The past week and a half has been tumultuous, and next month promises to It is 4:30AM so briefly:

-I was invited to, and went to a Fusion²³ singles event/get together (thanks, Natalie).

-I have a job interview for a chemical sales position in Durham, NC. Cameron has told me that I could find such a position here in Atlanta… which i plan to look into when I wake up tomorrow.

-There are some tumultuous happenings at work. So ominous that the events they prevail threaten to leave nothing in their wake. That job interview I am supposed to have next month might actually prove be part providence and part coincidence.

Next month is going to be… interesting.

As if my recent purchases weren’t enough of a drain on my finances… tonight I made the most expensive impulse buy that I’ve ever made in my life! I bought an IBM Thinkpad laptop! I have long desired to purchase a laptop, but the expensive prices on even older used units have always been prohibitive. However, tonight I was fortunate to catch a listing on git.ads. I purchased a 900MHz, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive for $300. The model is an IBM Thinkpad T22. Integrated modem and ethernet NIC.

Also, this month (february) is salad month! In an effort to shed some of the non-muscle pounds I’ve put on, I have decided to eat nothing but salads for dinner for a month. I had one tonight. It had lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and croutons. Not bad… but I got hungry a few hours later and had a pb&j sandwich. We’ll see if i can hold out for the whole month! Wish me luck!
The purchase has OBLITERATED my finances. I know it is a good deal on a laptop… but its a good deal on a laptop that I didn’t really need!

In other news: I am *extremely* sore and have been for the past 2 days! I definitely over-did that workout on Monday at LA Fitness. My chest has never ever hurt me so much. OW.

Mr.TANKA never called. I guess I spooked him something fierce!

Reed and Erik have been mulling over getting a corporate membership at a (fitness) gym for the employees. In the past few years, LA Fitness gyms have been popping up like gang-busters all over the Atlanta metropolitan area… including a fairly new one on John’s Creek Road in Suwanee where a lot of our students at the (cheerleading) gym go to work out.

To make a long story short, I went with Al, Reed (and eventually Erik) to the LA Fitness on John’s Creek to take a look at the facility and try it out. It’s the first time I have picked up a dumbell/free-weight in about 3.5 years! After a pitiful showing (compared to Al and Reed, who lift regularly), I expect I will be sore in just about every muscle I used yesterday. (I’m already sore in many of them). Exact terms of the corporate membership (and its existence) are still subject to a few factors. It looks like anyone wanting to participate will have to foot their own registration fees, though (probably in excess of $100). I’d better start saving up… between the GRE i still plan to take and that… I might not be able to make rent! But its fine if LA fitness doesnt work I can always go to Body Contouring Scottsdale

I found my wallet. It was under a computer I was fixing up that was sitting in my room. It was missing for 8 days.

The superbowl is this coming Sunday. I had tentative plans to watch it at a singles event up at Northpoint with Natalie, but there might be an alteration of those plans. No telling what might happen. No big, though. I recall watching the superbowl (and the awesome commercials) with Nat at her apt a few years ago. Much fun was had 🙂 . Ah, those days of yore.

“Tanaka’s curious return”   He’s back! For those of you that don’t remember, back in August 2004 I recieved an email from MR.TANAKA (not his real name), a recruiter looking for japanese speakers (Click here for the entire sordid tale). Well, last night I recieved this email:

Apparently I did not make much of an impression on Mr. TANAKA the first time around, since he has forgotten my name and doesn’t recognize my email address (probably deleted it right after we spoke 🙂 ). In any case, I sent him a reply email reminding him that he contacted me once before, but to call me tomorrow morning if he wants to speak with me. I probably don’t have the qualifications they are looking for for this particular job, since I haven’t ever done any real accounting… but nothing worse than what happened last time can come of it.

As an aside, I’ve lost my atm/debit card (5 days running so far) and have been trading emails with a previously somewhat-estranged acquaintance. Lets hope it doesn’t come back to bite me as it has before

Word of advice: Do NOT eat any food at the Panda Express located at:
PEACHTREE & HOLCOMB PANDA EXPRESS
3200 HOLCOMB BRIDGE RD. SUITE #650
NORCROSS, GA 30092
PHONE: (678) 969-0028.

After eating some chicken, rice and an eggroll from there last night (~6:45pm), I woke up with food poisioning. A slightly milder case than I have had before (McDonald’s & Burger King), but I am still sick from it.

Being as I only got 4 hours of sleep i got last night, I’ll have to relate the details of my latest goings-on at another time.

One (inner) complaint I have always had about many of my fellow Americans is their propensity to consume. By that, I do mean the materialistic desire to buy/acquire things… but mostly their apparent need to define their identity or individuality based upon what they consume (what music they buy, movies they see, clothes they wear, car they drive, teams whose games they watch). One would think that the content of one’s character, their personal history, ethnicity, geneaology and personal quirks are what set individuals apart from one another. Not to sound *too* much like a geeky-nerd, but the erosion of this more traditional method of setting oneself apart from another is probably the greatest triumph that advertisers and manufacturers of goods could ever hope to attain.

That being said, I very recently made two very frivolous purchases for two things that I probably won’t even have much time to enjoy (guilty as charged!)… though the reasons that I bought them were a little different than a psychologically-driven urge to consume. I got them at really good prices! (That sounds pretty lame, doesn’t it).

My first purchase was that of a ping-pong table (picture is forthcoming)! I was browsing a GT newsgroup where students post ads of things for sale when I saw that someone was selling their full-size (9’x5′) ping-pong table for $50, complete with paddles, net, and two ping pong balls. Any way you slice it that’s a good deal. I arranged to purchase them (easy) and somehow through provenient grace arranged to borrow a pick up truck to transport it (difficult and time-consuming). Here’s the embarrassing part… there isn’t any room in the townhouse where I live for a ping-pong table! There might be except for the fact that there are 2-3 extraneous pieces of furniture in the dining room that nooone uses. As a result, I transported my new ping-pong table to the parents’ lounge in the gym, where it will hopefully keep siblings of students off the floor. I plan to provide paddles and sell ping-pong balls (to cover costs of people stepping on them) so that the table will get use. Reed and I played a game after work the night I put it up there. He’s a big ping-pong fan (and pretty good), so I’m sure that I’ll get to use the table regularly after work should I wish to.

My second purchase is even more frivolous than the first. After subsequently browsing the same GT newsgroup, I arranged to buy a pair of snow skis. It is important to note that I have been skiing the grand total of ONE time in my entire life. However, I have turned down invitations to end-of-year skiing outings and trips due to the cost and lack-of-equipment. I still need boots, poles, and the appropriate pants in order to ski… so for now they will sit in the downstairs closet. The skis I bought are a pair of 195cm Rossignol M46 ‘racing’ skis. I got them for $12. It is true that I have no current use for them, but I couldn’t pass them up at that price! Apparently, the guy I bought them from got them second-hand from a shop/store somewhere. The edges are in decent shape (according to my roommate, who just got back from a ski trip), save a light layer of rust over. Also, the edges do just out past the width of the rest of the skis, so they can still be sharpened. My roommate also said that the bottom surface was in good shape, which made me happy. Maybe I’ll get to use them one day. If I’d already had ski’s a few months ago, then I might have been able to take my friend Sarah Burgoyne-Carl up on her offer to go skiing with her in Colorado where she was living at the time. Pity!

Anyways, here’s to hoping I can curb my spending until after I raise the $$ for the GRE 🙂
Here are pictures of the skis and the ping-pong table.

Happy new year, folks. I wonder what 2005 will hold. Its presented one surprise for me already, even after a somewhat slow, unremarkable start. I was told about 3 different parties (I wasn’t sure whether Nicole had invited me to hers or not), but I opted to stay home since I didn’t have a burning desire to party the night away. When the clock struck midnight, I was relaxing in a chair in my room.

The surprise came in the form of an impromptu trip to Piedmont park with my friend Natalie (on the right, not to be confused with Natalie-the-dancer). I was running an errand or two to in Buckhead in order get myself out of the house, and it was such a nice day that I called her to see if she would meet me at the park. Luckily, she was free and met me there about 30 minutes later. Footballs were tossed, and soccer balls were kicked (once again, Natalie proved to be a very quick study). We also sat and watched some bikers, skaters and skateboarders showing off tricks by the front of the park. Its the second trip with her to Piedmont park in about 5 years. It was a good outing, so there’s a fair likelihood of another such future trip.

Other friends that I called were out of town, nursing hangovers from partying, or not answering their phones. No worries, though… in this case all was well that ended well. It turns out that I might be attending fusion at Northpoint, per Natalie’s invitation. Hmm, I wonder whether I would better fit with the early 20’s crowd or late 20’s/early 30’s crowd? I have a feeling its the former even though i’m 27! (dang, i’m getting older for sure… wiser seems to be another story, though).

ETA for fusion is early February. In the meantime I need to make arrangements to take the GRE. 2005, here I come.

-EDIT- I just found out that one of the folks who didn’t answer their phone failed to do so because they threw their cell phone in the water. Deep water, apparently… and on purpose! Heh, having a bad temper can be an expensive habit 🙂

I have made it back to Atlanta safely. I left my aunt’s at 6:42AM this morning and checked in at the airport around 7:30. I tried to carry on my bag, but the attendant at the terminal made me check it during boarding. It had developed a small rip close to the zipper. Luckily, the connecting flight home from Pittsburgh was on the same aircraft, so US Airways didn’t have a chance to jack-up my baggage transit.

I landed in Atlanta at 1:30PM and picked up my bag and discovered that the little rip was now a tear that extended 2/3 of the length along the zipper. I stopped in by the baggage counter to:
1. Collect reimbursement for the clothes (~$70) I had to buy while waiting for my bag to get to me in New Jersey (which took 41 hours) .
2. Complain about the damage my bag had recieved between Pittsburgh and Atlanta (i’d borrowed my roommate’s old college cheerleading travel bag for the trip).

US Airways took my receipts andwrote a check for the clothes I bought, but refused to pay for the damaged bag. They said that they did not pay for damage related to the zipper and that my bag seemed overstuffed (which it probably was; as it was 60° in Atlanta, I had packed my winter coat into the bag). I i’m not sure whether the bag can be repaired, or how upset my roommate will be. I know that his mom is something of a seamstress, so she may be able to repair it for him/me.

Speaking of my roommate, he is apparently away on a skiing trip and has been quite busy in my room. I returned to find about half of my DVDR’s missing (~12), and a DVD project open on my computer using a program that he installed in my absence. Heh… maybe i’ll call it even for his damaged luggage! 🙂

I will (try to) get photos from my christmas trip up within the week… as well as make icons for the last series of posts that have none.

Its the day after Christmas. This morning my father and my aunt (fraternal twins, by the way) mentioned a news story about US Airways losing 1,000 bags of flying travelers over the past 2-3 days, and sure enough 15 minutes later a short report about it came up on the tv news… only it was 10,000 and not 1,000!

Apparently, US Airways baggage handlers have been having a tiff of sorts with the airline, which led to a large fraction of them calling in sick/taking leave for this christmas season. 10,000 bags were stranded at Philadephia International Airport (which is the same airport I had my connecting flight from). According to the report, 2/3 of the bags had been forwarded to their correct destinations (including mine, i suppose) leaving a mere 3,000 to be delivered. This also helps to explain why I have still been having trouble getting through to get my expenditures (in leiu of having my bag with my clothes and essentials) authorized. My return flight is one-way, but I plan to not-check any bags… for convenience (and just to be safe).

Also, I have finished The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. A short review will soon follow (I am on dialup up here and don’t want to tie up the phone line for too long). Not a bad book. It had some historical references in it that make me curious as to their validity and accuracy. I’ll probably wait until I am back in Atlanta to research it a little bit.

Its 2:12 and I am supposed to be going to the mall with Jessica today, but no word from her yet. I think our 2-3 person trip to the mall has turned into a shopping outing with my sister and Jessica’s mother, Aunt Daphne. Aunt Daphne and Uncle Robin gave me very generious christmas gifts, and I brought them nothing from Atlanta (I did try to shop before my flight, but didn’t find anything good enough to give as a gift). I will buy them something this week and either give it to them, or send it via mail (depending on whether i find something here, or back in Georgia).

-EDIT-
Went to Freehold Mall with Simone, Jessica, and Aunt Daphne around 3’ish. It was moderately crowded. On the way back we stopped at White Castle for dinner. I ate 7 cheeseburgers. On a related note, Jessica and I were talking about movies and she told me that she did like Harold & Kumar Go to White castle, but she did *not* like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Both flicks are set in Jersey about a pair stoner-pals… so I didn’t understand why she thought that Jay and Silent Bob was stupid. I haven’t seen Harold & Kumar yet, but I plan to grab the DVD on Jessica’s reccomendation. It comes out January 4, 2005.

Merry Christmas! Jessica & Omar came over with their parents to my aunt’s place and we had a very nice dinner. Cousin Earle and his family made an appearance much later at night. I was REALLY surprised to find pansit on the menu! It was actually ‘mae fan’ or something, but I know pansit when I see pansit!

My lovely lovely lovely cousin Jessica lent me a novel to read! The DaVinci code! I started it today and am about 1/3 of the way through it. She is currently reading ‘I am Charlotte Simmons’ by Thomas Wolfe. Its gotten a lot of press on NPR in the past few weeks. I might ask her to loan it to me after she’s finished with it. In the meantime, I plan to lend her ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ when I get back to Atlanta. I’ll have to hurry, though… she heads back toRutgers halfway through January, where she doesn’t have the time to do any pleasure reading.

Jessica is supposed to drive me to the mall tomorrow. I think my sister might come, too. I have to buy a gift for Nicole for moving my car out of the MARTA lot to save me a little bit of money (more about that later).

News: The bag that US Airways lost was found. They called early around 9:30AM to report that it would be delivered. It arrived here at my aunt’s house at 2:30pm. All contents intact! I was very happy to get my bag, but not happy about being unable to reach baggage service about a refund for essentials that I had to buy.

Today, my folks, aunt, and I all went over to visit more of our family living 10 minutes from my aunt in Howell, NJ. I got to see 3 of my cousins that I haven’t seen in a few years. I think that I might have found a kindred spirit of sorts in my cousin Jessica. She seems to share a few interests/habits with me that noone else in my family does. I was surprised to hear that she was graduating this coming semester! She’s considering grad school. If she goes, then i’ll definitely have to go to grad school as well. (I can’t let any of my cousins become more educated than me! 😉 )

I also saw Aunt Marge, Uncle Otto, Arlene & Stacey, Judy, Uncle Robin and Aunt Daphne. Omar (Jessica’s brother) was absent, but he and everyone else is coming over to my Aunt’s house tomorrow for christmas dinner. I’ll be sure to take lots of photos.

I woke up this morning to be told that US Airways had called and said that my bag had been found, and was on its way here to be delivered. That is definitely good news, but unfortunately they didn’t give an ETA, so I am sort of stuck here at the house until it arrives.

Just as well since I didn’t have any Christmas Eve plans anyways.

There is still the issue of getting compensation for the change of clothes that I had to buy (and am currently wearing).

I have made it to Newark safely (thank goodness). The ONE bag I checked (and the bags of half the other passengers on the plane) have not. US AIRWAYS LOST MY BAG ON A DOMESTIC FLIGHT. Apparently, my bags and those of my fellow passengers were not put on our connecting flight from Philadelphia (PHL) to Newark (EWR).

Here is a brief rundown of events:
-My flight (2846) lands on-time at 9:15 despite taking off 30 minutes late. We are forced to wait on the tarmac for 40 minutes while they try to decide what terminal to put us in (F27, our terminal was taken).
-The plane is put in terminal F29. The flight attendant tells us that our bags will automatically be transferred (I ask him again on my way out to be sure). I disembark and immediately walk to the terminal of my connecting flight in time to make it to the middle of the boarding for that flight (great timing). I worry about my bag making it over in time for take-off until the flight attendant announces that take-off is postponed in order to let 10 passengers from a connecting flight make it over in time to board.
-20 minutes later, at 11:40pm I disembark and meet my aunt at the luggage retrieval. We spend 20 minutes watching bags go round and round as a line forms at the lost baggage office (yes, there was a US Airways lost baggage OFFICE staffed with two people…. not a good sign). Half the passengers from my flight end up in the line. One guy traveling with his family was missing FIVE bags/suitcases.
-After an interminable wait in a fairly short lineInformation about my bag is taken, and I am given a record of the baggage claim along with a brochure on the apporpriate numbers to call. It is now almost 2AM. We drive home.
-I am told that once my bags are located, they will be delivered to me at my Aunt’s house. So for the time being, I have nothing except the clothes on my back, my cell phone, and a portable DVD player. LUCKILY, I had not checked my winter coat and hat… but i have no toothbrush or change of clothes… or the PS2 I had packed (which BETTER be there when my bag arrives).
-I spend the next day calling the automated line before I track down the phone number for the lost baggage office in EWR airport and the phone number for Deborah Thompson, the Director of Customer Affairs. The workers in the lost baggage office are curt, almost to the point of rudeness. I call on Mrs.Thompson, but get no answer, so I leave a message on her voicemail. Subsequent web-sleuthing reveals that the one flight from PHL to EWR (which theoretically could have ferried the bags to us) that day was canceled. The reason given was inclement weather, but rain in these areas was light.

So now its 9:26, 22 hours after my flight landed. According to flight schedules, the first flight from PHL to EWR lands at 10:30AM, with 2 more flights throughout the day. So, hopefully my things will arrive. I hadn’t originally planned to check any baggage, but I was forced to after I remembered that there was a small swiss army knife on my keychain (a gift for being a groomsman in Brannon’s wedding). Rest assured, I won’t make that mistake again (or the bigger mistake of flying on US Airways).

I spent ~$45 on a change of clothes for tomorrow and possible Saturday. According to the EWR lost baggage office, in order to get reimbursed I must first contact a LIVE PERSON on the US Airways lost baggage phone system (which has thus far proven impossible as the phone system says it is too busy and hangs up on you), and get it authorized.

A google search on US Airways and lost baggage turned up this gem from a blog (about lost baggage on US Airways) almost exactly one year previous to this date. One of the same aiports was involved, too (PHL).

US Airways SUCKS.

Well, I was all set to leave for the airport at 5:30 in the morning to make my 8:20 flight. I packed the bag and printed up my flight schedule. I was examining it when I noticed that the times were PM instead of AM… which meant that I had to call my aunt (who was supposed to pick me up at the airport) and my old roommate (who was to drive me to the airport) at midnight to cancel and rearrange plans.

It sucks that I didn’t realize the actual times when I booked the flight, but its a good thing I did eventually notice. Besides upsetting my aunt, I would have had to spend 12+ hours at the airport here in Atlanta.

One bad thing that did come out of this is that I’d made plans to visit my friend from elementary school, Beth, whom I haven’t seen in 10-11 years. She is flying out the morning after I leave, so who knows if I will be able to catch up with her, as she lives a little over an hour away from my aunt’s house.

I need to make new plans for getting to and from the airport. Unfortunately, my 8 oclock departure time means that:
1. I will have to get to the airport around rush hour. -I’ll probably have to take MARTA to avoid subjecting my friends to the stagnant gridlock that is the downtown connector during christmas season rush hour
2. I will have to be picked up from Newark airport at midnight, as my flight lands at 11:30pm. I can’t think of an easy way around having my aunt come get me (she lives about an hour from the airport).

The end of year holiday season is here, and my ma, pa, & sis decided to go to New York City to visit my family. For those of you who might not know (or might have forgotten), I was born in NYC and lived there until I was 8 years old. Most of my aunts and uncles still live there.

I opted out of the Thanksgiving NYC trip last year because I did not want to spend 12 hours in the car. I had the same dilemna this time around; I wanted to visit my family (whom I have not seen in years), but I did not want to spend 2 days of my vacation driving in a car with 4 other people (the trip takes 12 hours). After much hesitation, I decided to book a flight. $224 round trip. Expensive, but at least I don’t have to dread the drive home to TN and then to & back from NYC.

My aunt actually now lives in Newark, NJ, so that is where I am flying to. I have one day to pack and make arrangements to get to the airport, get picked up from the airport, etc.

I haven’t been to NYC in a while, so I am trying to find contact info for the people I know that live there. So far all i have come up with is Beth O’Brien (from 4th grade) and Dennis Delima (from college). I have phone numbers for niether person, so odds are that I wont’ get to see them.

I leave Wednesday the 22nd of Dec and come back Wed the 29th of Dec. My parents should arrive late Friday the 24th.

In other news:

-I tried to track down a friend from high school, sort of out the blue. The impetus for the search was a dream I had the night before… which is strange because their appearance in the dream was totally out of the blue, so decided to regard it as an omen. No luck so far, but I did contact the family of a friend of hers from college.
More news later if anything develops.

-The gym staff had a christmas party tonight at the wild wing cafe up in Suwanee. Al and David brought a friend of theirs named Joy, a girl Al cheered with in school. Joy was exquisite. She doesn’t live in town, but that’s a phone number I’ve got to get.

-Arranged to mod a ps2 for a little extra spending $, but the chip would not function… despite having all of the correct wires properly attached. It was a DMS3+ in a V4 gap console… which are apparently notorious for not being compatible. I’ve since come to the conclusion that DMS3 is junk, and v4 gap is NOT worth the effort. The owner is going to try to install a Matrix Infinity per my recommendation.

-kevin

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I’ll ignore the normal sorry-for-not-posting-in-a-while blurb that seems to have become the norm lately on this web log. My birthday has come and gone and thanskgiving is just around the corner.
I haven’t done much translation or GRE studying lately. I have been kept busy with many things PS2, and the start of the cheerleading competition season. The dvd-burner that I ordered just came in yesterday, so I’ve been busy with that as well. Its 3:00pm and I have a lesson at 4:00, so I need to leave the computer to get ready. I’ll post later tonight, time permitting.