Brawlin' at the Belmar, getting eaten alive by mosquitos

The Dude is in there somewhere, doing a barspin over a giant heap of dirt. Scary.




After the contest was over, Superbad Brad showed up and serenaded the whole group with a boombox that was duct-taped to his hand. I'm sure there will be footage of all of Saturday's madness on the internet very soon.


(taken by the Dude's iPhone)
Brawlin' at the Belmar was held in Binghamton, New York. The Dude warned me that Binghamton was like a ghost town, but I wasn't expecting it to be that bad. It was terrible! Everyone was old and ridiculously overweight, it was a sad sight. I can't imagine what people do in that town. The "downtown" area was a two block by two block area that was not poppin at all. When we got to Binghamton at 9:30am, I was hoping to get a soy latte at a coffee shop because I was dreaming about one during the whole 3 1/2 hour drive there. When we arrived, the chances of me finding a latte were slim to none, but I was relieved to see a Dunkin Donuts and settled with a gigantic coffee.

For some reason, I wore a dress to the hoopla and got eaten alive by mosquitos. My skin reacts crazy to mosquito bites and I am now left with 20+ red splotches on my legs. I love nature, nature does not love me. I hate to be a girl, but sometimes.. there's no other way around it. Luckily I had pants in the car so I changed right away. They go from my foot to my butt. Uncomfortable.

All in all, it was fun. I met a couple people that I've heard the Dude talk about all the time and it's probably one of the last times I get to go to a contest/trip with the Dude since he's going to be busy on his own trips soon.

Slave/Princess

The Dude's mom's basil was growing out of control so she told me to take as much as I wanted/all of it. We're talking about a 5 foot by 5 foot area of overgrown basil. So I chopped most of it down and made seven batches of pesto (yum!) I'm freezing most of it so we have homemade basil at our disposal during the winter.

While I was making all of this pesto, the Dude drew me a basil-bath. Isn't he the sweetest?

Je ne sais pas

Some people are in a relationship so they are not alone.

Others, for the magic.

What happens when you know what you're in it for? Are we satisfied if it is to fill our loneliness? If the two are content with each other's company, is that not enough. Do we need the magic.

Then there's the search for the magic. Is this relationship magical, or am I lonely. And the constant need to find out begins. Do we want love, or do we want love.

Small meltdown/Brief moment of panic

I walked outside my building this morning and who do I see? A surveyor. A surveyor? So what? Well he wasn't just any surveyor, he is a surveyor I hooked up with 3 years ago*.

To make a long story short, freshman year in Baltimore I went to some party in a warehouse. I honestly can't remember where the party was, but I'm sure it was the Annex or something. I meet this quiet, kind of strange guy wearing (what I remember to be) really ugly shoes. But he looked really German and I was wayy into the Nazi-shaved head-blue eyes thing. It might've been my recent viewing of The Believer (Ryan Gosling playing a Jewish Nazi), either way, I talked to him all night. He told me he was a surveyor and that's all I remember of him. We exchange numbers and I have him over to hang out with me and the roomies. It was only a one week fling.

He was "the guy that wouldn't leave in the morning" and the person you put under "DO NOT ANSWER" in your phone. Young, naive, stupid, bored. Whatever, it was what it was but it was strange seeing him right outside my door. Cowardly, I walked by him behind my sunglasses and my blazing red lips in hopes that he would not recognize me.

*And just to make things perfectly clear, he looks nothing like the image above, nor is he of "construction worker age". He's young, relatively good-looking, with terribly creepy blue eyes.

Strike 2

What's your country?

LA Times.com has a slideshow up with photos of Koreatown in Los Angeles, mainly focusing on Western Avenue. Now, I do not hang out in Koreatown, nor do I have friends that do. I have been to Koreatown to eat and to shop with my mother many, many times, but it's not a neighborhood that I frequent, though many Korean-Americans do. I know a few of you are interested in Korean culture (Chris) and this is a teeny tiny view into the "Korean" I know, not the Korea you've been to (since I've never been to Korea).

Click here to check it out.

New discovery

I am all about oatmeal right now. I don't know why I never discovered that I liked it before. This morning I am sitting with a bowl of oatmeal and strawberries and a cup of orange juice while my coffee steeps (in my french press). I've already got 30g of fiber, some vitamin C to help my body absorb it and 1/2c of fruit.

Oo and I forgot to take a photo of dinner last night. I made a corn and black bean salad with a bunch of goodies and barbeque tofu. I was just going to cook the tofu in store bought barbeque sauce and maybe add some extra fixins, but I only had a drop of barbeque sauce left so I had to make my own. The Dude likes barbeque sauce which is why it's in this apartment to begin with, so I'm used to making my own sauce. Icky and sticky yummy.

I miss talking about food.. haha :)