Day Sixteen: A Really Great Dog

6/29/14, 11:59 PM PDT

Meet Marlo.

Hello ladies.

He is a very cute poodle. He is also very big.

I am very big.

I tried to take a picture of his head. But he wouldn't stop moving.

Please do not take pictures of my head.

But I kept trying. And I got a picture of his head.

You got me, human.

Look at my tongue.

...Yeah, not a lot of things happened today. Stayed at my dad's friend's house for most of the day because it was my dad's friend's birthday, but I spent a big chunk of the day sleeping and watching movies on TV so yeah.

But look at how cute Marlo is.

I do not like to be petted.

Yeah, he's a pretty great dog.





RFotD: Male poodles typically weight around 45 to 70 pounds. Females weigh between 45 to 60 pounds.

SGAT: None. Damn it, another zero day.

Day Fifteen: A Fair-ly Fun Day

6/28/14, 4:24 PM PDT

Went to the Del Mar Fair with Angela, Christina, Brandon, and Kayla. I'm lucky too, I convinced my mom to let me go at pretty much the last possible minute.

I forgot how patriotic the trash cans at the fair were.

Earth's beautifulest country since 1776.

So immediately after entering the fair, guess who greets us?

George Harrison's not looking too good today...

We tried walking around them. See that guitarist guy in the front? Yeah, HE WALKED RIGHT NEXT TO US WHILE WE TRIED TO AVOID THEM. Christina was the first to spot him and she practically shat her pants when his creepy mask ended up inches from her face.

Oh, and you won't believe this, but we saw JAMIE HYNEMAN FROM THE MYTHBUSTERS. We ran to grab a picture with him, check it out!

Ignore the fact that I look worried in this picture.

We got there at around 10:15 and rides didn't open until 11, so since we had some time to kill, we decided to get picture-happy.

In this performance, I endorse cannibalism.

If you look at that palm tree, you'll see a ripe Christina, ready for picking.

From left to right: Me, Kayla, Angela.

Twice while walking, the people manning the game booths offered my group a free shot at that game where you try to keep a ball inside of a giant angled plastic bucket. I stepped up to the plate both times. The first time, I failed MISERABLY. I had three tosses and my first toss DIDN'T EVEN TOUCH THE BUCKET. Second one bounced out, but thankfully, the guy working at the time gave me a little tip to help my game: aim for the sides so that the ball doesn't bounce out. So I did that, the ball stayed in, and he didn't give me a prize because I needed to make it in the bucket twice.

Second time around, when a different guy gave us a free go, I already knew the game's little secret, so I got the ball to stay in the bucket the first time around. And even though he pulled out three balls, I didn't get to try two more times, so I still didn't get a prize.

Speaking of prizes, here were the more notable ones that I managed to take a picture of.

Nipple Pierced Penguinz!™

Knock down all three pins with one ball, win a little slice of FREEDOM.

Pretty soon, it was 11, which meant RIDES. The first one we went on was Alien Abduction. Basically a centrifugal force ride, where everyone lies around the circumference of a circle that spins really REALLY fast so that you stick to its walls. This thing, pretty much:

Imagine this, except only occupied by five screaming teenagers.
(via jazzwhiz.blogspot.com)

I swear, my throat almost collapsed on me during that ride because that thing spun around FAST. I remember Mr. Lawrence said that centrifugal force wasn't a real force waaaaay back in Freshman year, but I think my ribcage almost being crushed is evidence enough that centrifugal force is real.

Next, we went to Storm. Another spinny ride, which, in hindsight, was probably a BIG mistake since it was around this time that my head started hurting. But it was fun. Or at least, as fun as almost-accidental organ rupture can be.

Crazy Mouse next, followed by Bobsled. Thankfully, both weren't spinny rides, which was a nice break from the two crazy spinning rides that we went on so far. There was a guy on the microphone at the Bobsled ride that kept singing to the song that happened to be playing at the time, and when my group of four Asian people and one white girl found our bobsleds, guess what he said?

"Herro."

Followed quickly by

"I seeee you. Ooooooooooo, I see you toooo."

IN THE WORST ASIAN ACCENT I'VE EVER HEARD. It was SUPER racist, but I thought it was hilarious because of how bad his accent was.

I think this is what he thought we looked like.
(via hngn.com)

And then we went on the Orbiter.

Oh god.
(via wikipedia.org)

This entire thing spins. And each set of three chairs ALSO spins, angled at an axis PERPENDICULAR TO THE DIRECTION THAT THE REST OF THE RIDE IS SPINNING. That's... that's a lot of centrifugal force.

I think I almost fainted in this ride because midway through, while the ride was in full swing, I started feeling REALLY dizzy and my head felt really heavy and hard to hold up. Or I could just be a pussy and it could've been the natural feeling that the ride gives people. Either way, I managed to stay awake only because Christina's goddamn hair kept slapping my face when we spun around and it hit me like a WHIP every time. It hit my eyeball once and it felt like a tiny katana slicing through my retinas.

Lastly, Christina and Angela rode the big pendulum pirate ships that go side to side. They stayed at the very end of the ship. And they quickly realized how big of a mistake that was.

Look at that look of sheer horror in Angela's face. Or constipation.
Could be both.

All that took us until noon, so by the time we ran out of ride tickets, we were STARVING. Most of us bought hot dogs from this stand called "Pink's." They have a little gimmick where instead of giving you a number and calling out your number when your order is ready, they gave you the name of a celebrity instead. Look at the name I got.

I don't think they gave these names out randomly, they probably
just thought I was his stunt double. I don't blame them.

LOOK AT WHO CHRISTINA GOT.

Samantha, you feeling jealous yet?

After eating hot dogs, we bought a beautiful, beautiful funnel cake topped with strawberries and whipped cream, drizzled in chocolate syrup, and coated in powdered sugar. Absolute bliss. Didn't grab any pictures of the food, so just Google "funnel cake" and whichever one looks the most delicious was exactly what we got today.

Then we went over to the actual fair's theme building, where they had a big thing on The Beatles for display. They had a really cool "wish tree" where they let the fair visitors write their wishes on tags so that the workers could hang them on the tree at the end of the day.

Pretty.

Closeup. Look at how dense the tree is.

Here's what I wished for.

World peace can wait. I want Terminator feet.

And here's a few interesting ones that we found while looking at the tree.

AWWW YEAH.

Let me just take a picture of this with my... *ahem*
iPhone 5... (just kidding, mine's an iPhone 4)

This person needs to be President of the World.

Deep.

Poor Nodoxy. Good thing this ain't no Death Note.

We also tried to take an Abbey Road picture. But we couldn't find the actual Abbey Road, so we took this instead.

They won't notice... right?

Just kidding, we found it.

When we took this, we knew that everyone and their mother would be taking a picture just like this, so we wanted to make ours look different. And to do that, we had the genius idea of pretending that we tripped while walking on the road. But I reasoned that if we only pretended like we tripped, then it wouldn't really look like we tripped and no one would understand our picture.

So I suggest that we should all legitimately fall. And they agreed.

I told the cameraman to count to three as loud as he can and to snap the picture RIGHT AFTER he said three. We posed exactly like we were taking a normal Abbey Road picture, but on three, we all just HIT THE GROUND. I might have oversold my performance a little bit since I ended up shoving Christina as HARD AS I COULD into Angela and I ended with a dramatic little parkour roll when I fell on the concrete. I heard the crowd watching us all gasp in unison so I'm pretty sure they were impressed and/or aroused by my theatrics.

In hindsight, they probably thought we were stupid, but THAT'S OKAY. We got a pretty AWESOME picture from it, check it ou... oh wait, no. No we didn't.

The guy didn't take a picture of us when we fell.

Shit. Well at least we got this...

I mean I guess it's just as good...

Last thing we did was hit up the LIVESTOCK HELL YEAH BEST PART OF THE TRIP RIGHT HERE CHECK OUT THESE FOUR LEGGED THINGS.

HOTOT. OH GOD IT'S SO CUTE.

AWWWWWWWWWWWW IT'S SO FUZZY OH MY GOD.

THIS SHEEP HAS A BETTER HAIRSTYLE THAN ME. PLEASE TELL
ME WHO DOES YOUR HAIR, SHEEP FRIEND.

"Hey how you doin lil mama let me whisper in your ear..."

It likes me! Sheep number 00576 really likes me!

I also learned something today.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

When we left the fair, we decided to try and replicate the picture we took last year.

Hello, old bowlcut self.

Here are the results.

Oh how we change in one year. And also I didn't know when
Kayla's grandpa would take the picture.

Good trip, good trip.

Thank you for asking, LSDtopus!

RFotD: Sheep have smaller brains now than they did 12,000 years ago.

SGAT: None really. But I don't regret not working today.

Day Fourteen: Dress Up

6/27/14, 11:59 PM PDT

Fun day today. First went to the public library's Creative Writing Club. I didn't know that today would be the last library CWC meeting for the rest of summer, I feel bad for not being able to make it to the past few meetings because things popped up. But at least I made it to the last one, right? Oh, and I think our CWC teacher, Lisa, got emotional over the fact that this was our last meeting for a few months since I think I saw a few tears come out of her eyes.

Samantha also tagged along for CWC's last meeting, even though this was also her first meeting. She said she was sorry that she didn't know about the club earlier, but I knew she was just in it for the last-meeting glowsticks that we all got for free, courtesy of Lisa.

Were these worth playing with someone's emotions, Samantha?
(via islamicsunrays.com)

Afterwards, Samantha and I went to Yogurtland. Interestingly, we both liked the weird popping pearls as toppings for our yogurt even though they look like roe. That's those weird unreleased fish eggs, by the way.

She came straight from taking her senior pictures, so she didn't have time to change to normal clothes when she got here. So when we decided that we'd be meeting today, we thought "What the hell, let's make eating at Yogurtland a formal event." I brought along dress pants, a vest, a white dress shirt, and a bowtie, which I call my "waiter" outfit.

Artist's rendition of what I looked like today.

I think she said I looked like a penguin. I think that was a compliment, except penguins are also fat, so I don't know... And sure, we got funny looks from the other Yogurtland diners, that was inevitable. But they were just jealous of how spiffy I looked. And I looked damn spiffy. I think.

Afterwards, we walked around the mall. She made me say the words "It's so big" in my best Lumpy Space Princess impression and recorded the results, so now I can't make her mad at all because she has that to blackmail me. She also wanted a recording of me in my "nerdy voice" saying some line about getting crabs that I said at the beach during the CWC banquet, so I gave her that too. The recording, I mean. Not crabs.

I also found out that she's a very strong believer in superstition. I kept saying stuff like "What if one of us gets Alzheimer's?" and "What if a car swerves right and hits us right now?" and RIGHT AFTER those words left my mouth, she looked around desperately for wooden things that she could punch in order to avoid jinxing the situation. She got pretty desperate at one point and knocked on a full-grown tree, which I thought was pretty funny.

All in all, it was a great day, which ended with a few strange looks from drivers while we waited at an intersection for the crosswalk light to change.

RFotD: It's unclear whether the bowtie rose as a variation of the necktie or if it's the other way around. However, both find their origins from Croatian merchants who used scarves wrapped around their necks to hold down the opening of their shirts.

SGAT: None really. But I got to hang out with Samantha for a few hours.

Day Thirteen: Buying Water at Vons Sucks

6/26/14, 5:14 PM PDT

First thing I see at work today was this really pretty halo around the sun. I couldn't take a pic of the entire thing since my phone's camera doesn't go wide enough, but I got most of it.

Pretty pretty.

Anyway, today was relatively uneventful. Wustin and I are cool now, I could tell because he had absolutely no behavior problems today and he even smiled and waved to me when he was getting picked up by his mom. We cast kids into roles/crew positions today. I think I figured out that fifth period is my favorite period though, since they're all so obedient and they all love me for some reason. 

Although fourth period comes a close second. If they were just a little less talkative, they would probably tie with fifth period for being my favorite class. Aaaaaaagh, the kids there are just SO ADORABLE, especially this one little girl that raises her hand every five minutes and asks me how to spell words like "orange" and "shape" and "blue" and it's SO CUTE because she's so timid and she stutters a million times when she tries to say the word she wants me to spell and when I do spell it out for her she just gives me this big ol' toothy grin and AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. They're so adorable, I hope they don't end up becoming drug addicts when they get older.

Sixth period still sucks though. The Jets and the Sharks were back at it again today. Coincidentally, both the Jets and the Sharks had a person named... well, let's call him Laythan. Anyway, in both groups, Laythan is EASILY the person that causes this domino effect of disruption within their groups. Seriously, I think Jets Laythan is WAAAAAAAAY to young to understand the concept of paying attention because the ENTIRE period, he just puts markers into their boxes, spills the markers back onto the table (making this AWFUL racket of clacks as the markers all land on the table), and REPEATS. I had to take away their markers again just so that Mrs. Bartels and I wouldn't go insane from the noise.

After work, talked with Emily a bit. Apparently, she was born in Korea and does a lot of camping. Like, actual wilderness camping. Meanwhile, I told her about my camping experiences at the Kampground of America and she laughed at me because it's not real camping if I had access to a bathroom, a shower, a store, a freaking swimming pool, and if at night, I could head cars drive by on the highway that was literally right next to the campground.

Her idea of camping probably involves hunting and eating
wild marshmallows.
(via spongebob.wikia.com)

After work, walked to the Vons that was near the school. I got thirsty, so I decided to buy one bottle of sparkling water for 79 cents.

I ended up waiting in line for 20 minutes to buy one thing. All because of an argument between a lady and a cashier.

So the lady bought half a million things from Vons, including a few boxes of sodas. She insisted that the sign for those sodas read "Buy one get one free" so she bought four boxes. But for some reason, the cashier didn't recognize the discount. After a good 10 minutes of the cashier and the lady arguing, eventually they figured out that the discount was actually buy two get two free (which, in the end, shouldn't have made a difference since she bought four). Then, after their combined brainpower figured that out, they eventually realized that the discount didn't apply to her because she bought Coke, Sprite, Fanta, and Canada Dry, which isn't a Coke product even though the box for Canada Dry was apparently RIGHT NEXT TO THE BOXES FOR COKE. So they argued for even MORE time and by then, the guy in front of me that was next in line was getting FURIOUS because they were just yelling at each other for upwards of THIRTY MINUTES over a FIVE DOLLAR DISCOUNT.

I eventually moved to a different line. The nice lady that was supposed to be in front of me let me cut her because I only had one item and she had a billion. Paid my 79 cents, drank the sparkling water...

And it tastes like shit.

Worse than sewer water. Hell, it probably is sewer water.

Not worth my 79 cents. And definitely not worth my 30 minute long wait.

Same day, 11:59 PM PDT

I AM SO TIRED. Alright, let me speed through the rest of the day. 

I went to my sister's school for their open house. And you know what I figured out? My sister is winning her class' valedictorian race by a LANDSLIDE. Look at this plebeian "art" that the other kids are making right now.

I don't think Lucas got the memo about the drawings...

Meanwhile, my sister's work?

WOAH. SHADING. TEXTURES. DAMN!

SERIOUSLY. All of her work just WRECKS these other kids. Look at her handwriting...

WHY IS IT BETTER THAN MINE?!

...And her art.

THE DETAIL. THE PRECISION. MAGNIFICO.

Here's a quick reminder of what she's up against.

Oh yeah. Stiff competition, definitely.

My sister's a prodigy, I'm telling you.

RFotD: Michael starts to lose his self-awareness if he stays up past 1:30.

SGAT: Became less socially awkward.