Dinhternet

I can’t believe you’re yelling at me to update when you know I had to wake up early to go to a ser­vice project, Peggy. For shame!

Yes­ter­day… jumped online for a bit in the morn­ing. Down­loaded the new Naruto and Bleach episodes, but I haven’t watched them yet. Read more Crypto­nom­i­con. Hope­fully I’ll fin­ish that soon. After that, I’m gonna go to the library and see if they have the Baroque Cycle. If not, I sup­pose I’ll have to get it from Border’s or some­thing. And re-read Snow Crash in the mean­time. I’m not sure where that one is, though. I think Eddie C’s still bor­row­ing it.

Ran some errands in the after­noon. Ended up at the bank just as Joe was get­ting off work. The ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion is quote for the day.

He did the later. We headed over to his place together and I took a gan­der at the router set-up. It was a lit­tle weird, but I got it work­ing… kinda. The wire­less seems to be on the fritz, but we got it to work with his good ol’ Cat-5 con­nec­tor. Thanks to Tom for help­ing us out by get­ting the dri­vers for us.

After that, watched a cou­ple of AMVs and then Ian came over and the three of us went to Costco and then the mall. I got some bur­ri­tos and some body wash. It’s funny… I didn’t remem­ber until I got home… my microwave is bro­ken, so I can’t take full advan­tage of the frozen bur­rito goodness.

TAK was gonna go to the drive-in to watch Wed­ding Crash­ers, but we told them how bad of an expe­ri­ence we had last year at the fel­low­ship there, so instead we all went over to the house. I brought Jeremy’s burnt Fam­ily Guy movie, but it didn’t seem to work. Must be a bad burn or some­thing. Instead, we just watched the last cou­ple of episodes from the new sea­son. Oh, and I tried to do some ser­vice stuff at the same time. Stuff can really creep up on you! Espe­cially because of how the 31st is kinda hid­den on the calendar.

I was going to just chill and watch the movie and go home early and sleep and be a respon­si­ble SVP. But then Michelle kept insist­ing that I drink more and more with her. There was a ser­vice shot, a Laguna shot… man… I was stu­pid. And then… she started 7–11-Double. And my plans went down in flames.

I think every­one got nicely toasted last night. Joe M and Paul did jump kicks and passed out. Bran­don started pulling his pants off again. Mabel would alter­nately shove dol­lar bills down my pants and jump on me (with­out warn­ing me first about either). All while Lin was try­ing to watch Lilo and Stitch again.

I ended up not get­ting home until… 2. They were still drink­ing and stuff, but I had to go. Took Lin home, too, so that took a bit. When I got home, saw that Peggy was online, so I came back from away real fast to say good night to her. And ended up talk­ing to her until 6:45 in the morn­ing. Well, I can’t blame it entirely on her. I had to do some more ser­vice stuff, too. And sip water to make sure I wasn’t going to be hun­gover SVP at the project. But she doesn’t know that. It’s all your fault, Peggy!

Oh yeah, and I just remem­bered a quote from the day before that I just have to share. It comes from when Mommy Tang ran­domly ran up to me at Jason G’s Farewell BBQ.

And then she talked about the con­se­quences of the last time I told [some­one] [some­thing]. I’m sorry, moms. But it was too funny! (The last time and this.) Mommy Tang ran­domly reminded me again through­out the BBQ not to tell. And Mommy Van, I don’t appre­ci­ate your implications.

Hey, no one’s yelled at me to update yet. Awesome!

So what went down yes­ter­day? I woke up nat­u­rally at around 9:30, but Peggy insisted I sleep until at least 11, so I kept forc­ing myself back to sleep until about 12:30. Of course the first thing I do is to hop online and write a post for Dinh-starved fans. Checked other people’s blogs, too.

Then I started read­ing Crypto­nom­i­con again, but it was slow going, because I kept one eye on my mon­i­tor for stray IMs. Thu H mes­saged me and insisted my “Read­ing for plea­sure” away mes­sage meant I was read­ing porn. When I asked how that was pos­si­ble, she said I was read­ing trashy romance nov­els with porno­graphic illus­tra­tions. I didn’t even know those existed.

Read for a cou­ple more pages, and then Peggy started dis­tract­ing me. I chat­ted with her until it was time for Jason G’s BBQ. Damn, I’m never going to fin­ish that book! Good thing I’m not really in a hurry, hav­ing read it already and all.

Again, I was one of the first to get to the BBQ. But no grilling for me this time, Will Oh han­dled that. Stepped inside the lounge, where the guys were play­ing Magic and the girls were doing cross­words. It’s just like CoHo!

Slowly, more and more peo­ple came, and the cross­words and Magic cards were packed up, and things got a bit more social. Except for me. I did a lot of sit­ting and watch­ing. Just didn’t feel like talk­ing much.

The BBQ was prob­a­bly the biggest APhiO event yet this sum­mer, which is ironic, since it was unof­fi­cial. I hadn’t seen a lot of these peo­ple around. Like Vince! He is yesterday’s quote.

Poor Trung. Mommy Tang thinks that just because she had so many of us, we’re expend­able.

BUt going back to what I said, so many peo­ple there I haven’t seen in a while. Why aren’t you guys sign­ing up for ser­vice? Man, if half the peo­ple there did duck sales, we’d be get­ting a lot closer to our goal of 500 ducks a day. I hope that doesn’t mean you guys aren’t going to be doing ser­vice when the term really starts again. Another irony is that the BBQ was sup­pos­edly for Jason G, but he was gone for the major­ity of it. He was busy pack­ing and lying to peo­ple about being stuck back in Oak­land. I don’t think he even ate any of his food.

Left the thing around 9 to go back to my place for Victoria’s thing. It’s funny how Vic­to­ria com­plained that she needed more girls and told us to invite them, but her party was major­ity girls. Had the oblig­a­tory birth­day shot with her and then I ran upstairs. It’s weird… I just didn’t feel like drink­ing when there was liquor in front of me, and plenty of peo­ple to drink with. The night before was the exact opposite.

So yeah, just stayed at my com­puter and chat­ted with Peggy. It was really nice up here. The AC was on for the first time this year, because it was so hot down­stairs, but we didn’t want to open the doors and win­dows and risk a noise vio­la­tion. Ran down occa­sion­ally to say hi to peo­ple I knew, and to sing Happy Birth­day to Vic­to­ria. Not that she would have noticed if I wasn’t there. She was pretty messed up by that point. I hope she feels alright for the begin­ning for her LONG drive to Ohio today.

So yeah… chat­ted with Peggy until 4 in the morn­ing, and then we passed out.

Jason G, have fun in Japan. Vic­to­ria, I know you’re gonna kick ass in law school!

I know I said I wouldn’t, but what the hell… one more post to be truly and com­pletely caught up.

Woke up this morn­ing and got ready for the Spe­cial Olympics project. I could hardly con­tain my excite­ment. Had a solid break­fast of cold corn on the cob, made myself a Nal­gene of Gatorade (I bought the pow­der the other day), and got picked up by Jackie. We picked up Eric at the Col­leges and met up with Alan’s car, and then we were off. It’s funny how Eric’s e-mail said, “I have no idea where Old Sac is, I hope the dri­vers know how to get there,” and he allo­cated an hour for the drive. Jackie was lead car because Alan didn’t know how to get there, either, but he passed her up at one point, so we took a round­about way to get there. But were still on time, so that’s cool.

On the way up from the park­ing struc­ture, Mommy Tang was about to try to go up a down esca­la­tor. Every­one yelled at me for stop­ping her short of get­ting on it, but later she got me a bag of candy from Sweet Fac­tory, so I think I made the right call.

We met up with Lau­rie, the con­tact, and she gave us an overview of the Duck Regatta and what we were sup­posed to do. For those of you that don’t know, we’ll be sell­ing these ducks for the next two weeks. Well, I guess “sell­ing” isn’t the right term, since we want peo­ple to “adopt” the rub­ber duck­ies. Quote comes from just that issue. (Par­don me for jump­ing out of chronol­ogy for a moment.)

Yeah, doesn’t really sound like “adopt­ing,” does it?

But yeah, to con­tinue, we get peo­ple to adopt these rub­ber duck­ies, and then on August 6th, we release them all from the I Street Bridge and let them float down to the Tower Bridge, where oil booms fun­nel them into cages, and the first five into the cage win prizes. So it’s a glo­ri­fied and cut­si­fied raf­fle, really.

Lau­rie took off after ask­ing us sev­eral times if we were “pumped” and we all droned, “yes,” back to her. I don’t think she was very con­vinced. Oh yeah, and I for­got to men­tion that she told us our group goal would be to sell 500 ducks today, so that meant seventy-five ducks per per­son! It shouldn’t be a prob­lem, though, because peo­ple love Spe­cial Olympics. And they tend to buy Quack Packs (sets of five) and Quacker’s Dozens (sets of twelve, obviously).

I think we were all a bit intim­i­dated, but we did our best. It was pretty rough for some of us at first, espe­cially those who aren’t really used to giv­ing sales pitches, but I think it got eas­ier after we all got numbed to rejec­tion, as well as pick­ing up on what works and what doesn’t work. Mommy Tang was a beast and sold almost the same as the rest of us com­bined. Kevin was also very pop­u­lar, earn­ing a solid sec­ond place.

Around noon, started send­ing peo­ple off in groups of three to take a lunch break and move cars, since there was only one free park­ing per­mit for two cars, so we had to keep val­i­dat­ing and mov­ing the sec­ond car. Peo­ple took a bit longer than I would have liked for their breaks, but I can’t say I blame them for want­ing to stay out of the triple-digit heat.

Eric and I were the last to take breaks, and although I wasn’t hun­gry, I knew I had to force myself to eat, so I got some Panda Express, since they have the largest drink cups in all of Fast-food-dom. Oh, and my for­tune cookie said, “Make those spe­cial tal­ents you have work like a charm.”

Back to the grinder after that. I think sales were at their low­est in the after­noon heat. And peo­ple got ruder, too. I mean, it’s cool if you don’t want to buy a duck, but there was a cou­ple stand­ing next to our tent heck­ling us for a good hour. What the hell is your prob­lem that you make fun of vol­un­teers try­ing to raise money for Spe­cial Olympics?!

I tried to make sure every­one was cycling so they all got breaks in the shade, they all got enough to drink, and just were as happy as could be in the sit­u­a­tion. Lau­rie col­lected our sales at 4 (we had sold ninety-eight ducks at that point), and took off. We were sup­posed to stay until 5, when the Bridge to Bridge Fes­ti­val offi­cially ended. (We sold another twelve ducks in that time, mak­ing a grand total of 110. Only slightly less than our goal of 500.)

Cool ran­dom stuff I noticed at the fes­ti­val… the Wild Bill cars. Star­bucks’ Green Tea Frap. And of course, the stunt tank we were set up next to. They had an act called the “Human Torch” where a diver wear­ing a 100% cot­ton suit put on a cape that had been soaked in gaso­line, climbed ten meters into the air, was lit on fire by a small explo­sive, and then jumped into a pool. They also had a dif­fer­ent guy dive from twenty meters. Keep in mind this is all into a portable pool about ten feet deep.

So yeah, when the project ended, we just kinda threw every­thing back into the plas­tic bins that Lau­rie had under the table, and then folded up the table and left it there. I’m sur­prised she didn’t want to take the stuff with her. Kinda want to see if the stuff will be there tomor­row. Back to the cars and the magic that is air con­di­tion­ing as quickly as our sore and, in some cases, burned legs would take us.

Oh, and some advice for peo­ple sell­ing ducks in the future… try to have change to break a $20. The Rio City Café, which we were next to, got sick of us ask­ing. (They must have bro­ken at least $100 for us in the span of two hours, so I don’t blame them.) Small restau­rants in the area were too stingy to give us their small bills. So yeah, if you come with $5s and $10s, life will be eas­ier for you. Unless you actu­ally get peo­ple who want to buy Quack Packs or Quacker’s Dozens. And believe me, those are few and far between. Also, keep track of your change, because I lost the $20 I was using.

Any­ways, back to Davis. I was still freak­ing hot, so I sug­gested going swim­ming. Went home to change into trucks, and I picked up Thu H and Drew on the way. We met Jackie already in the Chap­ar­ral pool and hung out there for over an hour. Oh, and Diana Pham was there hav­ing a BBQ with some friends. Mommy Tang stopped by to say hi to us, but didn’t say hi to her.

After swim­ming, every­one but me was hun­gry. Dropped Drew off at his place, since he was going to Hot Pot City with a bunch of folks. Jackie, Thu H, and I show­ered and then went to IHOP in Dixon. They ate, I sat and chilled with them.

Back to my place, and as Jackie dropped me off, Jason G was in my dri­ve­way, so I stood out­side and chat­ted with him for a while. Even­tu­ally he went home to do some more home­work, and I went inside and took care of some ser­vice stuff. Then I wrote post after post after post.

And now I think I’m going to go pass out. Good night, all!

Oh, one thing I for­got to men­tion… no hives at all today! I car­ried pills around all day just in case, and never had to use them. OK, good night for real now!