Fear the Crab

The boutique called Maile and told her that they got her dress. So she’s rather excited, to say the least. The dress ended up being a bit cheaper than Maile anticipated, though it still punches the wallet at $1,500.00.

Speaking of punching the wallet, the quote from the florist was $8,000.00 for everything. Bridal bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages for the mothers and grandmothers, archway for the ceremony decorated with flowers, stanchions, drapery, cake decorations, lei for the emcee, and centerpieces for 20 tables. Now, $8k is a lot of money, and much of that is for the archway (which we’re renting for $1,200) and the centerpieces (which we’re buying for $3,000).

We’re going to see if we can knock that number down to a respectable $3,000.00. For starters, the groom and groomsmen don’t need flowers, the cake doesn’t really need decorating, and the mothers can get by without corsages. We can also provide our own materials such as the vases for the centerpieces and linens for drapery, and get leis from elsewhere.

We will also see what the florist can do given our budget. The florist’s vision has little to no green, meaning there wouldn’t be any stems anywhere, and yet the size of the arrangements means more flowers. The types of flowers are more towards the expensive end, too. So we’ll see what we can do.

Today I joined Maile on her diet. Now I am a willing participant in the Medifast plan, since I could stand to lose some weight. I figure, since we both managed to kick the smoking habit, the two of us can maintain this diet without cheating.

Bought more socks today. Same size and type as before, those lightweight hiking socks that seemed to only come in women’s sizes. They’re very comfortable, though.

Bought the End of Evangelion DVD. Haven’t watched it yet, mostly because I’ve already seen it and bought it just to complete my collection.

Bought dinner at Jurison’s Inn in Waikele. They have some good mochiko chicken, with a sauce that they make themselves. It’s a bit of a sweet sauce, and seems to go well with the chicken.

Bought some Listermint and a couple of packs of cigarettes. The Listermint because it’s better than Listerine, according to lab tests conducted by Maile at LCC. It kills more germs, and it tastes better. Not to mention, you don’t get that burning feeling when using it. The cigarettes I got because I’ll only be smoking at home, so I left them in the freezer to stall the staleness from sinking in.

I bought a lot of stuff today. Thank goodness tomorrow’s payday.

Did the laundry, but when I left for work a lot of it was still damp on the line. Did some of my math homework, so the day saw some progress.

I’m finding the quitting of cigarettes cold turkey has started to reach its difficult point. I see people smoking at school and at work, and just seeing it brings back the urges. The toothpicks help. Part of me is thinking that perhaps I could buy a pack and keep it at home, only smoking when I am at home. The reasoning behind this is that I only smoke one or two while at home; a majority of my smoking was whenever I was out. The drawback to this is that the mere act of smoking will likely heighten the urges and make it worse down the line.

The lockout of the shipping ports on the west coast has worried me as to the expected delivery date of my truck. There are a lot of questions unanswered regarding the whole deal. The biggest is whether or not they built the darn thing. Toyota City showed me a list of the different models and how much of each were going to be received, but I don’t know if that meant they were already built or they expect that much to be built and shipped. If it’s already been built, it’s highly likely that their delivery will just be delayed. But if it hasn’t been built, the delay could be way longer than ever thought possible. I say this because I just saw in the news that the factory that builds pickups has stopped production because the parts from Japan haven’t or can’t arrive. There is some consolation, though. I already have the paperwork that basically reserves my truck in my name, so whenever it does arrive, it’s mine. I just gotta remember not to spend the money I have reserved.

Tomorrow I plan to see Maile. I think she’s going to visit me at my house, since I’m pretty much all by myself now that the folks are in CA visiting my brother. We’re not going to do much because we both have a lot of studying to do, but it will still be nice to see her.

I somewhat finished my applet for ICS 211. Fixed a bug involving the deletion of pets. If there were two pets of the same name, and you wanted to delete the second one, the program would only attempt to delete the first, and never move on to the second. I fixed it by requiring not only the pet’s name, but the owner’s name. Unfortunately, I haven’t solved this other glitch where the program accepts duplicate entries. I used to have a check that ran to see if a pet’s name and owner’s name were already in the database, but when I converted the program to an applet, it didn’t seem to work. At least I have a whole week to ask for help.

Today I wore one pair of those women’s hiking socks. They fit well, as expected, and were a bit more comfortable than what I used to wear. Shoes are shoes, though, and when standing around all day, feet hurt no matter what you wear. When I got home my feet had an imprinted pattern on the top. That’s what happens when you wear socks like that.

Today I kept craving a cigarette. My mind tried to justify the craving, but thankfully the mere thought of having to shell out $6 kept it to a minimum. Maile said my mind is not ready to quit smoking, and I believe her. I just feel I should “get a head start” on quitting, and now is as good a time as any. I must maintain my discipline, and hopefully this discipline will spill over to other areas, such as car maintenance and my homework.

Woke up early and went down the street to vote. Stupidly enough, there was a chicken sale going on at the same time at the same location, so the parking lot was jammed full of people trying to pick up their chicken and trying to vote.

I bought some socks and shorts at Sports Authority, afterward. I ended up getting women’s socks because they had no men’s socks in my size. I wanted some lightweight hiking socks, the kind that wick away moisture or whatever it is they are supposed to do, and the women’s socks were the only ones in my size. So long as they fit, there’s no problem, and it’s not like the fashion police will come breaking down my door. I think.

I then went to the DFS car wash. I figured that soon, that car will be traded in, so it wouldn’t hurt to get it cleaned up, at least on the outside. Oddly enough, when I left my car didn’t look any different.

Work was dreadfully dreadfully slow. I think were it not for the toothpick in my mouth I would have gone insane.

On a happy note, I finished my applet program. There are a few bugs left, and there are probably a million ways I could have made it more effective, but those things can wait until I return to class and ask questions.

I was in Longs with a whole bunch of co-workers. We were there because we were on our way to the beach, and we wanted to get things. Strangely enough, the items we were getting had nothing to do with the beach at all, and we were all in our duty free uniforms. I remember browsing the shelves for things that I wanted, and as I walked around, I traveled close to the windows and the door that lead outside. I looked outside to see what the weather was like, when suddenly I didn’t look where I was going and ended up nearly stepping out of the store with a basket full of merchandise. Thankfully I managed to steer away from certain doom before I crossed the line, but I kept thinking that Longs was going to send a security guard to check up on me. While browsing for gum, I noticed an undercover security officer trailing me. But I wasn’t hiding anything, and if he approached me I was going to tell him the truth, that I wasn’t watching where I was going, and in my dream that actually would have worked.

I went to pay, and was standing behind two other customers. It was odd that Longs’ registers were all inside little booths, and these booths formed a circular island in the middle of the store. There were these separators that you’d find at airports or Disneyland, which would accommodate long lines. The first customer left, then the second mentioned something to the sales clerk, and the two of them left the store. Those of us in line, especially me since I was next, began to wonder what was going on. I looked over to the door, and noticed that there were four sales clerks standing around there, just talking. Meanwhile, everybody else was done with their shopping, and they came by to see what was taking so long. I explained what was happening, as far as I could tell it, then I noticed that the line was getting super long, even at some of the other registers.

Eventually the sales clerk came back, and I got ready to pay. Unfortunately, she came back with another customer, and took her in front of everybody so she could be rung up. This happened twice more, and apparently it’s because this dream Longs had special 10-minute parking stalls for customers, meaning that if you parked there, you had top priority to be serviced because you only had 10 minutes. At this point I was getting quite upset, especially after being snubbed in line and all the other sales clerks not doing anything to help out. Irene and Min kept coming by to find out what was taking so long, and even Maile came into the store. Finally it was my turn, and strangely instead of having a basket full of little knick knacks, I was buying a pair of boots that in reality I got a couple weeks ago. My dream total ended up being over 200 dollars for one pair of boots. When I was done with my transaction, I stepped one window over to their service counter, where a young man was there. I asked if he was the manager, and he said yes. I then proceeded to tell him everything that went wrong with my visit. I said that I could understand how the clerks needed to service those people in the 10-minute stalls, but that left no excuse to have four other clerks standing around talking story while the line gets longer and longer. The manager seemed sympathetic.

However, before he could do anything or say anything in response, I found myself watching an anime cartoon detailing the end of a futuristic civilization. There was some sort of nuclear blast, or that’s what I was led to believe judging from what I was seeing. I remember the scene was underground, and there was a subway train that transported people to different sections of the underground city. There was no sound (it was a dramatic moment, I guess), and I felt that this cartoon was really cool because of the way they drew and how they wove their story. When the subway doors opened, no one came out, but rather this melting heat wave spilled out and turned the area into an oven. Even the walls were melting.

Here, the details of my dream are blurry, but I do remember an escape pod containing a robot and a monkey, crash landing on a planet. The monkey survived, but the robot did not, and the robot was the only thing that could tell the monkey what to do on this new planet. The monkey then turned into a group of five people, all trying to figure out their role on this new planet (which looked like Earth). I was among those people, and I remember opening up the flood gates in our yard and watching all this water spill out into the street. We wanted to judge the peoples’ reaction, and their reaction was to throw baseballs through our windows. I got rather sick of that, so I decided to leave and take a walk down the street, which led me to be find myself…

…in Longs, with a whole bunch of co-workers. We were there because we were on our way to the beach, and we wanted to get things. Strangely enough…

That little loop forced me out of my dream, with help from a power saw.

Today started out weirdly. I almost threw up the omelette I had for breakfast. I had the night shift at 1830, so that meant I had to kill 9 hours before leaving for work. I’ve never been more bored in my life. What’s even more sad about that is the fact that just in my room there are hundreds of things I could have done to pass the time. Chalk it up to good ol’ laziness, I guess. I even tried to take a nap, but it was too hot, and I think I only managed to doze off for 10 minutes.

On CheesyMUD I tried to make a spec program, somewhat because I wanted to show I could contribute something, but primarily because I felt like it. The only problem was, a certain command was unavailable to me, so I couldn’t compile the code. That makes it tough to test. I felt like a prick for bugging all the higher-ups on the game to compile the code for me.

At work I tried out the new pair of boots I bought on Wednesday. A black pair of Bates-brand boots, they look like something someone in the military or law enforcement would wear. I think it even claimed so on the tag. What’s neat about them is they have a zipper on the side, so I can take my feet out while keeping the boots laced. The boots were comfortable at work, and after having them “blessed” by Irene I did a little dance in front of the jewelry stand.

Work itself was.. well, okay. That’s the best I could put it. It wasn’t dull or boring, but neither was it active enough to consider it a “busy” day. That’s what happens when our primary customers are those from overseas. Still, it felt like I got a lot of work done, so in the end I guess you could say it was worth it.

There’s not much to talk about regarding work, except to say that these days it seems the young Japanese girls are wearing less and less clothing. You can blame the pop stars for that. One day a pop star is going to promote corsets and those gigantic hoop dresses, and then all over Japan women will find it hard to ride the train.