Saturday, May 20, 2006

Shopping, Scrapbooking, Socializing and Santa Barabara

Let it be known that I do not find any of the alliterated words in my title that interesting. If I had gone to UC Santa Barbara I am sure that would have quit before my first year of school was done. Socializing with people I don't know is still a difficult and awkward activity for me, though I have made improvements. Scrapbooking seems like it is a lot of fun if it is your thing, and it isn't my thing. And shopping. What can I say about shopping. I hate it.

"Now Trenton," you say to me "I thought it was a policy of your not be negative in your blog. Are you breaking you own rule?" To which I respond "Thank you so much for leaving a comment! But you are wrong. In fact, while I do not enjoy any of things I have just mentioned, this week they were made tolerable, even enjoyable, by the company of good people."

The story of my week begins on Monday, when I picked up Boeun and took her to Forever 21 in the Downtown Mall so that she could return a shirt she didn't want. While she shopped for a replacement, I did my best give her some space and not be annoying. It took an incredible amount of will power and imagination to do this. The result of my boredom was several beautiful photos. This... And this...
To include just a few. Boeun finished shopping, and I learned that she had never been to Old Sacramento, so I insisted that we go. I told her that there would be free candy samples, to which she replied that she didn't really like candy. Sure. We spent quite a while in the candy shop and, personally, I had I really good time.
We then went to Hana Market, where I bought the 8 pound jar of Kim-chee. Then we went out to Korean food. Boeun treated me, to my distress. So that was Monday.

Kerrie and I have been planning a trip to Santa Barbara to see Mary for sometime. When I went to visit Mary 2 weeks ago, I brought various souvenirs and toilet paper (every good house guest should present TP to their host in my opinion). We wanted to give her something else, maybe something more meaningful. Well, as it turns out, while I have been spending my time and money practicing my tour guide skills, Kerrie has been using her time and money to learn about scrapbooking. Now, scrapbooking does not have much appeal to me. Aren't scraps things that you throw away or recycle? And books...well, I'd love to have a few less of those at the moment. Still, Kerrie was able to sell me on the idea, so for Tuesday and Wednesday we worked on the scrapbook. It was suprisingly painless. Kerrie handled all of the decoration, while I handled the technical aspects (printing pictures, cutting pictures, etc), and did the bizarre stuff. Like this...
And this...
Here is just a sampling of Kerrie's scrapbooking supplies. 18 different scissors.
I managed to finnish all of the scrapbook prepwork before we went on our trip. I stay up late Thursday night cutting the ~150 pictures that we had printed.

In order to reach Santa Barbara with enough time to actually do stuff, Kerrie and I had to leave at 6AM the next morning. Hence the following expression. It is the expression of a man who has only had 2 hours of sleep because he was using fancy, girly scissors to cut hundreds of photos down to a manageable size.
And this is how excited I was that gas only cost $3.04 at Costco in Vacaville.
Well, the drive went alright. We had to take some short breaks. One of them was here, at this vineyard in the Salinas Valley. Kerrie was worried that the owner was going to come out and shoot at us. Um, ok.
Well, after 6 hours of driving, with almost no blood left in my butt, we got to Mary's place. Here we are at a pasta place.
Here is UCSB. You know what they say about a school with a big clock tower...
After touring all around town, we went to another restaurant that actually printed out the nutrition facts of your meal on your receipt!! What a fantastic idea!
After that restaurant we walked around Isla Vista a little bit. At one point we were stopped by some homeless people who proceeded to tell me that I was a lucky man to be in the company of two such beautiful women. I heartily agreed, and tried my best to get away as quickly as possible.

We went to the Improv Comedy show that Mary and I went to last time I visited her, and again it was good. After that, Kerrie and I tried to concoct a way for me to keep Mary occupied so that she could finish up the scrapbook. So, Mary and I sat in her room and watched more Sex and the City. Finally, at 2 AM we presented the scrapbook to Mary.
I hope she liked it. At 5 AM Kerrie and I began to drive back to Davis so that Kerrie could make it to a friend's baby shower. In King City, at Burger King, she had the worst coffee ever. Avoid this coffee at all costs I guess.
After getting back to Davis, I had to get back in the car and drive to Sacramento right away in order to get Ed'd to the CSET on time. After dropping him off I went over to Sakakibara Sensei's house, where she was holding a potluck for some of her students. It was there that I met Jenny (shown in the picture below) who was the girl who discovered INTERAC and told Sakakibara Sensei about it. We chatted and exchanged information, and we will probably be seeing eachother again since we will most likely be in the same group for training.
And these were some of the other cool people I met. After eating and introducing ourselves, a guitar got brought out we started to make music. First James (the guy with the curly hair in the picture below) sang a Japanese song, then he and his friend sang More Than Words.
It was all very Hawaiian actually. Then I went back to pick up Ed'd...

Came home and wrote this entry.

So, on Monday I leave for Hawaii. I intend to recharge my Hawaiian batteries. Aloha.

By the way, I am going to work for INTERAC, in case you don't already know.

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