"She doesn't have enough ... excess courage." "You mean she needs to yell louder?" "Yeah"
After a week of adventure in the lands of LA and San Diego, I'm back just in time for turkey. This was my third trip to SD since may, but I needed to go because after tuesday I will have three weeks vacation per year with my new job. The last hurrah in a sense.
At this point most of my SD friends have graduated and have either gone on to become working stiffs, gone to graduate school, or at least attempted some combination of the two. All of the girls have run away to LA while all of the the guys have stuck around SD (or have come up to the bay area but, needless to say, I wasn't visiting them). The LA portion of the trip was a dense packing of visits, 4 beautiful girls in two days; it would have been five girls but coordinating commuting was a little too complicated. Karen picked me up at the airport, we went out to lunch, and then checked out her house before she had to dump me off before her work. I then road the rails down to Long Beach to see Dana. The plan was for me to come back from long beach that night and stay at my aunt and uncle's in hollywood, but plans changed such that I'd crash at Dana's that night so we could hang out more. Little did I know she snores like a backfiring chainsaw, but I still love her.
The following day I arrived at my aunt's, some funky little film was being made across the street, and slept until almost 2pm, catching up on the sleep I'd missed the night before. My uncle, discovering I was in the house, seized the opportunity to draft me as a hiking buddy. We hiked up past the observatory and the HOLLYWOOD sign to what I'm sure would have been an indescribable view before the invention of smog. That evening I met up with 'Bel and Steph for dinner. We had had dreams of going to some nice place Bel knows in Van Nuys, but they'd already driven from UCLA to Hollywood and were about to explode. We ended up at an "Original Tommy's", which, ironically enough, was not the Original Tommy's, because that is several miles away from where we were. Tommy's claim to fame is taking perfectly benign fast food and dumping copious amounts of spicy chili on top. Chili burgers, chili dogs, chili fries, and of course chili, are the most popular items on the 4 item menu. This was deemed satisfactory, amazingly enough, and so we dug in, having fun pointing at the dudes three tables over hastily chowing down with their filming equipment in hand.
The begining of my trip to SD was fairly exciting. I went to an Eijitsu (I'd be shocked if I spelled that right) competition. 6 hours of many muscular guys, and one muscular woman, brutally slashing apart defenseless straw mats. My favorite part of the competition was watching how people demonstrated their "excess courage". The idea in any event was for the competitor to build up all of his energy, release it through some very precise sword cutting movement, and then release the "excess courage". I quickly learned that this meant yelling ... very loudly. They had all converged on specific yells that came in a particular sequence. I managed to make Mark have a fit of giggles as I added comments to peoples' demonstrations, treating the yells as responses. "Hey dude?" "AAAYYYYY????" "Want a beer?" "YAAAAAAAA!!!" That day ended with a fantastic night of dancing with the dance club where I got to see a whole lot of my friends that I thought would have all moved away.
Another event in the week was the meeting of many of the nerds of Dan's website. We hit a near-critical mass of shear dorkitude as we met at the glorious Summit cafeteria in order to accomodate fellow nerds working there. We discussed such topics as belch machines, undergrad TA-ships, band competitions, puppets, cheesy independent films and our associations with them, and robots designed to hit people in the crotch. These debates frequently drew furtive glances from people at neighboring tables which were returned with smiles and nods. Good times were had by all.
The rest of my week consisted of extended trips to the beach, visits around campus, and visits with my old roomates, except Peter because he's up here. I'm happy to say that the working world has not made Dan or Brian any more normal than they ever were. Weirdness is still a well-honed skill at their house as it was at the apartment, though filth has not overtaken the house to the point of becoming an elaborate interior decorating style as it did in our apartment ... yet. There is some possibility that my job will give me the opportunity for business trips to La Jolla, so I'll be keeping tabs on their progress.
I move in to my new apartment this weekend and start work on tuesday. I am very excited, nervous, and generally distracted by the thought of it. I'll have news about it soon.
At this point most of my SD friends have graduated and have either gone on to become working stiffs, gone to graduate school, or at least attempted some combination of the two. All of the girls have run away to LA while all of the the guys have stuck around SD (or have come up to the bay area but, needless to say, I wasn't visiting them). The LA portion of the trip was a dense packing of visits, 4 beautiful girls in two days; it would have been five girls but coordinating commuting was a little too complicated. Karen picked me up at the airport, we went out to lunch, and then checked out her house before she had to dump me off before her work. I then road the rails down to Long Beach to see Dana. The plan was for me to come back from long beach that night and stay at my aunt and uncle's in hollywood, but plans changed such that I'd crash at Dana's that night so we could hang out more. Little did I know she snores like a backfiring chainsaw, but I still love her.
The following day I arrived at my aunt's, some funky little film was being made across the street, and slept until almost 2pm, catching up on the sleep I'd missed the night before. My uncle, discovering I was in the house, seized the opportunity to draft me as a hiking buddy. We hiked up past the observatory and the HOLLYWOOD sign to what I'm sure would have been an indescribable view before the invention of smog. That evening I met up with 'Bel and Steph for dinner. We had had dreams of going to some nice place Bel knows in Van Nuys, but they'd already driven from UCLA to Hollywood and were about to explode. We ended up at an "Original Tommy's", which, ironically enough, was not the Original Tommy's, because that is several miles away from where we were. Tommy's claim to fame is taking perfectly benign fast food and dumping copious amounts of spicy chili on top. Chili burgers, chili dogs, chili fries, and of course chili, are the most popular items on the 4 item menu. This was deemed satisfactory, amazingly enough, and so we dug in, having fun pointing at the dudes three tables over hastily chowing down with their filming equipment in hand.
The begining of my trip to SD was fairly exciting. I went to an Eijitsu (I'd be shocked if I spelled that right) competition. 6 hours of many muscular guys, and one muscular woman, brutally slashing apart defenseless straw mats. My favorite part of the competition was watching how people demonstrated their "excess courage". The idea in any event was for the competitor to build up all of his energy, release it through some very precise sword cutting movement, and then release the "excess courage". I quickly learned that this meant yelling ... very loudly. They had all converged on specific yells that came in a particular sequence. I managed to make Mark have a fit of giggles as I added comments to peoples' demonstrations, treating the yells as responses. "Hey dude?" "AAAYYYYY????" "Want a beer?" "YAAAAAAAA!!!" That day ended with a fantastic night of dancing with the dance club where I got to see a whole lot of my friends that I thought would have all moved away.
Another event in the week was the meeting of many of the nerds of Dan's website. We hit a near-critical mass of shear dorkitude as we met at the glorious Summit cafeteria in order to accomodate fellow nerds working there. We discussed such topics as belch machines, undergrad TA-ships, band competitions, puppets, cheesy independent films and our associations with them, and robots designed to hit people in the crotch. These debates frequently drew furtive glances from people at neighboring tables which were returned with smiles and nods. Good times were had by all.
The rest of my week consisted of extended trips to the beach, visits around campus, and visits with my old roomates, except Peter because he's up here. I'm happy to say that the working world has not made Dan or Brian any more normal than they ever were. Weirdness is still a well-honed skill at their house as it was at the apartment, though filth has not overtaken the house to the point of becoming an elaborate interior decorating style as it did in our apartment ... yet. There is some possibility that my job will give me the opportunity for business trips to La Jolla, so I'll be keeping tabs on their progress.
I move in to my new apartment this weekend and start work on tuesday. I am very excited, nervous, and generally distracted by the thought of it. I'll have news about it soon.