let's just change my name to naive george now shall we? or maybe this is a sign that city life isn't really for me. here's my story of how i was duped for a cool $20 last night. in my embarrassment of re-telling my story to jon g, martin and babbs i changed the story from $20 to $10 mainly so i wouldn't seem as stupid but the more and more i think about it the more and more dumb i seem. but what else is new...these types of situations just seem to find me for some reason.

as i pull into the parking lot across the street from where jon g lives a guy (the parking attendant i assumed) said $7 please. to which having just gone to the bank and only having crisp twenty dollar bills in my wallet i handed him one. he asked, do you have anything smaller to which i reply nope so he goes well i don't have any change so i'm going to run down to the store and get some. in the meantime you go ahead and park. so i do and i was a bit preoccupied in trying to figure out just exactly where i was and where jon g's building was but after standing around waiting for a cool five minutes with no sign of the guy coming back i started to get nervous. did the guy run off with my money? but wasn't he the parking attendant? i even asked some random guy on the street where he went...obviously he didn't know. wasn't quite sure what i was thinking there. i even contemplated calling jon g but then i was like well what could he possibly do? plus i still wasn't completely convinced i was duped. i still had a small ray of hope. just then i noticed a parking spot on the street open up so i went back to my car and moved it to the street and as it had now being close to fifteen minutes passed, i gave up and called jon g to let me into his building.

as i'm standing there waiting i noticed a big sign on a pole next to the parking lot which states in all capital letters i might add "NO PARKING ATTENDANT ON DUTY. DO NOT PAY IMPOSTER. PAY AT BOX". i had to stare at the sign for a couple seconds before it dawned on me...shit i just paid an imposter! i can't believe it...something like this has never happened to me before. the nerve! maybe they should consider putting that sign somewhere a little bit more visible instead of high up on a pole that no one's going to see until after they've already given away their hard earned cash.

so that was my twenty dollars down the drain. i do apologize though to martin, babbs and jon g for lying about ten dollars but you must understand my shame. and to top my night off, as martin and i were leaving, we noticed a parking ticket on my car because i failed to move for street cleaning. mental note that street cleaning is from 2 - 6am on mission sunday mornings. who knew. and as i drove martin to his car we noticed a nice little white parking ticket stuck to his car as well. $35 fine so all in all parking cost me about $55 bucks that night but oh wells. things could be worse and i got to hang out with some michigan folks so it was all well worth it. next time i pay at the box as should you.

the high point of my weekend in ohio had to be dinner at morton's steakhouse saturday night with chris, his older brother tom and his wife cassandra. i think it's the closest to being wined and dined that i'm ever going to get. first off his brother is a regular there. and i do mean regular. complete with his own waitress maxine i believe was her name and his own wine cellar. who has their own wine cellar at morton's? crazy. but lucky for me he had just gotten back from a weekend trip to napa (a place i have yet to go to but will be soon with victor hopefully) and brought back a whole crate of very expensive wine. before dinner we sat in the lounge area and i felt like a real sophisticated adult what with us sipping red wine, making conversation and tom and chris smoking their cigars. it was pretty amusing actually to see the managers kiss ass like no other and everything was mr brigdon this or mr brigdon that and as i was part of the party, i too got my ass kissed a bit. it was great. i highly recommend it. made me feel extremely important.

dinner consisted of two appetizers, lots of side dishes complete with hash browns, broccoli, asparagus and baked potatoes. then came our entree of which i ordered the rib eye steak which was damn good and all the while i'm drinking my wine like a real lady and thought to myself so this is how the rich people live. we got dessert...some godiva chocolate cake thing that was very very good...i highly recommend it and then chris ordered me a michelob beer (low carbs too it said on the label which i thought was pretty funny) and of course i had to finish it off with an after dinner drink on the house of bailey's on ice. yum. all in all our total bill came out to be over one grand and some change. yes you read it correctly. one grand! for a night out at dinner? damn. i don't even know how the bill got to be that much but i'm assuming maybe it has to do with the two bottles of wine we finished? i'm not sure how expensive they were but i'm assuming it was up there.

before dinner chris and i had gone to his brother's house or should i say mansion to visit and i got to see eric clapton's house (or it's rumored to be eric clapton's house anyways) which was down the street from tom's house and then the president of the limited lived a couple doors down as well and all of these houses were huge. it was ridiculous. i could barely believe my eyes. and just to show you how ridiculous this whole thing is his brother even has his own private jet! his own jet! i thought only movie stars and rappers could afford this. in either case, it was a really great experience and if you'll excuse me i must leave work now and go home and heat up my frozen dinner.

NOTE: blog written yesterday in a state of delirium due to the events below.

i hate chicago. or rather yet i hate having to connect flights through chicago. now i finally understand why it’s nicknamed the windy city. i type this as i sit here at the airport in the last hour of my three hour layover. but let me start from the beginning. i went to ohio this past weekend to go visit chris. originally booked a 6:30am flight to leave friday morning to cleveland only to arrive at the airport well ahead of time (a little more than a hour) only to find out that the security line was one hour long. on top of the thirty minute wait to check in my luggage. needless to say, i missed my flight. by ten minutes exactly. why the hell are there so many people at the airport anyways so early on a friday? must be some business reason i don’t know about. so i'm forced to wait another two hours until the next flight to cleveland but oh wait. it gets even better. chris calls and was like hey i was looking at your itinerary and it says here that you’re flying into cleveland. is that correct? uh yes i mumble. why? because i don’t live in cleveland, i live two hours away in columbus. columbus? i don’t remember him ever telling me that…there’s got to be a good reason why i booked it to cleveland but most likely not. my memory is horrible. so lo and behold, as my luggage was already on the 6:30am flight to cleveland, chris had to drive two hours to get me at the airport and then we drove two hours back. trust me i was apologizing profusely but all he said was “this is a very george thing to do” and i’d have to agree sadly.

the next day i try to switch my flight to fly out of columbus but to no avail. damn airline wants to charge me for a whole new ticket at a steep $630. f-ck you. so i decide instead of making chris drive another four hours for my mistake i rent a rental car instead and drive myself. only to get to the airport and find out that my flight is delayed a hour because of “winds” in chicago which means i would miss my connecting flight. go figure. But hey i figure if my flight is delayed maybe my connection will be delayed too right? uh no…of course not. the flight i miss leaves on time so i’m stuck on another flight two hours later. a freaking two hour layover? damn. so there i sit on the floor with nothing to do except chat on the phone which isn’t all that bad since i did a lot of catching up with people but still… when my cell is just about out of batteries, i decide to finally go to the gate only to find out that yet again my flight is delayed another hour and so here i sit, my butt sore and my tummy hurting because out of boredom i have consumed a mcdonald’s hamburger, filet o’ fish, a hot dog, chicken noodle soup and two scoops of ice-cream during my time here and now i’m hating myself and my stomache is hating me too. i did succeed in finding a power outlet though next to the ticket counter which the ticket counter lady so graciously let me use but now i feel like a paranoid freak because i’m convinced someone is going to run up and steal the phone away lying helplessly there on the floor. but i’m watching it like a hawk don’t you worry.

all in all, i was supposed to arrive in san jose at 7pm but now won’t be arriving until close to 11:30pm which means taking into account that i first arrived at the airport at 1:30pm eastern time (10:30am pacific for those a little slow) i would have spent a full 12 hours at the airport on top of the 9 hours I spent on friday.

yes yes need i mention, never ever connect through chicago especially when it’s windy out because you’ll get fucked like me and waste an entire sunday here. but on a more cheerful note, the weekend with chris and seeing ohio was really fun and i will blog more about it later.

today is the two year anniversary. or yesterday if you're going by the american calendar but officially it's today. november 9th. and ironically father of the bride was playing earlier on tv. a movie that i used to love but learned the hard way that i should probably never watch again. at least not for a while anyways.

as i spend my lazy sunday doing nothing but eat and watch tv i get flashbacks of the exact moment when i found out, what i was doing just hours earlier and the weeks that followed. seems almost like a dream. it's right around this time that i get sickening needy and depending on the mood either want to be surrounded by people but with no one talking to me so i can be left alone with my thoughts or take nyquil and just sleep. sleep is probably what i need as once again i'm sick and my head is spinning while i sit here blogging. when the hell did my immune system become so weak anyways?

for the past couple of weeks or so i've become or at least have been acting like this needy insecure little child who is constantly looking for attention and affection and really, if you could see some of my actions or thoughts it's really quite despising. and annoying. at least to me anyways and i'm sure some others. and i know all this but just haven't cared enough or wanted enough to do something about it. willpower is overrated anyways. but i had a friend mention that perhaps the reason why i was acting or thinking this way was due to the two year anniversary...a comment that i thought was so off the mark at the time but in thinking more about it, is probably true. i don't think i ever really appreciated family gatherings before but these days, hearing about large family thanksgiving dinners complete with turkey and cranberry sauce (and i don't even like cranberries) seem pretty ideal to me and i can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. why? because the family is off in little units in separate places and i don't see a family gathering of this sort in the future anytime soon.

but nevetheless they say the first battle is admittance and yes i admit i've become one of those needy whiny annoying girls i see on mtv specials all the time and make fun of but i'll be kicking it in the butt for good. and soon. i am off to ohio this weekend to visit chris which i'm really excited about and i think a little trip away from san jose will do a world of good for me as i have become someone recently that i don't particularly like and staying here definitely isn't helping.

i had someone ask me recently why i like to drink so much. not just drink but why i go out, get plastered, black out, end up not remembering much from the night before and then go out again the next night and do it all over again. and the best answer i could come up with was why the hell not. it's only recently that i've been on this drinking binge. before i'd have a drink here or there but now when someone asks what do you want to do tonight my usual response is let's go drinking. i've got my little method all worked out too. it used to be i'd have a long island followed by a mind eraser and then i was all good for the night. but i'm now i'm on the belief that long islands and mixed drinks makes me bloated and hence i expend way too much energy in sucking in my stomache and not being able to enjoy myself as much. so i've now moved on to shots instead. and shots only. no mixing. one smooth gulp and down the pipe it goes and let the buzz begin. i've even sunk to ghetto drinking beforehand because hey those $9 shots at clubs add up pretty quickly.

i did get a pretty good laugh though when certain people thought i was slowly turning into an alcoholic which i assure you i am not. far from it. but i would like you to organize an intervention though. that would be a hoot. my san diego friends surrounding me...the lone girl in the group (besides nancy and grace of course but well one is in hong kong and the other is mia) lecturing me on the evils of drinking.

but this did get me thinking. why do i drink so much? i have just as much fun sober most of the time anyways and never feel as if i need alcohol to make it through the night. i don't even really have issues with not being in control of my actions because i'm usually a pretty fun and good drunk and know my limits to where i won't be puking my guts out in public. and i don't normally do anything too embarrassing things when i'm in my blackout stage except for ok maybe the time i fell or rolled off the stage or poured a beer all over someone which i feverishly apologized for the next day) but nevertheless, my whole take is hey i'm still young, still able to go out clubbing or whatever it is without getting looked at funny because i'm too old (although some 19 year old girls did exclaim to me at a halloween party last weekend "you're pretty cool for an old person"...with old meaning 28. come on now, do i look 28 to you? damn little fuckers and i do say this lovingly of course), and why not a little alcohol here or there?

my favorite is when i go out with a group and everyone drinks. everybody is in a giddy loving mood and i love it. one of my best memories of clubbing was at backbeat back in february when the sd folks came in for josh's wedding and we all danced and drank our little hearts out that night. even mr jon yang. so for now, i believe i will keep on drinking until i get sick of it or i get a serious beer belly but bring on the intervention if i'm still like this a couple years from now. i know i know alcoholism is not a laughing matter but i've never been addicted to anything (not even cigarettes although some people are in denial of their addiction) and don't plan to start now.