Happy Birthday to Me!

Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been very very busy!

So going back, two weekends ago, Kris and I went to San Diego{/wiki] to visit his friend Suze and for my Birthday. We had a mostly good trip down there, but it became clear as the weekend went on that he only went down to see his friends and I was a total third wheel. He HATES and bitches when people are the third wheel, so I got very annoyed. Sunday he asked what I wanted to do, I told him the one thing that I would have liked to see and do again that I know in town. Now, I don’t know San Diego, and if _I_ took a friend to a town that I knew very well and they didn’t know very well, I would come up with suggestions of things for them/us to do. I was offered no such items. So instead we basically wasted the day wondering around and watching a movie. On the ride home he asked what was wrong. I told him, he BLEW up at me saying that I was only pissed because the weekend wasn’t ALL about me. We haven’t spoken since. He told me that I was being childish. Ugh. Whatever.

We went to the San Diego wild animal park while there. That was tons of fun at least! 🙂 I took like 400 pictures with the new camera. Only kept 200 of them. Still trying to widdle down to my favorites. I’m going to have to get used to deleting images now that EACH picture is 10megs!

So anyways, Birthday week wasn’t all that exciting. Jason and I had a heart-to-heart one night, I got a birthday package from Aaron and Erick which was VERY nice of them! Although, I just went to get some chocolate out of the box and there’s a WHOLE bar missing!! WHO the FUCK steals a bar of chocolate out of someone’s box on their desk!? Ugh. These are the idiots I work with.

Speaking of idiots. So my big project that I was all exciting about before the holidays. Well the boss man has TAKEN IT OVER and is ruining it with lightening efficiency. Basically he’s writing the requirements without EVER talking to the end users about what they want to see changed and what they do, etc. He says, “I have a basic idea of how things work.” You MIGHT. BUT that doesn’t mean you have ANY IDEA about how things are ACTUALLY working! Plus part of this project is to REDUCE the number of Excel spreadsheets that are wondering around the company. Well you would think that you would NEED TO KNOW what those are and how they are getting used to be sure that they are going to be worked into the new software. He has NOT begun at ALL exploration of what those spreadsheets are. VERY ANNOYING.

Also he designed a [wiki]Gnatt chart in fucking EXCEL! Who does Gnatt charts in EXCEL!? Idiots do Gnatt charts in EXCEL, that’s WHO!

So then, remember how I went to Caborca and NO ONE knew the fucking passwords. Well apparently LAST week German, the guy in Caborca, figured them out or remembered them or something. So anyways, the boss calls me the other day and we proceed to have a 20 minute convo in which I have to EXPLAIN TO HIM in detail a reason why my solution to a problem is the ONLY solution. I mention SEVERAL times in my reasoning that this is BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW THE passwords. AT THE END of the convo, the boss says, “By the way German has access to the server now”. I ask, “How is that?”. He says, “because he remembered the password”. DON’T YOU THINK that’s something you should have mentioned to me RIGHT AWAY when you found out?! Don’t you think that’s something that would be HELPFUL to me to do my FUCKING JOB!

Anyways, so for my Birthday Jason and I had Champagne and Cake, just a low-class day. Nothing to exciting. I really wasn’t into my birthday again this year.

So this past weekend, I was gonna go on a quick backpacking trip with JoEric and Claudia, but it rained and was nasty and it’s a good thing I didn’t go because I ended up pretty damn sick all weekend! So Saturday I dropped of Asparagus off to George and then went to Griffith Observatory with Jason and his new wife. Had a good time overall, came home, took a vicodin and went to bed.

Sunday I spent the whole day laying on the couch. Tried to do laundry, but everyone else in the building apparently had the same Idea. So I got nothing done.

Dad’s Visit!

It’s been a pretty drama filled weekend around here, but lots of fun.

Last week at work was crazy as usual. Friday I had a demo with this company that FINALLY has their shit together.. Sad thing is, it’s a product from MICROSOFT! I can’t believe I am saying this, but I really really like this software called Dynamics! For once it appears that Microsoft has got something done right! I am setting up a full 8 hour demo for later this month after I am back from Phoenix. I was supposed to leave at noon but this guy’s Outlook kept crashing on him. Gee, I wonder why, could it be because you have 5 Gigabytes worth of email stored on your computer!?!!? WHO needs that much fucking email saved!?! I got out at 1:30 and had some stupid conference to go to.

Got home that night and cleaned up the apartment and did a bunch of other stuff. Nothing to exciting. Got in a HUGE fight with Jason over the whole Kris/Erick meeting thing. I really do not approve of it. Long story short, I was pretty pissed the whole night at him. Then to top it all off as I was leaving to pick up dad, I saw Erick pulling away from Kris’ house. Just rubbing salt in! 🙂

So I go to pick up dad and stop to get gas at the Shell station by the Airport and some fucking homeless woman comes up to me and won’t fucking leave me alone. She started to get a little violent! I was scared. Went and picked him up, he was actually early and his luggage was the first one off the plane so we were able to get home pretty quick and get in bed.

Got up Saturday morning to some horrible overcast weather. Decided to drive out to Perris anyways just to see what the weather was like out there and as we got closer, it kept getting foggier. So we get there and they say they probably won’t start flying till 1, there’s already 2 hours of reservations backed up in front of us, so we wouldn’t get in the air till nearly 3 or 4 if at ALL! So we decided to forgo that and headed to the Marsh Air Museum. It was alright, they had lots of neat old planes and stuff out there. From there we decided to hear out to Joshua Tree. Had lunch at this CRAZY little Cafe in which the woman got our order COMPLETELY wrong! But we ran into these two REALLY hot rock climber guys who ate lunch with us and gave some tips on places to check out in the park. Spent a few hours in the park just bouldering around, hiking, etc. Headed back to LA and made it in really good time, stopped at China Town and Olvera Street, both of which were having some sort of crazy festival! Ate dinner at Olvera, headed over and showed him Union Station and then headed over to Disney to show him that crazy building. We walked around on the top of it and then headed home.

Sunday we got up EARLY again, there was a HUGE train wreck right by our normal climbing place, 26 people died, so that was all closed off. Decided to go to Malibu, George got there first and found out IT was also closed due to some stupid Triatholon. Ended up having to drive all the way to Mojave which ended up being a good thing. We got out there and headed to the bottom. I got to do my first lead climbing which was TONS of fun! I was a little scared and shaking like crazy, but I made it to the top without slipping once! These other random three guys joined us in the same spot and one of them brought his REALLY hot son along! I enjoyed watching him climb… Got done with that and I ran out of the Punchbowl again which was fun! My Ankle didn’t hurt this time, so that’s showing signs of improvement. Of course we ate at Charlie Browns! 🙂

Headed back to RB from there, stopped off at the airport overlook for a few minutes and then drove him through all the beach cities, stopped at the RB Pier and did the “Speed Boat” which really wasn’t that fast or that much fun. 🙁 The best part was that we saw probably 30-40 dolphins swimming along side the boat for a while.

Got back home and I showered then we went out to dinner with Sirin and Kris which was a lot of laughs. We had yet another stupid waitress at the freaking RB Brewing Company.

After that I left dad and went to Kris’ for our end of week drinks. I was only going to have one beer and then leave so he could study more and I felt bad about leaving dad home alone. Well that turned into one beer, a bottle of wine and then a Rogers Roy! I didn’t leave till 1:30am but we finished all of the first season of Heroes! Now we just have to get through Season 2 this week sometime! It was a little awk at times last night with him though, not in a bad way, but whatever. It’s hard to explain! I like him, but I don’t really think we should start anything for the sake of the threesome relationship (not in a dirty way!!) and the fact that he’s just gonna leave anyways! Like I’ve said before he’s a really great guy!

Sunday I got a REALLY long email from Erick again regarding the whole he and Const thing that happened back in April (well I found out about it in April, the act happened in January). I’ve basically decided over the past couple months from taking a step back and really looking at who he is that I don’t really feel comfortable having him in my life. He’s a manipulator to get what he wants, kind of a stalker in ways and there are tons of other little things about his personality that just really sit wrong with me. He was a great friend before, but I just don’t feel comfortable having him in my life at all any longer. I have yet to reply to his email as I’m not sure how to exactly put how I feel into words and I feel like he does deserve a full explanation.

IdyllWild & Tahquitz

A lot happened this weekend, it was an excellent weekend up to the very end, where things took a horrible horrible change.

I got off work on Friday and headed home, grabbed my wallet which I had forgot that morning and then ran off to REI where I purchased a new Sleeping bag! It’s a 0 degree 750 fill down bag @ $100 off the normal price, so I just grabbed it up! I have been needing a new bag for a while, so it was time to get one! After that I headed to Trader Joe’s and loaded up on food, then back home where Justin came over and we hung out and watched Soldier’s Girl while I packed for the trip. It was a pretty good movie.

Saturday morning I got up early and found Tuxedo was throwing up again. He’s done this in the past where he eats and then pukes it all back up, so I wasn’t too concerned. Went out and got the last few things that I needed for the trip that morning and came home, put the cats in the bathroom so that he wouldn’t throw up all over the house while I was gone and then packed up the car.

We headed out about 8am that morning to get to Idyllwild. The drive was great, no problems or anything on the way up there for us. Though we did pass a pretty bad accident in which a motorcycle guy got killed. We got to Idyllwild and checked out the camp site, but we couldn’t check in yet so we went on this little scenic route hike that was nice and short. About half way back to the car though, it started HAILING on us! CRAZY! That went on for about 20 minutes while we rushed back to the car. Got back there and it stopped so we headed back to camp, got everything setup and then headed into town for some lunch. While we were eating it started POURING down rain for about an hour while we were hanging out there. Once it finally cleared up we headed back to the camp site and ran into George and Jason on the way there.

Packed up and organized everything for the next morning and then headed back to the site, ate dinner and hit the sack. That was a pretty bad night for sleeping, lots of snoring, tossing and turning and a very very flat mattress. Got up at 5am Sunday and we headed out. The hike up to the base of Tahquitz was killer, but we made it there in good time. However, we then could NOT find the start of the two climbs we were doing, so we wasted over an hour looking for those. Didn’t get started climbing till 9am! My group made it up the first pitch no problems, it was a really interesting climb up to there. While we were waiting for Jerry to get up, Meghan asked about what exactly happened between Const and I, she even specified she wanted details, which was odd. I gave her a very brief overview of what happened, at least as I see it. I didn’t really think it was appropriate to go into the real details with her.

Jerry started up on the next pitch and wasn’t exactly sure where to go, so he made a jog right and got caught around a tree. Found out that wasn’t the right way to go but he had already placed a device, so he just headed up. Got up to a spot where he found the route, but it was much harder then they were expecting. He placed another device and started the climb. At this point Meghan and I decided we had to get him out from around that damn tree. So I extend my anchor and climb out to where the first device was placed and pull it out then climb back to the station. Meghan and I do a quick belayer switch so that he was being belayed from the correct side of the tree now instead of the rope being wrapped around the tree. We completed that JUST in time too because less then a minute later Jerry took a nasty fall and landed upside down on the ledge. He laid there for a few minutes and then tried the climb again.

This time he made it about 20 feet higher, but hadn’t been placing enough devices. He was just about ready to get over this hard section when he lost it again and this time fell a good 30-40 feet, landed upside down again and cut up his forehead pretty badly, he was bleeding like crazy so we talked him into just coming down. We rapped off the wall and met Kris and Mok at the bottom. Hiked out and went to get coffee and rehash the day and share some stories. I was very sad that we didn’t make it to the top of the climb, but it’s good that Jerry didn’t keep trying to push himself because I think he would have gotten hurt a lot worse.

They all left that night and Kris, Mok and I headed back to the camp site, got some chicken and drinks. We made some great dinner, a great peach cobbler and sat around the camp fire telling stories and talking for a long time. Kris and I slept out by the camp fire and I slept like a rock! The stars were so pretty and just as we were laying down to go to bed we saw a shooting start across the sky.

Woke up about 6:30 Monday morning and we putzed around the campsite and got ready for the day, we headed out to climb up to Suicide rock about 9ish. It was a great hike and we moved pretty fast up there and of course the views up there are just amazing and so well worth it! It brought back so many memories though of last year and everything that’s happened.

Headed back to LA around 12:30 or so. Got home by 3 and walked into my apartment. This is where all the mess starts… Kris needs to use the bathroom and I tell him that it’s probably a horrible mess because I had put the cats in there. I open the door and Moo comes flying out, I walk in farther and see Tux half in/out of the litter box. I figure I had just caught him in the middle of business or something and give him a second, but he doesn’t move. So I walk over there and touch him and he’s stiff. At this point I start freaking out… Thank god that Kris and Mok were there. They really helped out so much. They took care of everything for me and made sure I was ok before they left. I just can’t get that image out of my head though of seeing him there like that. I wish I hadn’t left this weekend. He must have just had a heart attack or something though. I dunno, it was so weird last night being there and not having him lay between my legs. I’m going to miss him so much.

I did some laundry, took care of all the camping gear, geotagged the photos from this weekend, gave Moo a bath and caught up on some TV and then Kris called and invited me over for dinner and some wine. I headed over there and we got CPK and came back to his place and he had made a little note and put it around the neck of this bottle of wine that I really like and gave it to me. We ended up drinking two other bottles and watching some more Heroes and just talking till like 10ish. He’s such a great guy. This weekend overall has made me really care about him a lot more and getting those feelings of “more then friends”. But he and I have talked about that in the past and since he’s only here for a short time things probably wouldn’t work out. So we’re just friends and what not. But I can tell he’s going to be a great friend!

Pictures from the weekend are here.

It’s been awhile!

I know. I’ve been sucking at updating! But I’ve just been so damn busy with life and shit! You have no idea.

Last week was crazy. Not home pretty much every night of the week. My cats are lonely! My house is a mess, my laundry needs to be done and I need sleep!

Friday night I went out with Kris, Steve and Mayko. Had a good time till the end. We went to Fiesta, Abbey, PopStars and Eleven. Mayko got me into the VIP at Eleven, Steve and Kris didn’t come so I lost them. Then found out that Steve had just left Kris and Kris wondered off. I yelled at him for wondering off! What a mess.

Saturday I got up early and took car in to service. Got home and slept till noon, got up, packed and headed out for Mt Baldy. Met up with George and Jason and we hiked up to the top of Baldy and spent the night up there. Soooo Fucking pretty! You could see both the LA and San Gabriela Valleys.

Got home from that late on Sunday and met up with Kris. We went to the BevMO $.05 sale and bought tons of wine. Went back to his house and ended up drinking 3 bottles.

Monday morning work called me at 5:30 and I had to go into the office. What a fucking hang over too! Spent the day working and then did personal trainer. He about killed me! Got home from that and I crashed.

Tuesday I worked and then went kayaking with Kris. We did a beach landing, which was just GREAT! We almost rolled over in the waves, but managed to keep it nice and straight and landed perfect! Carried the kayak home and then showered and then went, got his Jeep and headed to Jason’s for Lasagna and Champagne! What a fun night!

I am officially out of town/busy every weekend from NOW till Oct 27th! Crazy fucking shit! I am very excited for it though!

I am not sure if I mentioned it, but I got my iPhone. It’s been wonderful and yet annoying. It crashed on Friday, WHITE screen of death! Would not do anything for hours! Very annoying. It’s also very very slow loading my contacts screen and I have noticed the bad reception and VM’s take hours to show up!

I’m going to spend a week in Phoenix in September. Going to spend 4 days in Sedona/Grand Canyon and then 4 days in PHX at a Nerdy convention. I can’t wait!

That’s my life. I had lots of other shit to write about, but I’m to damn busy! Keep up people! 🙂

Pics from the weekend are here.

Apple, You Are Losing Me!

Another crazy busy week/weekend! Let’s see. Thursday I had a date, which went pretty good. The guy is Latino and a little different, but we had fun. Went to dinner, talked about random things, had a bottle of wine and watched a movie. He was a nice guy, but probably a bit to immature for me still. We’re going to hang out again on Tuesday, but he’ll probably end up just being friends if anything.

Friday I was at work and did a full day of work. Left at 4:30 and stopped by the Apple Store. STILL no fucking iPhone! Very annoying. I wrote a nasty letter to Steve Jobs. Jerk! Left the Apple store a little after 5 and receive an email from the Boss…

Can you make sure that the subject laptop is configured with Produce Pro and MS Office 2003? Please leave the administrative codes and laptop and charger on Mac’s desk by end of the day tomorrow (Saturday). Mac will pick up the laptop on his way to the airport on Sunday AM. I understand it may not have been clear to you that Mac’s laptop was needed by Sunday AM. Your support is appreciated.

What a mess!Umm, excuse me! You have been talking about this whole laptop switch around for WEEKS. NEVER ONCE! NEVER! Did you ever say that the laptop which was replaced by a new one was going to Peru! And NEVER ONCE did you say that it needed to be COMPLETED by Sunday.

Let’s step back for a second. Weeks ago, we ordered 4 new laptops. ONE of them was for Peru, the other three for internal people. I got them all and ONE of the people getting a new Laptop had an OLD one. He was supposed to bring the old one in for me LAST MONDAY so that I could transfer all his shit onto the new one. He didn’t bring it to me till 11am on FRIDAY! When he handed it to me, he never ONCE mentioned anything about it needed to go to Peru on Sunday! UGH! So I called the boss and reamed him a new one! I was VERY annoyed. He kept saying that he had left it in this other guys hands to let me know, blah blah blah. NO YOU were the one managing this laptop change, YOU should have told me that this was going to happen. Then I go on to bitch about how this is NOT an emergency etc. UGH!

So anyways, after that Kris and I went Kayaking for about 2 hours. We got out there and just sat in the water for about 30 minutes watching the sunset. It was sooooo gorgeous! Once the sun was past the horizon, we paddled back and got back to his place about 8. Showered and then headed up to my office to pick up the laptop shit, found a REALLY great Persian place around the corner and ate dinner there then came back and we drank while I reformatted the laptop’s hard drive.

ALSO, with the laptop. I found 14 GIGS of straight porn on there. I have no idea what I should do with this information! LOL

Kris and I parted ways about 2am, but I couldn’t sleep at all, probably from all the caffeine in the pop we were drinking! So I laid in bed and chatted on the phone with this guy. He was nice, and really hot (in his pics), but sounds REALLY girly! I think I got to sleep about 4 am… And then my alarm went off at 6am, then the neighbors started talking really loudly and playing guitar about 6:45am, then someone knocked on my door about 7ish and then my phone rang at 7:30. I decided that the world was against my sleeping, so I got up, ran around and did some shit and then called Kris about 9. We went furniture shopping, I spent $300 at REI on climbing gear and we dropped off the laptop at the office. Did some other random shit and got home about 2:30, took a quick nap, showered and the picked Kris up again. We headed out to the LA Arboretum to meet up with Sirin and her mom. We ate dinner at the Arboretum, had some wine and then Kris and I went and walked around. It was right at sunset so the place was absolutely beautiful, and technically everything was “Off Limits” and closed, so we were the only ones walking around the gardens!

The concert was pretty good. The last two songs were not my favorites, but the rest of the songs were just amazing! And they had this really good pianist/violin player named Ayke Agus! She was amazing! Got home from that about 11:30 and crashed!

Sunday I got up at 5am and headed out to Rock Climbing. We did more lead climbing this week and did some pretty easy/difficult stuff. Most of the route was 5.5/5.4 so not to bad. The first 20 feet was even a class 4 (which means “a fire escape without hand rails”). Anyways, Jerry and I were climbing and then Jason, JoErick and George on the other one. Jerry and I would climb up to a belay station and then wait for the rest of the guys. At the first station we had about 2 inches of ledge to stand on and for some reason it took them nearly an hour to get up to it, so I was standing there on just my tip-toes the whole time. We had a really great time climbing, the last bit of the climb was nearly a 5.10 and Jerry took a pretty good lead climb fall and went probably 10-15 feet down. I was belaying him and got ripped off my feet and slammed into the rock wall. Thankfully I got my feet out in front of me fast enough and broke off a chunk of rock where my feet hit! It was funny after it happened because I remember seeing out of the side of my eyes everyone else on the belay station grabbing for my harness!

Once we got off there we headed out to Charlie Browns again for lunch. I had this HUGE BBQ sandwich that had Pork, Chicken and Tri-Tip on it! Delicious! I love that place! We also discussed more the next few weeks and since Tahquitz is in Idyllwild, I decided to just make it a long weekend up there. So I booked a camping site up there and sent out a group request. We’ll see how many people reply! I hope we can get enough people to go. It’s Labor day weekend, so I realize a lot of people will be busy/out of town. But I just took the chance.

Got home about 4:30, showered, did a load of laundry, vacuumed, did the dishes and then Kris and I went grocery shopping, came back to my place and watched a few episodes of Rome. Very good stuff.

And that was my crazy busy weekend! 🙂

PS. That laptop that I worked so much on fixing… Still sitting on the guy’s fucking desk!