*Traffic encountered while trying to merge. A guy lets me in his lane*
Dad: Well people let you in their lane out of the goodness of their heart.
Grandpa: They have more good in their heart than me.
Dad: you're supposed to have some good though.
Grandpa: No I don't. I'm old.
Dad: What about santa? He's old and he's a nice guy.
Grandpa: No I'm more like that other guy, Stooge.
Me: Scrooge?
Grandpa: Yeah.
Dad: Dad, you just need to think WWJD.
Grandpa: What?
Dad: What Would Jesus Do.
Grandpa: Well, I think he'd sit down and take it easy.

Things I Hate: 9

Hello and welcome to my ninth installment of Things I Hate. Before I get started, I must let you know that my post below this one (the one with quotes) has been labeled with "Quotes." I will be posting quotes that I come across separately now with no titles and just the label "quotes" at the bottom. It is part of my special way of obsessively organizing my blog. Anyhow, let us get into the ninth installment of Things I hate. Today on Things I Hate: Annoying Laughs.

Chances are that by this time in your life, you have experienced someone with an annoying laugh. After encountering enough, I finally decided to screw people's feelings so I could bitch about them a bit.

Chipmunk Laugh: "That joke was so funny, I feel the need to applaud it as though I were a small, furry, woodland creature."
This laugh is the one where the laugher begins a rapid hahahahaah in a high pitch that sounds like Alvin or any other of his lame chipmunk friends. Since this laugh requires little air to use (and the people who use it are often airheads), this laugh can go on for a long time, making it all the more annoying.

The outdoing laugh: "No, you don't understand. I got that joke on such a greater level than you. That joke was so much funnier to me, so I need to laugh harder."
This is a very douchey laugh because the person doing it thinks that they are above other people they are with. The person laughing this way is basically saying "I know you got the joke, but I got it more!" That's not really possible at points, but some morons still feel the need to assert their lack of intelligence by making sure everyone else knows if they get a joke. Another possible cause for this laugh is if a person has no idea what the joke meant and they didn't want to stick out by not laughing. The problem is, the joke is rarely as funny as they are laughing for, so this person sticks out more and deserves full humiliation for their ignorance. The final reason this laugh can occur is when the person laughing just is obsessed with their own voice. The best cure for someone doing the laugh for that reason is to punch them in the throat so that they won't be able to hear their precious, precious voice for a while.

Chicks with deep laughs: "Nothing funny to say, that's just fucked up."
The last time I encountered a chick with a really deep laugh was a couple of years ago in Hawaii. In my experience with chicks with deep laughs, they have always been very awkward. Take for example, my experience in Hawaii:
"The waitress there was mildly attractive. Something odd that she did was place the napkin I had on my lap for me. Like her hand was less than one inch away from touching my balls. I was also the only person in my family to which she extended this service. Also, when I said something mildly funny, she let out a very deep rapidfire laugh. Not very ladylike. Very awkwardlike." (August 18th, 2007)
Chicks with deep laughs are very awkward especially for me because like any normal person, my voice is higher when I'm laughing. It's not very sexy when a lady has a deeper voice than me. Perhaps if I had kicked her in her woman-testicles, her voice would have gone up a couple octaves to where it should be. The reason this laugh is annoying is because it is really awkward to be around and in some cases, it can make it hard to tell if the person is a dude or a chick.

If you laugh in any of these ways, I sincerely suggest that you get a vocal chord transplant or whatever is necessary to prevent you from annoying me by expressing your pleasure at something this way. Until next time, peace out.

Quote unload

Well since I don't use AIM anymore, I guess this is the new place I can dump good quotes from the past. Here they are:

Sai: My bro wants me to ask you if you're still a virgin.
Sai: I'll tell him not that you know of, right?

*hot girl pulls up in car next to us*
Amanuel: Hey, now we can say wierd things to her and she can't understand what we're saying.
Me: I wanna grab your boobs!
Sai: I want to hold your hand...................and give you a flower.

Doug to our Bari Sax player:
Good God, man. You read like Stevie Wonder.

Maddy: The rain can be blamed for everything today.
Me: Even the fire drill?
Maddy: Oh is that what that was?
Maddy: I came back from a field trip and everyone was on the field.
Maddy: So really, everyone ELSE was on a FIELD trip

Orion: Vagina
Orion: Get it?
Orion: No, of course you don't!

Keir: Is this China? Because there seems to be an open door policy.

Keir: Yellow, I have some advice for you
Keir: Never play Starcraft again

Me:i just remember her saying "now i gave you all break to read this short little book"
Orion:lulz kkk

Orion: I hear there's this new transvestite band; it's called Girlz II Men

Jack: actually, my bday's on easter
Jack: me and jesus, we got a connection

Keir on "maybe the lurkers wont splash the tanks."
Keir: That's a big-ass maybe

Keir: Your blog is nice
Keir: no wonder it attracts all the homosexuals on the west coast

Keir: Green Bay, more like green gay!!!!
Keir: wait, green day!
Keir: which is inherently gay!

Me: now i will know how to know if it is pooping
Me: then we can do some 2 girls 1 cup shit
Oliver: yeah except it'd be 2 guys 1 bowl
Oliver: cause we're hardcore like that

Orion: Yi, what sound does a sheep make?
Yi: Moo, no wait, baaaah.

Me: well in your honor, i made the letter very dickly
Me:basically saying bitch i deserve this shit cuz im better than u
Me: but with proper grammar
Orion: lol
Orion: Bitch, I deserve this shit due to the irrefutable fact that I, David Altena, am better than you.
Me: exactly

Me: You can still have a verb before a noun.
Davis: Run, flower!

Orion: You know she said something profound, which was odd because most of the things coming out of Taylor's mouth-
Me: Are dicks!

*Davis and I see a painter staring inquisitively at a partly finished wall*
Davis: And then he realized....they were paying him by the hour

Ahmad: I only recognize something as a sport if EA has made it into a sports game

Steven: If I wanted my comeback I would have wiped it off your face

David: That is so going into my blog
Keir: Oh good, that means nobody will ever read about it

MASS EFFECT 2 TEASER OUT *boner*

Ask me for the link if you really want it. I'm not posting it because I know nobody will want it because none of you have 360s or seemed interested in the first Mass Effect. I'm excited though. Anyway, this past week was fairly busy, including three nights of little sleep. I think it may actually remain short, so here it goes.

Monday:
After my last post, I played more Metroid Prime, believe it or not.

Tuesday:
I didn't have a trumpet lesson because the guy had a gig to go to, but we had sectionals and those are always fun because instead of Doug yelling at our section, our section gets to go to a room so we can say "Shit, shit, we need to get this down fast." After school, I played some more Metroid Prime.

Wednesday:
I spent a lot of the day trying to catch up on reading for my Asian Literature class. It was quite boring, I must say.

Thursday:
Homework and Metroid Prime.

Friday:
We got a new song in Jazz Band that wants us to play at 190bpm. I'm sure when we have it down, it won't be a problem, but we all learned why we shouldn't sight read music at tempo. It was disastrous, but in a funny, not getting yelled at sort of way. After school, I got some good SC in with Steven for a while and then I pwned Ashley a bit.

Saturday-Today:
On Friday night, I stayed up until 11:00 and then had to get up around 4:45am the next morning to make our flight to Anaheim. It went well. We got to Disneyland at about 10:00 and we spent the whole day there riding rides and such. Kathryn and I got a good combo of that's what she saids at one point (though not nearly as epic as the Hendrix combos from theory (Davis know's what I'm talking about)). We met up with Kathryn's friend that lives down there now on Saturday and hung out with them for most of the day. Unfortunately, I did not make the Astro Blaster high score reel this time. Next time, perhaps I shall though.

See, there you go. A short post. You're welcome. If you like long posts, then I'm sorry. Come visit sometime or have me visit you or something so I will have something to post about. Until next time, peace out.

These three day weekends throw me off.

Well I might not have posted today if not for the fact that I seem to operate on a strict schedule week by week, so if I forget to do something, I will find myself sitting around until I finally remember. Such was the case just now. I was sitting, thinking to myself, there's something I'm always doing right now and I finally realized that it was time to make a new post. By the way, I'm pretty sure you will be reading this Orion, so I was going to let you know that one week from Tuesday will mark 2 months since an update from you. I hope you can get back into the regular posting that you hoped to achieve. (It's the last paragraph of the post). There, now I have linked to Orion's blog. What sort of backwards world have we stumbled upon now? Ok well anyway, I do believe it's time to go into the week for what hopefully shall remain a fairly short post.

Monday:
I messed up my solos in Band, but it was no big deal because we have some time left before the concert and it was just some fine tuning things that I missed that will help me sound better. Annoying girl was yet again not there. Much happiness ensued.

Tuesday:
I had a lesson on trumpet and I got to some higher notes, which was pretty cool. After that, I learned that the recording software I had gotten for free put an audiostamp or whatever it's called onto saved recordings, so that one was useless. I later found out that I had not downloaded Audacity, so I went to go download it.

Wednesday:
We had a really bad rehearsal as a group in Jazz Band, so Doug took away two of our harder parts, which sucked because they were cool songs, but I have a feeling we will see them again and for now, the workload is tolerable again. I was having trouble learning 4 new songs for that class and all the ones for regular band.

Thursday:
I guess taking away the two songs worked because we had a really great Jazz Band rehearsal. Unfortunately, one of our trumpet guys had a gig so we did not play after school for a while. I used the time to go home and play some Metroid Prime. The controls still anger me, but I am getting used to them.

Friday:
I stuck around after Jazz Band to play with the two guys in the trumpet section and our lead alto player came and played with us on his Soprano, so that was pretty cool. I had to leave early because of Sai's party. I met him and Steven at Red Robin (I know, we always seem to wind up there...). Later we caught up with Albert, Tom, Oliver, and Jennifer. Then Amanuel showed up around the same time Ben and Allen showed up. We all ate some dinner and Sai paid for it, which was really cool. After that, we went bowling and Steven and I still need to have an epic battle to decide who is better. On a side note: I noticed that Wii Bowling kind of does help me at bowling. My scores were much better than they were during my lifetime sports days. After bowling, Steven and Ashley quickly balled out for reasons unknown (but the next day WAS Valentine's day after all). We all split up from there. I took Amanuel to Abaneezer's house and Sai to his own house, then I went home myself.

Saturday:
I spent St. Valentine's day alone for the 18th consecutive time. I decided that I will try to make this my last St. Valentine's day ever, so that I can stop calling it St. Valentine's day in a vein attempt to make it seem like a religous holiday instead of what it technically really is. Pending my trip in March, this may be an attainable goal. If the trip winds up not happening, then perhaps I shall have to try harder later in the year.

Sunday:
I helped Kathryn get less n00b at tennis and then we went down to SPU to pick up my cousin (the one that is my third cousin once removed(the hot one)) on our way to Kent for a belated birthday celebration for my cousin (first cousin).

Ok pause here, I have to get something out of the way.

Dad's job:
So dad helped start that bank in Bellevue right? Well long story short, the economy really made it suffer. It wasn't that the bank was making stupid choices, it was actually set to do well. The people in the bank just became afraid and the bank was making less money, so they had to cut back. Dad and the CEO decided that dad's job could be deligated to 4 other people for less money, so dad, along with some other lady, got laid off. That was back in November. In December, he signed on with Union Bank of California which is this bank from California that's expanding north up to Seattle. In a paper in San Francisco, I guess UBOC was described as a bank that didn't take the stupid pill. Basically, it's referring to how UBOC is doing well despite the bad economy. Since this is a big bank, (like US Bank, but regionalized) dad has to go on business trips again, but unlike US bank, he now goes fun places! Most of his trips are to SoCal and Las Vegas. He actually has a trip to Vegas while I'm hoping to be in Sacramento. He also has a trip to Anaheim (home of Disneyland) this weekend. Anyway, another long story short, it worked out that our family could go to Disneyland this weekend for the price of just airfare, which we found for quite cheap, so we jumped on that opportunity, so from Saturday-Monday morning, I will be in Disneyland. I get back just in time to go to Jazz Band on Monday morning. So anyway back to the story...

Somehow the topic of Disneyland comes up and my cousin for who we were celebrating the birthday said she was looking at going soon, so we invited her along, so my cousin is now coming with us. Also, I guess one of Kathryn's friends lives down there now, so we're going to meet up with her family, so it will be a big group, but dad and I will still make sure we get the most rides in because dad and I have uber micro at Disneyland (the only place my micro is uber).

Today:
I helped Kathryn get a little less n00b at tennis again. After that, I played some more Metroid Prime. I'm about 50% on the progress that it tells you at the start. It's been about 10 hours and I'm still in the high 40's. I think it may last at least 24 hours, which is a pretty good time for an FPS/Adventure game like this.

Ok well other than that, not much has been going on. Hopefully I can get this song recorded soon so I can get back into Starcraft. I haven't done a lot of PC gaming recently. It's odd. Ah well, peace out for now.

Special Spontaneous Update

It's on baseball this time. I know that last year I said I was going to get into baseball since we got an HDTV and sports became 27% more interesting, thereby bumping up NASCAR and baseball to interesting enough levels. I know I said I would follow them last year and I wound up following neither because NASCAR is something that you honestly can't spend too much time watching and the Mariners had one of their worst seasons ever.

I found out today though that Ken Griffey Jr. is being considered for Seattle to sign. If the Mariners sign Griffey (who by the way has been my favorite player since I was 4 and learned who he was and that he was also left handed), then I promise to the Mariners that I will follow their season and become a fan again.

Ball's in your court, Mariners, don't let me down.

LET ME SHOW YOU MY POKEMANZZZZ!!!

The title refers to a lolcat photo that has something to do with a minor story later in the post in case you were wondering. Also, I realize that I have not posted pictures. I forgot, so I'll get them up this week. Because the days have started flying by and blurring together, I will do this week's post in the other format because frankly, most of the days would otherwise consist of "I went to school and came home and did something until going to sleep."

School:
School has been going well. Math is not too challenging. Asian Literature has not been boring. Jazz band has been getting better since I am getting slowly better at trumpet again. Concert band has been doing well too because the stupid annoying girl has not been there in 2 weeks and I got all her solos in the song she had them on last week. I did well on most of them, but on the last one I forgot to play an Ab and I hit an A and it sounded really messed up, but this week (today) I will do much better on them. Aside from that, the quartet I play with on Thursdays (4 trumpet quartet) is going to start meeting again now that all of us are here again and our lead guy is writing a version of electric avenue (youtube it) for us to play and he says I should play lead on it, which will be cool.

Videogame stuff:
So I've been beating some games, I just finished up Destroy All Humans 3 and it was pretty good. On Sunday, Davis, Sai, and I went to go to Toys R Us to get Shaymin and that was pretty cool. I now have 2 pokemans in Pearl! I feel so accomplished. After that, Davis suggested I borrow his Gamecube for a while since he isn't using it and he gave me 5 games for it, so I have some new games to play through. Also, he let me borrow fire emblem, so that will be cool too. I still have to finish Justice for All before I start that though. I thought about it though and I realized I haven't played much videogames recently. Between last monday and last friday, I played 2 hours of Starcraft with Steven and that was it. I haven't really been doing anything big to keep me away from it either. I just haven't played that much.

What I've been doing:
Masturbating!

Well I've actually been writing out a bass tab and learning the piano part for The Fragrance of Dark Coffee (Godot's Theme song from Phoenix Wright 3). Learning the bass part has taken a lot of time since I suck, but I'm close to recording, though the quality will be crappy since my mics are not the best for recording instruments. I did get Audacity though so it helps give it a slightly better sound. It's like photoshop for music. Hopefully I'll have that all done soon so I can get back to training at Starcraft.


Ok that's it for the post. I'll see you all sometime soon hopefully for whatever reason. I just need to hang out with people. Perhaps Steven and I should go to the UW someday or something. Ok well Peace out until next time.

Things I Hate: 8

Hello and welcome to the first installment of things I hate where the title rhymes. A stupid anniversary, I know, but I was lacking in an intro today so I thought I would bring it up. I was about to delay this post, when I realized that there was something I needed to hate on this week just today. I shall now introduce you to the subject of my 8th things I hate: Pushy salespeople

I saw someone doing something along these lines today on campus at SCC. Now when I say salespeople, I am also talking about activists who basically just try to pushily sell their ideas to you. After seeing this lady, I remembered the people at Mexico and had to post about this.

Vendors in Mexico:
So there are ropes about halfway up the beach in front of hotels to keep the vendors that walk by out of hotel property. There are hundreds if not more vendors that go up and down the beach all day selling their wares because it is their livelihood. Unfortunately, between all those vendors, there are only 5 different products they sell and you have to say no to each person as they pass. After a while, you really want to flip out and deck one of these bastards. I caught myself almost yelling at one, saying "GOD DAMNIT, NO MEANS NO IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE YOU DAMN GRINGO." I had to restrain myself though because there were young children around. The stupid vendors just wait though at the ropes and pester you until you actually look at them and say no. It gets really annoying when two vendors selling the same thing pass you right in front of one another. When that happened, I would just say "Did you not hear what I just said to the last person?" It's like if this is their livelihood, you think they would understand how it works sometimes. Don't stand near people selling the same thing.

Another tactic they use is where poor, old women have their children go out and peddle their crap. Most often, the kids are trying to sell these stupid ass whistles. To demonstrate them as they walk by, they just play two notes (for example an A and a B) and they just alternate those notes over and over. I wont even consider buying one of those things unless you show me you can play a song on it. Since the thing's in your mouth all day, I assume you would know if you could, so I'm not interested. Shit, I can annoy my friends and family by doing that FOR FREE. It's called whistling.

I do like it when kids try to sell to me though because they only came up to my waist (the perfect age, Sai!) so it was easy just to look down at them and they would get scared and walk away because let's face it, I could easily be a serial killer for all they know. I had to laugh at how much their plan backfired there. That's why child labor is illegal in this country, because we know that kids don't have the educational background to sell things effectively.


Pushy Activists:
So this lady was at SCC today with a booth set up in the middle of the campus that said "Reject the stimulus package, jail the wall street scumbags." I don't know too much about the problem, but I thought that the stimulus package went mostly to the people whereas BAILOUTS went to the "scumbags." All inaccuracies aside though, it was really annoying to have someone in the way of a major traffic flow area to push their stupid opinion. Whether or not I agree with it, I don't care. It was throwing off my schedule having all the people clogging up my path. She even yelled over to me to get me to come "join the cause" so I just gave her a quick "There is no way" look and walked past. When will people realize that the busiest place on a college campus is not an open forum for ideas? That's the Student Union Building. Do anything you want in there, I only go in once a quarter to buy books.



I know, I'm sorry it was short, but this idea happened upon me today and these are really the only kinds of pushy salespeople I have encountered. I have yet to encounter the pushy car salesman, but you can bet I'll be ready to deal with him because if I yell at him, he will know what I'm saying because he speaks english.

Ok well that's it for now. I think I'll post pictures tomorrow. Orion, regrettably as I was looking through the pictures it turned out I had none of Paris. I thought mom had a picture of her playing volleyball with us, but it turns out just her arm was in it. If you were wondering though, I would say she was between a 618 and 718, but closer to the 718. I know, I just struggle with the lack of decimal places I am allowed to have in that rating system.

There aren't enough G's in the world to make an acronym for how good of a game that was.

Well I was really happy with the Superbowl. I really liked that it was such a good game I wanted to skip the commercials to get back to the game. Of course the Steelers won, but now we have a second incident to prove that referees prefer the Steelers. I hope the Arizona fans will finally understand how not crazy we Seattle fans are. So I'm also happy that I beat my record in the playoffs last year. This year, I went 8 for 11. Hopefully next year I'll get a perfect record.

Some thoughts about next year:
I'm thinking of doing fantasy football. I don't really know much about it now, but if it's free, which I think it is, then I'm down with doing it. I also think there are pods or something involved in it because my second cousin was doing his draft at the start of the season with a bunch of guys over the internet. I'll have to look into it.

Team to watch next year: The Houston Texans. You guy's think I'm crazy, but just watch these guys. Something big is going to happen. I really hope they even get to the Superbowl. They will have to have a good season to get into the playoffs though because they come from a strong division, containing the Colts and the Titans. That being said, watch out for these guys, they're going places (and I'm not saying that (completely) because I like them).

So I was informed by Comcast that this photo has been going around the internet and Miley Cyrus (I guess she's the middle one) was caught here making fun of asians. Now the article said that she was in trouble for that, but does anyone else think that she should maybe be getting in trouble for being at a boozer? Has this really been overlooked? WTF is going on here?

Un vacacion muy super

I'm pretty sure that that is not actually the spanish word for vacation, but I really don't care if it's wrong. Orion, if it's bothering you, feel free to tell me though. I will not edit in any accents over the letters though. So yeah how's it going everyone? It feels like more than a week has passed even though I was only gone for a few days. I missed a ton of stuff, but still managed to get a lot of cool, different stuff done. I think the reason for it feeling that I've been gone a long time is due to the fact that I spent the first three days of last week just grinding out a week's worth of homework (2 4-page essays, 5 1-page peer critiques, 5 sections of math ("learned" independently), and a couple other random assignments). I'll try to fly through Monday and Tuesday because they aren't terribly exciting and I'm sure you would rather read about the mexico trip because it is actually interesting. Get ready for a lengthy post. Try to read it all because there are some good stories hidden amongst it. I'll be making other posts during the week too, so this post will soon be pushed out of the way.

Monday:
Well in band, that stupid girl did not show up, which was nice. I don't know if she's still in the band and I hope she quit, but I have a sinking feeling that if I let my guard down. she will show up randomly and I will be disappointed, so I am expecting her to show up, but being happy when she doesn't. Anyway, we have this phantom of the opera medley which she basically jacked all the solos for in it because "she played it in high school and she loves it so much and could play it really well." Well first of all, we all agreed she played it terribly. The lead horn player was talking to me last week and since the girl wasn't there, she wanted me to take over a couple solos, so I asked which ones she wanted, then she said, "Oh, just go with all of them. I have solos on other songs, you can get this one since I like your playing." That made me pretty happy.

**Also, I found out that I can get out of high school, but I can't get out of Victoria. I guess this band goes to Victoria every year and plays at the lawn or something, but doesn't march. We would take the clipper up on saturday morning and come back on sunday night. Not a bad deal, though considering that it would be cheaper per person and we would have 2 PEOPLE PER ROOM. I turned to the guy next to me to verify that once it had been said and he gave me this look like I was spoiled, so I clarified that I was used to four people a room, so he laughed at that. Unfortunately, attendance is mandatory, so I will be there sans my friends this time, but I guess it's not too much time there, so I can hang out with the girls while I'm there (note: "the girls" are the two girls in jazz band with me).**

Tuesday:
I did a ton of homework (yes Orion, literally 2,000 pounds worth of homework). I did the majority of it this day due to the band meeting, then 24 the previous day. I had a lesson and I was able to reach new high notes despite my illness, so I was happy to see progress. I also had my midterm that afternoon because I was going to be missing it that Friday. It went very well. I sat in the hallway and took it and I believe I did well, possibly even 100%. There was a lot of stuff that was not covered on the test, namely the 2 things I had actually studied, but oh well. I took only 45 minutes to complete all three pages, so a pretty respectable time, we shall soon see how the score went. After I came home and did the homework, I packed for the trip.

Wednesday:
I had to get up before 7 :O. Well actually, I didn't because I was lazy and didn't feel like taking as long to eat breakfast, so I got up exactly at 7. We then hit the road around 8:00 for the airport and got to the gate plenty early. The plane ride was nice. It was less than 1/3rd full. Some lady behind me wanted to change seats to sit closer to her husband (a reasonable request), but the flight attendant claimed that that would throw off the balance in the plane and proceeded to describe the "actual physics" of air travel to the lady as mom and I looked at each other desperately trying not to laugh at the amount of bs flying out of her mouth. It should have been pretty obvious that the lady could have switched and she shouldn't have asked. Here are the flight attendants points and the problems located therein.
1. An equal number of people need to be on each side. About 1/3 of the people were on the right side, so it was really unbalanced. She wasn't switching anyone else around. They wanted EVERYONE to stay in their assigned seat. Also, the balance from left to right is as important as the front to back balance, which was also way off. Furthermore, they don't ask for your weight when you sign up for your ticket, so how do they really know this is how it should be?
Well that was it for her arguments, but it was funny how little she knew about air travel. I switched my seat to the right hand side of the plane stealthily because it had more room and nobody noticed and we didn't die, so no big deal I guess.

So we got into Cabo and were promptly swarmed by stupid timeshare people on the way out of the airport. If you go, just go past them and say "We have someone picking us up." Go to the people outside for rides. We got to the hotel near downtown and it took a while to get there surprisingly. You'd think that they would have made the airport in one of the one billion possible places closer to the city, but whatever. 45 minutes is like something I'd expect from a place like NYC or Seattle or LA and such, but not Mexico. When we got to the hotel, we saw our family and hung out with them for a while. The family that was there were my family, my grandma, my uncle (mom's oldest of 3 brothers), his son (the other left handed guy in the family) and his fiancee, his younger sister and her fiancee, and then their sister, the middle child and her soon to be husband, but we did not see the two of them much because they were at their own hotel. As we stayed in Mexico longer, I got more and more used to speaking in spanish occasionally. At times though down there it's kind of kitchy to speak in spanish, but there are some places like if you go off the beaten path where it's handy to know spanish.

Drunk person of the day: Grandma

My grandma used to come down every February with my grandpa. They had done this for the last 25 years, so it was understandable that she let this happen, but she was quite drunk. Luckily my uncle and I were there to make sure she did not get injured whilst walking about. It was actually quite a hassle. We had a nice dinner, then everyone went to sleep because it had been a long day.

Thursday:
We got up and went to the deli on the hotel property and I wore a sweatshirt because it was still in the low 60's at 8am. By 8:30 am, it was in the 70s and I regretted wearing the sweatshirt. We toured around a bit before going with some of the family to rent jetskis. My cousins rode with their fiancees and dad rode with Kathryn, so I rode with my uncle. We were the fat guy jetski of awesomeness. It was funny when we switched halfway, he ducked under me (as best he could) and I climed over him (as best I could). The action was perfectly described by my cousin when she said "It looked like my dad had a heart attack or something and David was climbing over him to drive them back to shore." We need to work on our leapfrog skills someday.

Later in the day, my left handed cousin, dad, and I went to play shuffleboard. The girl at the desk was pretty cute and her name was Paris. Talking to her, kicked off the Paris Saga, which I shall go into as the post continues.

So we rented the shuffleboard stuff and I learned some new rules from my cousin and taught him the max score, which I learned from Seabrook. He was actually really good, but I gave him a run for his money and it was a close game. Paris came by to tell us she had to close, but we convinced her to let us have the stuff for 5 minutes to finish a game. She liked us, so she let us. After leaving, we decided that it was our goal to figure out where Paris got her accent because it was one we had all never heard before. It was a really cute accent too (from a pretty cute girl I might add). It was the accent where my name comes out as "Dayhveed." Also, my cousin seemed determined for me to pick her up as a date to the wedding (more on that later). Anyway, we finished up, then went to dinner with the rest of the family. It was a rehearsal dinner at this place I can't remember the name of.

Drunk person of the day: my uncle

My uncle was understandably drunk. He had 3 margaritas at lunch, then apparently he did shots with the groom during the wedding rehearsal. The groom is a cool guy. He's a san franciscan fire fighter and he really likes to do shots and party. For the wedding, he actually got a big bottle of tequila for each table. Anyway, my uncle did shots with him at the wedding, then had beer at dinner, so he probably didn't remember much of that night, but I bet in his drunk world, he really enjoyed the mariachi guy playing for us because he did a lot of strange dancing.

After the dinner, we went bar hopping and it was quite interesting seeing so many drunk people and lap dances and it taught me that the bar scene is not something I need to get into.

Friday:
Not much happened in the morning. Around 11:00, we ran into Paris playing volleyball. She saw us from quite far away (I didn't think she would even remember us up close) and she called us over to play, so we did for a while and that was pretty fun. After she left, we all put in our guesses for her accent. Dad said Mexico (lame guess), my cousin said French Canadian (we wtfed at that one), I said Spain (people liked that one), and my cousin's fiancee said Portugal (another good guess). So anyway, my cousin and his fiancee and I went into town to have lunch and to look around. I remembered third wheeling with Stashley once, so I made absolutely sure that they didn't care if I was there. We had lunch at this bar owned by Sammy Hagar. He's not a really huge name if you don't really listen to classic rock, so I won't be offended if you didn't know who he is. Anyway, we did not see him....there (more on that later). After that, the three of us wandered the town a bit and saw some shops before heading back to the hotel for a while to get ready before the wedding.

I caught up with my parents who had made friends with Paris while I was gone and asked her her accent, thereby cockblocking me. Turns out it was Guadalaharan (damnit, Dad was right after all). Anyway, we saw her when we went to return the towels, so I said hi again, then mom told her about how we were going to a wedding. I would have invited her to go, but I was forcefully told no by mom, who said that it was not our place to invite. She was right, but regardless, it would have been cool and I'm sure she would have been interested in going (I'm sure I'm sure).

So we all got ready and went to the wedding. It wasn't a religous ceremony, so it was fairly quick. The pastor was Juan (everyone was Juan, I swear) and he did a pretty good job. They had an insane camera lady named Helga (or Hellga as I called her) which was appropriate due to her intensity. She took a ton, and this time I actually mean 2,000 pounds worth of pictures. They were gone for a very long time and it was awkward at the after dinner for a while. Eventually they showed up and the party kicked off.

Drunk person of the day: Pretty much every non-family member at the party. Not me though!

So during the party, I figured I would have as much to drink as I wanted because it was an open bar and I was sitting at a table anyway. There were three courses of dinner amongst my drinks. At the end of the day, I had had 4 beers, a shot of tequila, and a cup of liquer as a "closer" drink that dad recommended. It was like a spiked starbucks double shot, so it was pretty good. A lot of people had much less to drink than me, but they still got drunk. I guess the fact that I did not is partly due to the fact that I am both Dutch and Irish and that I am 6'1" and 200 pounds. That or maybe I just didn't have that much to drink, I really don't know what a lot would be since I never really do that kind of thing regularly, or at all :/. Anyway, I did earn a cool badge of honor. My grandma likes to do shots of tequila and that works out well for the groom, since that's basically his favorite thing ever. He likes to take shots with her at family gatherings. This time, my grandma convinced me to take a shot with her, so I can now say I took shots with my grandma. It's an odd badge of honor to have, but it's cool nonetheless. As the party was winding down, our table (table 3 ftw (not too important, but not unimportant guests)) ditched, but it turned out that we had done so right before the mass jumping into the pool except by those that were wearing nice dresses. Also, we missed a couple that was dancing with their kid fall over since they were drunk. Sounds like we balled out at a good time.

Saturday:
Ahh, it was nice to be up and not drunk like I'm sure so many people were. Most of us just hung around for a while before going into town for shopping and lunch. Apparently, on the way to lunch, Sammy Hagar passed by our group. I saw him, but I didn't recognize him at all because he looks really different from pictures I have seen. As the groom put it, "he was rode hard and put away wet." We had lunch for an hour and watched some boxing match from 1985 which was on ESPN2 for no good reason I assume. After lunch, I took a shot of tequila with the groom and my cousin's fiancee, who likes to do that too, though he is usually pretty quiet otherwise. After that, people decided they wanted to do this strange party pirate ship for the sunset, so we set up plans for that. Then, all of us went back to the hotel and had about 2 hours of down time. I decided to use my time to see if Paris was over at the stand. She was, so I talked to her for a bit, then she asked if I could come to see her at this dinner thing that they do nightly at the hotel there because she was serving. I told her about the pirate thing and told her that if I got time, I would definitely try to make it. It went until 10, so I figured I had some time.

The pirate cruise was cool. We went out of the bay in a pirate ship and watched the sunset and some whales before heading back into port. The last half hour was stupid because they put on a boring show and then just stay in place for 20 minutes before going the rest of the way into port. Since I had somewhere to be, it was more annoying. When we got off the boat, everyone wanted to eat at this place downtown, despite my telling them multiple times that I needed to get back to the hotel to see Paris. We got to the restaurant and I could feel time slipping away as I went through a clock in my head and thought about how much time we would piss away on this. Luckily and unfortunately, my uncle was feeling sick, so I got a taxi with him back to the hotel. I went over to the dinner, but it was pretty empty. I guess the dinner part ends at 7 and it was around 8:00. Then I found out that she had just left because there were getting to be more servers than customers. So in the end, I got TOTALLY screwed over by the pirates so now I have taken a side. Whenever someone asks Ninjas or Pirates, I will definitely not side with the Pirates after this happened. I decided I would track her down tomorrow to apologize since I knew generally where she would be.

Sunday:
Alas, Paris was not working this day, so I did not get to see her. I guess this gives me a reason to go back, eh? Either that or maybe I'll just count on being able to go to Sacramento during spring break. I must remedy this girlfriend drought soon. Not much happened other than packing that day. I got on the plane at about 1:00 and we had a layover in San Francisco for an hour and a half right at the start of the Super Bowl. I was recording it, so I did my best to avoid it and it was successful. Apparently, during the San Fran to Seattle flight, the fourth quarter score was announced and I totally missed it while everyone else on the plane heard it, so I got a stroke of luck there. The football gods were really on my side this time. So at Sea-Tac, I kept my head down and Kathryn warned me when we passed a sports bar, so I added my "LALALALALA" to tune out any noise announcing the game successfully. Then we had to get into the shuttle to the car, which was the hardest part because they always have the radio on in the shuttles. Luckily, the guy in front of me asked for no talk of the game and we got lucky because the guy driving the shuttle was really cool with that and he decided he would test his quick comedy routine on us. It was actually really funny.

Somehow, I managed to get all the way home from Mexico through all those public areas and past all those tv sets to avoid finding out about the super bowl. It was a really great game. By the 4th quarter, dad and I were skipping the commercials because we just wanted to watch the game. We did watch the GoDaddy commercials though because... well, you know. It was nice not having a personal stake in the game also. Last year, I really wanted the Giants because the Patriots are my most hated team. The year before that, it was the Colts because they are my favorite team behind the Seahawks, and the year before that, I was rooting for the Seahawks. This time, I was able to just enjoy the game, and what a game it was. I'll make a post on that tomorrow. I had to stay up late (until 12:30) because of the game, but it was ok. There are few things that are okay to stay up late for and they are football, late night building projects with Orion, studying for physics, and girls. If it seems like I've done all of those things and that girls would then be out of place because I haven't, well you're right. I just leave girls up there because I assume that I would stay up late if the need arises.

Today:
I should have just skipped math and gotten the hour of sleep I missed because the midterm had been delayed to today and I spent the time in the math learning center getting ahead on homework. After that, I had some classes and came back to Jazz band and played better than I did on Tuesday because I'm not too sick anymore. Anyway, this post took a very long time to write and I can only wonder how long it will be. Sorry about that in advance.

So yeah I'll be posting about football tomorrow, then hopefully a things I hate on wednesday unless something goes wrong and nothing annoys me between now and then. I'll post the pictures of the trip (there aren't too many) on Thursday I guess unless I really feel like doing it on Tuesday. Ok well Peace out.