Dinner with the Hickeys

Rachel & Charlene
















Sue, Maria, Gabe, Ariel





















Michelle
















Uncle Edmund, Aunt Julie
















Jonathan, Uncle David





















Charlene
















Charlene, Ariel





















versus - Jonathan, Rachel
















Rachel, Jonathan, Ariel, Gabe
















Charlene, Becky, Rachel

Day of Boring Blog Title

Body Works 2. This show is cool from a distance but really morbid in close and in reality.
















(L-R) Uncle Al, Gabe, Sue, Al's brother Paul, Dad, Mom, Unrelated Uncle ?
















Rachel & James (no relation), Grandma, Aunt Jane, Becky, Lester, Maria, Ariel.
















Enter "self proclaimed cake cutting pro"
















Jonathan, Grandma, Charlene
















Jonathan, Grandma, Charlene, Sue, Gabe
















Ariel. Sleeping.

Dinner 2 + Shanghai Refugee

This day started off with an aborted attempt at the Body Works 2 exhibit at Toronto's Science Center. As consolation, we went to pacific mall for Tian/ Tong (lit. sweet soup) desserts. Not a bad consolation!
















Lester & Becky eating "Turtle Shell Jelly"
















Walnut Paste = yUUUUm

And for dinner...
Northern Chinese Cuisine





































2 fish dishes visible.





















Chinese Fried Banana + Green Bean Sweet Soup
















Lester , Me, Jocelyn ("escaped" back to Michigan)
















Warped and twisted me & Jocelyn. The picture is also blurry.

Dinner 1 + Family Pot

Dinner
















A new card/RPG called Mafia King. It's like Survivor and that one game The Mole. Rock Paper Scissor Tiebreaker. Insane variant. 3 consecutive wins needed.
















Me, Sue, Gabe
















Jonathan, Becky





















Poker victor again! The pot was $35CAN to me, $5 to second place (the buy-in). I must say, I had very good hands all night so it wasn't the best showing ever but I still managed to come out on top.

How did you spend your Christmas?

Christmas Eve was a hot pot dinner. I guess that's just what my family sort has been doing lately. I think we had some sort of nice dinner last Christmas but hot pot is the easy and lazy thing to do. =P no surprise. So how was your Christmas dear readers? I hope it was better than mine. I guess you could say except for lunch, it was a blah day. Maria and I had to sit through a Chinese Christmas Mass. Now I don't terribly mind going to Christmas mass all that much but any Chinese mass is a tad painful. It's mostly because I don't know what anyone is saying and I get approached by strangers who talk very LOUDLY saying all sorts of whatda?'s and whoseitnots. Overall, awkward and uncomfortable. Afterwards, they convene in the church basement for lunch but eating the basement of a church isn't the fondest of ideas of lunch so Maria and I snuck out and went to the local Chicago Chinatown in the blistering cold air. We wandered the shops a bit. Maria wanted to show me some ugly jade pigs. Eventually we ended up at the boba shop for lunch. We ordered Lemongrass Chicken wings, Spicy Pea Sprouts, and Chicken with Salty Fish Dish. Maria had a Mango Boba, I had the Papaya Coconut Green Tapicoca variety. It was entirely too much food.





















Afterwards, we made our way back to the church. Thankfully we were able to stowaway in a side room as the church-goers were doing various "acts." Not like the acts of the apostles. But like painful church acts of music and skits and stuff. Even my dad found it unbearable at times. Maria spent some time grading some papers (not what she had in mind for Christmas) and I doodled game ideas. I guess it was all much worse for my sister. Grading papers in the basement of a church whilst dodging out of a medley of church "things." Oh yeah, and cold weather.

Woof.

Jet plane Shimmy

Pictures taken on my flight from SFO to ORD.
















San Francisco Bay
















Treasure Island - can't see my house? Use your imagination!!!
















Oakland, Alameda
















Passing into the Oakland Hills





















Umm... mountains... I can't remember if these were the Sierra Nevada's or the Rockies.





















Midwestern Plains
















Snowy Crevice
















I think this is the Mississippi River.

Christmas in San Fran

Bleh

helB.
lost 5 pounds.
bed ridden all day.
not eating much.

saturday.
Fuddruckers - turkey burger. (bad meat?)
King Kong - 3 hours. (bad movie?) no more like long movie. too many unneccesary scenes.
Rain - lots of it.
Exiting summartive mode. So Romy drops me downtown. I swing by to the metreon. Hmm... I was hungry before but oddly I'm not quite feeling my appetite. I think I'll go walk it off. Or sit it off. Either way, I'll mozy around until I get my appetite back. Finally I get around and order some tortollini at the ol' Firewood Cafe. hleB. undercooked. Um, could you cook this some more? It takes some time... They must be RE-cooking it now. Um, undercooked again? helB. remember those nice homeless people? Well one of them get's my dinner. Browsing at Macy's. Thinking about getting some jackets. Going to a party... Maybe I'll walk in the rain!

Walking.

walking.

walking...

soaked...

mistake.

The party is not what I was expecting. When I first arrived, I was soaked (as previously stated) so I went looking for the coat check. Which turned out to also be the bar? ok, sure. Why not mix all your jacket and boozing needs together. I went around the place: the set up was a bunch of rooms openly interconnected. One room I found was a bright pink studio with all sorts of tacky designs up. Well, I should say it was more eccentric and colorful. I'm just not overly fond of pink. This room feature the works of Dee Dee Russells. "Indispensible to San Francisco" according to the SF Weekly, (see http://www.deedeetv.com/ ) and self proclaimed anti-fashion queen of the bay; it was indeed a new and peculiar experience. All of it was. I had no idea what I was doing there. It was pretty obvious from the get go that it just wasn't my thing. In a state of confusion, I agreed to help Ms. Russells cut out some pricing labels for her feature works and was subsequently given a "gift." Well in this world, it was a grand gesture but in my world I honestly thought "What? the f*ck?" She gave me this 8 or 10 inch braided human hair thing embedded with those novelty flashing lights. Lots of people were wearing flashing lights. I guess it was the thing. Then these two girls show up who want to kiss me. I didn't think I was in a position to refuse. Ms. Russells informs me that I have been SNOGGED by the infamous kissing bandits. Twice. And I had the stickers on my shirt to prove it. It is apparent that other party attendees take notice exclaiming "oh my god! I can't believe you got snogged twice!" Ms. Russells also informs me that the present company are the type to attend the infamous 'Burning Man' I am so at the wrong party. So the real reason I even arrived at the gig was because this fellow who sings with Tina said he had a gig there and I had seen him preform with her the previous week. He was pretty good but he gave me the impression that she was going to perform with him when in reality, she HAS preformed with him and still does on occasion but such was not the case tonight. I still tried to enjoy myself but when his show began, oops! someone is lighting up. Definitely not my thing. I tried to cough it up and rough it out but 2nd hand 'smoke' just gives me headaches. Around the rooms, tried to dance a bit. In the end I just had to bail. I tried my best to enjoy a new situation but in the end I was cold and tired. Caught a cab in the rain. Got home. Tried to take a hot shower to warm myself up and then got back to the beginning of the blog entry.

Bleh.
lost 5 pounds.
bed ridden all day.
not eating much.

TFB Holiday Party (the other one)

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Night of Insanity

Night. of Insanity. The night actually started off quite well. Secret Level was hosting a holiday party and a fellow I met at the last IDGA meeting was nice enough to invite me. I got there, had some snacks (no real dinner) and red wined my way through the night. There was a dance floor I got to burn some rug on, a game room where a girl kicked my butt in DOA:Ultimate once again proving there are female gamers. I ran into a poker room where I silently scoffed at their 10 and 20 cent blinds but it was the local natives who got the last laugh as I got a bad beat with 4 players going all in. Pizza's found their way to the suite later in the evening. Everythings going swell!

Things are winding down... Hey, let's go head over to 1984 at the Cat Club! That's great! Jimmy! is over there. He's like a mini-celebrity there. So we head over. I check with the driver. He's ok to drive. Great! Directions? Set. Turn Left? Woah! Crazy driver! Is this how you change lanes? Road Closed! Where are you going? Protruding manhole in dirt road! Dirt road is San Francisco? Something isn't right! Why aren't you stopping driver? Concrete medium barriers! Why do I keep alternating between exclamations and questions? Ditch! Stuck? Stuck! Stuck in a ditch on a dirt road running under some bridge construction. Well gee. This is swell. I can only guess that he thought "road closed" meant "no, no, we just don't want you to mess up our dirt, the other side of the road is in fact open. not really" So there's a total of four of us. We get out and try pushing quite a few times but the ditch is pretty deep, the car is only FWD, and the ditch is also filled with water so each time we try the gas, is there EVER a holy fountain of mud. By the end of the night there was mud to go around. After several more tries of this, using planks of wood found in the construction area wedged under the tires and such, I just flat out give up. I go off towards the main road with one of the passengers and just chill out and talk things out. What a ridiculous situation we're in. Who gets stuck in a ditch in a CITY??? Really, just how many such ditches even exist within any American metropolitan areas? This was right downtown. I guess any construction zone in any metropolitan area is bound to have a ditch somewhere so - well so much for my rant. I guess a triple-A tow truck is headed our way. We head towards the other end of the road to wait for the truck. Still chatting it out. I check my clock. I'm gonna take the bus home. I'll wait this out as much as I can. I don't want to ditch on my hosts. Penguins! I mean, Tow truck! So as I walk back towards the car I see the tow truck drive down and turn around. The tow part aligning to face the car- now he's driving towards me? Um... huh? Apparently they got the car out? How? Well, I thank the tow dude for coming out. I guess he's getting paid anyways. He doesn't seem annoyed one bit. As I get closer to the car I see mob of homeless people surround the car. One of them is holding a spoiler in his hands (wtf?). I get over there and my passenger companion wielding a heavy piece of re-bar (wft?). The driver hands me the keys and tells me "nate, get the car turned around, ok?" Um... sure. I don't know wtf is going on and it'll take too long to explain. I've been waiting like an hour to get out of here. Car's turned around, homeless people apparently helped him get the car out. Mobbing for money. Especially the ones who didn't help. Both the warm side and black eye of the homeless community are represented. There were those who came out generously offering aid to fellow humans in need because they understand as is their situation. Then there were the ones who will take advantage of every situation - out of want and not always out of need. That's painting too black and white of an image of it. Just a quick impression. In 5 full years in San Francisco, I come to try to spot out the genuine and thankful homeless versus the bitter and spiteful scammers and money hustlers. Hey!

1984! It's 2am. We have 1 more hour of partying to go! One more hour to salvage the evening. I've got the keys, I'm driving. I'm driving fine but I am a little freaked out. It's not the 6 glasses of wine I had tonight. That hour of sitting around really sobered me up. It's the fact the car is covered in mud. I can't see out the back window. The mirrors are covered in mud. Driving in the city is all about mirrors! 1984! I find parking right in front of the club! I rule! How did you get out of your crate? Our surly driver still worked up about the night get's into an arguement with the doorman at the cat club. nope! not getting in now! I did want to go see my friend Jimmy! but I can't ditch the hosts (the driver maybe) so we sadly sit outside. I watch the driver rant about the doorman. Passenger buys me a bacon dog. Taxi. Bus. Home. Insanity. No?

So I'm not too mad at the driver. I'm mad I got put in a car with a drunk driver. I'm mad the evening ended so badly but I won't stay mad. I can't. But do that again, I bust... um something bad. yes. on your knee. groin.

Shaba Holiday Party

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TFB Holiday Dinner

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