Well.

Friday night (or Saturday morning, whatever), laying on my bed, typing away on my new laptop. Woo! Kimiko is busy setting up a new modblog on my desktop system, so I’m sitting happily on my wireless connection with my notebook. Mmm, notebook. It’s nice to surf during boring lectures - I stay awake that way, and I seem to glean just as much from the prattle rising from the front.

Hmm. I try to commit certain daily activities and occurrences to memory, but I can never recall them once I sit down and try to write on this damn blog. Maybe I’ll just try for today.

I got my hair cut today after roughly four months. Saw the doctor about some long-term health problems and I’m very excited that he’s decided to refer me to a specialist in La Jolla that is covered by my insurance. Maybe I can eventually work out these digestive tract problems. After that I met up with my VIS70 group and we interviewed a graduate student in the Social Sciences department for our documentary on Asian stereotypes in the US and at UCSD. She had a lot of awesome insight and basically set all our minds at ease about the disaster that our film had been up to that point. I worked for 2 hours, then Kip picked me up and we went by the University Annex Gallery to see the art collection our VIS 1 class had amassed in the cramped space. Our cool costumes were partially obscured by other shit, so we basically stomped around and traded bitter cracks on the rest of the crap that was there. We left after only 15 minutes and came home to Mario Kart and snacks. Far better than wading around waist-deep in the worst shit that art classes have to offer. Ever seen a crappy collage made from printed-out AIM away messages? Yeah, be thankful you haven’t. After the art show I was supposed to join my documentary group to do some editing, but they finished ahead of schedule and I went out with Kimiko and Kip instead. We got food at this awesome little Italian deli thing where the waitress/frumpy woman behind the counter jokingly hassled us and threatened to not give me my food for messing up the salt shaker. It was a pretty good chicken parmesan sandwich; I was pleasantly surprised that the cheese didn’t set my stomach off. I plan on visiting the deli again sometime soon.

Next week is finals week, and although I only have one exam, on Thursday, I do have crappy busy work to attend to this weekend. Bummer. That and laundry. Curse you, gods of all that requires laundering!

Out.

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated; life has been busy as all hell.

Despite being busier than I’ve ever been in my life, I’m also perfectly content and more than unnervingly happy. Kimiko gets most of the credit for this, but a small part is that things with the MQ have been going really well. We’ve got an awesome staff and a bunch of really cool newcomers applied for editorial positions.

I purchased a Sony Vaio Z1 this morning. I’m incredibly excited. I can’t wait to be a laptop dork, totally connected all over campus. I’m hoping my productivity will increase since most of my work now is concerned with writing and email coordination, both of which will be helped by being able to type anywhere on campus with an internet connection thanks to UCSD thorough wireless LAN coverage and the built-in 802.11b card in the my notebook. That was a run on sentence. My laptop should ship by Friday, and with the free overnight shipping I got with it, it should be in my sweaty little hands quite soon.

I’ve been eating out a lot recently, and it’s nice. Kimiko’s company makes it doubly nice, plus she’s introducing me to all the cool, hardcore-Asian eateries on Convoy Street. Sweet.

I finished my work with the Mellon Foundation over the weekend, so I’m back to only working two jobs at once. Yes, being editor of the MQ counts as a job—I get paid. Ha. Anyway, I’m hoping now that I can have my Fridays and weekends back. What an exciting thought. Maybe I can get some rest and relaxation now. Haha, not a chance.

I need a flask.

Shit.

Life is hectic. I’ve been meaning to update Duolab for some time now, but things keep getting in the way and keeping me from blogger. I’ve got about 15 minutes in which to make a post right now, so bear with me as a I try to recap things.

This past weekend was MQ production. Things went swimmingly, and we churned out an awesome paper. Sunday morning Kimiko woke me up at 9am (or so I remember, it might have been closer to noon), informing me that her family was being evacuated. I should explain. Both my roommates, Kip and Troy, plus my girlfriend, Kimiko, are all from Scripps Ranch. Scripps Ranch is a large community in the North half of San Diego County, and it’s rather odd that three people so close to me all grew up there. Unfortuneately, Scripps Ranch (SR from now on) was one of the areas hit hardest by the fires that swept San Diego in the past 4 days. Kip and Kimiko’s houses were lucky and escaped the blaze; Troy’s family was not as fortuneate—their house, along with all their posessions, burned to the ground.

Of course, things have been stressful. As of now, however, the fires no longer threaten us and Troy’s family has already signed a one-year lease on a condo to live in while they rebuild their house. Things seem almost normal already, and I feel lucky for that. My midterm in Music was delayed until next Tuesday, which was good, and I’m currently begging my Vis TA for an extension on a paper that is due today. I’ve been much too busy over the past 4 days for schoolwork, and so far most of my superiors (school and work combined) have been very understanding. Geisel Library was closed (along with the entire UCSD campus) Monday through Wednesday, so I’m going to miss my deadline for QCing slide scans for the Mellon Foundation. I just emailed my boss over in New York to explain the situation to her, I imagine she’ll be very nice about it.

Shit, now I have to run to class. I’ll post more details on the fire later. The essentials are this, however: Everyone is safe and sound here in San Diego. Schoolwork deadlines have been extended and we’re all working to get back into the swing of things after the fires disrupted life for most of this week.

Holy shit. My life is entirely too busy right now. It was a struggle to find 15 minutes in which to make a quick post, but here I am.

The past weekend was great. I’m struggling to recall the exact timeline, but Friday night was a quaint house party at Joe Simonis’ new pad (replete with half-hearted pirate theme), where I met up with Marianne, Reid, Tim and more. I slept well that night. I had to wake up early and go to work though, and let me tell you—working in a cubicle on a Saturday sucks. A lot. I didn’t dwell on it though, since Fonty and I later went to Colin’s birthday party. Since we took precautious beforehand, the party was awesome in a cliche kinda way. Lots of weird stuff happened, so we’ve got plenty of stories to tell now. It was too bad Kimiko was in LA visiting her step-brother at the time, but I survived (somehow). After she got back on Sunday, we went out to dinner and stopped by the cliffs above Black’s Beach to catch the tail end of an amazing sunset. San Diego is awesome.

This week has been insanely busy and I’ve yet to make any real progress on my work with the Mellon Foundation. Goddamnit. Additionally, this weekend is MQ production, so I’m going to be tired and grumpy and overworked straight through until Sunday. Next week will undoubtedly be completely packed as well, since I have to finish up my first film project, write nearly a dozen pages worth of essays and cinema responses, all while working in Geisel until midnight every night to try and squeak in under my Oct. 31st deadline for my QC work.

Halloween, though, should be epic. More details on that later.

Mondays always get a bad rap; people always hate on Mondays. I believe, however, that Mondays aren’t that bad. Mondays are cool. See now, Tuesdays are shit.

This morning (Tuesday morning, to be precise), I was supposed to wake up at 9am. Instead, I woke up at 2pm. I overslept by five hours. Missed work, missed a class, hated myself all day. To try and escape from the quicksand that is my workload at the library, I went in and worked from 9pm to 11:45pm. Working in a cubicle until nearly midnight sucks. Period.

Also, our URL (www.duolab.net) did not work for most of Tuesday. We’re not sure why, but we apologize all the same.