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Well, in political news, here are the highs and lows: Highs: Vermont IOWA. I mean really, Iowa can get their ish together and where the hell are we California? Geez. Lows: This article... A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt namesthat are “easier for Americans to deal with.” The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans. Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations. Easier for voting? State Rep. Betty Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if youcould adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” NICE.

Random updates

So, it's been awhile, and recently the blog has kind of seemed broken on occasion? As in, you come to the URL and there is nothing there? This has happened to me a few times, not sure if that's why no one has been leaving us any comment love, but I will push on! Writing about things no one cares about! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm completely ripping this format from Amalah's last post. Seriously. Click on the link and you will see how unoriginal I am. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots has happened in the few weeks since I last posted cute pictures of Jean's puppy. That same day we visited, Dan and I went to the Jelly Belly factory which was fun because you have to wear a paper hat in the factory even though you get NOWHERE near the jellybeans in the process of being made. Also, the day we were there they were making cotton candy and raspberry flavors and wow, headache. But, you get to try a lot of flavors you don't see a lot of places (jalapeno anyone?) and new flavors (pomegranate is yummy) and be around too many kids on a sugar high. Exciting. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the factory, but outside where they have jelly belly motorcycles, a jelly belly car, a jelly belly RV and a huge blow up jelly bean, you feel free to take pictures to your heart's content! But, it was a factory tour, which completely fascinate me, and free, so hooray! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan is in Austin again for South by Southwest working really long days, and I'm still in Berkeley, sleeping in too late. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Um, this won't be exciting to anyone else, but I'm going to see Dave Matthews in September. This is exciting because I requested my tickets through their fan club system (of course I'm in the fan club) for a venue that I've never been to before but have always wanted to go to where they always do amazing multi-night performances. The trick is, the venue is the Gorge, about 2 hours east of Seattle. So this year, they're spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend there, and I requested tickets for all three nights to hedge my bets and I got ALL of them! Honestly, when I found out I danced around the apartment ala Dana's dance of joy from Sportsnight. No words. Too excited. Yes, I will be making the pilgrimage for a weekend o' dave. Dan is, well, not as excited. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I also have no words to describe how excited I am about this summer (before the concerts). Dana and Larry are coming out to visit in June, and she already has quite the itinerary planned out :) July means Houston craziness with the CC, followed less than a month later by CC craziness is New York. These are good times my friends :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finished my second RAD class today! We had 12 students which is a new record for us - woot! Seriously, teaching this is basically the highlight of my job. It's awesome seeing women who don't think they have any strength go through simulation at the end. *smile* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Friday, I went to the campus production of the Vagina Monologues and it was SO good. The cast did an AMAZING job, I laughed and cried, and cried some more. They also include monologues here that Cal women have written, and the original pieces were really powerful. What was NOT as amazing was the guy who came with his girlfriend sitting next to me who, no lie, brought a bottle of Jack in his jacket and, throughout the show, pulled it out to pour into his Coke and drink. And dropped it on the floor a couple of times. And smelled like I was in a bar, at last call. Then, he would pull his girlfriend over to him at completely inappropriate times and make out. NOT OK. All I could think about was that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry makes out with his girlfriend at Schindler's List. I mean, women are on stage talking about being raped, and you're getting drunk and sloppy. You, my friend, are pure class. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will be on the East Coast in 9 days! We're going to be doing a bit of a whirlwind visit - up to Johnstown, over the bridge to Maryland, back to DC for a conference, down to Richmond for a night and back to DC. Whew! Dan will be flying directly from Austin to meet me in DC, and he isn't coming back to Berkeley until we fly back together on April 6th. He'll be away from home for about 3.5 weeks, which is sad, because I think Lily misses him already. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Spring Break starts in 5 days! THANK HEAVENS. Time for a break. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fin.

Other California goings on...

I am on a posting ROLL people! I hope you're as impressed with me as I am with myself. So what do I actually have to talk about... *I'm 38 books into my goal of reading 50 books this year. It's feeling very accomplishable at this point. Plus, books are moving out of the house as they're being read, which means I can buy more books soon. (If you haven't heard, I'm currently banned from buying more books. Because they threaten to take over the whole of our apartment.) *Last weekend's adult plans to go to Target and Costco also ended up including Michaels, Office Depot and IKEA (twice). Oh my do I feel suburban. *I'm really enjoying the fact that I've actually gotten to watch the first three VT football games! I didn't think I'd be able to watch many this year since we aren't ranked, so I've been very happily surprised. Dan and I are hoping to watch a couple with the Bay Area VT Alumni Association and perhaps even meet some people. Only took a year... *We did go the first Cal game (Cal/Michigan State) although we didn't buy season tickets this year, as we weren't really feeling the games out here. But, I was really eager to see some college football. So, there we were. The Golden Knights (Josh - is that name right? I know we talked about it while you were here) also parachuted into the stadium at halftime, to the delight/horror of the girl behind us, who kept exclaiming "He's landing too fast!" while not thinking through the fact that this was probably NOT their first time doing this. Student Section: *My staff seriously does love Dan. See below. *Still love the fog. Photo is taken from the Lawrence Hall of Science at night (obviously)

I fully believe that I am cursed.

Yes, I am back safely in California after a wonderful visit to the East Coast. Why yes, my flight home was awful and got me to San Francisco almost 3 hours late, why do you ask? It just makes me tired to think about. And thankful that the next time I will be on a plane probably won't be until October. My dad and I sat through about 45 minutes of traffic to get me to BWI in the first place, but he got me there on time, even a little early, as he always does. I had time to check in, and grab some dinner and as I was eating, I could see down to my gate. As I start looking closer, I see this man who clearly is upset, harassing and yelling at the gate attendants. (Yeah, the one place you don't yell at people is at airports or on airplanes. Wow, what a quick way to get arrested.) Eventually, some security shows up and they take the guy down the jetway toward the plane, and close the door behind them. Shortly, two lovely police officers show up and join the party. The gate attendant then comes out and tells everyone that the flight is going to be delayed until "the situation is handled." (Translation: Until this crazy man is off the plane.) so after about 10 minutes, the door opens, crazy man is escorted out by police officers, and we finally board. I find out from the flight attendant that the flight started in NY and on the way he created a ruckus, they kicked him off in Baltimore. And he wan't pleased. His brother dd go ahead and stay on the pkane though, which made me laugh. SO, we're already delayed for about 20 minutes, but all seems well - the flight is really smooth, I did the entire "difficult" crossword puzzle, etc. We have to make a stop in Phoenix. Phoenix has thunderstorms and 50 mph winds. We circle. For 45 minues. We eventually land (right before we got diverted to Tucson which would have made me hurt myself) and then we sit. For another hour. Thankfully, there were only about 30 people on the plane, so everyone had their own ow to lay down. Ugh I was tired when I got in, as it felt like about 5 in the morning to me on East Coast time. Seriously, even though both of my flights were awful and the stuff of nightmares, it was really nice to be back in DC and to see everyone. My mom and I went up to Johnstown for Fourth of July weekend to hang out with my grandparents, who my mom and my aunts think are "slowing down." But, seriously, my grandfather is 83 and he still works out at a gym a few times a week, and is active in the Knights of Columbus and carves and...I don't know what to say about that. I mean, he's obviously slower now than when he (and they!) were younger, but seems like he's doing pretty darn well to me. The last time I saw my grandparents was at Christmas when my entire family was at the Sheep Farm, so it was nice to be there when only my mom and I were there. It's much quieter. We all spent some time on the Fourth hanging out and eating (really, what else do you do for the 4th of July?), celebrating my aunt Debi's birthday, and then the next day we also all remembered my uncle Bill, who passed away two years ago July 6th. It was...sad, obviously. (I bet you all would have inferred that if I hasn't said anything) Also, fun fact: We stayed at a hotel where the desk clerk mentioned that Barack Obama and his entire staff had stayed a couple of months ago during a stop. Who knew that candidates came to Johnstown? (It didn't do any good with my grandparents. Staunch Democrats, but they're voting for McCain. *sigh*) I do start to miss Reston everytime I go back. But, as I was discussing with Brian, I think it would be different if everytime I went back no one was there. Do I really miss the place or the people? This time, Jess was there, being all engaged and such, Brian was home visiting (for his birthday!), Missy and Franklin were obviously there, my mom, my dad, my aunt/uncle/cousins, etc. So I don't know. I had a great time enteraining myself during the day (which mostly entailed going to coffeeshops I really like that had free WiFi) and then meeting people at night to do fun things. Franklin, Brian and I saw "Wanted" one night. WOW was it bad. Funny thing is, Dan actually refused to see it with me. This is odd for a few reasons. 1) Angelina Jolie. 2) He LOVES bad movies. Movies that you think are going to be horrible, Dan gets psyched up for. He can't help it. 3) Angelina Jolie. I wanted to go because the premise seemed fun - get messages from the future about who is bad bad bad and assassins kill them in the present to prevent the future badness. I think as a concept, that has potential. However, they kind of sort of completely squashed it and just made it horrible. I haven't seen a bad movie in the theater in a while (I try to avoid them, as it's friggin expensive to see movies these days) but this one wins the prize. I think the last one I saw that falls into this category was "Crank" with Jason Statham (the guy in the Transporter movies) who I swear can NOT make a good movie. Anyway, Crank was also horrible. Annnnnd I'm rambling. OH but there was a preview for the Batman movie, which creeped me out (the whole Heath Ledger thing). So yes, it was lovely to visit, but I'm home again with Dan and the kitties. While today is the 12th, I will be postponing 12 on the 12th for another edition of 13 on the 13th because we're going whale watching tomorrow! Woot.

Work complaints.

Commence complaining.

I'm in charge of three buildings. Two are traditional style (long hallways, two or three people to a room, shared bathrooms on the floor) much like many of us lived in during college. The other, which I live in, is apartment style, so 4-6 students to an apartment with a full bathroom and kitchen and everything. It houses transfer students and upper division students (In UVA speak, that's third and fourth years and in VT "we're not as snooty" speak, that's juniors and seniors). Anyway, you can probably imagine that I see a lot more students who get in trouble from the traditional buildings - alcohol, noise, other stupid things that happen when students stay up until 4 AM with time on their hands and not wanting to study. All year, the apartment building (named Wada...for Yoritada Wada. I like to say his name a lot) has been quiet. But apparently, too quiet. In the past month I've had harassment over match.com, physical threats, apartment conflicts over noise and trash, huge parties, and a lovely physical "altercation" between two men in a fantastic love triangle. *sigh* Three weeks left. End complaining.

Last staff meeting...check.

Also, I haven't really had the occasion to document the haircut as of yet, but maybe this weekend. In return, I expect a picture of Meghan's haircut.

Fun story of the day: Berkeley's police chief, a couple of years ago, retired and was given a 2.1 million dollar retirement package. Shortly after, she was rehired. And given a raise. I shit you not.

We like long coats.

Living on a college campus has it's perks

So, when students ask for my advice (and sometimes when they don't) about what they should do while they're in college, I step onto my soapbox and tell them that they should take advantage of the performances, exhibits, lectures etc. that come to college campuses. Because in real life, these things do not pop up in your backyard for ridiculously discounted prices. However, I also unashamedly take advantage of these things as well, like last night when I went to see Angelique Kidjo in concert, for less than $20. She is a singer from West Africa, who has been professionally singing since she was 20 years old. She just released her third (I think) album, and she is touring to promote it. As per her usual, it's full of collaborations with other, usually Western, artists. This album feature Joss Stone, Josh Groban and some others I can't remember. Anyway, I first heard her when she did a duet with Dave Matthews (just the person, not the whole band) on her first album and the song "Iwoya." (Your cue to go download it on iTunes) and I really really like her voice. Granted, she sings in a variety of languages, so not always going to get a sense of what she's saying, but the music is pretty great. Anyway, the concert was great - she has some energy, lots of dancing and singing, putting Britney Spears to shame. The whole stage was just her, her five musicians and their instruments. No sets, no decoration. It was lovely. She talked a lot about her beliefs about religion and wars and politics and things. This being Berkeley, people ate it up. People were dancing in the aisles, and this one woman, I'm convinced was having the best night of her life with the enthusiasm she was "dancing" with. I'm not actually sure dancing is the right word, but I think it's what she was trying to do. Maybe the more accurate term is flailing, a la Elaine on Seinfeld. Good times. In not such good times, have you seen this on You Tube? Sally Kern is an ass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFxk7glmMbo Ellen's response on her show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBmCA4z8Yzc