I purposely kept Saturday the 24th open because it was Jay and Jaymi's birthday weekend. I figured either or would doing something to celebrate. Well, it turns out that neither is doing anything. And I didn't make any alternate plans. So now I'm sitting at home, bored as fuck.

A few months back, I was looking at the A's schedule, checking when they would be playing down in SoCal, because I wanted to watch a game with Tones & Mikey, the two other A's fans in my circle. The only time that they were playing down there (on a weekend) was this weekend, Sept 23-25, against the Angels. But I knew it was Jay & Jaymi's birthday weekend, so I knew I couldn't plan for it. Doh!

And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

It seems like nowadays, literally everyone & their moms are running. It’s like I blinked, and all of a sudden running is the new “in” thing. A lot of my friends and family are suddenly runners, and are competing in marathons, triathlons, relay races, etc, and they’re all urging me to start running too.

I’m not against running or anything. I eventually want to get to the point where I can run a (single) mile and not be completely winded (way ambitious, I know, I know). It’s just that it feels like society as a whole, not just my friends & family, is ramming the idea of running down my throat. I just want to say, “FUCK!! I get it. Running is good for you. And everyone’s doing it. I fucking get it already!!”. In what context would the following statement be suitable: “Attention, all you runners & shit.....go fuck yourselves. That is all.”

Yeah, I don’t really have it. I’m not ashamed to be filipino or anything, but I’m also not like a “super filipino” and wear it on my sleeve for everyone to see. I was born & raised here in America, wasn’t really exposed to anything remotely “super filipino” (I don’t know what else to call it), or taught any remotely “super filipino” values, aside from rice goes with every meal. My parents, as well as my grandparents, didn’t speak to me in tagalog, nor did they force me to learn it, and to this day I know very little to no tagalog. So yeah, technically, I am filipino, but I don’t feel like I’m that filipino.

I know some filipinos, who fall under the “super filipino” category, that claim the Philippines as their “home” or their motherland even though they were born here, can’t speak tagalog, haven’t even been there & wouldn’t last a month living there. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, if you like being a poser.

One example of me not being that filipino: a normal filipino looks at Manny Pacquiao and says “he makes me proud to be a filipino.” I look at Manny Pacquiao and I say “damn, he’s a hella dope boxer”.

I bring all this up because at work, I’ more or less being forced to be part of the filipino booth at our upcoming Diversity Day. There’s this one filipino lady in my office that put me on the “filipino’s only” mailing list, in which I hella don’t get (understand) any of the “filipino” jokes, and sometimes they write in tagalog, which I also don’t understand. And then she basically volunteered me to help out with planning Diversity Day. All because I’m filipino. Maybe I’d be a little more excited, or accepting, if there were people more around my age, but from what I’ve seen so far, they’re all the older auntie/uncle types.

Maybe 3 times a week, I walk by the same girl on my way from the bus stop to my office. She’s pretty attractive: asian, I’m guessing chinese or vietnamese, about 5’6”, maybe in her mid-20’s, slim figure, brunette w/ long hair, a lil past her shoulders, didn’t notice a ring on her finger. Pretty much the highlight of my day.  At first, I just wanted to smile at her. It’s just a smile, how hard can it be? Well, the smiling part is way easy, but it’s kinda hard to smile at her when we never make eye contact. Being that we’re walking in opposite directions, the window of opportunity is small. I can’t look like a fool smiling at the her the entire time she’s within viewing distance (can I ??). And whenever we are within a suitable viewing distance, she’s either looking down or away, like she’s not looking my way on purpose, freakin cockblock. So what the hell am I supposed to do?

I now know understand the correct answer is “absolutely nothing”, and I’m really good at doing that. I was told by an experienced veteran of the game that I was putting too much pressure on myself, and that it would not lead to anything good. I initially just brushed that off, cause my thinking was simple: it’s only a smile, it’s not that hard. But every time I passed her, I’d kick myself for not being able to do anything, and I would hella think about it afterwards. And then my imagination would take over. That’s when I realized that I refused some sage advice, and now I know better. I can’t force the issue, nor can I try to. I’ll try my best to not think about it (as much). But if the opportunity presents itself, I gotta be ready for it.

friday:
Volunteered for the Ragnar Relay (186 mile relay race, from SF to Calistoga. CRAZY). My cousins were running it (team Loose Laces Sink Paces), and they needed volunteers to work one of the exchanges, so Jacqueline, Albert, Jay, and I volunteered.  Apparently we saved their team (of 12) about $100 a person by volunteering (and all we got from them was a team jersey, which was maybe $20, just sayin').

Our shift was at exchange point 16 from 845pm-130am. It was actually pretty fun. Jay and I were a couple hundred feet before the checkpoint and announce the upcoming runners through a walkie-talkie, and Jacqueline & Albert were at the checkpoint recording the runners times and letting the other teams know if their runner was coming or not. It was kinda cold but not too bad, and it was hella dark. It tough just walking in the dark let alone running in the dark. It was cool though, cause we didn't have to stay till the very end. The last runner came through around 1240am.

saturday:
Met up with the team at the finish line in Calistoga. I took pics, but with my slr, and I probably use up that roll for maybe another month. Right after the race, we went to Cliff's in Brentwood to watch the Mayweather/Ortiz fight. Mayweather is hella whack.

sunday:
Shann bought one-piece headlights for his car, so we installed them.

(we forgot to take the "before pic" before taking off the front bumper)

Looks pretty clean, especially the black housing on the white car.

Is it bad that when I think back on certain events, I realize that I should have been more angry about the situation than I actually was, even if it was totally justifiable and no one would have (or should have) had any problem with my anger? Or is it a good thing that I can just shrug that negative energy off and not really worry about things of that nature? I really don't get that emotional about anything, or just chose not to. I dunno why, I just don't. I guess it's easier that way.

But the thing I was thinking about was my birthday weekend. I had my birthday plans set for the weekend, to spend it with Chris, Tony, and possibly Mikey, at a beer festival down in SoCal. Jaymi and Jacqueline had other plans in mind for me, as they wanted to surprise me on that weekend. After finding out about my plans, which were already set, they knowingly tried to derail my plans and kind of force me into their plans. They had my mom, Chris, Tony, Shann, and I don't know who else in on the surprise. They got Chris to text me saying he had to cancel because of work, which was BS. But I decided to go anyways. Apparently, I "ruined" their plans by still doing what I wanted to do.

I mean, the end result still worked out in my favor, due to my stubbornness (and absolute hatred) for changing plans. When they told me about their "ruined" surprised, I kind of had an idea about (Shann does NOT have a poker face), and my initial reaction was like "oh, haha......" and that was it. But after thinking about it for a little bit, I really should've been waayyy more angry at them.

I should've been like "WTF?!?! I already made plans, and you knowingly tried to change them, just to suit your plan. That's really selfish of you guys, being that it's MY birthday. And you guys should know this by now, about how I hate it when set plans change for no good reason. I appreciate the gesture, and I still love you guys, but seriously, that was not fucking cool. Really, you guys showed no respect for me and my plans for my birthday weekend." And no one should've had any problem with that, because it's all 100% true. I would've loved to hear their counter-argument to that response.

If I was a more angry, hateful, vengeful, etc. type of person, that's what my reaction would've been. But I'm glad that I'm not. It's not how I really feel, but I'm just sayin'. I just think about a lot of things and such, and play the "what if" game with certain scenarios and situations.

Hung out with the guys (Kev & Haile) this weekend. Sometimes, we do the most random things or have the most random conversations. Here are some things that went down this weekend:

So we’re sitting in stop-&-go traffic in one of the FasTrak lanes at the Bay Bridge toll plaza. A cute asian girl with white sunglasses in a corolla in the lane to my right signals to merge into my lane. I let her in and she gives me the courtesy wave. I notice she has a UC Berkeley Optometry license plate frame and make a comment on it (i forget what). Being impatient with the traffic, I notice that the lane to my right (where the corolla was just in) looks like it’s moving faster, so I switch to that lane and move up a couple car lengths. What I didn’t notice, however, was that lane really wasn’t a lane, and so I had to merge back into the lane I just left. And I turns out that I moved exactly one car ahead, which was the corolla I had let in earlier, so I ended up in front of her.

I really didn’t notice it at first, but Haile hella called me out on it, and I know it looks bad, but it wasn’t a premeditated move. I genuinely did not know that that wasn’t a lane, and I didn’t purposely let her in so that I could just cut her off later. I’m not spiteful / vengeful like that. Well, at least not in this particular case, since I really didn’t have a cause or motive. But I’m sure it must’ve looked like that from her point of view. Haile said to give a courtesy wave, but I was so embarrassed at what just happened, I couldn’t. So, to the asian girl in the corolla with the UC Berkeley Optometry license plate frame, “I’m sorry for cutting you off. I swear, it was unintentional.”

Somewhere along the drive to Santa Ramen, either Haile or Kev mentioned that they hadn’t had honey walnut shrimp in hella long**. I say the same exact thing, and then so does the 3rd person (Haile or Kev). After determining that Panda Express didn’t count, we decide to go get some honey walnut shrimp after ramen. We were already planning on going to Dessert Republic sometime after (for dessert, duh), so we looked around that general area for chinese restaurants. Lucky for us, there were plenty to choose from. The first place had just walnut shrimp, no honey. The second place had walnut shrimp, but in “special sauce”. The third place had walnut prawns, but this place we asked if there was honey sauce, and they said “yes”, so we went in and got our honey walnut shrimp fix. We just ordered their entree plate, and it was huge. And it came with hot & sour soup, too. It was pretty good, but we had just had ramen, and were still going out for dessert. Needless to say, we were all hella full at the end of the night.

**In retrospect, the 3 of us couldn’t determine exactly who first mentioned it, nor how it was brought up during our conversation. We went over what we were talking about, and came to the conclusion that there was no logical segue to honey walnut shirmp. So random.

Chris, Chrissy, & Jacqueline - at Carmel Beach on our cousins trip, way back on July 30.
This pic hella makes me laugh, and there were 2 more pics like this. Those two are hilarious.

Our FamBam Fantasy Football draft party - at Jay's house on August 27.
Things going on in this pic: Cliff, Jaymi, Gabe, & Shann on their laptops hella concentrating on the draft, Shann keeping a piece of chicken away from Cyrus, Albert looking like he's staring at the chicken Shann's holding up, Joyce playing with Crimson, and Caroline & Jacqueline hella cheesin cause their holding a cake that their surprising me, Cliff, & Shann with. Apparently they were standing there for hella long, cause nobody was paying attention to them cause we were all focusing on the draft.

Some of the cuz - at Jay's house for Cyrus & Jayden's christening party, on August 28.
I was kinda surprised that I was in this picture, since I'm hardly in any of the pictures taken with my camera.

I HATE the being ignored, like I don't even exist, like I don't even matter. F that. And the thing is, I feel like I get ignored all the time.

Caught a free screening of a Moneyball tonight. Last year, I went to the filming at the Oakland Coliseum of the (spoiler, but not really) "Scott Hatteberg game-winning homer to extent the win streak to an AL record 20 games" scene. I sat next to a couple that had face-paint, so  I trying to look for them, but it didn't even matter cause they didn't even pan over to were I was sitting. Hopefully there'll be extra or deleted scenes on the blu-ray, which I'm definitely buying.

Now, as for the movie itself. It was sorta long, almost 2 hours, and it had some slow parts. And it is about baseball, which isn't one of the more thrilling sports. And if it really means anything, it was pretty close to the book that it's based on. But I wouldn't recommend it to non-baseball fans. They were dropping names & stats all throughout  the movie, but I knew all of them since I followed all this back when it actually happened back in 2003, and I also had just finished reading the book a week prior. And of course, I loved the movie. Well, I am incredibly biased towards movie, since it's only about my favorite team of all-time, the Oakland A's. I loved seeing the green & gold on the big screen.