Wednesday

I drove down to Cali after work. Pretty uneventful, except for the part where I offended the Carnivore God. We stopped at the California Embassy in Vegas. Commonly known as IN-N-Out. I went in to order and asked for a #1 Monster Style. For those that know exactly what kind of sin that is, I have some words in my defense: I had just driven 4-5 hours after a full 8 hr day on 4 1/2 hours of sleep. The guy behind the counter wouldn't even look at me when he corrected me. "You mean animal style?" I thought that shame was the only payment that would be exacted of me, but the Carnivore God is a mean sofonabirch. I was feeling a little off by the time we hit Cali and my bro drove the last bit.

Thursday

Slept 10 hours. Woke up with a fever. Not about to let something like that ruin my day. It was a good day. We ate Pan con Pavo, which means the turkey gets finished off in my Mom's famous red sauce and served on a french bread roll. We did have some weirdness. It seems that in my absence, my fam has developed a taste for karaoke. They set up and started singing. Weird. We started planning our attack for Black Friday and did a recon run. 9:30 PM and each store on our list had enough people to already cover the vouchers that were going to be handed out. The stores had even already deployed security to make sure people don't kill each other until after they spend their money. We decided to sleep in.

Black Friday

I had chills going to sleep and sweat through the night. Woke up with my fever still very much there. Headache. The world had a slight fuzziness to it. If I sat down and stood up quickly, I'd get woozy. Once again, not enough to slow me significantly. We ran around and hit the stores. Nothing worth getting. I did get to go to Fry's Electronics and look around. -insert heavenly choir-. I got some cables and an LED upgrade for my Mag light.

Tech Saturday

Online stores and many tech places only half-heartedly compete in Black Friday. They release new things for Sat. The maternal parental unit wanted family togetherness time, so when the Sat paper came and the Tech Saturday deals were there, we made it a family trip, since it was on the way. I got my 19" lcd monitor for 160, with rebate down to 120. I also got my 2G miniSD card for my phone for 20. Now I can finally play with it for real. We went to San Pedro Harbor and ate at a seafood place. We were in the harbor and could see the container ships being unloaded.

Fresh is seeing your meal die in front of you.
















1.5 lb Shrimp Fajita.
















Good.
















Hard Core Seagull. (look at his legs)
















Sunset.

Latinosity

Last weekend, I hung out with some Latin chicks. It was interesting. I had my Latin-ness recharged. It used to get me in trouble (some girls dug it and got addicted. Long story), so I repressed it for a while. I had totally forgotten I can be loud when I let myself be. I learned long ago that I get what I want more often when I concentrate on the quiet intensity part of my personality rather than the fun-loving side, so I use what works.

My native tongue is not Spanish. My native tongue is Spanglish. I tried to tell some stories in Spanish and ended up tripping over some words until I switched over to Spanglish. Good to know.

We went Latin Dancing this weekend at a small club in town. Salsa Chocolate. I was still sore from running, but I went anyway. It was an education. Half the girls I went with were fun to dance with and had it going on. The other half had no real inner rhythm and were mostly there to hang out. The fact that there are Latin girls out there with no rhythm makes me a sad panda. At least they weren't Salvadoran. I had managed to stay away from Latin Clubs for over a month now, but now that I had a taste again, I'm contemplating setting up a regular group.

The last couple of girls I've gone Latin Dancing with have all been gueritas with natural rhythm and fire. Rhythm, I don't require, but I decided many moons ago that I feel most comfortable with girls that have a certain fire. I don't know if I'll hang with all of these girls again, but I'm craving another Latin Club run.

Learning to Run

A couple of lessons I just learned:

Treadmills have guard rails for a reason. I found out I have a natural swagger. It seems that if you walk fast on a treadmill and swagger, you bump into the guard rails. I'm learning how to run in a straight line. You'd think that would have been a lesson I learned at the age of 1, but you'd be wrong. My Mommy always said I was special, I just always assumed she meant it the other way.

It seems that there is something you're supposed to do before you run, I keep forgetting. What could it possibly be? Hmmm... SHIN CRAMP...TOO PROUD TO GET OFF THE D@m&D MACHINE...LIMPING ON FOR ANOTHER MILE AND A HALF...BE A MAN, WALK IT OFF...Oh yeah, STRETCH. I must remember to schedule myself a reminder on that one.

If you're only getting 5 hours of sleep, 5am workouts are not going to happen. Who knew?

Workout gear for men becomes a workout outfit when it can only be used inside a gym. Tshirt and shorts, people. You're in a climate-controlled building.