Wayward Identity

It seems, as of late, I have been misplacing my personal items. Most recently, my drivers license. In the process of photo copying and faxing my identification, it has seems to have vanished. Best part about this situation is that I actually never had a chance to photo copy or fax it to the people who need it. I’m sure it’ll turn up. Or at least I hope so, because I’m almost certain that I do not qualify for residency in California yet, to get an ID.

Perhaps, for some strange karmic reason, someone will send it back to Oregon, to the address that’s on the license and my boys there will let me know... or keep it and sell it for $50 bucks to some underaged, Pete Wentz look alike.

Lately, the weather here has been outstanding, mid 60’s to mid 70’s. I really don’t have any complaints other than for some reason, my body thinks, “Hey, it’s nice outside. Perhaps now is a good time for me to make Jesse sneeze all the time and make him want to scratch his eyes out.” Right now, my body is in a full fledged allergy season mode. Which I find very strange, seeing as how there isn’t a single leaf on any of the trees and not one god damned flower in bloom.

Yesterday I didn’t have to work until 4:30 PM so I decided to go check out the local indoor climbing gym. Berkeley Iron Works is an outstanding facility and if i was a million billionaire, I would probably have a membership there. Maybe I haven’t completely adjusted to the fact that everything here in California costs more than it should. Regardless, I went climbing by myself and had so much fun. Unfortunately, my forearms and hands are so sore today, that I was having a hard time lifting my RedBull without trembling.

Last and certainly not least, I miss my family. I could use a hug from my dad, some encouraging words from my mom, a healthy pat on the bum from my brother, and a solid eye roll from my little sister.Photo taken by Kolby Schnelli Photography. (Check out Kolby's Flickr Photo Stream HERE)

In Addition To Tuesday's Post

I feel sorta bad. In the huge mess of a blog that I wrote on Tuesday telling you guys of the amazing weekend I had I totally left out the fact that Kendra got a promotion at work. I was so jazzed about it when she told me. She actually got a text from her boss over the weekend we were up north, telling her that she needed to call him.

[edit] Basically the girl got a promotion.

The point I’m trying to make here is that Kendra is kicking ass and taking names and I’m very proud of her.

On top of that, I figured this would be an appropriate time to let you all know why my girlfriend is better than yours.

She bakes me cookies.

She feeds my addiction.

and most importantly, she’s my sugar momma. I seriously wouldn’t be able to survive so easily down here without her.

One more thing. Am I the only one who thought this was a funny sub-headline for the inaugural ball?

Delay, Wedding, Cancellation, Obama

First and foremost, I hope everyone that considers them self to be an American can truly understand and recognize that today was a historic day. One day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Barack Obama, was inaugurated to be the 44th president of the United States of America. Very exciting stuff indeed. I am excited to see what happens in the next few years and I feel blessed to be alive and witness history in the making. If you didn’t get a chance to see the inauguration speech, I found it on YouTube in two parts.

The speech isn’t long and I think that everyone should watch it and hear what our new president has to say.

Part One:

Part Two:


This last weekend was amazing. Like I said in the previous post, we went up north to the Portland area for Kendra’s big sister’s wedding. We had a 9:00AM flight and I figured that with traffic, check in, and the security check, that we should be there kind of early. So we woke up at 4:30AM and finished packing, grabbed some food, and hit the road to Oakland Airport.

Funny thing about traffic here in California at 5:30AM... there is none. So, our trip to the airport was very short. After all the usual preflight crap, we ended up finding out that our flight was delayed for about an hour. With this all taken into consideration, Kendra and I sat at the terminal for almost 3 hours waiting to board our plane. All I have to say is thank God for iPhones. We battled it out on a little puzzle game called Trism for a large portion of our delay.

Right when we got to PDX, we sat at a window that overlooked the Arrival Pick Up area while we waited for Justin and Jenae to pick us up. As you may know, it is strictly prohibited to leave your vehicle unattended at the Pick Up area. I saw this lady park, rush out of her mini-van, dash into the airport, and was hurrying back out to her car in less than a minute. I can only guess she needed to use the restroom. In this very short minute, an airport meter maid made her way to the front of this lady’s mini-van and started writing a ticket. Now keep in mind that I couldn’t actually hear what was being said but the expressions on the mini-van lady’s face were absolutely priceless. I could tell that she was completely dumbfounded that the meter maid caught her in less than a minute and while the meter maid was finishing up writing her ticket, her face went from, “No no no, you don’t need to write me a ticket, I was only using the restroom.” to “Un-F#@&ING-believable. I was only gone for a minute you wretched bitch. I bet you eat your young, huh?”

Honestly I felt bad for the mini-van lady but it goes to show that the airports mean it when they say, “Do Not Leave Vehicles Unattended”.

The first day we were in Portland we played it low key and took the time to relax and catch up with Justin and Jenae. They are renting a house from a friend of theirs that is outstanding. So outstanding in fact, that when you use the microwave, instead of it just beeping at you it plays a little tune to let you know that your tasty food is done being cooked.

Then came the wedding the next day. Jenae looked amazing and everything went off without a hitch... well, most everything. A little miscommunication with the DJ but other than that, it was awesome. I feel bad though. Jenae asked me if I could be in charge of the video recording of the wedding and I of course said yes. That morning I was having a hard time waking up so I downed not one, but two RedBulls followed by a cup of coffee. Some of the shots that I thought would be pretty cool came out pretty shaky because I was so cracked out from a caffeine overload. Hope my Final Cut Pro editing skills help me out on that one.

Later that night, after everything was winding down, I had a chance to meet a couple of Kendra’s high school friends. Honestly, I’m not sure a girl could ask for better friends. From what I’ve gathered, these boys haven’t seen her in almost a year or more and it’s like they had been hanging out the whole time. We met Cole, Trevor, Nick, and Mark at one of their friends penthouse condos in the Pearl District. His name was Darren and talk about an amazing place. Straight out of MTV Cribs and he’s a really nice guy to let us in his house and mingle.

After that the party moved right down the street to Aura where, because Darren knows the promoter pretty well, the bouncers let us in for free. The music was loud, the dance floor was packed, and everyone was having fun. Darren is the dude in the front with the green t-shirt on and Kendra and I are in the back. There are tons of pics of this party, and it seemed that Ian was in the background of almost every one of them. I guess he's pretty hard to miss. To make the night even better, my friend Michelle came out and met us. Kendra’s friend Cole worked his magic and got her in for free too. (She's the one being kissed by the blonde) 

I loved how one by one, each of Kendra's friends pulled me aside and said in a mildly inebriated  manor, "Ya know, Kendra's a good girl. An angel! You're a lucky guy, man. If she approves, I approve." Then proceeded to mention that her ex-boyfriend was a "Douche". Which is even funnier to me cause Kendra told me that they never even met him. My point is, I'm really glad that I finally got to meet these guys and hope to see them again real soon. (By the way, that's a hint to come visit us boys.)

The day after the wedding we hung out and enjoyed another low key day before heading back to the airport. We packed up and said our goodbyes then Ian drove us back to PDX. By the way, huge props to Ian for bringing me 6 bottles of my second favorite beverage in the entire world, Guayaki Organic Yerba Mate. I downed 3 of them while up in Portland and knew I wouldn’t be able to take them on the plane so I put them in the fridge to chill and then forgot all about them before I left. Thanks anyway, Ian.

We where basically already checked in and just had to drop off our only checked bag when we found out that our flight had been canceled. Not to worry but tell me if this makes sense, they rerouted us to Seattle then back down to Oakland. Not a huge deal, just thought it was strange. Either way, when we got to Seattle, they bumped us up to first class for the flight to Oakland. Pretty sweet... minus the old guy that asked us, “Do you feel lavish?” and when I said “No.” his reply was, “Well you should.” Like I was intruding on his magical and sacred first class territory that he actually paid extra for. What a tool.

I have video footage of most of the weekend and I'm sure I'll have something together by the end of the week so keep an eye open for that. Another thing that I thought was pretty cool is that my little brother is creative as all hell and is designing a few t-shirts that should be for sale very soon. Go check them out on his RedBubble page right HERE!

I Have a Serious Addiction

This may not come to a surprise to some of my closest friends and family who have been in it with me through the thick and the thin. Those of you who I hold dear to my heart and share my darkest secrets with, there is no reason to be incredulous about my current situation.

I have an addiction. An addiction that is not easily overcome. Oh RedBull, sweet sweet RedBull. Nectar of the gods. If not of the gods, it is at least approved by the gods. Upon inspection and a little research on the RedBull website, I found that RedBull is Kosher and Halal. Apparently “the production site and the origin of the ingredients were inspected and checked by the responsible organizations”. Good to know.

Enough nonsense, I have a meeting today with my the head of financial aid at SFSDF today and I really hope that we are going to figure out how to get to that $30,000 goal. Or maybe part of it.

On a more creative note, I have recently found out that my Sony Cyber-shot camera actually takes very clear digital video footage and I have been having fun with that around town and maybe I’ll post something up in a week or so. I only have a 2GB memory card so I have to take the highest possible quality of footage and then dump that info on to my computer and take more. I’m sure I can come up with something to make sure that my editing skills don’t get too rusty. So keep an eye out for that next week possibly.

One more thing, my mom just had surgery. Nothing major, but she’s a bad ass and I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that. If you know her at all, you should send her an email, text, or ring her up an wish her well. Knowing my mom, who is quite active and is stuck off of her feet for about 6 weeks, she’ll be going stir crazy around the end of this week. So say hi or bake her some chocolate cake. She probably love you forever.