Wedding Crasher

This past weekend I attended the wedding of a good friend of mine from the USC Dance Club. I managed to coordinate with Natalie’s schedule so that she could join me, since she knew the groom and the other Dance Club members that came. So we went down to Long Beach Saturday night to the Aquarium of the Pacific where the wedding was held. That’s right, the wedding and reception both were held in an aquarium. Hopes that the bride and groom would be wed in front of a shark or piranha tank during feeding time, or wed underwater while swimming with electric eels filled my head. Man that’d be a cool wedding.

We arrived about 20 minutes before the wedding was supposed to start and tables were still being set up in the main room. To pass the time we were directed into the Jellyfish Room to wait until the wedding began. The Jellyfish room, as it turns out, contains all sorts of different jellyfish, mostly resembling little Metroids. I couldn’t help but think of how Metroids suck the life energy from their prey and how this ties in with the wedding we were about to experience.

Once the tables were set up (all 40+ of them) we went to our assigned tables. I had an assigned table; Natalie did not. In fact, I didn’t invite Natalie along until after I sent in the invitation. No one was expecting Natalie. I didn’t consider this a problem thinking that it was going to be a smaller wedding (like the last one I went to), but when I saw the magnitude of the event I grew a little concerned. Would there be room and food for Natalie at our table? We both sat down at my table (with other Dance Club people fortunately) and hoped we weren’t infringing on any carefully laid out plans. In a sense, Natalie was our little wedding crasher.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a problem and even though we were given food tickets to redeem for meals, we didn’t need them anyway since the waiter just asked us for our order instead. The wedding was in fact in front of a giant aquarium, but mostly of subdued fish. Overall it was very nice and very sweet, but it was dragged out way too long. Everything said was repeated in Manderin Chinese so really it took twice as long to get through. The food was good and our dinner came with a good baked tomato (to me the tomato is like the jellyfish of fruits – brainless, heartless, 95% water and sometimes dangerous).

During the meal we realized it was going to be a dry wedding; however, sure enough one of the college students at our table snuck in a bottle of Malibu. Everyone was putting it in their coffee and every time a waiter walked by they would ask for more coffee refills. I’m not much of a fan for coffee, so I took some in my coffee cup and just drank it straight. Someone commented on it like it was a big deal, but come-on, it’s just Malibu.

After the wedding I took Natalie over to Rob’s place where we changed clothes and watched the first 2 episodes of Love Monkey. At around 3-4am, Natalie decided she should go home, but didn’t want someone to drive her there and back. So she borrowed my car, Rob’s pajamas, my sandals, and my phone (since hers had died) as I borrowed her sleeping bag. She came back over the next day with my car and with Scott to drive her back to Azusa. All four of us had lunch together and played a good game of Settlers before calling it a day and going our separate ways. Overall it was a fun night, both entertaining and educational. I still see a problem with serving fish for dinner in an aquarium, but it’s the little things like that I can let slide.

The All-Dayer Caffine Jolt

I was given the order yesterday to accelerate my progress on one of my many projects that had been placed on the back burner for what I deemed as more immediate work elsewhere. Apparently, they want this done by the end of the month (4 more days of work?) , so I get to relive my college days by pulling an “all-dayer”. The only perk about this is that I’m not losing any sleep because of working on this project. There’s a great clip in an “Undeclared” episode where someone, while pulling an all-nighter, in desperation to stay awake mixes large volumes of hot coffee with soda and then downs the whole concoction. I may be reliving the glory days of college right now, but at least I don’t have to stoop to that level.

Although I do have access to both right now….

Buy Me Some Peanuts And Cracker Jacks

There’s a scene in “Naked Gun” at a ballpark where people start spitting out their tobacco “chew”; first the players do it, then the coaches, then the umps, then the fans until everyone is chewing and spitting simultaneously. That’s what some of these meeting I attend seem like to me. Working out in the oil fields, you’ve got a lot of smokers (as disturbing as that equation might seem: flammable liquid + fire stick = disintegration. Consequently, I rode with a mechanic who smoked all the time while working around equipment and oil and it didn’t faze him one bit.... and I lived to tell the tale). So during meetings when they can’t smoke, they instead gnaw on sunflower seeds. I’ve never wondered how the sunflower seed industry was kept alive during the baseball offseason (maybe bowling or golf pick it up?), but I’m thinking the oil industry, at least where I’m working at, is doing its part in sustaining seed production. It’s seriously like a baseball dugout most meetings with a bunch of jabbering and piles of seeds lying about. I keep waiting for the seventh inning stretch, but it never comes.

Maybe a nice round of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” would help….

Short Posts

I’d like to clarify my comment about shorter posts that people are obviously having an issue with. What I was trying to get across is that I would like to include some shorter, random thought posts like I had done in the past to encourage frequent posting. This in no way means that my goal now is to shorten every post, nor is it a standard I will try to uphold (since so many have failed in the past). How verbose or how terse each post will be depends upon my mood and work schedule. Since today is Friday, my laziness is overwhelming my urge to post and thus a shorter post.

Finally something for the MythBuster fans.

Suicidal Animals

It’s no secret that I work out in the wilderness. Now this isn’t the 1800’s so the term “wilderness” takes on a whole new 21st century meaning. But regardless, I work out where wild animals are still roaming wild and free. Occasionally on my ride to or from work I’ll see a kit fox crossing the road far ahead of me or a rabbit sitting in the brush on the sides. Very rarely am I put in a position where the animals become a factor while I drive. On my way to work yesterday morning I had just passed a car on the highway and was accelerating up when suddenly a rabbit decides that it should cross the highway right in front of my car. I do my best to swerve. It’s impossible to say what happened, since it is still very dark at 6:15 in the morning. I’d like to believe I missed it but there’s no way of telling if I or another car got it.

Today as I was driving to work I saw what looked like a dead coyote lying on the side of the road about 1/2 mile from my rabbit incident yesterday. Once again, in the blink of an eye, it's swallowed up by the darkness as I speed past it. I had a field meeting early this morning and took the back road through the oil fields. After a few minutes, 2 furry rabbits jumped out in front of me again to cross the road. Fortunately, I couldn’t go very fast and had enough time to react before hitting them. It’s never been much of a problem before, but suddenly I’m encountering suicidal animals. If they aren’t too careful their going to be a part of a lame joke.

Why did the rabbit cross the road?
Well I guess it doesn’t matter much anymore.

Roots

I noticed today at work that I’m just past the 2-year mark on this weblog. As a kid I tried several times to keep a journal of my activities, thoughts, inspirations, aspirations, etc. only to see it crumble after a week. So the fact that I’ve kept up with an online journal of the random events in my life for 2-years is very impressive (at least to me). I find that I never really look back on old posts, but in doing so I’ve noticed how much more ambitious I was in the beginning. Throughout the past two years I have repeatedly resolved myself to keep up with posts by adding creative insight. I’ve tried all sorts of “gimmicks” to keep posting from amusing links to top ten lists to daily quotes and even movie polls. In my eyes all of these fell short in their ultimate goal of continual involvement on this site, but it’s not like I’ve been completely lazy in the past (just partially). Reading some old posts I’m amazed I even attempted to post what I did (also amazed at all the stuff I was posting about) with all the schoolwork going on.

In essence, I’d like to try and get back to the style of those first posts where I would try shorter, daily posts on comments heard, interesting thoughts, or amusing anecdotes. I know from past experience that I can’t make this commitment for consistency, but the thought is nice.

A major hitch in this plan is the fact that I’m on a work schedule and am thus working under limited means. Not only are there time restrictions/issues (I tend to take a long time to plan out and write posts) while at work, there is also the lack of creativity. In the past I’ve relied on college to supply me with my most amusing thoughts and anecdotes, but since I’ve started working, life’s a bit more mundane and bland. Most of what occurs at the office is not exciting and occasionally it provides an anecdote or two. My other problem is that most of my creative thinking doesn’t happen in the office, but rather in my long car ride home, where I am incapacitated to write anything down and after a long day of work incapable of remembering anything once I reach home.

But I’d like to get back to my roots, so to speak; just don’t hold me to any expectations.

Starting The Year Off With A Bang!

I showed up at the office on Tuesday after the new year only to find it shrouded in darkness. High winds had blown down several power lines and disrupted our power facilities such that all the power was knocked out for our entire field. So I spent the entire week in main office checking email (which was all we could access with the servers down) and going home before lunchtime. So after a slightly longer vacation a more well-rested me took back to work on Friday when the power had been brought back on line.

This is going to be a busier year for me, as I start to take control of more projects from the beginning of the year. By the end of the first quarter, I should have over one-third of my yearly tasks done, and with the power outage last week, I’ve already lost some time. The other thing that will be taking up my time this year is a pilot program Aera is trying out on new employees straight out of college. It’s a mentoring program that pairs us “newbies” with “experienced” mentors to help integrate us into the company, or as my dad puts it, to keep us with the company.

Yesterday was the first session of this program and it involves a lot of additional work (10-15 hours/month for 9-12 months, they say). The good news is that this work is done during the regular work day, so no “homework”; the bad news is that with everything else I have going on, reading about “understanding work relationships” isn’t high on my to-do list. They kept asking us questions about what are expectations were from this program, or how we’ve managed team conflicts, or blah blah blah. It got to the point yesterday when I was answering a question about effective team communication that I just grew tired of BS-ing. For those who know of Ms. Janota’s 12th grade English class know that I can effectively dole out the BS, but at this point in my life, I don’t want to be answering these types of questions.

What do I expect from this program? Hell if I know or care. It’s just more crap for me to deal with.

What am I excited about? Who says I’m excited? Why should I be excited?

What makes an effective team? I just spent 4 years in college learning about teamwork, I don’t need to spend another year talking about it.

Not to sound bitter about it, but this type of thing rubs me the wrong way, mainly because of the assumptions they’ve placed on us that we need their assistance in adapting us to their work environment, even after I’ve worked for them for 6 months. I’ll just have to wait and see how it works out. On a lighter note, my mentor’s last name is Cox and I can’t help but draw a parallel to “Scrubs”. Maybe I should keep referring to him as Dr. Cox. Somehow, though, I don’t think I’d get to experience any crazy rants or be called by a girl’s name. But you can’t rule out the possibility just yet.