Island Of The Honest Man

OK, gonna try to squeeze in another post or two before I go back to my other aunt’s (internet-​less) house.

Woke up from a really weird dream on Wednes­day morn­ing. It was a bit like Res­i­dent Evil. Or maybe 28 Days Later. I was run­ning on foot through down­town Davis, and although it was day­time, there was basi­cally no one around. I don’t know why I was con­stantly run­ning, but it felt as though some­thing was chas­ing me, even if I didn’t see any­thing behind me. Every now and then I’d see a friend in the dis­tance or as I entered a store, and I’d run towards them, only to have my friend dis­ap­pear, ignore me, or flat out refuse to help me. Even­tu­ally, it felt like there was no one else I could turn, so I just stopped run­ning. And then a sense of impend­ing doom washed over me, and I jerked awake.

Fun, huh? It was only 7:45, too. I show­ered, watched TV, and had some cereal, and then it was time to go to Cau Minh’s to unpack his PODS into his house. The process con­sisted of Cau Dung, Anh Bi, and I mov­ing all the stuff from the con­tainer into the garage, then wait­ing for Cau Minh to say it was OK for us to bring stuff into the house, because the con­struc­tion work­ers were fin­ish­ing up a cou­ple of the rooms.

For our lunch break, we got But­ter Burg­ers from Culver’s. They are pan-​fried burg­ers with an extra dol­lop of but­ter on top. It tastes pretty good, but the but­ter makes the burg­ers drier than I’d like.

After lunch, got the rest of the con­tainer into the house, and then helped Cau Minh set up shelv­ing in the base­ment. The sec­ond PODS was sup­posed to arrive at 3, but it never showed up. We just unpacked a lot of essen­tials, like the food, because Di Ngoc had to get started imme­di­ately on Chi Hai’s wed­ding cake.

Chi Hai came over after we were done, and told us about her “drama.” Which was, she mis­placed some thank-​you cards and had to buy con­struc­tion paper and make new ones her­self instead, since she had bought out the card store’s entire ship­ment already. She had made such a big deal about it I thought Nick had run out on her or something.

After that, we went to Di Hai’s house real fast to pick up some fold­ing chairs to bring to Cau Dung’s place, since Natalie had invited the entire fam­ily over for phở, which she made with Di Phuong’s help. I passed out in the car ride, because my sleep­less­ness was catch­ing up with me. Din­ner was awe­some, even though I made fun of the mas­ter chef and her new dis­ci­ple. Took a shower after­wards to wash off the grime of mov­ing dirt and sweat, and then chilled with the cousins as the adults ate. Quote comes from the older cousin’s conversations -

Man, I laughed until I thought phở would shoot out my nose.

After every­one fin­ished, we had dessert — Di Nga made a cake, and there were two dif­fer­ent kinds from Coldstone’s, too. I told Dong ha she couldn’t have any of those or else she’d be fired. (She works for a com­peti­tor called Cal­i­for­nia Chill.) I was pretty stuffed, so of course it was time to head out for some evening fun with the older kids.

Chi Ba and Mike took Anh Bi and I to a bar called Sally’s because Wednes­day is free drink night for the ladies. On the car ride over, Anh Bi decided that we would tell every­one it’s my bach­e­lor party, and I was get­ting mar­ried to some­one named Stephanie from UCD who just got her MD. And appar­ently it was my last night in town, because I was fly­ing to Vegas on the red-​eye for the wed­ding. I didn’t think it would work, but Anh Bi pushed it on every girl int he bar any­way, and he con­vinced a good num­ber of them to take a pic­ture with me. Then he got a pic­ture with one girl that he was really sprung on, but her man was tow­er­ing over him, so he didn’t try any­thing fur­ther. I’ll post the pic­tures when I get them from him. Nick stopped by, too, but he was just pick­ing up some­thing Chi Ba had for Chi Hai, and couldn’t stick around for more than a beer. Oh yeah, we had some beer called Blue Moon. I wasn’t a big fan, but Mike likes it.

Went back to Chi Ba’s place REAL early — it was only 10:45. Anh Bi wanted to go chill more and was drunk and a bit bel­liger­ent, but we got him back. I wanted to pass out early because the sec­ond PODS came, and we had to go back the next day to work on that, so I wanted to freak­ing sleep. Couldn’t fall asleep, though. Not sure if it was the cousin’s snor­ing, or just ran­dom stuff going through my head. Called Peggy and talked to her until my con­nec­tion dropped (have I men­tioned I hate Min­nesotan Cin­gu­lar ser­vice?), and then just laid down and forced myself to shut off my brain.

Tags: Chi Ba, Chi Hai, Dong Ha, Family, Food, Internet, Mike L, Mike T, Minh T, Nick S, Pictures, Work