Category: Rant/Whine

Ranting and raving and whining and bitching. Oh yes!

What did I say about those chickens?

The Trojans escaped again last night from the grip of the Sun Devils.

Gridiron Goddess said on her FB status: “thinks USC is TRYING to lose this game”.

It sure looked like it.

It seemed every time I blinked we would be 1st and 10. Blinked and it’s 3rd and long and there went the punt. Same thing coming back from Arizona State.  It started to resemble a tennis match.

Our ball. Their ball. Our ball. Their ball. Oh hey, a score here and there.

Actually, I watched quite a bit of in on Catalina Express on my way back from my friends Zak & Alex’s wedding there.  My friend Irena woke me up just in time to witness the spectacular interception which was returned for an awesome dive for a touch town.

Another couple of chickens were sacrificed for yet another narrow escape.

Can hardly wait until next season so we can get past this one. *sigh*

Reality Check

USC’s last week loss to Oregon could be blamed on me. The Trojan superstition was in full swing on Halloween night.

Hey, all a Princess Leia Zombie have on her were booty shorts and a bra. I surely cannot go without the bra!

But then again, Bill Plaschke of the LA Times finally threw a big ass bucket of cold, hard reality at Uncle Pete and his Trojans this morning.

What’s he’s saying here…and has been saying…is something I’ve been feeling since the start of this year.

We have not been the Trojans we know. However, we have been doing pretty awesome for a rebuilding team.

Why is it that some people are afraid to admit the fact that we ARE in a rebuilding year?  They expect the whole new coaching staff and a brand new team to perform like past years?

What brand of delusional crack are you smoking?

I mean, we lost the entire coaching staff and a butt load of great players. Our new QB, although he’s proven to be quite an ace for all the 3-minute period that he’s on fire, definitely needs seasoning.

Our defense wasn’t turning anything over.  3rd down is now a horror picture show.  Our kicker probably has more field days than any past years.  Our offense wasn’t going anywhere fast most of the game except for a few spurts when they all decided to wake up.

Oh, and the MAJOR noticeable downturn for the Trojans: we are no longer the 2nd half team.

We used to come out of that locker room after half time ready to kick ass and eventually take names.  Now, we come out and flail all over the field, holding on to dear life and possible sacrificing a few chickens somewhere behind the benches for Jobu to grant us more lucky breaks  to escape the disaster just one more time.

We are not the Trojans we were.

This year’s team has surprised me long enough with the lucky escapes.  The loss to Oregon definitely pulled the curtain off the masquerading Wizard of Troy.

It’s the loss that humbled everyone.  The team. The fans.

Have I lost faith in my Trojans?  Never. Have never done that even through the Hackett years.  I might not have been so proud then, but I for one have never boo’d my own team unlike some of these bandwagoning, fair weathered Trojan so called “fans”.   (I did yell “Suck it, Hackett!” a lot, but never once boo’d the players.)

I still have faith.  This year may not be a championship year, but hey, we didn’t do so bad so far.

Get it together, Trojans and Trojan TRUE fans!  We have the year to finish.  Finish off this season and work through the year to find your groove.

Next year, come back better, stronger. Asses will be kicked.  Names will be taken.

Fight on!

Learning Curve

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On Friday night, I was out at L.A. Live with 6 other Thrill the World zombies, entertaining the crowd waiting for Michael Jackson’s This Is It tickets.

We performed once and we taught the dance for another 1.5 hour.  And mind you, this is just folks hanging around LA Live here, nobody’s a professional.

If we were given another half hour, we could’ve taught them the whole thing.  But with the time we had, we were just a few moves away from completion.

People were having fun. They were putting in efforts to do the dance. And they all had a great time.

Forward to Saturday morning at my Italian class in Irvine through Fondazione Italia. This is our second class and our class size is pretty big.  We were told that the class may split up into 2 sessions because of the class size and also, as it turns out, the teaching style.

The lady who’s been teaching us is actually a substitute of another lady who’s returning next week.  She’s not much for having us repeating the conversation like a parrot, but deconstructing what we were saying.  It’s more grammar than conversational at this point.

However, some people didn’t like that so much.  They want to be able to walk out from the first class already talking.  Did you folks not notice that this class goes all the way to January?  This ain’t speed Italian.

Sure, when my Italian coworker asked me on Monday, “Come stai?” – How are you? My answer was, “Uh….si?”  I didn’t have an answer to that after my first week.  However, I know how when to use Un/Una/Uno (the) on a word.

I’d rather have the basic understanding of how everything works and THEN learn the conversation to go with it, than just sitting there memorizing the phrases. I want to be able to hold a conversation on my own outside of Hi! How Are you? Where’s the bathroom?

Seriously, I have a whole bunch of Japanese phrase I can spout out to you right now but I won’t understand a dang thing you said back to me outside of the standard reply.  What does that get me? Nowhere.

But then again, I digress.

Back to the bunch of whiny adults.  There were also others who have already taken last year’s class and wanted more.

“Can we have an all Italian class?” someone asked.  That would be across the way in Intermediate, we were told.  “But that’s too fast for me.”  But obviously, you weren’t going to get all the beginners in here to understand a lick of Italian.

So, here lies the problem. Our class has mostly newbies, maybe with Spanish background, and some that already had the skills.

Those were the one saying the our class is too slow but they couldn’t go on to intermediate because that one is too fast.  Here they are, in our BEGINNERS class, trying to make us go faster.

I have never heard grown adults bitch so much.  If beginners are too slow for you, then don’t bitch that class is too slow for you.  Obviously, it’s not the class for YOU any more at this point.  Suck it up and go catch up with the big kids in Intermediate.  Can’t hack it there? Well, you either do better or come back and learn the basics all over with the newbies.

We sat in class for another good 15 minutes just to agree to split the true newbies to 9 a.m. and the Advanced Beginners to 10:45.

I know this is probably an unfair comparison as the two occasions are completely different.  But going from one group of learners to the next, and I should probably add, one demographic to the other, I notice that the level of whines goes up with the median income.

Just sayin’.

Out of the Dark

Oddly enough, one should be nice and high after a major life triumph like your first backpacking trip.

Instead, I dropped off the side of Mount San Jacinto into the blues.

Elated, I shot out an email to my family soon after I blogged about it here.

It’s like dropping a pebble into a bottomless well.

Except for a chirp from my sister-in-law, nothing.

Well, heck, at least I expect to hear a “Well, you should’ve been working out so you don’t drag everyone behind”, but I didn’t even get that.

In a way, I did know that I won’t hear anything.  I did expect to hear nothing.   And somehow, knowing that I would probably didn’t get any reply from anyone, it still affected me.

It took me all week to get a hold of that feeling.  That I was sad because my family didn’t seem to share in my joy and triumph.  That I was sad because I had been disillusioned by a sense of closeness.  Facebook can give you that, I guess.

I didn’t think that whole “you need no approval from anyone but yourself” would apply to family members too.

But now I know.

I can breathe easy now.  And continue doing my thing.  Oh all the things my family wouldn’t have approved of otherwise. Frankly, some are still embarrassed with my participation with Thrill the World.  And probably will be again.

I guess when the bar is set so low, that I would continue doing things that would embarrass and disappoint my family, I shouldn’t worry any more.

Huh. That’s right, isn’t it?

I did tons of things I am proud of even if no one else is.

And that is enough.

You win one, you lose one

My epic battle with time this week?  I guess it’s a draw.

I didn’t start on Monday morning as planned.  Because, as you all have heard, we plan and God laughs.  Or something like that.

Last Sunday night, the night I wanted to go to bed by 10 to wake up at 5:15 and work on my stuff? I ended up going to bed closer to midnight and woke up the usual call time for morning with hair wash of 5:45.

I was up peeling and scraping the piths off of 25 lemons to go into my first ever batch of homemade Limoncello.

You heard me. Home made. Limoncello.  I will write ALL about that over at HmmFoodGood later.  But for this post, let’s just say that peeling and de-pithing took many more hours than I anticipated.

So, Monday was regular day.

Time 1. Oakley 0.

Tuesday morning, I’m on the new early riser schedule.  Was up by 5:15 and at station with a mug of tea at 5:45. I got a whole lot done.  I went to bed at 10 as planned.

Time 1. Oakley 1.

Wednesday morning, still on the wagon.  However, the near end of “Bad Things”, the book I’ve been reading, kept me up way past my bed time.

Time 1. Oakley 2.

Thursday, up a little later but was still up.  A couple of hours into work, an alien tried to dig his way out of my brain through my forehead and made me nauseous while at it.

Migraine in the office. That’s just great.  I couldn’t look at the screen, let alone tolerate the fluorescent goodness.  I took an Aleve around 10 and went to ask a coworker if I could go sit in her boss’ office–the boss is on leave.

My coworker let me inside and closed the blinds for me.  She went to tell my boss who came over straight away to check on me and told me to just take my time.  20 minutes later, feeling a lot less like a vampire, I crawled out to ask another coworker for a can of Monster to get the caffeine into my system.  A couple more coworkers came by to check on me and gave me some neck rubs…and those did help.

Nausea finally subsided around noon. The alien was now, digging more slowly, trying to get out behind my ear instead.  I downed 500 mg of Tylenol and continued to sip Monster to get better, fast.  After all, I had to go down to LA Live to check out a few venues for staff holiday party at 2 p.m.

Miraculously, that last bit of crazy self prescription did the trick.  I toured the facilities pain free and even scored some free brownies from The Farm of Beverly Hills.

That lovely bit of heaven sent me a wee bit over the edge on the jitters.  But hey, my head didn’t hurt any more.

Needless to say, it was an early night for me that night.

Time 2. Oakley 2.

Friday, I tried to get up early but my body screamed in protest. So I slipped back to nearly 6 a.m. scrambling out of bed.  My body continued to protest with some scratchy throat and sniffles.  I’m sure all these smokes in Downtown LA and all over Southern California doesn’t help either.  I fought it with echinacae tea, wild honey, and Airborne. By the time I was home, I was spent.

Time 3. Oakley 2.

I was woken up this morning from a lovely dream about my little country house in an orchard with the fact that I couldn’t breath through one of my nostrils.  Then both.  Getting out of bed was an out of body experience–as in I was out of my body, dragging it.  A cup of echinacea tea later, I had enough energy to make breakfast.

And now, I am stewing in my office intentionally.  I am hoping sweating all of this badness out might help me feel a little better.

Time 4. Oakley 2.

Things that have gone wrong? Not going to bed as early as I should have.  And the fact that I started this new program on the week before my boss goes on vacation when everything needed to be done before she leaves.

Stress + Change of routine + Lack of sleep + not eating much because of stress = System crash.

So here I am, sweating out my sickness in my home office, instead of out in Studio City, rehearsing Thriller with my fellow LA Zombies.  Here I am, missing out on a Beat It flash mob.  Here I am, sniffling, sweaty, and icky.

All because I want to beat time.

Next week awaits a new battle strategy.  But for now, back to the couch and more tea.

Fighting the time

Friends, get ready for another long and slow season on the OakMonster blog.

Thrill the World is here. And in full force.  (Oh hey, register with our LA team here.)

I’m involved in many different levels this time, a lot more than I signed up for this year.  Well, you know, MJ went and died on us. That brought a lot more to the original “let’s take it easy this year” plan.

I met with Amanda and Mahdroo and our new group of helpers last Wednesday.  This year is going to be awesome!

Friday was the second anniversary of my mom’s passing.  It gets a bit easier each year, but I still teared up a little when I tell a stranger about her death.  (Weird, huh?)  This year, I took Friday off to go to the temple with my aunt and cousin.  That evening, the cousin and uncle came over for dinner I cooked in my mom’s memory.  Some of her favorite dishes: Caesar salad (I cheated and used bottled dressing–mom LOVED table-side service), lasagna, and crepe suzette.

Mom’s favorite part of crepe suzette was the flambe’ing of the orange liquer.  I tried to do it this time with my cousin ready with his iPhone camera and Brandon with a fire extinguisher.

I didn’t know how to use the fireplace lighter, apparently. Mom probably was afraid I’d burn my apartment down or something.  LOL.

Saturday came with a morning full of errands and off to a barbecue at Nhien and Jonathan’s where I played a sous chef and general helper.  Poor Brandon was left to socialize for himself as I was busy assisting the hosts.

With all the busy-ness, I was supposed to start on the new time management plan this morning.

The problem I’m having is that I stayed up way to late to blog and work on Thrill the World stuff that I would crawl into bed around 11 p.m., long past our bed time.  Brandon would be long asleep by this point.  Of course, being a TV junky that I am, between after dinner and time I got to blog usually is occupied by going through the DVR etc.

Meanwhile, piles of paperworks colonized my desk.  Ask me to get a receipt from last week for a return and I will yell at you to leave me the fuck alone.  It’s that bad.

One morning, I was up at the first alarm and had at least 20 minutes before I have to be out the door that morning.  I did my Thrill the World duties and started on a blog.

It dawned on me that if the evening is to be left for family time, then the morning would be perfect to work on my hobby stuff!  So, instead of waking up at 5:40 a.m. (non hair-washing day), why don’t I just get up at 5:15 and get 25 minutes extra time in?

Well, I told myself that when I wanted to wake up to work out daily.  That just didn’t happen.

However, working on Thrill the World, my blogs, and other household stuff?  These are the things I REALLY do want to work on…unlike a work out which was something I really don’t want to do.

So this morning, I was supposed to be up at 5:15.

Didn’t happened.

Because last night, I was up until 11 p.m. scraping off any possible piths from the peels of 25 lemons to make a batch of Limoncello.  Yes, I am making my own.  (Blog coming soon).

We call can thank Justin and Olaina for having brought me an authentic Italian Limoncello.  Now that I had it, the commercial stuff tastes like crap.

My coworker Rob obliged in bringing me a bag full of his spray-free backyard lemons earlier in the week.  I finally started in on the lemons on Sunday around 4:30, took a break at 6:30 to make dinner, and came back to it around 8 p.m.  I finished at 11 p.m.

My right arm and hand still hurt from that and I’m one day late on my new time management plan.

The thing about it is, I REALLY want this plan to work.  I feel so guilty with all that I have been neglecting. The piano and the guitar have been sitting lonely for months.  There are many things I would love to do but never got around to because I seem to keep running out of time.

No more.

I’m determined to fix that.  There is no magical time turner for me to use: just discipline.  I definiely have been slacking in that department but with all that I WANT to do and NEED to get done, I can no loger afford it.

I can do this. I know I can do this.

Right?