Dinhternet

Man, yes­ter­day was such a long day, I’m still tired.

Woke up at 8 to get ready for “Wacky Water Day” at Fairy-Tale Town. Nhi came over and we picked up Drew and headed off to Sac.

The project was really cool. Basi­cally the front half of the park was turned into a tiny water park. There was the cas­tle, where we ran around with squirt guns and some lucky peo­ple got to stand on top with a hose to get any kids that wan­der by. One side of the lazy river next to the pirate ship was des­ig­nated as the “raft­ing” area, where we had inflat­able inner tubes ready for kids that wanted to float around. On the oppo­site side was the deep­est part of the lazy river, and that was des­ig­nated the “swim­ming” area. And finally in the area behind Mary’s Lit­tle Lamb was “Kids’ Zone” for chil­dren five and under to play.

Offi­cially, I was on the Cas­tle Lawn crew, but at first I didn’t have a gun and so couldn’t do any­thing, really. Then one of the other Cas­tle Lawn peo­ple got fed up with their assigned weapon because it leaked more than it shot, and so handed it to me. I shot up all the kids by the cas­tle and got bored, so I went roam­ing and shot up kids (and other APhiO­ers) in all the areas.

Randy, Nhi, and Ngoc were look­ing VERY bored at Kid’s Zone, so I told them to go explor­ing like me, but their staff super­vi­sor was a bit anal, and demanded to have three vol­un­teers at all times, so I offered to switch with one of them, and Randy heartily agreed.

Stay­ing at Kids’ Zone wasn’t too bad. I think Nhi and Ngoc just weren’t as into it as I was. I actu­ally ran into the lazy river and splashed around and played with the kids, and they kinda just sat in the shade of the tree. Yeah, they were doing their job, which was basi­cally risk man­age­ment for Fairy-Tale Town in the form of telling kids not to run (and trip and fall and sue), but they weren’t enjoy­ing it like I was.

The APhiO­ers came and went… there was a good amount of roam­ing. I hear almost every­one got a turn on top of the cas­tle, drench­ing every­one who passed under­neath. More peo­ple migrated to our area towards the end of the day, because Kids’ Zone was the clean­est area left; the other parts of the lazy river were affec­tion­ately called “Willy Wonka’s Choco­late River” because of all the mud and stuff that got into them.

So yeah, very fun project. And Fairy-Tale Town takes very good care of us. Got plenty of free water and snacks. I was sad to see it come to an end. Well, maybe not entirely, because there were a cou­ple of brats who sup­planted the cute babies in the area. They broke both of the staff water guns I man­aged to get my hands on.

Any­way, ended a lit­tle bit early, so I hur­ried back to Davis, show­ered, picked up Tim H and Esther, and we headed off to San Mateo for Diana’s birth­day party. Left davis around 4:45 and didn’t get to the restau­rant until about 6:45, due to a cou­ple of spots of bad traf­fic. Includ­ing one really bad five-car col­li­sion out­side of Fair­field. But it was cool, though; Tim H and Esther are very enter­tain­ing pas­sen­gers. In fact, they are quote!

(To set up this quote, Esther was sit­ting shot­gun, and Tim H was in the seat behind her. And they both had soda cans from her place.)

Yeah… they man­aged to kep me awake for the drive there and back just fine. :thumbs:

Oh, and on the way there, the din­ner loca­tion was changed from Mac­a­roni Grill to Red Robin. Good thing I had a San Mateo native in my car. We got there and parked exactly at the same time as Mommy Tang. Or so we thought. Waited for her out­side for a while, but decided it must have been some­one else with a car like hers, because we didn’t see any­one that looked any­thing like her walk­ing towards the entrance.

Went inside and found that every­one had ordered maybe two min­utes pre­vi­ously, so we got some menus and ordered our­selves. It was my first time to a Red Robin, and very hard for me to decide because I had to be veg­e­tar­ian, and there was basi­cally two things I could get off the whole menu. Either the Gar­den­burger or the salad. I went with the Gar­den­burger, because at least it had bot­tom­less steak fries to go with it, and I could load up on them. Also got the “Freck­led Lemon­ade,” which is their name for straw­berry lemon­ade with chunks of real straw­berry in it.

Din­ner was good, and I also got some onion rings off the com­mu­nal appe­tizer. Oh yeah, if you didn’t know, my ver­sion of “veg­e­tar­ian” is a lit­tle stricter than just “no meat.” Because it’s for my reli­gion, I’m also not sup­posed to have any gar­lic or onion, because they “make you hot inside.” (It’s a Yin-Yang bal­ance thing.) But I ignored that rule, mostly because I didn’t know what the hell was in a Gar­den­burger any­way. Kinda feel bad, but at least I didn’t have meat.

Oh, remem­ber how I said we thought we saw Mommy Tang in the park­ing lot? It turns out it WAS her. She just sat in her car after­wards to write Diana’s card. Which appar­ently took like twenty min­utes. I sat next to Mike C for din­ner, and he’s still as funny as ever. I wish more of Toy class was still around. Where did all the great­ness go?

Speak­ing of Toy class great­ness, if I could have a… I dunno, video clip of the day, it would be when Esther gave her gift to Diana. She didn’t have the time to wrap it, so she tried to just hand it to Diana when they sat next to each other, but Diana closed her eyes and insisted it be wrapped. So Esther looks around and grabs a dis­play box on the table (it’s a paper­board cube with dif­fer­ent drinks/desserts on every face), opens up the top, shoves her gift (a shirt) in, and hands it to Diana. Diana then pre­tends she doesn’t know what it is and goes through the whole shaking-the-box-to-guess-what’s-inside rou­tine. Mike C tells her not to do that, because the gift is a burger. Finally, Diana opens up the box and looks very sur­prised as she pulls the shirt out.

After din­ner, we went back to Diana’s place for what looked like a long night of drink­ing. But first, while Dick was out secur­ing the goods, all the guys sat around in the liv­ing room and Mike C read a girl mag­a­zine out loud. It was very edu­ca­tional. I wasn’t going to have any­thing, but then Bran­don busted out the absinthe that Dick had brought back from Europe, and I had to try some. We did a ghetto ver­sion of the Bohemian rit­ual, and drank the stuff straight up instead of mix­ing it into any fancy cocktails.

I have to say, the green fairy dis­ap­pointed me. Well, hon­estly, I didn’t see any­thing at all. I think we all needed more than our one or two shots’ worth. Or maybe we just have to do it the old school way, with rat poi­son and stuff to really kick it up to the next level. Oh yeah, and we were watch­ing Eurotrip at the same time, too. But we didn’t get to the club­bing scene by the time we were tak­ing it.

I got really tired after that, so Tim H, Esther, and I went home. I think Esther was scared I was going to start hal­lu­ci­nat­ing and run us off the road or some­thing, but that didn’t hap­pen. Not even close. I dropped them off at her place, safe and sound. Then I went back to my place for a bit. Peggy wanted to hang out, so I went to her place, and ended up crash­ing there.

Inter­est­ing day today.

Woke up at 7 and alter­nated between going online, read­ing Crypto­nom­i­con, and just lay­ing in bed. Did that until about 11:30, when I fin­ished the book.

Wrote a post. Went to watch TV. Noth­ing good on at all. I ended up watch­ing Celebrity Poker, but it was not enter­tain­ing me in the slight­est. Back online, but no one was on today. Lay in bed some more. Back down to the TV, where I watched X-Files. Haven’t seen that in for­ever. It was good.

Mommy Van came over and dropped off some Loose fam­ily stuff Mommy Tang had for me, and I burned Adobe Pre­mière Pro 1.5 for her. As soon as she left, I went back online, where I got today’s first quote from Mommy Tang.

Thanks, mom. Thanks a lot. Oh, and she said she drooled on it, too. Yay!

Did some ser­vice stuff, then caught up on a cou­ple of man­gas and watched Bleach 43. After that, it was time for the project. Stan­dard KVIE pledge drive deal. It was straightforward.

If you’ve done it before, you know that on the open­ing screen, you type in your name. Well, Peggy sat next to me and typed in “POO” on my screen and insisted I intro­duced myself that way all night. Since I can never say no to her, I did just that. THe script reads, “Hello, and thank you for call­ing KVIE. My name is Poo. May I get your name?” I would try to get the mid­dle sen­tence out as fast as pos­si­ble. Most peo­ple didn’t seem to notice or care. But one lady did. She is today’s sec­ond quote.

I do believe she was mock­ing me.

The project cut off at 11. They shoved some bur­ri­tos on us and we went home. Chat­ted online until now… I guess I should pass out soon.

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.