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waking up at 7am to loud, screaming, annoying kids outside my apartment on a monday morning would have to go down as one of the shittiest ways to start the week. i was so annoyed and pissed off. my alarm wasn’t set to go off until 8:15 and, for someone as sleep deprived as me on a general basis, that lost time was crucial. so it’s 11am and i’m drinking coffee. i usually don’t drink coffee. sigh.

i’ve been wanting to post earlier, but things kept coming up. so here goes…

thursday evening i hung out with sam. we made pizzas and chilled at his place for a bit. trader joe’s rocks… they have premade pizza dough for 99 cents! so we piled on the toppings and had some wine with our pizza after that we headed over to my place where we watched once upon a time in mexico. wow. a movie so bad that it is funny. not nearly as good as desperado, but still entertaining. i was disappointed that it was only sprinkled with flashbacks of salma hayek instead of featuring her as a main character. johnny depp seemed to be a bit random and forced in the movie, but antonio banderas was pretty solid in his role once again as el mariachi. everytime i think of antonio banderas i think of chris katan’s sketch on SNL where he’s banderas as a talk show host… and he has a compulsive need to take off his shirt mid-interview. and the mariachi band always tells him not to. “no no! too sexy! too sexy!” “ah, but i muuusst!” hilarious. ok random segue finished. after watching the movie, we stopped on the food network for a while and i finally saw the iron chef. it was wolfgang puck and his minions vs. ariomoto and his minions. damn that looked like some exquisite and tasty food. i think egg was supposed to be the secret/special ingredient so all the dishes featured egg in some way. wolfgang puck won easily, 26 to 21, and sam was raving about the food.

i woke up really late friday and made my way out to work. i didn’t last very long at work because i was tired and most people weren’t in since it was technically the off friday, so i ditched after a couple of hours. i was expecting friday to be hot, because earlier in the week i saw a weather forecast for 87. turned out it wasn’t going to cross 75 so i nixed going to the beach. ended up going home, thinking i was going to take a nap but that didn’t happen. i rearranged furniture in my bedroom and did stuff around the apartment. met up for dinner with jackie and claudia and after discovering a one hour wait @ nola’s, we finally decided on zao’s. the “spicy black bean chicken and vegetables” was not spicy at all, and not even that tasty really. after eating, i realized i was exhausted so i bailed on plans to go minigolfing after dinner with a bigger group of people. it was SO random, but jackie’s friends who went minigolfing are people who are now involved with TABS, this student group i started on campus with guha and dave. small world…

claudia took off to watch the new harry potter movie. i somehow have missed this whole mass phenomenon. haven’t read or watched anything harry potter related and i can’t find the interest for it either. jackie came over to my place and we just chilled, watched some tv and talked a bit. i hit the sack a bit late and woke up early saturday so i was in for another exhausted day.

i had been looking forward to saturday all week. the day started off a little slow. went grocery shopping at a newly discovered safeway off miramonte. i prefer the one off shoreline… it’s bigger, cleaner and newer. i came back and did some chores around the apartment. dishes, cleaning, etc etc, all that domestic bullshit that’s necessary for living. i went to the gym and got on the bike for a bit, met this random kid living in the complex that’s a frosh at santa clara and then lifted a bit. this guy i met, such a typical frosh. he went to gunn and he loved waxing on about how he used to go to stanford parties and stuff. letting on that he was super cool because of this. stanford parties. whoo. *finger twirl* right. he was a little obnoxious, forcing me to cut my time on the bike a little short so i could get away from him by hitting the weights. best news from all of it: no significant back pain. my disc must be getting unherniated…

i chilled a little in the afternoon, watching some tv. youn was looking for a study break and needed some stuff from costco so i went on a costco run with her. she came over and helped me finally build my damn bookcase from ikea. she was a bit delirious from lack of sleep and that provided some comic relief. i was very relieved to have the bookcase completed and finally started to feel like my place was coming together. after she took off, i relaxed a bit before doing what i was really looking forward to:

AND1 MIXTAPE TOUR baby! neil and drew picked me up and we headed to oakland. we stopped at this trippy futuristic gas station in fremont on the way which is worthy of noting. arrived at jack london sq and met up with rustin, khan and armen to have some ribs, but everett and (i forget the second half of the name of this place) was pretty full and the wait seemed long. so we ditched and went to this place called giant burger. waited FOREVER to get food… it’s crazy, this place only makes burgers… yet they never seem to keep enough on the grill. i think we waited for at least half an hour. we ended up eating on the go to get to the arena in time for tip off. my sandwich was huge, tasted alright and i managed to drip all over my jacket.

we get to the arena, and the place already has a hella long line to get in and an even longer line to buy tix. luckily we find the will call line to be pretty short and rusty, armen and khan found a shorter line for us to get into the arena. we get to our seats, which were alright, not spectacular, but not too bad and there’s a bunch of introductory shit and tipoff is probably around 8 or a little later at this point. could have gone for those ribs… armen, neil and i were lamenting.

the game was awesome. 50, escalade, hot SIZZLE, the professa, sick wit it, helicopter, etc etc were great to watch. great dunks, ridiculous handles and just all around funny shit to watch. the oakland team kept pace with the and1 team for about 2/3 of the first half. then and1 started pulling away. at half time, this hip hop group called “the foundation” got on the court and started doing their thing, at which point a bunch of people rushed on to the court. i think like half the stadium must have crowded on there and fucked up the court for the players. you could see foot track marks, spilled drinks, etc. it just turned into this crazy scene, where finally, they asked people to return to their seats. then they did this freestyle/battle competition involving 4 people with some guy from Source magazine MC’ing the event. this little kid, he must have been 10 or 12, was competing against these 3 other guys and he held his own until the final round. he had a lot going for him and i was thinking about the story of how snoop discovered lil bow wow on one of those weeends. the kid was clever but didn’t spit crazy game. during the 2nd half, there were a few off the heazy’s, some nice alley oops and hot SIZZLE doin his slo-mo moves with the professa showing off his rubbery knees with his crazy crossovers. i think he is rustin’s idol white boy’s got moves! oakland pulled to within 3 but and1 cleaned up and won by 15 or so.

after the game, i had planned to hit up a club in SF with eric so instead of driving back down and then driving up to the city and also instead of having two cars to get to the club between eric and i, eric picked me up at the coliseum/arena. the traffic after the game was CRAZY. people were drunk and high and pulling ridiculous shit in the middle of the huge intersection at 66th and coliseum way. this old colt packed full with 10 people had people hangin out the windows and stuff and was driving random circles through the middle of the intersection. i’ve never seen so many shitty cars with crazy rims in my life haha. this one mustang was revving it’s engine and smoking out so bad that the car behind them had two people open doors to yak. that was hilarious.

anyway i hung out on the corner until eric and meghan picked me up. we made our way out to the city just in time to get in for the cheaper $10 cover at this club called “end up”. sort of a weird name for a place… i mean it could be the double entendre or just the composition of the words, but it’s hard to tell people about the club in any clear coherent way. upon walking in, i liked the vibe of the place. the bar was cool, there was a room to chill in with some seats, a poker table, some video poker machines and some video games. there was also an outdoor area to grab a smoke and then a dance floor. i can’t remember the names of 2 of the 3 dj’s spinning that night, but i remember miguel migs and overall the music was phenomenal. deep house. good shit. we warmed up with a few drinks: i had two vodka red bulls to start just to get some caffeine in me cuz i was so tired. i fell asleep in the car going from oakland to SF! after that i knocked back 3 or 4 more vodka tonics. meghan’s long islands were weak so i stayed away from those. i love the blueish hue of vodka tonics under black lights… it’s so cool. the bartender at “end up” rocked and she hooked me up with a free drink, i think it was the second to last one i had that night. no complaints here, an extra $10 in my pocket. i had a great time there. good body buzz, good company and good music. meghan taught me some ASL, that would be American Sign Language, so that was cool too. i learned “ok”, “drunk”, “whore”, and some other things… haha. i’d hung out with her a couple of times before, drinking @ nola’s and i saw her at senior formal so it was cool to get to know her better.

so yeah, i think i danced for 2.5 hrs straight and could have gone on for longer but eric was getting tired, and being the driver, it was for the best for us to leave around 3. on the way back meghan and i chatted about fencing and it turns out she knows ken, so that was a cool random connection. eric dropped me off at my place and i stumbled in and found my bed for a nice night of drunken sleep.

woke up sunday afternoon and realized that i had meghan’s id with me cuz she had asked me to hang on to it for her. whoops. dropped that off at eric’s place and then thought i’d run some errands but i couldn’t really think of much to do. so i went home and started unpacking. yeah i know i’ve been living in my place for 2 months and i still have shit to unpack?! they were just boxes of books i was putting off until the bookcase was completed, but now i had no excuses. 4 boxes of books and school work were unpacked and loaded on to the bookshelf. it still needs to be organized and set up nicely but at least the boxes are out of my kitchen and i feel more settled in! i lounged around sunday, a little sore and tired. sore from lifting saturday and all the dancing. i think my back was starting to feel it… just a little fatigue or whatever. made lunch and dinner in, saving cash along the way. then i went out for some dessert with tiffany at the gelato place in PA (mmm burgundy cherry with dark chocolate) and then we watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind at the aquarius. it was my first time to the aquarius ever. not a very good theater…

GREAT MOVIE. everyone should see this movie. very appropriate for me in this time of life. definitely not an easy movie to watch but worth the experience.

made my way home and i was super tired but my mind was not settled. talked online a bit and then youn came over to cram for her e40 final because happy donuts was packed with people. fixed her up with some tea and then i crashed to the rude awakening i started this post with. now i’m just chilling at work, nothing really pressured on me at the moment. we’re having an all hands mtg soon so perhaps there’s some news about the program.

alright i’m off, gonna go check in with my lead…