Fear the Crab

Maile, George and I joined George at Bucca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant, for his birthday. It was a surprise party, because George had no idea everyone else was going to be there. His girlfriend planned the whole thing. There were other people, too, that were from George’s side of the social circle, and they were pretty cool, what few we managed to talk to. A couple of them reminded us of other people. There was a guy named Stacy (sp?) who reminded me of Reid, and another guy named Ken who reminded me of Richard. It wasn’t really a case of looks, it was more because of their actions, or little movements of body language that just screamed of similarity.

Speaking of screaming, when Maile and I went to pick George up, we idled some time waiting for the guy to finish work. We took a few pictures with my digital camera, and one picture Maile took of me standing next to my truck was.. well, interesting. There were these hazy swirls of white that suddenly appeared in the photo, and it’s not present in any of the others we took before or after. I can’t rightly explain it good enough, but it freaked us out because we can’t explain it. You can kinda see me and my truck through the white swirls, and that is very clear, so the camera wasn’t moving. And it’s a digital camera, so I don’t think there’s a problem with any double exposures. Weird.

After the dinner the three of us went upstairs to Dave & Busters for a drink and a few games. Combined we managed to acquire about 2000 tickets, bringing our running total up to a little over 17k. We actually don’t know what we’ll use those tickets for, but since all the good things are in the 50k and up range, it’ll be a while before we have to think about it.

Maile has a final to take tomorrow, then has to study for another on Thursday. I only have one final on Thursday, but I also plan to wash my truck tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll wake up early enough to get that done, but it’s been raining these past few days, so I’m not sure just how effective my little chore will be.

I went over to Maile’s classmate’s house, because the two of them were going to study for their upcoming final. I busied myself with writing notes for my 211 final, which is on Thursday. It was an interesting day over there. The house is loaded with animals, for there is one dog and five cats. Three of the cats are only kittens, so there was a lot of exploration going on in the living room. Those cats seemed really interested in my Cancer Man cap, though it was probably because of the scents from Maile’s house.

While there, I happened to chance upon someone else’s wireless signal. It was very faint, and probably from one of the neighbors. It was the first time I had ever done that, and I don’t really plan to do it again. For one thing, it’s usually an unprotected signal, meaning that someone, if they really wanted to, could hack into my computer. Not that there’s anything important on my laptop, but a hack is a hack all the same. Anyway, it was a rather interesting experience.

I tried to help Maile with her history paper, but my head was feeling stuffy, like my brain wanted to spill out through my eye sockets, so I only managed to write two paragraphs. I was feeling a bit lethargic after the outing, and that didn’t help much. Hopefully tomorrow will see me a bit more chipper.

I’m feeling tired today, so I don’t plan to post a lot. I went with my folks to my mom’s doctor, to help lift her on to the examination table. We ate Chinese food for lunch afterward. Then my dad dropped off the van to a body shop because someone dinged the rear bumper pretty bad, and I picked him up. After all that was done, I went to LCC to visit Maile at her ceramics class, where she was finishing up a few more projects, firing them up raku style. I’d explain raku, but I’d probably butcher it like a carving knife on a mouse’s tail. Afterward I spent time with her at her house, and Titan farted near my head, right as I was warning him not to.

Tomorrow I start work at 1600, and I think I’m supposed to get a dinner break.

It occurred to me that I haven’t posted in a while. It’s not like I’ve been very stalwart in writing every day, but in the future I can hope to be more diligent. Perhaps it’s because nothing since my last post has happened to warrant any update. Perhaps not.

I decided not to do the extra credit assignment for ICS 211. It’s worth 4 points, but if I say I’m going to do it and I don’t do it (or it doesn’t work), they’ll penalize me 4 points. I’d prefer to take my chances with the final, and the extra time I get by not doing this assignment will help. I’m not going to take the ICS 241 final, since I’m not being graded for it anyway.

I found out that I don’t have school tomorrow, because my programming professor has jury duty. Tomorrow is also the 241 review session, but because I’m not taking the final, I don’t need to attend.

I’ve applied to become an undergraduate for the fall 2003 semester. Right now I’m considered a “post-baccalaureate unclassified graduate student” because I’m only pursuing what they call a Certificate of Second Degree Completion. When pursuing that, I only need to take the classes I want to take, and when I’ve fulfilled the requirements of that field, they’ll give me a certificate. The drawbacks to that are that I pay graduate tuition, I register last, and I don’t get to apply for a parking pass. This time I will try to be an undergraduate and remove those nasty nasties. The reason I didn’t do this in the first place is because Academic Services told me that I needed to complete other cores (what they call Focus Requirements), such as history and other things I don’t need. This time around, what I plan to do is “pretend” I am going to take those cores, and once I’ve finished with all my ICS courses, I’m going to walk up and say, “I’d like to switch to pursuing a certificate.” Of course, I haven’t told them what exactly I plan to do, but it’s apparently an accepted practice within the ICS department. At least, the adviser recommended I do it.

Maile finished her lamp today. It looks awesome. I helped assemble all the hardware, such as the wires and other goodies that make a lamp, a lamp. I also managed to break off a piece of the lamp through my ineptitude, and I felt really bad.

I drank a couple of beers tonight, because Maile and I went to Sunflower to have dinner with her mom and her mom’s friends.

I enjoyed a most delicious dinner at Maile’s house. There was plenty of good food, including the turkey, and Maile cooked up this sweet batch of yams. She used marshmallows! It was so cool! There was the aroma of rice krispie treats and the taste of such on the tip of my tongue. I had two servings. We also had stuffing (one of my personal favorites), salad, mac salad (which I don’t really eat), rice (gotta have rice), and cheesecake for dessert.

In addition to that wonderful feast, I watched too much tv and typed too much on the computer. So now my eyes hurt and my back is probably all thrown out of whack. Can’t beat a good meal, though.

Today’s quote:
“Once you have the stick in your hand, mount it!”
— Madame Hooch

Thankfully it wasn’t boring, but that’s only because I was able to talk to Min about trucks and finances, and I was able to talk to Maile on my break. I did get into a bit of an argument with Takashi, who was going off about Christianity imposing itself on other religions, specifically Islam, and the modern-day relations between the US and Israel and why that is damaging the mid east. There were many flaws in his argument, some of which I pointed out to him, but it remains unknown whether or not it sank in. So many flaws, in fact, that I would find it hard to repeat them here with any semblance of clarity, and therefore I won’t do them any justification.

My vacation request for the 23rd was approved, so that means I will be able to accompany Maile to her company Xmas party.

Tuesday:
Went to school, and had a school day. It rained off and on, but never to the point where I had to open up my umbrella. Slept over at Maile’s house

Wednesday:
Woke up at 0600 hours and never looked back. Applied some Rain-X on my windshield because water just wasn’t beading up like it used to. Spent some time online and basically was a bum. Maile came home at around 1200 and brought lunch, which was sweet of her. We left the house at 1300 hours or so to conduct the day’s activities.

First we went to her mom’s working place because the mom forgot her lunch. We dropped that off, then assembled a bookshelf for the store so that the desk in the office could be more organized.

Went to Ala Moana and started our Christmas shopping spree. We first browsed through Macy’s, then Shirokiya, then a whole bunch of other places. While in Shirokiya, I ran into Min, who was there to buy dinner before he started work. I was finally able to introduce Maile to Min, since neither of the two had seen each other before, but both have heard about the other.

By the time dinner rolled around, I was dead tired. I think I was actually tired after lunch, but it didn’t hit me until 1700. Maile and I planned to eat at Bubba Gump’s, so that’s why we stayed at Ala Moana. The food was good, though a bit spicy, and the service was pretty on it. At least, they were very “happy.” I had a beer (Kirin draft) while Maile had what was called an Orange.. something. It basically tasted like a creamsicle with orange juice in it. For the meal I had a fish sandwich, which was excellent, and Maile had Shrimp New Orleans, which was also excellent. However, we were both feeling kinda full from the chips and dip we got as an appetizer, so it was unfortunate that we weren’t able to finish the meal.

I’m going to try and keep my hair long this time. With the occasional trim, of course.

…as usual.

I talked to Maile for a bit on my break, and we made some plans to attend her company’s Christmas party on the 23rd of this month. If it seems early for a party, it is, but it has some practical applications, too. For starters, the company gets 2 weeks vacation towards the end of the year, so no one will be around to have a party. Secondly, Maile’s best friend is due to give birth to her second child near that time, so planning the party for the end of this month is common sense to those in the know. I put in a vacation request so that I can accompany Maile to the party, and hopefully my request will be honored. I don’t know where the party will be, but I remember one year it was at the Hawaii Prince Hotel. I think last year it was at the Waikiki Parc Hotel, but I could be wrong.

I’m still creeped out from The Ring. Every little noise, every little shadow in the house makes me nervous. People will laugh, and have laughed at my condition, and I can laugh, too. But only in the daytime.

Put the car cover over the truck to see how good of a fit it was. It’s pretty decent, snug enough at the ends so that the cover doesn’t fly off when someone sneezes. I do have to keep the front a bit loose, though, because of the hood protector that’s installed.

Must remember to bring my shopping list for the employee sale tomorrow.

Updated the quiz page for myself and Maile.

Sleepy.

EDIT: Quiz page no longer available.

I washed my truck today. I hope to get into the habit of doing this once a week, but since this is only the second week I can’t rightly call it a habit, yet.

I took Maile to LCC so she could take an exam for her Psychology class. Since this class is strictly online, all exams are held at the Learning Resource Center and merely have a deadline by which a student must take them. Otherwise the student can go anytime the LRC is open, such as today when Maile actually didn’t have any classes to attend. As for myself, I spent my time sitting on a chair outside, watching the birds dance about the grass and trying to get those images from The Ring out of my head. It’s already been a couple of days since I saw it, but every time I think about that fuckin’ movie I get creeped out. I’ll be the first to admit I’m easily scared from horror movies of that caliber. It’s a brilliant movie, extremely well done; I just wish I didn’t see it. From now on, I’m sticking to strictly Disney movies.