Kitty!

I've had a good past few days; yesterday, statistics made sense the way my new teacher explained them, there was little-to-no traffic on the 405, and I finally got a job interview (at Build-A-Bear), so my mom is slowing the nagging about it. In the evening, I drove out on the 5 a ways to get Ron from Matt Sternacker, and decided that since I'd come as far as the 10, we may as well get on it and go see Matt.

We got to Matt's around 7:30 or 8:00 or so, met his mother and sister (to whom he is not related, despite this "biology" and "genetics" business), who we not quite as wacky as Matt describes them, but may have only seemed this way because we weren't there long. We ended up going for Thai food in hoppin' West Covina (or, in the seemingly growing trend of shortening the names of places for no reason, "WeCo"). We'd have liked to stay longer, but since I had class this morning we were required to head back with the plan to drive to San Diego tomorrow together (which seems it won't work out after all, but oh well).

Back at my house, Scabbers and Ron met and got along famously.


This morning, we went to my Human Sexuality class. My teacher began by saying, "You know when your in a relationship with someone, and they're sick and really want to cuddle, and you don't have the heart to tell them to back away for a bit, so you end up sick too? Well, I'm sick." He also kept bringing up specifically gay rights stuff (today's lecture topic was sexuality and law), and mentioned UCLA Law's Williams Intitute, a program that works for gey rights, which he is "involved" in. That and Ron agreed with my general vibe from him. Anyway, class was quite interesting, and there were several debates about how the constitution guarantees any form of sexual rights, and what "undue burden" is when involving a mother trying to get an abortion.

After class, we just ate lunch and stopped by where my friend Weintana was working on campus to say hello and that I wouldn't be able to have her over tomorrow after all, since I'll be heading down to San Diego.

Upon leaving campus, we decided to go check out West Hollywood, since I've only ever passed it, not really wandered it. In truth, it's not that exciting, but I did find it relaxing to be able to walk and NOT feel awkward. I generally don't care about what other people think of my sexuality, but I do often feel awkward around LA. Yet, in West Hollywood, I think Ron and I were the only pair of people walking around that weren't the same sex. We ended up getting "tea" at a cafe, and then browsing a bookshop until the parking meter ran out. From there, we just drove around the city, looking at things and for places to go, eventually deciding to drive from Doheney and Olympic to Hollywood and Highland and then back over the hill to my house.

After dinner, my mom gave Ron a mango to cut for dessert. Scabbers, being weird (for he is indeed my cat), LOVES mango. As soon as it was in the room, Scabbers was at the table screaming for some. He climbs into my sister's lap next to Ron, where he watched intently as the mango is peeled and sliced. At some point, her decides he can wait no longer, climbs across to Ron, and began eating it from the plate until Ron simply picked some up and held it for him.

Once everyone, including the cat, had had enough mango, Kevin called (with impeccable timing), we talked a bit, and I left Ron outside with the phone and began writing this. At the moment, we're listening to the Lost in Translation soundtrack and Ron is organizing and arranging ties for the dress that is to be in QFS next year. He’s being quite ADD, as usual.

Placenta

I had quite a busy four days of traveling and getting away from that hot George H. W. of a house. Friday of last week was declared Spare the Air day because the air quality of the bay area was projected to be unhealthy. This meant that the different public transit districts were offering free rides all day, and they would be reimbursed by a grant offered by the Bay Area Air Management District. I took advantage of this and spent the day in San Francisco with the sausage queen and his boyfriend, and I had a great time.^{1 Apparently the infamous hill where the Cathedral of St. Mary is located is called--Cathedral Hill.}

Saturday was spent on my parent's boat with my grandparents as well. We launched the boat at "The Delta," the brown, monument less system of natural and man-made waterways where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow into the San Francisco bay. My family spent the day wakeboarding and tubing behind my parent's $45,000 dollar boat (they say they can't afford to pay for my schooling). My grandfather really wanted to wakeboard, this was a desire that we had to kill because he has a severely arthritic knee, and is completely un-coordinated. Instead we persuaded him to ride on the tube with my little brother (I'll never forget the sight of my 68 year old grandfather being pulled over the water at 20 mph). My grandmother was content with the tube ride (she was a surfer in the 1950's and an accomplished skier [snow and water], and doesn't have the same sense of pride that her husband does).

Sunday was of course San Francisco pride, and after going, I think every GLBT person needs to attend this parade at least once. Not for the parade itself, but because the Caltrain was standing room only. Because BART was running 10 car trains that were filled to capacity. Because it is the single largest tourist event of the year for a major metropolitan area. Because I'll never feel that I'm some kind of freak or insignificant minority again.

Unfortunately through no fault of my own, I missed my Caltrain connection and was forced to spend an hour at the Millbrae station waiting for the next train, causing a serious breach into my precariously planned packing time. Long story short, I stayed up late and woke up early.

Surprisingly, Monday was one of the most enjoyable mornings I've ever had. Travel by train is severely underrated,

1. No lines

2. The seats are not nearly as crammed together as they are in economy class

3. No TSA (I hate those bastards, they take out the fact that they have a crappy job on people who are off to better places)

4. The train cars are clean, quiet, climate controlled boxes that float across land, allowing one to observe the city and countryside up close

5. No TSA

6. One can move about as one pleases

Even the 6-7hr bus ride wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it was going to be, in fact, it was enjoyable for most of the ride. The bus was nearly brand new, the drive up was spectacular, and the people were comparable to the average mix that one would find in an average economy class (the extra cost over taking a greyhound keeps more of the undesirable types from taking Amtrak).

Did I mention that the drive was spectacular? I must say that my noise cancellation headphones and iPod really made the difference; I'd defiantly recommend bringing something along those lines if anyone attempts to make the trip up here via Amtrak.

Eureka, from what I have seen so far is an interesting little town. The weather is identical to that of Santa Cruz, and the town is full of Victorian Era buildings. One major difference between the two towns is evident when looking at the collection of downtown retailers in Eureka versus that of Santa Cruz, no chain stores are present whatsoever (with the exception of Ramones Bakery [A local chain]), people here shop at the coop because they really do believe in the importance of locally owned businesses. The outskirts of Eureka along the 101 are full of shopping centers that serve the more conservative residents around the Pacific Lumber mill and those who live in the mountains.

Pacific Lumber unfortunately is a major part of the Humboldt area. The drive near Eureka is full of sections of missing forest where green grasses have filled in the gaps in the mountains where trees used to be. I didn't realize what I was looking at until I saw a fleet of logging trucks merge on to the highway.

(Just as a reminder) I'm staying with my Aunt and Uncle in their newly renovated and soon-to-be-sold Victorian house just off old town Eureka. I'm here as an all around handyperson (housework, renovation, and most importantly child care).

The Family.

Peter Moore

Age: 51

B.A. Oxford University

M.A. Harvard

Occupation: Musical therapist

Peter's ex-wife kept his last name because apparently he's well known around here as an excellent therapist. From what I hear, she's crazy.

Amanda Moore

Age: 30-ish

Occupation: Herbologist, Mommy

Amanda frequently makes her own Kombucha, Beer, Yogurt, Sourdough Bread, Tea, and one day hopes to run her own organic family farm. She is also an advocate of the anti-soy movement, and is in the middle of yoga instructor training classes (she has postponed this in preparation for the birth of her next child).

Maisey Moore

Age: 4

Interests: Ponies, make believe, playdoough cooking

An hour after I arrived on Monday, Maisey had me write a letter on her toy laptop to the Eureka Superior court regarding her disappointment with the judges inconsiderate ruling to suspend her father's license for 30 days, just weeks before her sister baby is due. (She's 4 years old)

Benjamin Moore (Benny, Balloon)

Age: 2

Interests: Day-Glo orange traffic cones, vacuum cleaners

Lilliana Moore

Interests: Her mother's placenta

Eureka!

I'm In Eureka.

I'm sending each of you my contact information.

Check your mail.

I will release my full report soon.

New Revelations

I am sick of perpetual battles with my mother, so I am finding other things to think about/learn

Things I have learned so far at UCLA, and Things I have noticed over the past few days:
1. Stats is going to be a bitch, and all Stats teachers, often men in their 30's and 40's, are utterly insane.
2. Reproduction and sex are opposites.
3. Your penis is actually evolved to remove as much of another man's semen is possible from a woman's vagina while putting your own in, and you're likely to ejaculate more semen if you believe your partner may have had other men recently. Haha. YOUR penis(es) with a vagina...hahahaha....STAY AWAY!!
:-D
4. "Caltrain" is an anogram for "Claratin."
5. At 8:00 in the morning, it is easier to drive to the city on surface streets than on the freeway.
6. I am in need of amy form of human contact, even just verbal, with someone not related to me.

Pride/San Francisco

I just got home from San Francisco. I really love the town and I'd love to live there. It's a beautiful town, even the Tenderloin where I was staying. It's great that it's so pedestrian friendly - I walked about 50 miles over the last three days. I just didn't have the motivation to take a crash course in SF public transit. I got to hang out with some friends I wanted to see, and it was a real treat that Kevin got to visit.

Pride weekend was interesting. On Friday I went to the trans fest/march in Dolores Park. Saturday I stayed in and only caught the tail end of the street fair, but I was in the Castro in the evening where I saw a lot of people from Santa Cruz on the street. I also saw a public display of oral sex in the window of an apartment.

I won't get into too many details about pride, but overall it reinforced my disenchantment with the gay community. This lies in the severe fragmentation of the gay community which is rooted in fetishism. Dykes on bikes, leather pigs, twinks, etc. - it seems that the majority, definitely not the minority, of people there fit into discrete identity brackets and in completely segregated peer groups. It's apparent that this identity obsession is sexually motivated - people are making a comprehensive lifestyle out of fetishism. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing, but these people just seemed like vapid sex fiends (whether hiding it or not) incapable of real human companionship.

That was a really condensed rant and I'm just babbling. If that was completely incoherent, chalk it up to too much time on the road in the heat.

Relatives

Today was incredibly strange.
It was my granparents' (mom's dad and step mom) 25th anniversary, and they threw a luncheon party at Maggiano's. While there, my uncle, Stuart, gives me this really tight hug, says, "We need to talk later," and walks away. Odd. So I sit for lunch, being polite and friendly to my grandparents' friends and just generally pretending I care for a while.

Sometime after desert, my aunt Marnie starts taking pictures and I am therefore required to stand up. Stuart then drags me out of the room saying that I don't need to be in any more pictures and that my grandparents know what I look like.
Stuart: I just want you to know we love you.
Me: I know. I love you guys, too.
Stuart: No matter what.
Me: Okay. I know.
Stuart: If you ever need anything, you let me know.
Me: Okay. But why was this so important that you needed to talk to me privately?
Stuart: I found your myspace when you added Kyle the other day [which was evidently against my original better judgment].
Me: Okay...
Stuart: And if you need any help telling your parents--
Me: Telling my parents? About what?
Stuart: You know, what was on your profile.
Me: What? That I'm gay? They've known for over a year.
Stuart: Oh. Okay...Well, just know that no one in this family cares. Or, well, I suppose I can't speak for everyone. But no one under MY roof cares.

Gah. What's weird is that Stuart is Harlan's twin, and now they've both found me on myspace. Luckily, these are the only two I would expect there, and I rather like James (the last brother) and don't worry about him knowing or caring. But what is with these 42-year-olds on this website? And why the whole fiasco just to tell me you don't care? If you really don't care, just say so and move on. I appreciate family support, but I will be what I will be--whether or not my uncles approve.

Also, my grandparents were sickly proud of me being the first grandkid in college; I'm only the second grandkid. But that was how they introduced me to everyone: "This is Jenn, she's our first grandchild in college. Oh, we're so proud of her!!" (pinch my face, AGAIN). It was like Kyle (21, in the Marines, looks like Matt's fantasy boy in the soccer pics a few posts down) didn't exist. It's not like the Marines are something to not be proud of...


To make the day stanger still, after dinner, my other grandmother and Mary came over after leaving the nursing home where Dale is for the night and we watched Transamerica. Weird movie to watch with a grandparent. Grandmom's comment was, "I'm so glad I'm satisfied with my gender."

Holy Crap.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/24/MNGM1JK1MI15.DTL

Who needs skin, anyway?

So, I spent the day at my grandmother's house, since her boyfriend's skin had to be removed from his right calf due to a surgery to prevent the spread of a flesh-eating bacteria he seems to have picked up vacationing in Canada a couple of weeks ago and the two were in desperate need of assistance. At the moment, his muscles are covered by what essentially looks like a sort of Saran wrap with an attached small vacuum tube to get rid of excess fluid. It's quite disgusting, really.

The first idiot nurse had said that extensive home care wouldn't be necessary, and that my grandmother could care for it on her own. Just holding the man's leg was going to be one person's job, but one person could do all of the cleaning and rebandaging alone. Right. So they had to find a doctor or supervisor who was available and who would override the first decision and get him approval to enter a nursing home for a few weeks until it is manageable at home. At 4:30 they finally got the approval from the doctors to take him to a place in Tarzana, so my mom helped my grandmother get him into her car, and his son followed in his car to meet them there and help him get settled. We got there around 10:30 this morning, and didn't leave until about 5:00.

My poor grandmother is feeling quite upset and frustrated by all this, since she used to be a nurse but has been retired for about twelve years and can't really perform the duties needed anymore. She and Dale have been living together for about three years now, and while I was never much a fan of him (he's just a bit boring, nothing bad; I've just never gotten close to him), my grandmother is very happy to have him in her life. They're both holding up as best they can, but it's been and will continue to be rough. My poor dad can't get off work to go be with her, but Mary, my aunt, should be flying down to be with them Sunday, which is good.

Teeth!

Good News!

Good News!

Pollute the Air.

Kill off the animals.

Poison the Oceans.

Deplete our natural resources.

It doesn't matter.

Because Jesus is coming

And everything will be fine.

Weird

So this morning I was determined to find my iPod if it was indeed somewhere in the house, but first I had to do some investigative work.

Unfortunately for me, once I took the anesthesia tablets, I don't remember much more than my shower, the next thing I recall (minus a few 3 to 4 second blerps) I was back on my couch with a Baskin Robbins mango smoothie in my hand. I was out of it for most of the day and night, and didn't even think about my iPod until Wednesday morning when I wanted to call my Eureka aunt to tell her that I was indeed coming and that I had tickets. [After a fiasco that occurred on Sunday I elected to employ the Contacts feature on the iPod because unlike most people in this society, I conveniently lack a cell phone and I frequently have my iPod on me when traveling, so I decided to make use of this feature]. Anyway, I went to look for the iPod to get the number and realized that I couldn't find it. Immediately I thought of the Surgery, and I remembered thinking about brining it with me. I checked my pants, and my white iPod headphones were quietly tucked away in my pocket along with a bag containing my four wisdom teeth.

This itself was a cause for alarm because I rarely separate my iPod from its headphones. As far as I was concerned, it was lost.

I searched the house and briefly looked through the car and found nothing.

I asked my Mom and she couldn't recall if I had brought it with me to the office, but I did remember that I was thinking about it. The next step was to call the office and see if anything turned up.

Problem: The office is closed on Wednesdays.

Thursday.

Kevin: My name is Kevin, I came in to get my wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday, I think in my drugged out state I may have left my iPod in the office somewhere. Has anything turned up?

Office: Kevin! Nice to hear that you are feeling better, it seems that we gave you too may of those pills because you were really out of it. I don't think anything has been turned in, but let me check with _____. No, nothing has been turned in, but we did see you listening to music on the way out.

-----

Okay. So these people not only knew who I was, but apparently I was listening to music while I was in this semi-conscious state. This also means that the iPod at least made it to Baskin-Robbins. One question that I want answered is- What the hell was I listening to while my teeth were being pulled out?

-----

Kevin: Mom, did I go in with you to Baskin-Robbins?

Mom: No, you could hardly walk.

-----

Hearing this is good news, sort of, because the probability of my iPod being in the hands of a stranger had been drastically reduced, but now I have to figure out where I'd put my iPod in such a state of mind? The oven? The refrigerator? Some unmarked cabinet?

I tore apart the house, but to no avail, my little iPod was nowhere in sight.

When my mom and brother came home from wherever they were for the day, my brother walks over to me and hands me my iPod, safe and unharmed.

He said that he found it in the backseat pocket, behind the passenger seat- right behind where I was sitting.

Whatever possessed me to put my iPod there will remain a mystery, but what didn't remain a mystery is what I was listening to. I synced my iPod with my computer and apparently I was listening to the Virgin Suicides and Half of The Pleasure Principle by Gary Numan.

Weird.

Bad Elephants! Bad!

A days worth of internet-surfing had to turn up something...

Missing

I've misplaced my iPod, and I fear the worst.

When I scheduled my appointment for my surgery, I chose one of three sedation options, and that was to take some pills the night before and the day of. I woke up Tuesday morning, the morning of my Surgery and when I was in the shower I decided it was a good idea to bring my iPod with me to zone out to during the surgery. Unfortunately, the last thing I remember was putting on my shoes. When I came to, I had a Baskin-Robbins mango smoothie in my hand, and gauze in my mouth.

This morning when I wanted to get a phone number off my iPod, I couldn't find it anywhere. I don't know if I brought it with me to the Doctor's office, but I checked the pants that I wore during the surgery and my iPod headphones were in my pocket. I looked all over the house, and I can't find it anywhere, the only logical place it could be is the Doctor's office because I'm not someone who usually misplaces things. I just hope that someone in the office turned it in; I don't think that someone going to see an oral surgeon would steal something like an iPod... I hope.

Vicodin!

Kevin, I want to see what stream-of-conciousness writting looks like on vicodin. Go!
Please??

Evolution of Dance

if it doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Dear God. Matt, why is it that I could picture you doing this?

Perhaps If I Saw More of This

Id watch the world cup only if I saw more of this.

The only time when I'm glued to TV sports is during the Men's Diving competitions; I'd love to get inside one of those...

Odd Files, any thoughts?

Copa Mundial

Okay, I admit it. I'm hooked on the World Cup. I'm not big on sports, but this is something else. Because I'm limited to broadcast television, I have to watch most everything in Spanish. That's fine, I can understand a good portion of it. However... it's more exciting to just watch the game and not pay attention to what's going on.

Just in case you start to think my fascination with the World Cup is macho driven, take a look at this: Fernando Torres, #9 España. Ay ay ay...
Damelo duro, niño.

Tubeway Kevin

UCLA

UCLA is a stupid, stupid campus. And people in the PARKING AND INFORMATION kiosks couldn't give directions or tell me where to buy a fucking parking permint. I hate LA. No danger of me transferring anywhere!

Kevin Numan

I found this mildly amusing, and I think I'll use this as my profile picture for a while.


-Kevin

Welcome

Welcome,I thought that this would be an interesting way for the bunch of us to keep in touch.
-Kevin