Dinhternet

So this week­end, I went up to Reno and North Lake Tahoe with Will N, Eddie C, Michow, Chris H, and Andrew P. Will N won the trip from his work, so it was basi­cally all paid for. The drive there was pretty fun. It was late and light on traf­fic, so Eddie and I cruised along nicely. Sadly, it was in auto­matic Civics.

The stay at Cir­cus Cir­cus was fun. I didn’t actu­ally play cards, but did make some money on the penny slots, besides get­ting cheap drinks. I also won at Uno when we went back to the room for the night. In the morn­ing, we hit up the buf­fet, and I didn’t con­trol myself as well as I should have.

The drive to North Lake Tahoe was even more fun. My tachome­ter actu­ally hit 6,000 rpm, which I had not done before. The hotel was really nice, but there wasn’t as much to do there. Well, we didn’t know there was, any­way, because we got there at dusk, and didn’t real­ize we were lit­er­ally across the street from lake front beaches. Hit the Big Water Grill, which was really bougie. Unfor­tu­nately, my dietary restric­tions meant I could only have a salad, which actu­ally worked out well for me, con­sid­er­ing the lunch I had.

That night, we chilled at the hotel hot tub and played a lot of “would you rather.” Watched movies and had cheap wine in the room after we got kicked out of the pool area, and then woke up for a lit­tle more slots and pin­ball action. We fol­lowed the lake shore for an amaz­ing drive home, and then chilled in Davis to watch the big game. Made a buck off Andrew P bet­ting on the Steelers.

Over­all, Will N made big money, as well as Minh T. I’m up for the week­end, but only by a cou­ple of bucks. Makes me won­der, though… You know the expres­sion “Lucky in cards, unlucky in love” ? Some­times it’s put the other way around. But the point being, in years past, it did not hold true for me, because I always lost money at New Years, and was still unlucky in love. But this year, I’m (slightly) lucky in “cards,” so does that mean the expres­sion will finally be true for me? Or will it be untrue in the oppo­site man­ner that it usu­ally is?

So there was another “dis­cus­sion” at din­ner today.

I for­got how it came up, but Ong Ngoai started describing/reenacting the Daniel Pearl exe­cu­tion. Cau Minh then brought up how peo­ple are protest­ing the CIA’s use of water­board­ing, and said that the pro­test­ers should have their chil­dren decap­i­tated like that and then see how they feel about water­board­ing. This brought on another round of “If you don’t like it, go home.”

I just quickly fin­ished up din­ner with­out say­ing a word, and then went up to my room. As much as I like Jack Bauer, I could never stand for some­one like him in real life. Unlike in 24, no man’s hunches can always be right. Prac­tices like water­board­ing are exces­sive and inef­fec­tive. They do noth­ing but cre­ate false leads for us and more ani­mos­ity from oth­ers. I just want to tell them, “An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.” Amer­ica can and should be above that shit.

So after my posts last night, went to brush my teeth, and got pulled into a two-hour dis­cus­sion with Jimmy about my posts. Specif­i­cally, about APhiO. Good stuff. He makes me see things in a new way all the time, and I love bounc­ing ideas off him.

Went to ser­vice this morn­ing with Albert and Melanie. I love ser­vice in the morn­ing. Even though this one involved me hav­ing a pretty bad aller­gic reac­tion… My skin and eyes were all itchy, my nose was just con­stantly drip­ping, and my lips even swelled up a little.

Today’s quote comes from the project:

Poor guy… a stocks buddy of his was text mes­sag­ing him every five min­utes, taunt­ing him with more infor­ma­tion he couldn’t act on.

Got back home and took a shower and slept off the rest of the attack. Had a quick bite for din­ner, and then it was movie time! Double-feature tonight… first, Eddie and I met up with Vince and Les­ley for Super­bad. Then we went to the other the­ater for Balls of Fury, and ran into hella folks, includ­ing Aaron L, Minh T, Michow, Chris H, Isaac, Joe, Drew, DK, Kevin P, and Donna. Super­bad was awe­some. Mostly because I saw so much of myself in the unbe­liev­ably awk­ward main char­ac­ters. Balls of Fury, eh… not so much. I laughed at stuff, but over­all… not as impres­sive to me. Plus there was ran­dom ASA com­plaints in the back of my mind the whole time.

Oh, and why is Mag­gie Q now THE Asian chick in Hol­ly­wood? She was pretty hot in Balls, but god­damn, in later scenes, she straight looked concave!