campaign since i wasn't an american then. i was in the philippines, recoiling from one of the most successful nonviolent oustings of dictatorship into economic distress.
i can't wait until tomorrow, really, because i'll be spending a wonderful morning at the beach. it should prove to be one of the better memories i'll make down here at southern california.
i'm all packed and ready. tuesday can't come sooner.
i'll miss my geode.
i've been having way too much fun with the
digital camera, and it shows.
news? i'll be in berkeley on tuesday.
goings-on? not much.
sunday looks like busy, and monday morning sounds like a plan. i haven't been to the beach in a long time, and it would be a nice capstone to this southern california trip.
monday evening, i pack. and i have to get up ass early since my flight out leaves at eight thirty or some shit like that.
i'm currently working on a redesign for my personal site. hopefully i'll get inspired this summer. i need to.
sigh. i miss the bay area.
GUESS WHO'S GOING TO BE A TOUR GUIDE!!!
i have enough reason to believe that women were given a handbook on how to swing between moods because my mother does it so well.
i also have enough reason to believe that doctors gave parents manuals on how to give their children guilt trips.
in the past ten minutes, i was scolded, given a lecture on not taking things for granted, was told many jokes, and see my mother act as if the past ten miuntes didn't even happen.
this is why i will never understand women.
this is also why i have to think twice about having kids.
i feel guilty. and confused.
um. yup.
disneyland was awesome. thanks to everyone who came.
we all gathered at my house (save for kat) and went on over to the happiest place on earth. the people in my car got to experience the mariachi bumping, but the van didn't have hydraulics it was still a pretty good experience.
my driving was so shoddy yesterday.
we got to the park, and all the berkelyans met a couple of the canyonites. then we ripped through the park like we fucking owned the place. big thunder, star tours, pirates, haunted mansion, jungle cruise, matterhorn, indy, canoeing (!!), pooh, and hell, even great moments with mr. lincoln. small world was particularly fun when we started to all lean to the right, and we almost took in water.
somewhere in there, we held the turkey leg challenge (finish a turkey leg within five minutes), but no one finished theirs in five, so we had it going until we all basically finished our giant salt-and-grease poultry sticks. chappy won the most. and ten minutes later, we headed to teacups.
the trip was punctuated by off-color pictures (like walt's, uh, dong) and really off-color pictures (triton's statue and perspective shots? OH YEAH), as well as random outbursts of tunnel and big c (especially canoeing!). we even found ourselves all singing along to ben folds songs while waiting in line.
we even got to watch a part of miss universe last night. lots of fun.
after disneyland, i headed on over to a wonderful place known as inebriation, where a handful of kids and i stayed up until around four in the morning doing random shiz. man, i'll miss those kids. until of course, session c comes along.
berkeley in one week. can't contain myself.
