I Can't...

...get. it. out. of. my. head.




We've forced the door shut.
Nobody wants to give up the key.
How do I change the lock?

In a week, I'll be in Rome.
[rinse. repeat]
In a week, I'll be in Rome.

Far away from this place.

In Between

Lately, whenever I try to write in this blog I usually end up filling an entire page's worth of words only to get to the end and delete it. Let's see if I can get this one to stick.

Didn't stick.

Oh well.

Had a Nice Day

Well. Huh.

Today was...nice.

Nothing remarkable happened, it just kind went the way I wish every average day would go.

I got out of bed...on time at 7:30.

I got to campus...with enough minutes to grab a hot cocoa and morning bun from Cafe Strada.

I went to my 8:00am class....and didn't feel like I was going to fall asleep.

I made my trek Downtown to work...and actually was productive the entire time.

I went to swimming....and was not the slowest person in my lane!

After swimming, I walked home....and a woman passing by wished me "Good Afternoon."

I went up to studio...and successfully sketched out a plan for San Antonio Center.

I thought I was going to eat dinner alone...but ended up eating with Ian and Lisa, meeting up with Chris, and randomly running into Jacob and Karl!

I went back to Wurster....and taught myself AutoCad with Aditi's company and help.

I came home at 1:00am, and don't feel exhausted.

Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it was the morning bun. Maybe it was having lunch while at work. Maybe it was the serendipity of running into people at the right time.

Whatever it was, today is the type of day I would probably forget if I didn't write it down, the pleasant kind of day that I'll miss once I'm done with grad school and no longer living in Berkeley. So, I just wanted to take this moment to say to myself, and to all my dear readers, that today, I had a nice day, and it was good.

Unseasonably Warm

Spring makes me feel uneasy, especially when it arrives early, out of nowhere like it did this weekend. Newspaper weather forecast: "Unseasonably Warm."

I'm feeling the heat.

I've lived on an academic calendar for most of my life, so the coming of Spring has meant that the year is about to come to an end. This is the last year where that will be the case. Soon, Spring will just be a shift to better weather. I look forward to that. But this year it's the biggest ending/beginning I've had to face.

*sigh* it'll work out, I know, but for now the not-knowing nags at me.

Party Party Party

In honor of me going out three nights in a row, and in honor of me sitting at home all day working on shit and occasionally procrastinating in order to pay for such actions, I offer you this music video of a new song that I find highly entertaining. Real men sing in falsetto. Enjoy.

Grace Kelly by MIKA

Grrrr.....BERKELEY!

So I was sitting in the California Theatre in Downtown Berkeley, watching Dreamgirls with my friends Peter and Michael. (It was the third time I've seen the movie :P )

First of all, the sound was craptastic. I felt like I was listening to the movie through a set of giant Dell laptop speakers. It actually made me WISH I was at some souless cineplex like the AMC at Bay Street rather than an old movie theatre in a downtown. Oh, the crushing conflict that such an impulse has on my historic preservationist-city plannery soul....

And then, near the end, some middle-aged typically Berkeley-looking bearded man wearing a funny hat, cheers, CHEERS, when Beyonce's character says, "well this is our last song."
Yes, sir, I understand that perhaps you did not like the movie and were happy that it was coming to an end. You obviously assumed that everyone else in the theatre shared your opinion and was quite happy to hear you holler. That or, you were embarrased to be there and felt so self-conscience about it that you had to cheer to prove to the middle-aged couple you ran into that you were above such a pedestrian form of entertainment.

Either way, you suck.

Why am I so wound up about one stupid guy's stupid cheer? Cause he reminds me of everything I dislike about Berkeley. The sense of entitlement and self-satisfication that hovers over this town can be toxic at times.

....

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return"

Unconditionally, though.

Wheeee

Anticipation and hope are building, on more than one level.

I am a fortune cookie.

Jack's Lament

Happy Halloween.



But who here would ever understand
That the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin
Would tire of his crown, if they only understood
He'd give it all up if he only could

Oh, there's an empty place in my bones
That calls out for something unknown
The fame and praise come year after year
Does nothing for these empty tears

Yum. Roasted Duck.

I have never....

...NEVER.....

....seen Memorial Stadium like the way it was on Saturday night!

If you caught the game on TV, maybe you have an idea. The sold out crowd of 72,516 fans rocked that old stadium from a half hour *before* kick-off until the clock wound down to 0:00.

Of course, the team did their part to keep us all happy and pumped. But the crowd really stepped up. For those of you at the USC game where we went into triple over-time and won...well, it was kind of like that...but for the whole damn game.

The student section, when Oregon had the ball, just never stopped. The blue zone, the gold zone, and even the old farts on the shady side got up off their feet and yelled their hearts out on every third down.

It was amazing.

And then, to have Cal's newest nobel prize win, Professor Smoot, recieve standing ovations when he walked on the field, and lead the entire stadium in some cheers...well it just made me feel really proud to be a graduate of a university that really has it all. :-D

Go Bears!!!

--------------------Favorite Quotes from the Newpapers--------------------------

Cal Roasts Ducks
Associated Press

"Tedford has turned Cal into a football power - but it's still Cal. Cosmologist George F. Smoot, who won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday, was introduced before the game to the cheering student section, which chanted "Nobel Prize! Nobel Prize!"

Golden Touch
San Jose Mercury News

"This was all about nerve-tingling, trumpet-blaring bigness. Serious bigness. Undeniable bigness.

Everything about Cal's raucous 45-24 victory over Oregon was painted in fluorescent colors and shouted at jet-engine decibels. Every play arrived with the force of nearby thunder.

Nothing was small at a sold out Memorial Stadium on Saturday. Everything that happened was goliath, oversized, mega-meaningful.

``Well, it was huge,'' Coach Jeff Tedford said with a beautiful smile after the trouncing was complete. ``It was big.''

Cal's resounding win helped by a loud crowd
San Jose Mercury News

"The ground has yet to be broken for the planned renovation, yet this was the new Memorial Stadium on Saturday night.

Cal Coach Jeff Tedford had challenged the fans to make the house a hostile environment. A sold-out crowd of 72,516 answered the call.

``It was like a rock concert out there,'' Tedford said after the Bears' 45-24 victory over Oregon. ``I love it. It was kind of like payback out there, because everywhere we go, we run into that.''

Thirty minutes before the scheduled 5 p.m. kickoff, the crowd was rocking the stadium. The program had enlisted some to carry signs that cried out for ``NOISE.'' The replay in the stadium urged the fans to rock out, and Cal's defensive players waved their arms for a crescendo."

Oregon isn't ready for the big time yet
Oregon Register-Guard

Saturday evening, Tedford got what he wanted from just the fourth Cal sellout for an opponent other than Stanford in the past 50 years - an unrelenting noise. "When you get a crowd excited, it can be a tremendous help," Bellotti said. "Sometimes there hasn't been a crowd here. There have been more Duck fans than other people."

As an experience, this game was reminiscent of those Oregon-Washington games in the mid-1990s, when Oregon, up-and-coming, finally had some success against the Huskies, the program it so dearly wanted to match and surpass. Saturday, California, a football program modeled in so many ways on Oregon's, had the louder uniforms, the fuller stadium, the faster and more explosive offense, the hungrier team, and the better team."

This Time, it's Cal that makes the Fashion Statement
The Oregonian

"The Ducks obviously didn't keep the crowd out of the game, either. A record 72,516 fans loudly answered coach Jeff Tedford's pleas to make Memorial Stadium a noisy place. They did that and briefly broke into an "overrated" chorus in the fourth quarter."

Bears too smart, too tough
The Oregonian

"A t halftime, the California student section used colored cards to put together a little vignette that began with a duck in flight, changed to a shotgun blasting the duck out of the air and concluded with the duck being served on a platter.

Smart kids, those Cal students. In three minutes, they described the game.

Cal brought a 12-gauge, Oregon a popgun."

......

Cal could be nation's No. 2 team
The Sporting News

"There goes that damn cannon again.

BOOM!

It's up there, perched on a hill outside Cal's Memorial Stadium. But fans don't mind. Heck, no. The loud echo through Strawberry Canyon makes this zany and brainy crowd giddy because it signals a Golden Bear score.

BOOM!

See, there it goes again. And so it went on this night during a -- What else? -- thunderous 45-24 Cal victory over Oregon. It was a showdown that would determine who is the second-best team in the Pac-10. But, who am I kidding? Given another unimpressive USC win (this time over Washington), this was a showdown to determine who was the best team in the Pac-10.

And it wasn't even close. It's Cal.

Go ahead, pull the string on that cannon again.

BOOM!

---------------------------------------

Boom! :-)


Bear Territory Cheer: Featuring Dan, Morgan, and Yours Truly:

Ahem...

Hello.

Is this thing on?

Good.

::clears throat::

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

::cough::

Thank you.

Oh You Tube...

I'm addicted to You Tube. I keep looking up music videos or clips from musicals that I haven't seen in a long time.

::::major Nick is a dork alert warning::::

So.... if you don't have any pre-teens in your life you probably have not seen High School Musical. I'm pretty sure I would have loved it if I was still in its target audience. But this little clip here is pretty damn good for a made-for-tv-musical:

Stick to the Status Quo:



I wish *I* had the guts to get involved in my high school's musicals. Doh. ;-)

Busy, Bored, & Easily Distracted

Random blurbs in lieu of a well-thought out post:

-The Book. Sitting in front of the Jehning Family Lock Museum, meeting people, and signing some books, reminded me yet again that Mountain View is ever-so-pleasant town filled with friendly, unpretentious people. No wonder I often get so frustrated with the atmosphere in the city of Berkeley.

-Cal football. Hrmmm. Don't know what to think. Still burning from that Tennessee game. The past two home games have been alright (can't complain about two W's) but I'm nervously awaiting the start of Pac-10 conference play. Then we'll see this team's true colors. One positive, it sounds like the crowd is getting loud much more effectively and more often. When we start playing rivals in close games, it could get really fun! Oh, and I don't care what other people say. I *liked* the team's new gold pants.

-Stanford Football. Hah. HAHAHAHA. Haha. Ha. Actually, I feel bad for them and want them to be good enough to make the rivalry fun. It's so sad that their team couldn't draw a sell-out crowd to the grand opening over their tiny new stadium.

-College friends. Eric E. randomly flew up to Berkeley to come to the game this weekend. Kay met up with me, Eric, and Dan after for dinner. That was nice. It's been a while. I wouldn't be surprised if the next time a bunch of the college gang is together is at Erik and Lesley's wedding. All the more reason to celebrate, but here's hoping I see more of you more often and sooner than that. Or else Lauren will get even more bitter. ;-)

-My roommates. The house is in order. Alex and Chris are good people. Dan's still Dan. We're having fun. It'll be a good year, and I'll be sad to leave once it ends.

-City Planning. Yeah. I've been on this career track since I was in 7th grade. What if I get bored with telling people to widen sidewalks and add street trees? As graduation approaches, I've spent a lot of time pondering what type of job will really make me happy. City Planning is such a broad field, where do I fit in? Time will tell, I guess. I'm slightly less motivated than I used to be, but honestly, I still think that's a good thing.

-Social life. I try to have fun, and often succeed, but at the end of the night its tough and tiring to be single. Nuff' said.

-Spinach. Just when I started to like it....

-Project Runway. Kinda boring this season, but still a great way to waste time on Wednesday night if I'm not stuck in some late Downtown Berkeley meeting.

-Swimming. I went from being in the fastest lane to the slowest lane by moving up to the highest level of Swimming PE. But hey, it's keeping me in good shape. Nevertheless, the RSF and I need to get back in touch sometime soon.

-Facebook. That mini-feed was creepy. Privacy controls are good. But there are some people who didn't change their settings so now when I sign in I'm greeted with a detailed account of every move they've made in the past few days. Annoying. I don't want to know, but can't help reading it.

-House Party. When to have one?

-Halloween. What to do, what to do?

-Shopping. I need some new threads.

-Bed. When to go? How about right....now.

Goodnight.

In the Wake of the Week

Hello again, Monday.

The first week of classes and the long weekend have flown by. Classes were fine, but the combination of getting back into the habit of school while also working 19+ hours for the City of Bezerkeley was too much to handle. I'm glad I'm going down to 12 hours tops. And if the week was tough, the weekend didn't bring much relief.

I made my way to the Bear's Lair with dozens of other Cal fans pumped to finally see our #9 ranked Golden Bears in action. Everyone expected a close fought, exciting game. Instead what we saw was our ass handed to us on a big bright Tennessee-orange platter. Morgan, Dan, and the City Planners with season tickets watched in disbelief as Tennessee dismantled California. My parents, who drove up to Berkeley to watch the game, made the wise choice of leaving after Tennessee's first couple of touchdowns.

It was a nasty and brutal beating on the biggest stage that Cal has ever played on in most people's lifetimes. It made our fans look foolish for even daring to hope to see the team rise to national prominence and it made the Pac10 look weak. Now, even if we blow through the Pac10 conference and win every game, the pundits will just say it was because it's an easy conference. Ugh, they might be right. And that's what sucks the most.

BUT, my ring tone is still set to play Big C, I'll still cheer for the Bears when they play Minnesota at home next week, and hope springs eternal for that magical Rose Bowl bid. Ah, the life of a Cal fan is so trying.

After picking up the pieces of my shattered blue and gold heart, I tried to make the best of the rest of the weekend. I took full advantage of 24-hour BART on Friday (friend's art gallery showing), Saturday (clubbing), and Sunday (Ian's birthday party in the Mission) . Each night had it's memorable moments, but nothing fantastic. The 24-Hour BART was not as fun as it was last time. The whole weekend has pretty much left me just as exhausted as the week did.

On the bright side, I have a feeling this week and weekend will go a lot better. My classes seem to be a good mix and I'm actually looking forward to delving in to some of my assignments. And even if school wears me out, before I know it, Thursday will roll in, happy hours will be happening, parties on Friday, and Cal football will return to Memorial Stadium. Even if the game's a stinker, it'll be fun to take a new crop of people to their first game. And boy, am I'm eager to see some action on the field. In more ways than one. ;-)

I'm Saving the World

Profound message from Lauren:

l p r o f e i t: you know what i realized today? that every time you and i start a new phase of school, a national disaster occurs. we started undergrad, and we had 9/11. we started grad school, and we had hurricane katrina. i'm thinking you and i should stop here. it's in the best interests of the country.

Auto response from Nap98: wooowheee:
9:30 - 11: CP113
11-3: Work
3-4: Swimming
4-6: Rest
6-9: Seminar
```````````````````````````````
...the world can rest easy, unless we ever get our PHDs

OskiWOWOW!

l p r o f e i t: yay!! SIX days!!

Auto response from Nap98: 6 days, and counting. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas.

l p r o f e i t: but instead of santa, it's tedford that we want to give us presents

....so exciting.

Done Jumping Around, Back in Town

With the exception of 2.5 days back in Berkeley to put in some work hours last week, I've pretty much been out of town and traveling non-stop since the end of July. Finally back at home, tired but happy. Lot's to write here, a few cool photos and plenty of great memories to share, but they'll have to wait a bit.

I'll just briefly say that visiting Lauren Rath and co. in Minnesota was awesome.

Uneventful

Not much has happened since I last wrote in this blog.

I went to the beach a couple times...

I went to San Francisco more than a couple times....

Kat and BJ got engaged...

Erik and Lesley got engaged. ...

I was asked to be Erik's best man..

My book was published, and I walked into Books Inc. in Downtown Mountain View and there it is in a special stand right next to the register....

Yeah, life's pretty uneventful right now ;-)

All Day Music

Summer.

It feels refreshing, and new.

I don't feel lazy. I don't feel lethargic. I also don't feel over-worked. Somehow, I think I struck a balance. Be warned, this post is going to be disgustingly positive....but perhaps a welcome change from some previous posts I suppose.

I keep having these little moments where everything seems right in the world. I love it.

-Relaxing in a hammock back in Mountain View, with the sun filtering through our fruitless mulberry trees, bright blue skies above, Snickers running around the yard, a slight breeze swinging me back and forth, and the sound of Mexican music drifting from my grandparents' house next door.

-Drinking a glass of wine on Jacob's balcony, chatting with friends. Listening and watching the street life on Euclid Avenue pass by from behind his blinds.

-Reading. For fun! Just plopping down on the grass next to a Redwood tree in Willard Park, reading the Kiterunner while Chris Atwood reads and enjoys an It's-It Ice-Cream I had been saving for him (his first one ever).

-Driving down to LA with Dan, meeting up with everyone I wanted to meet, seeing everything I wanted to see. Swimming in the ocean down in Carlsbad and just feeling so happy and smiling and laughing so much because it'd been so long since I'd actually swam in ocean water, it took me back to childhood days of body surfing and boogie boarding.

-Getting an excited call from my Mom, saying that she's decided that my Mountain View book party will have a "fiesta" theme. Loving my Mom for getting all excited about the book, and the party, and being as cheesy as I am sometimes.

-Spending time with Matt, Kim, and Melissa last week. Matt and Kim especially, because every time I see them or receive comments, notes, or emails from them and my other high school folks, I'm reminded how lucky I am to have made and kept such a great group of friends for so long.

-Seeing Lauren Rath for the first time in nearly a year, and spending the day with her and her boyfriend in San Francisco on Monday. A year had passed since we last saw each other, and her return confirmed what I always thought to be true...Lauren is the special type of friend that you can just fall back into a pattern of friendship with, no matter how long it's been since you've seen or talked to each other. You just see each other and are so excited to be in each others company. I'm so happy to have that.

And now, I also have a few things to keep my fingers crossed about, and things to look forward to. The Summer is just beginning.

Random Thoughts

I'm sitting here on my bed with a slight allergy-induced headache and a copy of Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. I was supposed to read the book two days ago for my planning dept's book club. When the book gets boring, I stare at this screen, checking if someone worth chatting with has signed on to AIM. Or, I glance over at my cell to see if anyone called our texted.

Nope.

Alice 97.3 is playing the background. Currently a Dave Matthews song. Commercials keep reminding me that the station is hosting a big free concert in Golden Gate Park on Saturday that I'm going to miss because I'll be in a car somewhere in Southern California with Dan. Lauren and Jen (and I'm guessing Matt and Kim) are all going. I'm sad I'm missing out even though I'm looking forward to seeing the Socal undergrad gang. The prospect of being in the car for half the weekend is a downer. I wish we could leave earlier, I don't have any plans for tomorrow, but Dan won't get off work until 5pm.

Right now though, I need to figure out what to do with my evening. Haven't had dinner. Don't have anyone to eat dinner with. Don't want to "cook." What else is new?

I could go to happy hour at The Graduate with some of the first year planners, but beer and talk about politics and suburbia doesn't sound that appleaing at the moment. Dan's over in the living room, watching the NBA finals. I was shocked to find out that they're still playing basketball. In my silly world, basketball season ended with March madness.

Anyone I'd actually feel compelled to call to spend time with, is not around at the moment.

So I'm left to ponder my life. Ponder ponder ponder. And all that makes me want to do is

*sigh*