Old Friends, New Experiences

Today was a day of many firsts. I hung out with two friends who I haven't seen in a while, and it was aaawesome.

First, off to shopping at Hillcrest. I went to a bunch of stores I had never been to before. Actually, I had only been to Hillcrest once that I remember, and it was for a birthday party at the Corvette Diner a couple of years ago. I usually don't go to thrift stores because the clothes are gross and I feel poor when I go to the ones on Poway Road, but the Buffalo Exchange was really cool. Nothing even looked used. Flashbacks was kind of weird. I would never wear retro stuff, sorry! This other store, Rags, smelled really bad but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

After we got starved, we went to the Corvette Diner, my second time ever. We had an awesome waitress named Goldie. Another first, she said we were the first table that day to have everybody remember her name. Woooooo. We all ordered different things, then did a rotation so we ate each others' food. It was GOOD. Note to anybody who's going to eat there anytime soon: the Saturday special is A LOT of food. We ended up eating the leftovers for dinner! So after that we had some main Downtown area adventures. Since Comic-Con is in town, parking was a bitch. We eventually made it to our destination, Urban Outfitters. Holy crap is that place overpriced. Then things got really interesting... one of my friends wanted to go to the Hustler store nearby, and since we were all at least 18, we could go upstairs. You know, upstairs. It was... an experience, haha. We basically looked at everything and laughed at it. None of it was in the least bit exciting. It's sad to think some people really like that stuff, and I mean a lot. As in, enough to work there. Let's just say, you won't find any romance in porn. But you will find penis-shaped cake pans upstairs at the Hustler store, among many other sketchy things. I'm sure we pissed off the staff because we were talking very loudly and objectively about the products, but whatever. It's not like I'll ever see them again.

So afterwards we went home and chilled. We watched Shear Genius, which I had never seen before. There are so many talent search shows nowadays. Look for the next best chef, the next best hair stylist, the next best country singer, whatever... It was at least entertaining. That reminds me, I want to get a haircut soon. So there you go. From cool stores to yummy food to skanky stores to new shows, today was a day of firsts.

It's been a while.

My summer has been a big blob of boring with some dashes of excitement here and there. I just feel like I'm one those Jews fasting all day only to stuff their faces when the sun goes down. When will my sun go down? In about 60 days, when I move in at UCLA. Then my boring spell will be dead and I'll be the most social person I've ever known myself to be. I'm getting excited thinking about it already! It's still surreal to me, though I'm getting more and more used to the fact that I'm going to be a college student. I'm already enrolled in my classes, I know what classes I want to take, and I bought most of the furnishings I'll need for my dorm room. But still... the thought of living exclusively among my peers with no family around is so foreign to me, but I can't stop looking forward to it! I just want to get out of here. Even just getting out of this house is hard. Everybody has different schedules and it's so hard to get a group of friends together to do things. I've been trying with one group for several weeks to coordinate just one day to spend together, which hasn't happened yet. Same thing with a different group of friends. We're finally getting to it this week, though!

Orientation was thoroughly amazing. I tried my hardest to be outgoing and get to know the people I was around, even though it was likely I wouldn't see very much of them during the school year. There's nothing wrong with networking, right? I met a bunch of people who were from San Diego, and they were all really cool. That's not to say the everybody else wasn't. Lily and I didn't name that fugly statue Helga von Schlaffenberger for nothing. My orientation group was really chill. It was so easy to open up to them about stuff, especially when we had those deep discussions. I would blog about the whole thing, but it's been a while and I don't really feel like putting down everything that happened. Basically the first day was fun, the second day was very tiring, and the third day was very rewarding. There you go, Orientation 101 in a nutshell.

I can't wait to start getting to know more and more and more people. I'm not looking to be everybody's best friend, though it would be nice, but having a lot of acquaintances in addition to a lot of besties is very appealing. Watching Dorm Life was so entertaining! I'm sad I finished it. I really love the characters. There was the crazy RA, the crazy girl in general, the antisocial Mormon or something like that, the drunkards, the sorority girls, the good boy... I hope to meet people like them in my real life dorm life. Aaaahhh. Here I am looking forward again. 60 days!

Creeper

Today I met a very creepy man. I went to the Carmel Mountain library because the PQ library didn't have the book I wanted. As I left, I held the door open for an old Middle Eastern man walking out. He thanked me and asked my name, and started casual small talk. Did I live around here, blah blah blah. That didn't seem too creepy. I thought he was either really friendly or senile, or possibly a combination of both. He told me his family just moved here from Pittsburgh, where they had lots of friends, so he was trying to make new friends here in San Diego. Oh, that's cool. I said. He asked if I was free today and of course my mental anti-rape reflexes spat out an excuse of why I wasn't. Tomorrow? No. Next week? Umm, maybe, I told him. I have a summer job and I'll see if I can get off... So I made a fake appointment to meet him again at the library next Thursday at 3, just to get him off my back. At first I thought he was nice, but he was really, really creepy. What old guy asks an 18-year old for coffee out of the blue and just "to talk"? Sounds like the stuff you hear about on the news about abduction. I have no intention of ever going back to that library. He even wrote down our "meeting" and asked my last name. I told him Rodriguez because it was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe that'll make him think I'm a Mexican, because very few Filipinos have that last name.

As I was going back to my car (he walked me there) he said something along the lines of "Be bold. Don't be afraid to come out of the closet!" and I was like "What?!" I didn't think I'm a flamer or anything, but even if he did guess correctly, it was none of his business since I just met him like 5 minutes ago. It was just really, really creepy. I felt really strange and unsafe after that so naturally I left to do errands in a (luckily) more crowded area of Carmel Mountain.

I feel bad because it's possible he's just a very friendly old man trying to man friends in a new city. But he is old enough to know that a 50+ year old man trying to befriend and 18 year old out of the blue is not normal, and would make most people suspicious. Oh well. By not going, the worst that could happen is that he gets disappointed. Who knows? I could see him on the news as a serial rapist and murderer soon.

Anyways, on a brighter note, I watched the fireworks today. Just got back, actually. We had a lovely view of the pole that holds up the stadium lights hahaha. It was a nice show, at least. I didn't even get stuck in traffic on the way home because I took the back road. Yay! Tomorrow's the 4th of July parade in RB. Just the thought of MC's first performance without me makes me feel kind of weird... but I'm not saying I'd do it again. Four years is the perfect amount. Band has been my life, but it is no longer what I devote most of my time to. Life's sweeping me in other directions, and I'm eager to try other things.