Poor Places

Damn, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I hate it when I let things slide.

Let’s see… Fri­day… Went to work. Like how all my sto­ries seem to start nowa­days. Took off early so I could make it to Grilling. I was so psy­ched because I didn’t even need to cram as much as I thought I would have to. A cou­ple glances at the study sheet and it all came back to me. The only part of the writ­ten exam that wor­ried me was nam­ing 80% of the pledge class. Not that I thought I couldn’t do it. But I was afraid I couldn’t do it fast enough. After all, Angela CC and I had said that we would fin­ish first with 100%. Didn’t want to get bogged down by an easy but tedious ques­tion, so I drilled myself on that one con­stantly through­out the day and at Well­man before Grilling. Was feel­ing pretty con­fi­dent, only to find out that there weren’t enough copies for all the actives who wanted to retake the test to actu­ally do it. Angela and I ran around cam­pus try­ing to find an open com­puter lab to print out more, but alas, they all close at 6 PM on Fri­days. Weird, huh? We got back and found out that they had already started Grilling with­out us, too! That really sucked, because I wanted to see if I could really deliver on my promises. Oh well. Went on food runs with Sophia and Peggy instead.

Quote comes from later that night:

“What does the Rit­ual Chair do?”- Thuong T.
“Um… all the impor­tant stuff.”- A pledge.

That night took a lot longer than I thought it would. I won­der if any of them ever go smoothly. Any­ways, deliv­ered my LB’s bid for acti­va­tion, went to Jackie’s to work on some fam­ily stuff, then back home to work on some other stuff. Then I passed out for a good four hours!

Sat­ur­day, I cov­ered already.

Sun­day… woke up pretty damn early… like 8:30ish. Weird, con­sid­er­ing the con­di­tions to went to sleep. Dong Ha IMed me and reminded me that the fam­ily and my vis­it­ing aunt were going to drop by Davis for Fuji’s. Crap. Did ran­dom stuff on my com­puter until Peggy S woke up. Or actu­ally, came online, since she appar­ently woke up hella early, too. Dropped by her place and picked her up with her own car, then had her drop me off at Fuji’s. Didn’t eat TOO much there, but got a decent value for my par­ents’ buck. Turns out while they were wait­ing in line, they actu­ally bought a futon from the Japan­ese fur­ni­ture store on the cor­ner for the new house in Ari­zona. Wow… it feels like I only have a cou­ple months left with them, and then I’ll never see them again.

Sunday’s quote is from lunch with the family:

“Anh Hai, want to play Di Phuong’s favorite game? It’s called ‘Guess if Per­son X is a guy or girl’ !”- Dong Ha and Gio Linh.

… my fam­ily is so weird. They actu­ally did that with a bunch of peo­ple in the restau­rant, argu­ing about clothes, acces­sories, hair­styles, stance, size of Adam’s apples, and size of breasts. And it was in half-​English, half-​Viet, so I was just wait­ing for a neigh­bor­ing table to crack the code.

After that, they dropped me off back at my apart­ment, and I went to Sophia C’s to work on more scrap­book magic. Didn’t get as much as I had hoped done, but I’d like to think I helped more than I hurt. Then it was time for work. I got the stu­pid 5 – 9 shift. It was pretty slow. Mostly a lot of clean­ing. After work, came home, and seemed like every­one was in elec­tions frenzy. I dropped by Drew M’s place to go over our speech, and as I got there, Jason G was just leav­ing. I guess he was get­ting some PP advice. We cov­ered a lot of ground and got a lot of good ideas down on paper, then called it a night.

Mon­day… yet another day of work. And what a long day of work it was. Appar­ently, that morn­ing, the boss saw some­one walk­ing along the road towards the sta­tion and thought it was one of my co-​workers, so she stopped to give the per­son a ride. It wasn’t my co-​worker, but she got in any­ways. So my boss was kinda freaked, but just took her to work and asked her to leave. She didn’t. She stood around out­side for the entire day. I got a bunch of shit duty again, so did the out­side work as slowly as pos­si­ble. Watched as peo­ple took wed­ding pic­tures at the church next door. The bride was pretty hot. Oh, as I was about to get off work, that ran­dom lady came into the store and approached the counter, but then fell. She didn’t respond to us, so we called 911. Para­medics said she had a coör­di­na­tion level of 1 and wasn’t even coher­ent enough to give her name and address. As they were cart­ing her off, this guy came in and tried to shoplift some of our gag glasses. When Claire called him on it, he made a big scene, but ended up run­ning off when he heard that the cops were already on their way because of that falling woman. At this point, I just counted out of my drawer and took the hell off.

Got to cam­pus a bit early, so I stopped by CoHo first, then shuf­fled over to Hunt 100 with the crowd. There was no real busi­ness, so we got to elec­tions really fast. Which was good, since I was so anx­ious and excited I felt like I was going to spon­ta­neously com­bust. I felt like we gave a good speech, too, but when Thuong T and Genie L fin­ished, I turned to Drew M with an “Oh shit” look on my face, and he had some­thing com­pa­ra­ble on his. Yeah… we didn’t win SVP. The elec­tions took so long because there was so much com­pe­ti­tion that we actu­ally had to move to Young 198 because some bas­tard of a group reserved our room after us. Then we had to move out­side because the cus­to­dial crew was wait­ing to clean up the room. So we actu­ally fin­ished up DSK speeches on the big con­crete steps between Young and SocSci.

Monday’s quote comes from one of those speeches. (Yes, I know can­di­dates are never sup­posed to hear what was said about them, but I fig­ure this is alright.)

“Steph L is so great, I had her secretly adopt me… but no one’s sup­posed to know, so don’t tell any­one.”- Joe M, to the entire chapter..

I had a fever and a fat headache by that point, so I actu­ally skipped out on MNR and went home. In fact, I asked Eddie C to drive my car home. Called in sick and passed the hell out.

Tues­day… Actu­ally woke up feel­ing fine. Weird­ness. I had thought that I was com­ing down with the flu or pos­si­bly some­thing even more seri­ous, but it might have just been food poi­son­ing, because I ate some­thing kinda old on my lunch break the day before. But yeah… woke up fine, if a bit hun­gry. Went online and noticed that Peggy S’s away mes­sage was breakfast-​related, so asked if she wanted to get some­thing with me. Picked her up, then went down­town to visit our respec­tive banks, then headed to Baker’s Square, since I hadn’t eaten there in a while. The Eggs Bene­dict were pretty good. Then we headed over to cam­pus, and I chilled in CoHo as she went to class and stuff. Tried a cross­word again. I’m so rusty. Gotta start doing them more often. Went home around 6, then talked online, and caught a ride to Fry’s, so I finally have toner for my printer again. Score! Oh, and Tuesday’s quote is def­i­nitely Steph L -

“Do you have any lap­top sleeves in pink?”- Steph L.
“Uh… sorry, it’s not very high in demand.”- Fry’s employee.
“Are you seri­ous? Do you see how pop­u­lar pink iPods are? …”- Steph L, going on for another 10 minutes.

Drew M, Tony W, and I ran a cou­ple of aisles over until she calmed down. On the way back, hit up Chipo­tle for some food. I didn’t know they were owned by McDonald’s. After that, went home and chat­ted online for while, then passed out.

And finally, yes­ter­day. I tried to call in sick again, but they wouldn’t give me any more sick days. I pointed out that I had worked for nine hours a day for two weeks straight, with only two days off, which weren’t even sched­uled “week­end” days off, but rather vaca­tion and sick days I used. They still wanted me to come in. So I quit.

Went to CoHo to meet up with Tony W for some stuff he had to give me. Chilled there for a while, then a bunch of us went down­town to take care of some busi­ness. Then we picked up Drew and went to Wood­land for some more busi­ness. Came back to town and got some Jack-​in-​the-​Crack and dropped off Tony W at school. Remem­bered that Chris T was cook­ing us a seven-​course meal, so we ended up not eat­ing the food we got at Jack. Played some Mon­key Ball at Drew M’s while we waited, and I remem­bered how much I hate single-​player mode. Finally, it was time for the feast at Chez Take­mori. The food was so awe­some. I mean, seri­ously, I bet at ban­quet, I’ll be wish­ing for more of Chris T’s stuff. After the food, we played IPhi Pong and watched 100 Women, a weird funny soft-​core porn.

Then we headed over to Sun­tree for Miss Kitty K’s birth­day party! I’m still try­ing to not drink/​at least drink less, so I took a birth­day shot with Kitty K and Mag­gie L, since it was their birth­days. And then Kitty K chose me to take one of the blowjobs, so of course I had to do that. And she made mine a bloody blowjob, too! Since I was so will­ing to take it, she was about to put cock sauce on it, too, but Jackie H and I just took the shot, so no buf­falo blowjob for you guys. Sorry! Pretty much passed out in the chair after that.

Yesterday’s quote:

“Thuong T said she wanted to fuck!”- Bao N.
“Wha?!”- Every­one else in the room.

Tags: Angela CC, Bao N, Chris T, Computer, Dong Ha, Drew M, Eddie C, Family, Food, Genie L, Gio Linh, Jackie H, Jason G, Joe M, Kitty K, Maggie L, Peggy S, Pictures, Sophia Chang, Steph L, Stories, Thuong T, Tony W, Viet, Work