came home today around 2 or so after being out all night.
i came in the door expecting to be annoyed by my prodding grandfather.
but when i walked in i didn't hear the TV.
something's wrong...

i walked throughout the house and no one was there.
eventually i talk to my sister online who says that my parents and grandpa are in the hospital.
the cancer is getting him.

when i walked in, i kinda missed getting questioned by him. not that he's that nosy or anything, but its a routine i got used to.
kinda miss him now.

get better.

i guess it's good to know native cultures before you go to where ever your foreign travels take you.

i'm reading through Rigoberta, who is talking about marriage tradition.
its going on and on about how the proposer has to go to the woman's house 3 times and get rejected by the father with a representative of the community present.
the first time you get flat out refused cuz the "daughter's too young". the second time you accept some cigarettes if there's a chance. and the third time, you get accepted. i guess you don't get rejected thrice, you just have to go to the door three times.

anyway. reading further rigo says how the woman should be pure and in this way the "community will respect the girl: they will love her becuase they know she has begun her marriage with her hands clean. That's what they say: 'She's not one of those girls who hang around the streets. She's never been seen with a boy in the street.' In [her] community, if if a girl is seen in the street with a boy, she both loses her dignity and breaks the customs of our forefathers."

now. maybe i'm reading into this and all she's referring to is prostitutes, but i feel kinda bad now cuz i walked this girl, mayra, home. twice.
it was a small community. and i am, well, white, so everyone and their brother who was aware watched me walk her home. at the time i thought it brought her clout, cuz all these girls think that if they try hard enough, one of these white boys will fly them home with them, but according to this, i disgraced her and possibly her family. although i guess her dad already ran off, so maybe she wasn't in too good of a situation to begin with. i gave her a hug goodnight and she really didn't seem down with that. thought it was weird at the time, but i guess i now know why.

fuck. i'm white. can i use that as an excuse?
wait!
american!!!
even better...

donald rumsfeld is such a jackass.
speaking of the troops in iraq on his latest press conference:

"if i can do my job, then they can do their job."

well. i guess sucking the presidents dick is a dirty job, but i think you may have things a bit more cushy than the soldiers. the only wrath he would incur is if he bit.

did i mention to yall that conference a while back that i read about?

there was shit that just showed his arrogance and ignorance, but i think this one took the cake.

somebody asked about retirement, to which he responded by saying something to this effect:

"why worry about retirement at your age? at my age i'm still not looking forward to it!"

again. sucking dick aint such a hard job.

even more pertinent than retirement some of the troops were complaining about not getting paid and having collection agencies coming to their wives or significant others at home.

yeah. we're doing alright. bush created 'jobs' by getting into a war and then he doesn't even pay them.
what a guy...

oh wait. found time.
these last few pictures might not be that interesting. be forewarned.

back to the deer in the dark...
dark or blurry? you get blurry.

here's that lower waterfall i was talking about in the previous post. since i don't know how to work with the light, the sun was at the shittiest point possible in the sky. just about set. this place is called painter's lookout, or something to that effect, but my pictures really don't do it justice.

so yeah. we finally left wyoming and got back into montana for a bit that eventually led us to idaho. i did a lot of sleeping at this point. idaho had some pretty river scenery, but i failed to capture it. the next pictures i took were at...
the dalles? shit. i don't remember what the city is called. but this is right on the idaho/washington border. ha! i just looked it up. on the idaho side (left of the river), you've got lewiston. and to the right, that's clarkston. shoulda known.

back in washington and we make our way to pullman where my great aunt and uncle live. my great uncle is a retired english professor at wazzu. they live damn near it. here's the view of washington state from their house. if you pull out a little further, you can see a little park with red trees. it's all native flora along with a rose garden. i walked around there with my great uncle. nice place, kinda warm though.

so my parents finished the drive home while i stayed the night with my granduncle and grandaunt so i could see wazzu while it was open on monday. i wasn't too successful, i only got to talk to one professor. although he was the one who i would most like to study under, he was a newb and couldn't answer many questions. it was kinda funny cuz i was walking around the anthro building and i recognized him from the pictures that they put on the professor's website. so i followed him into the cafeteria hoping to get up the balls to go talk to him. so i followed him to one part of the cafeteria, where he got a burrito, or something of the sort, he sat down, alone, chomped it down and threw away the garbage.
still, i didn't talk to him. but i kept following him. he got up, we to the other side of the cafeteria and got some pizza. he sat down and munched that down.
two-lunch kinda guy. i like it...

anyway. so i stayed the night and got up in the ass crack of the morning to head north to spokane, then west along 90 back to seattle. it was an ungodly 12 hrs.
i didn't take many pictures. i mostly slept or finished up "the davinci code".

this is the only picture i took the whole way back. the assed view from the entrance of the spokane bus station. those are stone pilons with inch thick steel cables connecting them. hell if i know what that's all about...

so here ends my trip. i could do the guatemala trip, but i'm sure all of you were bored off your ass with this one. however i did have more pictures taken on this trip than the guatemala trip. but that one is more exotic....

meh, whatever. i'm lazy, i might have to pass...
i only finished this one cuz i started it.

when a task is once begun....

maybe i'll actually finish up and blog about that east coast trip from the summer.
k. we left off in yellowstone. i showed a shitload of boring and a few interesting geyser pictures, along with a fatty bull elk crossing a river.

well, now i have more pictures of a different bull elk. this guy was just sitting there for a while bellowing his heart out for the ladies. sounded like something you would expect to come out of a herbivorous dinosaur. kinda foghornish.
eventually he's fed up with the lack of results and stands up. i had a picture of him standing and bellowing, but somehow my dumbass saved another seated picture over it. so here is the closest thing i got. he grazed when he wasn't yearning for the ladies. eventually the women did start trickling in from the north. the male got ready. on that hairy waddle thing he's got going on... yeah... he started to piss on that. that really drives the ladies crazy. i think i need to grow a fatty beard again then piss all over it. no wonder i don't have a girlfriend! nature has to set me straight.
so they did meet up, but in the distance. not quite sure what went on over there. we eventually got bored and left.

on the road was our biggest surprise. and one of the coolest shots i think i got.
driving along, the sun starting to set, now even the buffalo are heading home. the fucker's heading right for us! see how it's about as big as that bug? it's a giant beast. this is how close i got to its ass. that's not zoomed in at all. if i had leaned out the window a bit i would have been able to spank it.

going more north we started to get into more canyonous (if that's a word) areas. here's another waterfall. go waterfalls...

sun going down even further means more buffalo. this one had just come out of one of the steaming ponds you can kinda see in the background. this had potential to be my best picture. if only he wasn't mostly shaded...
if that damn sun was a bit higher or behind me and the car.
here's a better lit picture with another buffalo ass.

and now the last stop in yellowstone: the little grand canyon, as it is affectionately referred to. i played with the functions on my camera a bit. which do you prefer? the lighter one seems a bit more hazy.
but yeah, that is red rock on the side walls.
yup. another view of that canyon and river.
this is a bit further to the right of the river bend. and now even further to the right you can get a better gauge of the canyon's depth.
running to a different area, i took a quick picture of the moon and the width of the canyon.
this was even further down the canyon was a waterfall. that blurry thing is the upper one. we'll come to the lower one in a bit.

but first, some deer. they all came out to graze at night. so the pictures, of course didn't come out that well. this one isn't so bad though. that thing behind its ear is the moon.

well. ran outta time. just a few more to finish up next time...

i thought the numbers of people that i would see and know at fred's would start dwindling, but no.

today i had three people i knew.

asia. from blimpies. way back in the day. works at some real estate company on mercer island. her brother used to work there too. i guess he's a bum now and always pimping his shit at tiki bob's cuz he knows the bouncer.

second. randy. air's little bro. came through my line bowling with salt containers. chatted about how homelife is, etc, etc.

third was paola. a chic from high school. i always admired her cuz she lived in argentina for a while and seemed to be pretty fluent in spanish. she didn't say anything at all when i was helping her, and just as she was about to leave, i said it, "you look familiar". kinda bitter like i didn't know from where i knew her, she was like, "yeah, we went to school together".
so i asked, "it's paola, right?" to which her total body language changed and it seemed like she was now delighted to see me. but...
too late.
your time is up.
next person.

oh. can i also say about how i did 17 pull-ups on tuesday.

i would have shit myself in high school to do anymore than 5.

all it takes is a bit of practice.
anyone can do it.

my drunk ass says:
i know too many damn people in kirkland.
my ass needs to move back to seattle.
in due time.
unless i go to some far-off land.

anyway. first time in kirkland bars.
too many people from high school.
fuck off.
damn near 12 hrs of work tomorrow.

why is it that everyone i want has no interest in me, and the ones that do have interest in me i don't want? coincidence, or fucked-up retarded shit on my part?

mother fucking blogger quit on me last night. but i liked the post enough to attempt to recreate it. but first, i wanted to just get out that i am totally done with all my paperwork for applying to grad schools. tomorrow i have to fax westmont to get transcripts to each individual school, and that's it. my mom's got a fax machine at her work, so i'm getting the hook up. but this means i'm done! all i have to do now is sit back and wait til march or however fucking long it takes those bastards to process the shitstorm of applications they got this year. the anticipation hasn't really struck just yet.

now back to the previous post:

i finally got around to start reading rigoberta. there's a link below if you're interested. but the main point is that she was a civil rights leader for the guatemalans after the genocide they faced in the 80's.
anyway. the book is basically rigo telling of her life and culture. in the beginning she starts with the beginning: birth.

she runs through the practices that the mayan perform, but also go into an astrology that they hold. what i found interesting about it was that it was unlike the greek or romans that base one's personality on the MONTH a person was born. also, unlike the chinese who base one's personality on the YEAR the person was born, the mayan base what the person's personality will be like on the DAY of the week they were born.

they call it the person's nahual. pretty much like a totem. like the chinese the mayan get an animal or plant that shares their personality. you can be a dog, cat, bird, bull, lion, sheep, horse, or even a tree.
i know i said this was based on days of the week, but if you decided to count those nahual and got confused when you counted 8, the answer lies in the fact that the mayan go off of a 10-day cycle. rigo didn't really go into the details, so i can't account for how they assimilate that into our 7-day week, nor can i say what the other two nahual are.

but anyway. being born on a wednesday is bad. that means you're a bull: bad tempered. monday, wednesday, saturday, and sunday are the best days to be born on because you will be well mannered. wednesday is considered to be the best of all because your nahual is a complacent sheep.
i have no idea what day cats are, but if you are one, you will most likely fight with your siblings and like it.

the interesting part is that parents don't tell their child which nahual is theirs. this is so the child can't grow up blaming his behavior on the nahual. if you knew you were a bull, you might be tempted to blame your assholishness on the fact that you were a wednesdayer. the mayan culture wants the child's personality to form on its own until it is fully molded and formed. apparently this happens for them sometime around the age of 10 - 12 where the parents finally tell the child their nahual. the perk to finding out what animal you reflect is that the parents gift you with that animal, unless its a lion, in which case they find you a proper substitute. then once you are told, you tend to keep it to yourself or only tell your close friends. rigoberta is tight and won't give up the identity of her nahual.

all in all, i thought it was interesting that cultures around the world can base their notions of what a person's personality will be liked based on a time frame of when they were born, but that different cultures pick different ways of grouping how they think people's personalities will be similar. astrology doesn't seem to have much of a solid base if you can pick and choose your time frame for judging it. anyone have any explainations to offer?

i started reading that Rigoberta book. got a link below if you're interested. anyway, its a biography where rigoberta first goes through the birth ceremonies of the maya, and what kinda cultural beliefs surround a child's birth.

they have a sort of astrology in the mayan culture. but unlike the chinese tradition where the year defines a personality, and also unlike the greek/roman astrology that dictates the month to be the decisive factor in a person's personality, the mayan believe that the day of the week tells how a person acts.

...interesting how cultures around the world can found a belief on how a person will act in life depending on when the were born. even more interesting is how the beliefs can as easily be created on the day, month, or year you were born.
sounds a bit contrived to me...

anyway. like the chinese, the mayan believe you have the personality of a given animal. something they call the nahual, which i guess could be compared to a totem. they have animals like cats, dogs, horses, sheep, lions, bulls, birds, and even trees. she didn't specifically list out all of the nahual.
and if you also counted the list of animals and plant, and noticed it came out to eight, the mayan actually go off of a ten-day week, something that also isn't very explicitly explained.

but according to rigoberta, tuesday is the worst day to be born on, its the nahual of the bull: someone who is bad-tempered.
better days are monday, wednesday, saturday, and sunday.
sheep is on wednesday and considered to be one of the better days because of your impending mellowness.
she didn't really explain the rest of the animals other than the cat, which will have the child prone to fighting with their siblings.

as custom goes, the parents don't tell the children what nahual they were born under because they don't want the child to blame their behavior on their nahual. like a bull blaming their assholishness on the fact that they are a bull.

so custom dictates that parents don't tell the child what nahual they are until they are about 10 - 12 years old and their personality is supposedly already molded and formed. (i guess mayans grow up quickly.) but the cool part is that once the kid is told their nahual, the parents end up giving the kid their nahual as a gift. well, unless its the lion, then they end up getting something else.

astrology. go figure.

holy buttfuck.
i was all excited about getting my letters of recommendation from profs at UW, but now tomorrow i'm going to face the GREs. its been so damn long since i've had to deal with any of the shit they're going to be throwing my way.

it's sad to think that i'd probably do better on this when i was primed for it in high school than i am now. whatever. we'll see what happens. this'll really let me know if i'm going to grad school or not.
wish me luck tomorrow. it'll be over before i go to work at 6:30.

if i bomb it should i bother to spend more money on sending out transcripts?

at the pool i played with the kids today.
some kickball, some dunking of the 60-lb little shits on a long pole.
everyone was happy.

finally got the gaul up to actually read at work again. its been a long while since i've even bothered. but i grabbed some Sierra mags. everytime i read those i get pissed. but i guess that's their ploy. to tell you what's wrong in the world, and how the government has facilitated it. concerning the environment, its really weird to call conservatives just that. their idea of how the economy should work is to develop. growth is their main concern. why the hell do you think they're anti-abortion?

but anyway, even though the bush administration has recently rescinded decades-old laws that will now allow roads to traverse once purposely roadless wildernesses, they are fed up about a company's intent to build wind-powered generators in cape cod simply because its within view of given upperclass getaway areas like martha's vineyard. here, they call it "national treasures" that shouldn't be touched, but strip mining and deforestation of areas under protection since the days of teddy roosevelt, that's good for the american people.

you ask, why don't they just build the windmills elsewhere? i guess on the east coast there's only 3 good locations that have ample wind and are shallow enough to harbor these wind-powered machines. they didn't say where the other two sites are, nor whether they were being protested against. it just tells how rich mother fuckers make a stink when it's their own backyard at stake...

did i mention that those windmills would give power to 3/4 of cape cod and dramatically lower carbon emissions compared to the plants now producing its power?
oh well. its all about who got da money.

i shoulda studied more environmental science.

funny that i mention santa beck yesterday. cuz today around noon in walks a man of santa stature and a bleached beard. twas mr. beck.
he came through my line, but usually with anyone i know, there's some shit that's going on that makes them wish they hadn't gone to my line. sometimes it's just as simple as a long line, but other times, my friends get to see what kinda assholes are really out there.

mr. beck got to see something a bit more odd. this dude that looked like the more compact version of my spanish 302 teacher comes up to me with a gift card. he tries to spit out a sentence in english but quickly reverts to spanish... aqui en esta tarjeta...

so i try my luck and figure that he'd get his point across better in spanish, so i ask in spanish what the deal is. he's got a gift card with $89 and change on it. he wants the "plata". i tell him in spanish that we can only cash out cards that have less than $5 on them. he persists. not sure what mr. beck is thinking of all of this, maybe he's amused seeing me go off on the guy in spanish cuz he won't give in. i tell him that it's store policy, but he continues. he gives a story about how he bought a coat, returned it, now he wants the cash. they gave it to him on a gift card, so now he can spend it in the store. i can't help him.
eventually i figure out the way to get him to go is to put the card back in his hand and repeat, "lo siento, lo siento, señor. no hay nada más que puedo hacer." (sorry, sir. there's nothing more i can do.)
[that may be a bit redundant, but hey, we gotta communicate somehow.]

he's not done. he goes back to the customer service desk where they finally get someone who's fluent to lay down the law. i guess its a little more potent when you have 100% communication.

come to find out (the man didn't tell me this), but the coat he returned was marked at $200 something dollars, but over the day-after-thanksgiving sale they were that $89 price. so without a reciept, they gave him that price. i guess that's kinda fair, without a receipt. who knows which amount the guy paid for.
but i couldn't do a damn thing about his "plata".

about five minutes of this beck finally got his turn. we BS'd. he gave me his santa bidness card giving times that he'll be sitting around with little kiddies on the lap. air and i got a picture on his lap about 3 yrs ago when we lived on 70th and 20th. maybe we need round 2. but instead of U-village, he's over at belle square now.
closer for me...

as i may have mentioned previously, fred's is a fucking reunion. high school and everything else.
the other day i ran into krystal pagano. who i have run into since high school maybe 3 times. well. i knew she had a kid. surprised, but shoulda known it was for. she brought him in today, along with her boyfriend. i tried to talk to him, but he was acting shy.
then she told me about how they're going down to belle square to see santa.
without thinking i told her that i knew the santa. it's beck's dad.
then after she left i immediately realized what a jackass i am.
yeah. i could give a shit about xmas, but this kid is 4!
maybe he didn't hear me say i knew santa.
don't want to ruin the bliss at such an early age.
needed to get that off my chest.
sorry bout that.
not used to kids...

excited as shit today.
found some postings on craigslist for a regulator and BC. the reg was about $50 cheaper than a new one, and the BC (the vest that helps your bouyancy) was WAY cheaper than any i've seen, and still in decent shape.

so i paid the dude, brought the stuff home and hooked it up to the tanks that have been sitting in the corner awaiting just this moment.

hooked it up, purged the reg, the secondary, and inflated the BC.
all systems go. i have everything i need now.
over the past couple months i've picked up: a wet suit suitable for puget sound temps, an underwater light, a knife that attaches to my ankle, 2 aluminum tanks, and now the BC and regulator. i had the mask, fins, and snorkel from the beginning, so no worries about that.

i guess the only additional purchases i need to make is a weight belt and weights. i don't think those will set me back that much. you can also get weights that don't require a weight belt. its just pellets in a bag, kinda like a bean bag and my BC has pockets that these can fit into. so i guess i'll have to stop by a dive shop and pick up some of those.

then comes the hard part. if i'm smart i'll go out and find a dive buddy. which, unfortunately i am semi-intelligent, so i'll have to find one of those. dammit. can't buy one. then the other hard part is to actually get all my shit together and make that first plunge into the water without an instructor. maybe the person i hook up with will have a bit more experience than i do, so it won't be so bad.
oh. i might also need a waterproof watch so i can tell how long i have been/can be down. dammit. thought i had everything.

anyway. excited as shit. amidy's going to come over while i scuba in the bathtub and she'll drop "treasures" in for me to find.
that is, after work. damn work (just for today).