Archive for March, 2005

Tipping the scales and Film Fest

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 16, 2005
in Crazy, Lifting, Liz, Movies, Music, Story and Work
. 1 Comment

This morning I woke up and stood on my scale. It said 196. 196 JROD!!!!!! Yeah, I don’t know why I get skinny sometimes. I know right now I didn’t lift for a while and lost some muscle and then got a bit of a gut. I’m working on that now though. Hopefully soon my arms won’t be mushy anymore and I’ll be able to bench 225 for sets of 10 again.

I also had my first performance review today. It went really well. I like my boss, my boss likes me; my boss wants to keep me around for a bit, I wouldn’t mind staying around a bit. Some people talk about being all scared and worried about performance reviews. I wasn’t really nervous at all or anything. My boss is cool. I like talking to him. He says wise things. It was cool just hanging out with him for an hour. We talked about a lot of ideas of some new things we might start doing. I like my job.

Another weird thing that happened today was Brent, a coach for some sport who’s always working on editing a video of some game, was walking by and said, “dude, I’ve been wondering who that student is that always leaves their bag by your desk with that really cool Maiden patch.” I says, “That’s my cool Iron Maiden patch and that bags right over there.” So we talked for like 10-15 min about Iron Maiden, Zombie, Metallica (the old good stuff), Motorhead, Deep Purple, etc. I can’t say I’ve ever had a real conversation about Iron Maiden with anybody since I first came here as a student. I had that long conversation with the lady at the car repair place over Thanksgiving, but that wasn’t here, it was in some town on the way to my mom’s house.

The Trojan Film Festival was also tonight and I’m so glad I made it this year. I was never able to go to those kinds of things as a student cause I always worked nights and nobody would ever sub for me….jerks. So I got a little mixed up on the time and wasn’t exactly paying attention to my clock and got there really early. The funny thing was nobody even bothered to ask what I was doing there or anything. It’s just like when I was in high school and I would roam the halls sometimes. If you act like you belong…..people just assume. So I hung out with BenD and Chris and Jared (they were the band). I would say 4 of the movies were good and there was one I just didn’t really understand why it got picked….oh well. I guess I’m not “artsy” enough. Tim Sutherland’s was really good and had some great editing. Liz’s was also really good. They did some great things with scene/set changes and editing. They basically had one guy that kept seeing “copies/clones” of himself. It was great. Then there was Robby’s film about Katrina. It was beautiful. It was moving. It was well shot, well editing, and well acted. Robby won best actor. The girl that played Katrina won best actress and Robby also won best picture. It made me happy. I never really knew Katrina. I’m pretty sure she was in a class of mine once. One of those gen-eds where there’s a ton of people in there you’ve never talked to before and don’t get to know anybody. When I think about when it happened, I just remember hearing about it, then going to chapel and Farmer getting up to announce something like, “Katrina is dead. Get over it!!”. Frankly, I was pissed. It just seemed so insensitive and rude to me. My impression was a big deal wasn’t being made because she wasn’t one of the ‘all-stars’ on campus that everybody knew and loved. I really hope that impression was wrong. It happened during a break and a lot of people had no idea what had happened before coming to chapel that day and that was how they were informed. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten up and walked out of something before, but I really felt like it that day. Anyways, Robby’s movie was great and it made me wish I had taken the time to introduce myself in that class I had with her and gotten to know her a bit.

Isaiah

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 14, 2005
in Cooking, Friends, Funny, Story, TV and sIIs
. 2 Comments

Isaiah was here today and I got to hang out with him at Ivanhoes. I just kinda left my job for an hour. My job is cool like that. I kinda felt bad for him when I found out he was the only “adult” on this trip. I’m sure he’s handling it just fine though. He’s a responsible kind of guy. One funny part of our conversation went kind of like this…..

Judy: So none of the girls came over to see you Isaiah?
Mike: They’re all waiting at the souphouse
Isaiah: What?
Mike: Ok, this is the story I was told. You were going to be at Ivanhoe’s at 2 then you were going to the souphouse at 3. Therefore the girls are all waiting at the souphouse for you.
Isaiah: Rubbish. That’s all a bunch of rubbish. I’ll be back at graduation - they can see me then.
Me: HAHA!

…yet another reason I’m proud to say I lived on the deuce and associate myself with others that lived there.

I got my dvd burner in the mail today. I also installed it and started backing up video files. I currently have Futurama Season 1 on a disc and am burning Season 2. The seasons don’t take up a whole disc by themselves, but I can’t fit two seasons on there. It’ll be easier to find an episode anyways if they’re broken up by seasons. I already started downloading the first season of SG-1. More shall be on the way soon. This is some pretty cool stuff…..if you’re geeky like me.

Oh yeah, I decided today if I were on Iron Chef and the secret ingredient was black olives….I’d so be making nachos.

Cookies

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 13, 2005
in Cooking, Favorite things, Friends, Movies and PJ's
. 0 Comments

Made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies today. They aren’t too bad. Found out this morning at church they’re going to be making an offer on the building we use. That would be cool if we had our own building. I’d say this has been a pretty good weekend. We had PJ’s, Punch-Drunk Love, Clerks, cookies, poker, a couple other movies and several naps. It’s also looking like I’ll be able to see Isaiah tomorrow. That would rock.

My Love For You Is Like A Truck

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 12, 2005
in Favorite things, Lifting, Movies, Music, PJ's and sIIs
. 1 Comment

Now that’s gotta be a line from one of the more funnier songs out there. Last night we got some hot PJ’s action in the form of Timmy Bread and a 16″ pepperoni that Toll and I shared. It’s sort of our “usual”. The jukebox was acting a little weird as usual. Sometimes it just skips songs or plays random ones. It’s kinda weird. I think there were 16 of us this time. Toll called ahead so they turned on the extra oven just for us. I think they like us there.

Afterwards we were going to watch Magnolia but somebody “borrowed” it from Timmy - cause they obviously don’t steal stuff around here. So we had to go with an old classic instead. Still a good time. Afterwards we played some poker and made fun of some girls coming up on the Deuce. It still warms my heart to see a lot of those kinds of people still aren’t appreciated. All is not lost yet with SammyII.

Today is a day of laundry. I should probably vacuum a bit and maybe pick a few other things up. Got a good work out in this morning too. I saw Beebz there and got him to spot me on some decline. It’s crazy how fast you lose that top 20% of your strength if you’re not hitting it hard. I’ve been taking it easy and not really pushing myself for a couple weeks. Today I could only do sets of 4 with 250. I need to remedy that. Well, I think it’s about time to find something to eat.

Perks

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 10, 2005
in Favorite things, Free Stuff, Funny, Liz, Music, PJ's and Stuff
. 0 Comments

So I go to the concert in the union tonight which is supposed to cost $3. I walk up to the table and ask how much. One of the people taking money pseudo works for me and asks some guy how much for faculty and they only make me pay $1. That was awesome. I felt ‘hooked up’.

Tomorrow will be our glorious return to the mecca called PJ’s. It’s such a wonderful place. You’d think unicorns lived there and leprechauns played around the tables. Actually, there’s just tables…..but there’s the jukebox and the new menu item is Timmy Bread, which I will be consuming tomorrow. Last time was a bit interesting with our, seemingly under-aged, waitress complaining about having smokes stolen from her car and calling the cops. I was kinda wondering if she was even old enough to be legally buying cancer sticks in the first place. Oh well. All I know is I’m taking some quarters to queue up some Meatloaf in memory of Crickit, every single Tom Petty song and maybe some Motley Crew or Guns N Roses or .38 special or something. There not be anybody playing Savage Garden like that other time. Now that was awful.

Well, I think it’s about bedtime for this ‘hooked up’ staff person. Sorry I missed your presentation thing Liz.

I did it!

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 9, 2005
in Computers, Friends, Rambling and Work
. 1 Comment

Yeah, so I finally did what I’ve been going to do for years - and by years we’re talking like 10………can’t guess? I bought a burner for my computer. I got newegg’s deal of the day. It does ‘+’, ‘-’, dual layer….all the normal stuff. Now I’ll be able to free up a lot of space on my hard drive since I like to download TV shows.

They looked at my car today and apparently there was something loose. Oh I wish I would have known what to check for being loose. Seems like I’ve been talking to Sky a lot at work lately. She’s pretty cool. She’s always just been Mike’s gf, but she’s pretty cool too. I was thinking the other day about how a lot of times you know who somebody is but you don’t really know them. You may or may not have a good impression of them. For me, a lot of times, my impressions are largely due to the opinions of my friends. When people do things to my people, I take it personally. So when my buddy tells me random guy A was a jerk, I really feel that random guy A is a jerk. Sometimes it’s warranted, and sometimes it’s not, but that’s usually what happens. Anyways, I was thinking the other day about how I’ve had certain impressions of a lot of people…..then I actually meet them and talk to them…..and they’re pretty cool. I think it just comes down to everybody likes to be liked; everybody wants to have friends; everybody wants to impress (to one degree or another) other people with their skills . Even for those of us who say we don’t really care - we do care a little. So I guess my tip for today is try to give people a chance. You’ll probably be surprised once you get to know the real person.

more controversy?

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 8, 2005
in Computers, Lifting and Work
. 1 Comment

Nah, I think I’m done for this week….or am I? I guess only time will tell. Has anybody else been more tired lately? Well I have. I think it’s the weather playing tricks on me. It’s like these warm/cold spells are wrecking havoc on my body’s natural instincts just like they sometimes wreck havoc with nature. You know what I’m talking about. Like when birds fly back before winter is over or plants start blooming in January. To quote Payback - “It’s just mean man.”

So tip of the week:
Be careful when carrying computer cases around because they have sharp thing in them, on them, around them, etc. While switching out some computers today the tip of my right ring finger all of a sudden felt really funny. So I look and I got a pretty cool looking cut. It was deep enough that I could move each side of the cut independently of the other. Then it started bleeding. So my friend Mr. Ducktape came to the rescue. Duct tape is way better then a band-aid. It’s even water proof and won’t come off if you’re doing manual labor…providing you apply it correctly.

I’m taking my car back in tomorrow. That ol check engine light never really went off and that’s annoying. You’d think they’d hook it back up to the computer after fixing what they thought was broken to make sure it’s still not saying, “fix me! fix me!”. I feel like I can say these sort of things about the car business because I worked in it for a good portion of my not so long life. So I know a few of the ins and outs. Maybe it’s just the computer programmer in me saying, “check your work” - but shouldn’t everybody do that?

Explanation

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 8, 2005
in Funny, Story and Stuff
. 7 Comments

Hey everybody. I have a feeling my ‘rambling’ may have been a little bit misinterpreted from yesterday after Soulman’s comment today and feel like maybe I should explain some more. The one part I don’t like about the internet is you lose all intonation, delivery, facial expression, surrounding circumstance, etc. Basically, all those elements that distinguish letters on a page from a conversation.

So yes, I did say, “Aren’t white people awesome?”. Yes, this is random stereo-typing and I apologize. I am in no way saying all white people are to blame for everything or white people are bad, blah blah blah. There are plenty of non-white people out there who have committed atrocities too. There are also plenty of white, black, yellow, red, brown and whatever else frickin color you can think of people out there doing awesome things to better humanity, better each other, and making the world a better place. In writing what I did last night I just gave one example of how history is written by winners which means you usually only get one perspective. Even though I know there’s no way I always do this, I like to think I try to understand other people’s perspective on things. There have been many times when this has allowed me to understand a situation much better, make a new friend, or help to solve a ’situation’. I wouldn’t say I’m awesome at this sort of thing, but there’s been a few times where this has helped me out a bit. We must not forget our past because history is prone to repeat itself. TLoft wrote a bit more about this sorta thing so go check him out if you got some time.

On a sidenote, I got a card from my brother today in the mail. I had sent him this jacket for his birthday last month and he was sending me a “thanks” card. On the envelope he drew lots of lips, hearts, XOXOXO and wrote things like “¡Te Quiero!” and “¡Que Caliente!”. It was a snoopy card and the inside went something like this…..

Anal Vapor,
Thank you for the coat. It brings out the…(mexican)…inside of me. When I walk down the street, all the LOLITAS of Eldirdge whistle at me and say, “Suavamente besame.” This makes me confused, but then I think, what would Ceasar Chavez do. Thyen everything is okay.

Toodles,
Andrés de Eldridge

He also drew a couple pictures on the inside of a card. Nothing quite like a little brother to leave you laughing all the way back from the post office.

Not much happening

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 6, 2005
in Faith, Life, Movies and Rambling
. 2 Comments

Not much going on today. Spent some time washing dishes, watching some movies, munching on some tasty snacks….all in all a pretty good day. Lately I’ve been thinking about the other sides to things. It’s interesting how different things can be depending on whose perspective it’s coming from. Most Americans think Christopher Columbus is a cool guy. What did he seem like to the indigenous peoples that ol Chris discovered? Well some of them thought the europeans were white gods with their firearms and all. They may have “discovered” new land but didn’t these people know where they were before those 3 tiny boats arrived? These explorers also brought death and destruction in their wake as they brought bacterial and viral diseases that these people groups had never encountered before. Then when these people didn’t want to part with their gold and other natural resources, the ones that survived the disease outbreaks were killed for not converting to the Christian faith. Aren’t white people awesome? There’s just one example for ya. I’m sure you can come up with more on your own.

I signed the renewal on my lease yesterday. This is most definitely the longest I’ve lived in one place since high school. I also found out I’m getting a raise starting next fiscal year. That really rocks. It’s always amazing how God has taken care of me my whole life. The best thing is that I’m not stupid and know I can still live off of what I’ve been making. That means I can get my loan paid off faster and then look into saving some money. I’ve had a couple people really tell me I need to look into buying a house. As good of an idea that sounds, from a financial perspective, I really don’t have the funds to look into doing that. Plus, what would I do with a whole house? I don’t really have that much stuff and it’s just me. It’s not like I have a family. I’m not even married.

I saw the trailer for Unleashed and it looks awesome. Here’s some other movies I need to see:
Aviator
Ray
Constantine
House of Flying Daggers
Ong Bak
Million Dollar Baby
Motorcycle Diaries
Day Without A Mexican
Raging Bull
Get Shorty
Big Kahuna
…..and the list goes on and on. Oh woe to the movie enthusiasts. So many movies….so little time.

Lots o stuff

Published
by
Chalupa
on March 5, 2005
in Cooking, Favorite things, Friends, Funny, Liz, Movies, Story and sIIs
. 1 Comment

Many things have happened. My, now that’s one of those intros I’ve seen a lot. Anyways, yesterday there was a Dot’s night. The karaoke stuff was kinda annoying as usual. I didn’t even really know about it. Toll called me up so I went over and hung out with them a bit, well actually a long time afterward. Ended up getting to bed really late and then not getting up quite as early as I was planning.

A bunch of people came over today for lunch. I made a bunch of chalupa and then some sopapillas afterwards. We had neighbor Steve and Rachel, Tara and Dave, Elaine and Joe, Liz, and Mel. It was fun. Afterwards we went next door and tortured the cat. It was a lot of fun…..for us. We also watched Royal Tenenbaums and then went out and played some frizolf. That ended up being a little cold on the hands.

When we were in front of Wheeeeeeeeeangatz these two girls walked past us on the sidewalk and they were going on about this story in a very “valley-girl/cheerleader/i’m a dumb girl” sort of way. They got about 3ft past us and I said, “uh, is my face oily?” in a really high pitched whiney sorta voice. The only people that would really get this is Liz and Jamin and Robby but unfortunately they weren’t there. So they heard me and gave out a couple little gasps or something. Apparently Tara did a hair flip thing and other people in our party did some stuff too. So those two girls turn around and look at us……kept walking…….then turned around and said, “what’s so funny?”. I replied with, “what?” I so wanted to be a good man of SammyII and be Chalupa, but the whole, “I work here” kicked into auto pilot and I kept my mouth shut. That was probably for the best. Still made for a funny situation.

Well, tonight Michael and I are gonna go see Be Cool. I’m hoping it’s gonna be a rockin film.

OH - also watched the most recent episode of Scrubs which was directed by Zach Braff. There were a few cool scenes in there that reminded me of Garden State. It was kinda cool.