inside the wonderful world of vee

Like right now!

I was a bit skeptical about hanging around in the Bay Area for an extra three days, but since my parents seemed like they really wanted me to hang around and paid for the additional $60 Southwest Airlines ticket for me to return to Seattle on Monday morning instead of Friday morning, I just said, OK. And you know what? I’m surprisingly glad I did hang around. As a result of hanging around, I have managed to accomplish the following (instead of sitting at home on my ass, even though sitting at home on my ass also probably would have meant playing some muthafuckin’ Left4Dead!!!):

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23RD, 2008

DOING JACK SHIT!
Yeah! Arrive in SF. I don’t know what the fuck I did today. What the fuck did I do? Probably NOTHING.

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24TH, 2008

DOING JACK SHIT!
Yeah! Arrive in SF. I don’t know what the fuck I did today. What the fuck did I do? Probably NOTHING.

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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH, 2008

MEETING UP WITH ALLEN MA!
Since I had a car this day as my dad was out of town, I drove into San Francisco to eat dinner with Allen Ma. But he had a deadline, as he works at a cellphone game company, so I had to wait like an hour and a half before he actually got off work. I attempted to pay for meters but holy shit. 25 cents for FIVE MINUTES. Can you believe that?!!! CAN YOU REALLY?!!! It’s positively insane! I ended up going to Border’s and spending a little bit of money buying Christmas presents and crap. BLARGHHHH!!!

EATING AT THE FANCIEST SUSHI KAITEN RESTAURANT EVER!
We went to Japantown for sushi when he was off work and there are a million sushi restaurants there, but we finally decided on Isobune. Isobune is the finest kaiten restaurant dining experience I’ve experienced. Wow. ~__~ Great sentence. It’s sushi boats, but they’re like… really good cuts of fish. For good reason, I suppose, because you’re paying regular restaurant prices. Not cheap restaurant prices, either. The minimum plate I think was $2.25? Maybe? Not cheap at all. But delicious. I had ama ebi and some other crap and they were all delicious. The king crab nigiri cost I think $8.00!?!! Holy.

PLAYING FUN IPHONE GAMES!
We went back to Allen’s apartment and I pretty much played his phone games for an hour. The games his company makes for iPhone, that is. I forget the names. But they were fooking amazing. Really fun ~__~ Makes me want to have an iPhone… almost.

GOING TO A DRAG SHOW!
I picked Jeanette up from the Oakland airport when it was time, and we headed over to the Stud in San Francisco to see their weekly Tuesday night drag show. It was awesome! Let me recall the acts. They were ALL trannies btw, in various stages of transexualness, but Allen and Jeanette would scarcely believe it. LOL. Here they were in order-ish.

1) Larger guy in woman’s business suit type attire. Funny but pretty boring. Good personality, though, and looking at his jolly ass face made me jolly.
2) Host, who I loved. Goth/industrial type styled crossdressing dude who was pretty much hot as a man and as a woman. Right up my alley. Some corny jokes, but amusing enough. Sang, pretty well, but melancholy.
3) One that totally looked like a woman, who Allen and Jeanette still maintain was a woman, but that makes ZERO sense. Also doubled up as a host. She did a silent act, with a chair and a cigarette. Good facial expressions.
4) My favorite, a dude dressed up as a woman with this long rainbowish dress and long hair in two brown buns on the top of the head. Really messy. Really dude-ish. Did this really awesome lipsync that was perfectly synced with the music and was about snakes or something. At some point pulled out a box of dog food and chomped it down, spraying food and lipsyncing… IT WAS SO AWESOME. I wished Jeanette had gotten a video of it it was so so so great. But unfortunately not. I am sad about this. It was seriously so great.
5) Another one that totally looked like a woman, tall and black, with a really good female-ish voice. Really fucking hot. I am a fan. REALLY hot.
6) Another crossdressing dude. Lipsyncing act. I don’t really remember this part, unfortunately.
7) Fully surgerized guest who Jeanette and Allen thought was a woman. Totally was a man, though, and a really hot man. Lipsynced and danced around for a really long mixtape session. Got kinda boring, but she was pretty fucking hot. Woulda been a hot man as well.

When in San Francisco!

***

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27TH, 2008

EATING HOT POT WITH THE PARENTALS!
That’s about it, really. Roxanne and Phil came over. We ate hot pot. We watched a weird ass super artsy Chinese movie. Very artsy but made ABSOLUTELY no sense. Haha.

***

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, 2008

GOING BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING? HELLZ YEARER! FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, IT WAS EXCITING!
I woke up at 9:00am and went shopping with my mother on Black Friday and receive $115~ worth of free clothing. I was certainly prepared to pay for the stuff (and I would have bought less stuff), but my mom was like, “When you go shopping with me, I’ll pay for it!” and I said, “HAIL YEAH!” Of the aforementioned $115~ of clothing is: 1) A pair of black corduroy-ish black pants for $19.99; 2) A pair of grey and black leopard print pants for $19.99; 3) A grey and black zebra-print (I really like patterns) zip-up sweater — I mean literal knit sweater — with hood, by Fox, with neon yellow trim that is pretty much my new favorite article of clothing ever for $49.99; 4) A super warm quilted Hurley plaid purple and grey hoodie, like a Matix Asher hoodie, that I had really wanted to purchase before when it was $65.00, which I deemed to be too expensive, but now it was on sale for just $30.00!!!!; and 5) A dark green and black plaid mini skirt from H&M that I have wanted for a while for $19.99 (this I paid for myself).

During this excursion, I discovered that, WOW, MALL FASHION HAS FINALLY ALIGNED WITH MY TASTES IN CLOTHING! I had actually previously thought it a terrible thing that my tastes in clothing NEVER aligned with mall fashion, cause there was never any way for me to find clothing I actually liked. But now that it actually lines up, the dilemma, as stated by Alex, is this: maybe before I had my unique fashion style going on, at the cost of not being able to find clothes I like in most stores… but now I just look like everyone else. Shit. Dilemmas.

MEETING NEW PEOPLE, SEEING OLD PEOPLE, AND LISTENING TO BANDS IN SAN FRANCISCO!
On Friday evening, I picked up Xinlei and Isabel from Xinlei’s house so we could go to San Francisco. I left the house at 8:00pm, and my parents were amazingly receptive and non-questioning of this behavior. It’s like shit! They finally see me as a somewhat grown up. Well, maybe a little bit only. But still! Holy shit! I haven’t seen Isabel since high school, literally, and we were never really close in high school anyway (maybe just a couple sentences), so that was most interesting fo sho. We drove, and got slightly lost, but thankfully Xinlei’s phone’s GPS saved us, and we got to this dive bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District called the Hemlock Tavern. A really good dive bar, in fact, and quite populated with humans, AND WITH A FREE JUKEBOX!!!!! Unfortunately, I did not get to make use of this free jukebox Failure!! Mr. Allen Ma met us there. Hoorah.

Our primary reason for going to the Hemlock was to see Mr. Jesse Dienner’s band, Room For A Ghost, play. It was a double perk for me, as I have never met Jesse, despite the fact that he has written for me for REDEFINE for probably more than a year now. Apparently he was going to attempt to greet Nick (see below)’s girlfriend with a British accent, and he would have done the same to me, but he didn’t know that I was going til it was quite obviously too late! His band was actually really REALLY good, though, and the way they worked their song transitions into one another made the show definitely more cohesive and epic. It was good. I had the feeling like I had when I was watching Battles. Maybe I don’t see bands like this enough, but I was fully captivated by their live show. Absolutely. The recordings I’m not sure about yet, but the live show definitely had me HOOKED, which is a great sign considering it was the first time I’d ever heard them. It was also REALLY obvious that all of them were amazingly good musicians, and Jesse had really freaking good stage presence. Haha. Interesting movements haha.

Anyway, I also met Nick Hubbard’s girlfriend there, if only briefly! I guess I could have maybe eventually done this in Seattle as he and she live there, but maybe not. It was just interesting seeing him in California considering, well, I usually only see him in Seattle?!

As for the two other bands who played with Jesse’s band… they were interesting. The second band, Aunt Dracula, according to my notes, had a song that reminded me of “galloping cowboys” — although with a spastic, kind of retardedly strange vocalist. I hated the music, but rather enjoyed the performance because it was so bizarro world. It was amazing to me that there were four guys who saw eye-to-eye on that kind of strange, strange, hard to fathom music.

The third band, Her Three Eyes, was initially my bag of chips, at least in the way that it reminds me of Neon Blonde and Duchess Says. I had high expectations for them, and all that, but they quickly turned to shit throughout their set. It was a downwards spiral. By the middle of the first song, I was thoroughly all bout it. By the last song, I could hardly stand them. Redundancy galore, both in vocals and in music. BORING. Even despite the fact that the type of music they play should NEVER be considered BORING. UNFORTUNATE-O!!

One of Jesse’s friends who was there, named Josh Hug (literally, his last name is hug), turned out to be quite similar to me in terms of liking to do weird people interaction type stuff, so I told him to join me in my “Talk To Us” project, and then we made time to DO SO!!!! He said the coolest thing he and his friend had done was to challenge random groups of strangers to play TABOO! (one of the best board games ever), and I guess that worked out well well well and he had done it three times but only been rejected once every time before finding a group of 2-4 that was willing to play with them. Coolio.

EATING AT MEL’S DINER AND NEARLY DYING DUE TO FOGGINESS!
After the show, Isabel, Xinlei, Allen, and briefly Josh went to Mel’s Diner, where stuff was REALLY WEIRDLY PRICED! Their menu had like prices like $1.66 and $3.28, etc. etc. Initially Xinlei thought that maybe it was cause shit included tax in it, but it turned out it didn’t, so we were all very confused as to why that was. The conclusion was that it was done on purpose to confuse consumers into purchasing more expensive things. YEAH. The food was American diner food. AKA lamesauce. Oh well. Isabel paid $7.00 for a fucking grilled cheese sandwich and a couple of fries. Haha!

The trip back with Xinlei and Isabel was interesting, with Isabel giving a monologue about true love. I found it to be a bit idealistic, but I’m cynical when it comes to that whole love thing (cynical and still somewhat a believer), so I was rendered pretty speechless. Not to mention it was late. And REALLY fucking foggy. Like REALLY foggy. At some points we could NOT see more than like, thirty feet in front of us. Or less. I’d say less. Practically like ten. It was crazy!!! Luckily we all made it home okay. And pretty much once I got into Livermore city limits — and I’m not exaggerating really — the fog cleared up magically, 100-freaking-%.

***

(On a side note, it’s currently 2:05am on Sunday night, November 30th, and Kyle Parsons just called me. He’s one of my writers from Southern California who’s this like total scene / MySpace kid kinda. Very amusing, though, because for some reason he always calls me when he’s drunk and relates these random ass stories to me. Haha.)

(Lately, I’ve been talking on the phone a lot more, too, and man, I miss it. I like talking on the phone quite a bit. I’d forgotten.)

(I’m going to finish this post tomorrow. More later. :D)

***

Hey, I’m finishing this post, like a week later, but that’s okay, right?!

***

I’m listening to… These Arms Are Snakes’ Easter album. Their show is next Friday. Hollllllllar.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH, 2008

BEING STRANDED WITHOUT A CAR IN LIVE-NO-MORE!
I woke up this morning without a vehicle because my dad’s vehicle had been taken to the Lexus dealership to be fix0red and my mom was driving him somewhere or they went somewhere and they had to use the CRV that I usually drive. Oh wells. Jesse and Josh texted me early in the morning and I was like, “Whoa, I like need to go and do stuff with them but I don’t have a car,” and then I remembered that Xinlei was going to the city for the day and wondered, was she still going? Could she take me? Turned out she was going to laze out and was no longer going to go, but she agreed to pick me up in my backassbackwards house location anyway and she brought me to the BART station, like a good ol’ sugar mommy. So I got to the BART station and continued to pass the fuck out until I arrived in Oakland (with the exception of the time between one transfer because Pleasanton BART only goes to San Francisco and not Berkeley or Oakland). I was supposed to meet Josh in Berkeley, formerly known as Berzerkeley, but decided to meet him in Oakland’s 12th Street exit instead because…

RIDING A MUTHAFUCKIN MOPED FOR THA FIRST MUTHAFUCKIN TIME, YO!
I was going to ride on Josh’s muthafuckin moped! After I hopped on and declined to wear the helmet that covered the entire face — because it felt claustrophobic — and instead going for the one that a soldier might wear, although not quite, it’s just that it’s half the head, we took off! Initially, it was a little scary and I was holding on for almost dear life. Well, I mean, not that extreme, but both hands were definitely feeling the need to hold onto something. But that soon passed and over time 25mph no longer felt like 80mph and moving on with life felt easier. I mean it probably woulda been faster had I just taken the BART to Berkeley, but I thought, hey, why not, this is my chance to ride a moped. Of course, after I hopped on the moped, Josh casually remarked that he didn’t have his license, nor insurance, oh BOY! Sounds great! That made things so much more funner!!!

As we were riding down Telegraph, we passed a candy store, and this Asian boy outside was waving around a sign that said, “FREE CHOCOLATES” and he was occasionally quietly yelling (yes, quietly yelling, seriously) “free chocolates”. We passed him and decided to bust a U, which turned out to be an ultra long U-busting as it was actually three right turns around a city block, and then, six speedbumps later, we fell into the arms of the McDonald’s parking lot which was next door to the chocolate place. We hopped off, locked up, and headed into the land of free chocolates. Josh was first, and he asked the Asian kid what the password was to get free chocolates, and the kid said something which I forget. He opened the door to go inside the shop, but he didn’t hold the door for me, and had the dude who was coming out of the shop not caught it for me, evidently it would have slammed into my face! The black lady working in the chocolate shop was none too fond of this, and when Josh said the “password” to her, she was like, “What the fuck?” because to anyone who had not heard his conversation with the Asian kid, it wouldn’t have made any sense. She then continued to rebuke him for not holding the door open for me (I’m not sure if it was because I am a woman or because people should just hold doors open for one another, but I assume the former). He didn’t understand the argument, though, and proceeded to talk to her about how he thought that the door was a good door and that it seemed like the type that would stay open on its hinge rather than the type that would close immediately. He in fact said, “good door,” in those exact words, I believe. The lady then told me I should move to Seattle, where people, I assume, are gentlemen. I said, “Fancy that, I live in Seattle!” Well, maybe I didn’t say, “Fancy that,” but if I didn’t, I should have. But after being rebuked, we talked about the awesome wallpaper the place had, that the lady pointed out wasn’t actually wallpaper, but paint with sand blasted vintage Victorian designs. The wall was original, from the 1930s, and evidently the place had originally been a ice cream parlor. A confectionery, for all these years! Fantasmic! That being said, I can’t remember for the life of me the name of the place, and with those free places, it’s always scary because you feel bad for not buying anything even though you’re taking their candy… especially when you know the place is just a small mom and pop shop, or something similar to that… :[

On a side note, I am feeling quite humorous and I quite enjoy this current rambling style. D:

TALKING TO RANDOM HUMAN BEINGS AT THE ENTRANCE OF UC BERKELEY!
Last time I did “Talk To Us” in Berkeley, I was with Mr. Aaron Bruner, and a lot of the questions we got were, “How do you know each other?” We did not get it this time. In fact, this time was quite unlike any other time I’ve done “Talk To Us,” I think primarily because Josh himself talks a lot and therefore the people we talked to talked LESS. I don’t know. It was interesting because usually there’s an equal amount of give and take, it seems, but not this time. Usually there is also at least a couple really interesting folk, but this time there was maybe one that was more interesting, but everyone else was… I wouldn’t say run-of-the-mill but certainly not SUPER interesting. :/ But more about the “Talk To Us” session in a later post. I need to put up my social experimentation website ASA-FUCKING-P! I am slacking on writing up my “Talk To Us” sessions. Writing just seems to take too much time lately, even though I type tons of words per minute. Godamnit.

MEETING UP WITH NICK AND GRETA AND JESSE!
So Nick, Greta, and Jesse went to breakfast/lunch that morning and then went to Amoeba records, where Nick and Greta purchased probably a million records. Then they met up with us at the entrance of the UC Berkeley Campus and hung out for a wee bit, but then they had to move on to bigger and maybe better things, like unloading band equipment at a coffee shop, yay?!

EATING REALLY CHEAP INDIAN FOOD THAT WAS PRETTY DELICIOUS!
Josh suggested we eat at this one Indian restaurant that was on Telegraph not too far away. We walked there and he walked his moped on the sidewalk, receiving a couple of weird glances from jackasses, but for the most part, it was a-OK. By the time we got there, Jesse, who was the only one meeting us for dinner, had not yet finished unloading. He stopped by, picked us up, and brought us to the coffee shop where his bandmate Mike worked and where they practiced. They practiced in a grungy old basement with mold spores, yay! Making rock n’ roll HAPPEN, sons! Mike knew my name for some reason. He was like, “Vi… vian…?” and I was like, “M… att? Wait… Mike?” Oops! Not like I’d met him, though. Helped unload equipment and then we went off to get Indian food! I ordered some Palak Paneer, mmm! For $4.99!!! So cheaps! Although the naan to go with it was $1.00 or something. But still a good godamn deal.

PLAYING TABOO WITH A RANDOM STRANGER!
As we were eating, I asked Josh if he’d brought Taboo like he said he would the previous night, because he likes challenging random people to play Taboo. He said, “I did!” and proceeded to bust it out, and we saw this girl on the table behind me / across from Jesse and Josh, and invited her over to our table, yarr. She was eating by herself. Her name was… Lisa? Crap, I forget. She was youngish, I think a Sophomore in college, religious but not religious. She had a class ring from her Catholic high school which looked dope, it was this Victorian looking ring of the purple sacred heart or whatever. Much better looking than those godamn ugly ass football ring type shits. She said she wanted to move to some Mennonite community at some point or something? She currently lives on a hippie farm? Interesting. She didn’t come off as a hippie whatsoever, but she wanted to live in yurts and things in case of an apocalypse. Interesting. It’s funny, cause everyone kept talking about themselves, and they would say what they did for a living, and I’d say what I did for a living, and I’d always forget to bring up REDEFINE, and Jesse and Josh would always be like, “What about REDEFINE? That’s the most interesting first impression type thing you could say,” and I’m like. Hmm, good point, why have I not thought of this?!

Anyway, we ate dinner and shot the shit and then decided to finally play Taboo. Josh and Lisa? were on the same team and Jesse and I were on the same team. It’s funny, playing Taboo, cause it really gives you a good idea of how people’s brains work. Well I mean, at least a little. People just describe things so differently. Jesse and I worked together pretty well I think, and towards the end we would average 4-5 points per round consistently, I think, even though initial rounds were kinda mediocre. I think I am quite pro at Taboo actually, or at least I was that evening… at least for the describing part, not for the guessing part. I suck at that. Josh and Lisa? were interesting because they would describe things in such a roundabout fashion. Guess brains just have to sync up or something. I don’t know. I was looking at Lisa?’s cards and some of them I could come up with ways to describe stuff really easily and she would use words and thought directions that I’d never even thought of, or she’d be at a loss for words. QUE INTERESANTE. Anyway. I’m rambling.

Josh then received a phone call from some friends who wanted to play some game where you have blank New Yorker cartoons and you have to fill in the captions and a judge judges who came up with the best captions. He and Lisa? went. On his moped. Without his license. Without his insurance. At least there were helmets (turns out the one I wore was found… somewhere).

BEING DRIVEN HOME BY JESSE AND CHECKING OUT HIS PAD!
Mr. Jesse offered to drive me home and I did not refuse because otherwise it woulda been a bitch anyway. There was Poker Night going on at my brother’s house and I was carless, so someone — my brother or Roxanne — woulda have had to pick me up anyway. I stopped by his place because he had to pick up some stuff before we headed back. He has a NICE ass apartment. I was extremely impressed. He lives by himself and there’s a million things to look at and it’s spotless and every room has “alternative lighting” which he just rigged up… either you can use the regular lighting or use like, red lights, or blue lights… he has a basketweave Victorian kissing chair, which is kinda shaped like an S, where the two seats face opposite directions so both people can turn to their lefts and kiss each other. Also a buncha interesting posters and a fancy office space and fancy bedroom with red velvet curtain things. Wow, what a home. Jealous! It’s like $1,200 a month or something, though. Holy crap. He also pulled out some mixtapes from really old when he pretended to be a radio DJ and spoke in between every song hahaha. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to listen to them, but it sounds amazing.

Anyway, Jesse and I talked about a lotta crap on the way back, largely related to music. It’s funny cause the other night Isabel and him found out they have the same taste in music and like the same bands and she was quite quite stoked on that shit! Jesse and I have quite divergent tastes I believe so we will be mailing each other care packages with music and seeing how the shit matches up. I’m interested in seeing. Haha. I think we will hate each other’s music. Or at least just find it mediocre. Oh well. Nice of him to drive me, though. I also found out he does part-time promotions for Live 105.5 — WHAT DA FECK? And that he’s met all these famous people like Franz Ferdinand dudes and Nada Surf dudes and a buncha other dudes… and that he drove Moby around for a day. Da feck? Good times. My writers or bust.

PWNING NOOBS AT POKER!
So there were 10 people at my brother’s for Poker Night, and I hadn’t realized it, but they had totally been waiting for me to start and I was an hour+ late! Oh wells!!! Whatever! It was long long long games and not that humorous asides from the hands themselves. But there were allowed two buy-ins, with third place getting their money back, second place getting 20% of the remaining pot, and first place getting 80% of the remaining pot. I made it to the last three godamnit, but got in third place. SADFACE. But better than other things. At least there were no bigot ass dudes this time who got mad cause a girl was beating them (like happened at Lewis’ apartment one time). I would have liked to win some money, though, but at least I didn’t lose any money, I guess, and I didn’t buy in either! I got some lucky breaks, but man. There was one hand I folded on when I should have played because I would have gotten a Full House, but I folded because I was playing conservative even though I was chip leader. After I lost that hand, I felt my luck shift, and I was thinking, “I fucked it up. I’m not going to win another hand.” And I was right. I don’t think I won another hand and from there I got into third. BOO URNS. By then it was much too long anyway. I don’t even want to play the last three places. It was me, Robert, and some other dude who looked Viet but turned out to be Chinese. I beat his Chinese girlfriend to get into the top three. HOLLAR! Everyone else was talking mad shite the whole time, primarily to Robert, but they lost way early. Haha. Noobs.

CONNING ABEROO INTO DRIVING ME HOME!
My brother and Roxanne were feeling too lazy to drive me home even though I was stranded, so I told my brother to ask Abe if Abe would drive me home. He conceded and we chatted, yarr. Abe is my game-playing buddy even though I guess he is my brother’s friend first and foremost. He is Diablo master. But now he’s playing Lord of the Rings Online and I guess addicted to it. LAME!!! I like Abe… we just can’t talk about anything exceedingly opinionated (at least as far as politics and ethics goes) because we differ quite a bit. But as far as regular conversation, we get along quite well. He is the only cop I really know, though! HOLLAR. Enuf.

***

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30th, 2008

MEETING JEANETTE, SHERRY, AND TIN-WIN FOR A JOLLY GOOD TIME!
We met up at Regal, of course, because we humans in the Tri-Valley area are lame as shite. Shot the shit. Went to Best Buy. Went to Barnes N Noble. Sherry, Tin-Win, and I had plans to meet Phil Nho for lunch, but Jeanette and Tin-Win were hungry, so we went to eat dim sum. Ran into Fontaine and Bonnie and her parents there. Fontaine’s mom thought I was there with my parents and was like, “Your mom didn’t go to church?” and I was like, “She did,” and she was like, “You didn’t go to church?” and I was like, “No,” and her dad was like, “Want to join us?” and I was like, “My friends are over there,” and then he said okay, and then I fleeeeeeeeeeeed. Continued to eat some dim sum, which I pretty much hate, but everyone else likes for some godforsaken reason. Then we went to Old Navy, and ran into Stephanie Gray. Last time I saw her, she was like… 4″ tall. Now she’s like. 6″ tall and beautiful and a woman. And it’s like. WTF. I FEEL OLD. WTF. YOU’RE GORGEOUS. Jeanette and I were like :0 (Sherry and Tin-Win see her sometimes).

TALKING TO PHIL NHO IS THE SAME OL SAME OL!
Then Phil Nho showed up and we decided to go to Fuddrucker’s because well, bitches didn’t want to eat a meal at a fancier place since we’d just eaten. I picked at Sherry’s salad the whole time and we also put some almonds into her fork towards the end of the meal so that all three of the holes between the prongs were filled halfway with almonds. IT WAS AWESOME!!!! Like, really awesome. Um, yeah. Phil Nho is the same ol awesomeness and his girlfriend sounds hilarious based off the stories he told about her. There were only three, but still. Twas nice to see him and to see that he is still the same good guy as before!

BEING SLIGHTED BY MY PARENTS!
So every time I go home, I try to eat meals at home as much as possible since that’s pretty much the only bonding time my parents and I share, pathetic as that sounds. But then they pull this shit. I came home at like 5:00pm and said I was going to nap FOR A LITTLE WHILE. And I wake up half an hour later and they’ve already eaten without me! WHAT THE FUCK! They always do that kinda shit. I’ll make a special effort to come home or say I’ll almost be home for dinner and they’ll have already eaten. Bastards.

And thus pretty much concludes me trip to the Bay Area. ZZZ!

Cause I don’t particularly feel more or less thankful than usual at all. Perhaps I’m a brat, but it’s just another day on the calendar, another reason to get together because we’re too lame to do things by ourselves without excuses. Ain’t no thang thang.

So I was doing some thinking in the shower and thinking about Jeanette’s comment yesterday about how none of her friends are down to do whatever and some don’t exactly share her interests to try new, random things. I’d felt that way for a long time and find that just fairly recently have I met people who are more down to do bits and pieces of whatever. In college, Chol, Seungbum, Josh, and I formed the “Down Krew,” because we were always DOWN to do whatever. But at that time, :down to do whatever” generally revolved around raving and drugs, which was cool, at least for that point in time. Left the rest of my interests largely untapped, however. (Videogames aside… since everyone and their moms are interested in videogames.)

Since then, I was lucky to find that Lingo, Tony, and Nate share interests in drum n’ bass, but as far as rock music, film, and art things go, I haven’t really found anyone who shares my same tastes who is also down to do whatever. In the case of Lenny and I, I’d always managed to get him to do things with me, but it always felt kinda forced cause he just isn’t interested in that stuff.

Somewhat recently, I have found some people who seem down to do whatever… which is fantastic. But then, I was thinking about some of these people and how many of the people who share the same interests as I generally don’t seem to be hugely ’successful’ in traditional ways. They don’t work hoity-toity jobs, they don’t make a shitload of money, and they aren’t slaves to their careers. That doesn’t mean they’re not intelligent or talented individuals, of course. It’s just that their talent and intelligence goes elsewhere and not necessarily towards a career.

And a lot of people look down on that kind of thing, but it doesn’t bug me one bit, really. Careers and money have never meant all that much to me. I’m thinking about dating Micah, though, and about how he is a journeyman plumber, which in fact makes a shitload more money than any job I’ve ever had at around 60k a year… but how I could never really explain to people like my parents that it’s FINE to work a job like that, to not make 100k a year, and to not lose your soul to some corporation… that your entire life DOESN’T have to revolve around your job… that it’s okay to find interest in other things and to use jobs as a supplementary thing to REALLY living life. And hell, it’s not like a job like that is really worse even though it SOUNDS worse because it’s not clean and lame and wrapped around in a cubicle. But how does one explain these things to Asian parents?

Even in the case of Lenny, who was working at Microsoft, my mom would worry about when he would go full-time at Microsoft, because contract work is sOo unstable, and when is he going to get a degree? None of these things are fucking important, really, especially when you have a daughter who doesn’t even have a godamn job, but they find these things so concerning when I care about them zero. Zip. Not at all.

Today my mom mentioned that Fontaine’s sister Carol has a friend that’s starting up a magazine and that the magazine needs a marketing person. The headquarters is located in Thousand Oaks, California, in Southern California, between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Not the worst spot — there are many worse places in Southern California, I’m sure, but I heard that and instantly said, “No thanks.” I don’t have experience in marketing ANYWAY, and I am utterly UNQUALIFIED for such a position, but above all, I would never move to a place I think I would hate solely for a job that was just okay. Jobs aren’t the sole basis for happiness, and it’s hard to explain that to some people.

I don’t know where I’m going with this rant. But Sunday is some Victorian festival in San Francisco, which I would like to go to, but I am very sorry because I did not bring my Nikon D40 CHARGER even though I brought the camera itself, so what the hell am I going to do, going to that event without a camera at all? Godamnit.

I am a sentimental fuck. I am. Always have been, always will be. Been a bit jaded as the years progress, certainly, but it’s still there. Sentimental and a romantic. Not that great a combination, especially when you’re fairly logical at the same time.

I’ve been reading in my bed for the past hour — Paint It Black by Janet Fitch. I’ve read it before and enjoyed it. Bought it for Jeanette for her birthday and thought that I’d re-read it in the four days that I’m home in the Bay Area. First read-through, the book had a pretty profound impact on me. This time, it is much diminished, but the rambling, descriptive, totally stream-of-consciousness type writing the author does really gets you into the emotions of the book, which are all terrible terrible emotions like that of loneliness and sadness. This evening, one part of it stuck out to me and made me overly sentimental about my recent breakup. Here it is. Call me silly. Whatever. Not all of it will make sense if you haven’t read the book. To sum it up simply, there’s a plain girl, in love with an artist from a well-off background, who kills himself. She blames herself for not being able to save him, despite the hints towards his downwards spiraling. In the excerpt below, she is at the home of her boyfriend’s mother, staying in the bed he slept in growing up.

In retrospect it is not so emotional, but who can explain moments of weird emotional output anyhow… and shit, at least it’s good writing.

lenny: did you know the f word appears 48 times on the front page of your blog

Nope, I did not! Apparently, I fucking say fuck a lot ~__~ But not just fuck. Motherfucker and its deriviations as well!

lenny: lol omg
lenny: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/340208/Lolors
lenny: according to that word cloud
lenny: you are a valley girl

Image from Wordle.net!

(Notes from my two hour walk around my neighborhood in Livermore, California, plus some adlibbing:)

Look at these suburban motherfuckers, these single-family, two-story, four-bedroom-owning jackasses who find themselves entitled enough to own spreads of land but also deem the land not entitled enough for these jackasses to clean up the shit from their dogs. Shit. Everywhere.

Not only that, but their dogs aren’t entitled to that much, either. One owner has its Bichon Terrier running around on his lawn. Sounds like a dream, right? Sure, if the dog weren’t all fenced in by metal. If you’re going to let your dog “run free” on a lawn but are going to simultaneously fence him in, at least give him/her bigger than 5′ x 5′ of fencing. C’mon now.

Even the mailmen in suburbia are lazy. The one in my neighborhood in Seattle grabs a stack of mail, parks his mail truck, and then walks from house to house. He then fetches his car again when he’s ready to move on.

The fatass I just passed was racing me. I walked by a house he was stuffing mail into the mailbox of. He got back into his car. I walked by the next house just as he’d gotten himself out of his car with a handful of mail for the second house, as his car idled. Rinse, repeat. Dropping off mail at the second house was apparently an arduous task, however, and he got held up. As a result, I beat him in the race of lazy mailman versus me. Hoorah! It’s really quite unfortunate, though, because I was really hoping that I could walk and he could drive, and that we would go down the whole street side by side, relishing in the ridiculousness of it all. Dreams crushed, however.

Why else do I hate suburbia?

These perfectly manicured lawns. These motherfuckers in their gas-guzzling SUVs. These lazy fools who can’t walk to the supermarket even if it’s ten minutes away by foot. Their children ride bikes but they wouldn’t dream of riding one ever. They show love in terms of material wealths and useless, lonely posessions… houses that look beautiful yet rot away as they’re working their 9-5 brainless jobs and impressing absolutely no one.

Ah, Livermore, Hillbilly town with farms meets suburban death. So, unless you like raised trucks and lameness, geddufukout. I is!

I’m listening to… Andy Combs and the Moth’s MySpace and Leftover Cuties’ MySpace! Both are amazing bands!!

(in a conversation to alex:)
vee: weird man
vee: im reading this book called paint it black
vee: named after a rollling stones song
vee: (they quote it on the inside pages)
vee: and i just turned on my last.fm radio
vee: and typed in the beatles
vee: and the first song that came up was rolling stones’ “paint it black”

That has nothing really to do with anything, but these moments of random synchronized weirdness are always cool. This morning I took the bus to the airport and it was actually surprisingly painless and CHEAP too, as it only cost $1.50 for the whole ride! The only downside was that my flight was at 9:30am so I had to wake up at 6:30am to ride the bus or whatever. Well… good thing I played Left4Dead the previous eve because I probably would have hit the snooze button forever but when I woke up I started playing Left4Dead in my head. Kinda like after you play Tetris you end up playing Tetris in your head and building up blocks? It’s kinda like daydreaming and kind of like sleeping. Well, Left4Dead kept me awake this morning and definitely made sure I didn’t miss my flight! Unfortunately, I got to the airport at like 8:30am and it took me like 15 minutes to get in which is all fine and kosher, but the flight ended up being delayed an hour because they had to replace a part of the plane. This is literally the third United flight in a row I’ve taken where the flight was delayed 1+ hours and a part had to be replaced on the plane. WTF? Time to complain and hope they give me things.

As far as Cali goes, as anticipated, the initial touchdown resulted in bitching at me from my mother. Of course, of course. Everything else has been exceedingly boring and lonely. I am. Quite. Ready. To. Leave. I should have just left Seattle later in the week and stayed for this upcoming weekend or something. Cause this sucks. I’m leaving Friday morning to go back to Seattle. They’re trying to get me to stay for longer but I’m saying no no no no thanks. MEEP! Today’s Sunday? It feels like a Fun Day. Not really.

So some people kind of marvel at the fact that I seem like I’m doing fine post-break-up and what not. To be quite honest, I am quite forlorn about the whole thing but definitely carrying on better about it than I thought I would I suppose. I feel terrible about the whole aftermath of the whole thing, though, bah. Hopefully friendship can progress without too much awkwardness. ~__~

On another random note, I bought my SxSW ticket — March 18th, 2009 to March 23rd, 2009. I hate planning that far ahead but SxSW is actually worth it, I suppose. And… the thing is that plane tickets are at an all-time fucking low right now. It’s crazay! $255 round-trip including taxes from Seattle to Austin. Last year I think I paid close to $500 (granted, the ticket was purchased a few months later than now… but not THAT much later).

Also must share a few photos from the HEALTH show, for I am quite proud of them!

Quarter-life crisis, impending! Appropriately so, as my birthday is on December 20th and that is just less than a month away! This quarter-life crisis is nothing new. People get it all the time, and I am no exception, as it was a common occurence with me after every installment of my getting a new job. Right now it’s a little different from usual because it is setting in BECAUSE I have no job. Guess you just can’t get away from the mofaukin’ crisis! On the plus side, I just returned from a few days in Portland to discover that the satchel filled with Alex’s leftover Halloween candy is in fact STILL filled with Halloween candy. Hoorah!

So anyway, back to this quarter-life crisis thing. Whenever I’m working doing graphic design, I think, godamnit, I wish I were doing my own stuff. But given the state of the economy and the non-exciting state of magazine sales, I’m a little confused as to what I want to do for my own stuff.

But the most overarching issue of all is the self or social work issue. Social work seems like the thing to do because when I sit 40 hours in front of a computer for someone else, I’m not happy. I don’t feel like I’m making a difference. Yet I’m not exactly equipped to do something social work or teaching related, either.

Here’s how I’m attempting to get over this:

1) I applied for a teaching position, short-term, in Korea, for a month. I don’t want to commit to any longer than a month really, but I do want to see if something like that is for me. I don’t even really want to teach in Asia, to be honest, but Asia is the only place where you can teach at the moment without certification, so Asia it is.

2) I applied for Americorps jobs, which pay shit, but at least would give me experience in social work-related stuff so I can see if I even like it. I mean, I’ve tried to just apply for straight non-profit gigs, but they generally require experience… experience I do not have. BAHHHH.

We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, as far as other things go, they’re going alright. Just got back from another short trip to Oregon that was fairly entertaining! Drove back today and it was a lot shorter of a drive coming back than heading down, that’s for sure. To recap (not all of the days because not all of them were all that entertaining)…

***

Tuesday, November 20th, 2008

Got my shit back from Jack. Hey. Don’t ever lend people shit because people will get your shit dirty. Lots of food residue, sticky shit. Blah. I was quite peeved. Quite peeved indeed. Hey, that rhymes!!! Jack’s car broke down and he was fixing it, so I had to go help him get some parts. And shite.

***
Wednesday, November 21st, 2008

Was on the MAX downtown with Micah when this tranny dude (not surgerized, but yeah) came on, definitely high on something. He started talking shit to everyone, but in that kinda non-serious fun attitudey type way. He said to me something along the lines of, “You with your lip piercings there, you little Asian coochie,” and I just kinda laughed at him/her. Then he continued talking shit to other people, trying to get the attention of this one dude who was reading, saying, “Oh yeah, I love it when you read to me. Read to me, baby,” but the guy ignored here completely. Haha. I was going to make conversation but the dude seemed way out of it. He’s like, “I’m all about fun!” and would randomly insert, “WOO!” and other noises. Good shite. He also kinda did half pole-humping pole-dancing… not all out but practically. WEE!!! When we finally got downtown, we tried a different!! taco truck which tasted pretty good but failed to have fish tacos! Failure!!

***

Thursday, November 22nd, 2008

I went to the of Montreal show with Micah, Cole, and Leeba at the Roseland this evening. Hohoho. Prior to our leaving, Cole and Leeba killed a fifth of whiskey pretty much between just the two of them, and that turned into um, interestingness. On the way there, Leeba was trying to give directions because she lives right by the Roseland venue, but she was so intoxicated she didn’t really know what she was saying at all. Cole kept telling me not to listen to her, while at the same time Leeba, Micah, and Cole were ALL giving me contradictory directions. Finally Micah gave directions cause he drives for his work and no one else really does, and we finally made it there okay. So we park a ways away and as I’m trying to park, Leeba’s like giving me directions on how to park my car. Haha. Telling me to reverse into the space and shit, and I’m like, “I know. That’s what I’m doing.” and then we’re walking to the venue and she’s like desperately looking for her ID the whole time… and then she finds it and then starts asking where it is again and we’re like, AAAH. Finally we walk to the venue and get in line right as people are starting to go in. First time going to a venue with fucking metal detectors — what the fuck?!!! It’s actually weird, though, you think MORE venues would have metal detectors, but they don’t. Weird. Anyway, Micah’s on the guest list and I take his photo pass, and even though Micah didn’t have a +1, the staff is all confused because I have a photo pass… so they’re wondering why I have a ticket AND a photo pass, and I pretty much blow their motherfucking minds with the contradiction. They just kinda shrugged it off, though, and let me in without question. So right when we get up to the venue, Leeba goes to the bathroom and a staff worker comes over immediately, telling us that Leeba’s cut off from the the bar right then and there, and we agree. Soon, though, I guess she passes out, so Cole has to call a cab for her. The venue is up a flight of stairs, so Cole and Micah have to carry her down the stairs, and then Cole has to take her to her house and evidently has to carry her up two flights of stairs and down one flight of stairs. Terrible!! I guess Leeba’s roommates were totally not into helping him out at all either, so he was a bit peeved. While he was gone, Brian showed up. We had gotten to the show really early in order to see the opening act, HEALTH, which Cole also wanted to see, but he was forced to miss them. HEALTH’s show was hilarious because HEALTH is basically a noise band and of Montreal is a HUGELY poppy band. There were probably a couple HEALTH fans in the crowd, like myself, but most of the people were like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?” I literally heard some kid say, “Who the hell is INTO this kinda stuff?” I thought it was kinda awesome that HEALTH opened for of Montreal, though, because it just kinda meant that of Montreal didn’t give a FUCK. They liked HEALTH and probably just brought them on tour with them because of it; they probably knew that 99% of their fans would hate the shit. And they did!! But Roseland has really good photo policies, and I was able to take a couple of really good shots of HEALTH. And HEALTH’s hot vocalist man John Famiglietti was HOT, as usual. Lots of pics of him Anyway, Cole finally made it back as HEALTH was ending. Poor him. Then of Montreal came on, and I had high hopes because I’d heard such ridiculously good shit about their live show and about how the lead singer would ride in one a REAL white stallion and proceed to do fun stage show things! Unfortunately, however, what they kinda ended up doing at this show was cramming as much ridiculous shit as possible onstage (with the lead singer changing his wardrobe like a million times, hanging himself on a noose, dressing up as a half-horse man, introducing animal mask-wearing dancers, etc. etc.) without so much attention paid on the music. The sound sounded fucking terrible and I just found the whole thing extremely contrived and brainless. Totally not my bag of musical chips, and other people seemed to more or less enjoy it, but none of the people I went with really thought it was that great. Which makes us right and them wrong. YUP. We actually left early because it was so unexciting. Then watched half of “The Cable Guy.” The end.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I LOVE the aforementioned hot dude from HEALTH, whom I have had a crush on since SxSW last year, and I told Micah that factoid and he kind of agreed, I think. But then later on, while watching of Montreal was boring holes into my brain (it pretty much shut down my brain for half their set), evidently Mr. Famigletti walked by me and he actually like grabbed my shoulder as he was walking by to move me or something… I totally thought he was an Asian girl until Micah was like, “You totally missed your chance!” and I’m like, “What?!” and he’s like, “I thought you were just trying to play it cool!” No! I was oblivious! DAMMIT. Not that I would have had anything to say to him anyway. But still. ~__~

***

Friday, November 21st, 2008

I stayed at the house this day and got some work did. Went to the local market, picked up a smoothie, cookie, and Annie’s cheddar bunnies. Yummeh! But not as good as Cheez-Its, it’s true. Dan told me this horrific story about hooking up with a little girl who was shorter than me (according to Cole, she is 4′7″ and weighs 70 pounds… possibly an exaggeration, but either way, she’s supposedly really small). He described her and I was like, “AWESOME!” — part sarcastically, of course. And then he’s like, “It’s not awesome. I could barely fit my penis inside her,” and I was like, “HA HA!” while inside I was like, “TRAUMA!! TMI!!!! (TOO MUCH INFO!!!!!)” It’s not that guys don’t tell me about this kinda shit, because they do, and a little too godamn much, particularly if the guy’s name is Alex, but still… in this case, it’s like, “SHIT! I DON’T KNOW YOU THAT WELL! I DON’T WANT TO PICTURE THIS!” Although I must say, BECAUSE I don’t know him that well, it made picturing it less likely and less traumatic. Haha. Later that evening, Chris, the mysterious fifth roommate who moved out in the past month, stopped by and he has a MOST amusing laugh… we talked about his experiences with dropping acid for a while, and I guess the last time he did it, he took three hits initially and then another three while he was coming up. He got FUCKED, and he said it was horrific and that reality would fade in and out and he’d remember clips of it but most of the time he was in a whole nother world… and that not a day goes by where that acid trip doesn’t impact SOMETHING in his life. O___o Interesting. I guess he was hauling ass out of the house too (aka MOVING out), which is probably a good idea.

Then I shot the shit with Cole for a while and Micah and I went downtown to eat. We were originally going to go to some seafood restaurant or something but ended up deciding to eat Peruvian food. We were looking for the restaurant for a while and decided to stop at Ben & Jerry’s to find out if they knew where it was. They did not. We went back outside and Ben & Jerry’s was next door to one of those expensive boutique cupcake shops, and I was looking inside their windows wanting to figure out what flavors the cupcakes were because they looked tasty as shit, when I saw that there was a worker lurking in the shadows!! We waved at her, and she smiled back. Micah decided to smoke and the workers looked like they were preparing to leave, so I said, “Watch, they’re going to come out and give us cupcakes.” Soon enough, THREE workers (why on EARTH does a store like that need three workers at 8pm at night?!) came out of the shop carrying vats of cupcakes! Micah commented on how they looked tasty. They prompted us to take some by saying, “Want them? We don’t want them!” and we emphatically answered, “YES!” They told us, “Just don’t tell our boss,” to which we nodded, and we got 12 mini cupcakes of varying holiday flavors, including what spice, pumpkin, ginger, and one sole chocolate one which I hoarded (fuck the ginger ones!!! They were most plentiful in number as well, godamnit!!!). Well, we were heading to the restaurant so we had to go put them back in the car because we couldn’t really eat them all in one sitting. I wanted to give them away but there was skepticism in whether or not anyone would take them, as we were in the ritzy part of town (the Pearl District is all hoity-toity, stick-in-your-ass boutique-esque stores). There weren’t even any homeless people to give shit away to! So shiet. Oh well. We ended up eating them all later on. Anyway, we called 411 and finally made it to Andina, which was on 13th and Glisan. Pretty delicious! And pretty expensive!! Got four tapas dishes: PAPA A LA HUANCAINA (yellow potato slices in a sauce of ají Amarillo and ricotta cheese, served cold), CHICHARRÓN DE LANGOSTINOS (crispy golden prawns studded with quinoa, served with huacatay-peanut sauce), EMPANADAS CASERAS DE CARNE (flaky pastry filled with slow-cooked beef, raisins, and Botija olives), SOLTERITO CAUSA (a traditional preparation of freshly mashed potatoes, infused with key lime juice and pressed into a cake topped with green bean and cheese salad). The first dish was kinda like… potatoes in high-quality nacho cheese, haha. The second was good… really tasty shrimp, but there were only four of them! I didn’t like the empanada because it had too much fooking olive! The causa was interesting, although a little like potato salad… Also got an entree which was just okay in my book: ADOBO DE CERDO (pork tenderloin quickly braised in the Arequipa style, with butternut squash and gorgonzola ravioli, green apple, and a tamarillo-rocoto “uchucuta”). I also got this purple drink called Chicha Morada, which was a little like Mexican horchata, but with a fruity flavor to it. Pretty good, but not something you can really drink all that much of… or at least I couldn’t.

Afterwards, we were going to watch the new Bond but decided to waste some time by going to Everyday Music (same one that’s on Broadway in Seattle). Ended up buying a present for Sherry for Christmas and purchasing myself Neon Blonde’s disc and Magnolia on DVD. It was just so cheap, dammit!! But that made us miss Bond, and we didn’t really pay much attention to the time. We got to the movie theatre, smoked some pot in my car, and then realized that it was much too late to watch a movie because they all stopped playing before 11! I thought movie theatres played movies much later than they do, apparently. So Micah is telling me he’s a great high driver and I trust him, but ehm, it is largely OK minus him thinking Burnside was a one way road when it was in fact a two way road, lol. So a car was coming towards us and he was honking at the other car!! And I’m like, “It’s YOU!!” and he finally was like, “Oh shit!” Luckily there weren’t any COPS because we had JUST passed two cops right before that. It’s kinda fucked up though, because I found the whole thing fucking hilarious, although I would have been royally fucked had anything bad really happened. ~__~ Good thing nothing bad happened. Went back home and watched “The Frighteners” with Cole and Micah (who passed out 2 seconds into the movie), which KICKED ARSEEEEE. And that was that.

***

Fairly glad to be back in Seattle, though. Too bad I’m heading to San Francisco tomorrow morning for Thanksgiving. Bah, I don’t really want to go… not to mention — the first thing I wanted to do upon my return was play some Left4Dead but shit motherfuckers, Steam’s pre-load fucked up and I had to UNINSTALL Steam and reinstall the whole game in order to play it. But now it works, so I’m going to play it RIGHT NOW. As my laptop is defragging! Wee! Today is defragging day after I play Left4Dead on this computer as well.

a little early, but SUCKA. i do what i want.

LISTENING TO… Jason Forrest’s Shamelessly Exciting album.

I just have to share really quick. I came across the MySpace of this girl who was a year younger than me in high school, and her entire MySpace is just COVERED with pregnancy-related shit since she got pregnant. Maybe this is normal nesting behavior, but let me just say, it scares the shite out of me!! The page is all pink and sickening and has like pregnancy timer countdowns and other inane crap. Here’s an image from the MySpace page. Lord, let me never get pregnant! BLARGH!

Last night Rachel and I went to see The Faint and Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. I like The Faint okay, but their only song I *REALLY* like is “Let The Poison Spill From Your Throat” — but of course, they didn’t play that. They had the craziest light set up… there were SO many lights… more strobes than 30,000 raves! I’m surprised I didn’t feel more disgusting because I am NOT a fan of strobes! I think Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head was actually more enjoyable, as The Faint just got rather repetitive. People were somewhat dancing so I guess that was exciting. Maybe the attitude about dancing in Seattle is finally changing…? I noticed htat about Portland definitely, though… people there *seem* to dance more.

But on another note. Fuck, man. After being away for two months being at home seems SO GODAMN BORING. Like… SO BORING. I don’t know what to do with myself or what I want to do with my life. It’s kind of wigging me out big time. ~__~

LISTENING TO… Burial’s Untrue album.

I suppose I think that I will be easily forgotten… that I will be capable of making a limited impact within a limited time frame and then never really remembered or thought of again… or that there is always someone better than I! Not that I really have any example for which this REALLY applies, yet it’s a fear. Results from a lack of self-confidence, I suppose. Ick. ~__~