julie gave me that eyeball last week. said she saw it in the candy dish at her eye doctor's and had to get it for me. i have never seen such a candy before. i bet green means it's mint flavored. i don't want to find out though. pretty clever halloween treat otherwise.
look at what thai an discovered last week. it made me look up the original video, which is not half as entertaining.
actual chat transcript between me and my awesome webmaster:
thuy: may i show [that picture] on schmeebot?
thuy: the one of me with my arms around you
thuy: it's my favorite shot of us
thuy: although you look a bit disgusted
rsgbot: haha
rsgbot: your arms barely go around my stomach! haha
thuy: well, may i?
rsgbot: ok fine
rsgbot: no autographs though
i first met rsgbot in september 1990 when we were teenage freshmen living in the same dorm at cal poly. we became great friends and i visited him regularly until 1996, when he lost his mind and moved to texas. we fell out of touch for years until i tracked him down in january 2004, approximately a month before schmeebot was created.
anyway, i got to see him again this past monday but only for three hours. we had a great time reminiscing about our youth and debating about current affairs. i hope it won't be another nine odd years before i see him again. because i can't wait that long to barely wrap my arms around somebody.
i've been feeling low for weeks. i'm trying very hard to keep positive. it's difficult to do that when everything in my life decides to foul up. if it wasn't the car then it's the plumbing. if it didn't have to face one unsavory character then i'd have to avoid another. and so on.
i've been thankful for the rain. there's something very redemptive about it, mostly how it intensifies the color of everything, the mountains, ocean, pavement, etc.
oil rigs in sb channel seen from bailard park 09 nov 05
i'm also thankful for the little graceful things people, total strangers, do. they're very few and far between so i really appreciate it when they happen. for instance, this past monday, while standing in line at starbucks for my morning caffeine fix, i watched a man come schlepping in, eyes downcast. he looked beaten and all slumped over, as if he had a really rough night. when he aproached the line, he looked up, right at me. i smiled. and he smiled back. it was this wonderful great big wide smile. i could see his eyes were red but the tiredness had completely vanished. my life suddenly felt bearable, even enjoyable. that simple five second interaction, it was like someone let a bit of sunlight into the bottomless pit was in.
flyer on via real
yesterday i heard a short npr commentary that just about swept me off my feet. it's by teller of penn+teller, the guy that never says anything. i don't know why i'm so impressed by him. may be it's his pleasant voice, may be it's his anecdote.
san luis obispo, 1995
tomorrow jg and i will have met each other exactly ten years ago. such a long, long time ago, isn't it?
i met a gentleman this morning whose name is mark johnson. he responded to all my questions with yes ma'm and no ma'm. anyway, he reminded me of one of my professors in college whose name was also mark johnson. more precisely, doctor mark johnson. i remember the first day of class, he asked the students to call him mark, just mark. "because if you called me doctor johnson, you'd have to wrestle me down to get my attention. i do not respond to doctor johnson."
then he took mug shots of us against the blackboard, one by one. i forgot what his reasoning was. what an eccentric character. but modest. i admire that.
that quarter i decided to have a crush on mark. it was the only way i could motivate myself to get out of bed and drag my half conscious body to his 7 am class every monday wednesday friday. urgh. i'm so glad i'm done wtih that whole routine!
lunch at zaytoon 19 aug 05
that's me and g. that's right, g. i haven't seen her for years it seems. i had to dig that picture up yesterday to remind me what she looks like. mark this day everybody. it's the first time she lets me post a picture of her on schmeebot!
jg broke his wrist saturday. you could very well guess how he did it. i'm too embarrassed to say. last night he walked up to saint mary's for an xray around 5. he came back at 8 with a cast. here he is, freshly splinted.
sunday 20 nov 2005 at 7:57 pm
he clowned around with his decrepit arm all night. he'd do kung fu moves and say things about his newfound claw that are entirely too inappropriate for me to put on schmeebot.
the blurry part of the tag reads: too old to be skating
this makes it his second annual emergency room visit. last year, it was for his right foot. this year, left wrist. and, unfortunately, ibuprofen alone won't cure it this year.
monday morning at 8:38
he stopped clowning this morning but it's just as funny to see the severity of it sinking in. he can barely button his pants but he has to go to work. he has to conduct a meeting, no less! i very much wanted to ask if he could still skate with a broken wrist. but i refrained.
i took these pictures four years ago on thanksgiving day. the little boy was one of our next door neighbors' holiday guests. i found him unattended and running in circles on the drive way.
that's jg watering the yard and his mom standing by. anyway, the speedy little fella ran and ran while i tried to make conversations with him. except i completely forget what we talked about. he did stop a few times to climb on the fence and jump off.
i don't remember how this next shot came about. he must have paused running long enough to go back inside to fetch the toys. or may be it was taken later when he had had enough of running. what a curious series of pictures. i wish i could remember a coherent story to go with it.
have a great thanksgiving day, everyone. may jolly little red people circle all your drive ways!
last week jg came home with his xrays on a cd. i had no idea that xrays are no longer taken on film.
cracked goods
i had a lazy week in sf. we had turkey and yam and the whole nine yards for thanksgiving dinner. except i was too sick to enjoy any of it.
highlight of thanksgiving 2005
the 8" princess cake saved the day because jg failed to add sugar to the pumpkin pie mix. the day after the feast, attempts were made to see the new de young museum. unfortunately, attempts were also made by the entire population of greater sf.
taken while standing in the never ending ticket line
there were several lines, one nearly wrapped around the building twice. we gave up trying to get inside. we did check out the museum's grounds. it was neat, i think, to experience james turrell's three gems.
jg outside turrell's skyspace
the skyspace
that's all there was to the it: that bit of sky, an incessant echo of a baby crying, and two elderly persons talking really loudly.
it's good to be back. i hope your thanksgiving was more eventful than mine.
yesterday, while my colleague hand was helping me fix a software upgrade glitch, my itunes shuffled to a set of cocteau twins songs.
hand: cocteau twins, good stuff.
thuy: what? are you serious?
hand: yeah, i have two of their cds... [interrupted]
thuy: oh my god. do you really? i have damn near every single one of
their cds. i saw them in concert twice back when blah blah blah
i can't believe how excited i got just because someone recogized the cocteau twins. then i got all sentimental. i discovered them some seventeen years ago from a girl named odette sanchez. she had borrowed one of their records from her cousin, i think. i remember hanging around her house after school shooting pool and trying to wail along those foreign sounding songs.
i have never seen this poster before today
*one of the neat things about the cocteau twins is their song titles. they're real odd. not that it matters much because there's no discernible lyrics to associate with any of the titles.
i still remember the moment i found out i was going to see them in concert. odette called me, screaming, "guess what you're getting for christmas? just guess! guess!" turned out she had camped out all night in line just to get the concert tickets. i was completely blown away. for one, i was convinced that they'd never be big enough to tour the states. two, i had never been to a concert before.
people with lollipops, december 1990
i took that right before we took off for the concert. i love that picture. reminds me of sesame street; which one of these doesn't belong? hahahahahah. anyway, from left to right, that's jayjay, the one who didn't belong, odette, and scott.
when my webmaster first heard the cocteau twins, he asked me, "is it english?" it took him a while to take a liking to them. then he took me to see the them in concert at the warfield in 1994. it was a regretfully lackluster show compared to the first one i saw. nothing is ever as good as it once was, i guess.
anyway, i should admit that i don't listen to the cocteau twins so much anymore. almost every song reminds me of something from my youth. it's nice. and i want to keep it that way.
