wow.. it's been awhile.. not that this has been going on for very long, but nonetheless..

so the past week has been full of getting art ready to go and sending him off to europe (first to amsterdam, then some town 9 miles away from another small town called venlow/venloe). it's been hectic, it's been an uphill drag both ways ("yes art, you have to try on both pairs of pants, not just one.. what if they don't fit? do you want to bring them back? i didn't think so" and "walmart is your friend" and "rei, the place to be"). anyhow, he's in amsterdam, safe and sound (though.. the concept of being safe and sound in amsterdam is.. a bit radical) and will soon be starting work where i'm kind of certain he won't get in any trouble. so worrying can be put aside for approximately one month until he starts travelling and then the paranoia of him being pulled under eurail by a shoelace or being mugged in switzerland can kick in.

it sort of makes me wonder, if he did.. die (and i'm not saying he's going to or wish he does, i just worry), he doesn't occupy space the same way that say mike or i do. mike's room is a diaster, a mess, but filled with what is, i consider at least, the essence of mike, and to a large degree, so is mine (though i really do need to become less of a packrat and get rid of things i don't identify with anymore). but art's room, because he's in transition between not having a room in davis, and not collecting as much as mike or i. i don't know, i guess this all comes from the fact that whenever someone dies in a movie (which i've seen lots of recently), those mourning that person go to their room and mope around. if i went to art's room, it just doesn't seem to contain the essence of him. i mean, dad put in the wall to wall desk, which i'm not even sure he likes, he's got a bookshelf full of stuff collecting dust, which hasn't been added to in years. and the books, i suppose are him, but the tapes are abandonned from the family room to keep it from looking cluttered, the tv is old, but my dad is the original packrat again (same with the table/desk) so we can't throw that out. where would we go to bottle the essence of art? because he seems to contain so much of it..

anyway.. home on a saturday night in my hometown.. hasn't happened in a while. but my friends are all off on vacations or family trips (australia, seattle, and montana currently). so anyway, that's about it here..

oh lord, the end is near.. the room is thisclose to being clean. have i said that before? this time i really mean it. i only have *1* box to unpack (and it's mostly unpacked, just not all the way yet).

the weather has been extraordinarily lovely. or maybe i'm just used to the davis weather from hell still, though i have no idea how that'd be as i've never actually spent a summer there, and it has been 3 weeks since i was last melting there. i feel badly for all the people who like to live in 90+ degrees F.

job hunting has begun and boy is it depressing. looks like biochemistry was the wrong field to major in, or at least i should have skipped the protein crystallography for some cell tissue cultures or what not. i'm still applying to places, but my biggest gripe is cover letters. come on, they're already getting a resume, i'm supposed to kiss ass and reiterate my point? what's the point of it all?

so as the mandatory room cleansing continues, i routinely run into old sentimental stuff. today was the year books. it was really weird, my senior year, the book is crammed to capacity with signatures, mostly about hating ap fizzix (physics), and mohr (if any of you went to LAHS you know who i'm taking about *shudder*).

but despite the verbosity or even the space covering of these pages, i have not talked to many of these people since grad night, let alone even run into them. now i know that everyone has standard year book signatures, so they may not mean that much to the person writing/reading them, but there were a couple of heart panging messages, that had me wishing i'd stayed in touch with that person. it's hard to describe how i miss them, as they haven't been a part of my life for the last 4 years, but i do.

i hope it doesn't happen with my college friends, as there's no yearbook to remind me who they were, or of our various escapades.

amended: bug bites now itch like mad

ah, home sweet home. those are words that, when you leave, you don't think you'll relish, but as you return, you find more and more comforting. uncle craig's "non birthday event/just a relaxing weekend, really, it's nothing" was somewhat fun.

yesterday we woke up, arranged showers and breakfast while waiting for a few more people to show up. then we drove down to the snowshoe brewery and pub to have lunch (3 layer tostada mixed w/grandma's fish and chips - yummy) and pick up a pony keg. i had two types of beer, the brown beer and the snoweisen. the brown wasn't too bad at all and the snow was kind of weird for a hefeweisen, but oh well.

then we spent the afternoon vegging on the deck, just talking. there were about 19 people about (5 of which were little kids/babies). So it was kind of noisy, and as means for escape and relaxation i went to sit in the sky chair up in the woods. how wrong i was. after a mere 40 minutes of swinging idly with my eyes closed (you can tell how hard i was swinging from that.. not very), i was startled to find 6 bug bites which were swollen into 2 inch welts each. let me tell you now, a full 24 hours, that 4 of those are still raging and GODDAMN do they hurt. a LOT.

anyway, so after being abruptly awakened this morning (do people really need to shout good morning across the house from patio door to patio door? i think not), we went for a 4 mile hike. then we showered, relaxed, ate again (there was tons of eating involved this weekend) and then art drove us home.

thank god for home.

so today i spent a lot of time helping grandma get ready for all of uncle craig's friends. boy does he abuse her ;o) we did a massive grocery/supply shopping trip and then we then labored over fresh salsa and potato salad for snack/dinner. then we had a small break, and art and i hosed off the deck/patio table/chairs/benches etc. melissa and the great outdoors (in particular spiders) do not get along well, so it was with great relish, and mild disgust, i washed them away from sight. although, maybe incests really are intelligent and will get me tonight. we'll just have to wait and see.

uncle craig and aunt kymberly just arrived, with nieces and nephews in tow, just arrived. oy, looks like i will not be getting much sleep in the next couple of nights. thank god for going home i guess.

tomorrow promises to be less busy (oh, i dusted too, and arranged all magazines in reverse chronological order according to title, and then alphabetically.. it was rather obsessive compulsive. if i start washing my hands frequently, take me to a doctor quickly).
tomorrow also promises to be.. coming too soon due to small children, so i better sleep.

ok, so today was extraordinarily hot for me, because i left the bay area approximately 3pm and suffered through a long long drive (longer than normal) to my grandparents house in Twain Harte. as we drove through the central valley, in it's 110 degree F heat, without air conditioning in the heat trap car, aka the audimobile, i think i must have sweated so much, my body decided to stop or i'd become raisin-like.

so it was a pretty good day aside from the heat. i did laundry (wow.. that seemed like such an achievement earlier) and then headed out for a boston market lunch with leslie. then i got home, annoyed my cousin matt at work and drove up w/art. we're going to stay until saturday noonish (high noon - that funny noise for stand offs in western movies). today we just hung out, had dinner (no one makes me want to eat red meat like grandpa, with all his amazing seasonings) and went for a short walk. then we sat about and chatted a bit more and here we are.

tomorrow is another.. not so busy day, but i figured i'd hang out with grandparents for a couple of days because one of their good friends has a fatal brain tumor and grandpa's sister had a mini stroke (the best kind of stroke you can have apparently - not that i'm saying having strokes is good, but well..).

anyhow, early morning tomorrow, so over and out.

so it was pretty hot today i guess, at least that's what people kept telling me. it honestly didn't feel like 100 degrees (someone who had a thermometer told me that) but i could be wrong. i do feel very sorry for people who had to have >100 degree F heat today. our cats looked really flat all day, pressing their bodies against the coolness (well at least for sometime) of the pavement, rolling over to cool the other side from time to time. i felt bad, them being furry and all.

in other news, the room is looking.. well not much better.. but a little better. the shelf is thisclose to being ready to be removed. and then i get to work on getting rid of the extension to my desk too. if all goes to plan, i will have less stuff in my room soon (i'm trying to fight the pack rat gene, but i think that getting a double dose - one from each parent - will make this task much hard to do than to say).

also went to visit my lovely aunt terry today, she's got cool scrap booking stuff, so i imagine that a fair amount of time this summer will be spent doing so, especially when i get the ireland/london trip pictures organized into some semblence of order.

the gym was visited today, of all the hot days to go. did well.

am off now!

ah, the mundanity of life. oh wait, that's yet to come. instead, i had an interesting day.

well - actually a large majority of my day was spent half asleep half watching horrible tv (i won't even enlighten you to my frightening tastes in programming). then i cleaned and visited sean ojakian.

and my car died when i was trying to go home. so we tried to jump it, but it didn't work. so we had to push start it (4 tries, thanks so much sean and brother adam!!!!!!).

tomorrow is more cleaning. but i have a master plan:
a) clean out big shelf near door.
b) remove shelf.
c) move chest of drawers where shelf was.
d) assemble and put bed side table from davis where chest of drawers previously was (next to bed)

it sounds simple but in reality is highly ambitious - more later.