29 May 2006 0516 EDT
Fall in love again
Marry
Have children
Coach a football team
Run for public office
Find God
Create a scholarship program
Save someone's life
Be rich
Help other people get rich
Write a book
Walk into a restaurant and be able to ask for the usual
Looking over that list, I think I've accomplished one and two-halves, which is almost two for you math whizzes out there, but not quite. I'll leave it up to you to decide which ones though.
I should be sleeping right now, but I've been having problems with that recently. It's nothing to worry about though. Tonight was pretty cool. I provided my projector services for a family wedding and ate lots of food in return. They also had a karaoke jockey at the wedding reception, but barely anyone was going up to sing. It was funny how my family was poking at me to go up and how I pretended to not want to go. Come on, people...it's karaoke! Yes, I was in a room filled with 300+ of my sister-in-law's family, most of whom I didn't know. But it's karaoke! And while most of the tracks were in Chinese, I had a feeling they had some Elvis hidden in the back. I was right. And don't worry, kiddies, I rocked. I got quite a few compliments for my rendition of Can't Help Falling in Love, and I'm all but convinced that I will have karaoke at my own wedding reception...whenever that will be. Now, I'm just waiting for my dad to post pictures of the event so that I can show you how hot I looked.
Last thing...the file that I was looking for earlier when I found my list was a word document I used to keep with random search strings people use to find my page. I wanted to add this one to my list: asian girl at carpools herndon. For those readers in the know, I hope this is as hilarious to you as it is to me.
That's enough for tonight though. I'm getting up in less than three hours to help my sister move, so I should probably go to sleep soon. MTF
27 May 2006 1832 EDT
Cleaning up my house definitely gets kicked up a notch on my list of priorities now. It helps that I watched an episode of Clean Sweep on TLC today. I already have a box of junk that I'm getting rid of, and I plan on getting more done tomorrow. I can't wait.
Before that, though, I'm gonna be hanging out with Ben and Thuy tonight. I think we're going to grab dinnert at Taco Bell before heading over to another friend's to watch UFC 60. It promises to be an exciting night.
26 May 2006 2337 EDT
Anyway, this weekend will be kinda busy. I'll be helping Yenny move and visiting with family. Then on Sunday, there's a wedding I'll hang out at. Other than that, I'll be sleeping and working out a lot. Oh, and it doesn't look like the gf will be visiting next week. That's probably for the better. I have a bunch of stuff to wrap up for annual training and the school year. Oh well...tired.
26 May 2006 0041 EDT
About an hour ago, I was overtaken by a sudden urge to run, probably residual from my two-mile jaunt with Ben yesterday...or my short AIM conversation with Ermias this afternoon. Anyway, it was an amazingly cool evening...dark though. It didn't seem like there were any street lights along my path. But I ended up covering the three miles in about 23:09, not bad considering I've run three times in the last three months...or something like that. I really haven't exercised much cardio-wise since basketball season ended. Going into annual training, though, it wouldn't hurt if I started running some more. It's tough to balance that with my lifting, though. Either way, the next time I find myself staring at my phone, I'll have an extra option. Until next time...
25 May 2006 2158 EDT
I didn't mention my dream that I had this morning yet. It was a strange one. I was shot by one of my students. It wasn't at school though. The bad thing is that it was one of my really good students who shot me. What's up with that? Can someone interpret that one for me?
24 May 2006 2205 EDT
Ever since I had my alternator replaced, I haven't really listened to my iPod much in my car. I've really just been listening to WTOP and other random radio shows. But on my way home today, I decided to kick on the iPod again. It felt good to listen to my favorite songs again. It was like my car knew what songs I needed to hear and played them for me. It was perfect. And then when I got home, I checked my mail to find that my Wallflowers CD showed up. I haven't listened to this album since I accidentally left my CD case on top of my car about four years ago and drove off. Since then, I've slowly purchased my lost albums again, one by one.
Oh, btw...it's Allison Bott's birthday today. So happy birthday. I kinda feel bad saying that because I missed wishing Arun a happy birthday. Oh well...
23 May 2006 2156 EDT
Oh well...got a lot of stuff done this afternoon. I got a nice little nap in before working out and watching 1.5 movies and writing 0.5 quizzes for class. After that, I cut my hair and cleaned up a little. I probably could have gotten a lot more done, but I was just staring at the phone waiting for it to ring. Yes, I know I'm pathetic.
22 May 2006 2246 EDT
So when I came home at the end of the day, I pretty much went straight to bed. After napping for a few hours, I went over to Target to spend a bit of money. I have been out of my GoLean and GoLean Crunch cereal for the last week, so I figured I would start generating a surplus. I bought a dozen boxes today, bringing my house cereal total to just under thirty boxes. I replenished my Balance bar supply, as well, and picked up a few small things that were on clearance. After that, I did some writing and sorting and laundry. I feel like it was a pretty productive day...and hopefully, I'll get to bed early tonight.
21 May 2006 2252 EDT
Anyway, from there, we got back to the armory in Manassas where I spent a few hours cleaning a dirty M16 that I didn't use this weekend. Then I rode down to Richmond with my commander at 0600h to attend a seminar along with all of the other commanders in the State. We stayed a little longer for the battalion training meeting and then came back up late in the afternoon. It was honestly more exciting than I made it out to be, but I'm tired right now.
And I had some awesome stories to tell on Thursday night, but I accidentally left my thumb drive at school in the computer in the teacher's lounge. I will try to catch you up later this week.
17 May 2006 1950 EDT
16 May 2006 2102 EDT
I skipped 7th period today. This was the first class I've skipped all year...of course I had a real excuse, unlike a majority of my students. I took an hour and a half of leave today so that I could make it across the county over to Marine Corps Base Quantico for a range safety brief. I need to be in charge of stuff this weekend, so that was kinda necessary. What's funny is that I had another class talk to me the other day about taking time off. It's like they don't like me or something. What's up with that?
Anyway, let's talk about my basement. The corner is wet...not soaking or flooding, but damp. At first, I thought I just spilled something...no biggie. But then I touched the ceiling and then the wall, only to notice that part of my drywall is a little soggy. It's not much...just a few square inches, but enough to be concerned. I call the dad and he said to blow dry it, run a fan, and see if the problem persists. I get started, but I start getting impatient. Enter genius. You see, my ironing board is also in the basement. Smart me decided that I can't wait for the air to cool my carpet, so I decide to iron it. Unfortunately, there isn't a rug setting for the iron. What's up with that? I try polyester and acrylic settings at first as some of the stuff in my carpet seems like it could be considered synthetic. But I start to turn up the heat as I get more and more impatient. Eventually, I have it up at cotton. I start hearing a sizzling sound at this point. I think to myself how well this is working. The sizzling must be the steam, right? Hehe...okay, I'm not going to finish my story. It's barely noticeable.
14 May 2006 2030 EDT
Today was mom's day and the whole fam got together at the parents' to eat some food and play math games...hehe. Jane and Yenny were playing this game on their Nintendo DS where they give you 30 arithmetic questions for you to answer as quickly as possible. Yeah, no gimmick. You just do math as quickly as possible. That may not sound so exciting, but Lenny and I got sooo into it. We peaked at around 21 seconds when Jane had to leave and take her game with her. The goal was 20 seconds, and our hearts were pounding so hard as we tried to break that barrier. Yes, I know...it's a very good thing that I don't play video games any more. Stuff like this makes it abundantly clear.
14 May 2006 0012 EDT
When I came home, I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal and polished off a bag of cheese curls (900 Cals) before heading to bed to nap for about four or five hours. Then I got pretty and hung out with Ben for a while at his parents, where he and his dad fed me meat for about an hour. There was a pretty big spread there and I was stuffed by the time we left to do the mallrat thing over at Tyson's. Ben showed me a backdoor route to the mall and we just loitered for a bit. The plan was not to spend any money, but I did make a small purchase at the end to replace my recently broken money clip.
After that, I came home and talked on the phone for a little bit before sitting down here to blog and watch SNL. They just had a pretty funny sketch about mySpace. Good stuff and happy Mom's day, Mom.
12 May 2006 1904 EDT
Oh, I got a bunch of stuff done while I was up so early this morning too. I cleaned up some things and took out the trash. Then I packed up my water cooler to get sent back in to be serviced. After school, I stopped by the UPS store to drop off the package before doing some grocery shopping at Giant again. I saw so many things on sale this morning, but I couldn't really do the shopping that I wanted to because of the big box in my back seat. Then I came home and sorted out mail before cleaning up a couple of rooms and vacuumed and swept and dusted. I've still got more to do though, so it's back to work.
10 May 2006 1820 EDT
Anyhoo...tonight will be spent hanging out with the sibs at Yenny's. They're getting together to watch Lost and eat Chipotle. Since I refuse to watch Lost, I'll sit facing the other direction and I'll just talk during the show. People like it when you do that, right? Hehe...I need to hurry up and finish up a workout and get my haircut before I head out. MTF
08 May 2006 2250 EDT
Aside from that, I buckled down and finished my grad school project this evening. Tomorrow is the last day of class for the semester, so that'll be nice. Don't get me wrong, I love going to class and learning. But I've just felt a little overwhelmed these last few months. It's been tough balancing class with school and increasing national guard demands. I'm trying really hard not to spend money too. I know it doesn't seem like it, but I am. In addition to looking for a new roommate, I'm starting to look for a new part-time job, too, for the next year. I'd like to make somewhere in the high teens without working more than 20 hours a week...looking for something very flexible...very flexible. Give me a shout if you can help me out.
07 May 2006 0117 EDT
06 May 2006 1528 EDT
WHAT?! Yes, you heard me correctly. The whole last week, I've been almost embarrassed every time I've arrived at home because I see the dandelions and weeds getting to about knee level in my front yard. I mean, half of the neighborhood is like that, but that's no excuse. So today, I pulled out the slightly rusted manual mower that's been sitting in my backyard, and I spent about 45 minutes going over all of the clovers and dandelions and occasional patches of grass in my 1/5th acre yard. It was surprisingly entertaining.
05 May 2006 1719 EDT
So here's the big question. There were only maybe twenty or thirty copies made. Is there any chance that someone else has a copy of this? Has anyone converted that old highlight film to a digital format? I looked on eBay, but no luck. I am willing to pay serious money if someone can get me another copy of that tape...even more if you can somehow turnover that holding penalty on that run I had against Edison.
04 May 2006 2120 EDT
03 May 2006 1942 EDT
Anyway, that was that. School itself was pretty cool too. I wrote and gave a quiz to my seventh period. I went on the discovery channel site real quick before class and made up a word search for the kids who would finish up early. They love that stuff. I should do it more for review stuff...crossword puzzles would be more educational though. Oh, and then with my second period class today...this is funny, borderline inappropriate but funny. We were reviewing for our quiz on optics and we were talking about the human eye. There's this one kid in the class who really shouldn't be taking the course. He's bright, but lazy, and he's really just taking this course because he doesn't want to put the effort into a full-blown physics I class. Anyway, he was bugging me about going to the bathroom since the start of class, but I wanted to get through with the review before too many people started asking to go to the can. So he's still bugging me about it, and I say that he can go after we play a game. And then the kids start asking about what game we are going to play. And I told them that I was going to play with their rods. That's when my one student chimes in and says that that's why he's been asking me to go to the bathroom for the last half hour, but I wouldn't let him. You should've been there. It was pretty funny. But yeah, we played the game which basically involved me dimming the lights to play with their rods. It's kinda fun. You can play it at home if you want. Basically, you see color with the cones in your eyes and black and white with your rods. Well, when it's dark, there isn't enough light to activate your cones, so you depend mostly on your rods for vision. The thing is that you can't see color with your rods. So I hold up a marker and ask them what color it is. When I hold up a brown marker, they yell out anything from red to blue to green to black. When you're looking at just the greytone, it's really hard to distinguish color. You're practically color-blind because there isn't enough light for you to use your cones. Anyway, I know it's really immature, but I had fun watching the kids giggle as I kept on repeating how I was going to play with their rods in class today.
30 April 2006 2008 EDT
Some positives that came out of this weekend, though, include me smashing the heck out of my Praxis II for physics and spending about 30 hours of solid quality time with the parents. I even made an effort to practice my Chinese when we were over at my aunt and uncle's place too. Oh yeah...I spent all day yesterday and this morning driving around in NYC. It was funny the way my dad was telling me to look out for cars and to slow down and stuff. I was having flashbacks of when I was fifteen and he was giving me my first driving lessons. Oh, and I ate a lot of food too. When we dropped grandma off at the Chu's in Jersey, my aunt was cooking up a storm while we watched the end of the first round of the NFL draft on tv. This meal came just about two hours off the heels of my first lunch at my parents'. Then when we got to Chinatown, my parents went around to pick up a few things why I stayed by the car having "parked" in front of a fire hydrant. My eagle eyes found a real spot in quick time, though, and my conscience was spared. Anyway, after they finished their shopping, we stopped by across the street for dinner. Of course, when we finally got to Queens, my other aunt had a bunch of food prepared for us. My parents were already full, as was I, but I politely accepted some more food as she seemed so excited to feed us. It's an asian thing, I think...or maybe it's just my family.
Anyway, that wasn't a bad way to bring April to a close. I'm a little excited to see my gas and electric bills for this month because I had the heat and a/c off the whole time. I know that's sad, but you have to take some pleasure in those little things, you know? That's all I've got for now. And for you loyal readers who I may have disappointed recently, I'll try to update more in May. Peace.
29 April 2006 0015 EDT
Either way, I had a lot of fun studying the last few days. I fell asleep yesterday reading my cartoon guide to physics and spent today combing through about fifteen chapters of Conceptual Physics by Hewitt. It was about 90% review, but I feel like I did get a little better understanding of some concepts I struggled through during undergrad, so that was cool. I actually had a lot of fun, and I'm tempted to go back to see if it may be worth it to go ahead and take my GREs some time this summer and apply to a program. Maybe I can just sneak in at Mason since I'm already taking grad stuff there.
If I do start studying physics again, though, I'll probably need to carve out a little more time in my schedule. It doesn't help that I spent over 4000 minutes on the phone this last month...up from about 200 minutes back in January and February. Hmmm...I wonder what that's all about. There must be a glitch in Cingular's network or something...hehe. I don't know. I have to be up in 4.5 hours (a.k.a. three sleep cycles) to get ready for my test, so I'm out. Wish me luck.
26 April 2006 2001 EDT
Anyway, I was going to do a lot more school-related work today too, but I ended up catching up with a lot of people online and got a little distracted from my original goal of making tonight a worknight. I'm going to get to it now though...right after I make me some dinner. I think it'll be leftovers from yesterday with tofu thrown in. Tofu always makes things better.
23 April 2006 1942 EDT
After that, I cleaned up and went over to the parents to spend some quantity time with the fam. It was good, filled with gossip, talk about moving, congratulations for people getting married in Vegas, and food. Yeah, it was nice. The older siblings didn't show up, but I guess they were off working and doing other important stuff.
From there, I left to go back to this condo community in Fairfax. There are signs all over Route 50 and I-66 talking about how there are luxury condos starting at 260K. So I was thinking that I could sell my place for about 400K and then buy this place and not have a mortgage or something. That was what I was thinking, but the condos really weren't that cheap. For a two bedroom that's about half the size of my TH, they were already in the upper 300s. So that was a no go. I left there and loitered a little around various local establishments picking up little things here and there. The most important, though, was a gallon of milk to eat my cereal...which is what I did when I got home. Anyway, it's still early tonight, but I really don't see myself getting much work done. I'll maybe lift for a half hour or so, eat some more food, and then head off to bed early. Upcoming events this week include teachers vs. students quiz bowl after school tomorrow, lecture about the end of the age of oil at the Carnegie Institution on Thursday, and my Praxis exam on Saturday followed by a trip up to NYC with the fam. Yes, very busy.
22 April 2006 2336 EDT
Anyway, highlights of the day include seeing all of the awesome officers from my battalion. It just makes me happy to see everyone. I saw Drew too...I hadn't seen him in a while since he's not with the BN anymore. I also saw one of my first commanders. He's an awesome guy who everyone looks up to when it comes to commanders. He's one of those commanders who just has the command presence. He's the kind of guy who puts a lot of responsibility on you but also makes you feel that you could do it all too. The way he talked to you was just so soothing and inspiring at the same time that you couldn't help but want to do great things for the man. But yeah...really great seeing him again. He even joked with me about my blog and a certain video of me and my first sergeant. Also, in addition of the new adjutant general speaking to us, the mayor of Virginia Beach gave a pretty inspiring speech, only to be followed by Senator Allen. He's tall. Oh yeah...his speech was pretty good too. He may well be my new favorite senator.
Other than that, there was about six hours of meetings during the conference and a little more free food. The drive back was a bit tiring. Finishing over 400 miles in about a 16-hour span was quite a feat considering how tired I thought I felt after our last meeting. A lot of sugar and snacking helped though. The rain was coming down pretty hard too...which put a bit of a damper on my plans with Ben to head in to the city. That's cool though. I just ended up blogging and talking on the phone all night. Quite an exciting life I lead these days, isn't it?
21 April 2006 1544 EDT
Oh, and I've been forgeting to post about this. I gave my kids another songwriting assignment over spring break and they came back with some real masterpieces. I kinda embarassed myself, too, with my song about Kepler's laws written to the tune of My Humps by the Black-eyed Peas. I'll post some of this stuff on Sunday when I finally get some time to myself. I'll be busy most of Saturday as I have to wake up around 0300h in order to make it down to Va Beach for the officer conference. With some luck, it'll wrap up pretty early and I'll get back in time to head into Georgetown with Ben & Co. We'll see how that goes.
Other than that, things are going well. I've got less than two months left in school, followed by my two week annual training. After that, I'll start my year as a student. Exciting, no?
19 April 2006 2222 EDT
So after school today, I jumped in my car and followed him down to the Falls Church post of the VFW where he gave me a tour before linking up with about a half dozen other volunteers to carpool/convoy down to Walter Reed. By the time we showed up, the four-hour event already kicked off and we just jumped in to help out. Our main responsibility, though, was to just talk to these soldiers. Yeah, I know...that involved me going up to a complete stranger and introducing myself and starting a conversation. As hard as that was for me, it got easier throughout the night once I realized that this whole thing wasn't about me at all. I mean, everything in the end is ultimately about me, but I wasn't really the focus of this event is what I'm saying. Anyway, it was cool. For the most part, I just stood around and listened to guys tell their stories. Most of them were funny stories...stuff that I can imagine my guys talk to their friends about all the time. But yeah, that was pretty much how I spent my afternoon/evening. Good times...
Other than that, today was pretty typical except for my free lunch. You see, I eat school lunch. I just started that this year, and I love it. Anyway, I carry around this pink card in my pocket and the cafeteria lady signs off on it every day. After I eat ten meals at school, I get one free. Today was the free meal. I had a double pancake/sausage on a stick meal with fries, fruit, milk, etc. Jealous?
18 April 2006 2133 EDT
Anyway, I was talking to dad at dinner today. At first, I was a little worried because he seemed disapproving of stuff...mainly my spending and my inclination to meet girls through the internet. But as dinner went on, we got to talking more and I think we're okay. He wants money for the car though...which is understandable. He's seeing me waste a little bit here and there and I can see how it may seem like I'm not trying to save up. I am though...I promise. And yes, I know it looks as if an entry is missing. I'll explain it one day, but not today. Also, I want to post a correction about an entry I wrote a few weeks ago. Ben's parents were in Taiwan, not China...and that's all I have to say about that.