that rosebud girl

wicked sweet!

so i was talking to pete sometime tonight, and it is official:

petey is invading the west coast in july!

i am super stoked. it’s going to be a lot of fun. pete’s never been to california, so i’m excited to take him around and show him what it’s all about. he’ll be here about nine days. i think that’s plenty of time.

we’re planning to catch a couple of phillies-giants games at the phone booth (at&t park, for the uninitiated). i’m stoked enough about that because i’ve never been there, and i hear it is a pretty kickass park. maybe barry will even hit a home run and we’ll get involved in a scuffle for the ball. sweet.

i think we’re also going to drive down to socal for three days or so. i’d like to do something with edgar. take pete around some of the great haunts — and get him some chicken and waffles at roscoe’s ’cause he loves that kind of crap! the angels are also home somewhere then, so we could catch them too. ?Ǭ†

and then i gotta top it off with a bbq at our house. and maybe i’ll get some rafting in there. we’ll see. but i’m totally excited.

on a totally unrelated note, ahmed sent jane and i this link from the smoking gun. it is damn hilarious. but very x-rated! don’t say i didn’t warn you ….

crazy couple in florida.

’tis all, folks. my neck friggin’ hurts. i think i slept on the wrong side of something in the last couple of days. ergh.

we are family.

so this weekend, my cousin leanne had her 18th birthday. if you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re not filipino, well, know that the 18th birthday is a pretty big deal ?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ some throw parties called debuts. this was a pretty elaborate affair.

this was a pretty big family gathering. almost all the cousins were there, except for rizza. i was glad. i hadn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t seen mae in a while, and she came down from arcata.

the party was a good time, and the post-party was always entertaining. our uncles are funny people. and they always tell such great stories about the crazy things they did growing up. and it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s always fun to hear about them living in guam back in the 70s.

anyhow, some pictures:

leanne! she was very pretty.

this is leanne’s sister, marcielle. she sang during the party. (it was a monica song — “for you i will.” i hadn’t heard that song since high school!) anyway, she is quite a singer (hey, we have talent in our family!). this is her diva shot. give her a few years and she’ll be on “american idol.”

closeup of leanne. her dress was stunning. handmade in the philippines, of course. it would have made a sweet prom dress.

just us cousins hanging out. mae is on the end in the dark blue dress. she used to have long hair. then she took some scissors and chopped it off after drinking lots of sake (or so she said). not a bad job.

death of a restaurant …

a few days ago or so, elisa emailed ed and i saying that she and matt were planning to take a trip to montreal for memorial day weekend. she knew we were fans of montreal, and wanted our take on that lovely city. both of us write her epic e-mails (hey, we really love montreal), and one of the great things we tell her about is a joint called movenpick.

if you’re not familiar with movenpick, it’s basically a huge buffet. it’s a market/restaurant that features numerous “stations”: asian, seafood, chicken, steak, salad, crepes, etc. it’s freaking huge. you basically get a tray and a ticket when you first walk in and your ticket is stamped at each station so they can keep track of how much you’re going to get charged. it’s the ultimate all-you-can-eat joint. i loved it. it is a must-stop in montreal. they’ve also got them elsewhere in canada and in boston.

but … and it’s a hugenormous BUT …

elisa emails us today telling us that movenpick is closed. and i’m like, “closed? as in closed down? that’s a canadian tragedy!” (it really was, for me at least.)

ed, being the intrepid boy he is, reports that movenpick is indeed closed. it was some messy bankruptcy dispute. basically, they suddenly shut down the boston joint and most of the canadian places; there are only a few in toronto that operate under a different name. apparently this all happened in 2004 or so; ed hadn’t been back to montreal since the 2004 baseball season because the expos disappeared.

this news quite saddened me. seriously. that place was such an intergral part of the montreal experience for me … it also happened to serve some pretty great boulibaisse (however the hell it’s spelled … too lazy to look it up) and some real kick-ass crepes.

basically, we raised poor elisa’s hopes for nothing. oh, well. at least tim horton’s is still around. i told her to have a donut there.

if tim horton’s ever went out of business in canada, i would really cry. where would i get my donuts and iced cappuccino in canada?

pool, anyone?

damn, i think i found a new favorite hangout in sacto.

yesterday was edgar’s last full day here in sacramento. we mostly hung out, sat around, watched a little nba, blah, blah, blah. we also played a little one-on-one poker. i was up a while … then wound up losing five bucks to him. damn him.

but anyhow, i wanted to do something, so i suggested playing pool. we wound up at this joint called blue cue midtown. pretty awesome place. a few people came along later, so that was cool. we ate … and we played lots of pool. i won three games in a row at one point. edgar and i wound up splitting … he scratched the last game, but really it was more of a tie. it was my turn to shoot and i pretty much couldn’t avoid scratching the 8 ball because the rest of the balls were clustered around it near a pocket … but i chickened out and cheated, not even trying to hit those balls. so we declared a tie because of my subversive tactics.

but i really liked blue cue. it was kind of like yankee doodles, but way smaller. but their tables were pretty sweet (and purple … i’d never seen purple tables before). big ol’ thumbs up from me.

glad to have finally found a nice pool joint in sacto.

meanwhile, i woke up today and had no idea what day it was. is this a bad sign?

the poker saga.

so what was supposed to be a day of playing poker and having a general good time turned out to be quite a public transportation saga.

it all started when i was leaving the house and shut the door behind me … and then realized i locked the keys in the house. after much hemming and hawing, and trying to figure out how the hell i was going to get all the way to natomas for poker, i wound up going to the builder’s customer center. they couldn’t help me (they didn’t have keys), but a kindly old man there said he was willing to drive me to the rail station. my plan was to ride downtown and possibly hitch a ride with tim from there.

i originally called tim to ask if he could pick me up, but since i was nowhere close to being on the way, i kind of felt bad about this. once i hitched the ride to the rail station, i figured it was going to be at least 45 minutes or so before i got downtown. not wanting tim to be late to the tournament, i waved him off — super bad move on my part, but hey, i wasn’t going to get anywhere near his place until 2:15 — and figured i’d catch a bus or something to natomas.

i get downtown, manage to get some cash for the tournament, and it’s probably around 2:30 or so at this point. i find a bus that will go to natomas, but nowhere near marc’s house. to make matters worse, the driver is at the end of her shift and has to take a 25-minute break or some crap like that. so we don’t roll out until past 3, and i get to my bus stop of choice around 3:30. marc picks me up and i get there close to 4. holy jesus.

at least i made it to the tourney. it was frustrating, but okay. it’s not like i’ve never had to deal with not having a car or riding public transportation. i just wish the buses went more places.

i played the tourney, didn’t last all that long — but at least i didn’t bust first.

some of us played a side game and i won a measly three bucks there. at least i had a blast.

remind me to never lock myself out of my house again.

oh, and on a good note, my house is pretty damn difficult to break into. and i’m a semi-professional. i’ve had to break into my own joint numerous times before. couldn’t do it this time.

foreign language …

porque es muy dificil para aprender?

(i couldn’t even tell you if that was proper spanish. but what the hey?)

one of my life’s goals is to learn spanish. i mean, really learn it. like, learn enough to go to a spanish-speaking country and a) not?get hopelessly lost; b) be able to go to a restaurant and not wind up with, say, goat on my plate, instead of pork or beef; c) not wind up in jail over some misunderstanding.

stupid adults and their incapacity to grasp anything other than english.

luckily, though, outside of class, there is the beauty of the internet. i’ve hooked up with some language exchange sites and actually started chatting with spanish-speaking folks in spanish. sometimes it’s good. i can make small talk. yay. sometimes … it’s not so good. and then i kind of have to talk in spanglish. (kind of like speaking in taglish, but that’s an entirely different story.) well, at least i kind of know what’s going on. and i do have to think in another language. and you don’t want to leave the other person kind of hanging there, so you have to think fast. and a lot of these people are very nice and helpful. bless them.

the internet is cool.

i think i would be scared shitless to actually talk to people. but chatting at least proves to me i know the basics. i could probably walk into a restaurant and not wind up with goat on my plate. i could ask where the bathroom is, where i could exchange money, blah blah blah. but ask me to keep up a non-small-talk conversation and we might have issues.

*sigh*

maybe i should talk to edgar. at least he won’t laugh his ass off at me. maybe.

tomorrow is poker. i hope i don’t get my ass kicked. there are some big-time hustlers there, though. getting into the money will be a challenge.

what is it with me and my need to challenge myself?

school’s out!

school is over. yay. no more (trying to) wake up at 8:15 … until the fall.

i think i will take piano class this fall at sac city. for giggles. i need to come into a piano. i wish my mom could ship my old one from guam. i wonder how much a piano costs? i love my old piano though. it’s a clavinova. electric and all. no need to worry about tuning the darn thing.

edgar’s sacto invasion is suddenly cast into doubt. that is a bummer. i hope he still comes here. even though i screwed up and thought i had both days off that he was here. oops.

i am tired. heat makes me tired. at least i took a nap today.

busy as a bee …

suddenly, i seem to have 15 billion things on my calendar. i don’t know what amazes me more: that i actually have enough friends to have this problem, or that none of these things are actually in conflict with each other. damn.

here’s the rundown:
may 20: marc erwin’s poker tourney. (booyah!) this is also preakness day. i need to find someone to haul my bet over to cal expo.
may 21: river cats staff outing (haven’t been to raley yet this season)
may 24-25: edgar invades sacto!
may 27: christening i would like to go to
may 28: leanne’s 18th bday/big ol’ family thing in fremont

then i still have a show (june 24) and my parents are coming up to sacto on june 25. and then there’s independence day and maureen’s extravaganza and possibly a few more days in socal. and then pete comes down and i hope to throw some sort of kickass party at our house.

i am most looking forward to having edgar up here though. that will be a pretty fun time. the poker will be fun too, but the caliber of competition may shut me out of the money. and i’m kinda bummed that melody and jimmy won’t be there. oh well … at least tim casey will be there and i can steal his money. ha!

of course, i am reminded that i have numerous projects that need to be done and some gifts that have to be made. d’oh.

oh, and happy early mommy’s day!

a little ditty …

ah, airconditioning! finally. our a/c had been busted for few weeks, but we’d never really noticed until it hit the upper 80s on a regular basis the last week. but it was fixed today. no more suffocating nights. and my cats no longer look lethargic as hell.

and now, a lyrical blog:

i break tradition
sometimes my tries are outside the lines
we’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes
but i can’t live that way

staring at the blank page before you
open up the dirty window
let the sun illuminate the words that you cannot find
reaching for something in the distance
so close you can almost taste it
release your inhibitions,
feel the rain on your skin

no else can feel it for you
only you can let it in
no one else, no one else
can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten
– natasha bedingfield, “unwritten”

it’s a nice song. kind of my mantra for the time being.

picture time!

a few weeks overdue, but well, my computer doesn’t like me sometimes.

here are pictures from maureen’s wedding … in no particular order, really.

the real photographers wanted the groomsmen to lift maureen up. the look of sheer terror on her face is prcieless.

if they had to pick up maureen, they had to pick up rob too. (actually, rob was first.)

mark and i dubbed this “the prom photo.”

the wine bottles at the wedding. i thought these were pretty awesome.

emmett mixes me a bacardi and coke … before the ceremony.

the shoes all the groomsmen wore … a tribute to rob’s love of vans and informality …

joe, jara and chris!

don’t ask me why i’m not looking at the camera.

joe and i were partnered up for the ceremony. we’re responsible for this whole thing happening, you know.

mark and billy doing what they do best … play the piano.