It's what I do. I worry about stuff. And usually it's about stuff that's out of my control. Retarded, I know, but I just can't help it.

So the thing that I'm currently worried about (that's out of my control) is the the weather on Friday. That's when we leave for our annual cabin trip, and it's been forecasted to snow heavily in the mountains, so much so that they've already issued a Severe Weather Warning. If it's anything like the last storm, they might close I80 at night, leaving our 2 late cars SOL. If that happens, we're down 12 people to pay for the 1st night of cabin, making it more expensive for everyone else, possibly an additional $20. Total crap.

Right now, they say there's a 70% chance of snow. Meteorology isn't an exact science, it's more like a crap shoot. You'd probably get more accurate forecasts asking a Magic 8 ball. So I'm hoping they're dead wrong or just wrong enough to keep the roads open.

And driving in heavy snow is freakin terrifying. You can't see 10 feet in front of you and you can't see the really see the lanes so you have to follow the car in front of you, which you can barely see. It's soo nerve-racking. I'm really glad I got new tires for the X5 last weekend. And I really hope the heater fan decides to start working again. It's still being all diva status and working whenever it wants to, that b!tch.

Current worry level is over 9000!

Fri: Speakeasy, Hard Rock
Sat: BMW Concord, J-mac bday, NBA All-Star Weekend
Sun: Yu-Raku, Dessert Republic, Old Pro
Mon: cabin trip prep

We (Kev, Haile, & I) hadn't been to Santa Ramen in a while, so we decided to go. I was hella looking forward to it, and I was sorta surprised that between the three of us, we couldn't remember the last time we went, with it being my favorite ramen shop and all. So we make the drive all the way down to San Mateo, and out of all the days in the year, they just happened to be closed for the holiday weekend. Really, what are the odds? I was hella mad.

Not to be deterred from getting our ramen fix, we found another highly rated ramen shop nearby on Yelp, called Ramen Dojo. So we drive a couple blocks down, pull up to the place, and guess what? They're freakin' closed for the holiday weekend too! W.T.F. Apparently I missed the memo on ramen shops being closed for Presidents' Day Weekend. Really!?!?

So we hit up Yelp again to find a plan c, which was a place called Yu-Raku. This time, we called first before driving over. And what do you know, they were actually open. And I'm glad they were, cause their ramen was pretty damn good. Their miso was on point. Not crazy good like Santa Ramen's, but I'd put up there as my #2 fav. The only knock I have against them is their portions are smaller, as in they use a smaller bowl than most ramen shops, so you get less. I soo would've loved more miso broth.

And of course, we also had to try their chicken kaarage. Santa Ramen was basically spoiled us with their goldfish cracker tasting batter, that it sorta (i don't want to ruins) but it makes every other chicken kaarage taste "not the same".

In short, Yu-Raku is pretty good ramen shop that I'd definitely go to again, even though it wasn't our 1st, or even 2nd, choice of the night.

Governor Jerry Brown is imposing a hiring freeze on all state agencies. It's basically like the one Arnold imposed last year, but this time they're also prohibiting departmental transfers, meaning I can't transfer to a different Caltrans office. So basically, I'm stuck in Fresno & Merced for the foreseeable future, or at least until Gov Brown figures out how to overcome the budget deficit, which probably won't be any time soon. Freakin A, man........

I called in sick on Monday. I went back to work on Tuesday. Today, when I first walked in, a co-worker said to me, "oh, you look much better today. you're not sick anymore?"  I said, “yeah, I feel much better” and left it at that. But in my head, I was thinking "wtf?! i look more or less the same as i did yesterday. do i really look that much different from yesterday?"

And then there’s our department boss. Whenever he walks by my cube, he almost always says either "wake up! you look tired" or something to effect of "lighten up" or "cheer up" or "smile!", as if I look tired/sleepy or just sad all the time.

I know I’m not consciously trying to look the way that other people are telling me that I look. It fact, most of the time, I feel the exact opposite of how they're telling me I look. So whenever someone says things like that, it sorta doesn't make any sense to me.

But it is interesting. And weird. I don't think I have that many different facial expressions, and I think I have one default/plain expression that I more or less have all the time. I guess my facial expressions/demeanor/body language don't accurately reflect my current state. This leads me to believe that I have a good poker face (which, in my opinion, I don't have). Either my subconscious is just lazy and doesn't want to physically portray how I'm currently feeling, or it's trying to tell me something.....

Fri - watched The Eagle w/ Tj & Gabe
Sat - surprisingly productive (due to internet outage)
Sun - volunteered @ SF Food Bank; Warriors / Thunder game
Mon - called in sick; spent day in Vallejo with Jaymi

I volunteered at the SF Food Bank on Sunday. Our job this time was to repackage 50-lb bags of rice into 1-lb bags. They had asked for 2 volunteers to do the heavy lifting of the 50-lb bags into smaller containers at each packing station. I was one of those volunteers. Maybe not even 5 minutes into it, the other guy who volunteered stopped helping with the heavy lifting and just went to a packing station and started doing that task instead. He maybe did one bag. What. A. B!tch. But whatever. In our 2 hour shift, we did over 4000 lbs of rice. That breaks down to a ton of rice an hour. That'd be at least 80 50-lb bags that I lifted. By myself. I was sorta hurtin afterwards, but it was worth it. I got my workout for the day

The k-drama addict in me loves a good story. There's this one blogger on xanga that I follow. I started follower her maybe 3 or 4 years ago because she was a friend of another blogger I followed, and her writing was always insightful and sometimes funny. About 2 years ago, she started writing about a guy she met on xanga, who she referred to as XC (xanga crush). She often wrote about him and their relationship, about the both the good & the bad. And you could tell her feelings were genuine.

So today I checked on her last update, and it was entitled, The Proposal. If you don't feel like reading it, here's the gist of it: they were in a plane on their way to a vacation getaway, XC gives her a scrapbook and at the end of it is a printout of his latest xanga entry (entitled, The Next Chapter) and a Southwest peanut bag with an "open me!" note on it. In the emergency exit row of the plane, he's get down on one knee and proposes.

It's soo fitting that he proposed in a xanga entry, being that they first met on xanga. The location (in a plane) and delivery (scrapbook & xanga entry) are both very unique, as well as memorable. This is like the kind of story you see in lovey-dovey chick flicks.......or korean dramas. It's such an awesome story. Congrats to the both of them!

Cliff & Caroline had a shindig at their place for Cyrus' first birthday, which also doubled as a Super Bowl party.

Caroline's homemade, Super Bowl themed birthday cake. It was dummy yelicious.

Watching the game being projected on a 100" screen. Pretty sweet.

Our Super Bowl pool. Betting on the game made it way more exciting to watch. I wasn't even rooting for any team in particular, I just cared about the last digit of the score. And check the winning square. That's right! Yeah buddy......

Went to The Albatross with Kev & Haile. The place was pretty cool. I liked the ambiance. They had a live band ($3 cover), $1 popcorn bowls w/ unlimited refills (the popcorn maker was inside a telephone booth!), and a bunch of beers on tap that I'd never heard of before. They also had pool, darts, and a bunch of different board games.

The place was sorta packed, so the pickings were slim for multi-player games (3+ players), so we picked up Connect 4. And made it extreme. How extreme? Three players alternating between the two colors every turn (one turn I'm playing black, then the next turn, I'm red. And repeat). It made us think 2-3 turns ahead instead of just the next turn. It sounds weird, but it was hella fun, like way more fun than we could've ever thought.

3-player Connect 4 was great success (Borat voice). So we tried to apply the same level of awesomeness to chess. Well, that didn't work out too well. It literally made Haile yak (well, mostly due to the drinking, but the brain power required to play 3-player chess didn't help). Regular 2-player chess already requires a lot of strategy & planning your next move carefully & anticipating your opponents next move. Well, when you throw in the 3rd player and the switching of the colors every turn, all that planning & strategy gets thrown out the window. It's almost impossible to plan and strategize. On top of that, Kev was a complete random wild-card: could not predict any of his moves. Simply put, 3-player chess is a complete mind f@#k. It will literally hurt your brain.

Anywho, The Albatross is awesome. It's not too far from Vallejo, and it's just a cool place to chill and drink. They're cash only, so no open tabs, but I guess that's a good thing.