Dinhternet

So I haven’t been stick­ing to my fit­ness plans at all over here in MN. it’s actu­ally harder, because in Davis, I was lim­ited by money and acces­si­bil­ity of food, so with lim­ited options, it was eas­ier to go with healthy choices. Now, I’m sur­rounded by unhealthy choices, and my fam­ily keeps push­ing me to fin­ish things. Despite my set­backs in that depart­ment, though, the week­end was awe­some. Got to chill, played a lot of Rock Band, and I’m now com­fort­able with medium on every­thing except drums, which I con­tinue to suck at. Hand-eye coör­di­na­tion just isn’t my thing. That’s why I did wrestling in high school rather than any sport with a ball.

Last night, Chi Ba and Mike E took me out to see an Irish band at an Irish bar in the down­town area. The only Irish music I had really lis­tened to before was Flog­ging Molly, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Turns out, the band — Paddy Wagon — is pretty cool. It’s offi­cially six men, but I believe I counted more last night, Chi Ba said some­times they have so many peo­ple that some of them can’t fit on stage and have to stand off to the side and play. Their set is mostly Irish folk songs, and audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion is strongly encour­aged. Some­times it’s just clap­ping along, but in one song, every time they say, “Alice,” the audi­ence responds, “Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?!” In another song, every time the wife in the song calls the hus­band, the audi­ence responds, “Hey, what?!” But as peo­ple get drunker, it turns into things like, “What bitch?!” How can you go wrong with enter­tain­ment like that?

Any­way, I start work at 6:30 tomor­row, so I gotta go to sleep extra early tonight.

So hun­gry… and arms so sore… but must keep post­ing… You guys don’t know the sac­ri­fices I make for you.

Thurs­day… the start of the fun! Woke up early and con­tin­ued the laun­dry. Wanted to have a Steve McQueen marathon, but Mag­nif­i­cent Seven didn’t work, so I could only watch Bul­litt. It’s a good movie, but it’s no Get­away or Papil­lon. There was also some more Literati. I was very excited to get seventy-one points for “crankily,” it was my first bingo bonus in what seems like forever.

Got hun­gry and started mak­ing noo­dles and the kim chi dumplings that Sophia C gave me when Kitty K called me up and told me to come over for lunch, so I brought the noo­dles with me. She had made rice and a Chi­nese tomato soup, which we had first, then we split the noo­dles. Kitty K and Jane P tell me I made instant food look good.

Back home and chilled for a bit, and then James S called me up and told me he was swim­ming over at the freshmen’s, so I went over, too. But first I stopped at Safe­way to get two Rock Stars (for the drive down to Santa Cruz and back) and two Gatorades (because it’s hot as hell in town.) James S and Mike T actu­ally swam laps for days. I just sat in the water and enjoyed the coolness.

Soon enough, it was 6:30, and I went home to shower and get ready for Alice C’s din­ner at Sud­w­erks. I was the first one there, and Will O spot­ted me and he was like, “It’s a thing? I thought it was just going to be me and her…” Soon enough, every­one got there. We got a table on the patio even though there were per­fectly good empty tables inside. Those bastards.

Din­ner was fun. aBB was dirty. Quote comes from when Will F showed up.

But he did. Boy did he. Will F had a shaved head, and many com­par­isons were made. Per­son­ally, I think he resem­bles Ham­mer­head from Dick Tracy now. We chilled there until a lit­tle before 9:30, when most of them decided to go to Wal­mart. Thu H and I still had to go home and pack.

I had to drop off every­one who didn’t want to go to Wal­mart, so it was around 9:45 when I got home. Packed up by 10, then waited for Thu H and Haley to get ready. Then we filled up on gas, and finally left town around 10:30. The drive was unevent­ful for the most part. I did take 17 at higher speeds than I did last time I went down there. It was so fun! Oh, and we beat Peggy S to Aaron L’s house because she acci­den­tally went the wrong way on the freeway.

When we got to Aaron L’s, played some games on the XBOX, then Peggy S got there and we played some more. Then Peggy S was hun­gry, so we went to Safe­way, and she got some potato salad, and Thu H got crois­sants. Back to Aaron L’s, and we ate and talked, and then passed out. Oh, and Peggy S never lis­tens to me. Thu H knows what I’m talk­ing about; she laughed at my frustrations.

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.