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.