ThisIsVlad

i was reading LJ today and a person dedicated a photo contest to their
friend who passed away on the 23rd. when they wrote the friend’s name in LJ,
it had one of those little LJ user icons, meaning that the person had a
livejournal of their own. of course, i clicked on it to check it out.

there were posts on it from the girl up to april 7th, just 2 weeks before
she died. it’s so weird to think that this girl was alive and writing in
her LJ just 14 days before cancer killed her. and now the journal is just
left sitting there, abandoned. her thoughts and daily updates left behind.

*v

sometimes sadness can be broken by doing something totally random and silly. i was talking to caryn on the phone and she was totally bummed, so i suggested that she do a somersalt on the bed. she said she was worried that the curtains were opened, and what if someone saw her? who knows, maybe if someone saw her, they too would go to their hotel room and do a somersalt on the bed. it’s contagious.

*v

i have a FTA (Failure To Appear) on my driving record. this is because i was driving to the nova cabin party a year and a half ago and got pulled over for going a measly 45 mph (it was in a 30 zone). to add insult to injury, my car wasn’t registered at the time, and i got another citation for that. to add the icing on the cake, i couldn’t find my insurance cards so i got a ticket for that too. three in one.

and then i didnt show up to court for the 3 citations.

today i got a letter in the mail saying they will revoke my license on may 15th if i dont get it taken care of…. i better get my ass in gear!

*v

as if there wasn’t enough damage done to my car already… yesterday i noticed that there was something wrong w/ the little door that covers my gas cap. it was bent and wouldn’t close all the way. how the hell does that happen… unless someone tried to force it open?? when i got the thing open, the gas cap beneath was totally loose. ugh. so, seeing as my car was beat up the other day, i started wondering if maybe someone had tried to pry open my gas tank to put something in there? i dismissed that as just a paranoid thought… until all of a sudden my “check engine” light came on. Fuck.

*v

went down to the park today to try spinning some poi with sage. sheez, it’s fucking hard! i really can’t fathom how caryn picked it up so fast. i was definitely not doing all that great…

*v

on saturday, we celebrated caryn’s bday again. in the afternoon, we got some people together and went to a place where you can race gokarts. these aren’t the slow weak gokarts like at Malibu grand prix, these are hardcore fast little karts that go up to 35 miles an hour. 35 mph may not seem like much when you drive on the streets, but when you’re in a tiny cart inside a building on a twisty track, all of a sudden it seems *hella* fast! it was so fun to totally zip around the track, skidding around corners, trying to pass each other etc. the only problem was that we didnt get nearly enough time!!

after racing, we came back to our place to have a barbecue. caryn was making mojitos (really good ones) and we all started getting rather drunk. i realized that it’s been a long long time since i last barbecued at my house, and i should totally do it more often.

ever since our party a couple weeks back, when caryn tried spinning fire, she had totally wanted to do it again, so for her birthday, i bought her a set of poi. near the end of the barbecue, caryn lit her poi for the first time, and spun fire in the yard. it was hellza cool! she was damn good at it… especially seeing as it was only her second time ever!

when the barbecue was over, we all headed down to the cats club. there was plenty more drinking and we all had a blast there as usual.

the weekend had already been packed full of fun stuff… and it wasn’t even sunday yet…

*v

there’s something really cool and exciting about fire and there’s something really cool and exciting about robots, and when you put the two together, it gets even better! friday night, caryn and i went to this interactive show put on by a group who builds large robot machinery. each of the displays that the group did, were interactive in some way so that an audience member could control the robots, and almost every single one of them involved fire in some way.

for example, one of them was a “flight simulator”. an audience member sits on this huge industrial sized metal thing where he can control it’s motion. it tilts in all sorts of crazy angles, spins around clockwise and counterclockwise, and basically simulated being in a plane. at the push of a button, a large fan on the contraption blows air at the guy. but the best part, is that there’s this massive flamethrower on the front, pointed just inches over the head of the guy riding it. this thing was blasting crazy flames *so* close to the guy’s head!!

another thing they had there was this smaller robot, that you could activate w/ a joystick. it looked like a little spider crawling around… err, that is, if a spider had a blowtorch on it’s head. here’s a photo:

also, here’s two short clips of video i took of the little spider thing:

Clip 1 Clip 2

*v

my car has gotten some serious abuse over the last couple of days. thursday, when i got to work, a car was crowding the left side of an empty parking spot i found. because of that, i parked toward the right side of the spot, apparently fairly close to the car on my right. when i got back to my car at the end of the day, i found this note on it:

later on in the day, when caryn and i got back from dinner and i walked up to the passenger side of my car, i noticed a huge dent in it. there were also several other smaller dents. what the fuck?! the car was parked with the passenger side facing the sidewalk, so i dont think this could have happened at the restaurant… it must have happened earlier that day, in the garage. the only thing i can assume is that whoever left the note also took the liberty of repeatedly bashing my car. fuck!

as if that wasn’t enough, the next day, friday, when i walked up to my car, someone had crashed into my driver side mirror, knocking it off completely. of course they left no note.

so now my car is damaged all over the damn place. *sigh*

*v

last year, i didnt really get to celebrate caryn’s birthday with her on the actual day. this year, since caryn is gone during the weekdays and her birthday is on a thursday, i figured there would be a good chance that i wouldn’t be able to celebrate with her again. luckily though, her boss let her come home a day early, and therefore i was able to take her out to dinner on her actual birthday. we went to the First Crush wine bar. the food there was really damn good. they had some bomb cheeses, great oysters, really good horseradish encrusted salmon, and not surprisingly, the wine was quite good too. by the time we left, we were both sooo overstuffed. ouch!

*v

one really weird thing about maddie cat is that she doesn’t like to drink water out of her cat bowl. she refuses to. she’ll drink out of the sink, or from puddles, or out of cups, or pretty much anywhere… just not her own bowl.

whenever we turn on the sink, she’ll often come running to drink some water. the odd part is… she’ll drink from under the faucet when it’s runnning, and doesnt even seem to notice that there’s a huge stream of water pouring directly on her head!! she gets totally soaked… and yet just drinks away…

*v