Friday, November 30, 2007

Friday Five

inspired by john's 10 on tuesday, here's my lazy friday five. i make no promises that this will be a recurring post...or even actually include five items. i will try.

Five Reasons I Love Being Friends With Paddy
the pictures do not necessarily correlate with the numbers they are next to.

1. he is hilarious. if you have not taken the time to have a conversation or two with paddy, you are missing out, my friends. his humor is one of a kind. it's an intelligent, genuine, natural kind of humor, it's not like your typical "class clown" kind of humor. he doesn't say funny things for attention. there are some people, you know the kind i'm talking about, who need everybody in the room to hear the thing they just said that made one person laugh. so they say it over and over. and then they remind you later of how funny it was when they said it before. paddy's not that way. he doesn't parade his humor around. it's subtle, and he doesn't say funny things to get attention. he just says them 'cause that's what he's thinking, and if only one person in the room hears, then that's how it is. and the things he says that i find so funny are not like contrived jokes...he just delivers his thoughts in a natural, smart, witty way. i think that's so refreshing. and so, it makes sense that since i love to laugh, i love to hang out with people who make me laugh...also, paddy will do all the random stuff that i tell him to do. that's why i love being friends with paddy.

2. he is not ashamed to be who he is. he is an eagle scout. he loves harry potter. he loves wii. he loves modifying nerf guns and shooting people. he loves zelda. he observes birthdays of fictional characters. he goes to UCI. he wishes his school had a quidditch team. he loves blogging. he loves Heroes. he loves old women. he won the costume contest at borders the night that deathly hallows came out (in case you didn't make the correlation there, that means that he went to buy his new harry potter book in full costume). he loves jack bauer. he proudly posted his scores on the WOMBAT. he is british. he cooks his dead pets and eats them. he loves carly patterson. he once claimed to be in an actual relationship with her. he loves custard. and he answers to the name "Paddy." and he loves it. every bit of it. even the things that might be considered "nerdy" paddy loves. the bottom line is that he is not afraid to let people see who he really is. he is genuine and he makes no apologies for it. he is comfortable in his own skin and that makes other people comfortable around him. i feel better about who i am when i'm with paddy because he likes who he is. that's why i love being friends with paddy.

3. he argues well. ok, that one may sound weird, but i really enjoy the way paddy argues with people. often when friends argue there comes a point when one or the other can't adequately articulate their opinion or they can't think of a response to a counterpoint...and that's when the argument moves into personal-attack mode. paddy doesn't do that. he remains logical even when being berated (often by me) and doesn't even validate the personal attacks by counter-attacking. he usually turns it around and continues arguing logically and reasonably against the personal attack, still bringing it back to the original topic. (see his last two blog post including all comments made if you want to see what i mean) this is also true for when he argues hypotheticals. even if the hypotheticals get really out-there, paddy continues arguing with reason and logic. it's very impressive. i love to make my end of the argument get more random and obscure as i go just to see how he will bring it back to the heart of the issue. he does it every time. i don't like to argue...i'm not good at it. i often resort to name-calling. paddy doesn't take any of my cerap when we argue. that's why i love being friends with paddy.

4. he is super smart. that's why i love being friends with paddy.

5. he is an eagle scout. this means he is eco-friendly and always prepared. it's also somewhat of a super-power. so if i go to the airport and need duct tape to smash my bags down so they will accept them at the baggage check, paddy will have it. or if i need knots tied or untied, paddy can tie and untie them. or if i need lots of things loaded into a small space, paddy can do that too. paddy has a camelbak in case i get thirsty for some water with lemon. if i am riding my bike and i get a flat tire, paddy can fix it. paddy can start fires using nothing but the harnessed power of the sun combined with his will. paddy once ate a tapeworm and grew it in his digestive system and then pooped it out just to prove that he is immune to parasites (true story). paddy is a super hero. that's why i love being friends with paddy.






paddy, thanks for being a good friend. sorry i told your roommates you were gay. and i'm even sorrier they believed me and refused to sleep in the same room as you for a couple months. and also...i'm not sorry at all.

Friday, November 23, 2007

ouch.

Every muscle in my body hurts.

I had to pick up my own legs this morning and throw them over the side of the bed so i could get up.

I guess this is the price I pay for putting forth a serious effort to exercise only once a year.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

turkey bowl!

Just want to let you all know, Turkey Bowl will be at Downey High School again this year, Thursday morning, November whateverdaythanksgivingis, 2007. We'll start picking teams at around 7:30, and hopefully start playing at 8:00. football. in case you didn't know what the turkey bowl is. it's a football tournament. it's fun.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

mmmm, pizookie!!

I'm not kidding. This is, word-for-word, what the waitress said when she delivered my pizookie tonight...

"I'm sorry it looks like there's poop on your pizookie...we lost the little star-shaped tip that goes on the....."

something. i didn't hear the end of her sentence over the hysterical laughter coming out of me. the beauty of the situation was that it really did look like poop on my pizookie...and she apologized for it before i even noticed. BJ's in cerritos made a loyal customer out of me tonight.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Success!

i went to boston market today for lunch. this time i ordered a chicken caesar salad so that they wouldn't be able to toast any bread that i didn't want toasted. as i was sitting at a table by a window that looked out onto the drive through, i saw a guy that looked about my age, and he had scrubs on, and one of those little paper/clothy looking hats that ties on in the back...and i thought, "he looks my age. wow, he's really successful"

and since then, i've been thinking hard about success. i think success is a really personal thing. i don't think there really is a general standard of success. i can't even say, "according to the world's standards" because even the world seems to have a double standard for what success looks like.

like let's say there's this doctor, right? and he specializes in pediatrics. and he works in a big hospital and makes a lot of money. would the world say he's successful? would he? what if the only reason he specializes in pediatrics is that he got rejected for every single other specialty and the head of pediatrics is his dad's best friend from college and he hired him as a favor to his dad? would the world still say he's successful? would he say he was successful? maybe yes, maybe no. it's all relative. that's my point.

what about if there's a woman who lives in a van with her daughter? is she successful? what if she lives in the van because she was married to a man who was an alcoholic and he beat her, and one day she worked up the courage to leave him before he started beating their daughter? and she did it! she left! after all those years. and she's finally starting to believe that she's worth something again, only she's got nowhere to go, so she's living in the van with her kid while she looks for a job and a better life? is she successful?

i think success is so personal. and it depends so much on a person's goals and outlook on their life. there could be two people in the exact same situation in life, and one person would think they were a complete failure and the other person might be totally content with where they are, feeling like they've accomplished so much. like two students at a city college. maybe one of them was in the top 10% of his class in high school and had lofty dreams of going to an ivy league school. maybe he got wait-listed at a few of the universities he really wanted to go to and by some fluke, he missed a deadline or two for paperwork at a couple other schools, and so he's enrolled at Cerritos College. Maybe the other guy grew up in foster care and now he's 18 and there's no room for him in the system anymore, so he's on his own. and he went out and found a job and he works hard every day, and his boss likes him because he's driven, and a hard worker, so he promotes him. and now he's making enough money to pay for a small studio apartment and he's got enough money to pay for a full-time load of units at Cerritos College. so he enrolls. are they both successful? would they say they were successful? would the world?

anyway, i guess the thoughts i'm left with are that there's no way to judge success in other people. we may think someone has accomplished a lot, and maybe they have, but maybe they feel like none of it's what they really wanted...or that they could have done so much more, or so much better. and maybe they could have. but it's personal. so i'm going to try not to think "wow, he's really successful" anymore. because i don't know. and i don't want my assumptions to lead to comparisons that don't mean anything in the end anyway.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Stitches!!! Not the book. But...buy the book!

Man, I can't believe I forgot to mention this! Since my brother does not have nearly as much available time or internet access as I do (thanks again, Barajas), I feel it's my duty to let you all know that my nephew got his first set of stitches within the last couple weeks. Poor thing was riding on a scooter during the before-school recess at kindergarten and fell. His face then collided with the handlebars which simultaneously collided with the ground. So he had to go to the hospital to have four stitches put into his upper lip. Look at him, just laying there helpless! Poor little guy!!







The upside was, they gave him really awesome drugs!