okay well I had a link up here before, but somehow that link now leads to something utterly disgusting, so i had to take it down. sorry for those of you who clicked on it and got what was not intended. it WAS supposed to be pics of a 20x20 in-n-out burger and some dude eating it. i dunno what happened. okay that's all.

VICTORY! Got a call from Cingular, $65 has been cleared! AND I didn't have to call them this time. okay this is my last post for the day.

Every infomercial merchandise you could possibly think of, in one place, right here. maria and I were exercising this morning, and we were totally getting sold on that flavorwave oven. It's probably this ghetto useless piece of plastic you'll use once in your lifetime, but man, those infomercials really know how to sell something to you! Price "slashed," comes with another ghetto piece of plastic known as the chopper or something, which is worth over $100!, and the food tastes oh-so-good. Worth over $250, but today, all for the low price of 4 easy payments of $33! Oh wait, because they're so generous, make that now THREE easy payments of $33! Oh, and who can forget about the Ronco? oh yes.

check out some of these inventions:
because you want people talking to you when you go to the bathroom
oh yes how many people have you tried to shock with one of these?
who needs botox when you've got this!
ultimate laziness. only in America.
maybe eric huang should try getting this ;)

After 4 emails to Yahoo help, an online chat with SBC Yahoo, a phone call to SBC Yahoo, 2 more emails to Yahoo help, and one more call to SBC Yahoo, MY YAHOO ACCOUNT FINALLY WORKS AGAIN. I can upload pics again! yahoooo! Stay tuned...

Up next: a dog fight with Cingular, with whom I've been aruging about being double-charged $65 for over a year. This after seriously more than 15 calls to their customer service, and faxing in my bank statement twice to prove that I already paid it... (with which each time they tell me they'll call me back but never do... and then every time I call THEM back I have to start the whole stupid story over again and it's back to square one. They'd better not make me fax in that statement again.)

I think I should win an award for most disgruntled customer ever. Costco, SBC/Yahoo, Cingular... what's next?! I'm becoming a pro at this!

my coworker (who was born in taiwan): what is a piece of crap? (after another coworker called his phone a piece of crap).

ahahahaha. how do you explain something like that?

and then... my coworker, after being explained what it is: i think i deal with a lot of piece of crap today!

i think we all dealt with "a lot of piece of crap" today.

I don't think I've ever screamed so loudly in the morning in my life. When most normal people come out of the shower in the morning, they don't expect someone to be sitting in the middle of their room in the dark wearing a straw hat and doing nothing. Apparently, olivia thinks that's normal. That almost matches the time I screamed when byron scared the pants off me. Ironically, olivia was there then, too. Although this time she didn't start screaming when I screamed. Nope, this time she just laughed at me. Cruel.

I got 200 emails this morning. HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP?!?!

holy moly! i'm being attacked! someone help me make it stop!! i keep getting those emails with virus attachments. And when i say i keep getting, i mean one or two a minute. LITERALLY. And before you lecture me, I do have updated virus protection software, and I never open questionable attachments. How do i make it stop???

News flash: karen had some curry and actually liked it. gasp. Granted it was very mild, and when i ordered my dish, it didn't mention curry in it, but i had it. and i enjoyed it. Maybe there's hope for me after all. However, you'll still have to pull my teeth to get me to try goat brain.

50" tv is up and running! woohoo! Still need to figure out how to rearrange our place to fit in this new tv. The fact that the 27" tv is still in our place is also kind of hindering that. alinna and i have a secret plan with this tv. Shall i divulge? hmmm... yeah nope. Sorry, it's staying a secret.

Tomorrow... the big screen tv will re-emerge into existance. Right into our apt. And only nice people can come and watch it. That means Tomio isn't allowed since he kept telling poor little Faith to call me "Larry su-su" ("Uncle Larry"). Boo on Tomio! Good thing Faith still knows my real name even though she did call me "Larry su-su" for a while. Too bad for byron, jerry, and ted. No lakers or any other bball games on our tv for them since they're no longer our neighbors. Which works well since the Lakers suck. yeah.

Congratulations to Mike & Kim who are happily married! So many high school and canaan memories of mike, even though he was only here junior & senior year. I remember mike's old ghetto car with no seat belts, how he used to watch soap operas with the gals, making videos (like "blame it on the rain" with dave, christy, and another friend), mike's bball "skills" (hence the nickname "mr. physics"), senior ball when kim came up to go with him... senior ball was a blast. I even remember senior ditch day when we went to memorial park with his guitar and just sang worship songs together, and then later took olivia to gunn.. heh heh. i won't recount the rest of that day. Or how he was in AP Physics with us and some of us would cram the entire night before for a test, and Mike would stroll along during lunch, see us study, and say "what?! we have a physics test today?!" and then study during lunch, go into physics, and ace the test when the rest of us got fat D's on them. Hmm... I think Mike is the first of my high school friends to get married... weird. We had a Saratoga table at the banquet and it brought back some great memories. I'd upload my pics to my yahoo photo album, but unfortunately I've been locked out of my yahoo account for a while. That's another unhappy consumer story... I'll save it for another time.

Some LA highlights:
1. driving down with o, jean, and drew. Playing the cow game, and hearing jean yell "COW!" everytime she saw one, even if it was a horse. drew yelling "I HATE THIS GAME!" after jean yelled "COW!" for the fifth time. Of course, she continued to yell it another 200 times. jean saying "we're going SOOOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOW" every ten minutes while drew was behind the wheel.

2. drew telling us about his "streak" at the Kettlemen City In-n-out. He claims that he's never stopped at that In-n-Out without seeing someone he knows because he's just so popular. So as we pull in, he tells us he's nervous because he's afraid his streak will end. jean, o and I don't particularly care about his streak, so we just nod and smile at him. So we go into the restaurant, do our thing, order our meals, and sit down. Just as we sit down, a guy comes up to us and says "drew!" drew gets up and says "mark! hey, what's up?" and proceeds to introduce us to him. of course we're amazed that he runs into someone he knows. we quickly forget about it until later into the meal when drew says "hey guys, i have a confession to make. I actually don't know that guy. I asked him to pretend to know me." What the?! Who is such a loser that he would have to do that?? only drew. the best thing is he got rejected from the first guy he asked to help him out.

3. I took over the driving duties after In-n-Out, and as we drive down, olivia, sitting in the back begins to smell somthing foul. jean and i start to smell it but wonder where it could come from since my car air is on recyle and we weren't near coalinga. then we all look at drew, who's sleeping in the back seat. DREW! it was nasty! olivia suffered the most; she kept smelling it even when jean and i didn't.

4. Being the first to break-in reni & maurice's new home. It was a nice place! They were very welcoming to us.

5. Hanging out with reni & becka in Santa Monica. Playing taboo on the beach.

6. Trying to watch "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" (as Maurice claims, a pure classic) and falling asleep in the first half hour. I'm doubting Maurice's "classic" status on that movie.

7. Hanging out with Joyce and playing Bible pictionary. Joyce and I rocked as a team although some of our drawings were questionable... hehehe. Seriously, who knows how to draw "atonement" or "stricken"?

8. Mike & Kim's wedding. Got to see lots of old friends, and got to see our dear ol' mike and his ever-so-sweet wife kim tie the knot. the only sucky thing was the 105+degree weather. EW! it seriously was stinking HOT.

Things I hate about LA:
1. the traffic
2. the 100+ degree weather
3. the traffic
4. the fact that you have to take 5 different freeways to get to a place 20 minutes away
5. the traffic
6. the smog
7. the traffic
8. the fact that if you want to stay on the same highway you have to change lanes like 3 different times because it keeps junctioning off itself. seriously, that's so retarded. you'd think if you want to stay on one highway you could just stay on the left lane and just drive. not in LA.
9. did I mention the traffic?

I have learned that i HATE driving in LA traffic. Like absolutely loathe it. Doesn't matter what time or what day of the week it is - there is ALWAYS TRAFFIC. Just driving down there puts me in a foul mood, so I am so happy to be back at home. and I canNOT believe drew claims norcal traffic is just as bad as socal traffic. he was pretty adamant about it. PLEASE! When I drive in norcal at 11am on a Friday, or at 10pm on a Saturday, or at 5 pm on a Sunday, I do NOT run into a billion other cars going in the same direction as me. LA highways are my nemesis.

All in all, except for the driving and traffic, I had a great weekend. But next time (byron & maria's wedding?) someone else is driving.

The worst part of this week is the fact that on Tuesday, all my training for the week got pushed out to the end of August. Which means, I could have gone to Mexico. sigh. I guess that's really God's way of telling me I wasn't supposed to go.

Tonight I'm off to that smog-infested, traffic-ridden part of California also known as socal. For... as usual... another wedding. Why do my friends keep getting married down there?? Blah. Norcal is so much better. go bears!