darkness falls

now it's pouring rain...

that winnie the pooh song keeps popping into my head..

"and the rain rain rain came down down down..."

i'm supposed to meet jeremy at the mall after work to help him pick out some spectacles. he doesn't trust his own tastes. :0

the sky is a muddy grey. it's getting darker by the minute. i expect the world outside to turn black soon. a blanket of cold.

damn. i wish i were at home.

stay awake

i'm at work right now, trying to stay awake. i just opened up a dr. pepper i brought to work. hopefully that will help me out a little. my eyes keep drooping. my head hurts from me fighting it from shutting down. this is my daily food coma battle.

it's a bit dreary and damp outside. it's been drizzling all day. the sun came out around one o'clock but tucked back away ten minutes later. these types of days are best spent underneath the covers reading a good book or watching the food channel.

bush-speak

hahaha. i want this calendar.



click on picture to head to www.bushcalendar.com
*see 15 sample pages

hahaha.. someone posted...

"it's amazing that his brain generates enough power to keep his legs moving."

okay. so maybe it's not nice to make fun of people for their mistakes but hell, he's our president. if we can't count on him to lead this country then we should at least be able to use him for a good laugh.

phone posts

hella cool.

i've been in a cave or something cuz i just found out about phone posts that can be made through live journal if you have a paid account.
posted his first phone post today. i messed up and thought it was a way in which you can text message people's phones. it turned out that you can download their message and play it on winamp or some other media player. then other users can transcribe the message on the post.

i'll have to test that out.

flu shot

sometime during lunch today, jeremy and i are supposed to take an hour or so off of work to get our flu shots. there's a fire station near our condo that's giving them out for free today between 1 and 4pm. then we'll just eat lunch at home. we hardly ever take our lunch breaks together since our work places aren't too close. plus, i normally eat lunch at work.

everyone at my work is slowly getting sick. i'm paranoid around them now. i'm a compulsive hand washer and it always escalates whenever i'm around sick people. part of my daily morning routine consists of drinking emergen-C. it pumps me full of 1000 percent of my daily vitamin C requirements and a crap load of other vities.

i just woke up a while ago. about to hop into the shower, get dressed, and make my lunch. i'm so glad today is Friday. i want to sleep in tomorrow morning.

guilty cats

(click on pic to see larger)

Guilty! I don't know what they did but look at their faces! Guilty I say.

thin, not thin

i just ate my lunch. i had my usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich, baked ruffle chips, and 4 snackwell vanilla sandwich cookies. i'll have my diet dr. pepper around 3pm. it's my second desert. :D

i brought two chocolate chip cookies that i baked the other night for a snack. i shouldn't be eating those but i can't stop myself. plus, john and jeremy are NOT help themselves to my goodies. so it's up to me to finish them off.

go figure that i would have a passion for baking and live with two people who are not passionate about desert. i love desert. sometimes i wish i could just eat cookies and ice cream for the rest of my life.

but you know, i said the same thing about mcdonald's fries and chocolate milkshakes before. i get really annoyed with the whole obsession over weight.. mainly, my obsession over it. i thought that i would be happy and content by now. i was completely satisfied with my weight when i was 35 pounds heavier...until some people told me that i shouldn't be. i kept thinking to myself, i'll be happy after i lose ten pounds. and so forth. i've lost a crap load of weight since i started but i'm still not anymore content with my body than i was when i was eating hamburgers and fries. i keep thinking to myself that it's not enough.. that there's still extra chunk there. i look at these waifs and wonder, how they hell they survive? how can you be 5'6 and only weight 90 - 100 pounds? how is that considered living?

i could try out being a vegetarian but that seems so absurd. why on earth would anyone in their right mind block out an entire food group from their plate? how can you not crave steak?

i dunno. i fluctuate every day.. content, discontented , proud, disgusted...
the mirror stopped being my real friend since i turned 13.

give or take?

i spent all day at work trying to get lost in my mind so i wouldn't have to focus on the things i need to be doing. every day, i write a list of things i need to do. every morning, i look at the list and wonder why i can't check anything off. i keep wondering what the definition of life is. are things supposed to be balanced? is it necessary to have to work in order to enjoy the fruits of your labor?

i want to believe in karma. i'd like to think that things are in direct relationships with each other. that in order to get something, you must earn it. in order to take, you must give. it's easier to justify things that way.

however, i'm not blind. i can see clearly that things are not balanced as such. not everyone has to work for their livelihood and not everyone that does work has enough for a good lively hood.

at the end of the day, i have chores to do. at the beginning of the day, i have work to go to. somewhere in between, i get to rest and do things that are "fun." am i really earning that "fun"?
can that "fun" exist without me working for it? do you have to put in time, to enjoy time?

damn it. what i really want to know is, am i a bad person if i play games on the computer instead of doing the laundry. >:P

hehehe. i love to throw out the mundane every now and then....

*sigh*....

jerms had rediscovered gambling in diablo II. he keeps bugging me for money. we should be playing Wolf ET but we're not. i should be playing diablo II but i'm surfing the net looking for that elusive "something"...

no eyes, no ears, no voice, no fears.

hey j,

are you out there? i'm so tired. i am so very tired. i'm tired because the days won't let me go and the nights won't let me rest. i feel like every breath is part of a rule i am abiding to. it's all so dreary and yet i so want to be deleriously amused with my life. but that's just not to be. not yet anyhow. i feel like an empty vessel. i could so easily slip away from myself. i could so easily just give in and dissapear into the mundane.

i'm so tired of the ignorance. so bored with the tediousness of listening to these helpless beings. why are they so weak? it's so easy to simply march, to get your shit together and move forward. but they can't. and they annoy me. and that probably makes me a bad person. but i'll mask my anger and hatred with an abundant amount of sweet gestures and good intentions.

i am so bad. i am good. i am tired of being both. i like the idea of writing to you because i know you can't hear me. i know you. you can't see beyond simplicity. and that's a good thing. because i'd hate for us both to be trapped in my hell.

w-i-i-i-i-i-red

okie smokie. so now it's almost 3am in the morning and i am completely wired. i guess this is what i get for drinking 3 dr. pepper's in a row. what was i thinking?

i have to get up for work by 8am. ouch. oy. yuck. but since i feel like i have all of this energy, i'm going to go ahead and pack my lunch for tomorrow and take a shower.

i finished the webpage i was working on. it's for some heat exchanger company my brother does some free-lance computer services for. jeremy started up a new character in diablo and played all night till about 1am. he tried to start a hardcore character but he couldn't figure out how. hardcore characters are pretty scary because once you die in a game, your character is dead for good. no resurection, no nothing.

we are supposed to be practicing Wolfenstein ET but no one on our team is playing right now.
i guess we'll get back to it before the next season of matches start.

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we went to bed, bath, and beyond today. it's one of my most favorite stores. i got a set of spring form pans, a 5 cup sifter, a lint-removing roller, and a bulb in a vase. you're supposed to add water to the bulb and it grows into a bundle of flowers. i hope it works. every time i go to that store, i get very depressed. there's just so much i want and i know i can't have it for a very long time. mostly, i want nice things to entertain people with. i'd love to have nice silverware, place settings, and complete sets of plates, cups, and napkins. *sigh* another year or two i suppose.

hmmm. i guess i better try and do my business and get some sleep. i'm going to pay for all of this dearly in the morning. maybe i'll have to drink 5 dr. pepper's in a row in the morning to make up for it! :)

diet dr. pepper and old-school game, diablo II

i've been bad today. i'm on my third dr. pepper. granted, it's diet dr. pepper but it still makes me feel guilty. plus, i baked chocolate chip cookies and had three huge ones. all of this coming after eating a bbq steak and pork loin dinner.

my philosophy when i was in college was, if you can't enjoy eating, what's the point of living?
now my philosophy is, the scale is your enemy.

so i'm sipping on my diet dr. pepper right now and working on some free-lance web page designs. tables drive me crazy. i wish had some webpage software that would just do it for me. i'm sure there are some out there, i just don't know about them.

i so wish that today was Friday night instead of Sunday night. i don't want to go to work tomorrow. i'd rather stay up all night working on the web design stuff.

this weekend, jeremy got an urge to pick up diablo II for some reason. we haven't played that game in years. so we installed it on both of our computers and are starting it back up for fun. so far, i'm just a level 10 amazon. too bad, bnet doesn't save your characters from years ago. we were god-like back then. oh well, jerm's new goal is to fight uber-diablo. fun stuff.

just brakes

oy. how i do hate auto repair issues.

last night, ren, myself, jeremy, john, and john's friend justin had a matrix marathon at our house.
john and justin only stayed for the first movie but ren, jerms, and i lasted through the second. it got us pumped for the finale.

so today we got up and left the house around 9am. we picked ren and justin up and headed to Just Brakes. We needed to drop off john's car to get his brakes fixed. the way my dad put it, it seemed we would just drop the damn thing off and come back a few hours later and it would be fixed. no such luck. when we first got there, i hopped out to talk to the mechanic about what was wrong with john's car. the rest of the guy's waited in jeremy's car.

i told the guy what was wrong. when you push the brake pedal down, the car does not stop. and also there is a weird air hissing sound coming front he pedal. they guy said, yup i bet it's a power booster problem. when john arrived with his car, they took it for a test drive. the guy came back and said that the car was driving fine. that should have been the first indication that things were going to be bad.

they said they were going to do a full bleed on the brakes and then tell us what was wrong. the inspection cost 27.00. it also took 30 minutes. by that time, most of the people waiting were getting impatient. i didn't hear them complain cuz i was inside but i know i would have been. finally, a service counter guy began talking to us. he told us that he thinks our master cylinder that we had replaced recently was refurbished and not new. he said that refurbished cylinders have all kinds of problems and never ever last. we asked him how sure he was that it was a refurbished one and he said that he couldn't make any guarantees but that he was 80% sure. he went on to explain that the container at the top looked old and used and that if it was a new cylinder then it would have a new top as well.

anyhow, we ended up having the shoes and caliper or whatever replaced along with most of the other periphery brake parts. they had a 99 dollar special for it. they said they'd do a further inspection on it while that was being done.

so we went to go see the matrix while they did their business. frustration was building.
we got to the theater around 10:10 or so and got tickets for the 10:20 showing. we got to see a lot of good previews. LOTRs III of course is a must see. I'd like to see The Alamo looked pretty cool but of course we all know they all die. Last Samurai is a must see because we love all things Japanese EVEN though it has Tom Cruise in it.

the matrix met my expectations. i thought it was a great ending to a great epic. i only wished the new star wars trilogy was half that good. the battle scene was phenomenal. the mech warriors rocked my world and the final matrix battle was extremely impressive. fun with water. yeah. that's all i'll say for now. a truly great finale for a truly awesome 6 hour movie as i am calling it. that's how i read the matrix trilogy, as one long great movie. i think that's how a lot of people go wrong with this series. they expected to see three separate distinct movies. it's all part of one long stream of consciousness. the first part was the awakening, the second was the discovery, and the third was the resolve.

it all fits just grand in my book. critics be damned.

so. after the movie, we went back to Just Brakes to find out about the car. once again, we left our friends and jerm's to wait in his car. after taking off the tires and inspecting it and told us that the problem was with the rear wheel cylinders. that they were leaking and needed to be replaced. so yeah, you guessed it, more money ($500 bucks). we asked them if they thought that these repairs would fix the problem, and the counter guy said yeah. he kept pushing us to replace the master cylinder. but we wouldn't budge yet. we told him to fix the rear cylinder and other associated parts and we'd test it after that.

so we came back around 4pm to pick up the car. the guy was ready to ring us up when john asked to test drive it before we paid. the guy was like "yeah sure, but you're paying either way."
what the hell? how you gonna go and charge someone for a service when you can't guarantee quality or even if the damn thing works? the counter guy said that it was tested and that everything was fine. damn lazy ass mechanics. they'll do the least amount of work possible.

so john went for a test drive and i stayed and talked with the guy. i thought everything was going to be okay. oy. nope. john came back and was like, "man, i don't know what brakes should do but i don't think they should be like this. it's the same as it was before."

so the guy said he'd take it for a drive and check it out himself. we went with him. i didn't take him but one brake try to see that something was wrong. plus he was like, "hmm, there's this air hissing sound. i know what that means. it means that there is something wrong with the power booster." i was like, "uh, i told the mechanic that when i first got here!"

he was like, "well, i'm sorry but i wish i had known that." so we went back to the shop and he priced a power booster for us. another $400 dollars. by this time, john was getting very pissed off. then he went off to talk to my dad about all of this which of course was only going to get him more angry. i stayed and talked with the guy. i was like "how come you're the only one who noticed that there was a problem? even your mechanics said there's nothing wrong." he was like "well i've been doing this and fixing brakes for many years." and i was like "yeah, but come one. it doesn't take a mechanical genius to figure out there's something wrong with those brakes." then i asked him some questions about the parts. i wanted to know if there was any real evidence that the master cylinders were refurbished.

while he was explaining his evidence to me (which to me didn't add up) john came back pretty peeved. he was like "look, if we get this stuff done and replaced the master cylinder, is this thing going to work? i do not want to have spent all of this money and it not work. if something needs to be fixed, you need to tell me up front. i don't want to have to keep finding out something else needs to be replaced..." he goes on and on bitching the guy out about how he want to make SURE that it's going to work. that they shouldn't be giving us back the car when the brakes don't work. etc. of course after that, the guy comes down on the price of the master cylinder. another 60 bucks.

however, in the end, we're gonna get screwed out of 1000 bucks. i was like "look Will (the guy's name), right there the sheet. Air sound at front pedal. i told the guy up front." he just kinda sighed and was like "yeah, i'm sorry, wish i had known."

now i'm totally suspicious about everything. i bet there was nothing wrong with the rear wheel cylinder. i bet it was the power booster all along. and i bet there is absolutely nothing wrong with the master cylinder. so anyhow, john's basically getting a completely new brake system for his car.

we told the guy though, when we come back to get the car, it better work.

i'm going to write them later to let them know what happened. i mean, how can you give someone back a car that doesn't work. their mission statement says: Our mission is to assure a safe braking system in every customer�s vehicle by consistently performing high quality, dependable brake repair and service.

well if that's true, they failed.

so blah blah blah. foo foo foo. i hate auto repair messes. we need to learn how to fix cars ourselves. you just can't trust mechanics... nor should you ever.

prozac nation

how do you become a happy person. are you born a happy person or are you raised as a happy person. what makes someone naturally pessimistic?

some mornings i can wake up and convince myself to look forward to the day. those times are rare. and even when i do, i feel like i had to coax myself. why is that? and even if i could be, would i want to be one of the happy people? have these people somehow fooled their mind's eye to see the world in a certain way?

but then again, i'm not saying that living life day to day on a super low is good either. but obviously it's not all bad considering i haven't off-ed myself yet. but just because i don't want to hang myself, doesn't mean that life is a ball.

i'm not depressed. i just don't always look forward to living each day.

usurper/halloween/wedding/matrix/pictures

Identity
hmmm. someone has been usurping my identity on some weezer forum. i think the whole thing is kinda funny and insulting at the same time. all things not weezer

i'm kinda flattered that they chose to use my identity, at least my physical form...but also kinda insulted. he or she posted my picture and then said "i wish i were pretty". hahahaha. at least my dead webpage has some use. i haven't had the motivation to work on it at all. i barely have myself going to live journal anymore. i have a zillion pictures i want to post. oh well. i don't have much time with my job. i chose a career over life. :)

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Halloween
i meant to do a post on halloween. guess i'lld o that now even though i've lost most of my agnst.
ren and i went out to 6th street like we did last year. he dressed up as a warrior but ended up looking like a bloody psycho killer which worked well too. we walked around 6th street for awhile checking out costumes. we saw a guy dressed as a pig wearing a police uniform. he was standing next to the cops. hahah. that's gotta take guts. then we spotted the justice league (basically all of the super heros) and ran around after them like fanatics. "ooh ooh! there's flash! loook looook, it's superman!" it's a shame we didn't bring a camera. not that i would have time to post them. :) we ended up going to paradox, a hip hop dance club. it sucked booty. the whole night, disgusting loser guys tried to grind us. men are dogs. wolf wolf wolf. it's probably the last time we go to a straight club and definitely the last time we go to a hip hop club. not to mention they charged us a fortune at the door. we kept on dancing though and got our money's worth.

this halloween we didn't get that many trick or treaters. i passed out handfulls of candy. some of the kids were so cute. what bothers me is when i finish putting candy in the kid's bag and then the parents put THEIR own bag in my face. i'm like "how old are you?" ah well, i give candy to all... i do not discriminate when it comes to sweets. i carved a pumpkin with a silly face the night before halloween so it wouldn't rot. it was my beacon to all the kids so they'd come a'knockin.

i'll post the pics of mr. jacko down below.

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The Celebration of Marriage Of Letitia Eileen Phalen and Gerardo Noel Huerta
i.e. the wedding that would not end.
yup, i went to another wedding of yet another couple i don't know. that's 3 of 3 now. this time it was jeremy's mother's first cousin who got married. the ceremony was held in a catholic chapel in san antonio. the ceremony lasted an hour and a half. i have no further comments on that. the reception was held at the Lackland Air Force Base. the hall was really nice and they had free coke and sprite. they didn't open up the buffet line until well past 9pm. we were the first in line because our table was the closest. the last person to get their plate of food was at 11pm or something ridiculous like that. i enjoyed spending time with jerm's family. they always crack me up. the bride was amazing. at the end of the evening, i found out she was 40 years old. i thought she was in her late 20s! i posted some pics of her so you can see. but anyhow, weddings like this make me not want to have a wedding. eeeeeeeeeeeeeelooooooooooope! woo woo. i wish.

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The Matrix Revolutions
if you don't like video games, flashy special effects actions, don't watch this movie you dumb ass moron. i just read the cnn review of the matrix. i haven't seen the movie yet. we're going to watch it on thursday, i believe. i just get annoyed when a movie gets critisized for its very essence. it would be like someone critisizing a disney movie for having cheesy songs. get over it. blah blah blah.

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Now onto the pics:

meet jacko.




me and my jacko. my jacko and me.


going to the wedding. i like this pic cuz my head looks like a melon.




jeremy's mother's first cousin Letitia and her new husband Gerardo Huerta


Letitia and some friend or family member of hers- jeremy's mom took the pic