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.