spring break part V: 3.31.2002 – 4.1.2002
THE LAST AND FINAL EPISODE.
(the continuation of part IV)
though it was painful, i did get up in time for church on sunday. my grandma was in town, as you know, and my aunt linda (my dad’s sister) and her new fiance had driven up from west palm the day before. so with the three of them my family went to the 9:30am service. the message was fantastic–it was the first time i’d heard a pastor attempt an apologetic approach to an easter sermon that a) made any sense and b) didn’t leave my philosophical nature unsatisfied or questioning or accusing. my level of respect for my pastor rose accordingly.
then the traditions: half an hour (read: an eternity) of trying to take family pictures in our nice clothes. in florida, this just means pants other than jeans and a shirt with some kind of buttons on it. after pictures, lunch: the toast to the pre-newlyweds, the toast to our grandmother, the toast to family, and the toast to god for uncountably many blessings. then the roast beast, marvelously prepared, with the appropriate side entrees, followed by key lime pie. we had a good lunch, and a long lunch, since it was family time and nobody was rushing anywhere.
after the meal and the talking, we went our separate ways for the evening. i dubbed lord of the rings from divx to vhs for my family. i cleaned pine needles out of the gutter. i got a call from emily. it was shortly after the extended family had left for home in west palm, and shortly before the pine needles. talking to her was both good and bad–or should i say, both good and unpleasant. good because i know it’s good to keep communication open and in place. unpleasant because it’s the first time we’ve really talked since breaking up a few days ago, and she’s still hurt by my decision, and i’m not sensitive or wise enough to know what to say or how to act. a recipe for tension and awkwardness, certainly. but a step in the direction of keeping a friendship, more importantly.
i went running with david again. this time we did 2.5 miles in about 16.5 minutes. that’s averaging about a 6:50 mile–and for me, running even one mile under 7:00 is great! i’m just hoping that i’ll keep up running two or three times a week at school. i can see it being really good for me in both the short and long runs.
i ended the evening watching ‘the saint’, the one with val kilmer, with my family. it’s a pretty good movie.
i fell out of bed before noon today, which was quite nice. i did some work on the computer, took a shower, and ate breakfast before going to pick up my sister from school at 2:10. they start school at 7:45 and get out at 2:10. can you believe that? i remember high school as being from 7:50-2:50. they have 35 minutes less per day than i did! if you go to school 180 days out of the year, that’s 6300 minutes!! equals 105 hours equals 4.4 days! it’s like an extra spring break. no fair. anyway i took rach to panera to hang out for a bit, since i didn’t get to see her too much when i was home. mark was working and he hooked us up with some extra free food, cool right. so rachel and i talked a bit, then went to target to take back my luggage, which had broken on the trip to england. they wouldn’t let me, but i reasoned with the manager and finally they let me just take a new set home.
i got home between 4 and 5 and started working on a poster design for the dr. henry schaefer lecture that campus crusade at stanford is sponsoring. he’s a world-renowned quantum chemist sort of guy, apparently very famous and even a nobel prize nominee. he will talk about stephen hawking and the big bang and god: sciency stuff. i’m definitely looking forward to it. i drafted up a couple of poster designs and sent them off to be reviewed. i also worked on the blog design a bit, and did a little javascript programming to produce a random image which appears to the right. i got 45 pictures taken mostly by myself, and a few friends, to form a pool from which one is randomly selected every time someone views the page. it was fun to figure out, and i was proud of myself for actually making the script on my own instead of just copying someone else’s (the idea of course isn’t novel). hopefully it’ll make it a bit more interesting to visit, as well!
then dave and i got mark from his apartment and he drove us to aiguille, the climbing gym. we were there from about 7-10pm again. the second time around was slightly better than the first–i was able to re-nail all the routes i’d gotten previously, and even finish a few more difficult ones. i noticed that the style of routes that they tended to set up was quite different from the ones that they have at the stanford gym. can’t quite put my finger on a reason, but they felt different. the design of the holds themselves was not the same, for one thing.
on the way back, about 10:20pm, mark got word from his roommates via my brother’s cell that some girl friends of theirs had played a prank on them and stuck oreo cookies to their doors, along with large men’s underwear and powdered sugar which they leaf-blowed under doors and into rooms (incidentally, this set off the fire alarm). needless to say, mark and his roommates were suitably pissed. he vowed that he would get them back, and so asked me if i could help plan something.
i would rarely play a prank on someone, but if i am tricked or toilet papered or my property is messed up in any way, i’m more than willing to hit back harder. i felt this vicariously through mark, so i was happy to help. the girls were still at the apartment hanging out (thinking that they’d had the last trick, and one of them was mark’s roommate’s girlfriend). knowing this, we came up with the idea of going to the visitor parking lot, jacking up the girls’ cars, and taking one tire from each and hiding them. then we’d make them clean up the oreo/sugar mess they’d made before getting their tires back. as a little whipped cream, we’d get those big round pool floaty things and put them as mock tires in the place of the old ones.
so we stopped at publix and winn dixie to look for the necessary gear. publix was closed and winn dixie didn’t have pool flotation devices. oh well, so we wouldn’t have fake tires–the plan would still work. we went to the apartment complex and found their cars in the visitor lot. using a jack we lifted one car up a bit, and tried to take off the hubcap. and the stupid thing wouldn’t come off–no matter how hard we pulled and no matter what we hit, it didn’t come off. it was a very weird hubcap. no matter, we thought, there’s still one car left. so we moved to the next vehicle, and, lo and behold, mark’s tire wrench was the wrong size for the lugnuts. two strikes and we were out.
until i came up with another idea–the girls were still in the apartment, right? like girls, they would never keep keys or change or anything in pockets, close at hand. no, things like keys would be in purses or bags, which would be lying around the apartment, or on the table or something. i figured we could palm their keys as long as their attention was sufficiently diverted. then dave and i would say we had to go, and mark would come out with us to say goodbye. we’d bid the ladies and mark’s roommates adieu, and be off to the visitor lot and the girls’ cars. we could move them to some other obscure place in the lot where the girls would never look, and, to be extra crafty, pop open the hoods and take one of the battery leads off. if you didn’t guess, this would render the cars safely (and easily fixably) inoperable and unstartable.
so, the girls would come out, have half a heart attack when they saw that their cars were missing, run frantically around until they spotted a glimmer of a blue shine from the other end of the lot, and exult in the discovery of their ‘stolen’ vehicles! wondering why/how they were moved, but thankful that they were found at least, they would take their keys (which mark upon returning would have reinserted stealthily into their purses) and try to start the cars. but no, they would only hear a sputter and maybe a whine as nothing happened. and then (at least this is one way we envisioned it) mark et al would tell them the price for fixing the cars–cleaning up the mess they’d made of their apartment! the girls would have no choice but to bow before the superiority of the guys’ april fools’ counter-prank. muhahaha.
a grand scheme, and everything went according to plan, though diverting their attention and sorting through purses quietly and invisibly while the girls were in the same room proved to be a challenge. one which we overcame, and so out to the parking lot. we moved the cars easily enough, lifted the hood, and…crap. the leads are connected with nuts, and all we have are our bare hands. how could we possibly get the battery unhooked? i came up with the idea of calling dave, one of mark’s roommates, and giving him the following story: our car was having trouble and could he possibly bring out a toolbox so that we could bang around a bit and maybe get it started? dave was in on it, obviously, but the story worked great for explaining to the girls why he was walking out the door at 12am with a toolbox. with the required tools, we unhooked the batteries, tested to see that the cars really didn’t work, shut the hoods, and gave the keys to mark. dave and i dropped dave and mark back off at the apartment for the last part of the mission, and wished them good luck.
at this point i can only speculate as to how exactly the whole thing turned out, and if it worked exactly as planned. i’m at home now and it’s been an hour and a half. the fireworks, if there were any, have already happened.
anyway, it was a fun little diversion, and an interesting capstone to the break. in a little over 12 hours (most of which will be sleep, of course) i’ll be going to the airport for the flight to LAX, and then a quick hop up to SJC. hopefully someone will be able to pick me up. if you’d like to volunteer, feel free to e-mail me and let me know!
i don’t know if i’m looking forward to school, but ready or not, it’s starting again, so i’d better get prepared. thank you god for a week off, even if it was more interesting than i really wanted it to be, and maybe a little bit less relaxing. and i pray this next quarter will be better than the last!
