David's Tangled Thoughts

I'm trying to stay away from the vending machines at work. My lunches are now consisting of carrots, yogurt, graham crackers, and leftovers from the night before. *Sigh*

As I had mentioned in a previous post, I went up to Michigan State University on Saturday where I met up with Christine. It's been a few years since I saw her last and it was great to have the opportunity to catch up with each other. I'm happy to say that she seems to be doing well. She will be graduating from the masters program this May and is already going for a PhD. [looks down and scuffs the dirt] I want a PhD. I asked her if she wanted to stay here in the US. She said that she didn't know but I got the feeling that she would if she could get a great job even though she does miss the Philippines. A few minutes later she said, "It makes me mad when people ask me that." "I insulted you by asking if you wanted to stay here?" I asked. "No. People ask me if I am going to get married so that I can stay here." For the record, I never asked if she was going to get married. But there is this stereotype that Filipinas will attach themselves

Hey there everyone. I'm at the MSU Union. Let me tell you, the roads suck! My official business here is already concluded. It took maybe two minutes but now I've got some time before I leave back for home. Since I'm here, I thought that I would see a few sights. I should be meeting up with Christine who is attending graduate school here. I knew her from when I did Study Abroad to the University of the Philippines Los Banos. I'm thinking about having lunch with her at this Malaysian resteraunt on Grand River. It looks new to me and what could be more appropriate? Sure we may not be Malaysians but we're Malay and that's close enough in my book. I think I will leave a little bit more earlier than I had planned. I'd rather drive back home while the sun is up. More to follow.

While waiting at Barnes & Noble for the book club to start, I sat down at their cafe to go over my notes on the book that was going to be discussed. To no more about that go to the other blog. But while I was sitting down I saw another one of those Quixtar goons trying to recruit two women. This had happened to me earlier in September. I continued to watch out of the corner of my eye intending to go up to those girls and telling them that this was a scam. That if they did this, more likely than not, they were not going to find the riches they are hoping for. But they left and he stayed. In fact, he eyed me and deliberated whether or not he should approach me. "Jason?" He asked making it seem like he recognized my face. "Nope." I was kinda hoping that he would have tried to start a conversation that way I could knock it down saying that I've already heard the scam spiel. By the time the I was leaving the meeting about two hours later, he was still near

As I mentioned before, I took my car in to find out if there might have been damage after finding the oil cap off of my engine. The sheet that Saturn gave me when I was cashing out said that I needed to have my car battery serviced. Fine, so I jotted down a note in my head. I'd get a battery over the weekend. Well this morning, my car had difficulty starting up and the service engine light turned on. Mind you, it was negative five degrees out--Fahrenheit just in case you metric people were rolling your eyes. I assumed the battery was on its death bed. After work I took it over to Wal-mart. While they were supposed to be installing my battery for me, I got paged. It turns out that I was being "denied" because they couldn't get the battery out. Something to do with it being attached to the fuse box or whatever. I resigned myself to having to go to the Saturn dealership again . Not so fast, though! The guy said that he ran a check and found out that my batte

I'm thinking that there are two of you that may be looking forward to the vid post but I've got to make an almost-emergency trip up to Lansing tomorrow. Depending how early I get back and how much energy I'll have, look for it some time between late Saturday night and early Sunday afternoon ( EST of course.)

Late yesterday and most of the day today I was burning up thinking about my car and how much that POS car was going to cost me. Yesterday morning, I started the car up to get it warmed while I brushed it off. While I was doing the rear, I heard a pop. It startled me and I looked off towards the back fields. I assumed that it was a gunshot and didn't worry about it. (Yeah... as odd as that is supposed to sound.) Within five minutes I was on my way to work. That evening on my way home, I started to smell burning oil. Crap that can't be good . When I got home, I popped the hood and nearly shit a brick. My engine block was covered in oil. The hood too. The oil cap had blown off and was lodged between the block and some hoses. I was beyond pissed. Not only had this nixed my plans to go out but it meant that I would need to take it in and get it looked at. There shouldn't be a good reason for an oil cap to come off, right? Plus, if it was from this morning, it mea

It is bitter here in the Midwest. It's so bad that I'm not going outside. It's the last day of the Hunter Ice Festival in Niles and I think I will miss it this year. Normally, snow and cold wouldn't bother me, but it's not every day that we get degrees being measured in the negative. If you are interested there is a blog post about last year's event here . It was around this time last year that we entered into a prolonged cold period. It was long enough to freeze the lake out beyond sight. It wasn't so bad. Sure it was cold but once that initial snow was on the ground and then plowed off to the side, we didn't get anymore snow. This time it won't be so cold but we will be getting plenty of snow. I've got a shovel. Bring it on!

Fellow blogger John and I were IMing the other day and he asked me why I using some British slang. I told him that I was using it as a more polite way of cussing and because it was useful for a secondary meaning. I bet you are wondering what I said. --I can't say it here! Actually there are a lot things that I borrow when I speak. A lot of what I do borrow is British but that is because there aren't many other English speaking countries to borrow from. No offense to John P., but Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin do not make me want try out words and phrases from down under. Canadian? Apparently I speak like them already. So there you have it. It's a bit different but I want to try something with the few foreign readers that I have. Take a look at the following list of names. If you would be so kind, record yourself and send me a copy. I'm interesting in hearing y'all trying to pronounce some of the things that are here in Midwest America. Cuyahoga Des Moines D

So Stargate Atlantis last night was a pain in the butt to watch. It was one of those filler episodes that does nothing to advance the story arc. That's fine and all. I expect those episodes to come by every now and then. Still, it was a crappy episode. It was crappy for a couple reasons but the number one is--glass. Yup, glass. You know those windows that the city has? It can withstand high winds, crashing waves, seismic shaking, crushing depths of water, the vacuum of space, and blasts from energy weapons. Yet, if you need to escape from a room, just throw a chair at the window and it will smash to tiny bits. [Rolls eyes.] Maybe the writers did need some time off.

My cousin, Jessica sent me a text the other day warning me to be on the lookout for a package. She and her family were here a couple weeks ago on a visit. I assumed that they had forgotten one of my gifts and were sending it to me through the mail. They had brought me shirts and that was cool but I thought that there may have been some personal items that they had forgotten. You see, my sister got our mom's old jewelry box. I was wondering if there might be some other items that might have been shipped over since Nanay passed away last year (posts here and here ). To tell the truth, I don't think I could handle having some of that stuff being returned. It'd seem like the last string that binds me to that land would have been snipped. No more family left. The did send me another shirt but fortunately there was nothing that would threaten to bring me to tears. Instead they sent me money. When they were last here, I showed them the collection of Filipino cash that I

As of this entry, the polls will be closing in about 45 minutes. Voting has been low here. The local station, WNDU reported that about 9 percent of eligible voters have voted. My dad told me that he had gone to New Troy and he was the only person that was there to vote. I joked with my boss about letting me go early so that I could vote. Yeah, like that was going to happen. I heard from one source that Sen. McCain was ahead of Gov. Romney. I haven't seen any news that has polling numbers yet so I suppose I'll find out for sure tomorrow morning. Or, if I manage to stay up, later tonight when the late edition of the local news comes on. Pundits say that Gov. Romney needs to come out on top or a the very least come in a very close second. A McCain win would bolster his position as the leading GOP candidate and would be solidified with a win in South Carolina. I was watching the BBC World* doing a newscast on the race here. The journalist seemed to be a little surprised th

I've made no secret about my fascination with Apple and its siren call leading me away from Microsoft. I was looking forward to what would be announced at the Macworld Expo. That way I could calculate how much money I should tuck away each month until next September or so. The answer is $0. The big feature is the Macbook Air, a super thin (3/4 inch) laptop computer that's going to sell for USD$1800. From what I've read, it's a fair deal in comparison to like models. But I'm not into small computers now. Maybe if I had a job that required me to be mobile, I could see about looking into it but naaah, I want a jumbo computer with all the bells and whistles which would cost me about the same amount of money. If I buy an IBM clone that is. The next thing that got my attention was the addition of new features to the iPhone as well as the iPod Touch. I've thought that my iPod Touch was a bit bare on the features. But, hey, it was ten steps above my previous MP3

<<--See Also: It’s better than underwear and ramen noodles, Mr. Moore. ; A Blue State Going Red in the Face ; MI Cuts in Line ; and Did we miss the election lull? Ready for some more politics talk? I thought that I’d move this post up ahead a few days due to Moncrief’s surprising, yet very much welcomed, visit. Earlier this year, Michigan passed a law that moved up the state’s primary to January 15th. At the time of the bill’s passage, it would have made Michigan the first state in the nation to hold a primary. (As you probably have noticed, New Hampshire didn’t like that at all.) It was hoped that by moving the primary up, it would force the candidates to pay more attention to Michigan and to the concerns of her citizens. It backfired. Keeping true to their threats both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee striped the state of her voting delegates to their respective conventions. These are the events where the DNC and RNC will vote on

Did anyone play tetherball when they were young? Last night I went to the yoga class at the Y. I was hoping to see Erin there. It's been almost a month since I saw her last and I wanted to give her the gift that I got for her. We're already out of the Christmas season so any further delay and it probably would have turned into her birthday gift. She was a no show, so I got to have the women all to myself. Oh yeah... ;-P When class was let out, I drove over to her house expecting that she would be there so that I could give it to her. Ha! Me and my expectations.... So I get there and no one's home. So I try to think about how I can get this gift into her house. I've broken in before. No big deal. I try the door. Locked. I try the mail slot. Not wide enough. The porch sliding window. Locked. Hmmm... that's unusual . The secret hiding place for the spare key? The key is gone. Where'd she put it? The garage. Locked. When did she get a lock for

There was an explosive event at work yesterday. Tension between my supervisor and one of my coworkers escalated into a screaming match which almost resulted in the police being called in. Over the past couple weeks or so, the supervisor has been riding the slackers who are not meeting quota. It shouldn't have been a big deal but one girl would just not take the criticism or commands. So I was there at my station when I suddenly hear this girl starting to raise her voice. Apparently she was getting written up for coming back late from break. My sup tried to get her to calm down but the girl wouldn't so the supervisor told her to get out. "Am I fired? I'm not leaving until someone tells me I'm fired. I need documentation." Blah, blah, blah. By now, the whole production floor has gone dead quiet. You knew that everyone was just keeping their heads turned to their work, yet their ears were all pointing towards the two. I wasn't even about to turn aro

I was asking it when I made a comment on another person's blog about there not being a real snow event. Now we've got it. Yesterday, the snow started falling and it still hasn't stopped. The snow is about a foot deep with the drifts in our yard approaching 3'. This morning, I got up at 4:45 so I could start shoveling. I try to play shuffle the cars with my sister's and mother's cars only to have my sister's car be frozen shut and my mom's blocking me in. I get manage to finagle my mom's car out of the way only to find out a few moments later that my car wouldn't start. I needed to jump start the dang thing. I ended up blowing perfect attendance by one lousy minute at work. So there goes $50.* What we've got going on right now is lake effect snow. (See this article to learn more about it.) There was a band over the area while I was trying to get back home from work. It figures that home would just be outside the band where my pare

Happy New Year everyone! So I spent yesterday a bit differently than I have in the previous couple of years. I didn’t go out and I didn’t drink. Nope. I spent the day watching the Planet of the Apes marathon. Then at night my sister and I played Monopoly while watching the Family Guy mini-marathon. Since there was no Leno (I think—he may have gotten a deal like Letterman ) I didn’t bother staying up to see the ball drop. To be honest, it’s not exactly a thrilling event. Wahoo, a lighted ball came down and now we have to sing some song that very few know the lyrics to. And those that do, probably don’t know what it means. My parents went out to a party. After over ten years of living in this country, my Mom has started mingling with the local Filipino community—like, all ten of them. It makes me glad because she’s not spending her days working and then coming home to tend to that. Bonus for me: she always brings me back leftovers. I love Filipino parties; they expect you