LET THEM EAT PIE

Thanksgiving 2008 has passed and the food was delicious. This year the Phuong residence welcomed in a new and special guest in the form of Ricardo Gonzalez. After a long, rainy, and traffic-ridden journey from SD we arrive pretty late to the OC, and Rico begins his experience with a nap. After some late night Chipotle with some good friends of mine, we hit the hay for the anticipation of the feast to come.
So the most important people in my life showed up to this dinner, and I am thankful for them. The grandma and grandpa, the moms and pops, and of course the bro and buddy.
A few new and welcome faces spend their first Thanksgiving with the Phuongs, other than Rico. My niece, Skyla Ocean Phuong makes her first apppearance and so does my sister-in-law Amelia. I am also thankful for them both.

Cuter than a puppy.
Rico has a burning hunger, waiting for that bird that has been cooking in the oven for a goooood couple hours, those mashed potatoes that have been begging to be eaten, and that pumpkin pie...oh that pumpkin pie.
In no time the festivities start, and a camera should be nowhere between this face and a plate of some home cooked turkey and corn, so I leave you with the promise of more exciting things to come. Hopefully you all had a good Turkey day! Hopefully your black friday was spent sleeping off that Tryptophan rather than up at 4 at Frys.

THE GIFT AND THE CURSE, THE VENOM AND THE SERUM

Work time this weekend for Rico and playtime for myself. It's the Gift for me and the curse for Rico this weekend. He has 2 major essays due this week so he has to work on them, and play tetris of course. His mom came over and gave us some bomb grub from TJ. Word up to Bertha Gonzalez, the nicest lady south of the OC. Oh did I tell y'all we got a call from an old friend today?TIM! Oh dear Tim, how we missed you buddy. We caught up with the man, seems like everytime we see him he gets taller and more yolked. He said we came up since there had been some talk to him about us...imagine that. Everywhere I go I can find a few people that know Tim and it's easy to understand why he is so popular especially after 5 minutes with him.
There have been some crazy moments with him, and many come in these random activities. This one was from last year, the trust test:


Tim caught his, too bad Rico didn't. Tim was enough of a crazy man to let Rico purposefully drop a bottle on him.

Oh Tim can get pretty physical too, just a fun guy. Sorry Rico I think Tim won on this one. Have you guys noticed yet how he kind of look like a subsitute Brawny man? One day I feel like Ill tell my kids about how I know Tim Shibuya from college and they won't believe me.

Tim is one of the most entertaining people I've ever been around and he does weird stuff to do it, like pee in bottles which can be a gift or a serum. This time he decided to show off his old trick, the thing is this is no one trick doggy, he brought us something new....he DRANK/SIPPED his pee/cola/hydrogen peroxide mixture. The Venom:

What's just as funny is Cortney's facial expressions in these photos. Oh and Tim had to wash that taste out of his mouth for a few minutes, I don't blame you Tim. Basically this man can survive in the jungle for at least 3 weeks by killing small animals, making a fire, building some furniture of of palm trees, and drinking his own urine to keep the water supply high.
He sadly had to make his exit, but even then he doesn't disappoint.


Baseball man can get up. He's got a pretty mean turn around fade away from 10 ft, but sadly nothing else. When he left so did the fun and the nostalgia. I missed the moments we had last year and now that I look back at it, I feel I took ATL and everyone for granted, because I miss them and the camaraderie. Last year seems like a distant past, a gift. This year I'm catching some Venom, soon enough I'll catch some serum, and this year it will look like a gift.

Oh Tim, no more jumping over banisters, you have a baseball career to watch out for.

'And I've found the Indian dance to bring our reign back, and they pray for the death of our dynasty like amen.'

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES...

Good morning Vietnam. Sorry to all of you who I have hooked on this blog because lately I've been only releasing blogs that cover spans of a week or so. Soon enough though I promise at least Thanksgiving will be covered in one sesh. So this week I got a preview of what the next two years of my life will be like...hardcore studying interlaced with divine moments of fun. Oh and today I woke up early just so I could schedule more classes for next quarter. It just never stops, at least it's exciting. Oh here's Rico, luckily he doesn't have to study for Ochem. I'm glad I killed it or else that studying would've been worthless.

So between studying and sleeping I found a few spare hours to have fun, and we went back to the good ol' days to have it. Matthews B-1 and I adventured out into the world to buy the candies that we so desperately desired, and I'm not talking about the new candy...I'm talking old school like Peach-O's and my personal favorite, Fun-Dip.
So if you hadn't noticed, because I have, my camera had been a little off lately because my pictures were a little noiser than usual, but hopefully you'll be glad to notice that I've fixed that! All by turning down the ISO setting...I'm still relatively new to the DSLR culture but I'm getting there.
Between class and studying I eat, and no other better eating partner than Ms. Jennifer Manegold.
So this afternoon, like most, I raid her fridge and get the chance to prepare some bomb panini's with the help of her new Panini maker. yum. Shes a pretty good cook too, her lasanga is worth walking 1000 miles for.
Rose. It was the funnest moment.
It was the darkest reading.
It was the age of foolishness.
It was the age of wisdom.
...it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us....-Charles Dickens
Suprise, another night of studying is going on but, this one isn't interrupted by a meal until I get so hungry I could eat a baby dear, or a single Western Bacon cheeseburger with a small fry. Jenny, Rico and I get to hunting.
We decided to hit up the express hunting range at Carl's Jr., now open until 12pm with 2 California Roast Beef sandwiches for only $5!(I better get paid for that plug). So we're sitting in the drive through and I have to get a picture of this sticker on this car:
Trained to serve Jesus it says, for the people without glasses. Well thankfully someone is trained to serve. I wonder what certificate or diploma they got after they finished their training...or what their final exam was...turn water into wine? Heal lepresy? who knows, thankfully someone's ready in case of an emergency though.
On the way back to Matthews to chow down on our grub I saw a baby raccoon and bolted for it, apparently it smelt our food and decided to opt for some photos, too bad I would've fought that thing to the death over a single fry. Jenny got awfully close to it, braver than me and Rico, she said it didn't creep her out since it was only a baby, guess I'm even scared of babies; or rabies?
That picture was for a dear friend named Alton, whose favorite animal is the raccoon. Tell me Alton do they have baby raccoons out in Tuft's? No, didn't think so.
Back to work, soon it will all be over.
Oh this is an asian Chem major's desk/bed after a long night of Ochem, book still open, disheveled bed, shirt aloof.
I told you guys already that I killed that test, but really I only got a 75, but it was good enough to get an A. So since that it over, I decide a little basketball is in order, so I go all out and get back midnight...this is the sight of a tired baller, I played pretty well but my jumper has slacked since all this studying. Practice during this next week is bound to get it back and ball up fools even worse.
Everybody listen to the radio show tomorrow!!! on at 8pm...Google KSDT and click listen at 8 to the Rico and Patrizzio show. We're killin 'em on the radiowaves!

THE CATCH UP

Okay I'm going to come clean and tell you that I've been hesitant to write this blog because I haven't hit one in a week so I might be rusty. But I decided I have to get back on that horse sometime, and plus another couple days without the blog people would start rioting all over the world. So here's the catch up, last weekend started with Spooky and Rico's house with some booomb food. I was full from 11am-8pm after that meal.



After that Chen Jack and I did some major b ball work and then hurried to make it to Alice's surprise party at Cheesecake Factory. Too bad we were the one's surprised seeing as how we got there 10 minutes after Alice had already arrived. It's weird to think Alice is the same ago as me, how did she catch up??? She's eternally young and a child at heart for life. I feel even though we're the same age she is much younger and I'm an old stressed out fool. At least we got a night to hang out and have a good time.This great party was set up by the ladies of Matthews A-4, and it turned out well. Though the late men had to sign a card the size of a mural while keeping it a secret of the birthday girl sitting two seats down. I guess it doesn't help when I'm taking pictures under the table with flash.Everybody was looking mighty sharp.

See the transformation she undergoes with simple balloons? It's crazy I tell you.
It's a new year for you, go get'em kid.
Oh this week has been saturated with visits to this one: la mia principessa.
Oh Tuesday I had a job interview so I had to dress up all spiffy and head over to Chris' lab for an interview, a really cool job and I'll keep you guys posted. Thanks Chris if you're reading this, for all the help you've given. I kind of wish I could dress this way everyday.
After that was done, I took a physics quiz in which I cried during the middle of the test because I could see no end to it. A few moments after the quiz I almost cried again as OBAMA has won the election and secured presidency. This man I feel embodies a change for America and he will be the one to take us out of our dark times and gain back our respects. Rico has something to say about this too. Drop truth:

"yes we can," the people chanted as Obama gave his acceptance speech. On November 4th, the United States woke up determined to make a Change. While the people of the United States saw this as the most important election of their era, the rest of the world saw this as an opportunity for America to reconcile. I read a beautiful anecdote of an American overseas. A man who is currently residing in Australia posted a blog were he described the effects of the election of Obama throughout the world. He claims to have been sitting on a train on his way to work; when he got up to get off the train, a girl stood up and gave him a peck on the cheek. The man, dumbfounded by what had just occurred, turned in the direction from where the peck came and saw a row of woman smiling at him--only one conclusion came to his mind, he was an American--they were thanking him.

Rico and I hit up Carl's sometime during the week and look at what they've done! They've replaced jobs with machines. Structural unemployment right there, if we don't need people anymore, there's going to be a lot of unemployed people out there. Hmm technology vs. human capital. Someday humans will become a commodity.
Now if you will excuse me I must catch up on Ochem.