Dinhternet

Now that I think about it, I’m still pretty far behind. Should have writ­ten more yes­ter­day, but Saturday’s post was so long, and I had to do it twice because Fire­fox crashed the first time. Oh well… here’s Sunday…

Izzy P got a call in the mid­dle of the night and I woke her up for it since I was lying next to her. She didn’t sound very appre­ci­ata­tive, though… les­son learned: don’t wake up Izzy P.

Woke up at 5 and got ready in min­utes. Took a lit­tle longer to get every­one else ready. We left Peggy S’s place at 6, which was a lit­tle behind sched­ule, since we told Hanh D we would be pick­ing her up by then, and she lives on the other side of San Jose. For some rea­son, I was lead car to both Hanh D’s place and to the actual project. Maybe Peggy S and Ian R think I’m respon­si­ble, and/or know my way around Frisco. Hehehe. But I did keep us going at a rea­son­ably good clip (aver­ag­ing 75), and we got there in time. And before the chair.

After we signed in, found that they weren’t very well orga­nized, and job assign­ments were almost a free-for-all. Most of us were doing Check­point 4. Doing what, I couldn’t even tell you. Then Will F announced that they needed another Delin­eator, so I went over to that crowd. Found out that what Delin­eators do is put down the cones that mark the course route, and pick them up again after every­one has passed. Not too com­pli­cated. I was in group D3 with Deb­bie P, Jackie H, Kevin P, and Thu H. And there were three non–APhiO peo­ple and David, our super­vi­sor and driver.

The first thing we had to do was put on our day-glo orange hats and vests. (I think it’s a step up from the hot pink one I got last year. )

Putting down the cones was easy. We assem­bled them on the truck, and dropped them strate­gi­cally spaced out along our sec­tion of the route. Then one of us had to run along with cau­tion tape and con­nect all the cones. We also had to set up a cou­ple of bar­ri­cades to stop cars from turn­ing onto the course, and to mark some course haz­ards, like a big pile of dirt on the side of the road.

After we fin­ished mark­ing up our sec­tion, went to a big bend in the course between Check­points 1 and 2 and stopped there. Helped Energy 92.7 set up there, and Cheer SF was there, too. Spent the next four hours cheer­ing on every­one that went by. David was very inspired, he made pom-poms out of extra cau­tion tape (one of the non–APhiO peo­ple told us last year he made skirts with it) and had a bunch of cheer signs ready. They included, “Your boots were made for walk­ing,” “You go _____ (Fill in the blank),” “Thanks Gold Crown Walk­ers,” and “You walk­ers are bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S.” Oh, and he took one of the many “No Stop­ping” traf­fic signs from around the park and wrote under it, “You’re halfway there!” He also told us to think of some­thing, and he would put it on a sign for us, but none of us could come up with anything.

So we stood around for hours. Well, Kevin P and I stood around. Deb­bie P, Jackie H, and Thu H did a lot of danc­ing to the music. Thu H even requested songs. Saw Amy K, Diana Pai, Kitty K, and Carol S in the crowds. Also saw this scary old man who had a hot pink wig, neon orange bikini (com­plete with male camel-toe), and tall black heels on. It was like the sun… I didn’t to look directly at him, for fear of per­ma­nent dam­age to the retinas.

Got sack lunches again. They were sit­ting in a cooler on the truck the whole time, but we didn’t really bust into them until the walk was almost over. Partly due to that one guy. It’s a good thing we did wait, though, because we def­i­nitely needed the energy for pick­ing up the cones. The process was a lot more involved than putting them down. We had two peo­ple run­ning slightly ahead tak­ing the cau­tion tape off the cones and wind­ing it up to throw away. Two more peo­ple ran along out­side and handed cones into the truck as it drove by. One per­son on the plat­form on the back of the truck to take the cones being handed in. And finally two peo­ple in the truck tak­ing the cones apart and stack­ing them up nice and neat.

That took a while. And I was stu­pid and stepped in a pot­hole and rolled my ankle, mak­ing me take a pretty embar­rass­ing fall and scrape my knee. And my ankle swelled up. That was fun.

After we fin­ished up, headed back to the other side of the park, where the fin­ish line was. Along the way we passed Jimmy P and Jane L’s Delin­eator crew, who were still hard at work. And their sys­tem wasn’t as good as ours. Oh, and ran­dom peo­ple we passed would shout, “We love you, Cone­heads!” as we passed. That was nice.

So we got back to the fin­ish line, where every­one else was. First thing Peggy S says to me when she sees me is to demand my hat, so that she could have the full set. Nhi K seemed to have every­thing under con­trol as chair, and told every­one we were all free to do what­ever, the project was now offi­cially over.

Ian R, Izzy P, Peggy S, Thu H, and I walk back to the cars, only to get stopped every cou­ple of yards by some­one who wants to buy one of Peggy S’s hats off of her. Got back to the cars and the plan was to fol­low Ian, who was going to Star­bucks, a gas sta­tion, Costco, and then back to Davis. Tried to fol­low him out of the city, but I lost him right before get­ting on the ramp to get onto the Bay Bridge, so I decided to just lead Peggy S back home. (Well, still stop­ping at Costco, by for­go­ing the Starbucks.)

Found out that Ian R some­how ended up pretty close behind us, so I was once again lead car. Took us most of the way, and then Peggy S (or maybe it was Ian R, I wouldn’t know because both Thu H’s cell phone and mine died, but she was the one who moved and had me fol­low) decided we weren’t going to the Vacav­ille one. We stopped at the one between Vallejo and Fair­field. I for­got the name of the town. Ian R and Peggy S got Harry Pot­ter there, and then I bor­rowed Peggy S’s card to get some gas.

Made it back home after long last, and I passed out almost imme­di­ately. Woke up a cou­ple hours later and went online for a bit. Peggy S woke up and we went out to din­ner. Were gonna eat at Thai Bistro, but they closed a lit­tle early, so ended up at Old Tea­house, where we ran into Ian R, Alice C, Becca Y, and David Y. Oh, and Deb­bie AY, Jenny D, Ling K, and Randy L were at a dif­fer­ent table, too. Peggy S got her Seafood Udon and I wanted the Seafood Bake, but they told me the oven was bro­ken, so no bakes pos­si­ble. I doubted it was actu­ally bro­ken, but what­ever… got the yin-yang rice instead. Quote comes from din­ner talk.

After that, Peggy S needed to study, and I offered to keep her com­pany by read­ing with her. Only we didn’t have a place, because she can’t con­cen­trate at her place, and my place was super hot. So we invited our­selves to Sophia C’s. But she wouldn’t let us bring Harry Pot­ter into her apart­ment, so I started to re-read Crypto­nom­i­con instead.

After a while, Sophia C got tired and kicked us out, so I dropped Peggy S off, went home, and passed out.

Man, Peggy S’s such a slave-driver. She threat­ened to never talk to me until I update. So now I guess I have to. But what to write about? I guess I’ll cover Sunday…

Hmm… woke up at 7. Hopped online to find that Peggy S was still up. She had pulled another all-nighter and had just fin­ished her project. I told her to take a nap before Amber W’s grad­u­a­tion, but she insisted on stay­ing up to make a poster for her, too. Got ready for my long day and bummed around online, because my mom was going to stop by on the way to tak­ing my sis­ter to the air­port to give me my ticket and talk to me about some fam­ily stuff.

Fin­ished up the fam­ily busi­ness at 10:30, and hur­ried to Kinko’s to print out my project. I noticed that the printer they have there is the same exact one my dad has at home home. Too bad I didn’t have time to go home and print it myself. Any­ways, he told me the pic­tures were a bit pix­e­lated, so I ran home and tried to touch it up as best I could. Got back there and gave him a higher res­o­lu­tion form of the project, and he told me it would be done by 1:30. It was 11:45.

I hur­ried over to cam­pus, hop­ing I could still make it to get a pic­ture with Amber W out on the lawn after she walked. Got a great park­ing spot and ran around the Pavil­ion a cou­ple of times, but didn’t see any­one I knew, so went to Hunan’s. Saw Peggy S and Jackie H drive off as I made the turn out of the park­ing lot, so I knew I made the right call. Stalked them all the way down­town. Lunch was cool, except I don’t think Amber W’s mom is par­tic­u­larly into Chi­nese food. And pos­si­bly was over­whelmed by the Asian in her life.

After lunch, went back to Kinko’s and added my project to Peggy S’s. Then we went to Jackie H’s to pass out for a bit, since we couldn’t get into the actu­ally 2 PM grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony. Went after, though to take pic­tures out­side again. Met Kitty K’s fam­ily. The genes are strong. Just like Jenny L’s fam­ily. Peggy S gave her project to Thuong T and went home.

A bunch of us went to Dos Coy­otes and Coldstone’s after. Alice C, Drew M, Jackie H, Jen L, and I split an Ulti­mate Bucket. aBB man­aged to dis­turb small chil­dren the vicin­ity with her dirtiness.

Moth­ers were quickly drag­ging their infants away from earshot. We went our sep­a­rate ways after we killed the bucket… I went with Alice C to 49er video so she could use my account to rent some movies, and then I went home. Tried to cheer up Peggy S for a bit, but it didn’t seem to work. Ran­dom stuff online.

Some peo­ple went to see Bat­man, but I was too tired, and didn’t feel like pay­ing full price again. Ended up tak­ing a nap that lasted until 1:45 in the morn­ing. Talked online some more. Finally passed out for good around 4:30.

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.