Day Seventeen: Journey To The Center Of PQ

7/02/15, 10:12 PM PDT

Today, Angela, Kayla, Nick, and I decided to experience the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors through a good old hiking trip through the Los Penasquitos Canyon Trail.

I haven't gone hiking in a long time, but when I asked my parents if I could go, they gave me horror story about horror stories about these bastards:

No badgers or mushrooms in sight, thankfully.
(via oddastic.com)

And these bastards:

"As soon as you step foot on the trail, a thousand of these thigns will
come after you." - Dad
(via washingtontimes.com)

And especially this bastard:

Circles. I've been scared of these things ever since we had to do
proofs in geometry.
(via thesun.co.uk)

So, fearing snakes, sun, and biblical plague-size hordes of insects, I came massively massively overprepared.

Me, looking for a woman to finally love me for me
the next great adventure!

I brought a headless golf club to swat away snakes, white sweatpants to prevent insect bites, a first aid kit for any accidents that happen on the trail, and my dad convinced me at the last minute to bring a hat with a nice frilly back to protect me from the sun. The soccer shirt actually serves two purposes. One, to allow for more air to flow through my body, and two, to attract females that I see along the trail by giving them the illusion that I'm more athletic than I actually am.

We first grouped up at Angela's house. Nick and I got there (relatively) on time, so while we waited for Kayla to wake up from her hibernation, we played on her WiiU.

I tried to make a Mii from Nintendo's automatic Mii Generator. Here was the result:

Not bad, Nintendo. Not bad at all.

We also played Mario Party. Thanks to a combination of Angela's witchcraft and the fact that RNGesus has forsaken me, I lost. Terribly.

See that spike in Angela's graph near the flag thing? We had to fight for
half of our stars there. You can probably guess who won.

After Kayla finally came and we cooled down from the most intense Mario Party game ever, we were on our way.

Hello, hello.

The last time you ever saw any of us ever again.

Having never really gone seriously hiking before, I was pretty amazed at how pretty the place looked.

Looks like something straight out of a Smucker's commercial.

If you ignore the thousands of rattlesnakes hiding in every single bush in
this trail, it's actually very nice.

We first stopped at the creek, about two miles or so away from the entrance.

Man, this drought hit us hard. The creek's so dry it looks like a dirt road.

Look at it, in all of its HDR beauty.

Uhh....

Yeah, my camera doesn't really do it justice, since I take all my pictures with a crappy iPhone 4. But as always, here's Kayla and Angela to save the day with their much more impressive image resolutions.

Actually, this isn't the creek, this is actually Unreal Engine 4.

There it is... Terabithia.
(via Angela)

We took some obligatory squad riverside pictures.

Even though absolutely none of us were going to Riverside.
(via Angela)

That stick wasn't planted by Nick, it kinda just rose from the ground
and Nick, out of impulse, just started stroking it.
(via Angela)

Angela proved to us just how much she trusted us.

Either that or we killed her and are in the middle of disposing her body.
(via Angela)

She also found the darkness in her inner self.

This pic isn't upside down, Angela's
just evil.
(via Kayla)

See this next pic?

(via Kayla)

Kayla goes in deep to get pictures like this, so it deserves at least a little shoutout.

Good job Kayteal.

Next stop, we hiked to the waterfall. I was really surprised at how sparse the landscape was from here on out.

Here we see Nick the bushwhacker, roaming the savannah.

Kinda reminds me of the blight from Interstellar.

We eventually made it to the waterfall. And holy CRAP was it amazing.

The view we got as soon as we walked in.
(via Angela)

You can see just how relieved we were to finally arrive after two hours of hiking.

Here, I try to fish for dinner, Angela prays to the sun god, and Kayla
amazingly still has reception in the wilderness.
(via Angela)

We explored the waterfall/lake area and got a few interesting pictures.

"Hello my name is Angela and welcome to my crib."

At one point, Angela and Kayla decided to bring back the lost art of planking.

Either that or they're in some sort of weird new photosynthesizing cult.

Kayla also got her thinking cap on.

The machinations of her mind are an enigma.

If you've never been to the falls, I highly suggest that you do, it is AMAZING. There really isn't anything like the feeling of trekking through a few miles of desert with a few friends under the heat of the sun and to finally reach the nice, cool water of a gentle, isolated river.

Of course my camera doesn't do it justice, so here again is Angela to save the day.

(Actually, technically, Nick took all of these pictures, but it was with Angela's camera. And on this blog, credit follows the camera, not the hand. But Nick deserves a shoutout anyway.)

This would make a really awesome cover photo.
(via Kayla)

Sea foam from the waterfalls!
(via Angela)

Honestly, pictures will not do this place justice at all. Seriously, if you can make the trip, visit this place yourself. It's only a two-hour hike from the very easily accessible Camino Ruiz park, and it is BEAUTIFUL. Just uhh... bring a stick to ward off rattlesnakes.

We eventually ended up climbing all the way to the bottom of the waterfall/stream. We couldn't find our original way back to the trail, so we ended up just rock climbing our way out from the very bottom of the waterfall. And it was awesome.

Impressively, Kayla did the entire thing while holding our hiking stick.
Good on her.

Nick and I did most of the trail setting while Angela and Kayla followed behind. Here we see Nick looking shamefully down at the stragglers.

In Angela and Kayla's defense, that next rock that they're about to climb had
some disgustingly textured moss on it.

You can see Angela's reluctance to touch that rock.
(via Angela)

We eventually rock climbed to the very top of the waterfall and back down again to return to the trail. After an exhausting two hour hike back, we finally made it back to the park, where we all pretty much all but died on the park picnic tables.

Kayla got the worst of it. Her tiny, twig-like legs just couldn't take that steep home stretch of tiles we had to climb up.

She's dead.

Meanwhile, Nick and Angela are (relatively) fine. Here, Angela shows us that her legs are still fully functional.

"Oh no, my left leg's actually gone completely limp. Nbd."

Nick, easily the most athletic of the four of us, looked like he wasn't even sweating.

"That was a pretty good warmup hike, ready for potato chip rock?"

Meanwhile, Kayla sweated literally an ENTIRE CONTINENT.

It's Africa, complete with Madagascar and
the Nile River!

So to make sure our Kayla didn't die from starvation, we went to an emergency trip to Vallarta's to buy us some burritos.

Look at the behemoth Angela and Nick ordered.

I think they called it a "Wet Burrito" but I might just be thinking of what
Urban Dictionary calls your toilet after you finish eating this thing.

Sorry if this entry wasn't super heavy on text or funny stuff. I kinda just wanna get this entry over with since I'm still feeling kinda depressed and I want to move on to other stuff that I want to do. Today was a great, great day, but as of writing this (7/3/15), I'm feeling pretty down so this entry won't be super fantastic even though the day itself was fantastic. Does that sort of make sense? Hopefully it does. But yeah, I'll get better soon, don't worry about me!

RFotD: We heard a grand total of 15,000 different rattlesnakes in this hiking trip. Nick's greatest regret in the four or so hour hike we took was that he never got to see one.

Day Sixteen: We Raid Angela's House

7/01/15, 10:13 PM PDT

Today started off as a sort of bad day.

Alright, scratch that. Today started off as a really bad day. Thankfully, it was alleviated by the little date I had with Sam and especially the impromptu hangout at Angela's house. Most of the time I spent with Sam is largely pictureless since I was still pretty depressed at that time, but here are a few pictures I got.

We found this bearded dragon at Petco.

Not quite at the level of pointing out his new lambo yet, but he's getting there.

Notice the absence of sand in his corner? That's because the entire time we watched him he was tring to crawl through the glass in that corner. At first we thought that he was crazy, or that he was trying to get the fly on Samantha's face (she never had a fly on her face, he probably just mistook the large mole on her face as an insect).

But then we saw this box directly across from the bearded dragon tank.

Because nothing says extreme like WordArt on a desert-like background.

He wasn't trying to escape or trying to get the thing on Sam's face. He was in love. With a picture. Aww. It's cute.

But man, it's weird, when a bearded dragon has a better relationship with a picture than I do. I mean that guy's trying to break through (from his perspective) an invisible wall of psychic energy to get to his wife. Meanwhile, Sam threatened to use this on me if I look at anyone of the opposite sex at UCLA.

She doesn't have to worry about that though. Cuz I
only have eyes for her. And my balls are already gone.

Later, I went to Angela's house with Christina. Even though Angela only invited Kayla, we decided to show up anyway because why not?

I don't know if you've seen Angela's room before or not, but it is MAGNIFICENT. She painted and decorated it herself, right down to the meticulous placement of the room's clutter. Take a look.

The master designer herself.

A potato, bean thing. I don't know. There's a Totoro too.

The biggest part of the room. Not talking about Christina, mind you.

That... that should not be there.

Most of the day was spent either making music for our new band, The Nematodes (which you should DEFINITELY support, we're coming out with our first album never soon!) or playing Castle Crashers while Kayla edited some thing for a Yogscast contest or something. Here was the Photoshop piece she spent so much time on:

The Voldemort in the left corner's freaking me out though.
(via Kayla)

Here's the link to the contest she's entering, so when you see it VOTE FOR HER SO SHE CAN FINALLY SHUT UP ABOUT THE CONTEST WIN A COOL HOODIE.

Oh, and if you haven't heard of The Nematodes yet, don't worry. You'll hear us soon, just tune in to Channel 933. As a reward for being loyal readers, here's some of our behind the scenes footage, courtesy of Christina.

RFotD: I just now realized that Blogger's video quality is TERRIBLE. I should set up a YouTube account, I swear.

Day Fifteen: Selfie Photo Manipulation

6/30/15, 11:14 PM PDT

Today, I found out that UCLA Athletics' Student Section had a selfie contest for people who were buying their den passes last minute.

Free hats, hmm?

Luckily for me, I completely put off buying my Den Pass until the very last day, so I got to be one of the few people eligible to compete in this. I saw that one of the criteria was "funniest" selfie. So, using my background in video editing, I took this very strange, cringe-worthy selfie...

Ignore the Post-It note on my webcam or the fact that I have a look of
pure despair in my eyes.

Into this, equally strange, much more cringe-worthy picture.

Jesus Christ.

YES. I KNOW IT'S A HORRIBLE PICTURE. But let me explain my design process. So after I took that selfie, I realized that I had accidentally clipped off the top part of my head. I was too stubborn to retake the picture, so instead I tried to cover it up with something.

I didn't want a repeat of this picture where the hat was so obviously fake, So instead, I opted to cover it with a more reasonable beret. Then, I thought, since I had the beret, might as well put me in France so it makes sense, right? So I slapped the Eiffel Tower right behind me.

Then I thought, that's not a very funny or memorable picture, so I slapped the mustache and the (really crappy) cloud art behind it. And, as the French people say, voila.

Fifteen minutes, and some serious deliberation later, I decided to scrap the Eiffel Tower idea completely and go for something ridiculous to blow the judge's socks off.

This was the result.

Yes, that is USC on fire behind me. Yes, Godzilla is a Bruin.

After posting it on Twitter (and getting a boatload of likes)...

The Den tweeted this out:

It's even better when you can see the gif.

Helllllll yeaaaaaaaah.

Later today, I went to Sam's house to meet some of her family members that were staying for two weeks. One of her cousins drew this picture of us:

BMOM stands for "Batman  or Michael." Because my voice was so deep
they decided to call me Batman when they first met me.

I'd say for the most part, it's pretty accurate. We're both squares, and I'm at least a tiny bit taller than she is. Telling you, this cousin's going places.

Afterwards, we all baked brownies, ate said brownies, and finished off the day with karaoke. One of Sam's cousins decided to sing this song:

Although soon after, the mic got handed to me because I had the deepest voice in the house. So I turned the knob on my throat to the "angry smoker" setting and sang my best Louis Armstrong impression.

They were laughing pretty hard whenever I sang "What a wonderful world" so I don't know whether or not I did a good job on that song.

What I do know is that I got some GREAT footage of Sam singing a certain Taylor Swift song...

RFotD: Samantha actually entered a Taylor Swift lookalike competition. She came in 5th, but she would have ended up in last place had it not been for her stellar moves.

Day Fourteen: Lying Down For Extended Periods Of Time

6/29/15, 11:42 PM PDT

Today was a day that largely consisted of me doing this.

Complete with hunchback pose and everything.
(via liborioescobedo.wordpress.com)

Actually, because I have an unusually comfortable floor, it was more like this:

Just imagine that dry riverbed consists of really comfortable pillows
or something.

So yes, today was a really, really lazy day. I played Melee for a few hours, wrote blog entries for a few more hours, played Castle Crashers for even more hours, and now I plan on sleeping for a few hours.

Lazy day. Lazy lazy day.

RFotD: Christina believes that the Blue Knight in Castle Crashers is horrible because his magic is horrible. How misinformed she is.

Day Thirteen: Dancing Queens

6/28/15, 11:10 PM PDT

Today, my sister had a dance rehearsal at the very pretty Poway Center for the Performing Arts. Look at her. All costumed up and everything.

D'aww.

For the past few months, she's been going to practice every week to dance to this song:

And she has been so secretive about what the dance looks like. She told us the song well in advance and she even sings it when she's in the shower, but she has never shown us anything about the dance, so tonight would be a nice surprise for all of us.

The venue they have this at is amazing too. I brought my actual DSLR along for the ride and took a few pictures.

You know it's fancy when 50% of the building is glass.

The actual stage is really cool too.

So based on the fact that there's a large black uvula hanging from the
ceiling, I can safely assume that this is a female theater.

I don't even know this woman, but her hair caught the light in a really cool
way so I took a picture of it.

Unfortunately, due to our capitalistic society, video recording and photography were prohibited during the actual performance because they wanted to sell us DVDs later, so I couldn't take any pictures of the performance. We ordered the DVD anyway because we're a bunch of chumps we want to remember the performance forever, but that doesn't come until a few weeks from now, and that's no good for this blog.

So instead, to get a feel for how amazing their performance was, imagine that my sister is any one of the following people.

Oh, and there were also these two REALLY adorable dancing groups comprised ENTIRELY OF TODDLERS. Again, no footage, but let me just recap the things that made that performance so adorable.

1. They're toddlers.
2. They don't have very good muscle coordination.
3. None of them have any clear idea what they're supposed to do.
4. They made little clicking noises every time they walked because of the tap shoes they had.
5. They're all wearing small blue tutus.
6. They waddled in holding hands in the dark because the stage lights were turned off.
7. They were toddlers.

SERIOUSLY. God, I wish I got footage of it because it was the most adorable thing I have ever SEEN. I can't even post a video that's similar because there was NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING that can compare to how cute those toddlers were.

I could die so happy right now. They were so cute.

RFotD: Michael should seriously buy some spy sunglasses to discreetly film in film-prohibited places.