Day Sixty-Six: Sam-I-Am, Featuring Sam

8/20/15, 11:21 PM PDT

The origin of the name "La Jolla" is uncertain, but the two most popular theories are that it either derives from "La Joya," meaning "The jewel" or the Native American term "Woholle," meaning hole in the mountains.

Either of those etymologies apply to Sam though. She's probably gonna kill me if she reads this. But the joke was worth it.

Yeah, we went to La Jolla Cove today to mainly check out the places that were around. We found an exhibit that had art by Dr. Seuss on display.

How cocky are these guys, naming themselves legendary for just being
the exhibitors, huh?

Hey, it's Sam-I-Am, and I'm with Sam! It's like... a pun
or something.

I was especially impressed with the statues that he made.

Rudolph never recovered after never being able to
join in any reindeer games.

Sam said this guy had my haircut. I agree.

This one kinda reminded me of a certain AP Physics teacher we had on Mira Mesa's campus.

All he needs is a gray hoodie, huh?

Afterwards, we pulled the incredibly cliché couple move of watching the sunset on the beachside rocks. We sat at La Jolla cove, watching the orange orb of a sun slowly sink below the horizon.

Just kidding. We both had to go to the bathroom. So before the sun set, we looked around the cove to see where we could answer nature's call.

Of course, given the capitalistic society that we live in, literally EVERY place we visited had bathrooms reserved only for customers, so our hunt for a restroom ended up becoming a hunt for where the cheapest place to eat was. And we were in La Jolla, so no matter where we went, this was probably gonna be at least a 20 dollar bathroom break.

We ended up finding a Cold Stone here, so our pee session only cost us 10 dollars, which was much cheaper than the usual arm and a leg blood sacrifice required by La Jolla restaurants.

RFotD: Yes, there were port-a-potties near the beach. No, they were not worth it.

Day Sixty-Five: Motion Graphics With Video Games

8/19/15, 11:30 PM PDT

Hey! So remember that motion graphic thing I talked about yesterday? Well I finished it today, check it out:

And yes, I know it says "August 20" in the video, but that's because I finished and uploaded this thing at like... 1 AM on August 20. Whatever.

Oh, and as a little behind-the-scenes treat for you blog readers, LOOK AT HOW MANY LAYERS WENT INTO THIS ANIMATION:

Yeah, this was NOT an easy project.

It took me a little over a week to finish this one, which is probably something I should fix since I'm making this a weekly series and all.

RFotD: Based on results from a test by Creative Cow, After Effects can handle up to 1,918 visible layers at the same time. When using AE's "shy" toggle and making some of those layers invisible, however, the number basically becomes infinite.

Day Sixty-Four: Animation

8/18/15, 4:13 PM PDT

Today was a very work-intensive day. The bulk of it was editing a little motion graphic video I'm doing. Something sort of like this:

Obviously nothing of that caliber, but you get the idea.

It's very difficult, let me tell you. So much shape manipulation, so many layers, and then after that there's a lot of secondary animation to add to make it pretty to look at.

But yeah, that's how I spent today. Huh.

RFotD: Not every day can be interesting.

Day Sixty-Three: The Zoo Zquad

8/17/15, 11;37 PM PDT

Today, Angela, Kayla, Nick, and I decided to go to the zoo in order to visit Christina's family just to hang out.

Hey, you can see Christina on top of the sign!

Somewhere in this park, there's a beautiful and elusive animal. Natively found in Africa, we San Diegans are lucky enough to have one grace us with its presence in our very own zoo. Hailed as a divine being in some cultures, it is the epitome of elegance.

It calls itself the "Dik-Dik." And I was on the hunt to find it today.

The first thing we did was take the skytram to the other side of the park. The first animal we saw was unfortunately, not the Dik-Dik, but this guy:

It looks like a living kiwi.

This cute little guy is called a peccary, a member of the pig family with prickly-looking fur surrounding his entire family. He deserves special recognition for being the unofficial welcoming animal for the first annual Kamichan zoo trip. Good on you, friend!

Congratulations!

Of course, with the 3,700 different species in the zoo, I couldn't afford to photoshop top hats on all of them nor can I upload pictures of all of them, so I'll post the highlights.

There was this snow leopard that happened to be standing on a walkway that connects the two leopard cages that I got a pretty okay silhouette picture of.

"I'm Batman."

Not to be outdone, this peacock (which is allowed to roam the park freely!) also did his best Batman impression by climbing on top of a roof.

"I am the night. Err, the dusk."

And there was this guy, star of the bestselling novel "The Poisonwood Bible."

Half giraffe, half horse, half zebra, it's a Gizebrorse! Also I'm bad with fractions.

We also saw a real Angry Bird! Look at how fat it is!

They had to surround it in sand because if it hits anything wooden, glass, or
pig-like, it instantly explodes.

Actually, I believe the title of "real life Angry Bird" belongs to this guy, where he's so angry that it's in his actual name.

Of course it's not threatened, it won't even allow poachers
to step on its lawn, let alone get close enough to kill it.

This animal quickly became one of my favorites when it let out its incredibly cry. My camera glitched when I recorded its song, so instead, have this YouTube video that I found:

Isn't it adorable? Also adorable was this plaque that we found.

We're not sure if Poseidon the leopard dog is an animal or the full legal name
of whatever rich philanthropist donated to the zoo.

We also found Christina's family!

With my estimates, her fist should come flying through my window and into
my face right about n-

Seriously though, hippos are pretty damn cool. Key club  D21 definitely chose a good mascot, they're adorable.

We caught a video of one of these guys submerging...

Love me my underwater transition shots.

And we noticed a neat little symbiosis happening between these fish and the hippo:

Much like the symbiosis between Will Smith and those whales in a
particular Dreamworks animated film.

The highlight of the day though? THE ORANGUTANS. We luckily came to their exhibit right as they were starting up their daily Cirque du Soleape show, so we got some pretty good footage:

(Ignore how obnoxious I am on camera, I don't know what the hell is wrong with me)

I especially loved this little guy:

I really regret not bringing Joby to meet his family, but on the other hand, with how active some of the other animals were, it might have been a good thing not to bring him, lest he get mauled to death by these guys:

Oh and I also had a face to face encounter with a koala!

"It's like looking into a mirror." -Christina
(Pic via Kayla)

We stayed at the zoo until it was pretty late. Late enough to see the golden hour...

It's pointing up because if koalas touch the ground to cross the street,
they go straight to heaven.

And to see when the zoo was nothing but golden light.

The beauty of incandescent lighting.

We got that picture when we were on the skytram at night. And since we took it near the entrance of the park and it was near closing, we would have to walk back to the entrance from the other side of the park. At night. Pitch black night. And although it gave rise to a particularly cool picture of Kayla...

Looks like she's about to perform on stage but she has stage fright or something.

It also gave us some very creepy, horror-game worthy moments. It was inevitable that we had to pass through some of the animal enclosures to get back, and even though the zoo was essentially closed at that time, the ambient jungle-esque noise that played near each enclosure kept playing. And though it might give the exhibits a bit more realism during the day, at night it only served to hide the sound of footsteps from murderers that were walking right behind us. 

After sprinting the last 40 miles of the zoo when we though we heard breathing behind us, we made it to the gift shop and decided to distract ourselves from the fact that the San Diego Slayer was definitely real and definitely almost murdered us with his dirty, bear-like paws by looking at the stuff they had for sale.

They of course had cute stuffed animals...

Reminds me of the look I had when I was first told
that girls and boys had different parts.

Some "cute" baby children's shirts...

One of those things is not like the other. And no, I didn't just put the shirt
there for a photo, you can see the stack of kids size snake shirts on the right.

And a kaleidoscope, which I used to simulate what you'd see when Kayla knocks your lights out when she finally snaps and becomes the San Diego Slayer.

Look closely at it.

RFotD: We never found the Dik-Dik enclosure, unfortunately :(

Day Sixty-Two: The Gwend

8/16/15, 10:57 PM PDT

Today, unfortunately, is the last day that we will see Gwen living in San Diego. Gwen, our surrogate white mother who enjoys white motherly things like reading books on her Kindle at the beach, drawing birds, and threatening us with physical violence if we're the wrong Zodiac sign, will unfortunately be in Utah for the next four years to continue her studies into becoming a park ranger/bird drawer/white mother.

God, it sounds like I'm writing an obituary.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

In order to cherish the last moments we had with her, we decided to have a last supper with her at TPOP. We ordered a big ol' ice cream hot pot, which is basically six scoops of ice cream with some awesome dry ice smoke coming out of the center.

Woah.

We also ordered honey brick toast...

Huh.

And a 150 gram rock of pure, Columbia-grade crack cocaine.

And we snorted it right in the restaurant too.

Just kidding, that giant block of chalk right there was Gwen's birthday gift. It's a dinosaur excavation toy, where you have to manually chisel out all the parts of a dinosaur skeleton and assemble the bones like a real life version of Indiana Jones!

As mentioned before, we did this right in the middle of TPOP.

They didn't appreciate the mess,

We got pretty excited when we successfully extracted our first limb.

But then later moved to the rec center to finish the job, fearing that the people at TPOP would throw us out. Here's a few pictures of our entire paleontologic process.

Check out that ribcage imprint on the top.

Making progress.

Things got especially exciting when we removed and assembled the head.

"Hello ladies."

And by "we," I mostly mean me. I got excited. So excited that I filmed this:

Eventually, we managed to assemble the entire skeleton. And we witnessed it in its full, bony glory.

Steven Spielberg would be proud.

We were so happy. And then we had to put it down.

God, so much death today. On a much lighter note, check out this family portrait that Phoenix drew of us!

They're creepy and they're kooky...

Lets go ahead and do roll call. There's Gwen...

You can also see her life goals in the top right.

Kayla...

She looks happy, sure, but inside, she wants your head
on a pike.

Aaliyah...

Tiny, armless, ridiculously happy, yepyep.

Christina...

Or maybe it's Genocider Shou from Danganronpa.

Angela...

Yep, she looks like a boy. Just like in 8th grade.

Me...

Me? Mi Ly? Haaaaah. That joke is dead.

Ken...

It's so accurate that Phoenix Ken't have drawn it better.

And of course, Phoenix.

She almost looks like she wants to play a game...

Later, we decided to end the day with a trip to Rita's and some fun talking about our Zodiac signs. I'm not really a big believer in horoscopes, but it's kinda impressive how accurate the description of a Taurus is to my personality. And yeah, yeah, I know it's not real and they spin it in such a way that the same traits applies to a lot of people, but I mean if you really know me as a person and you read some of these traits, you'd see some pretty true things.

The last thing we did was read this post on which Zodiac signs you should and shouldn't fight, and it is HILARIOUS, especially when Gwen read it in her really loud, super-dramatic way. We were just LOSING it in Rita's, we probably drove away all the other customers from how boisterous we were, but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

To get a slice of our fun, imagine these people when you read their respective paragraphs in that link above:

• Aaliyah: Leo
• Me: Taurus
• Christina: Pisces
• Angela: Scorpio
• Kayla: Gemini
• Ken: Sagittarius
• Gwen: Capricorn
• Phoenix: Virgo

Then imagine that it was being read by this woman:

And you would have a very rough estimation of how much of a good time we had at that Rita's at six in the afternoon, over Zodiac signs and frozen drinks.

Gwen, if you're reading this, I would like to say thank you for being a great mother and a great friend. Senior year would not have been as fun as it was if you hadn't been there to call me a bitch-ass pussy in class, or show me the beauty that is the giant Speed ride in the Del Mar Fair, or gouged out your eyes with us in some horrifying cultist blood pact. It's been awesome knowing you, but it's not gonna be goodbye because I know someday, the squad and I are gonna get lost in Utah looking for salty lakes and suddenly hordes of Mormons will attack us and right when we're closest to death, you'll descend from the sky and save us from their bicycles. And then you're gonna call us bitch-ass pussies and tell us to suck your ass as you fly back up, above the clouds, cackling the whole way.

Until then, we'll miss you, Gwen.

RFotD: I am actually not sure if she is going to Utah or not.

Day Sixty-One: An Old Dog

8/15/15, 11:20 PM PDT

After a month of traveling in Europe and getting used to either speaking in French, Tagalog (to shit-talk the people near us with no risk of them understanding us) or very simplified English, suddenly switching back to a country that only speaks English is very very strange. Awkward, almost. Like you know when you don't write anything by hand in awhile, your handwriting turns to trash? Sort of like that for me, but instead of mini Parkinsons moments with graphite and cellulose, they're little stutters and a general inability to find words.

I met up with Angela and Kayla today at Chipotle and just ordering my burrito (from our friends, Jonah M and Michael P as well) was DIFFICULT. It felt uncomfotrable to find the right words to say, which was weiiiiiiiird. I felt very awkward, it's just an inexplicable thing.

Damn it, I might have to relearn English again.

"All this reading is required? And there's a test tomorrow?!"

Luckily, a few days with my friends ought to fix that really quickly.

We went to Petco after gorging ourselves in a Chipotle. Kayla and Angela were both really surprised that the male mice available in Petco had some junk in their trunk.

I had to google search "Mouse balls" for this
picture, so the least you could do is appreciate it.

And later, we found these squeaky hedgehogs that sounded less like "Gotta Go Fast!" and more like the anti-smoking ads they run on TV starring tracheotomy victims.

Now, the following story I am about to tell will be a moment in my life that I will never forget. 

So at one point, we were looking at dog toys near the front of the store when a frail, elderly woman entered the pet shop while pushing around a small shopping cart with an equally frail, equally elderly dog sitting in the cart's basket. It was brown, a bit shaggy, and shivered slightly, much like an old person on the verge of collapsing from skeletal failure.

Of course, me being the moron that I am, didn't initially notice the dog in the cart, I just noticed the old woman. So after I saw the lady and returned my attention to the dog toys we were looking at, Angela innocently said "Hey look at that old dog!"

And I immediately thought she was talking about the woman. And I said, in a very loud voice,

"Angela! You can't call her that!"

Right as said old woman and her dog passed me. I saw her look at me. Her and her old dog.

I escaped. No way was I gonna live down that shame if she ever got a clear look at my face, so I hid behind an aisle selling dog training supplies and used ALL my willpower to prevent howling in laughter. Eventually, Kayla followed me to the aisle and she was basically crying from laughter after she realized what I did.

I avoided that woman's gaze the rest of the time we were in the store. Should I have apologized for calling her an old dog through proxy? Maybe.

Nah.

RFotD: It took way too long to rotate that video of us squeezing the hedgehogs back to the correct orientation. Editing some thing like that should be way easier, I swear.

Day Sixty: The Great Room Cleaning Initiative

8/14/15, 11:20 PM PDT

Today, I spent the bulk of the day cleaning my room. And for good reason. When I left, my room looked kinda like this:

I mean it's not bad, but it's not fantastic either...

(Psst, that's not my real bedroom, it's a representation since I didn't have a before picture)

But when I got back, it somehow ended up looking like this:

"HOW DID I GET A DRUMSET IN MY ROOM?"

I'm not entirely sure how, but when I got back, somehow the spiders must have interfered and made it like a MILLION times more messy or something because when I stepped into my room, I was DISGUSTED. Literally disgusted.

Well... maybe not literally. I kinda just saw it and thought the fact that my desk and floor was unnavigable was mildly inconvenient. But regardless of my motive, I decided to DEEP CLEAN MY ROOM. I removed everything that wasn't essentially an immovable part of my room, moved it to my hallway, sorted out the stuff I needed and didn't need, reorganized everything, redecorated so everything would look aesthetically pleasing, and BOOM. After about six hours of work, this is what it looks like now:

If you look carefully, you can find a few interesting little things in my room.

It may not look like much, but this is MARVELOUS compared to the previous iterations of my room. YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIND STUFF WITHOUT LOOKING THROUGH MOUNTAINS OF BOOKS! And I have 500% MORE DESK SPACE. ENOUGH TO FIT MY LAPTOP AGAIN!

Yeah, I'm very happy.

And then I realized that Samantha's going to LA tomorrow for a week and I could have spent those six hours with her instead of with the crap in my room.

But fear not! I got to see her today anyway, for two hours too! So I'm still very happy.

RFotD: She threatened to leave me because I just got back from a month-long trip and I decided to spend my first day back with my room instead of with my bae.