Saturday, January 31, 2004

Since When Did I Turn Into a Book Worm?


Hmm. A week passed. Actually. A whole month passed.

Most peculiar.

I'm really sorry for the lack of updates to my website (The Routes). Like you care right?

I'm just kind of ashamed to have only one update in the month of January. See here's the thing... Ellvin Kelvin now owns Timotei's digital camera, so Timotei had to buy another one (albeit a better one too). So we were unable to take random pictures during family get-togethers and activities and junk. But once things get back to normal (and we get used to the new camera's settings), I should be back to many updates. And I might actually get to doing that "Who's Who at The Routes" section I've been putting off.

I took the Walt Disney World pictures for developing on Wednesday, so they should be done now. I just have to pick them up. So that update, I promise, will come very shortly.

In other news, I recently went to Barnes & Noble and bought two more books to add to my book club list. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown and Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I stopped reading The Phantom Tollbooth to read Angels & Demons which is excellent. It talks about anti-matter and the conflict between science and religion. I bought Howl's Moving Castle, a fantasy book about witches and (um) moving castles, because it's going to be the next Hayao Miyazaki anime film.

I really love reading the Dan Brown books. I'm thinking of picking up his other two (non-Robert Langdon) novels Digital Fortress and Deception Point. Though I wish I could get his books in hardcover format.

And lastly, I got The Critic, the entire series on DVD. Which I am going to watch now. I'm still waiting on the Scrubs DVD. Please please release it on DVD.

BTW, it was K-mart's birthday yesterday! Wish her happy birthday if you see her!



Reading on through February,

Ricky

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Sunday, January 25, 2004

Boredom - The Story of My Life


Welcome to nothingness. Well, welcome to non-eventfulness?

Whatever! You get the point. I'm bored. And nothing has happened since I returned home from the east coast.

Okay, maybe one thing.

I finally got to finish reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I can't recommend it enough, it's so good (unless you're heavily Christian and are insecure or offended easily about your faith). The book draws on a huge conspiracy theory that ultimately gives ideas that could crumble Christianity. But that's only part of the fun/coolness. There are several little details hidden on Leonardo Da Vinci paintings that hint at the "truth." In other words, it's fun to try and figure out the puzzles and codes as the book progresses and to see these little details (stuff hidden in plain sight within very public paintings) that are easily missed.

I can't wait to see the movie which will probably be out sometime next year. Meanwhile, I've picked up another book (one that I've been putting off reading), The Phantom Tollbooth. Yes, the children's book. But I find that children's books, along with being a lot quicker and easier to read, are a lot more interesting that adult books. After I'm done with this book (or most likely midway through it), I will pick up Dan Brown's first Robert Langdon novel Angels & Demons. Also on my list is Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (which is also a musical).

And lastly, it was Angel Wing Jasmine's birthday yesterday! Wish her happy birthday if you see her!



Waiting for a Phantom Tollbooth to appear in my room,

Ricky

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Wednesday, January 21, 2004

A Warm Welcome Back to Those of You Who Made It


Hello!

La La La!

I'm back from zee Florida trip and I don't really feel like totally recapping the entire trip (nor you with reading it), so I'm just gonna highlight different things.

The plane flight wasn't bad at all. The only thing that sucked was the two stops (making for 3 take offs and landings) and also the fact that we had to sit apart for the longest leg of the flight. Everyone wants the damn window or aisle seat.

I sat in between an older baldish man from New Orleans and this kinda scary looking skinny man. I just listened to music and read The Da Vinci Code through the whole flight. The older baldish man talked to me for a little bit about how much he loved The Da Vinci Code. The kinda scary looking skinny man just sat in his seat, staring out the window. He just looked scary, but was actually nice when the flight landed.

We went to Magic Kingdom first and it was empty on an off-season Wednesday. We basically finished the park by 4pm, leaving us time to go see La Nouba (Cirque du Soleil) at Downtown Disney. The new ride, Mickey's Philharmagic, was awesome! Best 3-D show out there. It's just really charming and beautiful.

Then La Nouba! It was fantastic! Just awesome. The music is great and the acts have so much variety. My favorite was these little asian girls who do tricks with Diablos. They were so amazing and made me so proud : ) The music was awesome as well... so I bought the soundtrack.

The next day, we went to Epcot. We rode the new ride, Mission: Space, first. It was okay. Not as intense as I thought. But it was still fun. We explored the park for the whole day and ran out of things to do. Then we saw Illuminations, the nightly fireworks show, which was awesome as always.

Next day was Disney-MGM Studios day. It got crowded because of a stupid college cheerleading competition. So there were annoying bubblegum poppers everywhere. We hit Tower of Terror 4 times that day. Love that ride! Then saw Fantasmic! that night up in the front row. We got drenched.

Saturday, we had to hit Animal Kingdom in the morning and then go to Magic Kingdom for Spectro Magic (the nighttime parade) and Wishes (the firework show). So we blazed through Animal Kingdom, which I love now, and did a few things. But while we were there, we figured that coming down to Florida and seeing La Nouba only once was kind of a waste. So we called for tickets. We got tickets (all seated separately) for the 6pm show and left Animal Kingdom early to see it. The seats weren't as great as the other ones, but they were still good and the show was still awesome. After the show ended, we had to run to Magic Kingdom and made it just in time to watch Wishes and then Spectro Magic.

On Sunday, we hit Magic Kingdom again to finish off some things we couldn't finish on Wednesday like Pirates and Tiki Room: Under New Management. We ended up playing there for a long time before deciding we wanted to ride Tower of Terror again. We went to Disney-MGM Studios for a quick ride on Tower, then took a boat to The Boardwalk Resort and a bus to Downtown Disney to hang out at Disney Quest.

At Disney Quest, they have a bunch of Virtual Reality/Interactive games. The coolest was a game called Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle of the Buccaneers. You stand on a boat with 6 cannons (3 on each side). One person steers the boat while the others use the cannons to rapidly fire cannonballs at other boats to steal their treasure. The action is all around you and it's the most fun game there.

They also have a thing called Cyberspace Mountain where you design your own roller coaster and then actually ride it in a simulator. That was cool and extremely popular, but it got me sick.

Then Monday was our "finish-up-Animal-Kingdom-and-back-to-MGM-for-more-Tower-of-Terror" day. We ended up going on Tower 7 times during the course of our trip. That ride is so much freakin' fun!!!

I got four rolls of film for a future Route and I will definitely get those pictures developed sooner than my Winchester Mystery House photos. So bear with me... there will be an update on my site very soon... finally.



Jag lagging and slacking,

Ricky

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Saturday, January 10, 2004

Dreams Two Dreams


Okay, back on December 21st, I threw out a little blurb about a weird dream I had. Honestly, I forgot about it. Well, the dream seemed really weird and cool when I had it. But as time went by, it just became rather ordinary. You know what that's like, no?

But I'll let you all decide whether it's ordinary or anything but...

So I was at a party and for some reason, two people in front of me were arguing about their holiday pay for some job. Then I looked out the window and saw a friend from high school outside. She had felt that her arms were making her head look big, so she got the bone that goes from her shoulder to her elbow removed and proceeded to wave to me with a shortened stumpy arm. Next to me, a group of kids were singing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer," but they only knew the first two lines (or thought the first two lines were the only two lines in the song). So it sounded like this:

"Rudolph the red nose reindeer
Had a very shiny nose.
Rudolph the red nose reindeer
Had a very shiny nose.

Rudolph the red nose reindeer
Had a very shiny nose.
Rudolph the red nose reindeer
Had a very shiny nose."

And so on.

Then came the time when I had to poop. I went to the bathroom and pulled out a toilet seat cover from the dispenser. Even though the bathroom fans were blairing, I could still hear the two men fighting over their wages. I was fumbling with the complex nature of the thin paper seat cover, but my poop wouldn't hold. So it started dropping, but naturally made it into the toilet. Like magic it was. (Alright, all signs point to I should have ended this dream retelling a paragraph ago, but what's done is done.) The last part of the dream had me scrambling to wipe an unwipable butt.

Okay. Well, I've said too much. Perhaps one day I'll tell you about the dream where Erico Suave, MacArthur, and I plunged into a lake...

I'll just tell you now. We were going to watch the Cirque show "Varekai" and driving to some obscure place around mountains and such. Erico Suave was completely high off some sort of substance (none to be found on me, for sure) and was constantly looking back to talk to me. Anyway, we suddenly found ourselves flying off a cliff. In the air, knowing we would hit the lake below, we unbuckled our seatbelts and visualized what had to be done as soon as we hit the water. When we hit, it didn't phase us at all. The two doors to the VW Beetle flew open and Erico Suave and MacArthur proceeded to swim out of the sinking auto. It was at that very moment I realized that there is no door for me to exit. So, seated behind the driver, I swam to the front to get out, but Erico Suave, still high, locked the door as soon as he left. So I went out the other door and we all swam to shore. When we got there, thousands of students from the lakeside school came out to spectate. They continued to stare as we made our way through the campus and asked people desperately to use their cell phones, but no one would let us.

Then I woke up.

So, there are my two weird dreams of the past few days. Dreams are fun. They're weird and scary and just damn fun fun.



Fun,

Ricky

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Tuesday, January 06, 2004

In Seven Days... Florida is Mine


That's right... in exactly one week, I will be at Walt Disney World. I can't believe this trip came so fast. Seemed so far when we were planning it two months ago. I'm gonna try and get some pictures while down there. I'll be there for exactly a whole week... Tuesday to Tuesday. Don't miss me too much.

A notice came in the mail today saying that I can finally pick up my diploma from UCR. I just got two things to say:

1) Bout damn time.
2) Could they be any slower?

And finally, I'm reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It came highly recommended by Prisoner Tribbiani and Ellvin Kelvin, so I finally got down to reading it. It is really really interesting and exciting. First I thought it was a bible like preachy book, but it's actually a murder mystery, suspense, thriller, novel. Complete with an actual story! I'm coming up on Chapter 15, so I'll be writing more about it as I flip through.



Drawing a pentacle on my stomach,

Ricky

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Friday, January 02, 2004

A Lot Can Happen in Thirty Hours


The eve of New Years 2004 was definitely the most ambitious and eventful New Years I've ever had.

The day started at 8:00am, when I got up and got ready to head off to Magic Mountain with Angel Wing Jasmine to use some complimentary passes that were only valid through 2003.

At Magic Mountain, we got pretty pissed. Firstly, Deja Vu and Scream (their newest ride) were CLOSED! Screw Magic Mountain. They don't know how to operate an amusement park or something because I clearly wasn't amused.

But we went to X and waited 2 1/2 hours for the ride because they were only running ONE TRAIN. That was the recurring theme of the day. X is so much fun though.

Then we went on Viper, which was the only coaster that we went on running more than one train... TWO in fact. Wow, Six Flags is really smart!

Then we went to eat some over priced food. We got some corn on the cob which was good and fairly priced at $3.50. Still hungry, I got a burrito for $7. It was okay, but I'd rather have Disneyland food.

We then went to Riddler's Revenge, but the line was way too long and they were running only ONE TRAIN, so we went to Batman (which is much more worthy of a 90 minute wait).

Batman was also only running ONE TRAIN, but it went fairly fast. The ride was a lot of fun. Pure adrenaline rush!

After that, we went to Goliath and waited the longest 2 freakin' hours of our lives. Running only ONE TRAIN, the line went slow and it was getting cold. When we finally went on, sure the ride was fun, but nothing is worth that much excruciating waiting.

So 8 hours at Magic Mountain, we rode four rides and wanted to get the hell out of there. We exited and decided to head to Disneyland to wash the bad taste of Six Flags out of our mouths.

After driving in traffic for 90 minutes, we got to the resort to find that Disneyland was full, so only DCA was only open.

We went in and it wasn't crowded, but pleasantly busy. We went to the Cove Bar and I had 2 chilled shots of Crown and ordered an Amoretto Sour to chase it down. But when I got the Amoretto Sour, I took a sip and was gone. First real time I've been drunk, so drunk that I couldn't speak. I couldn't remember a lot of things that were happening around me. CRAZY! I said I didn't like that feeling at all, but it was fun. I was numb man. Numb.

So while my buzz was still alive, we went dancing at the KIIS club. That was fun. Angel Wing Jasmine got to dance with a couple of black guys... one being 14 years old!

We danced till the countdown and then watched the fireworks. Then, tired, we trekked to Monstro, and she took me home.

I didn't sleep when I got home. Instead, I watched some Conan and wrote my annual letter to myself; a tradition I won't let die.

Then at 4:00am, Erico Suave, MacArthur, Princess Karlita, and I went to Pasadena to watch our handy work in the Rose Parade. We found parking easy and went to find a spot, settling at an intersection behind a row of chairs. We waited 4 hours for that first float to drive by and it was freakin' cold. (Side note: I won our Uno game.)

The parade took forever to get down to where we were. Right after the Tower of Terror float passed (our sunbursts looked so nice), I was ready to go. We waited for USC to come marching down for Princess Karlita and MacArthur. After that, we were done!

We went home at around 11:00am and saw that the rest of the Routes family was still asleep. Lazy bastards.

I ate breakfast then took a 3 hour nap. Then went to Granny M's for dinner and then to The Oblongs for another party.

I was dead tired and went to sleep early, but not before watching some of the Twilight Zone marathon.



Toasting to an exciting Two Thousand Four,

Ricky

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