throwing away books

had time today. parked under a shady tree and left the door wide open. the sky is blue with lots of clouds. looks like a creamy blueberry milkshake. i sat silently for a minute until i felt the cool, strong wind wash me over. then i started to pray, provoked by God through the invisible molecules that is the air.

i sold all my books in my room. now my room looks and feels naked. at first i regreted doing it, not because i traded three boxes of books for nine dollars, but because i kinda felt slightly empty, just slightly. i kept a few books though: my collection of Arthur C. Clark novels and a red book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that i found buried underneath a pile of forgotten and abandoned books. i held on to the red book of Tom Sawyer because i received it from my mother, whom i love dearly, when i was a boy in grade school. i remember receiving it as a present but being disappointed that it was a book and moreover a book i had no interest in. so probably sometime in the fall of 2006, like in October, i will read that book from cover to cover. i've never read that story before.

AT ONCE an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt, is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

by Candice Millard

This will be my new companion on my long flight from the west coast to the east. Should i keep my nose in the book or should i dare to look outside hoping to catch the bombs bursting in the air on that night of July 4th. if there be explosions they'll be explosions from another perspective, from another dimension. then again it's a big, thick book, so i should try and finish it on the one-way trip. i don't want to be tempted to read this book A River of Doubt while taking my classes. that's gotta be one heck of a motivation or one heck of a distraction. i'd probably get distracted since i have terrible stage fright ever since i was a baby. i remember i was terrified to look at a costumed character in the eye at disneyland, granted though it was a scary character (a wolf w/ big teeth). i still have that picture somewhere too. and i also remember being too shy in kindergarten, so most of my attention went to a giant stuffed teddy bear where all the books were. hmm, maybe that's why i find some level of comfort around books (not necessarily reading them, but just being surrounded by them).

france vs. korea.

i watching the 2nd half of this worldcup 2006 game. france is good, but i didn't know france was overrun by african immigrants. most of their players are black. funny how france and a handful of other european nations invaded and marketed the people of africa. i guess history has its sense of irony.

i am continued to be impressed by the longevity and performance of one of my random videos on YouTube. it is slowly yet surely racking up votes and comments as well as being favorited by as many as 26 separate viewers thus far. here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wasYNNfnfVE

my passport is taking forever to get here. it's been over a month. you can always rely on the government of one of the most powerful and influencial nations in the world, the Unites States of America, for some of the slowest government services known to man. i also need to get shiny, black dress shoes. i need a shave and a haircut. i've recovered from a recent attack of food poisoning. i'm envisioning a few things wrong with the new and emerging church.

so much to do, but oh so little time.

i realized today as i was driving my brave yet dying car that i am 28 yrs old, not 27. after doing a little math this means that im almost 30. it's not turning 30 that im afraid of. in fact i think it'll be a year of achievement. i want to turn 30 in a cool place, like on a snowy mountain fully dawned with ski gear, or in swimming trunks with a good layer of sunscreen out in the middle of the ocean somewhere (also wearing sunshades, on a sail boat). no, im not afraid of thirty. thirty is going to be a boon.

my little brother is starting to finally collect I Love Lucy episodes on DVD. i swear i've seen every episode at least five or ten times each. so i'm wishing i could be a better host so i can host an I Love Lucy party series. ha. it'd be too much fun watching the queen of all comedy in black and white. blissful feeling i tell you.

still looking for a good book to keep me company on my route from California to New Jersey. i hope they serve lunch and dinner. my brother has poe, edgar allen poe, so i might consider one of them.

i have a sudden craving for peanut butter on a spoon.

WorldCup 2004 - U.S. vs. Czech Republic

It's Monday morning and the only channel broadcasting the silly futbol game is Telemundo. Evidently American television refuses to broadcast its own country's worldcup game. This is unpatriotic. How can you compare this kind of unpatriotism with Japanese cars? This kind is by far worse....even if team U.S.A. does play like crap (yet mysteriously high in the rankings).

Czech leads 3-0. And life, for the time being, is good.

Why engineers don't write recipes.

Ingredients:

1. 532.35 cm3 gluten
2. 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3. 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4. 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5. 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6. 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7. 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
9. 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10. 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous.

To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.

Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.

(Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies from some geeko enginner's website)

worldcup 2006, be a leftist.

try to do every thing left-handed, like rbushing your teeth, holding a cup, combing/brushing your hair, using a fork, using a knife, using chopsticks, using keys, throwing a ball,...etc.

Nanta, the non-verbal musical involving food, is sponsoring the WorldCup in S. Korea. Actually they're sponsoring their own show by giving discounts to admission tickets if you wear S.Korea (the reds) attire.

summer, it's hot.

anxiety is with me. it's a good kind of anxiety. it gives me feelings that i've almost forgotten about. i like it.

i saw a movie last night where this person snowboarded for her first time, but, in her clumsiness, some how snowboarded well enough to not fall and ended up on the cover of a local ski magazine. now i feel like snowboarding. i still have yet to snowboard. some day, some day i'll do it. but not this year.

last night i received a post-it note on my car window. it read, "Are you 'mentally challenged' or are you just rude? Don't park in front of my mailbox again." This is presumably from the same person who got me a ticket for parking in the wrong direction on the side of a residential road.

i started to think of creative ways to get back at her. like making thousands of copies of her note and sticking them all over their lawn so when they wake up they'll wake up to a sea of notes stabbed in to their precious fertile grass. then i thought about being a jerk and ignore the post-it note and just continue to park in front of the mailbox. then i started to conjure up ways to apologize... like a simple reply saying, "My sincerest apologies." after that i couldn't get myself to think of vengeful things. it just didn't seem very right of me to think like that in the first place.