lately i’ve had to do a lot of work using linux. in fact, over the last month, i’d say that like half of my work has been linux stuff. when i first started using it, a little while back, i was absolutely fucking clueless. i spent a whole day just trying to figure out how to do the most simple of simple things like how to install programs. i hadn’t the slightest clue about gzip, tar files, rpm packages etc etc. and dont even get me started on the insanely cryptic and evil VI editor. ugh!

but now, i’m really starting to get used to it. it’s pretty cool to know how to all this crap from a command line and not need the graphical interface. i feel like i’ve learned sooo much over the last few weeks. i’m definitely not yet proficient or anything, but it’s been a lot of fun figuring stuff out and learning new shit.

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i watched the movie Thirteen tonight. the movie was about a thirteen year old girl who really badly wants to fit in when she gets to junior high. to do that she befriends the most popular girl in school, and is soon drinking, taking drugs, getting piercings, blah,blah, etc. her mother who loves her like crazy, is slowly being torn apart trying to deal w/ her crazy daughter.

while watching the movie, i totally couldnt help but think of all the shit that i pulled when i was young. i started going to raves when i was 16 and of course did all the stuff that goes along with partying. of course i didnt think it was a big deal at that point, but looking back on it now, it would be impossible for me to say that i would think it was no big deal if i had a 16 year old child doing that kind of stuff. and as time goes on, kids grow up faster and faster. they’ll be doing what i did when i was 16, when they are 13 or 12 or who knows! the worries i have can only be about things that i know about, and things i did myself…. but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. who knows what kind of new insane fucked up shit there will be for kids to try when they are growing up years from now. i’m sure the future will hold much more treacherous things than piercings and ecstasy.

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the rv that sharon and dave bought is fucking humongous. 30 feet. it is a monster, and they’re planning on towing dave’s car behind it when they go cross-country, making it even longer. i can’t even imagine how hard it must be to drive that thing! last night, a few of us drove down to santa cruz to check it out. sharon and dave took us for a tour inside:

this thing was so roomy! i always thought the inside of an rv would be cramped and stuffy. but in this one, sure there were a few tight squeezes, like the one dave is in on the left, but other than that it was nice and spacious. a big bedroom, a kitchen w/ fridge and stove, a living room. there was 6 of us over there and we fit perfectly. hell, we could have invited even more people!

anyways, they’re still working on the RV. they’re hoping to get all the repairs done by this saturday and finally start their cross country voyage. i bet they’re gonna have an insane amount of fun in the apollo three thousand.

oh, yeah, one more thing. we all went to saturn cafe too. it sucked! what the hell happened?? that place used to always be so fun and cool. now it was all stale and boring!

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after about 20 months, a couple thousand dollars in fines, 4 separate trips to the tow yard, and a grueling 2 hour long way down at the DPT, i finally got my J parking permit. now i can park in front of my house. of course, now that i finally have it, i will only continue living here for another 5 months, but still… at least i shouldnt get anymore tickets from now on.

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saturday was liv’s 35th birthday and to celebrate it, she had a potluck at her house. caryn was looking up recipes for what to make on the internet, and she found this cool recipe for making penguins out of stuffed olives:

liv’s party was hella fun. sharon brought this pen that shocks people when they try to click it. we got several different people to unwittingly try it out and yelp when they did. later on in the night, liv, sage, and gleb all did some fire spinning which was pretty cool. sage and gleb just used the regular poi with balls on the end, but liv used these hardcore ones that had huge sticks that completely engulfed in fire:

as the night went on, and people drank more and more, kevin started talking about his “sour skittles” experience. apparently one time he ate a whole bag of sour skittles, and then the following day, he had layers of his tongue peeling off. peeling off?? a lot of us were doubtful that that could happen. i mean, come on, sour skittles? are they even that sour? well, a few minutes later we drove down to 7-11 and 3 of us tried to take the challenge.

the first couple of handfuls were really no big deal. hardly sour. but then, as we kept eating… things got more and more sour. pretty soon each bite was becoming literally painful!:

by the time we got to, and finished off, the powder left in the bag, our tongues were hella hurting.

two days later, when i woke up this morning, my tongue felt hella weird. most of it felt like it couldn’t taste or feel anything. i looked in the mirror, and yes, the top layer of my tongue was peeling off. fuck! how can they sell this stuff to little kids?!! i dont get it!!

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friday night caryn and i went over to joey’s house to watch a movie w/ him and catherine. the movie we ended up watching was Thirteen Days, a movie about the cuban missile crisis. in high school, despite the many years of history we had to take, unfortunately we never really spent too much time concentrating on any modern history… like pretty much anything after WWII. sure we kind of glossed over the vietnam war, kennedy, and the cuban missile crisis, but we really only learned a tiny bit about each and most of that information i’ve already forgotten.

watching that movie was pretty crazy. it’s totally insane to think just how close we came to having a nuclear war that would probably have wiped out most of the planet. the nuclear missiles that russia had in cuba could travel to the US in a mere 5 minutes, so any attempt at defense or hiding in bomb shelters etc would have been totally useless. due to some insanely lucky circumstances, and a president who wanted so badly to avert war, we somehow managed to pull through the situation. but it so easily could have ended differently. what if a situation like that had happened when we had an incompetent trigger-happy president like bush in control? i shudder to think what might have been.

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Stephanie and i broke up over a year ago, and since then i’ve only seen her a few times. i think maybe 3. several month ago she had a kid named Hunter. i know i’ve already posted this several times in my journal, but still i must reiterate that it still shocks me every time someone my age, who i know, has a kid. so weird! anyways, i’m not big on babies. they kinda make me nervous, and i’m definitely not down to hold them, but if someone makes one, i feel like i should probably go see it. so here and there i’ve talked to steph and we’ve tentatively planned to meet up at some point so i could check out this baby.

today she calls me out of the blue and says that she’s in my neighborhood and is down to stop by with her baby. so she comes over. sooooooo weird! i gotta say, it was truly bizarre to see her w/ a kid. her son was 5 months old already so he was pretty big and could smile and stuff by now. so we kicked it for a bit and talked about her son and life and stuff. turns out she is probably gonna move to nebraska! crazy eh? well maybe 8 or 9 minutes later the baby started crying and getting antsy, so she took off. luckily i never got asked to hold it or anything…

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my friend sage works at an ambulance company, and last night she got stuck w/ the worst shift ever: midnight till 8am. when all of us went to dinner for sharon’s going away, she was begging people to come kick it w/ her for a few hours so she wouldn’t have to endure the thing alone. staying up till all hours of the night didn’t sound very appealing to me, but i was pretty curious as to what an ambulance dispatch center would look like, and thought it might be interesting to hang out and see what happens. i agreed to come hang out from 2-4am. i didn’t think i could survive awake till 4am, so i decided to take a quick nap from 1 to 2.

at 2 am, my alarm goes off and i’m utterly confused as to what the hell is going on. why the fuck is my alarm on in the middle of the night?? oh yeah. ambulance shift. i’m exhausted, can barely see straight, and have a *very* strong urge to call and flake. somehow i force myself to get up and drive down there anyways. the ambulance center is tucked away behind some houses, so if you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably never even notice it. i walk in to the place and am surrounded by blinking monitors, walkie talkies, and other electrical mumbo-jumbo.

sage gave me a rundown of what everything is, how stuff works, and what a typical day on the job of an ambulance dispatcher is like. it was pretty cool since this is not something everyone gets to check out. since this was the middle of the night, she didn’t get any calls, but we did hear a few calls come in over the walkie talkie from other ambulance crews around the city. it definitely seems like a pretty crazy job. i honestly dont think i could handle it. it would be too depressing for me. listening constantly all day to people who are badly injured and stuff. yikes! definitely not for me… but it was cool to just check out.

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yesterday i drove down to palo alto to have dinner w/ sharon, dave and some other people. we were getting together because sharon is about to take off on her cross country trip in her RV and she’s gonna be gone for 6 months. normally i would think “wow, i’m not gonna get to hang out w/ sharon for a whole 6 months", but this time it’s just the tip of the iceberg. after she gets back from her trip, she’s moving to New York to go to Cornell for 6 *years*. wow, that’s such a long time!! i already dont really get to see her all that often seeing as she lives an hour and a half away in santa cruz, but it’s gonna suck extra much now.

it’s so weird how, as life goes on, slowly but surely people that you are friends with start setting out and going far away. people that i used to see day in and day out, i hardly ever see them nowadays. i guess it makes sense. everyone’s gotta live their life and do what they gotta do, but at the same time it’s so sad to see people leave, especially when they are part of the handful of people who you have been good friends with for ages. sure everyone makes more friends along the way… but there are some people who just have been your core friends for years, and those are people who are impossible to replace. Erica, Natasha, Yan, and Sharon… out of the people that i have been close with ever since at least 10 years ago… they are the only ones i still kick it with. soon there will only be 3.

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