A thing I seen

Kerplow! says Adam West.

Gatsby says hello

Every damn day.

I eated a rat

Give me crepes

Crepes!

Recent picture

Not such a good one. Meh.

Sending it to UCLA to get my student ID.

Yesterday was pretty crazy

My friend Clif asked me and some of the AAR guys to go to the Red Bull Air Race in San Diego. I asked my old friend Kris to come, and we met up with another of Clif's friends in San Diego.

The race, was actually the qualifying session. It was pretty exciting, but I'm not sure I'd do it again. We left there, and headed up to the Stone Brewery in San Marcos. That was a lot of fun. The beer was a little too good though. I had two drinks and some amazing onion rings. I should have had a single drink.

Still our group split up at that point, and I drove Kris back to Mission Viejo. We got back at 7:45pm and wasted some time. Then put on pirate regalia and headed up to Heina's party in Irvine.

I had this brilliant plan to do all my drinking for the night in the first hour, so I would have plenty of time to sober up. I remember having about 6 shots, and I think the beer from the Stone brewery was still in my system.

I must have had more to drink.

Anyhow, net result, I made a fool of myself and only remember perhaps half of the night. I still had a decent time, but I didn't use good sense.

Oh well, live and learn. I've never even approached my limit, with regard to alcohol. I always have been very cautious. Now I found it, and went way beyond it.

Finally, him Mom, don't worry. This is not the start of a trend.

Anyhow, some of the people from the party have chatted with me, so apparently I did nothing to make myself a pariah.

Sartorial wisdom

These are English made Crockett and Jones dress boots.

Men should buy nice dress shoes.

99% of dress shoes are made with correct grain leather, which means it is crappy leather that is sanded down and then printed with a grain. Painted essentially.

The uppers are glued to the soles.

Good dress shoes are made with full grain leather. When they get scratched, they can be polished back into shape much better than cheap leather.

When the soles wear down, they can be resoled.

High quality mens shoes can last a lifetime.

Yes, it is calf skin, and evil and all. What is worse though, killing one calf and wearing his ass for decades, or killing a new cow every season because your shitty shoes fell apart?

For a while, a suit+chucks was cool. Then Ben Stein did it. Back to leather for me.

Sadness

Starbucks finally misspelled my name.

Who is it?

Finally, proof that I have a brain.

I knew it, and I suppose the fact that I knew it is evidence enough.

In the profile view, my nose is smashed down a bit. My head and nose were too large for the machine.

Leaving the gym

The camera is not out of focus, I was actually blurry.

"The art we remember is the art that torments us."

Hand wraps

I do a sort of Thai style wrap.
Start with a nice stack of folded wrap perhaps 8 layers thick and set it on top of your knuckles. Then go around the stack and under your palm. This is the trickiest part, you want it tight but tightening it moves the stack off your knuckles.

Then down around your wrist a couple times, then go up over the top and around your ring finger. Come back down the opposite side of your wrist. Then go up over the top between your index and middle, then back down over the top around the opposite side of your wrist.

Go around your wrist a couple times, then up around the knuckles once.

Back to the wrist, down well past the joint, then back to the joint and wrap until you secure the velcro.

I'm sure none of that made sense, but it helped fix it in my mind.

Also, sometimes I go around the middle finger too.

You are teh lose.

Some people can't live without spell check.

This is what they were protesting

And it was the Irvine Barclay. Segerstrom is over by SCP. Dunno how I mixed them up.

(Yes I probably need to rotate the image. )

Gatsby's conundrum

The dog found one Budweiser can, and after walking about ten feet, he dropped it and dragged me to another one ten feet further.

After picking that one up, he walked back to the original can, dropped the one in his mouth, and picked it up again.

He went through a couple iterations of this before settling on one of the cans. In the end, I think he made the right decision.

Protest at Segerstrom Hall

I don't know what was going on inside tonight, but outside there were about 30 people hatin' China.
About 3 news crews too.

I'm tired

Today feels like it has a bunch of extra hours.

Breakfast

Mmmm...

My cousin

My eldest cousin recently died of bladder cancer at the age of 48. He left behind two daughters.

He was ill for some time, knew he had a terminal prognosis.

I'm the youngest of all my cousins. In fact I have second cousins who are nearly my age, and one of them is married.

Anyhow, he spent the last year of his life trying to put things in order so that the void he left would not be filled with chaos.

I didn't know him well, but I think he was a bright, kind, and flawed man.

His main hobby in his later years was turning burls of wood into bowls and things like that. They are really beautiful to me. They display careful workmanship and organic chaotic beauty. I understand that his ashes are contained in an urn he made.

His daughter gave one of them to my father. It is pictured here.

New building by the science library at UCI

So I was a bit bored today, and I noticed the new building next to the science library had opened during spring break.

Anyone who enjoys a little urban exploration knows that brand new buildings are some of the best places to explore. Most of the construction crew is gone, and the fences around the site are gone. However the new tenants haven't moved in. They don't have their keys, and the construction workers generally leave everything unlocked.

So I decided to look around. There were some labs that were uninhabited, except for some expensive looking equipment. The real score was the fact that roof was unlocked! I've never encountered an unlocked roof at UCI, and that is not for lack of trying. There are some roofs you can climb up on to. However due to some suicides, they are careful to lock the roof doors all the time.

Of course, I took pictures. Blogger goes a little nutso when I upload multiple pictures, but we'll give it a shot.

Here's the rest of the photos.

new building