nightmare flight before christmas

i got to the airport around 6:30, fully expecting to swing into the check in, get past TSA, and have plenty of time to visit the bathroom and peruse the trashy magazines before settling in at the gate to wait. upon handing my passport and web check in boarding pass to the luggage check lady, she looks at it, asks me what my flight number and destination were. los angeles, flight 468. she then tells me very bluntly that i was supposed to be on flight 466 that departed at 12:30 pm.

suddenly everything from earlier began to click into place. my dad had called me about an hour before my shuttle from school to the airport was leaving to tell me to check the flight status, since it looked like my flight had been delayed from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm. i checked my email confirmation for flight 468, double checked the time then for 2:00, then checked the flight updates. 8:00 pm. so at that point, i decided to forego the shuttle, and kill some time at school and leave around 6:00 pm with lawrence, who offered to drive me to the airport since he was going home anyways. we watched wizard of oz (i slept through most of it), played some girl talk jenga, had a little dinner, then set off.

fast forward to present moment. initial thought: fuck! luggage check lady tells me that she will put me on standby for flight 468, still leaving at 8 pm, but if i don't get onto flight 468, i will have to pay an extra $100 fee for another flight. i say fine, not really pondering repercussions at the moment, just praying that i squish into flight 468, the flight i was originally supposed to be on. apparently, it was my fault for not checking my boarding pass before getting to the airport. but even if i had come via SU shuttle, i still would not have made my flight, which not only changed numbers, but moved up a couple of hours.

at the gate, a very korean looking middle-aged woman approached me to ask if she could use my cell phone to call someone in los angeles. she offered to pay, but i refused, so she gave me a lindt chocolate in thanks and sat next to me and proceeded to interrogate me with various questions. i obliged, since she had given me chocolate and was so cute! she even showed me pictures of her new granddaughter, and her family. after cooing over the pictures for a good 10 minutes, we both get called for standby, and manage to get onto the flight, except i am assigned to the emergency exit aisle so that korean woman can get a normal seat. how could i decline?

the entire flight was awful. i had a window seat, but no armrest, so leaning against the wall was impossible. there is plenty of leg room. but the drop down table didn't even get close to my seat. there wasn't anyone in the middle seat, and the guy in the aisle seat was studying to be a paramedic, and used the middle seat as his storage area. happily enough, he wasn't a make-small-talk-conversation guy. and yet, i couldn't even appreciate this miniscule pleasure for the extremely obnoxious, loud women behind me, and their chair kicking children. they carried on conversation that was not only completely idiotic, but ever increasing in volume, so much so that yoda on full volume couldn't even drown them out! at least their children fell asleep halfway through the flight. but their jabbering, which knew no pause, no breath of silence...continued from takeoff to landing and beyond.

official worst flight ever! on a happy note...am home, ate in n out immediately, got a kick start to christmas shopping yesterday, and lindsay managed to pass pharm! i guess there always is a silver lining....^^

pop art shoes!

"Inspired by comic book drawings of the 1960’s, the 917 Lo Popart stands out with double take-worthy details. "
since my faithful tweed chucks have developed holes in the heels, i left them in california where it doesn't rain so much and mentally vowed to look around for new shoes to replace them...shoes that are a little more rain resistant than canvas? anyways, after many months of poking around, i just found these. And despite the enormous probability that these are canvas, i want them anyways! so...now that i've gotten a little frivolity out of the way, i'm gonna go back to studying.

squeezing in a last november post

yowza. it's practically december already!
i'm procrastinating studying in hopes that my large large coffee will start to kick in.

updates:

thanksgiving break was amazingly welcome and fun!

• thursday i went to liz's, had intense and hilarious board game moments, meat sweats, pie sweats, pumpkin roll sweats, and walked in on joe showering. good times.
• friday, we went black friday shopping downtown, then came back and hung out in our cleanish room, and then emie, krystian, bridget and michelle and i had a fatty party at honey court in chinatown, stopped for gas and doughnuts, then went to cary park to take in the seattle view, visited the fremont troll, and chilled at gasworks park. such a great night!
  
• saturday, went to sarah's for more delicious thanksgiving food, and then hung out with emie and krystian watching movies, chowing on leftover chinese, and going for a nighttime stroll.

it's getting closer to christmas!!!! :D i now have 2 secret santas, and inspired by aimi's post about an awesometastic santa clause, my ultra wishlist that only a very generous and wealthy santa should think about would include:

• a car! ANY car. just nothing too large or gas guzzling.
• a new camera, one that would inspire me to lug it along with me and take more pictures.
• a CD drive for my laptop that works!
• speakers...i really really like creature speakers
• a nintendo DS or a gaming system with the new guitar hero!
• clothes and shoes money!

tomorrow i have my first final, skills validation, which is basically picking a random skill out of a hat (like injections or wound dressings, etc) and doing it perfectly while a professor watches you. i wasn't nervous at all before thanksgiving, but now the anxiety has kind of caught up. i think it'll be alright. but i really need to stop blogging and start studying.

p.s. i almost forgot...what is everybody thankful for? i'm thankful for friends. lots of good friends. old ones, new ones, ones that help you clean. here's to friends, cheers!! ^__^

the anatomy craze is creeping back into my life

well, i suppose it never left.

i'm enjoying drawing and researching pictures of hearts a little too much.





while helping me research heart graphics, emie ran across iheartguts.com. there, i found a haven for my ridiculous obsession for stuffed parts of human anatomy. every time i go back to this website, i can't stop the rush of excitement...it's really sad, but i can't help it... they're just so stinkin cute!!!

definitely my favorite...but only slightly.

other websites to fuel the fetish: street anatomy and morbid anatomy

and today, i opened my TSGC day present from emie. it's a 6 foot tall, life size pop anatomical figure that emie and charlie have dubbed, the dimensional man. just the thought of assembling him makes me giddy!!! we should get together and have an assembling-the-dimensional-man party. for those of you who can stand it. :D thank you sooo much emie-chan!

finally...a little unconventional...but i loved these awesome vintage illustrations of godzilla and other famous kaiju from pink tentacle. here's a taste:

california's burning

how bittersweet this transition to a new era is for me. i'm excited to see what will come for america in the future. and i loved being able to dance in the streets about it with perfect strangers. (who incidentally, cleaned up after themselves...my faith in human nature is increasing). i know many people are not dancing. and i know that this change will tear as many people asunder as those who are uniting with the hope of change for our time, our now. that is a truth that we cannot ignore, and a truth i am sure that those people won't allow us to ignore.

there are hardly any words to describe the outrage and disgust i feel in regards to what my home state just did. i cannot believe the nightmare of utter regression that people have chosen.

particularly, i am furious about the fact that my own parents believe that the passage of prop 8 is good news. although we are at an impasse, at least my father had the decency to respect my opinion. as for my mother, i have nothing more to say. not because i actually have nothing more to say, but because i don't want to say anything more in vain, waste any more words on something so asinine. often times, i have let things slide in order to prevent unnecessary conflict. but this time, i will not yield here, not in the face of this intolerance, this ignorance. this doesn't mean to say that i will provoke rash conflict. but if it comes up again, i will not back down. equality will come, it must. if not today, then someday.

which sailor scout are you?

FIND OUT THE ANSWER TO YOUR LIFE'S MOST BURNING QUESTION!

in anticipation of tonight's sailor scout meeting:

You Scored as Sailor Jupiter You're just awesome. Powerful lightning attacks, strong-willed, and a great morale booster. You are very good at cooking and like the colour green. Sailor Jupiter 100% Sailor Moon 92% Sailor Uranus. 67% Sailor Saturn 67% Sailor Mars 50% Sailor Mercury 50% Sailor Pluto 42% Sailor Venus 33% Sailor Neptune 8% Sailor Chibi Moon 0%

mary shelley: unexpected hero

last night, victoria invited me out to discovery park for a bonfire. i was kind of not into doing anything that involved me wearing anything other than pajamas, but i said yes anyways, and agreed to meet her around 6:45-7ish. we met up and drove to pick up morgan from downtown, and then we drove to discovery park, watching the last vestiges of the sunset along the way. we parked and met up with sam and george (victoria's couchsurfer from amsterdam) who had been there all day. the sky was that perfect twilight/dusk color as we were walking. we all went for a beer run, and picked up some munchies and supplies along the way, crucial things like hot dogs, marshmallows, skewers, and jiffy pop.

we got back to the park, and started the trek to the hangout spot that they had been prepping all day. the guys kept telling us about this "little bluff" that we had to climb down, and victoria and i kept joking about building up the bluff in our minds to be a sheer 90 degree cliff, so that when we got there, it wouldn't be as bad as we imagined. it wasn't too bad, but still took a good while of clambering, trudging, and sliding down to get to the beach, lugging the provisions, the victuals, what have you. the only thing was that it was super dark, and even though the moonlight was fairly strong, it was mostly covered by the surrounding foliage. we forgot to bring a flashlight, so we used morgan's bike light and mary shelley to help us navigate. i am truly, truly grateful for mary shelley...who knew that her power LED light and quacking would come in so handy?? :D

we finally made it down to the beach, and the guys showed us their handiwork - a chair, two benches, a table, and a windwall, all constructed of driftwood, a little cave/hut, and of course, a firepit. it was PERFECT. the tide was out, revealing this huge stretch of round, wave-polished rocks peppering the shore. the guys had already collected a pile of huge shells, but i picked one big, smooth, white clam shell up just for good measure. george started the fire up with an unfortunate copy of the stranger, and soon enough, we had a good crackling fire, open beers, and hot dogs on skewers. halfway through, we spotted the rope swing hanging from a nearby tree, and i hopped on with great enthusiasm. victoria pushed me a little, and it didn't take too long before the swing was going high and fast...towards the tree trunk! luckily, i only had one beer and one hot dog...otherwise, that swing would have been a terrible idea.

the park was closing at 11, so we decided to leave around then...after we'd eaten/drank our fill of hot dogs, popcorn, beer, and marshmallows, the fire put out with sand and piss, we packed our crap up, and made our way back up the "bluff". we didn't get out of the park until about 11:30, but luckily, we caught the guard just as they were closing the gate, so we didn't have to scale anything. we left the park and drove out to a point near the seattle center so that george could take pictures of the city, and then we drove back.

i think i'll never forget that night, something i almost missed out on. plowing through the sand, the reverberating quack of mary shelley, the sound of the water, the crunch of broken shells under my feet, the smell of the night, the stars, victoria's fluorescent legs, george's glasses glinting in the firelight, morgan coughing/hacking up something nearby, and sam's amused, half-lidded stare. i want to keep the memory of it all behind my eyelids.