Dinhternet

Yes­ter­day was a very driving-intensive day for me.

Woke up and went online for a while. The blogs were in pretty much the same shape I left them the night before, so not much to catch up on. Chat­ted with some folks. Cathy said I was a weirdo for being up so early when I didn’t have to do any­thing until 4. I can’t help it, though… I can’t sleep in to save the life of me. Gave Peggy a wake-up call at 9. Talked some more online, and both Cathy and Peggy asked for rides to cam­pus because they missed their buses.

Back home and watched a cou­ple episodes of GTO with Will. He’s been blaz­ing through them… I think he fin­ished re-watching the whole series in the last two days. Went to Nugget to try their deli for lunch because Michelle J told me last week it was really good.

Will got bored and rented one of the Devil May Cry series. I’m not sure which one. Watched him play that for a bit, then Drew called and asked for a ride to Paint Chip because he missed his bus.

Home again and back online. Checked up on my usual web­comics, but only one out of three was updated. Looked for new manga chap­ters, and there was only a new One Piece out of the dozen or so series I read. No new animé or any­thing to get. Just checked blogs as they got updated for the most part. Also chat­ted a bit.

Then it was time for the project. Picked up Wei-Li, Drew, and James R, and after a cou­ple of delays, we were off. Got to the Bingo Palace late, but they didn’t mind. Most peo­ple hadn’t shown up yet. They had us start with the usual… two flash­card games. James R and I had Money Maker, and we owned Drew and Wei-Li’s Four Sea­son­ings. Actu­ally, the first game was pretty even. Smok­ing sec­tion wasn’t that bad this time… maybe because we didn’t stay as long into the night as the first time I did this project. For the sec­ond round, we really did own Drew and Wei-Li at the sell­ing. Mostly because our game, Light­ning Poker, had maybe a quar­ter of the cards that theirs, Jack­pot Jew­els, did. After we fin­ished sell­ing out games and got our money counted out, the coör­di­na­tor sent us home. I guess she doesn’t want us to be call­ing win­ner sheets and stuff like they had us do before.

Dropped off every­one, took a shower, and called up Peggy because we were sup­posed to hang out and watch MPD Psy­cho. When I called her, though, she passed the phone to Joe M imme­di­ately, who told me every­one was hang­ing out at his house, so I should come over, which I said I would. Then he hung up. Peggy called back a minute later, and was like, “Why did you call me again?” I guess she didn’t remem­ber our plans. I reminded her, and she was like, “Oh, OK, see you later.” I start dri­ving to Joe M’s place when I see Peggy com­ing from his place to mine. I told her to go park at my place, and we’ll go back to Joe M’s, since I told him I’d hang out with him for a bit.

Get there, and it turns out that peo­ple aren’t hang­ing out. They’re study­ing. So I was like… “Eh… I’m gonna go now.” After tak­ing a quick look at Joe M’s com­puter, any­way. While I was fix­ing it, Peggy chat­ted with Mommy Van online, and we decided to make a pit stop at Chap­ar­ral on the way to my place. Went to A4 first. Mommy Tang, Esther, and Dorothea were hang­ing out there. Mommy Tang gave Peggy some match­ing shoes and pretty much cemented her “Num­ber one daugh­ter” sta­tus. Which must have been a bit awk­ward for Esther. Quote came as we were leaving.

“All these peo­ple” mean­ing three other kids of her’s. So then Peggy took her by the hand and dragged her to a dark cor­ner of the apart­ment. Weird suck­ing and slurp­ing sounds com­mence, and Mommy Tang stag­gers back into the liv­ing room look­ing like she had just been drained by a vampire.

We were going to stop by Mommy Van’s apart­ment after that, but Mommy Tang needed to return a video to 49er by mid­night, which was only min­utes away, so I offered to do it for her, since it was on the way back to my place.

Back to my place, and we popped in MPD Psy­cho. I was look­ing for­ward to it, because it’s by Miike Takashi and the manga was really good. Unfor­tu­nately, the show was slow, the story was changed, and all the gory stuff had been dig­i­tally blurred. (I guess Japan­ese TV is pretty cen­sored.) Peggy fell asleep, and I decided to stop it after the first episode.

She went home after that, sup­pos­edly to go to sleep. But we ended up chat­ting online until the wee hours before pass­ing out from exhaus­tion again.

Oh, and this post isn’t longer because you threat­ened me, Peggy. It’s longer because I had a full day. If you — this goes to every­one who reads the Din­hter­net — want my posts to be longer, take a moment or two and make sure I’m get­ting prop­erly enter­tained.

Ran­dom day today. I was expect­ing to do eleven hours of ser­vice. Well, not really expect­ing it, but it was sched­uled. I was expect­ing to get done early, like we’ve been dur­ing pre­vi­ous duck-selling projects.

OK, let me back up a lit­tle bit. Woke up early, got ready for the project. I even stopped at the bank to get lots of $5 bills, since we always need change to sell ducks. Went over to Will Oh’s, and Peggy came shortly after. Will drove, and we were off. Got to Old Sac and called up Lau­rie, the con­tact. Appar­ently Spe­cial Olympics didn’t remem­ber we were sched­uled to go out there today. So they told us to go home. We did so, after wan­der­ing around Old Sac and Down­town Plaza for a bit.

Found on on the way back home that there was a road trip to Frisco com­menc­ing, so Peggy and I went along on that. It was three cars’ worth, too… Ian drove Aiza, Peggy, and me; Joe drove Sheena and Vi; Paul drove Claire, Michelle J, and Chanda.

First we stopped at IKEA. Then off to Mill­brae to drop of Claire and get some sand­wiches from a deli called Lucca. They were pretty good. Ate them at a nearby park. Then off to Frisco proper to pick up Clay­ton. We hung out for a bit at his par­ents’ restau­rant. Michelle J asked me to talk to them in Viet because they love it, appar­ently. That con­ver­sa­tion is today’s quote.

Yeah. That whole con­ver­sa­tion was… odd. We cov­ered the usual Asian par­ent stuff… school, work, girl­friends… Damn you, Michelle, for just leav­ing me there!

After that, dropped of Chanda, and we went to the mall. Wan­dered around for a while. Then we decided to go home. With a quick stop by Ian’s car at Won­der­ful Foods Co.

Now I’m back in Davis. And I have ser­vice at 6:45 in the morn­ing. Yay!

EDIT: Will’s friend brought a puppy over to my place, and it wants to play with me because every­one else is watch­ing a movie. But I have to be up in five hours!

I have this over­whelm­ing urge right now to take the Trooper out to the near­est muddy field and just tear loose until I can’t see out my wind­shield any­more. I can pic­ture it in my mind’s eye, down to my face, which is plas­tered with a demonic grin stretch­ing ear to ear. It reminds me of Ed Norton’s line in Fight Club: “I wanted to destroy some­thing beau­ti­ful.” What the hell is wrong with me?

Well, instead, I’m gonna write a post and try to pass out.

Before I get into today, though, I for­got to men­tion some­thing in yesterday’s post. When Aaron L, Thu H, and I went to Drew’s place to get him, he was in the shower when we got there. Thu H went in to look at his bed­room, and naked Drew went from his bath­room back to his bed­room. Aaron L and I expected some scream­ing or per­haps slam­ming of bod­ies, depend­ing on how well Thu H man­aged to hide her­self. But then she came out fine, and got a new t-shirt to boot! The moral of the story is, good things hap­pen when you see Drew naked.

Today… woke up in stages, call­ing Peggy every so often to make sure she was work­ing on her paper. I would fall back asleep after each call until about 8:30. Woke up for good and did some chores around the house. Went online after that. Got some new manga. Read blogs. The usual bum­mage, in other words. Proof-read two of Peggy’s papers.

Went to lunch with Aaron L and Thu H after that. Aaron L sug­gested Chipo­tle, and I coun­tered with Guad. Appar­ently other peo­ple had the idea, because we ran into a huge APhiO study group. They were fin­ish­ing up as we got there. Ate fast and chased after them to John’s house. It’s very nice. We played a cou­ple of rounds of Smash Broth­ers on the big screen, and then it was time for the ser­vice project.

I actu­ally got us rolling pretty early, but rolling all around Davis to col­lect every­one in the car took a while, and we hit some traf­fic, too, so we were about fif­teen min­utes late to the project. The tag­ging itself was pretty straight­for­ward. We just took the rub­ber duck­ies and slapped num­bered stick­ers on them. Some of them were pre-numbered from pre­vi­ous races they had been in, so we just stripped those off first.

The project was sup­posed to last from 5 to 8:30, but we fin­ished just a lit­tle before 7. Then they loaded the crates onto a flatbed truck and force-fed us pizza and soda. They made us take the left­overs home, too. I felt kinda bad. I think they give us too much for the amount of work we do for them. And con­sid­er­ing cer­tain recent events, I’m try­ing to accept as few perks as pos­si­ble on projects.

There was a lot of service/pledge par­ent talk. That’s where quote comes from.

Keep in mind the project is sup­posed to be 3.5, and we actu­ally did about 2 hours. I might have to dock him 1.5x hours. Let that be a les­son to all of you. Don’t be bad chairs!

Oh, and Aaron L lied at the project and Eric didn’t believe him. Amaz­ing! I think the train­ing may actu­ally be kick­ing in.

Back to Davis. Took a shower. Heard about a cou­ple of events going down, but I didn’t feel like going to any of them, really. Just stayed in bed and read my book. I’m actu­ally get­ting close to done! But no more for tonight… I’m just… tired. No, not tired. Weary. That’s a bet­ter word.

Good night!