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Thursday May 23, 2024

Surprise last minute volleyball sub!

Almost went to trivia with my old team but I didn’t bring my wallet

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Wednesday May 22nd

Critical thinking questions for Hadi. Vanessa had bad period symptoms so we couldn’t gym long 😰

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Tuesday May 21st, 2024

New monitors came! So crisp! Actually feels way better both for work and for gaming

Mr smoosh actually likes being in the box! But we had to throw it out bc it was too big

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Monday, May 20th 2024

Drier not drying, adhd kinda day today, blankets are mildew, forgot AirPods at gym kinda bleh

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Sunday May 19th

Still forgetting to take pictures at events, but remembered to stop and enjoy some golden hour on the walk back to the car

Gonna be brief today and just point out the highlights

Elevate volleyball league today

Eric made a good play and said "I learned that from Zach!" felt really good since I feel like they're so much more experienced than me

The person I don't like is back, still don't like her

Went to Jeffs thing, strawberry milk was only okay but they were gracious about it

barely knew anyone and got there so late that people were already leaving at that point

still pretty good chill time and glad I went.

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Saturday, May 18th

Hanging out with friends before going on an unintentional sidequest.

The rest of the week progressed for meas usual, work is work, mostly chillin.

This week unforunately was not so normal for Vanessa. On Thursday her Grandpa had a stroke, so from 9am until 10pm that day, she was in bellevue calling 911, translating for her grandparents, talking to doctors, getting medical history, everything. It was a super tiring and stressful day.

On Friday it was right back to work for her too, no time for a break, I feel like something else was tiring about Friday but its slipping my mind now.

On Saturday we slept in a bit, Vanessa got up at 8:30 to get ready, and we got dimsum with Justin, T-siya (no idea how to spell that), Tommy, and Kristen Green at Jade Garden. Vanessa agreed that Justin has become surprisingly well rounded and much easier to talk to, but no one in that group knows how to gracefully end a social interaction lol.

We then planned to go over to Bellevue to spend some time with her Grandpa, show him some pictures and then maybe go to costco to run some errands.

What actually ended up happening was that her grandpa was in a fever and pretty much slept through the whole day (and also hadn't eaten in a day and a half, which was worrying), and her uncle, who was watching over him, had to go pick up a medical bed for him to sleep in. Since I'm a strapping young lad, we volunteered me to go with him to help move it. What neither of us (or the uncle, I think) realized, was that the bed was up in Mt. Vernon, an hour and a half drive away.

So I am stuck in the car with just Vanessa's uncle Cau My, for 3 hours round trip. Wat.

Honestly it went surprisingly well, he's very talkative, and we talked about a lot of stuff in the 3 hours

We started talking about jobs, and I was surprised how much of like, a working professional I am now? We were actually able to talk at length about both of our hobs and like compare and contrast and stuff, it was kinda cool. We talked a lot about the grandpa, and about his hobbies crabbing, fishing, basketball.

The only painful part was when he was talking more about Trump and Biden. Luckily he didn't make any super strong statements but definitely inferred that Trump was better than Biden and he was surprised that there were so many Biden supporters.

I think my saving grace was that I also think Biden is a terrible president, but I'm on the other side where I'm too leftist, but I was able to make non-committal statements of fact and got through, and was able to pivot to a different conversation about the grandpa which saved me.

After all of that happened we went back to the house, then back to the hospital, and then Vanessa and I went back home, got 6pack for dinner, and passed the fuck out.

So much for an easy breezy day of chores.

I ended up spending 5 hours solo with Cau My total. Someone give me a medal lmao

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Tuesday, May 14th 2024

Pretty normal workday today, still have imposter syndrome at work, and Mr Smoosh is adorable

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Monday, May 13th 2024

Justin in town!

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Sunday May 12

Got a big ol mirror to open the space up!

Went to a picnic with Vanessa’s dance friend Hannah, and won all my games at volleyball today!

(Was it a coincidence my least favorite player subbed out today? We’ll never know)

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Saturday May 11th

Slept in till 1pm, Mr Smoosh even joined us even though he hates the bed!

Made strawberry milk!

Finally went to the gym for as long as we wanted but we didn’t eat enough so we got pooped before we could finish everything :(

Dancing and grooving is hard

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May 10th

Today, I feel young.

We haven’t had this much spontaneous energy in a long time! remember to write more here when you’re not on mobile please

Me from May 12th, I didn't forget! Today was a fantastic day. It was a Friday, and work was mostly meetings. Oh yeah its not on the blog, right now I work for Inscopix, I've been working here for almost exactly a year now, and I'm working on getting our first internal users to use the toolbox creator app. I'm also working on making some basic activity metrics tools for the platform. That seems really boring to me now, but its always weird to see what I remember and what I forget when I look back in time haha.

Anyways! On to the more exciting things. After work Vanessa and I went to our dance class, which is a beginner/intermediate hip hop class with an emphasis on popping and waving. We spent the first half of class just focused on the popping and waving practice, doing grooves and working on fundamentals which I really appreciated. Then the second half of class was only cleaning the parts of the choreo that we had already learned! Our teacher Sean is actually really good at cleaning, I feel like in the past so far cleaning has really just meant "we're going to run it a bunch and you figure out what it means for you" but Sean was really explicit. He was like here I want your weight to move like this, I want your arms to have this energy, lets do this 4 count really slow, etc. and it really made a difference! We talked with Sean a little after class and he gave us good advice on how to practice being groovier and how to make things feel looser and stuff.

We went home and some how it was already 9:30 so we went to shower and get ready for the aurora!!!! Oh Shit I haven't even mentioned that in the text yet, so this morning Vanessa heard that there was the biggest geomagnetic storm in 20 years or something, and that there was a chance to see the Aurora boralis here in seattle! So we made plans to go out near snoqualmie pass to get away from the light pollution and try and see it.

Okay now its 9:30 and its almost time to leave already, I kinda expected there would be a lot of time to chill and wait for the aurora, but we had to shower really quick and then headed out right away.

As we were driving, there was still a ton of traffic even though it was probably 10:40 at the time, Biden is in town right now, but I think some of the traffic was actually a lot of people also trying to get away from the light pollution!

As we were driving out, Kimmie started to notice what she thought was an aurora, but Vanessa dismissed it as a cloud, because with all the light still around it was really hard to see the any colors, and also we've never seen a aurora in real life before lol. But as we continued driving out, it became more and more distinct! Interestingly, for some reason, the camera was able to pick up the aurora waayyy better than our eyes, which I guess makes sense? But I started using my camera as a viewfinder to help me know where to look and then I'd stare at it to see if I could actually see it haha.

Eventually we got to the trail head (Props to Seyoung for driving, the traffic was really turbulent and unexpected and Kimmie, Vanessa, and I were all clamoring about the aurora but he kept it cool and safe for us on the road). There were so many cars at the trail head! Literally on both sides of the trail for half a mile down the road. We parked pretty early and got out, walking past all the cars still trying to find parking, which was a really good call.

We were blinded by headlights for a while before actually getting to the trail head, but finally we got out to where it was dark out and it. was. crazy.

You could see the aurora so clearly! There were parts that were barely colored, but there were definitely areas that were bright pink or green. It was really cool because the aurora was constantly changing, every time you looked up it was a little different, or there was a new light curtain. We spent about 20 minutes taking pictures and marveling, it was amazing but I also for some reason expected it to idk, feel like I was being spiritually blessed? Or unlocking my avatar chakra? but it was just a really beautiful sight haha

After we spent a decent amount of time gazing at the sky, we went back to the car, and I jokingly suggested that we get dimsum, but surprisingly pretty much everyone was down! So we spontaneously got dimsum at 2am on the way back home. I was so happy, it felt like undergrad energy again where you're just doing fun stuff with your friends and you feel unlimited.

We got back home and crashed into bed almost immediately.

What a wonderful day. I hope I remember it for a long time

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May 10th, 2024

A perfect sunlit spring morning

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May 9th, 2024

Today, I'm in love.

I didn't just fall in love, in case future me is reading this thinking the date is weird. I've been with Vanessa for 5+ years at the time of writing. In fact, Vanessa hasn't even been mentioned on this blog, that's how long I've been without writing here.

I wanted to start writing again because we just finished watching Queen of Tears, which is a k-drama where the main character confronts their own mortality with a seemingly fatal condition. At the end drama's always do that montage thing where they fast forward through their life and show them living happily ever after in a monologue, and I got that bittersweet sickening feeling that you get when you feel like life is flashing by your eyes faster than you can afford to savor it.

I love how deeply and richly my life is recorded on this 365, and it is genuinely the best preserved record of my life. I know I won't realistically find time to write here every day, let along take a picture to go along with any text, but I'd like to be kind to myself, and post here when I can, picture or text, and hope to god that tumblr doesn't go down without me being able to save my record here. Maybe I should make a backup somewhere....

Anyways, logistics aside, I should tell my future self where I am right now.

I am in love. Like I said before, its been 5+ years already, but it feels like we're in a new renaissance, a new honeymoon phase.

We've been steadily and earnestly working on our relationship this whole time, but ever since graduating, we've had some key patches that have made being together feel so much safer, and wholesome and wonderful. I feel filled with love almost every day. We celebrate each other, play with each other, and spend time with Smoosh.

Right now, I am semi-focused on getting better at volleyball, and Vanessa is in her log phase of dance growth. She's working on heels, hip hop, popping, waving, and she's getting better so fast! She's found an awesome community and has really great, supportive teachers. I injured my ankle last week, so I've been a little more hesitant lately, and also trying to figure out how to balance getting better with enjoying my hobbies haha.

Another thing that I have been focusing on has just been spending time at the gym. I am more buff than I've ever been in my life, and I owe a lot of that to cottage cheese hahaha.

There's a lot more I'd like to share, since I haven't recorded the person I've been in more than 5 years, but I think I'll stop here today to let myself know that it's okay to have shorter posts, it should be easy and low barrier to entry to update this blog.

Btw Justin Wilkowski is randomly visiting next week, and Ernie is visitng two weeks after that!

Random blasts from the past, its almost fitting that I'm starting to post here. I haven't seen either of them in years, almost as long as I've not updated this blog hahaha.

Oh and I'll update with a picture of Smoosh, I'll surely want to remember him, but you've already seen that if you're scrolling back down to here.

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End of College Reflection

Damn. 5 years. When I started College I had just turned 18. I was so much more naive then. I started trying to reminisce about all that had happened  in that time and I realized thats exactly what this blog is about. I don’t want to spoil it for myself though so I’m going to write my current thoughts about each year and then add to it my thoughts about everything that’s happened.

Freshman Year: 2013-2014

I started the year after waiting all summer for it and dealing with the Cecila situation. I pretty much started dating Krystel immediately, I was friends with Johnny because we were the only two asians pretty much. Except for Q lol. Stephan was a thing. I was on Hall Council but we all realized almost immediately that that was a joke. Nicole took it super seriously. Vendetta fam! Got pretty close with Delena and Tiffany. Tavi? Was whatever I guess. At the end of the year I broke up with Krystel, Joined board, and went off to summer to be single lol.

Things I forgot: I used to call Krystel Bunny lmao feels kinda cringey now but pet names are cute. In retrospect I was already being flirty with Angela this early, hindsight is 20:20 I guess. I forgot this is when i went to Arizona, I thought 4 months was long in a relationship haha. It was really cool to be a part of a group :(. WE FIT TWO PEOPLE INTO A SINGLE. HOW. I went to my first race and tried dancing with a girl and got shot down I totally forgot that lol. oh yeah I had a thing for Caroline for like 1 second. The end of Freshman year feels so unimportant now but it must have been crazy back then. That was the biggest year of my life back then. Time is moving faster and faster and I dont know how I feel about it. 

Sophomore Year: 2014-2015

I got with Angela over Summer, and between her and APSA board, I barely had time to have friends. Because of the distance I barely interacted with APSA too. Spent a lot of time in my room skyping, Lived in Blvd 63 at the time, I feel like thats all that I remember. There was a shit ton of drama between board that year, the Arnelle group vs AmAZoN. We almost quit board. Then everyone stopped caring hahah

Things I forgot: The first summer after freshman year was a lot of fun, driving around with Peter and Angela drinking, young romance, idyllic. We went skinny dipping I forgot about that lol. I used to say a lot of cringey stuff tbh. Also I did almost evrything to fuck it up. Also I forgot I spent a ton of time over summer with Johnny. Also with APSA Even though I was part of the group I was never really part of the group. Does that makes sense? I really underappreciated the Blvd 63 apt. also treated it like shit, it wa a really nice place. Being a part of something like APSA seems so nice. I dont know if I’ll ever have something like that again. I spent like every weekend with Angela at the time. priorities were all out of order. Oh well. lol never mind about the being accepted I just read a rant where I said I dont feel close to anyone hahaha. I got called out for falling asleep in all my classes. I was a fuckin terrible student christ.

Junior Year: 2015-2016

A hot mess. I think Angela cheated around here? Then we were broken up for like 3 months before trying again because I’m an idiot. Things kept being messy and I skyped her all the time, Living in the shitty Murray ln house. Towards summer I applied to go abroad and things only got rougher. oh yeah and I started volunteering in Sussman lab. 

Things I forgot: How absolutely obsessed with Angela I was. I guess its cute but I completely let all other aspects of my life fall to the wayside while that all happened. I thought I might miss her more but if anything I’ve become more resolute that moving on was the right decision. Other than that its all been par for the course. I kinda hate the way I talk. Ah I’m so overdramatic lol, also everything fell apart mid July after I visited her, so we lasted like one whole year. OH YEAH I tried molly and then had to move out that was a good experience hahaha oh wait that wasnt even the best part, she slept with a dude on my birthday, two days before coming back home, that was the best part. WAIT no the actual best part is I didn’t find out for a whole month. jesus July-September was a real mess but I met Ana so that was nice haha. no wait the REAL best part is that I TOOK HER BACK.I LOST MY BRICK JACKET THE FIRST DAY OF HAVING IT IM STILL SALTY ABOUT THAT. Senta died while i was abroad :(

Senior Year: 2016-2017

I left for Singapore and had an amazing time, traveled a lot all that. I don’t feel like reflecting on it a lot because I still remember it a lot? Became friends with Amy, had a fling with Buse, was STILL fuckin around with Angela, got hurt more, started moving on. By the time I came back I had already disconnected from most of my friends. Ernie and I were both super single by then and got super close over it and tried to deal as best we could. I think this is when we started doing burger nights? Switched over to Zeller lab when I got back.

Final Year: 2017-2018

Scraping by with the shreds of my past friendship I have like 6 individual friends and no friend group. I’m left a long a lot when everyone goes to their groups. Started fucking arougnw with Angela AGAIN. Hopefully for the last time. I feel like I can’t complain because I do have friends but I still feel so alone. I can’t wait to move to seattle. 

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Day 3: The day of three days

So much happened today its crazy. With how lazy I usually am I feel like I packed three days worth of activities into one.

Woke up at 8:30 and got ready for the day, and ate breakfast at a local diner with Nicole. She drove us into town and dropped us off by the hidden staircase. I promptly realized I forgot my memory card for my camera lmaoo. We walk around anyways and take a few pictures on the iPhone but its underwhelming and we’re not cute girls so we can’t just be in the picture and have it be cute. We actually walk to the top and see some cool rocks a few blocks away and walk to that and actually get some decent pictures. The weather is perfect if not a little too hot.

After messing around on the rocks for a while we call an uber to a nearby target to buy a memory card. After thats taken care of we looked at what was nearby and saw that the painted ladies were only 1.5 miles away so we decided to walk to that. The streets of SF are so nice to walk around!

Once we were at the park we wandered around and there were a BUNCH of dogs running around and chasing balls, I think there was some kind of dog walking service that people were doing bc each person had like 5 dogs on them. It was awesome. Anyways the painted ladies were pretty underwhelming so we took our picture and left.

We were going to meet up with Kevin’s friend so we walked another two miles to the USF campus and chilled there for a while. the campus is small but nice (The dorms look shitty). and since the weather was so nice EVERYONE was out enjoying the grass and chatting, it looked like one of those staged ads. also made me feel old bc Im graduating lol. We rest for a bit waiting for Ross and then we Uber to Bi-Rite ice-cream and Dolores park. Usually I don’t buy into the hype for ice-cream but that place is legit amazing. The guy serving ice-cream really seemed to love what he did and served a ton of samples, and every single sample was amazing. I got irish cream and snickerdoodle, but I honestly probably could have gotten anything and loved it.

Ross took us to the park which was big and had a nice view, and was also super packed with people. I guess its been rainy and people wanted to finally enjoy some good weather?  and he took us to this graffiti alley which was super cool. I forget what its called though. Then we went to Castor street and saw some gay stuff (including a completely nude man in his 70’s walking down the street…wat..) Then we ubered over to Irving street to meet up with Nicole and Jamey for dinner. I think total we walked 7 miles in that first part of the day.

We ate korean with Nicole and Jamey and everyone got along, it was actually really fun! Then Nicole Jamey and I went to Acro Sports to do an open gym, Kevin and Ross went to Ross’s apartment to chill a bit before going out to bars. At aero sports I met Jesper who is like what I aspire to be hobby wise. He it super into photography and videography, and was talking my ear off about how to get my action photography better. I wish I could have absorbed more but he was talking so over my head it was hard to keep up. He also works full time at acrosports so thats probably why he’s so good at free running and tricking too. Im never gonna have that much time with how long I spend in lab. But It was super fun messing around int he gym again! I started learning how to do a B-Twist again, and got over the fear of eating shit from the last time I tried it. Nicole was going to practice her ariel but pulled her hamstring while warming up. what an idiot. She’s honestly so fragile I don’t understand. I felt bad though.

After the gym I took some time to cool off and try not to be too sweaty and gross and Nicole dropped me off at Emporium to meet up with Kevin and Ross. Emporium is a huge barcade with air hockey, old school games, pinball, you name it. I loved the ambiance there and it was a wednesday night so it wasn’t too hard to get on to any of the games there. Air hockey is so much harder than it looks but I got the hang of it eventually. Also shuffleboard is wayyyy more fun than it looks!

We left around 11 so that we could get home before bart closed and the bart is gross and sketchy. worse than NYC, and DEFINITELY worse than asia. and its expensive. not worth. After I got home I thought I crash super hard but I actually edited some pictures from the day.

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Day 2: Just Driving

Literally just drove up from Kevin’s house to Nicoles house. Kevin and I were going to switch off but I got into the zone and 7 hours later I was pulling into Nicoles driveway lol.

We did stop at an in-n-out and I was chatting with the register girl there. She asked if I was on spring break and where I was from, and she told me she applied to UCSD but didn’t get in, ands going to SF state instead. We were in the middle of nowhere and I asked where she lived lol, she lived in some farming town 20 minutes away with like 150 people living there. I can’t imagine how crazy it would be to move from such a small town to an enormous town like SF. Hope she does well.

Nor Cal is so wooded its awesome! She lived in the suburbs but plants were exploding out of every corner, it was actually kinda hard to park. As soon as I got out of the car my allergies started kicking up too. We chatted for a pit, planned our morning and went to bed.