penn

Congratulations

and Happy Birthday to Undisclosed Location! Here's to many more blogging years.

See why I have such a hard time cleaning my room?

(courtesty of my buddy Kibochan the princess ;-)

American Splendor

is an awesome movie. I just happened to wander downstairs when my brother and his friends were watching it, and boy am I glad.

IMDB sums it up best with this quote:

"An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the life of comic book hero everyman Harvey Pekar."

Without ruining the plot, I'll try and sum up the reasons why I liked this film:

(1) There were humerous bits in it without slapstick toilet jokes. This is always a plus.
(2) The movie was a great alternative look at a somewhat failed American Dream, but it wasn't as melodramatic as American Beauty.
(3) The filming was excellent. A combination of documentary and film styles was used, which helped break the movie up into manageable portions. The documentary style wasn't overused, which is the danger in this mix. The cinematography was well done; there were several great shots that I was just in awe of.
(4) The story takes place in Cleveland, and it pretty much sums up my stereotypical view of the city: not too exciting. Sorry, Izzy, perhaps one day I'll be proven wrong.
(5) It didn't feel contrived. It felt like an actual glimpse into someone's life, but without that Real-World-fight-cam feeling.

If you're a fan of slightly odd movies that don't follow the mainstream, I'd definitely recommend this to you. If, however, you don't like odd movies . . . um, go check out Say Anything. It's cute and much easier to take. And, besides, who doesn't need a little extra young John Cusack in their life?

I meant to post this months ago

I can turn on my bike headlamp generator with my toe while riding!

It's a moot point now, but I was still really proud of myself for that all semester.

Cleaning and cleaning and CLEANING

I'm cleaning my room right now, and I am finding all sorts of great walks down memory lane in the process. First, I should state that I haven't really lived at home for the past two years. My room is basically a preserved image of what it was the day I left for sophomore year in college (because I did live at home for my first summer). Most of the things in drawers and in my closet are from high school or earlier. That said, here are some of the great things I've found:

(1) My planner from, oh, junior year of high school. I was so anal that I wrote down every piece of homework, every little meeting, and even every social event. It's chock full of phone numbers, logins to various programs, and probably every thing I needed to survive that year. In retrospect, all this may have been written down to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation, which was a real threat during my high school years. I woke up every morning at 6, was at school by 7, didn't leave school until 3 (at the earliest), and didn't get to bed until 1 am. It was not the most restful period of my life.

(2) Book covers, and book covers, and more book covers. Every book I had for each of my seven classes every semester had to be painstakingly covered in durable paper bags. Apparently, my friends and I decorated our book covers with duct tape to make them last longer (I had completely forgotten this). We covered all the corners and the spine. It looks like every cover had a different color theme. Philosophy was black and labelled "the GOTH book . . . otherwise known as Philosophy." Alg/Trig was brown, and I have three Alg/Trig covers, which proves that Alg/Trig was the book I loved the most, as I carried it around so much that it wore out all my covers. I even had a yellow and green book cover. And in the areas which aren't covered by duct tape, there are inummerable quotes. I had no idea I was so witty.

(3) I have a drawer full of socks. Some have matches. Some don't have matches. The real question is this: why aren't these in my sock drawer in my closet? Socks do not belong in a drawer under the bed.

(4) I have every paper I ever received throughout all of high school. My recycling bin will be full this week; I fully expect to throw out over half of these by the time I get through them all. Of course, unfortunately, some of them might still prove useful.

(5) I need to come up with a better method for managing all my cords and chargers and electrical devices. Right now, my ipod charger is sitting in a ziploc bag on my window seat. That's not quite optimal. I think I'm going to have to clear out a drawer and dedicate it to the electronics that have taken over my life.

(6) I have too much stuff. I'm really tempted to torch my room; that would make sorting go much faster.

Time to get back to the room after this brief blogging break. If anyone wants to lay claim to any of my discarded "treasures" . . . uh . . . let me know.

The best part of my Portland visit?

Seeing my baby, Ferdinand J.

I feel obliged to post

but I'm not sure what to write about. I'm heading down to Portland today -- woo-freakin-hoo -- to meet with professors and whatnot. Unfortunately, my timing is rather off. I could have sworn that one of the profs I really need to meet with was going to be back in town by now, but she's not, so I'll have to make another trip down to Portland sometime soon. In this world of rising gas prices, that's not so cool. I might have to check out taking the train and see if it's cheaper than paying for all the gas to get down there.

I'm having a meeting regarding my thesis tomorrow morning, and I'm fairly apprehensive about that. My thesis is a survey of a local creek in which we've seen tailed frogs, which is a fairly rare species of primitive frogs that likes a pristine environment. We're not sure how they survive in a logging creek. So, right now, it's my job to document them. There's a few problems here, however. First, I haven't seen them there. I've just heard reports from other people about them. Second, I've hardly done any stream monitoring. I don't feel to competent about it. Third, I really don't understand the freakin' novel on amphibian monitoring that my professor loaned me. And, last, I haven't hardly even thought about science for the past four months. I'm thinking that I will discuss a possible thesis change with my advisor, because I'm not sure that I'm quite up for my exact thesis topic. We'll see what she says. Otherwise, I'm going to have to work my ass off doing paper research this summer to prepare for the fall. And I think I have to drop my lit class to make room for thesis *pout*

Other than that, all is going well. I discovered the video function on my mom's camera, so I went to town using that the other day. I'm still loving work, although I'm glad I get a little break here; my throat is so sore from barking during the whole game. Perhaps when I'm inspired, I'll write a nice little piece about some of my working experiences. Oh, but that reminds me! I've got the cutest little story here:

This weekend was little league weekend, which is a great weekend to work at the ballpark. Even though I only had cotton candy on Friday, I still sold fairly well. All the extra traffic that the weekend produced really helped out all our sales. On Sunday, a beautifully hot hot Sunday, I sold lemonade. Right at the end of the day, when I've got eight lemonades left and I'm almost done selling, a kid taps me on the back. I turn around, wondering who still wants lemonade in the bottom of the eighth inning. I only managed to get "hey" out of my mouth before the kid grabs my left hand (right was holding the tray on my head), shakes it, and says "thank you for your service."

Wow. Talk about speechless. That great kid made my day, and he couldn't have been more then ten. Props to you, parents, for raising a great kid, and props to the kid for being such an upstanding gentlement. Stay like that, kid, please. We need more like you in the world.

Work

was great and fabu and all that happy stuff!! I'm ecstatic now. It's good to be back, and it looks like I'll have a nice summer. I totally didn't school the other vendors as much as I think my boss hoped, but if I start running (like I intend to) and get in some better shape, I should be in schoolin' mode pretty quick. I mean, we've got a lot of new vendors, and they're all scrawny Asian kids. History has proved that, when Leah is in good shape, she can beat all of those. My goal is to work up to the top third of the list by the end of the next homestand *crosses fingers*.

Oh, a note on my job: I work at Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners. I'm a vendor, and I mostly sell cotton candy, tho I do occasionally sell lemonade, hot chocolate, sno cones, or squishies. I adore my job, and I've been working for this company since I was 15. It's not all fun and games, but it's a helluva way to earn a summer living. When I have more energy, I'll write up some funny stories.

PS Ichiro got his 2,000 career hit today, and I saw it. Also, Edgar Martinez (PR lovin') received an award for a bunch of different career milestones, and I think he's only the sixth person in MLB to achieve all of them. Pretty exciting.

And, no, I don't get free tickets to Mariners games. I wish.

To all the Seattle people who read my blog

When do you want to play Ultimate? I want to get a game up next week sometime. I'm thinking Friday (the 28th), Saturday (the 29th), or Sunday (the 30th). Let me know what y'all think; leave a comment please. I really wanna get something going.

This . . .

is the cutest bunch of loveable, adorable cuteness out there. Heather, props to you and John for having the most adorable kid (and dog), and thank you for being willing to document it all for a bunch of people on the internet.