yoshi and her wet tail

last night while i was walking into the bedroom, i happened to notice that yoshi hasn't been moving around for the past several days. when i opened up the lid of where she was positioned, this horrific smell drifted into my nostrils. i was like, damn that's some nasty ass shit (literally).

upon closer inspection, we discovered that she has wet tail. that's not good. basically, yoshi has a severe bouts of diarrhea. it's a pretty serious condition for a hamster. deidra and i were trying to get her some meds, but both petsmart and petco were close. we tried a 24-hour vet, but there was a crazy wait of about 4 hours to see a tech.

we came back home and deidra came up with a great idea of giving her some fruits and vegetables. basically, hamsters don't die because of wet tail, they die because they get dehydrated from wet tail.

luckily, yoshi took some apple bits that i gave to her. and we went to bed hoping that she'll make it through the night.

this morning, i woke up at 9 and went down to petsmart and got some medicine for her. gave it to her in an eye dropper. moved her to the big spinning wheel-cage so she won't get further contamination from the glob of diarrhea that's sitting in her normal cage.

i fed her some water with the eye dropper, but she would only take a little bit of it. she's now resting on some kleenex and has some lettuce leafs next to her. we'll see how well she does tonight. she's pretty fucking resilent for a hamster.

the picture above is of yoshi in her better days.

month-a-versary

today marks the one month-a-versary of my marriage to baby dee. happy month-a-versary, baby!

the new smiths

a couple of days ago, i was bitching how bad the american music scene has been the last, oh god... decade. anyway, i was surfing the web today and found this. obviously, they are not an american band since they are actually pretty good.

if you click on the music link, there are two songs available for your listening pleasure. i'm listening to "once upon a time" and it's pretty good. here are the lyrics.

Once upon a time you would travel
A hundred miles with a smile
Just to be by my side
Now you would not make
The journey across a room

And where we once watched sunsets
We now watch television in silence

Of all the things that I will miss
Oh, your shy laugh, your tender kiss
The thing that I will miss the most
Is you holding my hand

Although parting is such sour sorrow
I agree that we’ll be
Happier apart
For you no longer smile at me
As once upon a time you did

Where we gazed at the Milky Way
We now gaze at the floor in silence

Of all the things that I will miss
Oh, your shy laugh, your tender kiss
The thing that I will miss the most
Is you holding my hand

Wherever you go
Take my love with you

apparently, they are dubbed the new smiths. that's not such a bad thing.

now i'm listening to the second song, "a fearless heart." it's pretty mellow. i like it. here are the lyrics.

When we first met it felt like spring
After months of winter weather
I hoped our blossoming romance
Would brighten up my life forever

But faint heart never won fair lady
Or indeed fair gentleman
At the very first sign of trouble
You turned upon your heels and ran

It takes great strength and bravery
To show vulnerability
It takes a fearless heart indeed
Truly to fall in love

Just like the giant guarding his garden
You built a wall around your heart
A wall impossible to scale
Serving only to keep us apart

And now we are strangers again
I will no more gaze into your eyes
As affection so sorely neglected
Rests its weary head and dies

It takes great strength and bravery
To show vulnerability
It takes a fearless heart indeed
Truly to fall in love

all lyrics are copyrighted by the boyfriends, 2004.

vegas baby, VEGAS!

i'm still stuck on the initial phase of working on my thank you letters. (which basically means that i'm not working on it at all). deidra is upset at me for not doing anything towards completing this task. but honestly, it's just not something i look forward to doing since it's... well... permanent. i think it's my penmanship that's really deterring me from starting on it.

for some reason, i feel like blogging. i haven't been this productive with blogging since hk2004.

i was reading some of my old postings and i figured i should talk about my bachelor party/trip to vegas back in march.

let's see...

i think we left friday night. don't quote me on it, but that would make sense. so i was going to ride up with carlin and grace. i got to carlin's house around 7ish but he was out with grace getting some groceries (read: liquor). as we were getting ready to leave, i remembered that i didn't have much cash on me, so i asked carlin to stop at the atm so i could take some money out.

i didn't know this at the time, but apparently, neither he nor grace ate dinner yet. so they decided to stop by a nearby mcdonalds. they asked me if i wanted to eat, but since i had a late and filling lunch, i declined. i told them i'll just wait outside for them because i thought that they were going to get it to go. well, i was wrong. after 10 minutes, i was like, damn it's sure taking them a long time to get food. so i looked into the restaurant and see them sitting at one of the tables eating.

great.

i didn't want to disturbed them so i decided to make a few calls and finally they were done. when i thought them what i had originally thought they were going to do, we all had a nice laugh about it.

after getting on the freeway for 40 minutes, i needed to go pee. i thought i could hold it, but let's not kid ourselves... it's a freaking 4 hour drive. so i politely asked carlin, if he'd mind getting off the freeway so i can have a little restroom break. sure he said and i guess he didn't want me to have an accident in his car.

so having done that, the rest of the drive up was pretty uneventful. grace and carlin talked between themselves while i just basically listened to the music and drifted in and out of sleep. as we drove closer to vegas, passing those casinos in the outskirt of the city, i began to get more excited since i haven't been to vegas in so long.

vegas baby!

once we checked into our rooms at the luxor (we were basically the first group to arrive), my parents called. i forwarded my house phone to my mobile. so i spent about 40 minutes talking to them. after the call, i went next door to the other room where a mini party was taking place. during my absence, mark, his sister, cassie, and her boyfriend (now fiance), john were there. it was also mark's birthday, that's why cassie and john were joining us in vegas.

so when i walked in, grace was right in my face asking me what i would like to drink. whatever, i replied. so the drinking began. note: i haven't eaten anything since dinner. so after about two drinks, i was pretty buzzed. we decided to head downstairs so some of the gambler-holics could get their fix. i recall bitching about wanting to get some fucking food.

just as some of us were getting into the casino from the rooms, scott walked by. "get a drink and meet us down here." like scott needed prompting right? hahaha. then as my peeps were just settling into their seats at the bj tables, another group of people arrived. if my memory serves me correctly, it was jay, tony, christine, and rachel. i don't think i've ever met rachel, but she's a friend of grace's.

so after a few more drinks, i was like fuck this shit, i'm going to get some food. so a bunch of us went over to the sherwood cafe in excalibur. good stuff. open-faced turkey sandwich. hmm... what happened next. i think people continued to gamble, and i was basically watching some of them play while getting drinks. finally at like 5 in the morning, i headed back to the room. mark was already in bed cuz he was scheduled to play golf with cassie and john in the morning. tony and i kept him awake for another hour or so.

at around 7:30am, tony's mobile rang and it was so fucking annoying because he and i have nearly the same ringtone. so i thought it was my phone, but in actuality, it wasn't. *sigh* so after awhile, i decided to get up. this part is a bit foggy, but i think i went down into the casino then came back up. then i don't know what happened, but carlin, tony, scott and i went and had breakfast/lunch at a japanese restaurant at the luxor. carlin was a little peeved at grace for running off to have breakfast with jay, christine, and rachel.

after, lunch, we saw kathy and david. some of us went back up to the room to rest up. later in the day, scott wanted to go out to the pool, so that's what we did. sometime between lunch and the pool, gordon and amy met up with us. i know this because they joined up with us pool side. then sometime during our sunbathing time there, rob, jenny, eddie, and reyna arrived.

did i mention that we were drinking?

after some time at the pool, me and a couple of the people decided to head back up to the room. i decided to do some school work while i think most people were out gambling or doing whatever they were doing.

close to dinner time, i discovered that carlin and grace made green t-shirts for us to wear at dinner. it was really a neat surprise. i was given one that read "fran," while everyone else had ones that read "fran choose marriage over me." witty. so with almost everyone (let's not get into why i said, almost everyone) wearing the t-shirts, we headed to dinner at one of emeril's restaurant at mandalay bay, the name escapes me right now. on the way to the restaurant, i think grace sold a t-shirt for $1.50. which means some random stranger has a shirt referenced to me. sweet!

after dinner, cassie pulled mark and i aside and said that she wanted to get us the three wisemen at one of the casino bars. sure, why not. it's not like i haven't been drinking all day anyway. oh, it's also good to mention that john fell off the wagon for my bachelor's party. more reasons to drink. while most of the people filed out to the suites at luxor, cassie, mark and i headed to a bar.

what is the three wisemen, you ask? according to cassie, it was something like a shot of jack daniels, a shot of tequila, and a shot of 151. but then according to this, it's a shot of jd, a shot of tequila, and a shot of jim beam. whatever the case maybe, i had three or four shots of tequila there.

after a while, on our way back to the suites, we passed by this cigar shop. we got some cigars. hung out at a lounge at the luxor, lit up some cigars and chatted. this was basically the calm before the storm, if you get my drift.

it must have been like an hour or an hour and a half before we made it back up to the suite. as i stepped into the room, grace was there (BAM!) with drink in toll. a short while later, several people and i were in one of the bathrooms holding a joint chief of staff meeting courtesy of eddie. i like to note also that by this time, cecil and char have joined up with us (cecil had to unfortunately work on saturday).

i don't know what the fuck is up with eddie's... well stuff, but it was pretty fucking potent. i stepped out of the bathroom and was already feeling pretty nice and happy. extremely happy. a while later, with the state of the country at such a critical stage, we had to hold another joint chief of staff meeting.

i think this was the most memorable part of the bachelor's party for me. we had a good number of people in the bathroom with us for the second meeting. everything was going well until the second round, when i started to freak out. i swear i couldn't breathe because it was so fucking warm in there with the smoke and level of body heat.

all i remember was saying that i needed to step outside for a second, all the meanwhile, laughing like a maniac. i heard people saying, "no way man, this is for you!" at this point, i remember laughing uncontrollably, tears streaming out of my eyes, making breathing even harder. i tried to head towards the door, but it felt like tens of thousands of "tenticles" were holding me back. i don't know what happened next, but i think i heard gordon saying, "damn, i think we should let him go." and then i heard everyone agreeing to this, so i popped out of the bathroom.

AIR. i can breathe again.

next thing i knew i was down to my boxers in the jacuzzi with a bunch of my girlfriends. pictures were taken. i can't seem to remember what happened at this point really. after some time, i decided i wasn't feeling too well, mainly from the stress of being in the joint chief of staff meetings. so i climbed out of the tub and headed towards one of the beds.

i'm not sure how long i was lying there, but all of a sudden, it was time for me to suffer the consequences. so with my head in the toilet, i let it all go.

MUCH BETTER!

round two. so after puking up a storm, i got out of the bathroom, at which point, amy, reyna and i headed downstairs and amy bought us a shot each of tequila. yum. we went back up to the room and somehow, i got rob and reyna to join me in taking a walk through the casino. feeling a bit hungry, since my previous dinner was somewhere in the sewer system of the luxor, i, along with a bunch of people went and grabbed some food from a luxor cafe.

after that, i went back up to the suite with rob, and we went to bed. i remember grace passing out on one of the sofas. tony and jenny were already asleep. in the adjoining suite, gordon & amy were sleeping (more like passed out) on one of the beds, char was on the roll-away, and eddie and cecil were on the other bed. when we walked in, it was like WWIII in the room. apparently, eddie has sleep anemia. good lord, i have no idea how cecil was able to even sleep next to eddie.

sometime during the night, reyna got in between tony and i on the king-sized bed.

oh, i didn't sleep very well that night either. i kept waking up and drifting back to sleep. i was extremely tired.

the next morning, when everyone was up, we rounded up all the alcohol and cleared out of the suites and returned to our normal rooms. since it was sunday, a number of us (me excluded) had to start heading back to la. i was feeling pretty rubbish at this point. we all went to breakfast that morning. mark was playing golf with cassie and john again (yeah, tell me about it. it's not that he didn't chill with us - though it would have been nice, but how much golf can one play over a weekend?).

i'm not really sure what i did that day... i think i mostly veggied out that day in the room. some people left, some people went to the pool, and some people gambled. an incident occurred that i guess should be left unsaid, but i like to point it out for prosterity sake. it had to do with scallops, car ride back, and some overall rudiness that's apparently wasn't acceptable for many of us.

that night, a group of us (rob, eddie, jay, jenny, cecil, char, and i) decided to go to sir galahad's at the excalibur for dinner. uuuurghh.... prime rib... forbidden prime rib. at dinner, i was debating rather to leave early with rob, jay, and jenny because i was pretty much all partied out at that point. i hadn't had a good night's rest for several days and all i wanted to do was to go home and sleep on my comfortable bed. however, i knew that cecil and char decided to stay sunday night to hang out with me (originally, i was going to stay til monday).

carlin, grace, gordon and amy went to a show.

after the hearty meal at sir galahad's, we went back into the room. without a clear plan of action for the state from the meetings the night before, we decided to hold another joint chief of staff meeting. it was then that i decided that i wanted to go home. so i packed up my stuff and after apologizing and saying goodbye to both cecil and char (and eddie of course), i headed off with rob and them to the car.

here's the second most memorable thing that happened in vegas for me. was we were passing the two giant camels at the luxor, i started being incredibly sensitive to the cricket noises within the casino. it was like i had my fucking spidey-sense working in overdrive. everything i heard was fucking in super THX. george lucas had nothing on this. on top of the cricket noises, i heard jenny and rob talking about me.

i couldn't stop smiling. i felt like the joker because while i was trying hard not to crack up out loud, i had a big, fat smile on my face.

dude, chill. you've got this.

just relax. no one thinks that you're weird because you have that smile on your face.

dude seriously, you need to relax. you're almost out of the casino. you can totally crack up outside in the parking lot.

just a little more. okay, control yourself. that's it.

fuck, that cricket noise is really loud. should i ask them if they can hear it too? yeah, i should.

i'm not weird, am i?

"hey guys, can you hear the damn cricket noise?"

*someone says something*

why aren't they answering me?

dude, maybe it's just me.

oh god, this is too funny. damn, are people staring at me? fucking eddie.

so we finally get to rob's car. once i was in the car, i was out. i remember waking up once when we made a stop for gas. as we were pulling out of the gas station, jenny (riding shotgun) and rob were taking about the food network. something about jaime oliver and rob couldn't think of the other show that he was on. oliver's twist... wait, no, that's the one he knows. what was it... come on, i fucking watch that shit friday nights at 1am. oh, yeah, the naked chef. that's right, the naked chef.

a minute later... "THE NAKED CHEF!"

out like a light again.

next thing i knew, we were at carlin's. since i had my car there and since rob and jay live out in the westside, i told jenny that i could totally drive her home. let's just say, driving while sleepy and high isn't the greatest thing to do. luckily it was really late at night (or if you so incline, really early in the morning) so not a lot of cars were out and about. i remember driving down this street, which i have driven on enough times to be familiar with it, and for some reason, i was mainly paying attention to the white line right next to the curb. all of a sudden the line turned into an intersecting street, and since my brain wasn't up to processing all that information that quickly, i started veering into the intersecting street.

luckily for me at the last moment, i remembered that the street went straight, not right. so in the nick of time, i recovered. after half a block, i looked at jenny and said, "did i almost turn into that street?" she was like, "uh-huh..." excellent.

in the end, we both made it safely home and deidra was surprised to see me. i had a wonderful night's rest, but i woke up feeling like shit still. it took me a couple of days to recuperate from such a weary, but excellent trip.

i had such a blast and it was because i had a great bunch of friends who went all out for me. from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys!

ps: i forgot to mention that using yummy bears to make jello shots is definitely not such a good idea.

ms. add at it again

oh, i forgot to post this early...

so my wacky friend sandhya wrote this blog. i thought the first line of it was pretty fucking hilarious. behind every retard is an evil sister...

she's very pc, isn't she?

snacky, snacky

sorry about the picture quality. it's taken from a cell phone. anyway, this is what i was talking about, fried grunions. it was definitely good eats.

superfly

last night, or more exactly, earlier this morning, a bunch of us (our hosts, amy & gordon, scott, carlin, char, jenny, melva, dan, and myself) went grunion hunting off of hermosa beach. i've lived in la for over 20 years and have never been running with the grunions before. needless to say, i was pretty stoked.

by stoked, i meant screaming like a little girl... but more on that later.

jenny and i decided to carpool to gordon & amy's out in hermosa beach. after getting there, the rest of the group were playing this boardgame called settlers of katan, which basically is a game where you're trying to obtain as many points as you can by building cities, settlements, and roads by accruing various raw materials. it looked to be a very interesting game.

an hour later, we were ready to head off to the beach (amy & gordon's home is like a 10-minute walk to the beach) to get the featured guests of our mid-morning snack. so with bucket and flashlights in hand, we took a leisurely stroll to the beach.

there was definitely excitement in the air, at least for me.

we immediately saw the tiny, silver, eel-like fish by the time we got down to the ocean. it was interesting. i never realized how fast they were. it was like they were practically flying on sand, heading back out into the ocean. it is exactly this behavior that freaked me out.

yes, it took me about 10 minutes to catch my first one and actually put it into the bucket. everytime i tried to pick one up, it would squirm away from me. this didn't really sit well with me. and yes, i screamed like a little girl. it's just so... unnatural (but probably not so for the grunions).

but i think in the end, i caught about 5 or 6 of them. and once you have them in your hands, they would flip and flop trying to get free. it was actually pretty interesting. thank god, the dont' have teeth. that would have been disastrous.

if i was a casual observer and ran across the bunch of us at the beach last night, i would have probably died laughing. between me screaming like a little girl and other people yelling for the bucket ("the bucket! where's the bucket! i need the fucking bucket!), it was a crazy mess.

anyway, after about 30 minutes of folicking and screaming at the beach, we decided that we had enough grunions for a nice snack. we headed back to gordon & amy's. along the way, scott trespassed into a garden, grabbed a watering pot, filled it with water to wash off the sand on his and carlin's feet.

grunions don't really survive long out of the ocean. midway to gordon & amy's, a number of them went bellied-up. we even had them in ocean water, but to no avail.

when we got back to the apartment, scott had to leave because he was going to volunteer putting roofs on houses out in san bernandino in the morning. gordon, amy, and jenny dealt with cleaning, gutting and cooking the fish while the rest of us played poker (points). of course, i made a killing when there's no money involved.

at around 2:30, the chefs were done with the cooking. amy fried up the fish with some flour, cornmill, salt, and paprika. it was delicious. who knew these little tiny things were so damn good.
after we finished eating, we helped clear the table and since it was getting to be about 3:30am, we headed home. it was a rather interesting night so say the least.

i got home at about 4:30am. took a shower and was in the middle of putting some clothes on when i heard a noise by the front door of our apartment. at first, i thought it was a skunk trying to get into the cat food. so being the stupid ass that i am, i began to stomp and bang on the floor and the front door.

if you don't know why that was stupid, let me elaborate. 1. it's a freaking skunk in my porch. scaring it would only lead to one thing. and if you don't know what that is, you're stupid. 2. i woke up deidra at 4:45am. for someone who takes their sleep seriously, that's not a good thing. of course, once she found out what was happening, she was pretty understanding.


so i went into the computer room, turned on the porch light, and peered out the window to see a freaking huge raccoon staring back at me. the way it was looking at me (without any sense of fear, just basic curiosity), it reminded me of, "ahhh, fresh meat." (me being the fresh meat).

keeping in mind, i'm still naked (yeah, i know... shudder at the thought), i immediately got a bat, and tried to scare it away. nope, nothing. the fucker had no fear. so for about a minute, it was just me waving the bat at it behind my screen door, and it running back two or three feet and then returning to where the food was.

i then decided to throw the bat at it. well, let's just say it didn't work out quite well. now i have no bat, a bemused raccoon, and a naked me. the cool thing is that it was trying to drag the plastic container into the garden and trying to twist off the top to get into the food. it would have been really fucking interesting if i didn't give a shit about the cat food.

by this time, deidra was out of bed, carrying zofvig (one of the cats that also has no fear... well except for me), and was wondering why i woke her ass up. i was like, dude, there's a big fucking raccoon trying to get the damn cat food. then she blames me for not bringing in the food. yeah, okay.

i screamed at her to bring me the tennis racquet, which was basically our last line of defense. i must have been playing the xbox too much because the next thing i knew, i was running outside, naked, swinging my tennis racquet at the damn raccoon. finally, it ran away and i quickly snatched up the plastic container and the bat. as i was running back towards the apartment, deidra had closed the door on me. nice.

so yeah, if you were at my place at 5am this morning, you would have gotten a nice view of me... all of me.

technology is a bitch

okay, so i updated my hk2004 blog (link to the right) with pictures and captions. it was such a pain to do all of them at once. see, technology is great, but it's also a bitch.

i also got a new template for this blog so that people can write down their comments.

and i can have pictures here too. yay.

school things

oh, one more thing before i go.

i got some pretty decent grades last semester. granted, i only took two classes, but still. two A's. nice.

for one of my classes, management in higher education, i had to do a group oral presentation, which i was freaked out about since most of the people in the class were second years.

anyway, on the day of the presentation, i got there somewhat early and my professor was waiting outside the classroom because the previous class wasn't out yet. so i was talking to her, telling her how nervous i was because i'm not used to doing presentations in front of a group of people. she was really nice about it and told me not to worry and that i'll do fine.

luckily for me, the two other members of my group took more time for their section than anticipated. when it was almost about time for me to do my section, the professor told me that we had five more minutes for our presentation. so i went on autopilot and basically did my section without reading straight from my notes.

one of the things i learned this semester is that when doing a presentation, it is important to not read from your notes verbatim. according to the same professor, it is essential that you keep your powerpoint slides short and precise. they are basically bulletpoints to remind you of what you are going to say. and do not read from your notes, it completely tunes out the audience.

i remember back in high school, i found a mistake in one of my history textbooks (i know, can you believe this shit?) and went up to the teacher, mr. grillo, to let him know. i thought i was going to get a "wow, good work" from him. but instead, he told me to do an oral presentation on the topic.

that's not even the worse part. on the day when i had to do the presentation -- and mind you, it was just me doing a presentation, no one in class had to do it, so it was a bit awkward, he told me to do it from memory. yeah, like i could do that. hahaha. so i ended up just reading it from my paper. in hindsight, i wished i did it by memory. but then again, he could have told me earlier.

anyway, getting back to my original point, i have to say that fear is a great motivator. i couldn't even remember what happened. it's a good thing that i went over what i was going to say numerous times beforehand and pretty much had it memorized.

four A's and one A- this year. i think next year will be very challenging, especially with ethnography (which everyone whose has taken it says is a fucking bitch).

yay!

anyone figured out the lyrics yet?

single no more

yes, i know. many of you are disappointed. but let me reassure you that there are many available bachelors out there. granted, none who are as wonderful as yours truly. (i still need to inflate my ego every once in awhile.)

for those living in a cave, i got married almost a month ago.

for those incline to ask me how's married life treating me... well, it's swell. i've been living with deidra for over a year before, so on the domestic front, it's pretty normal. but one thing i've discovered, well, actually i didn't really think about it until deidra mentioned it, is that our relationship has strengthened enormously since we slipped the rings on each others' fingers.

i heard dinner went well. you liked chris's jacket. he reminded you of johnny. before he went electronic.

if anyone know where this bit of lyrics is from without looking it up on the internet... i'll be your best friend. and if anyone knows what it is about... i'll be your best friend with cherry and nuts on top.

we had our wedding ceremony in santa barbara and had the reception at the spiritland bistro, which is an organic restaurant located several blocks from the church.

oh, i forgot to mention beforehand that doing your own wedding is a fucking bitch. if you have the cash, spend it on a wedding coordinator. it's well worth the money. let me put it this way: if i had a choice between dealing with my wedding and getting anally raped by a catholic priest... well it's a tough choice, but at least with being molested by a priest, you can sue and make millions. (yes, i know. that was very wrong.)

so being that the restaurant was a bit small, we could only invite less than 50 guests. luckily for me, i was able to invite most of my close friends, but then they couldn't really bring dates, which wasn't too bad for most of them since many of my friends are single.

hmm... i'm really getting ahead of myself here. let's start from the beginning.

thursday, may 26. woke up early to clean the house and my car. i hate cleaning the house, so that was a bitch. and not to mention that my car was pretty messy. after that we had to pick up her brother and father (along with his new family) from the airport. here's what i don't get. stephen, deidra's brother, and her father, richard, both live in florida... about 40 minutes away from each other. yet, they had the brilliant plan of flying out at different times. one during the day and the other one at night. so we ended up going to the airport twice to pick them up.

of course, some dumbass airport cop pulled me over because i lost my car registration sticker (but i have my registration paper on my rear windshield). luckily for me, he just gave me a warning, but it's not like i didn't have my car registered. "you should really get a new sticker because from far away, we can not tell if that's just a kleenex or not on your rear windshield." fuck you.

when we got to the airport, we discovered that stephen's flight was delayed for two hours. deidra and i ended having lunch at sizzler in culver city. then we went and picked up her brother. i've never met him, but did talk to him on the phone several times. he seems like a really nice guy. it was really funny, the first thing he wanted to do was go to jack in the box. let me say that stephen isn't a skinny guy. and his wife has him on this no fast food diet at home. so as you can guess, he wanted what he can't have, and that's a nice, big, juicy burger.

so after settling in at our apartment, he and deidra went to jack in the box, while i get the pleasure of doing the laundry. yes, it's was great fun. after doing the laundry, i went home with just enough time to rest up a little before going to the airport again to pick up her dad and his family (maria his wife and lis, his step-daughter). here's another thing... why do airlines make things so damn difficult. i understand that different airlines usually combine their flights, but seriously, let the people know which airline the flight is under. her father tells us that he's with delta, but then it turns out to be something like american airlines. so we went to the delta airlines terminal, but couldn't find the flight. finally after talking with the info people, we found out that the flight is actually under AA. great!

so after meeting her father, same story with stephen, never met him but have spoken to him on the phone, we went to budget to get their rental car. after an hour, finally got the car and then as we were heading to their hotel in pasadena, maria needed to go get some aloe vera juice. WTF?!?!?

since it was nearly midnight, it was a bit difficult to find a place with aloe vera juice. we stopped by a 24-hour albertson's but they don't carry shit like that. so finally, we dropped them off at the hotel, and got on our way home. given that our last meal was at sizzler's, we went to in-and-out and got some burgers. stephen was waiting for us at home (he was half-asleep with the tv on). deidra went straight to bed, and stephen and i ate the burgers and shortly after, i went to bed myself.

friday, may 27. woke up, got out of bed, pulled a comb across my head. we got up, early. i hate getting up early. their was excitement in the air however. this was the day we make our journey to santa barbara. happy day! maria still wanted fucking aloe vera juice... fucking aloe vera juice. so deidra and her father went to get it, but they weren't really successful. the places that carried this shit was a bit pricey. anyway, around 11am, we took off. riding with me were deidra, gwen, and duncan, deidra's bride... people. duncan was her friend from utah, and he's really a very interesting guy.

anyway, so midway, we decided to stop because some people (with small fucking bladders) had to make a pit stop. shortly after that, we had to drop by a walmart to get maria her fucking aloe vera juice (yes, i'm going to use fucking everytime i mention fucking aloe vera juice). after getting her goddamn fucking aloe vera juice, maria decided she's about to die because she was hungry. so we went to tgi fridays for lunch. i don't know what she was expecting, but when the food didn't come out within minutes of use ordering it, maria was having a fit. she must live in this little strange fucking world.

anyway, so after lunch, we finally got back on the freeway and arrived in santa barbara. well, techically, it was carpinteria. we stayed at the motel 6 (we'll leave the light on for you). after having a short rest, my wedding party arrived. this consisted of mark, carlin, and jenny. at around 4ish, we finally headed to the church for our wedding rehearsal. unfortunately, maria had the great idea of leaving to get herself a freaking sweater. as we stood there waiting for her, deidra begin to get upset. without maria, her father wasn't going anywhere. so i finally decided for us to leave first and then have her father, along with maria and lis, to come later.

no deidra was not happy. it was a bad moment. a bad start towards the rest of our lives. but anyway, we got to the church a little bit late since there was a bit of traffic. when we got there, mark's parents, my surrogate parents at the wedding, gordon and joshua (our ring bearer), stefana, barbara were already there. after a bit, richard, maria, and lis finally arrived. so we got the show on the road. it was really interesting, our ceremony. it's not your typical ceremony with a lot of unusual stuff going on. hahaha. i can't begin to describe it.

so after the rehearsal, the wedding party went to dinner at this place called gisellas. the week previous, deidra and i went up to sb to have a run-through for her hair style and to look for a place to hold the rehearsal dinner. we ended up having lunch at gisellas and the people who booked the private room canceled so we got lucky.

so after dinner, we distributed gifts to everyone. deidra and i made a little speech which was a bit funny since i'm horrible at it. i got my people each an engraved shot glass, a book, and a snack. deidra was a bit more elaborate and creative with her gifts.

later that night, deidra's group went to a strip club, while mark, carlin, jenny, and myself went back to the hotel. there we drank a bit, and walked about carpinteria cuz i felt like doing so. i remember it being a strange night... the night before i was to be married and never again know what it's like to be with another woman again. well hopefully not, right. ;) i remember just standing on the balcony in front of their hotel room with mark and wondering why the fuck i'm feeling rather strange.

saturday, may 28. the big day. the biggest day of my and i'm assuming deidra's lives. woke up. wasn't feeling strange. but probably excited. it's a really surreal feeling. i remember just lying in bed in my boxers reading the la times sports section. deidra was out and about getting ready to go have the traditional bridal group breakfast. robert, an ex-boyfriend of deidra's, came by with a digital camcorder and asked me several questions... some of which i didn't have a good answer for.

after getting ready, some of the people attending the wedding showed up. it was great seeing my friends. i don't know, there's just this wonderful feeling of joy seeing my friends for some reason. before leaving the hotel, mark, jenny and i had ourselves a beer. i wouldn't say it was to calm myself down, but it was just a thing to do. when you can't think of something to do, it's always good to get a drink. yes. anyway, soon after, my group and i went to santa barbara to try out and pick up our tuxes.

to make a long story short, we tried on our tuxes, then had lunch at this cafe called joe's. i had the open-faced roast beef sandwich. delish. after lunch, i knew that i was running a little late. deidra wanted us to be read by 4pm so we can take pictures. excellent, except, i haven't showered yet and i was feeling a bit disgusting. my plan was for me to go over to the nice hotel that i booked for us for our wedding night and shower there. time was really tight. really, really tight.

mark and i went back to men's warehouse to pick up the tuxes (it would have been foolish to carry our tuxes to joe's now wouldn't it?) and waited for carlin and jenny to pick us up in front of the parking garage. drove back to the church where i left my car and i headed off to the hotel.

nice. king size bed with a jacuzzi.

so took a quick shower and headed back to the church. by this time it was about 3:40pm. i have about 20 minutes to put on my wedding gear. it's actually pretty fun putting on a tux. joshua, the ring bearer, looked so damn cute in his little boy tux. so around 4pm, i went downstairs to get some pictures taken.

what i didn't know and i should have known, but i'm stupid like that, was that women take a lot of time to get prepared. our photographer(s) sandhya, who is my friend since college and her partner, jigar, was already taking pictures. sandhya went up to where deidra was getting ready and took tons of pictures. i was getting a bit antsy since there wasn't much to do and stefana took the cd player with her so they can listen to music whilst getting ready.

a lot of waiting. and some more waiting. and then came my beautiful bride. it was amazing. she looked fabulous. so for about 40 minutes, we took pictures. guests started to arrive and i chatted with them since the ceremony didn't start until 6:30pm.

finally, the moment arrived. once again, i'm not going to go into too much detail. everything was good. hahaha. for those who weren't there, well... your lost.

so anyway, after the ceremony, we took more pictures and then headed out to the reception.

god, i'm tired of blogging. hahaha. maybe i'll write more later. i should really get back to starting on my thank you letters.

ciao.