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I’m leaving for Moraga, CA in three and a half hours. I’ll be visiting Mandy, Eva, possibly Caitlin and Neil, and Charlotte too. It’ll be great! We’re going to Berkely, San Francisco, seeing an A’s game, and going to pig out on ice cream and cheesecake. Most of all, I’m escaping the Tucson heat. Yeah, no bragging intended. I’ll be back late on Thursday, so I’ll see you all Friday, I guess. Don’t have too much fun without me! And I’ll bring Vikram, Leelee, and Breelee back something nice for their birthdays (dear lord they have birthdays right next to each other!!!). Happy birthday, Leelee!!

I made a jerk out of myself towards my parents tonight. They didn’t yell, but I’m just not proud of myself. How should I make that up to them?

Grant and I were in our backyard when it happened. A great screeching noise caused us both to whip our heads towards a palo verde tree over the wall of our property. A few grey birds flew away as a second screech sounded. I gasped. Grant sniffed the air.

Perched atop the palo verde tree was a great bird nearly ten times the size of an average grey bird. He was magnificent, a true wonder for all to see for those who feasted eyes on his green throne. He was all black except with a few orange streaks along the outer edges of his wings. He had an orange beak and sharp black eyes that stared directly at us. His tail was not huge, but it had great white markings along the bottom. He stood high and proud, as though he truly knew he was the rightful king of the desert animals. He screeched again. Even I, a human, perhaps his only threat for miles around, felt humbled by this creature.

Grant and I saw this bird earlier this week, except it was from a distance. He was flying in mid-air, evidently in the process of collecting his next meal. But now that I know that this bird is a Harris’s Hawk, I am not certain that this is the only great bird in our neighborhood for now. Perhaps these king of birds will grace me with their presence later this week, after I return to this wild world of stormy and starry nights~

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So I guess I’m posting between that halfway point of Vikram and Leeann’s birthdays. Happy birthday, you two!

Dad wouldn’t let Joey and me go to Rocky tonight, and what do we do? That’s right, we stay up until past three in the morning anyway. Take that, parents! You need to stop marginalizing your kids!

Crystal and I wore SpyKids 3D glasses at the concession stand today. It was quite amusing. Even Ken (head honcho in all the Tucson Loews Cineplex theaters) thought it was funny, though everyone kept asking us if the movie was any good and neither of us had seen it.

I’m almost done with Zelda already. Yes, spell obssessed for me…

A true lady works at the food court of the Foothills Mall. I recall her being there since before I was in middle school, though no one, not even herself, knows for certain how long she has been working there. She is rather long, though not tall, Asian, and perhaps is the most dignified person I know. She is a lady. She stands tall with a straight back and says little. She has the ability to look down at you while she does her tasks, and she moves as quietly and quickly as a mouse. She has the nobility of a queen and the subtility of a wizard. Her skin makes her seem young, but if you look into her sad, tired eyes she seems ageless.

This woman who works at the food court is in fact a custodian of the mall. She wears a degrading uniform with a FOOTHILLS MALL logo on it, though on her she may as well be wearing the finest silk kimono. She always wears latex gloves for cleaning, but the gloves seem dainty on her hands. If you catch her mopping, sweeping, or wiping tables, she pretends not to notice you as though you are the person waiting on her. And yet, you see her and feel as though she has raped you of the finest riches in the world.

Who is this woman? Does she truly deserve to be ignored, pushed around, and forced to work for the general public at the hourly rates she probably earns? Why has she been working at that place for as long as I can remember?

The mysterious woman continues to scrub away, ignoring even her co-workers. On occasion I pass by her at breaks, or after clocking out of work. She chooses to ignore me, too, as though I am one of her subjects in her great kingdom as well. Once I was there when a woman spilled her soda all over the floor, while the lady was busy wiping off benches. Without a sigh or any signs of complaint, the lady took out a mop and began cleaning the mess, though the woman who spilled the soda looked as though she would rather be cleaning the mess up herself, rather than have this lady, this beautiful creature, wait on her.

But let us not think of who she is, but what she does and why she would do such a thing. Here is a noble woman brought to shame, cleaning up people’s garbage for the sole purpose of at most $10/hour. She is a queen now a peasant, scrubbing her hands raw because she cannot escape this horrible fate brought to her. And let us look at not her magnificently scrubbed tables but her magnificent beauty, the epitome of American capitalism~

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AND NOW: a rant.

So let me tell you what I think of Dr. Atkins and his crazy diet. Being a vegetarian, I of course am going to be biased, but let me remind you once again that the only reason I’m a vegetarian is because it was a bet with a friend back in sophomore year (to this day I believe that friend owes me $10/year, so that’s going to be $60 he’ll owe me next January). But anyway, my thoughts on the Atkins diet.

Dr. Atkins alleges that carbohydrates is the reason Americans are fat. Neglecting to look at the fact that most Americans are over-eating, feasting, snacking, non-exercising, munching overweight chumps, he instead says, “no, no, just don’t eat sugar and bread and you’ll be thin again.”

But let us consider what Atkins limits people to eating. As my sister, who was loosing weight for her wedding dress, says, this diet basically limits you to chicken and cheese. Chicken and cheese, which are not horribly great for you in great doses, coupled with cows and other pure-protein products, are all about space efficiency. We’ve all heard this argument at one point in our lives: the food chain begins with the sun, to the plant, to the animal, which gets slaughtered and served on a sesame seed bun.

Now, that is the thing that bothers me. It is simply more efficient and space-worthy to go from the sun to the plant to us than to the plant then animal then us. That’s twice the work and graze-time, not to mention space and efficiency, it takes to feed one person as opposed to the non-Atkins dieter. And that is what seriously bothers me. When we consider programs that work so hard to feed people, such as the Hunger Site, and the fact that over 24,000 people die each day because of food distrubution, when I think of people who throw out that hot dog bun just because Dr. Atkins said it would make him or her fat, it is then that I think to myself, “who is really the pig?” If everyone ate in Atkins-fashion, all the land would be dedicated to food production, our energy industries would be wasted, and world hunger would increase easily.

I don’t care how thin you are, if you are on Atkins, you’re the pig and I am not~

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I got an A in Calc III! Why is it that you guys believe in me when I doubt my own abilities all the time?

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Here is a quick post before bed.

At work an amusing thing happened before I clocked in and after I clocked in. Before I clocked in, I had a shift that began around 11a, and naturally I woke up around 10a and rolled out of bed and into my work clothes. Needless to say, I was still zoned after Mom dropped me off.

And, well, it’s normal procedure when you’re going into concession stand to knock on the door to be let in instead of just barging into the theater, because they’re not open yet. Yeah. So this morning, I forgot that we were open since 10:45a, and what do I do but come in at 11a knocking on the door expecting someone to let me in! Hehehe. Yeah, shut up, the people I work with were amused!

Then after work they wanted me to stay another half hour so I could make them cotton candy. I was the only one there at the time who could make cotton candy, and they had a sneak preview of Spy Kids 3D to deal with. I want to see that movie since it’s in 3D and that would be sweet.

I think I figured out the science behind cotton candy. Making cotton candy doesn’t take much more than understanding basic principles of heat. There is this motor in the center of the machine and it spins around and around, emmiting fluffs of sugar in the air that the stick catches. However, if you let the heat on too high, it comes out too fast because you have put more entropy into the motor. So, the solution is to turn down the heat. However, if you are running out of sugar, there is more heat too because there is less mass/volume for the sugar to heat up, thus it takes less time for the sugar to go into the air. So, turn down the heat when you’re about to run out of sugar, too. And when you refill the motor with a different colored sugar-type, turn up the heat so it’s working just right again.

There is one last thing to note about this endeaver. Some of the sugar is lighter than other flavors, that is, the blue is lightest, pink is second-lightest, and green is heaviest of the three flavors. So, since the mass is less in those consecutive orders, you better turn the heat accordingly. It’s all in the entropy.

Wow. I talked about cotton-candy making much longer than I meant to. Sorry, folks.

After work Trevor, Joey, Jimmy, and I watched The Dish and CowBoy Bebop. I highly enjoyed both movies. The Dish was a beautiful movie (probably one of the best movies I’ve seen in a looooong time), and I can see why everyone likes CowBoy Bebop so much.

Well, I’m off to write because I’ve started this story and can’t seem to put it down. Er, that’s “it” being my pen, not my story, because obviously if I was to put my story down that wouldn’t make much sense. Yes, I can’t stop reading a story not yet written. Riiight~

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I wish things were better with some of my friends, but alas, such times make one feel helpless. Moby blames President Bush, but I don’t like blaming people for my problems. My choices cause my happiness–or my unhappiness. Just like your choices brought you to where you are.

Life is cruel. Life is random.

Sometimes I just wish teddy bears could solve all our problems. If we could get a nice army of those furry things to come and suck up all the unhappiness in the world, life would be good. Perhaps we all need a nice Patronus, a sort-of anti-Dementor, in our lives.

Vikram’s about to come over and grab COS. I’ll have you know he seems to prefer the British versions to the Evil Scholastic Empire as well.

Work sucked. They keep on accusing me of being off on my drawer when I count back all my change, so I hate to sound arrogant, but how can it be my fault? Like last Saturday, I was supposidly off $58 on my drawer when they found the money about 10 minutes later. Then today I was off $10 when it was because Jenn forgot to put $10 in quarters in my drawer. I mean, duh, I’m a math major, and I regularly do the cart shift without the calculator. It’s not my fault. So quit accusing me.

Hmmm not much else to say. Now would be a good time for Vikram to pull into the driveway.

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Every time I go to read my list of blogs, I am always like, “noooo this will take forever,” but then it never does because over half the people haven’t written anything new. Lazy people rule.

Today was Jimmy’s birthday. I hope he had a good one; I treated him to Uno’s and Finding Nemo tonight (Leelee, Breelee, and Joey were there, too–that was fun, folks). I think we should take a raincheck on that swim though–call me when I get off work tomorrow if it’s not raining.

Zelda rules. I’ve been playing it all day and now am an official Nintendo-zombie. But the storyline totally picked up. I thought the whole island thing was dumb, but I got a major spoiler today and now am in awe of the genius of those Japanese people with their Zelda-gadgets and storylines.

My math professor for vector calc sent me a very nice email about how I did well on the final and that we should keep in touch during the school year. Of course I will make an effort to do so, though it made me think she probably put the grades up on bannerweb. So I went on bannerweb to check and the stupid server is down. So, no math grade for me as of yet :sigh: I miss the Scripps registrar :(

Breelan said a very profound and kind thing to me about my blog tonight. She said what she likes about my blog is that I post regardless of comments. She said earlier she was reading a xanga that said rather nastily that the entire xanga site has become a status game with the winner being the one with the most comments per night.

I’ll have you know that the number of comments I get per night really don’t matter that much to me. Of course comments are always welcome here and I read each one, but I understand there are lots of people who read this blog (and more people than the comments button ever reports–site meter reports are wonderful).

And to me what is more gratifying than a comment is when I mention not feeling well, and a good friend says, “oh yeah, you sounded kind of down on your blog last night…” True friends are the ones who comment in other ways~

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JIMMY HAS SABB!!!! AH HA HA HA HA HA that kid will give poor Sabb hell. To make matters even more interesting, Andy and Jimmy are both in the same hour (for those of you who don’t know Andy, he is a smart-alecky genius friend of Joey’s who has more brainpower than anyone I know. He makes me feel stupid. Somehow Jimmy and Andy get along fabulously though, so needless to say, BRING OUT THE PRANKS). So yes, this next year will be very interesting, and it makes me wish I was taking first-hour physics at CDO with them. Jimmy also has Madden and Quinn, plus McCann for Spanglish. Things are going to be interesting next year.

Let’s see…this morning I slept, wrote, and played Zelda. It was awesome. This afternoon Joey, Jimmy, Andy, Mike, Rob, and I played Risk while watching American Beauty. Joey won the game, which surprised me because I thought he was a goner in Asia, but he managed to go east and take over North America.

After that Auntie Angela and Uncle Brian came over for dinner. Cousin Mark just came back from Peru and had a bunch of interesting photos and stories to share. He’s leaving for med school at Duke next Thursday. Cousin Michelle is good, too–she hasn’t registered for Cross yet. I still can’t believe she’s starting eighth grade; I’ve known her since before she was born!

A special thanks goes to Vikram for that delicious giant cookie! It turned out great, and we had a good laugh over something (but I won’t say it here because it sort of needs to be told rather than typed to someone).

So, we mostly listened to Mark’s stories and played card games the entire evening. It was fun.

I’ve had waaay too much sugar, caffeine, and even carbohydrates these past two days. I’m going to lay off on all three for the rest of the week because it’s making me feel not only fat (I know, I know, I hate it when girls say that, too, but sometimes too much of these substances make even boys feel fat or at least heavy) but rather lully too, and I can’t sleep at the same time. I imagine it’s something like being stoned.

When two young boys see a friend in a public place nowadays, they greet their friend by shaking their hand. It seems like something new to me as opposed to old ways males greeted each other. I can remember when boys used to greet friends by slapping each other high five or something a little less mature than a simple shake of the hand. And yet, this new, fashionable way of greeting someone seems a little more classy and hip. It also shows retrogration.

In what direction is our generation moving nowadays? I believe a more conservative movement is upon us. We will mirror our grandparents’ generation, because the saying in history is that to understand a generation, look not at the parents’ generation but the grandparents. We are definately becomming 1940s conservatives (though we have learned a thing or two since then), and I would be much mistaken if this retrogration did not become more prominent in later years~

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I am at Leelee’s now. Hehehehehehehehehe

Door was funnier earlier (again, door is the shift where you just stand there and rip tickets). This shift would’ve been fun except I had two seperate pairs of flagged tickets, plus a sold out Pirates of the Carribean to deal with. With the first pair of flagged tickets I had, there was a couple, a boy and a girl. They wanted to get into Bad Boys 2, but box office would not sell the girl tickets because she didn’t have a picture ID on her, and the boy was obviously not her legal guardian. So, box office sold a flagged ticket (that’s a specially marked ticket so that I know to keep an eye on those people) to the boy, and he walked over to the other side of the theater and bought the girl another ticket. Naturally they were a suspicious-looking couple, and of course they both wanted into Bad Boys 2. So, bearing in mind that box office went through enough trouble to get these guys NOT into this movie, I picture IDed them, and of course the girl didn’t have her picture ID. Well, I also saw that they had each one large 44 oz. drink, so I thought up a crueler thing than just not letting them in. I told the couple they could go into the theater, but if either of them got up ONCE, even to go to the bathroom, then I would kick them both out without refunds on their tickets. Well, as some of you may know, Bad Boys 2 is a two hour and forty-five minute movie, so that’s a pretty cruel punishment when you’re clutching a 44 oz. drink in your hand. Needless to say, both bolted to the bathroom when the movie got out.

The other cruel thing I did with the other pair of flagged tickets was almost as bad. There were five boys total trying to get into Bad Boys 2, three being of age and holding tickets, and two being maybe 10 and holding flagged tickets of Legally Blonde 2. Even if the tickets weren’t flagged, I would’ve been suspicious: what 10-year-old boy would voluntarily go to see Legally Blonde 2? So, I kept a close watch on the youngsters going to see Reese Witherspoon’s movie, and of course forced them to sit through the entire thing, even when they tried sneaking into theater 3 not once, twice, or three times, but FOUR TIMES. The fourth time I told them if they pulled any more fast ones on me, I’d kick them out without ticket refunds.

Yeah, door shift is funny when it’s busy. You get to be the Ticket Nazi.

After-work life involved playing hide-and-seek in Wal-Mart until it closed and then playing Life until three in the morning. I better leave now, because Leeann gets up at 6a. Poor Leelee. I’m taking away from her sleep time :(

PS Cristal rules!

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QUIZ TIME!

Threat rating: Medium. Your total lack of decent
family values makes you dangerous, but we can
count on some right wing nutter blowing you up
if you become too high profile.

What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Please forgive me today if I prefer to be alone. Sometimes people take my introvertedness for granted, but it’s me. Take it or leave it.

The Pythagoreans, who devised ways to prove mathemetics, who discovered the square root of two, were able to catagorize five regular solids (solids being things like cubes and so forth). Of the five regular solids, one solid, the dodecahedron, was rendered “dangerous.” It was so mysterious, it was associated with the stars and the sky, because it was heavenly. The Pythagoreans also associated the four regular solids with the four elements–earth, fire, water, and air. But as for the dodecahedron, that must corespond with a fifth element–a heavenly element. Because of the dodecahedron’s divinity, the Pythagoreans kept the dodecahedron a secret from ordinary people.