Sedna is the new Pluto.

I figure if I'm going to suck at updating frequently, I might as well go big when I have a chance to get around to it.

So here we go...

(Oh, also, you should research the title of this blog. It relates to one of the very last things I post about.)

Friday the 11th
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Wow, this was a long time ago. Thankfully I keep vague little reminders of daily events in draft form, that way when I finally get around to this writing this shit I can reference words stacked in the following style:

fri.
---
brit
brick
pool/gaurd
footprints

Now is the part where I stare at the words blankly trying to remember what exactly they were supposed to remind me of...or if I was just smoking crack.
So lets see-
Brit came over in the evening and we watched "Brick." (Excellent movie by the way. I highly recommend it.) Which was followed by copious amounts of drinking.
Copious people. Copious.
This resulted in some genius idea of Brit, Jay and I going down into the hottub from around 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Right when we decided to get out and go back to the apartment our friendly apartment security gaurd coincidentally was standing next to the pool gate waiting for us.
I don't know that he knew we were there or had just happened to pass by, but judging by the amount of apartment lights turning on and off around the pool throughout the night I think it's safe to say some people may have complained.
They could have joined us.
So the guard stood there and asked us what we were doing. I simply replied, "Just about to leave."
"Don't you guys know the pool is closed."
"Oh. There weren't any hours posted."
"Well the gate is padlocked, how'd you get in?"
"Um, through the gate down there," as I tossed my hand in a random direction towards the pool. You see, there wasn't really a gate there. But you'd have to be sober to know something like that. So the gaurd gave me a puzzled look, and I think I actually had him confused enough that he questioned whether or not a gate was actually down there.
"Oh...well...well the pool is closed from 10 to 8, so next time you know."
"Oh, o.k. Yeah, it was posted. So yeah, sorry. Very sorry."
"What apartment do you live in?"
"Um. On the 2nd floor."
"Which number?"
"Um. I don't remember. It's on the 2nd floor though."
"You don't know your apartment number?"
"Um. No. We just moved in. So...I...don't know it. I just know how to get to it."
"Alright, well from now on stay out of the pool at night."
"Kay. Have a good night sir."
After that nice little conversation, complimented by the rising sun, the three of us scuttled back to our apartment, but in our drunken sneakiness instead of going straight to the apartment we walked around the whole 2nd floor leaving wet footprints leading to EVERY door remotely close to ours. That way if the gaurd tried to follow them he wouldn't know which door we actually went in!
Hell, I even walked backwards a few steps to confuse the hounds.
The rest of the night was for me to know and you to find out.

Saturday the 12th
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Waking up sucks. Waking up smelling like chlorine and beer sweat sucks even more. Add the disgusting taste of beer and cigarettes left in your mouth from the night before and you're on the road to Suck heaven.
Thankfully Brit doesn't take up much space, so the little sleep accomplished was uninterrupted.
After waking up sometime in the afternoon trying to figure out which parts of the night did and didn't happen (and things like- where the HELL did those claw/bite marks come from.), I met up with Don to shoot a rap video in downtown Hollywood- on a rooftop next to the Capital Records building.
We shot until about 2 a.m., and I have to admit it looks pretty damn good, especially the shots where Don sat on a dolly with the camera as I shoved him as fast as I could around a half circle track- giving it a "matrix-esque" effect.
The whole video was shot with orange-toned filters over the lights, it has a very "classy" feel to it. PLUS! The song was actually pretty damn decent, a little TOO catchy if you know what I mean. Don and I were humming it for the rest of the week.When it's done being edited I'll try and put a compressed copy on the INTERWEB.
Once I got home I smoked a little and fell asleep watching animated "Clerks," only to be rudely awakened by our fire alarm.
This wasn't no pansy-ass fire alarm, this was the kind that doesn't even sound like it's comming from the room, but inside your head. Just a constant high pitch wail that never changes tone, or stops.
So I tried to grab Chester, who's cage is unfortunetly right under the alarm, but he was too busy going FUCKING BESERK for me to be able to catch him very effeciently. Eventually I just grabbed him with one hand and threw him in my bathroom, figuring it would at least be a little quieter in there.
Then I went out to the living room to find Jay looking as perplexed as I felt. The whole apartment complex was ringing, apparently we're all wired to the same alarm?
So I decided to go back to sleep with a pillow over my head, and eventually woke up to put Chester back in his cage.
And then the alarm went off AGAIN! At that point I think I would have rather just burned to death than have to deal with that abnoxious sound.

Sunday the 13th
----------------
Elise got back from her trip in the Artic and gave me a call. Heard some interesting stories. Stories I can't repeat. Let me tell you though, from the sounds of it the artic isn't much different than Las Vegas ;)
Um...that's basically all I remember about Sunday.

Monday the 14th
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After work I had my first of six "Avid Media Composer 201" classes. Yeah. That's right. I SKIPPED the 101 class.
'struts away'
Oh, today I also got Don hooked on "Katamari Damacy." It's hard to explain to people that it's a game where you roll a ball around and pick stuff up. They're always like, "And...?" and your like, "....that's it."
But everyone loves it. No one not loves it.
Not even Mr. Double Negative.

Tuesday the 15th & Wednesday the 16th
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Work. Class. Sleep.

Thursday the 17th
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When I got home from work Elise gave me a call asking if I'd mind if she came over the weekend to hang out, and interview with some potential professors for her Ph.D. This was a good thing, for many reasons. Originally my trip to NY involved driving down to NYC and seeing her, along with other people. After I was financially forced to change that plan, most of the people I wanted to see in NYC were kind enough to come to Buffalo to see me- but Elise was not one of them.
So instead she was going to come to California. :)
I love surprise visits from friends. Especially when they've never been to the west coast before!
After that, I went out to the Fox and Hound for a little bit to chill with Don and his posse. The guy that wrote the song "The Flower Girl" (featured in "Dumb and Dumber") performs there every Tuesday and Thursday. He basically just covers a lot of sweet classics.
At one point Don got a phone call from his roomate to come outside. Apparently the shoot he was P.A.-ing on was having him return a rented police car. So he sat in the bar parking lot flashing the lights, using the loudspeaker system, and scanning the police radio stations. It's only $250/day to rent a cop car! An authentic one! The Ford Crown Vic. with modified V8!
I'm totally renting one some Saturday night to harrass people outside of clubs.
On our way home from the bar I decided to take a "Lost Cat" flyer off of a telephone pole to put on my wall at home. When I got home and put it on the apt. wall I decided that the WHOLE wall needs to be covered with "Lost Cat" signs. So if you see any that you like, send 'em on over to the wall! (I'll take pictures of it when it gets full)
I was supposed to hang out with both Brit and/or Frankie, but those plans totally fell through.
Oh well, at least there was a cop car involved.

Friday the 18th
---------------
Today I rented a HVX-200 camera package to some guys and asked what they were shooting. They said it was a music video for some hardcore band. I sez, "What's the name of the band?" and they say, "It Dies Today."
I was like, "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! THEY'RE FROM BUFFALO!...I'M FROM BUFFALO!" It was cute.
Seriously folks, what are the chances that a band some of my friends in Buffalo were close friends with would be flying out to L.A. to shoot a music video? Let alone that coincidentally I be the one renting the equipment to that shoot, AND knowing exactly who the band was.
'Tis a small, small world.
That night I cut hair. The spikes are back...except I'm out of gel.

Saturday the 19th
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I took the train to the airport at like, 7 a.m., to go meet Elise. Aw man! It was so good to see her! :)
Then we took the train back to my apartment, and went and got her rental car. Actually, Enterprise sent someone to come pick us up to get the car. The stranger part of that being: when he came to pick us up, he parked directly up ON the sidewalk in from of my apartment building. I was like, dude, just because we gave you the numbered address doesn't mean you should park on the sidewalk right next to the numbers.
From there we drove to In-N-Out, since Elise had yet to experience the west coast's very own 8th wonder of the world.
She loved it. Everybody always does.
After that we went to Venice beach and swam in the ocean for a while. It was actually surprisingly warm, no worse than a pool, and the waves were about 8 ft. high so it was fun to play in (body surf, etc.). Then we walked all the way to the Santa Monica beach pier, and back. We passed all the crazy people with their flea-market-esque stands (selling shit like metal Predator replicas and ugly homemade art), as well as the infamous Muscle Beach workout area, and Venice Beach drum-circle.
The sun was pretty much set by the time we finished up, our shoes filled with sand. And buttholes.
I navigated Elise through Santa Monica, to Westwood, to Beverly Hills, to West Hollywood so she could take the city in.
Yeah, it's no NYC as far as concentrated tall buildings go. But I think the palm trees make up for that.
We stopped at In-N-Out (keep in mind this is the second meal in a row that Elise wanted to eat there) and took it up to Mullholand Drive. We parked at a designated over-look of Studio City and ate our delicious meat sandwiches. From there you could see Universal Studios (as well as it's theme park), Warner Brother Studios, ABC Studios, and my house :)
When we finally decided to go home to get our drink on, we got in the car and Elise took a few minutes to mix cream into her coffee. A minute too long actually.
A police car pulled up and gave us a parking ticket for $65, explaining there were signs posted saying you're not allowed to park there at night-time. The shitty part was that we didn't see the signs until he pointed them out because they were 10 feet high, where headlights don't tend to shine on them...and naturally it tends to be a little too dark at night to read signs very well.
At least we weren't stoned like the kids in the van next to us. They were TOTALLY going to be grounded when they got home.
On the way home we stopped to pick up some rum and coke to pre-game our trip to Residuals (a bar close to where I live. I've mentioned it before, and how the waitress is from Rochester.). Don and Steve came over to have some drinks and play some Katamari, and then we were on our way.
Residuals was sweet. We got a spot on this huge wrap-around leather couch. It was chill.
When we finally decided to go home, Don dropped us off in the middle of the street so we could chinese fire-drill our asses onto the sidewalk next to my apartment.
A few mintues later he called and left a voicemail to the affect of, "I JUST GOT PULLED OVER FOR A D.U.I.!!! THE POLICE SAW ME DROP YOU GUYS OFF AT THE LIGHT AND PULLED ME OVER! BUT I PASSED! I DON'T KNOW HOW, BUT I THEY LET ME GO!"
Yeah. Take THAT legal system. Let the drunk guy drive home, but give people parked safely on the side of the road a $65 parking ticket.

Sunday the 20th
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Elise and I wanted to drive to the Grand Canyon, but after learning it takes about 8 hours, decided that we would settle for Las Vegas (she had never been there before). So we drove the 3.5 hours to Vegas (when we stopped for gas and drinks half way it was about 110 degrees out) and walked the entire strip up and down. I had an AWESOME sour apple margarita at Caesar's Palace.
We watched the Bellagio water ballet and the Treasure Island pirates. Then basically drove back home hyped up on Amp and Arizona Ice Tea. Did a lot of talking...long drives are great for talking :)
They are also great for listening to the ONE cd Derek bothered to make. But hey, M.I.A. and Richard Cheese never get old.

Monday the 21st
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Worked, then went to class, then got home and went to Don's with Elise to smoke and eat pizza, chips and watch "Dunston Checks In."
I...I can't believe we actually watched that...

Tuesday the 22nd
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I skipped class after work and decided to just read through my textbook until Elise got back from her interviews in Irvine. Apparently a professor, who's family took her out to dinner, basically offered her to study under him at Toronto University. She was excited. It would pretty much be a free ride to get her Ph.D along with really affordable housing and a trip to Thailand right off the bat to study animal behavior and shit, I really hope it works out for her.
Plus she brought me back leftovers. <3 size="1">rd
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Elise left REALLY early in the morning, after a good 2 hours of sleep. Ugh...it sucked seeing her go.
I'm gonna miss her.
So I worked, had my last class for this course- I got a certificate for completing it! (and I got to keep the book! which is actually pretty sweet, you can't get it any other way than taking that certified class ((one of three facilities in the country that offers it is Moviola. the other two are Avid itself)) ).
Got home, cleaned up my room, attempted to pack but I always have trouble getting into that. Instead I spent my whole night half downloading and converting movies to watch on my PSP on the plane, and half sleeping in my clothes on my bed with techno music playing while the movies were downloading.
It was a very "Neo" "Matrix" "Hackers" moment.
Sometime around 4 a.m. CNN texted my cell phone with a message saying "CNN Breaking News: Leading scientists have determined that pluto is no longer classified as a planet, the Associate Press reports."
When I went to bed I thought Pluto was a planet. When I woke up I was completely wrong.

Thursday the 24th (TODAY)
-----------------------------
This morning I scrambled to pack everything I thought I'd need. The packing part is easy, it's leaving the apartment for good that is hard. I always have to check the closets and rooms a million times to make sure everything is PERFECT before I can step out the door. And I never feel like everything is perfect. But after about an hour of doing that it's a little easier to force myself to leave.
At lunch Don and I went to the library so I could set up and account and grab some books for the trip. The librarian that was helping me was ULTRA-SUPER into kids books, and was RAINBOW-HAPPY to recommend some reading material to me.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Then Don and I talked about good books and got lunch, brought it back to the room I work in and watched "The Shaggy Dog."
I talked to my sister a lot today, I'm really excited to see her :) (and everyone else, but hey, she's my sister so she gets a pinch more of excitement)
Actually, it's 7 p.m. and I should start heading up to the train to go to the airport.

This trip is going to be awesome. I can't wait to see everybody :)