Back to the Grind

I have been back in the San Jose area for over two weeks now, after vacationing in Peru and Los Angeles. The trip to Peru was cut short for reasons I will not go into on Blogger. The time I did spend in Peru was very enjoyable, and I met some random Canadians as well as a fellow Bruin Alum, thanks to Jaclyn and Kathy.

I would post photos of my trip, but the majority of my readers have either flipped through them on facebook or Picasa.

School started a few weeks ago, and I've been working roughly 20 hours a week at my job with Our City Forest, trying to compensate for the vacation time I took.

In more exciting and serious news, my sister is ready to give birth in less than two weeks! I will soon have a nephew to dote on, however, I will not be spoiling him because I am a very, very poor Aunt. I am excited to welcome a whole new generation of our families (both Ray and my sister's) into the world. Life will change as we know it, and everything around it will too.

That's my life in a nutshell.

Oh yes, my work has been postponed for a semester. Personally, I don't care anymore because it's time that I start finishing things on my own pace.

Serendipity

Facebook is my obsession, but I have rarely used the social networking site to actually network or socialize with people I had not seen in years, that is until this past Friday.

There have been a few people from my past that I was interested in chatting up with that were my "friends" on facebook. That was in Los Angeles a few years ago. It was not until last week that I reached out to someone again from my high school. After a few messages back and forth, an old high school swimmate and I intended on meeting up for food and other things after work Friday night. Not too long after confirming our arrangement, my friend Aaron contacted me about meeting up that same day (but in the morning, which is strange).

Friday comes along, and I get off BART in downtown Oakland. While walking out and up to the street surface, I notice this person with her helmet on and bike in tow. Then I realized it was Ellen, a girl I went to college with and a girl that I volunteered with on Habitat. It was strange that, of all the days, I was looking forward to catching up with old high school acquaintances, and I ran into yet another person. My coworker said my situation was very serendipitous. I agree, to a certain extent.

And by the way, my Friday was very enjoyable. I am rather surprised on how much said swimmate and I had in common and got along. It is strange to see a person after eight years though. C'est la vie.

Recapping 2008

Every year I tell myself that I need to go somewhere I have never been before. I haven't traveled internationally since my trip to China (which was back in 2003), and going down to Rosarito and Ensenada in Mexico does not count for me.

Last year, I went to Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Delaware, Chicago, Orlando, and southern Utah. I visited three different National Parks: Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce. I also went snowboarding at Brian Head, again southern Utah. I consider that a fairly successful year of traveling.

Of all the places I visited last year, Chicago was hands down the best. Orlando, courtesy of Song and Masa, was a very cool place (and I did not go to Disneyworld). Philadelphia was nice too, but my poor choice of visiting museums on Mondays (museums there are closed) prevented me from exploring more of the cultural aspects of the City.

This entry was prompted by the fact that my best friend is about to finish Law School, and she wants me to go with her down to South America. I have been a little hesitant on making travel plans mostly because I have no income. I say, screw it. If I don't go through with the plan, I will always regret never going somewhere I have wanted to go for a long time. I don't have time for regret.

Holidays with the Family

My visits to Los Angeles have typically involved spending copious amounts of time with Patrick. However, I try to squeeze in a visit to my parents when I am in town, but I usually do not stay with them, even during the holidays.

This year I spent a prolonged period at home, meaning I have spent more than just one night here at my parents house. For the first time in my life, I finally realized that I really moved out of my parents house, that this place in Monterey Park is no longer home. My life truly was centered around West Los Angeles and Santa Monica. I still sort of feel that way.

This was the first time that Christmas that we did not open presents at midnight, with my sister and Ray, as well as having a Christmas tree. My parents home was flooded with a faulty sprinkler system on my birthday, where I also witnessed a loss to USC at the Rose Bowl. Such is life. I suppose this holiday season felt the most barren in years because of there really was no spirit. This is not to say that it was a bad Christmas, it just didn't feel like it. Maybe next year.

With all that said, Christmas dinner was still delicious, and I got to be with my family. I also got to see my friends this past weekend. So, all in all, it has been good.

Adventures in the Bay

It has almost been two months since I moved up to San Jose, and in all honesty I haven't done a lot. The first two weeks of my stay in the third largest city in California led me to a wine tasting adventure with my sister, Ray and their friends in Napa. The following weekend I headed out to Yosemite with the usual crew, and the usual excess amount of people on our campsite. I miss camping because I can eat as much as I want and still not feel bad about my food consumption because of all the activity I do. But as usual, I digress.

Things up here have been fairly mellow. I have been going to classes, and I kept up with the reading for the first four weeks. Now I have fallen a little behind. There is one class in particular that I do not care for, but I won't mention which one it is. It requires writing "Reflective Memos" after each assignment. I find these "short memos" (in which case, they are never truly short) to be somewhat helpful, but mostly it annoying and a waste of time. Reflective memos I feel work better as an in class assignment, but that's my opinion.

I met up with an old roommate of mine from UCLA. We lived together our first year when we transferred to UCLA, and then had an unmentioned falling out. Over the years I felt bad for how things went between us, and for a while I thought our rift and differences were enhanced by another roommate, whom shall remain anonymous. Anyway, I met up with her and some mutual friends in the City. That was fun because I don't know San Francisco very well and I got to see some old college friends. We actually met up again last weekend, playing Outburst and Transamerica. It ended up being a double date on accident at a Stanford graduate recreation room. That was a lot of fun too. And yes, Patrick came up to visit me last weekend. I had gone down to Los Angeles the previous weekend.

Patrick and I doing well considering the fact that we had never been separated for a long extended period of time. We see each other about twice a month, whenever possible. We also talk on the phone every night. I miss him a lot. I miss our conversations at night, and watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report together. I miss our evening walks. Despite our separation, we're managing. Luckily for us, we only live a few hours away by driving or an hour flight's time. It isn't the worst case scenario, but it certainly isn't a great one either way.

When I went back to Los Angeles, I saw Patrick, my family, and my friend Sonya. I went to to the UCLA vs. Fresno State game and met up with my friends Kim and Dan and proceeded with a tailgate. Fresno beat UCLA, but not by much. That is a vast improvement over the last few games UCLA played. I didn't get to see a lot of people when I went down to LA, but at least I saw some of my good friends. Always a plus.

Now I am back in San Jose, going to classes, wishing I was back on the quarter system. The semester goes by so slowly, and it is extremely painful to sit through a class when you dislike it. I'm already on week five of school, and I think to myself, my God if this were UCLA I'd be half way done with this hellish course. Of course, I am not so fortunate. Oh yes, and I brought my bike back with me. Riding around San Jose is like riding around Nebraska. Flat. Whatever strength I had climbing hills quickly diminished when I left my bike in Los Angeles. Now, I feel it is non-existant. Ah well. That's my life in a nutshell.

Please save me.

Separation

Journals are a funny thing for me, mostly because I have a hard time writing in them. I try to write as often as I can in my journal, blog, or what have you. As time has gone on the sites myspace and Facebook have both offered options to either publish posts or upload "notes." Personally I still like maintaining separate domains because, though there is no such thing as privacy thanks to the internet, I like to believe I still maintain a bit of privacy. Most people who read my journal are friends, maybe not everyone, friends I actually know and enjoy to see.

It's a little strange and unnerving to have my relatives on Facebook because well, Facebook was a college thing initially while I was in college. I know there is a good deal of students (former students at this rate) th at miss the old Facebook. All my younger cousins, my sister, my brother, and other various people from my life are now on Facebook. I suppose it's a great way to stay in touch, but to me, it was always more of a way to stay connected to my friends, which, by the way, has allowed me to stay in touch and reconnect.

I'm not really one for family bonding to be quite honest with you. This stems from a lot of various situations from my childhood, growing up, or whatever. This sort of epiphany sort of came when I saw all my relatives on Facebook getting happy and closer to one another while I still maintain a relatively distant relationship. Don't ask me why because I do not know why. I guess, as a friend has as her quote, "Friends are family you choose." The happiest I have ever been has been with my friends, and that in turn finally led me to become the person I am today. I'm not saying that I don't love or care about my family, all I am saying is that, I was never close to them outside of family functions and gatherings. I would be lying if I said otherwise.

Florida and Utah

Getting to my destination is never the problem, it's returning home that is.

Anyway, I had a fantastic time in Florida and camping in southern Utah. Apparently I missed the week long heat-wave in Los Angeles while I was out looking like a deranged woman while I was camping in the Colorado plateau.

Will post photos later on this evening when I return home.
And for those of you who read my blog, I was recently accepted into San Jose State's Master's in Urban Planning program. That's right, I will be returning to school, leaving behind my job. All I have to do now is put in my notice. I'll do that when my supervisor is actually at work.

Traditions

When Patrick and I first started dating back in 2004 we both were avid outdoors recreational kind of people. Our first date was a hiking trip to try to reach the Mount Lowe hotel ruins. We overshot the destination point by four miles. So our hiking date ended up being 11 miles, instead of 5. Whoops. Anyway, farther down the line we ended up camping together for the first time in June of 2004. We went to Yosemite the day after getting mugged at Berkeley.

Since then Patrick and I had been back to Yosemite every year for Labor Day weekend. For me, this year will be the fifth time going back (I actually went with a few friends in August of 2003 after my skydiving adventure). It has been a sort of traditional between me, Patrick and our friends. Every year we have a few people that come back, but every year we also have new friends that join us. There hasn't been a time, despite my cranky behavior, that I didn't enjoy being at Yosemite for a few days, void of any sort of real communication. For me, I love the fact that cell phone reception is essentially non-existent.

In 2004 it was just me and Patrick. The following year it was Tho, Patrick, The (Tho's sister), Daniel, Matt, and me. The year after that, in 2006 we had enlarged the camp site to two and had Tho, Patrick, Matt, Kimmy, Delia, Kelly, Patrick and me. Last year, we had Tho, Bruce, Chris, Brian, Patrick, Delia, Kelly, Kathy, Will, Patrick and me go to Yosemite. For the past four years we had camped at Crane Flats. Unfortunately, because of my laziness and such, I forgot to make reservations at our usual place. So for 2008 Patrick ended up reserving three campsite at Hodgdon Meadows, which is why I had a random post with a Google Earth image. It's much closer to the western entrance of the park, and much much closer to Hetch Hetchy Dam and Tuolumne Meadows.
Despite the hectic planning, travel arrangements and providing directions each year I feel that there is nothing better than sitting around the campfire, eating, drinking, and being obnoxious. Letting go of the real world and submerging myself into a group of friends that enjoy these moments every bit as much as I do is the best feeling in the world. The only irritating thing is by the time we are done with our trip, the group always ends up with an excess amount of beer, and none of us want to take it home.

Celebration

Last night was the first time in a very long while that I had gotten drunk. After having dinner at Javan's, Tammy drove me over to O'Briens in Santa Monica. I had never been to that particular bar before, so it was going to be interesting. Initially we had planned on going to Brennan's for the turtle racing, but due to inclement weather, we opted to do O'Briens. Of course with my fortune, it began raining after we finished up at the Irish pub around 11:30.

Like I said earlier, I was never one to really celebrate my birthday. On occasion I have been known to go out and have dinner with some friends, and usually call it a night. Celebrating my birthday last night was one of the best gatherings I've had. My friends Delia and Kelly arrived at the pub, courtesy of Patrick and Bejan, and then Carlene and her friend Constance showed up a bit later. We started off the night with Irish Car Bombs (which I like, but it seems that most do not seem to prefer it), and just kind of ordered drinks afterwards. Aside from the car bomb, I had a Newcastle beer (I finished it) and a shot of some sort with my friend Bejan. If you know me at all, consuming all that alcohol essentially pushes me to my limits of coherency. Then again Tammy said I lost control of my inter-monologue skills. Ah well. I just recall that for most of the time at the pub I kept putting my head down on the table. There were a few moments yesterday night where I thought to myself, hmm maybe I shouldn't be saying these things.

Somehow I managed to make myself go to work today. Starting from last night, I am going to be celebrating my birthday throughout the rest of the week, even up to Sunday. Saturday night I will be going out on my beer tour, meeting up with Tammy and some of her friends and my friend Aaron, weather permitting of course. Tour starts at Father's Office (5:00 pm). Patrick will be joining me later that night towards the end of our beer tour. He has to study for his finals. We are supposed to end up at the Daily Pint, which is our favorite bar spot in the west side. Did I mention that the beer tour will be done via bike? However, if it begins to rain before the suggested meeting time, our contingency plan is just to meet up at the Daily Pint and stay there for as long as we want. Tonight I'm going home to have dinner with my parents for my birthday, and then picking up my Kitchen Aid mixer!

Eventually I will post some photos up from last night. I did manage to get a fairly good group photo of everyone. Well everyone minus Carlene and Constance.

I am looking forward towards this upcoming year. It seems to have started on a positive note for me this time. Thanks to everyone who made the effort to wish me a happy birthday and to all my friends that showed up to the bar.

Red Lion Tavern and Daily Pint are still my favorite places to go.

I'll have an entry dedicated to beer and pubs later on. One day I will get into wine, but this is not in the foreseeable future.