Synaxis TV

When I got to work I showed Rachel these bad reviews for Godsend and she said she would coerce her boyfriend into seeing Young Adam instead. For Friday breakfast day they finally had smoked salmon cream cheese spread for the bagels. Part of my morning was sucked up working on some mail merge stuff for Courtney.

I had sent this thing to Pugs & Kelly about Operation Take One for the Country but found that it was a hoax. They ran with it anyway though and it was pretty great. Basically Pugs was saying that this was a good thing and encouraging women to do it, and Kelly was saying that women had more to offer and shouldn’t be reduced to this.

I took a nap during lunch. Laura kept on calling because she was off. I found some stuff on Indiana for her regarding A&M and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. It was my last day before my primary boss returned from Greeced. Looking back I had mixed feelings about the whole ordeal though it was nice to mostly work independently. So much work is still backed up.

After work I came home for a bit then Laura and I went to this awards thing for RISD. The main reason she was going was that Philis was getting an award. I wasn’t originally set to go but she got a free extra ticket. The place itself was quite nice. The food was good too, though Laura didn’t like it. They also had some tasty cheesecake. To give you some idea people came around after we were seated and took the napkins from in front of us then put them in each of our laps. It was kind of strange. Especially since the people doing it were all Mexican. It seemed so demeaning.

The presentations for years of service were kind of long and boring but I did get to experience Bob’s strange sense of humor and we talked about food some. He mentioned some sushi place he liked and that he had recently enjoyed some Thai food. Philis’ brother was there as well with his wife and he said some pretty funny things. They had mispelled Philis’ name, putting an extra L, and someone joked that they had heard she was an L of a teacher. Her brother quipped that she should have told them to get the L out. Philis’ mom was there, as well as another English teacher Casey. Casey was quite an odd girl though mostly because of how normal she was. Her face seemed to present a constant palette of shock, surprise, and confusion. Laura told me that she was a Southern Baptist.

They had some other prestigious awards, which Philis was getting, and showed a tape that detailed each of the winner’s personality and teaching style. It was really great to see. There was this one teacher in particular who teaches pre-k but only has underprivileged students. Her segment made me cry.

When that was all done they gave out a bunch of door prizes. Neither Laura nor I got lucky with that, though Philis won a gift certificate for some Italian place. The announcer discovered that the crowd would gasp whenever he said cheesecake, so he said it a few times.

On the way home Laura said she doesn’t want to get married until everyone (e.g. gays and lesbians) is able to, which i found extremely cool. She also mentioned that she would like to get involved in the upcoming election, which I also thought was cool.

I went to the tunnels for lunch and ate at Chik-Fil-A. It was kind of interesting watching everyone. I talked to Laura a bit but my phone was going dead. The strangest thing was seeing so many people eating around each other without knowing who anyone else there was.

Overall my day at work was fairly productive. On the way home I almost missed my stop because I was dreaming.

I had dinner at the Seals again. Laura and I were going to go on a bike ride but there was a problem with hers or something so I spent a lot of time playing the Unreal demo. Deathmatch was better than the tug of war game.

Back at home I watched the Frontline program on Bush called The Jesus Factor. I was aware of a lot of the information they presented, but he actually seemed scarier after watching. One of the most interesting things was when they were talking about Bush Sr. winning the election just by getting all the evangelicals to vote for him. The scariest thing was seeing just how much W had eroded the wall of separation. There was enough in the program to be strongly against his reelection without bringing the war into consideration at all.

After the Bush program I watched part of this program on Da Vinci, then some of the Stern show, some Teen Hunger Force, and then the first half of Conan.

For lunch I took a nap. The new FedEx printer came in and it worked without any problems so that was nice. A vendor sent our group a huge tin with Hershey’s kisses, and little peanut butter cups, Krackels, dark chocolates, and regular chocolates. I ate a whole bunch of it. Usually a cup, then a Krackel, then a dark chocolate.

After work I went over to the Seals and had some Italian sausage for dinner. Then we all went to get blizzards at Dairy Queen for some reason. I tried one of the new cheesecake blizzards. It was ok. The people in front of us ordered dinner for a party or something because it took forever.

When we came back to the house I played the Unreal 2000 demo some then came home and spent some time on the computer.

At lunch I went to the Barnes & Noble near SMU. I almost got this introduction to Habermas, but I didn’t have my giftcard with me. Now I can’t remember which book in particular it was though. If only I had my stupid little notebook. Sigh…

I had problems with the FedEx label printer and spent some time on the phone with tech support again. They finally decided to send out a tech, and the tech said he was sending a new printer to try in the meantime. There was another birthday so I had some Snickers cake. My poor diet…

After work I went over to the Seals’ to have a quick bite. Since they were in a hurry it would have been nice if my dish had been prepared for me before I got there. I didn’t really have enough time to eat a full dinner either. Oh well.

The purpose for the rush was this student art exhibit that Eric was participating in. We went to the wrong place at first then walked a bit across the park to the right place, the Plano Reperatory Theatre. Always so organized. There was some nice pieces. Strange sometimes to see such talented youth. The best part though was all of these cookies they had. Guess it was a good thing I didn’t have a full dinner. They had a presentation type thing where they gave the students certificates. I think it was just a rouse to keep the kids interested. At first I didn’t think there were any black kids there — they were mostly white, Asian, Indian, and hispanic — but there were two blacks, though they were girls.

I had some more cookies and then we went back to the Seals’. Laura went back to the apartment but I stayed to do my laundry. I spent some time on the computer reading my feeds then played some Call of Duty. At 9 Eric got on the computer and I came home and spent some more time on the computer writing Amy who had found my website and left a lengthy comment.

For lunch I went to Taco Bell. I was so super tired all day. I was glad when it was over. After work I ate at the Seals’ then we went to the coffee shop downtown. I got some chai again and studied Japanese, though not as productively as before. On the way home we stopped at Tom Thumb and I got some horseradish cheddar. At home I spent the evening goofing around on the computer.

After everyone woke up we sat around the table for a bit and then my dad and I went to get some brunch (at that point it was too late to call it breakfast). We stopped by the Plano Bazaar first and saw all of the little Mexican shops they had there. I got a t-shirt that says, “I (heart) Jesus; Jesus (heart) you,” and my dad got a black Dallas Cowboys hat. Then we got some sweet bread at the Michoacana next door and headed over to La Paloma to get some tacos. On the way back from La Paloma we saw some people gathered downtown for some kind of fair. My dad told me that he had talked to Jesse the night before he died and was going to pick him up but my mom sent him off to take food to some other people. He said that the one thing that bothered him was that Jesse wasn’t going to stop drinking so he wished that Jesse had just drank with him, but my mom didn’t want him to be a bad influence on Jesse.

I had some pork tacos and thought they were fine, but my parents were both disturbed by how small the tacos were in comparison to the ones back home. It became the topic of discussion for the rest of the day, to my sisters’ and my own amusement.

After we finished eating my dad took a shower and then I thought we were going to leave. But he told my sister to take a shower and she said OK so we had to wait for that. Then they loaded up their stuff in the car. It was a bit annoying but not surprising nor can anything be done about it. I watched more TV than I should have, though some of it was good like the stuff I saw on intersexuals.

When we did finally get out the door we went to downtown Plano and walked around very shortly. We went into a few antique stores and then my mom said that since we were about to eat in a little bit there wasn’t anything to do there so we should just go to the Seals’. It was about time to go eat at that point though so we just met up at Abuelos.

Dinner was pretty fun sitting with my sister, Laura, and Eric on one half of the table, and the parents on the other. We all laughed about Dave Chappelle, the Family Guy, and South Park. Jacqui and Eric were talking about the shows they like on MTV such as Pimp My Ride and I put my hand down between them and Laura and I and said, “The generation stops here.” I need to remember my new saying, “Give it up Chuck!” I need to remember the one that Jacqui introduced me to as well: “Pound it!”

We all said our goodbyes and my family started their trek back home. Before my dad left he told Laura that her going to the wedding showed that she was a real woman. I watched Ghostworld and rather enjoyed it, unlike the first time I saw it several years prior, then made some updates and browsed the Internet while watching Welcome to the Dollhouse. Good times. Laura was holed up in the office watching Queer as Folk, the second season.

Went to my ex-girlfriend Amy’s wedding with Laura, Jacqui, and my parents.

I got ready and wrapped the present then Laura and I drove to Carrollton so I could attend my Japanese class. Another fun day. It’s such a good feeling to understand more and more and know a word here and there when it comes up. This time it was a word that I had stumbled upon through random study and committed to memory because I thought I would use it. The word was kowai — scary. We studied relative clauses, which are quite odd characters for English speakers. For example, one of the sentences we went over, translated directly, would mean, “a stereo is a ‘listening to music’ machine.”

Laura went to a coffeeshop and watched Queer as Folk while I was in class. I asked her to get me a chocolate muffin but they didn’t have any so she came back empty handed. This made me sad but perhaps it was for the best. The ride to Fort Worth was a little tricky but not bad. We found the church pretty easy and got there quite early. It was an old church (built in 1888) and fairly nice looking. The inside reminded me a lot of St. Anthony’s back home. When I walked in I saw Hershel then Katie. It was pretty crazy to see her after so long.

My parents showed up shortly after and we met the groom Carlos while everyone was using the bathroom. The church didn’t fill up all that much and it was a typical long Catholic wedding, though on the short side as far as these things are concerned. The priest sucked pretty bad for some reason but Amy’s dress was really pretty and everything else went well. The music was pretty good. They didn’t play the traditional “here comes the bride” crap. It was unavoidable to think again about why Amy and I had decided against being together and seeing her get married in a Catholic Church made it pretty clear that it had been a correct decision.

We drove from the wedding to the reception place and spent the rest of the evening there. It was a small crowd, low key, but very classy and nice. No crass music. No proliferation of idiots on the dance floor. Anne sat and told us who everyone was. She said that she wants me to read this biography on Joseph Cambell. Hershel talked to my dad some and I talked to one of Anne’s brothers, who I didn’t remember as well as I should have. It was pretty cool to see Hershel’s mom. She’s a firecracker. My dad talked to Carlos some and I finally got to talk to Amy before we were leaving. There was still a twinge of oddness here and there but overall everything was cool. She said that she was planning to go to the Dominican Republic for her honeymoon which I found quite odd. The funniest thing of all though was to see her talking a mile a minute drinking a beer and saying how much she loved A&M.

I didn’t go anywhere for lunch because we all brought food and some of us ate together. One guy is leaving and another woman is going to a new position. Kinda sucks because she was cool and I always told her stupid stuff, but she definitely deserves it. While we were eating together I tried to see if anyone knew an official name for the dot lets Pacman eat the ghosts. When I looked later I found people calling it a power pellet, superdot, and the energizer. I think it’s interesting that it doesn’t have a more settled game. Not sure what that means. Either that there was just less communication amongst the broad masses about games then or perhaps we just have detailed manuals now. No one seemed to care for my lentils and spinach dish. Oh well.

After work I came home and spent a lot of time on the computer making updates. Laura thought the galleria closed at 10 PM and we were going to leave at 8 PM but she was wrong. We were going to go to the mall nearby which she knew for sure was open until 10 PM but she was wrong about that too. So we just went to Target and got a gift that was on Amy’s registry which was the best thing to do. I kind of just wanted to go to the mall though. Registries are kind of cool. I’m glad they had one at the first place I looked. It was just a hunch. My education at work.

During lunch I just rode the train. I rode it to the Dallas Zoo stop, walked around a bit, then came home. It was interesting to see the run down buildings on the way. I liked seeing the graffitti most of all though. I saw another “half-dead” tag. I also saw a funny store called “All Size Screws” or something to that extent.

After work I went to eat at the Seals’ then played some games. Laura and I came home after that and I spent some time on the computer then made some food for work, that lentils and spinach dish with cumin that I like so much.