ThisIsVlad

driving home from work today i stopped by the hill with the goats again. this time other people had started noticing the goats too. in fact there was a line of cars parked on the side of the road, and all sorts of people were getting out and taking pictures of the goats etc. truly bizarre.

i was way curious about what the hell these goats were doing here, so i finally started asking people if they knew. so it turns out that these goats were brought here by the water department so that they could eat all the shrubbery etc off the hill and thus reduce the risk of fire. weird eh? is there really no easier way of reducing risk of fire than to let a hundred goats loose on the hill?

unfortunately, not everyone was in agreement w/ the water dept. i talked to this one lady who was really pissed and upset about the goats being there. she told me extensively about how she (and the sierra club) was so distraught that the goats were destroying the environment on the hill, how there is a species of butterfly native only to this area that was getting eaten by these goats, and how once the goats ate all the natural vegetation, tons of weeds would grow back in it’s place thus creating an even worse fire hazard. this lady was practically in tears when she told me all this. she was also yelling insults at the water dept worker that was there. the whole scene was really really weird. oh, and this kid that was with the water dept actually had a “goats-r-us” jacket on. whoa!

here are some photos. the first three are a bit blurry unfortunately…. Click!!

-v

when i walked out to my car today, there was a huge dent in the rear bumper. some piece of shit hit my car while it was just sitting there innocently parked, and didnt bother to leave a note. the fucked up thing, is that this is the *2nd* time this has happened in this last month. my car is starting to look like crap because random haters keep hitting it. in the last 6 months, my car has been hit 3 times (one time the person actually left a note) and has gotten keyed 2 times. why can’t people learn to fucking drive?!!!

-v

yesterday morning i got a call from my roommate telling me to grab my camera cause we were gonna go on a field trip. huh? anyways, i grab the camera and we drive up 7th avenue a little past woodside road where she points to the left side of the road. the hill is all splotchy colored. wait a minute, the splotches are moving… um, the splotches are… goats???! so, i have no clue, how this happened, or where they could have come from, but the whole hillside is *covered* w/ goats. i’m guessing about 100 of them. now, this would have surprised me a lot less if this was in some huge field off of highway 280 or something, but *in the middle of SF*????

-v

dammit!! so i haven’t posted in this damn journal for hella days now. in fact i’ve only posted like 4 times in the last month. finally today i forced myself to sit down and actually post even though i still didnt really feel like it. and what do you know…. 3/4 of the way through writing a super long entry, this piece of crap LJ eats my entry. ugh!

-v

… and that’s exactly it. no one has any damn thing at stake. 65% of the people in this country actually support this fucking war. unbelievable. and yeah sure, i’m sure it’s easy to support some war when all you have to do is sit there in a fucking office, sip coffee, and wait for the gas prices to come dropping down for your precious vehicle. if these 65% actually had to go over there and start shooting missiles at random iraqi targets… would they really still be so excited to start a war?

*sigh*

-v

wow, i really cant believe how fast people can build stuff these days. i looked outside my kitchen door yesterday and in just *one* day, our landlord had built all of the steps for our new stairs. so fast!! they’ve already got his much done: click!

heh, this is the small board across the kitchen door that saves us from falling to our doom: click!

-v

i got my employee review the other day, and it was a huge disapointment. in the past, all of my reviews here have gone really well. seriously, they couldnt say enough good things about me and all the comments were very positive about how well i accomplish all my stuff etc. for pretty much all the sections i would score a “1” which was “goes above and beyond expectations”. so, it was a total shock to me when yesterday my review was filled completely w/ all 3’s (acceptable performance, average). wtf? according to my boss, i do the tasks i get assigned well, but dont show enough initiative and he gets the feeling that i “dont care how well the company does”. dont show enough initiative?? dude, i am sooo busy at work, have so much crap to do, so many random assignments etc get pushed on me…. i dont have any damn time to show initiative. i need to be trying to plan *more* projects for myself?? sheeeez.

so anyways it all really sucks. part of me thinks that the review may have turned out like that because i have a different boss writing it now. maybe he’s not the kind of guy that writes glowing reviews? or maybe i’m really doing way worse now than i’ve done in the past. *sigh*.

-v

i woke up this morning and the stairs were missing. yes, missing. a couple months ago we had a party and a large section of the side of the stairs broke off. we’ve been begging our landlord to do something about it for a long time now, and it looks like finally he did. but the thing is… we kind of expected him to fix the stairs, not *remove* them!! and if he did remove them, we would have thought he might at least warn us. so now, when we open the kitchen door, there’s nothing there except for a 3 story drop, with only a small plank of wood nailed against the doorway to protect us from certain death.

it’s so weird to have a whole staircase just be missing like that.

-v

this thursday went to go see Zion I with sharon. neither one of us ended up paying too much attention to the show though, instead we spent most of our time trying to decipher life. we talked about life, physics, psychology, and the meaning of it all for hours on end… and it was exactly the kind of night i was looking for. since coming back from thailand, i’d been doing tons of thinking about life, and feel like i’ve really been looking for the answers to a bunch of questions… unfortunately, i dont even really know what the questions are, so finding answers has not been easy. heh. but i definitely think that having long conversations w/ people that really have something to say helps. it’s always good to know people who’ll expand your thoughts and views and sharon is definitely one of those people.

friday i woke up to find out that shit had gone totally haywire at work. spent all day long stressing and working like crazy… to the point where i forgot to move my car from the tow-away zone. FUCK. this is the 3rd time now that i’ve had to get my car from the Hall of Justice. and i had to pay off 7 outstanding parking tickets to boot. $550 later, my car was rescued. sheeez, parking around here is really breaking the bank.

spent the rest of the weekend up in tahoe. elena’s family owns a place up there so tash, marcell and i went up there to kick it w/ her and patrick. we didnt snowboard or anything, but just spent most of the weekend hanging out, drinking, and chilling. had a great time. oh yeah, we also went to reno to gamble for a bit. i dont know crap about card games etc, so i spent the whole time playing roulette. it was hella fun though. i decided i would limit the amount of money i blew, so i only got 80$ from the atm. since in roulette, it’s so easy to double your money, my bets of 20$ quickly grew to 40, 80 and sometimes 160$. chips are so weird. they’re money, and yet so dont seem like money. yet at the same time, watching the ball spin round the wheel and knowing that a whole $160 is riding on where it lands, definitely gives you a huge kick of adrenalin. anyways, i was up some, down some, all over the place, but in the end, i was actually able to pull myself away from the table without losing it all. and i actually ended up $125 up!! SHWEET!

-v

i’m finally over being sick. after spending last weekend (and the whole following week) being sick and miserable, it was good to finally get out of the house and have some fun. friday night sarah mazze was down here from oregon and it was great to get to see her again. saturday night some of us went to check out this bar called the phone booth. at the bar, kevin spent an hour trying to convince us that this girl there was Jamon, and when we had finally convinced him that it wasn’t her, by some totally random coincidence the real Jamon showed up. what are the chances of that? turns out she lives near by and the phone booth is her local neighborhood bar. sunday i checked out cirque du soleil. i got there expecting to be really impressed… and i totally was. the stuff these people do is just simply amazing! Afterward, i had to speed back to SF to catch the Sage Francis concert. it’s crazy, he’s gone from playing at Bottom of the Hill and not even packing the place, to selling out Slim’s completely. to mix things up a bit he played w/ a live band instead of a dj. it was cool cause it was different… but honestly i liked the last show he did a lot better.

all in all it was a really cool weekend. the last week had been so weird. being sick and home alone really made me feel like i was in this halfway limbo state… not still away in thailand but at the same time like i wasn’t really back here in the US yet. i was back home, yet couldn’t experience all the stuff that i love about being here. finally getting to get out and have fun and hang out with friends definitely makes me appreciate everything about here. it may not be the same as traveling, but if there is a place i’m psyched on living in… it’s definitely here.

-v