Next Exit

So a new post is finally here! Huzzah!

Fri­day… woke up and felt great. Chat­ted online for a while, then headed to CoHo. Got psy­ched about Scav­enger Hunt, started try­ing to recruit for Team Nut­sac For­ever. Pledges told me they heard sto­ries about me, and they wanted to see my eye­brows and stuff. Who spreads these lies about me?! Hoa Viet with Joe M and Ian, then home. Talked to Mommy Van about Scav­enger Hunt online. It’s our Mom­mies’ last one. What will we do next time? Got close to time, Mommy Van came to pick me up and stop at Esther’s on the way to TOPS. We kept call­ing Mommy Tang in hopes of wak­ing her up for it. Got her and Michow to go at the last minute, too. A lit­tle past the last minute, actu­ally. Good thing the chairs worked on APhiO time. Sophia took me to cam­pus and I reg­is­tered half my team, since a bunch of peo­ple were late. Found out Chris defected away from ours, so we had to do some quick shifts. The final Team Nut­sac For­ever ros­ter was… Mommy Van, Mommy Tang, Joe M (from the orig­i­nal Team Nut­sac), James S (from Team Nut­sac Returns), Amber, Sophia, Carol, Lin, Liz, and me. (And unof­fi­cially, Michow, our photographer.)

The Hunt itself went very well, I felt. We got a lot of stuff done. The events on TOPS after­wards were pretty crazy, too. Peo­ple will do any­thing for a bracelet. ANYTHING. On a totally unre­lated, note, here’s Friday’s quote -

“I AM the Daddy!”- Lo, giv­ing away points at TOPS.

Bao and Lo — what a funny cou­ple they are.

Oh yeah, BB showed up there! She got a bracelet, and she didn’t even have to do any­thing. Most peo­ple appar­ently went to eat and then to the TAK house after­wards, but I went home to sleep. On the way, took Mommy Van back to her car at the ten­nis courts. I was sup­posed to take Sophia, too, but I for­got. Sorry! It was only 11 when I got back, but it felt like 1 already, and I had Run for Seals!

So yeah, tried to get some sleep. Hopped into bed as soon as I got in the door. Didn’t even rinse off the chlo­rine or the make-​up I had on. (Found out the next day that wasn’t the best of calls.) Got between an hour and an hour and a half of sleep. I just kept toss­ing in bed, and ran­dom stuff would pop into my head. Felt like a zom­bie when I rolled outa bed, but a scald­ing hot shower fixed that. Printed out some maps and direc­tions, picked up my folks, got some gas, and headed to TOPS. I was afraid we would be the last car there, which would be espe­cially bad since I was dri­ving the chair, but luck­ily, that was not the case. After every­one got there, Don­ald still had to get gas, so we decided it’d be bet­ter for every­one to wait in the bus cir­cle, so he wouldn’t have to go all the way back up to TOPS. For­got Drew as I went down there. Sorry! As we were all sit­ting there wait­ing, a cou­ple of cop cars roll through and stop Clayton’s car. Let the panic begin! We had all the other cars just take off, and my car waited across the street for him. Luck­ily, the cops just let him go when he explained that we were just gath­er­ing for an early ser­vice project. Appar­ently there have been a lot of peo­ple loi­ter­ing around cam­pus late at night? I dunno, sounds like bored po-​po to me.

I led Clayton’s car and we tried to find the rest of the wolf pack. Appar­ently they are speed demons, though, we couldn’t even raise them on walkie-​talkie even though we got on the free­way maybe two min­utes after them. Kept just cruis­ing along and try­ing to keep con­tact through cell phones until Vallejo, where there was a detour on 37. They entered the detour maybe thirty sec­onds before us, but we still couldn’t find them. Got on the free­way after the detour and didn’t see a big pack any­where. Then we got a call from them say­ing they had just got on the free­way. After us. Who­ever was lead car got lost in the detour, and yeah… so I was lead car now. Except peo­ple chal­lenged my author­ity, and the pack broke apart at a cru­cial point. And of course, recep­tion was cutty at best around the Marin Head­lands area, so it was more stress try­ing to make sure every­one found their way there.

The orga­niz­ers seemed to be run­ning late, too, though, so I guess it was OK. We got our assign­ments and our shirts, and we were off. Amber, Peggy, Ray, Ben, and I had Ware­house Lot. It’s one closer to reg­is­tra­tion than the Pump­house Lot that I had with Diana and Deb­bie last year. We found ways to enter­tain our­selves until we were needed. I, for one, flipped out and punted Amber’s dog into the ocean, and pushed Peggy over and made her bleed. You don’t even want to know what I did to the pledges. Saturday’s quote comes from when we were stand­ing around -

“Where’s the radio?”- Peggy.
“I put it in my butt.”- Amber.

So Amber says that some­thing is “in her butt” when she puts it in one of her back pock­ets. And she puts a lot of stuff there. This amused us to no end.

Once again, there were a cou­ple of peo­ple who insisted on doing their own thing instead of lis­ten­ing to us. :shakes fist: Why do you have to have make it all com­pli­cated for us? I hate con­fronta­tion, but the other kept mak­ing me to tell peo­ple not to not here yet or not to leave yet, since “I was the SAA.” The clouds didn’t burn off the way it did last year… it was over­cast the whole morn­ing. After the race, got back and put stuff back in the trucks, and they said “farewell” to us. No raf­fle or even just talk­ing to the peo­ple… they just kinda sent us off.

A big group of us decided to go eat dim sum, and we set­tled on one par­tic­u­lar place in Mill­brae called Fook Yuen. Boy was that fun to say on the phone/​walkie-​talkies. Unfor­tu­nately, city traf­fic was too much for our group, so some folks splin­tered off and ate in Chi­na­town. We stuffed our­selves for a lit­tle over an hour, and then Kitty and Mo got there as we were fin­ish­ing. Turns out, Kitty drove from Davis! So yeah, they went and got some food on their own, and met us at a park where we all chilled/​napped. I tried to get some shut-​eye, but got maybe fif­teen min­utes of real sleep. The rest was just mess­ing around, play­ing tag, tum­bling, and other stuff I haven’t really done since ele­men­tary school.

Then it was time to go to OZ’s ban­quet. We weren’t sure if it was for their pin­ning or acti­va­tion. It was actu­ally acti­va­tion for their Swaga Deb class. OZ appar­ently has three pledge terms a year! Crazy! I wanted to see their acti­va­tion rit­ual, but also felt bad for pledges who would have had to wait out­side. Their ban­quet was more like a party… casual dress and a lot of inter­est­ing activ­i­ties. I feel like I rec­og­nize a lot of the OZ actives, but I can barely name more than hand’s worth. Which is odd, for me. Maybe it’s because I was so exhausted… I barely ate, and my eyes had that burn­ing sen­sa­tion that means I’m too tired to blink as often as I should be. Had a lot of caf­feine from their soda bar, a Krispy Kreme from Kitty, washed my face, and I was good to go, though.

The drive home was safe and unswerv­ing, thanks to every­one stay­ing up in my car and talk­ing about ran­dom stuff the whole time. I thought we would need to stop for gas, too, but the low gas light didn’t turn on until I hit Dixon, so I fig­ured I was safe. I should go fill up now, though. Any­ways, dropped every­one off at TOPS because Jack­son left his car there, and went home. Passed out almost immediately.

Here’s the table of com­mi­na­tion for those two days:

Get­ting a big group of cars to stay together is hard. Things were said when cars were lost. Espe­cially when lost in areas with­out reception.

Tags: Food, James S, Joe M, Michow, Phone, Stories, Viet, Work