Sunday, September 28, 2003

Strange random fact:
Jude Law kept the shirts that he was killed in from the movies Gattaca, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Talented Mr. Ripley.
It's Sunday morning...and I'm tired. As I bet almost everyone else is right now, too. Yesterday, Corie, Bria, and I had some kind of adventure! It started out pretty good. We were gonna go to San Francisco to go get clam chowder in a breadbowl. Sounds like a relatively easy, quick trip, right? WRONG!
We got up at 9:00 to take the Amtrak down to Richmond, which cost $20 per person round trip. Then we had to take the Bart (a bay-area bus) from Richmond to Embarcadero, which is where Pier 39 is, and where all the cool shops and stuff are. So we got on the train easily enough--the trip was about an hour and a half. Then we got on the Bart bus--and we took the wrong one! Luckily, some scary girls sitting next to us asked us where we were going and told us we were on the wrong train. So we got off and switched trains. When we finally got off at Embarcadero, we were at Pier one--and we had to walk all the way to Pier 39! Needless to say, by the time we actually got our clam chowder at 2pm, it tasted really good. We walked around the pier area for about 2 hours, and then we decided to catch the 5:47 Amtrak back.
We managed to take a trolley (only $1.25! Yes!) with lots of weird homeless people back to the Bart, and once again, we got on the wrong train (bad idea to just guess on these types of things, apparently). And when we switched stations, the whole Bart computer system had gone down, so we had to sit around for about an hour before the Bart started running again. So we missed our train. We got to Amtrak in time for the 7 o'clock train, but it was delayed to 8 o'clock! So we didn't get back to Davis until 9:30 pm.
And this was all to spend just 2 hours in San Francisco!
But we met this cool Indian guy at the Amtrak station who was also going back to UC Davis, and he told us all the "insider info" on Davis. But the coolest part was that he was originally from India, and he had just come to America 4 years ago! So I got to ask him all about India. It was exciting.
Actually, it was pretty fun. We just had to do a LOT of waiting! We want to go back to San Francisco again, just not next weekend or anything. Right now I am so tired, I'm just going to be antisocial all day.

Friday, September 26, 2003

Ha HA! I finally had classes today! Well, two of three, at least. German in the morning, Linguistics discussion (which never happened), and then Linguistics lecture. I like German, I think--the teacher's name kind of scared me at first: Ingeborg Henderson. But she's cool right now-she has a German accent and makes a joke every now and then. And the class is only about 25 people. I'm a little worried, though, because the professor's very rigid and fast-paced...I can already tell. Linguistics has about 70 people, which is large compared to most of my classes. And it's scary, because it has freshman, and seniors, and all the grades in-between. I had to sit next to this big scary upper-classman dude (are they still called that?). And the professor seems nice, but he talks in a MONOTONE! Not good...the last 10 minutes I had this overwhelming urge to take a nap when I got home.
Poor Kaylan is reading Joyce's Portrait of the Artist--she has to read 150 pages in 5 days, and her boyfriend is coming up for the weekend. So she's trying to finish the whole thing in 2 days! And I finally got a UCD sweatshirt--yay for school pride! I didn't buy one yet, because I hate those traditional styles of writing it. But Davis has a cool retro-looking design that I bought.
Watched the Season Premier of Friends and Will and Grace. Friends was funny. Will and Grace wasn't really. We didn't watch Coupling...it looks too stupid. But it was fun having 6 people sitting on the floor around our TV, which is literally about 6"!
I'm supposed to go to this "Drummers of West Africa" show tonight...but we don't have the tickets we paid for yet! If I don't go to that, there's always Matrix Reloaded!

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Man, I have way too much time on my hands. I get up at 9:30, read my Interview magazine for a couple of pages until it bores me to death, and then I just sit around and take a shower or something. I don't even have classes on the first day of school! My roomie, Kaylan, has basically her busiest day on Thursday (b/c she's taking animal biology and chemistry, which meet like 5 times a week), and I have NOTHING! So I will need to make some new friends! No, I've met some really nice people. The girl right next door, Colleen, is majoring in International Relations, so we have some interests in common. And this guy Josh has been hanging out with us a lot. And I played Hearts in the lobby right outside our room for like half an hour with some random people. But it was fun! And I'm FINALLY starting to remember names...sort of. Has anyone else had this name problem?
Yay! We were supposed to go bowling tonight (one of those social activities for the Segundo dorms), and it was so crowded, that a group of us went over to the "Downtown Davis" scene instead. It was fun! And in this one shopping area, there's a Gap, Border's Books (complete w/ overpriced CD's), Jamba Juice, Pluto and Fuzio restaurant, AND a Ben & Jerry's. Who says Davis is boring?!?

Monday, September 22, 2003

I was walking behind this guy on the stairs up to my room, and his shirt said "Bush and Gore make me wanna Ralph," and under that it said "Vote Nader." I thought it was funny.
Well, I am at Davis. And it is really pretty cool so far! I think I've talked to a lot of people from back home since I've been here, so most of you know the gist. But basically, the dorm is brand-new, and I mean Brand-New. It was just finished on September 15th, I think. And it's really nice!! I have a scanner now, so hopefully I can put up some pics of it soon. It's pretty big, and there's carpeting, and air conditioning (which doesn't work yet, unfortunately), and all of the furniture is made to look like maple wood. It's really cozy! I haven't met a ton of people yet--I did meet the girls in the dorm next to us and a couple random people that I just happened to talk to, but so far, everyone seems really nice. My roommate, Kaylan, is especially nice too. She's really talkative and friendly, and her family and her boyfriend are really cool too. I hope everyone else is having a great time at their colleges, too! Judging from who I've talked to, it sounds like everyone is having a great time, and meeting lots of cool people. We are growing up!

Saturday, September 20, 2003

HAPPY 19TH BIRTHDAY, CAMMY! I hope it's great!
Caution! Long pointless story coming up!
It is now 11:38 PM (yeah, the blog clock is wrong) on the last night I'll be sleeping in my bed for a little while. I pretty much have packed everything--3 boxes of stuff, and 3 bags of clothes. Does that sound like a lot? Because it seems like a lot to me. The main thing I brought was CD's! They are like my inanimate babies. I think I packed about 70 of them!
So today was a very interesting and fun last day. I got up at 4 AM to go to a free exhibit at LACMA (LA County Museum of Art) that went from 9pm to 7am friday morning. So we got to the exhibit at 5:30 (it was French Painters and this creepy Italian painter Modigliani), and it was actually pretty crowded. Rather interesting crowd; there were the usual arty types, the "normal" types, and then the downtown LA homeless people types. I'm not sure what category my family fits into. Hopefully not the last one. So we looked at the paintings, which I honestly barely remember because I was so tired, and then we went to the Farmer's Market for breakfast at 7:30. Then we went to visit my grandma, and then we went to visit my OThEr grandma and my aunt. We had lunch at this cafe called Buster's in South Pasadena.
We walked in, and there was this group of goth/bohemian/poet people in their twenties, dressed in all black with dreadlocks, and some of the guys in the group were, well, "beautiful," to use my mom's words. So I'm rushing by the group of beautiful males, on my way up the stairs to the second level of the restaurant to get my dad's order, when I completely trip on the stairs, barely keep from landing on my face, and all of this loose change falls out of my pocket and clatters down the stairs. Needless to say, I avoided going back downstairs again for the rest of the visit.
Then, finally, for the last part of my last day, my family went to see Lost in Translation at the Rialto. The movie was pretty good, but it was REALLY slow. And a little tedious towards the middle. Funnier than I expected, though. And I just love Scarlett Johanson for having an actual stomach and looking like a normal person, as opposed to a starved actress.
Man, besides missing my family and my adorable pets, I'm really going to miss LA when go to Davis!

Thursday, September 18, 2003

This has to be one of the best ideas in recent history:

It's Ben Folds, Ben Kweller, and Ben Lee, forming a temporary band to sing 4 songs together! Too bad it's 26 bucks on Amazon.com.

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Hooray! Johnny Depp is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly! Go look at it!

Sunday, September 14, 2003

YES!! I FINALLY have my blog looking the way I want it!!! Time for a party.
I read this in the California section of the LA Times this morning:

“California’s environmental protection laws, among the toughest in the nation, are being challenged frequently as the Bush administration acts to blunt regulations viewed as inconsistent with national policy.
The administration has weighed in on matters ranging from offshore oil drilling to air pollution to toxic waste cleanups, outraging state officials and environmentalists, who warn that the actions threaten to undermine the role California has played as a laboratory for innovative environmental solutions intended to improve the quality of people’s lives.
Since President Bush took office, the administration has joined with the auto industry in a successful lawsuit to weaken California’s mandate to build nonpolluting electric cars. The administration has consistently challenged California’s right to have a say in regulating drilling in federal waters three or more miles off the coast.”

And this is only the effects in California! In the words of Winston Hickox, California’s environmental protection secretary, “This is crazy what’s going on. The assault is unending and astonishing in its size and scope. I find it astonishing that this is going on, and the pace with which the Bush administration is showing its anti-environment colors.”

I honestly can’t understand why anyone would be so against preserving the environment. It’s something that affects all of us so much. Definitely not voting for Bush at the next election.
WHite StRiPes stuff ahead (don't go any further if you don't care)!


can you see this one?

Jack and Renee National Enquirer style! And Jack has a moustache! Ha ha. I think it's funny.

Saturday, September 13, 2003

I was reading the LA Times this morning, and I have to share the Times' review of MTV's Wuthering Heights; I couldn't stop cracking up while I read it:

"What would you have if Heathcliff were a guitar-plucking, motorcycle-riding Kurt Cobain wannabe named Heath, and Cathy wre a snub-nosed, Valley girl-twanged, hyperventilating gal called Cate? What if the moor were Malibu?
What you would have might aptly be called “Withering Depths.” Instead, MTV has the gall to call it a remake of “Wuthering Heights” (Sunday at 8 p.m.).
Mike Vogel (“Grind”) infuses the role of Heathcliff with all the intensity of a bowl of vanilla ice cream and comes off about as tough as a puffy cloud. Plus, he cries like a girl. As Cate, Erika Christensen (“Traffic”) portrays emotion by hyperventilating. A lot. Someone get this girl a paper bag! MTV vapidly reduces a lyric poem of a novel into a cheesy limerick. Would Cathy hit Heathcliff upside the head with a shovel? Would Heathcliff get highlights? Now, really.
“Sometimes love isn’t enough to hold you—sometimes it’s so strong it drives you away,” Cate blankly intones to the riff of an electric guitar. Indeed, sometimes love of one’s hold on sanity strongly drives one to flip the channel."

So, it looks like if anyone wants some laughs this Sunday night, and doesn't want to watch the Conan 10th Anniversary special, just turn on MTV!
Ok, there are two people that need to be remembered today:
1. Johnny Cash. Need I say more?
2. John Ritter. I couldn't believe it--I just watched him on Conan something like 3 weeks ago. Really funny, nice guy.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

I went to Fry's (in Burbank, I think) last weekend with my dad to buy my laptop for school. We got there, expecting a regular circuit city-type store...but the first thing my dad and I notice at the Fry's building is this big, UFO-shaped sculpture that looks as though it has crashed into the wall above the entrance to the store. So we both think, "Ok...interesting idea for an electronics shop...." And then we go in--and it's even scarier! We see army jeeps with mannequin soldiers inside, and there's a huge robot in one corner, and then Darth Vader is in another part of the store. the whole store has a kind of military/old movie decorating theme. So I'm feeling pretty weird. And then my dad and I got to the worst part: In the laptops department, there's this humongous octopus with big black eyes and fangs, breaking through the wall, with its tentacles breaking through the floor. I was so scared and creeped-out! I didn't even want to go to the laptop part--It was like some kind of evil cheap carnival ride. In the end, I actually found a good computer, and we had a very knowledgeable salesman. I just hope I never have to go back there again!

Friday, September 05, 2003

Soo...I have no important news. Or anything interesting to say. As usual. So here are some random facts that I will list off randomly:

1.) 10th anniversary of Conan is a week from this Sunday--watch it, people! I'm so excited about it!
2.) I get my braces off (for the 2nd time, and hopefully the last) on the ninth of September, yippee! I already bought Crest Whitestrips for the big day (I'm so vain).
3.)Hannah! And all other lovers of good old-fashioned singers! I was looking through my uncle's old record collection (which he gave to us, since he's moving), and there's a Nat King Cole "Treasury" in it--a collection of six Nat King Cole records! Very exciting. It's one of the best parts of the collection, although I must admit that I thought the Sammy Davis Jr. record was even better.
4.) I took Kim for a walk in Monrovia Canyon today. At 2:30 in the afternoon. It was really hot.

Thursday, September 04, 2003

So, in this miniscule time between summer break being basically over (all of my family’s back at work) and going to school, I’m basically living the good life. Rent 3 movies at a time from Blockbuster, watch them all in 2 days…watch Lizzie McGuire and Conan O’Brien reruns…take Kim for a walk if I need exercise. And I got to go shopping at Urban Outfitters with Vivian today, so I still get to see some of my friends!
Except for not Billy, because, oh yeah, he’s in SPAIN right now!! Pretty cool. I wonder if he can manage to be a vegetarian there without starving too much. Isn’t Spain really big on seafood?

Monday, September 01, 2003

One quick rant:
The MTV VMA's were horrible! I looked forward to them all day, and what do I get? Boring, thrown-together, x-rated junk! 3 hours long, too! Vivian and I agreed, the only highlight was Coldplay playing (aaah...) and the award that Coldplay won. Yeah yeah, they beat the White Stripes, but for once I'm ok with it. Coldplay was loads better than any of the other musicians that won stuff. Aah well. I'm not very "in" with the MTV crowd much these days anyway.
Ok, I'm back for good. Meaning, I guess, that I'm back in Monrovia until I go to Davis in 3 weeks (!!). Lots of time to see my (remaining) pals before we all go off to who knows where!