Not So Bubbley...

Apparently there's like 400 - 500 calories in a serving of bubble tea :( Wow, that's going to hurt. I just rediscovered bubble tea, I don't think I'm ready to give it up yet. How much more do you want from me good health, you've already claimed cookies, ice cream, Panera Bread i.c. mochas, bagels, and taco bell. Don't take bubble tea from me too. Damn you! ... You don't need to eat lunch every day, do you?

Bubbley...

So, I've been on this big bubble tea thing recently. Seriously, I've had it pretty much every day for the past four or five days, and have found at least four locations that serve it. Bubble tea = happiness in my world view. Your opinions may vary.

I'm pretty sure what I did for memorial day was try to find something to do for memorial day. I went through like 3 or 4 sets of plans today. Apparently other people aren't as well to shrug of work, sleep, and responsibility as I am. What has the world come to when someone would rather clean than go out. Whatever I guess. Still was a good day. Starting off with an excellent morning work out and moving into bubble tea (as mentioned above). From there I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I now remember why I loved that movie so much. I think I used to have this naive belief that other people were actually as collected and together as they appeared to be on the outside. As I've gotten older I've come to see that that's simply not the case in most situations. I like movies that in some way portray their characters as human, especially in the context of interpersonal relationships. I think this flick is great at that because both characters involved are pretty weird. I don't know that I like it enough to be in my top five movies, but certainly it's amongst the top ten or fifteen. I need to find more stuff by who ever was responsible for that film. If you haven't seen it, watch it. That said, I think a taro milk tea with boba is calling for me. It would be rude to keep it waiting.

Grrr...

I am so annoyed right now that both my Sunday plans and my Monday plans fell through. Oh, and the backup plan with Zo fell through too. Sure, come teus. Peter comes in for the rest of the week, but that still doesn't fix the fact that I have two days off with nothing to do :( ... I know. Could be worse, le sigh.

Ghost Office...

It feels so quiet in here. True, it's 800 in the morning, and no one is here that early, but still, it's kind of eerie. That they sent us home monday and teusday helped, but the fact of the matter still is that I didn't really want to come in this morning. That said, you have to get back to work some time, right? Dan, Nate, Andy, Dave, Reggie, and others, you will be missed. I'm sure you guys will find something else, but still.

The Meta Dream...

A funny thing happens wehn there's a lot on my mind, I can see it bubble up in my dreams. I find that I dream more often and more lucidly, and I can tell that I'm thinking about things in my sleep. So what's weird about this is when you start noticing what one might call meta data being used in the dream. That is to say when someone in the dream controls something or gains information from outside the context of the dream. A few examples.

I had a dream where I was with a group of baha'is and we were hanging out and walking somewhere, and I was talking to this girl. In the course of the conversation, I say something to her that was meant to be a joke, but wasn't especially funny. From outside the context of me in the dream I thought "I want her to laugh" and she did. Stranger still, I remmeber that, but that's not even all that weird by comparison to the other two dreams.

About a month or so ago, I had a dream that some friends and I were out adventuring. This was because earlier that night we were actually out adventuring. I kid you not, I have geeky friends. Anyway, in the dream we're out adventuring, but we're doing crazier stuff than we were in the dream. At one point we stop in front of this car and we're trying to decide if we should steal it when this old japanese guy comes out of this sushi resteraunt and starts yelling at us in Japanese. At this point Dan freaks out and is like "he knows, he knows, we gotta' get out of here." So we start walking away. Now, here's where it get's weird. As we're walking away, everything this guy is saying is being subtitled. I am able to read these subtitles, but not me in the dream, like me personally watching the dream. Having read what the guy said, me in the dream was like "yeah, he doesn' know, he's just going on about aliens from mars or something," cuz apparently the old guy was crazy. Maybe I am too, I don't know.

Anyway, third dream was last night. This one was weird because I totally played my dream. We're standing in a neighborhood in the middle of the street, and there's a trebuchet (a medieval engine of war with a sling for hurling missiles, according to dictionary.com, how geeky is that definition?). So, somehow I'm aware that this is a dream, right, so I'm like if I get in the trebuchet and have it fling me I'll be okay. I remember looking around and seeing trees and houses and stuff that I might hit, but I was totally like, this is a dream, I'm sure I won't get hurt. So I climb into this thing and some guy cuts the rope, and I go flipping head over heels, and I'm thinking "oh shit!" cuz it was terrifying but then I got a hold of my self and straightened out. I've never to my knowledge played a dream like that before. In case you're wondering, I ended up landing on the roof of a moving scion (xB) and I jumped from that onto the roof of a van. I smashed the window of the van and jacked it from the people driving. I took the van to a drop of point and got like $500. Yeah, I've been playing a bit too much GTA IV. Still though, if you have never had the chance to fire yourself from a catapult in a dream, do it, totally cool.

Seriously?!?...

Ok, I have to tell you something. Don't be mad at me, I'm an idiot I know. On occasion. Every now and then, I realize that I still really like that girl I was going out with. Yeah, I know right. I swear, I wasn't even trying to fall for her (not that I'm ever trying), and we were going out it didn't even seem like a big deal. For me it was more about winning attention and having someone to hang out with. It just so happened that I noticed when I was talking to her I felt like I could really open up around her, and if you know me, there aren't a whole lot of people I'm like that with. Right after that I was trying kind of hard to find people I would be far less interested in to hang out with, and that kind of worked. I met some cool people. The problem with that is that my attention span has a really short shelf life, and just don't meet people fast enough to keep it happy. I guess I'm okay with that cuz there's so much going on right now it's not like I'm in dire need of newness. I should learn to appreciate what I have, right? Anyway, I'll get over it I know, but it's just another piece of random chaos layered on these strange strange days.

You Are Fired!!!....

But you have to imagine it's being said like the old chinese guy from "The Fifth Element". In my world, everyone would get fired by that guy.

So, not a big deal sort of, but just so no one can say I didn't tell anyone. They just laid off like a third of my company. We went from a team of 50ish to about 30ish yesterday. I survived. Some of the people we got rid of, we needed to get rid of anyway, but still, with a situation like that you end up having to let good people go. People who are your friends and what not. I really feel bad for the people that have known about this for weeks. Blah...

It's weird cuz they sent everyone home yesterday and told us to take today off. So it's strange that while people were losing their jobs, a bunch of us were hanging out, playing games, and going out to dinner. I guess it makes sense because when the rest of us do get back to work, it will be with relatively high spirits, all be it with a lingering sense that something's missing. Greg was talking about going to the beach today, which I don't completely get. What do you do once you've gotten to the beach? Sit? Get wet? If I go, I'll just consider it a cultural exchange like the time we went to the chili cook off and my friends had me put on sun screen 0_o

Core Dump...

OMG, my brain has been running on overload recently. That probably means I got stuff I need to get out of my head but have just been reluctant to. Ahhhh.... That said, there have been some really cool developments over here recently. On one hand I've been training so much here that I think I'm about to break. Just a little more though, I'm about to hit a couple of events which will give me a chance to take a break anyway. First, Peter comes to visit Cali. next week, and then, two weeks later, I'll be in VA visiting peoples. It's kinda crazy in that I think Mark is now officially bigger than me. I mean, he's always been taller than me, but I think he has a few pounds on me now. Don't worry though, I'll still kick his ass if it comes to it. Someone has to keep that boy in line. Freakin' bear.

So I went and did Baha'i stuff this weekend. That was interesting. At a basic level, it felt good to be involved with the community since I hadn't been in a while. Saturday was our cluster reflection meeting, and Sunday we went door to door teaching in a couple communities in San Jose. Door to door teaching is a very strange animal. I thought I was going to absolutely hate it. Naturally, there's a part of me that hates the idea of taking my ideas and forcing them on others. I mean, it's not forcing really, but still, it triggers that feeling. In practice, it's pretty respectful, we're like "Hey, we're from the baha'i faith, and we're in the neighborhood giving people the opportunity to learn about the baha'i faith." If they say no, they're marked on the list as "not interested" and that is that. It's a lot easier than I expected it to be. People were all generally pretty nice. I think my final opinion on it is that it's not my favorite thing in the world, but I now know I can do it.

The thing that came out of that that I was really interested in was the idea of starting a youth group. It's weird, but we have children's classes galore, and we have pre-youth groups, but we don't have a youth group put together. That's so not gangsta, that's not gangsta at all. I think establishing a firm baha'i identity in those young adult years is critical so that as they get older, they don't stray totally away. I think a certain amount of straying happens anyway, so one has to take precautions. So anyway, just talking with one of the youths, Ryan, I threw out the idea of starting such a group. We'll see if that pans out, I've mainly just offered to be the adult sponsor, I guess it's up to the youth to actually move on it. Even if it's just a few kids to start, that would be cool, but I'm excited by the prospects. We'll see where all this goes.

So, consider this part one in a series of braind dumps. There's been a lot on my mind recently, let's see if I can get it all out before my finder get sore from typing.

J3L2404...

Wow, Netflix has really been doing good by me. I just got two more movies I liked, wanted to make sure to pass them along, those being "Fargo" and "Sex, Lies, and videotape." Fargo was awesome because it was the ind of quirky writing that I love indie films for. Match that with a bunch of Minnesota accents where every third word is "yeah," (it's hilarious when you hear it in full effect) and you have quite the quaint little film there. I also liked that it wasn't full of fluff. I have a short attention span, so even movies I like start to wear on me if they take too much longer than 90 minutes. Good deal right there. I also watch SL&V (abbreviated cuz I'm lazy). I didn't know what to expect out of this film especially since it's an older film ('96 I believe), and I don't necessarily like older films, but I was surprised. It was a really small cast, and a pretty low budget looks like, but it's one of those neat alternate love films that I love. You know, the kind of films that explore love and relationships as more than boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, antics ensue, everyone ends up in love (I hate when everyone end up in love). So yeah, this movie is neat. May not be for everyone, but I thought it was cool. Still though, I think "The Science of Sleep" ranks as my fav Netflix film. something about it reminds me of my actual life, the melding of my dream world and the real world. I sometimes feel like my divider is a little too ambiguous between the two. Anyway, see that one also if you have the chance.

All Growed Up...

Welcome to the new growed up version of my blog. I felt like I had somehow outgrown my myspace blog, and wanted to do something different. So bye, bye old and busted myspace blog, welcome new hotness. I'm still not 100% sure on the title, but I think it suites me well enough.