The Only Guy in Town

It seems to be becoming a tradition of mine to blog during my Monday 5pm-10pm class block, which i'm ok with, seeing as it gives me some sort of a break other than the 15 minute walk from lecture to lecture. The only way i can describe my past weekend was "solid". It began on Thursday, where my friends Austin and Justin, along with a leader of the Rereation Office Matt Brower, and I all hit the racquetball courts to test our respective skills against one another. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling confident in my game, I was playing pretty good, and beat my usual racquetball equal Austin thrice in a row. The unavoidable feeling of hubris that ensued lifted me up a notch higher in my confidence, only to drop me from farther up when, with repeated self-caused points against me, I lost badly to Austin, Justin, and Matt. Well, i never really had a chance with Matt, seeing as he's been playing the game for 30+ years, and my loss to Austin was incumbent after i had beaten him the previous week, but what really threw me for a loop was my game with Justin, wherein I repeatedly gave him points that were easily avoidable. Alright, enough about racquetball, on to Friday.

After waking up at the crack of 12 pm on Friday, Jordan and I utilized our mad biking skills and biked downtown to run a few errands. Jordan picked up some art supplies for some unknown and secretive reason, while I bought myself a copy of the Ramayana, the great Indian Epic, on which i'm doing a research paper. After eating at the local Jewish/Italian eatery and buying myself a stick-o-sopresetta, we biked back to campus and made some dinner. At night Jordan, Shoshie, Austin, Max, a few other friends and I went to the on-campus production of Hair, a musical about the 60's. Mostly devoid of plot and character development, the play focused on the group dynamics of a bunch of hippies, one of which was drafted for Veitnam. That was the plot, however the entertaining aspect of the play was that it featured loads and loads of absolute nudity. Why? I don't know. However, singing, dancing, hippies, and nudity make an entertaining 2 1/2 hours.

Saturday Jordan and I again biked down from campus, however this time we biked to Capitola (round trip about 7 miles), in search of a man named Carlos, who lives in a trailer park. Why were we trailer-spelunking? On the final leg of my Spring Break trip to the Grand Canyon, we stopped at the Kelso Sand Dunes, to which i stupidly brought my camera. badda-bing badda-boom, my camera has sand all over it, along with inside it. This, as you can imagine, impeded the functionality of my camera, which then had trouble opening and closing. After putting off fixing my camera for this entire quarter, on Friday I called all around Santa Cruz looking for someone who could repair my camera. I finally found out that the only person within 50 miles who repairs cameras, is this guy Carlos, who lives in Capitola in a trailer. So after calling him and making an appointment, Jordan and I biked over to meet him. He lives in a place called Trailer Haven, and his trailer was surprisingly professional. Carlos was super nice and really knew his stuff about cameras, and he's supposed to give me an estimate by tomorrow. So if you're in the Santa Cruz area and ever need a camera repaired, call Carlos! (831) 325-6426. After our meeting with Carlos, Jordan and I biked past this little mexican market, where I ended up buying some really fresh bread, and carne asada meat for Tacos.

This past year i've been a TA for Sunday School at Temple Beth El in Aptos. This past Sunday my last day with my class of rowdy 3rd grade boys, and we had an ice cream party, which was AWESOME. I'm not sure if the kids know it (I sure didn't when i was a kid), but the teachers love recess, movie day, and a good old fashioned ice cream party as much as the children. So i was stoked. After a bunch of ice cream, and convincing the children to sit quietly by showing them Star Trek: The Return of Spok, the kids exploded in a fireball of energy just in time for our all-temple meeting/final goodbye. To conclude the ceremony, a guitar-laden rabbi was brought up to sing the concluding song, which I assumed would be in Hebrew. Wrong. The concluding song was "wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish", the song popularized by Adam Sandler. Not sure how to feel about that one.

When I got back home, I worked for two hours on editing the videos of my Dad telling stories into a movie. However, iMovie unexpectedly quit, deleting ALL of my progress. Luckily I was able to re-do my work in half the time later that night, so my loss wasn't irrevocably painful. It's been so fun watching my dad tell all of his stories again, and getting to name them, and edit them together into a comprehensive and accessible movie. Oh and i made Carne Asada Tacos for dinner. mmmmmmmm.