Things are starting to get in motion in regards to my 6-week long excursion to New Zealand during winter break for geology field camp. I thought I would go ahead and put together a list of links and just what the heck I am supposed to be doing for my friends and family who aren’t entirely familiar with my plans come Christmas.

Field camp runs from December 28th to February 7th, though it literally takes 2 days to fly there (~18 hours in the air, plus crossing the international date line). So I will end up leaving in the afternoon / evening on Christmas day (not sure if I’m flying out of San Francisco or LAX just yet). I’ll arrive in Auckland (North Island) on the morning of the 27th and take a small commuter flight to Nelson (South Island) where we will begin our trip!

We start our trip off on the South Island and end it 6 weeks later on the North Island in the city of Auckland. The schedule sounds intense… 6 days a week of working, with 1 day off (but all field camps are like this). 3 meals a day are provided for us as well!

We’ll be checking out things such as the Franz Josef Glacier too:

Anyway, I’m getting more excited as December approaches. My passport application has also been sent off and I should receive that the first week of December! This will be my first ever trip abroad and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

I decided to update the list of In N Outs that I’ve been to. Added a few in just 3 months! People seem to be sympathetic to my cause.

My sister and I decided to drive home this past weekend on a whim, to visit our parents and see how our mom was doing after having surgery on her wrist. It was a nice weekend to relax for a bit and get away from the hectic school life. The drive wasn’t all that bad either, at just over 6 and a half hours each way (I must have been speeding!) and the car performed flawlessly. To that I say, “Up yours Saturn of Colma!”

Anyway, some highlights from this weekend:

*Went to a bar with Dan, my sister and some of her friends. Here I am, nearly 500 miles from San Francisco and I ran into a girl I met *in* San Francisco, who used to be a roommate of one of my geology friends.

*Dan is getting rid of some of his musical gear, so I was able to pick up two of his electric basses. Sweet! On the way back home, I dropped one off at David’s since we were both talking about getting a bass recently. Now we both have some to play around on. I decided to break it in by recording a bass track for the last song I wrote, entitled “Out of Life.” Check out the new version here! The old version is here for comparison. 🙂 Thanks a lot Dan.

So it was nice to relax (in terms of no school work), even though we were only able to stay for two full days (which caused me to be quite exhausted and flake out on a few people as well).

Walking Home

Changing up subjects… I decided to walk the 3 miles home from school tonight after I got out of a class at 10PM and there was just something completely spooky about tonight. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s a full moon. But all sorts of various things combined to make it feel weird tonight.

Walking down some of the side streets to my house, there wasn’t a single person around or even any cars driving. Most of the lights in the houses were off too. It’s a clear night with a full moon and a light wind blowing. The only thing I heard as I walked down the street were the rustle of leaves and some window shutters rattle (scary).

Of course there are a few houses around under construction and have some large tarps over their roofs. Whenever I walked by them, the wind would convienently pick up and catch the tarps, causing them to make loud snapping sounds as they flapped in the wind.

It’s weird to try and explain it. Just an odd night I guess. Maybe it also has to do with the fact that Halloween is just around the corner?

This is completely awesome news I just found out today. My Geology News blog (warning: tons of nerdiness) is gaining recognition and has been posted on the front page of About.com’s geology section!

I read this funny story a few weeks ago about someone’s experience on the SF Muni. After last night, I believe I have my own interesting “Muni Street Theater” experience.

My sister and I left late last night from a friend’s party in the lower Haight area and hopped on a bus to take us home. The bus stops at a fairly busy cross street (Fillmore I believe) and a rather wasted guy gets up from the back and tries to get to the door in time.

The bus begins to leave and he shouts “Back door!” The driver stops and waits for the man to exit. However, in his drunken state, he doesn’t remember to step down to open the back door of the bus. The bus driver figures no one is going to get off, so he leaves again.

This time the drunken man shouts “Hey!!! I said back door! Stop!” and the driver ignores him. Drunken guy stumbles to the front of the bus to yell at the driver. The driver pulls over at the next stop (only 2 blocks away) and asks him to get off the bus. The guy leans over to roll down his sock and pull up his leg, evidently showing the driver his knife and saying, “you see this?”

The driver unbuckles his seat belt, stands up and gets right in the guy’s face to say “I don’t care about that! Get off my damn bus!” The guy admits defeat and steps off without another word, which causes the whole bus to breakout in cheers and clapping.

It was definitely an awesome sight.

I received a HORRIBLE grade on my recent Chem II midterm. To sum it up… I never knew the grade scale went that low! I thought I did alright too right after I took it. I was WAY wrong.

So to make up for it, I’m now spending quite a bit of extra time doing my chemistry homework and studying. Almost finished with an assignment. It’s kinda crazy to admit… I’m having fun balancing random equations such as:

And many more (which explains why I’ve been at this since 8PM). Anyway, time for bed.

At our bonfire on Saturday night, I got a call from a friend in Southern California who was driving by our old house in Redlands that night. She said that there were something like 15 police cars around and the front yard was taped off in police tape with a forensics unit on site as well.

This was somewhat scary because my mom had sold the house to my sister’s friend a few years ago (after we both moved to San Francisco). I told my sister about the incident on Sunday and she called her friend to find out what happened.

Apparently her parents were vacationing in Mexico and her brother decided to throw a party… which turned into a massive event. They started trying to kick some people out and somehow some people got into a fight. A 19 year old was sent to the hospital with a punctured lung and one other person was stabbed in the hand! Ugh!

A local paper has a small blurb about it.

Officers who were called to break up a house party Saturday night in the 1400 block of Cambridge Avenue arrived on scene to blood in the street and reports of a stabbing. Four people were taken into custody following the incident, including one man believed to be a gang member, but none is a primary suspect in the stabbing, police said.

At 11 p.m. police arrived at the intersection of Cambridge Avenue and Lincoln Street where dozens of people were filtering out of a house party that had 50 to 75 people, said police spokesman Carl Baker.

I took my car in on Friday for its 3,000 mile checkup. This is the first time I’ve delt with any dealership up here since I moved to the Bay Area. The Saturn dealership in Southern California has been absolutely phenomenal so I expected no less from the dealership up here.

I was wrong on so many levels.

Evidently, what normally costs me a nice and affordable $40 in So Cal (which includes a car wash! Swanky!) will now cost me ~$200 in Nor Cal.

“Oh, but this is different!” says the sleezy fat slime ball behind the counter. “This is technically a 6K checkup and we also thoroughly inspect your car to make sure everything is running okay!”

Fine. Whatever. My last “3K” checkup was nearly 5,000 miles ago, so I’ll go with the 6K service they wanted.

They found out my car was in nearly perfect condition, minus a “collapsed engine mount.” Apparently, getting this fixed will cut down on vibrations into the passenger compartment (note: there are none) all for an affordable price of $200!

After telling them to sod off, I finally liberate my car from this fine institution and I drove it back home, happy that my car had a fairly positive report and everything was in working order.

Fast forward to late last night.

My sister and I drive down to Daly City to score some food. As we wait in the drive-thru, thick clouds of steam start to billow out from beneath my hood! We panic… I open the hood to find out that the cap isn’t even on my coolant reservoir!!! The stupid bastards FORGOT to put the cap back on! Interestingly enough, it was sitting off to the side (and by some miracle, didn’t fall beneath the car and onto the freeway). I screw the cap back on and notice that now my car is saying it has no coolant (makes sense as we just watched it turn to vapor right in front of us).

We pull across the street to a gas station and fill up with water. Only to realize that NOW MY CAR DOES NOT START. Lights work, radio works, it actually cranks once but doesn’t turn over. So we struggle with this problem for 15 minutes and start calling some random people for advice. I’m beginning to think that we may have to call in a tow truck.

I notice my lights are now quite a bit dimmer and decide to flag someone down to give us a jump. It worked! My car was back to running. We thank the people for their help and get back inside to go home.

I look down to find out that my car is now out of coolant AGAIN! Evidently, I have a leak somewhere in my coolant system (and it doesn’t appear to be the radiator).

We fill it up again and things appear stable. We get in the car and start to drive home. After 2 minutes, my coolant light comes on again! Of course now we’re in the middle of the freeway. Ugh!

Anyway, we find another gas station, fill up and repeat the process. We finally get my car to limp home.

It’s great to know that the thorough inspect that I paid for basically amounted to jack shit. I mean come on… they didn’t even put the damn coolant cap back on!

This is going to be a fun week.

Alright, since I’ve been lame and haven’t had the time (or patience really) to write anything in awhile, I’m going to post a photo journal. Just a bunch of random pics taken in the last month and a half basically.

Mount Wilson Observatory (just outside of Los Angeles/Pasadena) while on my way back to San Francisco.
Our roommate’s pug eating a playing card in my room.

One of the many random photos of sunsets from my room.

The 16th Street Tiled Steps Project (about 5 doors up the street from our place). This was just completed last month (and done entirely with private donations. Roughly $80,000).

Luxor Hotel and Casino at 4:30AM when we drove into Vegas for Michelle’s birthday.

A nice blurry photo of more of the Las Vegas Strip.

A syringe outside our hotel room at St. Tropez.

Crazy rays of sunshine one afternoon.