Mizblog

I attended a wedding this afternoon. Dave Kitani and Ji Son got married, and it was the biggest Jesus fest I’ve ever seen. I think Dave and Ji are really nice people, and the wedding theme was a very cleverly thought out political allegory, but the cheerful little zombie cult stuff was too much.

The other thing that bugged me was that the selected scripture (Ephesians 31-35 or something like that) was written by Paul, who I consider to be something of a lunatic. He emphasized that the woman’s role in the marriage is to respect the husband, but no mention was made of a husband’s duty to respect his wife. It was the old patriarchal cultural biases being reiterated. I hope those two don’t actually try to emulate that antiquated formula.

After the wedding, KP, John, and I went over to Joel’s house in Santa Monica. From there we walked all the way to Venice beach, and out to the end of the pier at Washington Blvd., where we saw a dozen or so fireworks shows at various distances up and down the coast. The closest show was Marina Del Rey, and it was weak for most of its duration. Single bursts were fired at a fairly steady pace, sometimes with two of the same in a row, and sometimes with long silences between bursts. But the finale was really exciting.

The walk home was exciting too, because drunken crazy people were lighting fireworks off on the beach. Some of them were going horizontally into the surrounding neighborhood. It was slightly harrowing but still overall a fun experience.

After a stop at Holy Guacamole for some burritos, we went back to Joel’s place and watched Die Hard 2. This was difficult because the disk kept skipping. Finally, John fixed the disk and we watched the conclusion. We decided that the reporter on the plane wasn’t such a bad guy, but Holly (the wife) was a seriously violent bitch who deserved jail time. Also, the whole story falls apart if you think about it for 5 seconds, so don’t do that or you’ll ruin the enjoyable action. :)

KP and John are going to Hawaii on Monday. Ji has already moved out of the lab. It’s going to be much more sparsely populated in there for a while. I miss them already.

Today I spent 2 1/2 hours scrubbing stove burner rings with steel wool, trying to remove baked on charcoal. Even though I’ve made huge progress (you can see actual metal in some places now), the overall result is still spotty and ugly. It feels like some of that carbon has been cooked into the steel, anodizing it a dull gray. I also feel like I wasted too much time scrubbing burner rings when there’s so much else in the apartment that needs attention.

I used compressed air to blow the junk around inside the stove while the burners were disassembled. Lots of charred food remnants in there that I’ll never be able to reach. Oh well, at least the nutritive content has all been consumed by fire, so it won’t be much of a haven for vermin.

I just finished cooking up a pot of turkey chili with extra jalapeños. It’s cooling and should be ready to eat by tomorrow. I took special care not to allow insects or insecticide to get into it, because I doubt either one would make it more delicious.

While stirring the pot every 15 minutes or so, I took the opportunity to clean out the spice cupboard. Eeeks, what a mess. In the back was evidence of multiple spice spills and habitation by a spider. I threw out spices that had dust or cobwebs on them. Apparently we don’t need those. Allspice? Dill weed? No. Bye. Trash.

My war with the other inhabitants of the kitchen continues. If anything it has accelerated since yesterday, but now I hold the field and can easily spot and destroy them when they pop their heads out of their hiding places. The areas they used to treat as safe are now barren and exposed, making them easy prey. I also noticed that they’re having a harder time finding food. I dripped a drop of liquid from the black beans onto the kitchen counter, and within 15 minutes it had attracted a scout. Dead.

Sangeeta took the key to the laundry room to Nepal, so I think I’m going to have to visit my parents’ house tomorrow with two bags of laundry. I’ll probably do some yard work to pay for it. Usually it’s enough just to bring Saranya, but Sangeeta took her to Nepal also. :P

I’m on a weird sleep schedule. I crash before midnight, wake up in the wee hours, have coffee, do some work, then go back to sleep after the sun comes up and sleep halfway to noon. I feel that process starting again…

It’s 2:45am. I just slept 4 hours and woke up. Guess I can get some work done while it’s dark and quiet.

In the kitchen I saw a few of my little friends next to the stove, so I broke out the bug spray and killed some babies. Then I partially dismantled the stove and sprayed bug spray inside it. The little pilot lights would ignite the bug spray, making fireballs that I imagined would napalm the little bastards to fiery hell.

My kitchen is a war zone, left mostly uninhabitable by both sides. I can’t prepare food in there anymore. I keep a fan running all the time to prevent the fumes from collecting in the bedroom. I can turn it off after the war. I’m tempted to just nuke the site with a room fogger, but those pilot lights would turn the whole apartment building into an inferno.

…

Now it’s almost 4am, and I’m trying to re-learn how to manage a SVN repository so that I can clean up some mistakes I made way back in 2007.

On Monday night, our lab went to Everett’s new apartment in K-town for Mr. Pizza. Joel regaled us with tales of his adventure in Ibiza, and then we all walked over to a Korean karaoke establishment. It was much fun! I had 1 glass of beer the whole night, and then drove people home safely. I got home and crashed at about 3am.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 7am, expecting a possible call from Nepal. The call didn’t happen, so I tried to go back to sleep. I was very uncomfortable and finally decided it just wasn’t working and I should get up and get coffee, but when I looked at the clock it was 9am. I’d slept 2 hours and didn’t even notice.

Tuesday evening I got home from work around 8pm with a few groceries I’d picked up on the way home. While putting them away, I spotted a cockroach on my refrigerator. Immediately I went into cleaning mode, cleared all the bags and boxes and plates and trays from the top of the refrigerator, and wiped the whole thing down with a hot soapy rag. It actually cleaned up pretty well, but while I was washing some of the big plates we’d stored up there, I turned and saw that I’d disturbed some more cockroaches. Even as tired and as hungry as I was, I was more angry that these little bastards were invading my living space, and I was determined to exterminate them all. I even tried to move the old refrigerator to clean behind it, until I started worrying that it might break.

Anyway, after all that effort I went to bed with one more clean area in the kitchen, and creepy crawlies in my head. I laid awake for 3 hours in the dark before my consciousness time traveled to morning. 5am. Allergies had kicked in. Coffee. World of Warcraft for my jc daily quest. Then some mindless travel while reading the news on the web, drinking coffee, and generally being a zombie. By about 10am I was again tired and went down for another shot at sleep. This time the dreams came almost immediately, and I knew I was dreaming because Saranya jumped on my back and tried to poke me in the eye like she often does, while Sangeeta yelled from the other room telling Saranya to leave me alone. I thought “oh, this must be a dream” and then it changed into something less memorable. After an hour of REM sleep though, I feel much much better.