I’m gonna try and recap the year. November and December will get their own post later to show what I’ve been up to since moving to San Diego. Until then, enjoy the first ten months of 2010.
January
Started the year in San Diego. To some generic techno-voice countdown and then “Tonight’s gonna be a good night”. Good night, but it would’ve been better if the place wasn’t packed with dudes.
Dan left for Japan this month so it was my first time living alone for more than a few weeks. According to what I put down in my “Stuff I did” category in Google calendar, I was still playing a healthy (possibly unhealthy) amount of Modern Warfare 2. For instance, there’s this gem from Monday, January 25th: “Played too much MW2 by myself”. Earlier in the month I have an entry that says “MW2 for four hours with Albert and Wally” and there’s no mention of that being too much so god knows how long I played on the 25th. Great month.
February
Again, Dan was gone this month. And it looks like I also did very little this month. Of course, February is always the Super Bowl, which means we played our annual game at Hillcrest Elementary. I didn’t play like an idiot this time so that was a bonus.
March
More MW2 this month. And we also started playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. We got all the guys together and played football again this month. I recorded my statline into Google Calendar because I’m vain:
Offense – 2 catches, 1 TD, 4 dropped passes
Defense – 1 INT returned for TD
On March 12 I have an entry that says “Beasted on chocolate pretzels” and a separate entry that says “McDonald’s dipped cones”. Some days are better than others and this was a better day.
This is also the month when I talked to Laura about how we’d both start writing more Yelp reviews so that we could be Yelp Elite and go to the parties together. She wrote more Yelp reviews, became Yelp Elite, and got a boyfriend (he’s a charmer by all accounts, and by all accounts I mean Wally said so) that she brings to the Yelp parties. I matched that effort by writing zero reviews and asking Laura how the parties are.
There’s also this March 22 entry: “Wrote the Ninja Turtles Forever verse”. Junior told me about Ninja Turtles Forever, the animated movie where all the different generations of turtles combine forces. And the Drake, Wayne, Kanye, and Eminem song was still getting a lot of play around this time. Since they both have the word “forever” in their titles, it made sense to write a song that I’m probably a little too proud of. I’ll share a little bit of that:
No anchovies ’cause they cheese heads. PACKERS.
Always playing games and skating sewers. SLACKERS.
Tryin’ to charm the dime April O’Neil. ASK HER
Plus they do it all while lookin’ fly. BAXTER.
Have fun imagining how horrible the rest is!
April
I bought an iPad. I also bought a Nexus One. Tubo came with me to meet the guy at a mall parking lot. (For fun I told Dan I was heading out alone and the guy wanted to meet at the abandoned FedEx warehouse.) We waited in my car with a golf club and aluminum bat that we pulled out of my trunk for safety. It started to cross my mind that this was ridiculous and we’re gonna somehow end up being goons, beating the hell out of an unassuming engineer, and stealing the phone. Then the guy pulled up in a car that had two baby seats in the back. Smooth transaction.
I sold the iPad to my mom so she could give it to my cousin in the Philippines. And I sold the Nexus One because I missed the guys’ Blackberry group chat too much.
I also saw one of the shows on the Conan tour.
On the last day of the month we went to Vegas. It was still April the night we went to Tao. Most of the guys also put $50 on the Lakers to win by 2 but they won by 1. Goodbye money—bad start to a really good night though.
May
Started the month in Vegas. Pictures of that are here and here. Doodle Jump was a big part of our lives.
In May I stopped recording what I did during the day in Google Calendar. And I looked back at blog posts from back then and I still can’t really figure out what I did. Maybe I didn’t do anything. I do have this calendar entry though: May 15 “Drive to San Diego????” Labeled as “Tentative”. Four question marks is correct. This was the month two of me telling people I’m moving to San Diego. I don’t think I was that-guy-that-says-he’s-moving-but-he’s-still-here yet, but I was well on my way.
June
Google Calendar is even more bare this month. But my blog posts helped this time. I went to Ichiro bobblehead night. And this is definitely around the time I was sort of addicted to happy hour at Elliott’s Oyster House. I took Dan, Paul, and Junior separately I think for three straight weeks. Actually I just read the blog post about it, and I took the three trips in a single week. It was enough times that we were starting to joke that the hostess would start giving me winks and giving me the thumbs-up, gravely mistaking the bromances for attempts at romances. I love that happy hour. I also started my brief stint as an ultrasound model (aka ultrasound human dummying) this month.
July
After visiting Vancouver B.C. last summer we realized we’ve definitely been taking it for granted that we’re only a few hours away and decided we’d go at least every few months. A little over a year later, we made it back! It was a good time and we realized again that we’ve been taking it for granted. Now I live in California. I haven’t yet been to Tijuana so I can’t say from firsthand experience, but I’m gonna go ahead and guess that I’d enjoy Vancouver a lot more.
Oh yeah, me and Dan also moved out of the apartment we’d lived in since 2006 and moved into a 5-bedroom house with Chris, Ireneo, John, and Donna. If you’re paying really close attention, you might’ve noticed that with me and Dan that makes it six residents. I’ll cut to the chase: I moved into the nook which was probably a 7×7 area. Enough for a futon and a desk. Charming and hilarious, just not all that comfortable. I started sleeping in the family room on the bottom floor and using Dan’s desk as an office during the day so it turned out alright.
I loved living in a house with all those roommates. Since I wasn’t working and everyone else was, I was home kind of a lot. It was good to have a bunch of people to talk to and hang out with at different times of the day.
August
Wally was in town for his sister Linda’s wedding. Beautiful day for an outdoor wedding. We went skimboarding the same weekend on Whidbey Island. Great, great day.
There’s a calendar entry that says “Steak night with the guys”. I grilled this time and I actually didn’t screw things up for once. I also have an entry that says “It’s late night” which means this was the night we decided it’d be a good idea for the guys to write a rap song together. It eventually became clear that this wasn’t a good idea.
An August 5th entry says “Tubo’s day off”. Which seemed to come up every other week this summer and basically meant it’d be a great day of golf and food. On this specific day I think we played the par-3 at Jackson Park, grilled and finished some ribs in the oven, grilled some corn, ate on the balcony, practiced our Dougies, and then played the par-3 at Green Lake.
On Wednesdays this month we met up at the track to do drills and see how we stacked up athletically to NFL linemen. Me: not well. But we all improved over time and that was the point. There were also a few random days here where I’d meet up with Junior to kick the soccer ball around. And eventually have shootouts from the 18-yard line. I estimate that I hit probably 3 out of 40.
September
I had (probably) the most stressful three days of my life. Got a start date for one job that I pre-accepted in February, an offer for another, and had a pending final interview for another. I’d been telling people for months that I was leaving, then I told them I was staying, then I changed my mind again and told people I was leaving. 48 hours of thinking about my life.
I don’t get real too often here (or anywhere) but here goes nothing: things haven’t turned out as expected (in good ways and bad ways) but I’m really happy with my decision. I really can’t help wondering “what if” every once in a while, but that’d be the case no matter with either choice.
I told Albert that I think moving would give me an opportunity to learn more and grow more as a person. Then I flip-flopped a minute later and accepted the Seattle offer (that I reneged o; note to kids: don’t ever renege on an offer, ask for more time to think before accepting it in the first place). But the learning and growing has been true so far.
On a lighter note, this was also when we had our annual camping trip and the birds ate all our chips and poo’d all over our campsite. Hopefully not an annual thing.
October
After finalizing things and knowing that I was really, actually going to San Diego in November (and realizing I had very little savings left), I basically moved back to Oak Harbor for a month. I played a lot of Pusoy Dos, watched a lot of movies, and ate a lot of Chex Mix. After my contract ended in April I was either thinking I was moving or I was job hunting because I wasn’t sure if I was moving. October was one of my favorite months because I got to really relax.
We closed the month out with a Halloween party at the Seattle house. Most people actually weren’t last minute with their costumes so it was a lot of fun. Except people had no idea who Machete was so I was basically just dressed up as an ugly guy.