On a Wednesday

Wednesday was an interesting day, but first some setup.

Last time I mentioned I was going on a date. Two Thursdays ago we went to the Drum Barracks. It is a Civil War museum centered around a building that housed Union soldiers. I found the museum online when I searched for museums near Long Beach. I was surprised to find a Civil War site in southern California. We went on a Thursday morning to their 9 a.m. tour. There were three people in our tour group, the two of us and the docent. Our guide explained the different rooms at the barracks. One was decorated as a parlor with period furniture, another had bunk beds for several soldiers, and a third was furnished like a fancy bedroom of the era. The other rooms and hallways had exhibits on things ranging from guns and California soldiers in the war to selected topics of interest like the Battle of Hampton Roads or the submarine H. L. Hunley. The museum has a Gatling gun, which is one of the first machine guns. The docent cranked it and showed us the firing pins were still working. It was a good museum located in Wilmington near the port of Los Angles.

As we were walking out after the tour, the museum director stopped us. There was a reporter for the New York Times writing a story about the museum and he wanted to interview us. We explained what we thought of the museum. When the article is published I will drop a link so everyone can see it.

The date went well. There were few opportunities to talk, since our tour group was so small. I made her laugh a few times. She had some work to do before class so we could not hang out after the tour.

Wednesday
I attended a trade show. My supervisor in LA recommended I go there to see what new things were being developed. While it was mainly focused on medical devices, it also had groups of exhibitors in lasers, automated machines, plastics technology, and manufacturing. I am a sucker for any displays with moving parts, and there were a lot of those. There were machines that could sort randomly placed pills based on color, injection molding machines, and automated machines of many kinds. It was fun to see everything in action. I picked up a few items of interest, including plastic drinking cups that were made right in front of me and a pen that was laser engraved with my name in ten seconds. The exposition and parking were free since my affiliation with the City of Los Angeles made me an industry person.

Later that day I headed to the Beach for their Ash Wednesday mass. While I had signed up to be a Eucharistic minister ahead of time, they also recruited me to distribute ashes and do one of the readings.

At the end of the day I talked to the girl I went on a date with. She wanted to stay friends; she was interested in someone else.

I thought I would be sad or more disappointed, but I am at peace with it. However, considering the last few girls I liked told me they were not interested by 1) ignoring me after saying she would love to hang out, 2) telling me she had a boyfriend after we went on a date, 3) avoiding my calls, avoiding me, and detagging herself from my online albums, this is pretty nice.

There was also a subtext of me feeling sick as the day went on. As soon as I got home I crashed before waking up at 2:30 in the morning. I ate, went back to sleep, and then woke up 45 minutes later so I could go into LA for the day.

Facebook knows too much
When I was on Facebook earlier that day, the ads wanted me to buy people Valentine's Day gifts. It was eerie how good it was at selecting who I would want to send Valentines to. It listed five people, and the first three were ones I have real feelings for and would love to be with.

The first girl listed is the most interesting choice. She is awesome and I have some undetermined romantic feelings for her. The problem is geography. If we lived closer to each other I would spend time with her and determine how I feel about her. Since this investigation would be difficult, I see no benefit in telling her. However, if Terrance and Erin could get together living in Chicago and Baltimore maybe I should reconsider. We have not spent enough time together for me to be sure I am not imagining the whole thing.

The second one was the aforementioned girl I just went on a date with. The system probably knew I liked her because we planned the logistics of our date through messages or that I looked through the last 100 pictures she was tagged in.

The third person was someone I had a big crush on circa 2008. I made a couple of mistakes pursuing her, and she did not respond to my advances, at least not in a way I could spot. There was one point in 2011 (when Facebook put all private messages between two people in one long conversation) that I thought she might realize something was going on. In two and a half years we exchanged 50 Facebook messages totaling over 14,000 words.

The fourth person is my second cousin. Does this mean they condone this kind of relationship? If they do, they should have picked my other cousin, I followed a lot of her stuff online.

The fifth person is another girl I know from the Long Beach group. She is cute but we do not have the right chemistry.

Watch out, your online habits can be analyzed to reveal a lot of stuff.

Back at Long Beach and up to San Francisco

Last week classes started back up at Long Beach. This is awesome because:

• I got into the Nonlinear Control Systems class I wanted.
• The class is taught by the professor who is the graduate adviser for the program I am applying for. He also gave me an A last semester.
• My two best friends (also my only two friends) from classes at The Beach are in it. I have not had a class with them since 2011.
• This will hopefully be the last semester I am taking classes in the grey area of being non-matriculated and working toward a masters degree.
• I get to see the people from the Long Beach Catholic group and make some new friends.

Last weekend I was in San Francisco for the West Coast Walk for Life. Someone from the Beach Newman group is from Concord and her family offered to host anyone who was traveling north for the event. A group of seven of us drove up. Someone else did the driving, so this was the first time since 2005 I traveled to Northern California by car but did not do most or all of the driving.

I met some interesting people. One of the people we were staying with is a brony. He is a male fan of the TV show My Little Pony. I have heard they existed, but never met one before. I met someone who is a lot like Juliette from the Berkeley Newman group. As I said on the Facebook, "She has a whimsical personality, loves coloring with crayons, picks flowers to put in her friend's hair, shares [her] fashion sense, plays a harmonica, and laughs at everything." The next time I see her I should ask if she has stuffed animals of the entire cast of Finding Nemo or will be inviting 30+ people to a sleepover in her apartment.

As for the Walk for Life itself, it was good. It started at the Civic Center with some speeches. I ran into Sean who was filming things for the Salesians. Then the march went down Market street and ended at Justin Herman Plaza. Afterwards, we walked to Fisherman's Wharf and enjoyed crab sandwiches. Then we went to the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi and attend a celebration of the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, which is the proper way of saying we went to a Latin mass.

One of my favorite things about trips like this is how I get to observe and live someone else's life. We eat the same food, sleep in the same place, and are together all the time. This happened before when I visited Sidney, Amanda, and Chris (which I could not find a good post about).

I got to see what life is like for the family that hosted us. I saw what they normally do, watched the same TV shows, and meet one of their friends. After everyone got back on Saturday we all watched that day's episode of My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic. Our friend's mom was kind and made us breakfast both mornings as well as strawberry shortcake one night.

That is all great stuff, but the most exciting thing happened a few days later on Wednesday night. I talked to a girl at the Beach Newman meeting and we are going on a date next week. I have seen her at meetings for the last semester and she was on the trip to San Francisco.

Books: The Picture and Killing

There are two books I recently read.

The first is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Before I read the novel, all I knew was the basic idea. A picture is painted of Dorian Gray and the picture ages, while Dorian Gray himself does not age. However, the book has a lot more than that. It goes into beauty, what gives things value, and some other things. The book has a lot of witty lines, which I am told is normal for Wilde's works.

The book was controversial when it was published in 1890, so I wanted to see what it was like by today's standards. However, it was only after I read the book that I discovered there are two versions. The original version differs from the common novel version. I had read the second version which is 20 chapter long. This included a lot of changes after the original public outcry. I missed out on the homosexual content and the unrestrained hedonism of the original.

The good news is Project Gutenberg has the original 13 chapter text. I might read the original one day, but right now I have had enough of the story. I would like to check out some of Wilde's plays.

The second book I read was Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. I sometimes watch The O'Reilly Factor, so I wanted to see what the book was like.

The book starts at the beginning of April 1865 and follows in parallel the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln's actions, and John Wilkes Booth's planning. The narrative builds anticipation. The reader knows Lincoln will be shot, but it is still exciting to read.

There are many great books about Lincoln which are more detailed and scholarly. The strength of Killing Lincoln is its accessibility. It could get people who do not care about history into history. O'Reilly was a high school history teacher for a short time and I think the book is directed to certain types of students he had.

After reading the book, I looked at its reviews on Amazon. There were a lot of 5 star reviews and a lot of 1 star reviews. When they are that polarizing the reviews can be interesting. A few people pointed out minor inaccuracies and factual errors. However, some people were still bitter the South lost the Civil War and disliked anything positive about Lincoln.

Some Christmas gifts

There are some Christmas things I want to share. These are a few gifts I received and a couple of things I gave. I received the last one last weekend.

The first one is something I got from a white elephant exchange. This was with people at the Long Beach Newman group. It was a $5 limit and I looked for the best gift I could. However, many of the other people brought items that were just horrible. Many of the gifts were funny as long as other people got stuck with them. A few examples included an electric toothbrush with stickers to customize (which was pretty cool), a DVD for a movie that no one had hear of (that we all then watched and made fun of), a box of tampons, a horrible book someone re-gifted from last year, and a box of English muffins.

The gift I brought was one of only two gifts stolen the maximum number of times. I was very happy my kit to bake chocolate cakes in mugs was appreciated. There were 16 people and I had a good position; I was the twelfth to pick. All of the opened gifts were so bad I chose to open one of the remaining wrapped ones. It was a good choice.

While the person who brought the Spam probably thought it was a gag gift, I am a big fan of all things made from pig. I even made Spam musubi a couple of days later in honor of the Spam.

My next gift was from the Red Cross. It is an ornament or stand alone hanging thing. It is made of metal and reads American Red Cross on one side and hope on the other.

This last gift is from a secret Santa exchange with The Group (AKA The Vietnamese Crew). Terrance and Erin where in town after their trip to Indonesia. They also shared pictures of their wedding (which Brandon joked was a hipster wedding). For the gift exchange, I was a horrible person and did not put anything on my wishlist. However, I did send a message a week after the deadline suggesting something related to making cocktails would be good. Erin had a good idea what I liked since she got this gift before I made my suggestion. These two books are about making drinks and some food to pair with them.

I drew Chris with the beard and bought him a laptop case and book light. It was easy to buy him stuff because he had a wishlist. I brought a cooler full of alcohol to the gathering and made people A.M.F.s.

One of the fun things about having a blog is linking to posts I wrote earlier. For example, I can link to my A.M.F. recipe instead of repeating it. The same post also has pictures of visits to zoos. The first picture is from 2008, but I saw all of the people in it within the last month.

It only took four years

It has been a long time since I made a post about my Apheresis donations. Every two weeks I go to a Red Cross blood donation center and donate platelets. It is similar to giving blood, except they filter my blood. This way they only collect the platelets and let me keep everything else in my blood.

I reached a big donation number, so now is a good time for an update. Since the blog does not have too many pictures of me standing around holding stuff, here is me holding the plaque and pen they gave me.

This is a closer picture of the pen. It is engraved 200 Apheresis Donations and has my name.

While I reached 200 donation units in July, it took a while for them to get the pen engraved. Since I am blessed to have platelet rich blood, when I make one trip to the donor center the Red Cross can extract three units of platelets.

Normal whole blood collections usually need ten minutes or less after the needle is inserted. This process takes around 90 minutes. The good news is they have it setup so apheresis donors can watch a movie to pass the time. Back in the days of February 2011 when I published my last post, I had just watched The Town and received my plaque for 100 donations. Since then, I have made many trips and seen many movies as I donated. In the order I watched them, they are:

Salt; RED; Unthinkable; The Illusionist; Changing Lanes; Casablanca; Love and Other Drugs; The Incredibles; Get Him to the Greek; Rango; No Strings Attached; Unknown; Source Code; Bridesmaids; Limitless; Groundhog Day; The Ides of March; Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang; Friends with Benefits; Drive; Moneyball; The Descendants; J. Edgar; American Gangster; Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; Somkin' Aces; The Punisher; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Today you Die; Man on a Ledge; The Expendables; Blunt, The Fourth Man; The Italian Job; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; and Lawless.

Sometimes donations do not go perfectly. Since I have been to the center 39 times in the last two years, small things are bound to happen. Once I got a hematoma and another time I got a bruise (which led to follow up phone calls asking if I was OK) from needles that did not stay in the veins.

I went in to donate on New Year's Eve. However, they could not accept me because my temperature was too high. It was 99.6 degrees and the maximum allowed is 99.5. I have been deferred for too high a hear rate, but never before for too high a temperature. Whatever the temperature's cause was, I was just fine. I did not feel sick nor did I develop a fever afterwards.

I bring all of this up because I want you to think about what you are doing to help the people around you. This is a project that works well for me; what are you doing to make the world a better place?

Hanging out in malls

In the last few days I have spent a lot of time hanging out in malls. I do not do this very often.

The Block
On Friday I was at The Outlets at Orange, which is the new name for The Block. I met up with a person who knows Sidney from church activities. Since he recently moved to Orange County, Sidney suggested the two of us should get to know each other.

Since I had never met Jason before, I was concerned about us recognizing each other. I thought about holding up a glow in the dark statue of baby Jesus (a gift Sidney recently gave to dozens of his friends). However, I decided that wearing a Cal shirt and looking at his Facebook pictures would be enough. We enjoyed a couple of beers during happy hour at Alcatraz Brewing Company. He seems like an interesting person I would like to get to know better.

After that, I spent some time with Dave since he lives close by The Block. We looked for a place to eat. There were way too many people at the Buffalo Wild Wings. Instead, we went to the great American institution of the food court. Many of the restaurants were giving out samples which led me to eat a cheese stake for dinner.

South Coast Plaza
On Saturday I was at South Coast Plaza. I saw Lisa, who I know from Newman activities in Berkeley. We meandered through the mall and lamented the closing of certain stores before eating at Lawry's Carvery. After hearing what Lisa has been up to, I want to plan a trip to Death Valley. Otherwise, she still lives in Hippo House and will be better after her thesis is finished.

Not a Mall
Yesterday for the first time I saw an episode of the show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. One of my friends watches the show and admits it is train wreck television. If you want a short introduction to what the show is like, ABC has a short video since Honey Boo Boo was named one of the most fascinating people of the year. There are dozens of better ways you should spend your time instead of watching this show.

What makes you happy?

I want to know, what makes you happy?

Looking at the people around me, I have no idea what makes some of them happy. For example, I do not know what makes my grandma happy. Based on what she spends her time doing, I think it is baking, cooking, going to mass, and praying the rosary. My dad spends a lot of time in front of a computer or looking at his phone with the TV on in the background. However, I do not think it brings him happiness.

If it is not clear to the people around you what you like doing, perhaps it is not clear to you.

Since I want to be happy, I want to set aside time every day to do something I enjoy. A few of the things I really like doing are:

• Watching TV shows I like without interruption. These are shows that are still great, not just shows that used to be good.
• Going on trips to different places. Sightseeing, hiking, or just looking around a new place is fun. The main requirement is being with people who are fun to be with. Taking naps in a hotel room most of the time does not qualify as fun.
• Reading things I like. This could include fiction or history related things.

Everyone around me has their own ideas on what I should do with my time. However, it is all based on their goals and the things they think are important. I am the only person who will prioritize doing what I like to do.

My great fear is I will become like some of the people in my family. I do not see them really enjoying anything. They appear to be merely passing time and not using it for what they want.

One of my efforts to improve my life is allocating my time based on what is important to me. If reading a book or watching a TV show is something I want to do, I need to make sure I do it. If working on an alumni group is important to me, I need to prioritize that. It is up to me to make my life awesome.