I never got around to posting about the 4th of July. So quickie short post.

Sean and I went up to Aptos, to his family's cabin near the beach, and ate hot dogs and hamburgers. Sean's uncle was *really* pushing for me to set off firecrackers, which I didn't want to do but he seemed convinced it was some stupid rite of passage I had to complete. I mean, I like watching fireworks shows but lighting the fuse and throwing the little things around? Eh. Open flames are always worrisome. Long hair, usually hanging all over the place = perfect target for sparks or careless fuse-lighting. But I ended up setting off a couple of little ones. One that spun and looked like a little color-changing flower, and one or two that just made a big bang. Don't remember the names.

After everyone ate we went down to the beach, where people were blowing up all sorts of illegal fireworks. Smoke everywhere. It was very pretty and noisy. Cops were busting people for lighting fireworks all over, but there were so few cops and so many offenders that they could never catch everyone. Do I think fireworks should be illegal? Probably not, as long as people clean up after themselves and don't blow 'em all when people are sleeping. But the fact is, where I live they are illegal, so if you get caught there's a fine. No point bitching about it, that's just the chance you chose to take when lighting up. I really haven't got much sympathy for the people who were complaining about how their rights are being trampled all night long.

Oh well. It was fun to see everyone. The fireworks were pretty. Can't complain about the evening, overall.

There was a dead rat by the clubhouse this morning. One of the tennis players reported it. Normally if there's a dead animal (say, the dead skunk/cat that was found near a pool last weekend) it gets left for the Maintenance team to clean up, but the rat was right in the middle of the path, and hard to ignore.

Rats freak me out. It's their tails. They're so long and snake-like and CREEPY-LOOKING, and when the rat is dead the tail goes all stiff and the fact that it doesn't bend scares the shit out of me.

So I thought, I'll find a shovel, scoop it into a plastic bag...and then what? Can you throw a rat in the trash? I mean, people might throw away a pet goldfish, or flush it down the toilet, but a rat? People don't go chucking dogs and cats into rubbish bins that I'm aware of. (The lack of childhood pets has left me with a great ignorance when it comes to dealing with animals.) They bury them or cremate them or leave them at the vet so that he can deal with the corpse. But is that due to emotional release or are there laws about dead animal disposal?

I text my manager asking what I should do, because she has a procedure for everything. She usually responds to text messages quickly, but not immediately, so as I wait all I can think about is the dead rat on the path outside.
So I called Marcela, because she's a mom and she probably has had to do this sort of thing at home. Her phone's off.
I wonder if it would be less embarrassing to call the General Manager or the Maintenance Manager. I opt for the GM, because I managed to piss off one of the Maint. team members last weekend. The GM is probably rolling his eyes as he tells me to put it in a plastic bag and throw it in the dumpster. So I guess you can throw a rat in the garbage.

Bad news: no shovel.
Worse news: The locks for the Maint. shed have been changed and I don't know the combination.
Even worse: Thoughts of the rat are making my hands shake and my stomach churn.
No way am I touching that thing. It's probably riddled with disease.
I can't help but wonder what took it down. It's a fat rat, with silky, sleek fur. It was feeding well. It doesn't look like it was attacked. I see no blood. Maybe it fell off the roof and broke its neck?

I find a stick and a plastic bag. The first poke of the corpse sends a shudder through me. It's so stiff and heavy and IT'S STARING AT ME. That is by far the worst part, the wide-eyed stare of the rodent. I'm going to vomit.
I have to sit back for a moment and take deep breaths. I am a GROWN-UP now. Grown-ups have to deal with things like dead rats. Plus my Daddy's not home and my boyfriend's too far away, so really, I can't wuss out of this. Taking my stick I poke the rodent into the plastic bag, cringing each time I come in contact with its rock-like body. It's so fat it ought to be squishy. I'm not sure if it would be better or worse if it was.

I probably have the grimmest face as I carry the bag to the dumpster, hurl it in, and practically sprint back to the Clubhouse to wash my hands (which never actually came in contact with the rat, but rat-germs could have potentially crawled up the stick somehow, right?) again and again. So so so so gross.

When I get back to my desk, there's a text message from the office manager instructing me to ignore the rat and leave a note for Maint. to take care of it on Monday.

DANG IT!!!

So I've officially left the acupuncture clinic. I don't think I ever mentioned that. I turned in a two weeks letter, dropping the letter off at the office on my way home from school during finals week. I wasn't scheduled to work again, and I never heard a peep from the office, but I assume Doc got the letter.

There was nothing really wrong with that job, save that it no longer suited my needs. The scheduling was erratic - I only worked Fridays, and sometimes he would be open every Friday for a month and other times I wouldn't work for several weeks. It was the lowest paying job I had. To be honest, I didn't like the work much, either. Calling insurance companies and trying to hunt down deliquents who owed the doctor money wasn't the biggest part of my job, but it was definitely the suckiest and I hated to do it.

Unfortunately, leaving that job doesn't earn me any more free time since I'll now be spending those Fridays at Lush. But what can you do? Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, I gotta eat.

Oh happy day!

Design - A
Arts 2C Honors - A
Accounting - A+

How the heck did I get an A+ in accounting when I showed up for less than half the classes?
Who cares?
4.0!
(Also, passing accounting this time around clears the 'F' from last quarter, so my transcript now claims 4.0 for winter AND spring!!!)

Hopefully after summer session, my cumulative GPA will be over a 3.0 again. It was down to a 1.9 last summer. What can I say? I'm a friggin' lousy student.

I'm slowly getting used to wearing contacts again. It's not great, because I'm still getting headaches, but they aren't appearing as quickly. Maybe after another week they won't show up at all. That would be swell.

Summer quarter's going to be busy, but I think I'll be OK. I've got the next section of Accounting and a Pilates class; I decided I didn't want to go hardcore and take a math class too. Mr. Ellis, my accounting teacher, seems nice enough. He isn't giving us homework, a midterm or a final, just several quizzes. I hope that's a good thing.

I used up the last of my BPAL Lady Macbeth perfume. I haven't been wearing BPAL that much in the past year, but I'm trying to start it up daily again, because:
A/ I get stinky in the summer (especially if I'm doing 2 hours of Pilates!!)
B/ I spent a lot of money to get that perfume, so I should enjoy it!!
Lady Macbeth has always been one of my favorites; I'm going to miss it until I am allowed to reorder it, several years from now at the rate I go through my perfume :-p

Uploaded a bunch of family photos to Facebook today. Just random things I found here and there.

At Rinconada right now. Heading to Lush next for inventory.

On Wednesday afternoon, as I was studying for my art history final, my glasses snapped in two. I had gotten up to wipe some smudge off the lenses, and suddenly there were two pieces in my hands, not one. Ugh. I don't seem to have any backup glasses (I can't find my old pair ANYWHERE) so Seanie helped me glue the frames back together and reinforce it with tape, and I'm wearing the glasses around the house. But these patchwork glasses are too embarrassing to wear in public, so I've pulled my contact lenses out of retirement. They still make my eyes itch like crazy, and give me a headache, so I'm trying not to wear them more than absolutley necessary and I'm minimizing my outta-the-house time.

My last final was Thursday morning, so that was a relief, but a small one, because I still hadn't completed my paper for that class. I worked on it most of Thursday afternoon, polished it off Friday morning, and turned it in just a few minutes before work at Lush. Then I felt relief. A wave of hallelujahs just washed over me.

Unfortunately, summer session starts Monday so there's I'm thrust back into school again. It's a brutal routine. You have fall quarter, and then a couple weeks off for the holidays. That's fine. Then you have winter quarter for 12 weeks, followed by spring quarter for 12 weeks. There's a week's break in-between, but that's not enough time to really relax and shed the anxieties of the previous quarter. All you get between the end of spring quarter and the start of summer is a single weekend, which is even worse. No detox time at all! Six weeks of double-time classes and triple-loaded homework, and then...bliss. Freedom. Aaaah...

It's only six weeks, I can survive that, right?

Dude, Michael Jackson.
Way to steal the thunder from Farrah Fawcett's cancer defeat.

Seriously tho'. I'm not too hip on the celebrities, and I was a smidge too young and my parents too old to ride the Jackson craze in the 80s, so I kinda don't remember much about him except the child molestation and the plastic surgery. He was clearly a sick man in his own world, probably batshit crazy, and death is probably a mercy for him.

It's fascinating watching his fans, though, and the way they converged on the hospital in LA as it was announced that he had been taken there, and was dead. I mean, only a few minutes passed and boom! Hundreds of people swamp the entrance. The testimonials that pop up on forums on the Internet, the reactions on Facebook, the Twitfest I refuse to touch..everyone has something to say about this guy, and for a lot of people, it's about his talent and his music. As 'meh' as I am about MJ, I'm glad people seem to remember him for more than baby-dangling and a funky nose.

Last Saturday one of my oldest friends got married off. Dear Kitty, who I have known since sixth grade, finally wedded her sweetheart Tyler. They've been together for seven years and engaged for at least four, maybe five now! It was time. She's the first long-term friend of mine to tie the knot, so it was a little strange. Part of me kept thinking "But WE'RE TOO YOUNG TO BE GETTING MARRIED!!!" but I also kept reminding myself, "Dude. You're TWENTY-FIVE years old. You are all BITTER OLD MAIDS by now!"

Anyway, this is only the second wedding I've been to 'on my own' rather than as my parents' child. So I don't know a lot of the usual wedding traditions and ceremonies. Christine's Catholic, so this was also my first Catholic wedding.

The wedding was at St. Joseph's Cathedral Basilica in downtown San Jose. It's the prettiest church in the area.

I spent a lot of the slower moments of the wedding ceremony contemplating the murals on the wall and trying to remember what little I know about the Catholic saints. I would be embarrassed about the meagerly few facts I managed to pull together, but asking my friends who grew up Catholic and realizing they didn't know anything either made me feel better, although a little sad.


Andi couldn't sit with us because she was doing a reading during the ceremony, but Seanie and I found Kero and Sean as well as some of my old co-workers from Bath & Body Works. Sean had cut his face shaving right before he left, and it still hadn't stopped bleeding when we got to the church so he sat with a finger holding a piece of kleenex to his face throughout the ceremony.

( More Wedding Photos Behind the Cut, Plus a Reception Paaaaaarty!! )



Big group photo of all the young'uns from junior high, high school, college!

I felt really bad that I didn't recognize everybody right away, but at the same time I was surprised how many faces I could remember since a lot of these people I haven't seen for five or ten years. It was a lot of fun to see everyone again!

Kitty and Taitai, I wish all the best to you!

I just had a lovely woman (that I have never seen before) come in and yell at me because the swimming pools still aren't open. They weren't open for Memorial Day weekend, they weren't open for today (Father's Day) and now Father's Day is RUINED because she was going to have people over for a barbeque and swimming and now she CAN'T and WHY IS SHE PAYING $500 A MONTH FOR THIS PLACE ANYWAY??? As she stormed off (I think I said like two sentences) she yelled "I HATE THIS PLACE!!!"

It was so ridiculous that I just had to laugh.
1/ Anyone who has Father's Day ruined because a swimming pool is out of commission has some fucked up priorities if you ask me. You should be grateful that you HAVE a family to celebrate Father's Day with!
2/ Now what the heck did yelling at the top of your lungs accomplish? NOTHING! No matter how you screech, I can't make the swimming pools fill for you!
3/ Dude, if you hate it here than move out! Seriously, I don't know why anyone would want to live in a home owner's association in the first place, but if you do then suck it up and stop whining about it! You made the choice to be here.

Yeah, I'm normally one to rail against the pointless fluff stories about President Obama and his magical powers...but the video that's circulating where he smashes a fly is pretty rad. I hate bugs.

It's the last week of school and everything is RUSH RUSH RUSH before finals. I have to finish a paper for Art History, as well as an extra credit project or two. Design has a few final projects; accounting has a fussy midterm.

Rush rush rush. One more week and it's over!

--

On the bad news front, SJSU is not taking transfers for Spring 2010. So I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do. Hold on until Fall 2010? (That would be horrible.) Go to a different school? Try to crash classes this fall?
It's a bit too much to think about right now. I'll deal with it after finals.

Once again, dear residents, I am the Clubhouse Assistant. My domain, so to speak, is a small Spanish Mission-style building (I say small because it's square footage is smaller than my house, although that is not true if you count the three tennis courts as well) that sits at the entrance of a gated community in Los Gatos.

I am NOT the police. I cannot enter a resident's home because you think he's passed out in an upper room; while I can call the police and/or the hospital, the time it takes for you (the resident) to call me, tell me the situation, and have me investigate the house you could have have called the emergency number yourself and help would ALREADY BE THERE.

I am NOT traffic control. I did not issue the citation you received when you left your car in the driveway, which is against the complex's rules. I also did not make the rules. I probably processed the citation and sent you the notification letter about it, but that's just paperwork. I can't waive your fine or let you "skip" the steps of the appeal process. I will not make a special exception just for you.
(This also goes for expired 'temporary' parking permits. You only get one, valid up to ninety days; after that you can't have another one. That's why it's called temporary. You're the fool who decided to move into a complex with such rules while owning too many cars; you can figure out what to do next.)

I am NOT a gardener or a member of the property maintenance staff. I can't unclog your drain, fix a leaking sprinkler head or mix paint colors for your home's exterior. You can fill out a request form like everyone else and the maintenance staff will take care of it when they return to their office. I am not going to call them for you unless your house is flooded or your roof has collapsed completely because it is their day off and Heaven knows, they deserve their weekends!

I'm still NOT traffic control. I can't walk up to your neighbor's car and give him a citation because he parked in a spot that inconvenienced you.

I am NOT animal control. I'm sorry that baby ducklings are in your swimming pool, but I'm not fishing them out for you. Do it yourself! (Seriously, I don't know if a former Clubhouse Assistant did this or what but I've been getting this request a lot lately.) I also can't do a thing about your neighbor's barking dogs. Well, that's not true. I can call their phone number and try to tell them to shut the dogs up. But let's be realistic, people. If the owners are home, the dogs probably wouldn't be barking.

I am NOT psychic. If you can't tell me where the problem is, like the name or address of the person you're complaining about, my ability to do something is zilch. If you're too cowardly to identify yourself, or too vague, I also can't help you all that much.
Real complaint earlier this week:

Resident: "My neighbor's dogs are barking all the time and it's really obnoxious and against the rules."
Me: "Well, I can try to call them. What is the name of the owner?"
R: "Oh, I don't know."
M: "Do you know the address?"
R: "Well, it's on AV Street." (AV has at least seventy homes on it.)
M: "Can you be more specific?"
R: "..."
M: "What is your address? I can try calling your neighbors and seeing if they know where the dogs are."
R: "I don't want anyone to know I'm calling."
M: "I wouldn't use your name, it'd be totally anonymous."
R: "No."
M: "..."
R: "Just do something about it!"
M: "I will be sure to file your report, ma'am."
R: *hangs up*

Again, Clubhouse Assistant. I make sure kids don't drown in the swimming pool, people using the kitchen don't burn the building down, and tennis players don't leave scuff marks on the court pavements. What happens out of the Clubhouse area ain't really my business.

I know it's super-old now, but I just can't get over the awesome of The Hoosier's 'Goodbye Mr. A' music video.





Campy superhero delights always have my affection.

For the past few weeks I have been obsessing over this panel I have to do for a group mural. It's for my design class, naturally, and we had to create a group collage/mural/whatever themed around 'apocalypse.' My section was to be the gods watching as humanity was wiped out by the moon slurping up all the earth's water with a straw. (Yeah, I know. We are STRANGE!)

Here's the concept sketch, which I scribbled off a few hours before the first class on the back page of a calender:



Now, two weeks later, here is the panel to turn into the teacher:

To be crossed off as completed this weekend:

- paper for Legion of Honor visit (AH)
- journal entries for AH: one, two, three, four  1:42
- officialize topic andd write thesis statement for research paper (AH) 8:55
- order books for research paper  9:05

- paper for Legion of Honor visit (D8)  12:33
- finishing drawing of gods (D8)  1:29
- color background of gods (D8)

- pick classes for summer 12:53

- package + print postage books from bookmooch, PBS, bookcrossing

- visit Lush to talk to Debbie 4:00

- get a new audio book at All Ears 3:30

- exercise

- update FP 2:36
- add new FP contest 9: 31
- send FP email 10:00

Saturday, June 6th
Sunday, June 7th

I saw Up last night in 3-D. It was such a fun movie. I have to admit, for me it was a little ill-timed. If you've seen the previews you know one of the main characters is a classic Grumpy Old Man archetype. Well, the first five minutes or so of the minute basically speeds through his whole life with the great love of his life, his wife Ellie. They are, of course, absolutely adorable together, but one can't be a true Grumpy Old Man if one's wife is still around...so Ellie dies. This made me think of my grandmother - I found out about her death almost exactly exactly two weeks before seeing the movie - and of course I started tearing up, and pretty much every time the character was mentioned or flashback'd my eyes would water once again.

But no matter. Up! is such an adorable movie that I forgive it for turning me into waterworks. The premise is ridiculous (old man attaches balloons to his house and it floats away to South America) but it totally works.

The animation is just stunning; I can't believe how far computer animation has come in the past few years. The way they played with the balloons transparency and the way light would reflect through them, sending rainbows everywhere, was just beautiful.

Carl Frederickson totally made me think of my grandfather, who lives down in Southern California. they have the same completely square jaw. There's something so appealing about watching this old man push himself and push himself, first to get to Paradise Falls and later to continue his adventure. I mean, you think of old people as weak and ineffective, and Pixar manages to laugh and incorporate his aging decrepitude while still making Carl kick butt.

Throughout the movie there's this undercurrent of sadness. When you step back, it's a little depressing. Besides Carl's obvious loss of his wife, Russell, the bumbling stowaway, throws himself into the Wilderness Explorer program because it's the only way he can spend time with his dad, who has (presumedly) divorced his mother and lives with his girlfriend, Phyllis, who tells Russell he's 'bugging' his father when he calls.

We watched it in 3-D, which was cool. They have continued to improve the integration between 3-D and the film, so it really adds to the movie experience. The balloons really pop and as people and objects go sailing through the air, they do seem to fly out toward the audience.



PS - I keep waiting for Pixar to screw up and release an awful movie. I wasn't crazy ab out Cars or Wall-E, but they weren't at all bad. Just not to my taste. But Pixar's winning streak can't last forever!

PPS - OMG TOY STORY 3 SO EXCITED!
(Shut up, I really like Toy Story.)

Answering the phone:

Me: Hello?
Telemarketer: This message is for Kendrick Hew.  (Mispronounced our last name)
Me: He is not here right now.  Can I take the message?
Telemarketer: There is no message.  *hangs up*

LAAAAME!

So the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is having a samurai exhibition next month, and they've started sending out little teaser notices about it and talking about it on their blog. One of their samurai facts struck me as exceptionally cool:

Some samurai enjoyed playing a game of fragrances.
Reminiscent of the perfume apparatus described in the French decadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans in his novel A Rebours (Against the Grain), the incense game often involved a dizzying array of fragrances. Guests would bring their own incense (mixtures of pulverized aromatic woods and animal scents, kneaded with honey and other substances) and the group would try to identify the aromas and decide which it liked best.

The appreciation of fragrance originated in Buddhist ceremonies; transmitted to Japan in the sixth century and thereafter, this aesthetic pursuit became popular in aristocratic social occasions, outside of any religious context.

Shown is an incense game box and implements from the 1700s. Made of lacquered wood with sprinkled metalic powder, silver, bronze, and mica, it includes fire tools, box, braziers, and a tray of mica plates.


Original article (and other fun facts) here.

It's just so random to think of these big tough warrior men sitting around sniffing incense smoke. Kinda funny. ARTIST FRIENDS DRAW A PICTURE OF THIS PLEASE!!! ;_;