World’s tallest man saves the lives of two dolphins. “The long arms of the world’s tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs.” This is on CNN.

Still in San Francisco. It’s almost six in the morning. I left the airport at the beginning of Seattle being blown away by wind and made it to this airport in time to catch Seattle being blown away by the Niners. But not in time to catch my connecting flight. I did try. I was in full sprint ducking and dodging the people in the way. Much like the Ultimate Warrior in Wrestlemania VIII, I started sprinting without realizing how far I had to go. It’s probably half a mile, but it isn’t that great to run with a backpack and a hoodie. I made it to check-in and the machine didn’t print my tickets.

I talked to a woman standing around helping people and she told me I missed my flight. I told her the screen says it’s delayed, she asked what time was on it, I told her no time was listed, but she insisted that I missed my flight and directed me to the desk. Everyone in line for that desk was unhappy. Some guy tried to cut because he was running late. Except he didn’t realize that all twenty people in line were running late, so he got the good old “WE’VE GOT A CUTTER!” and a bunch of boos. The desk assistant explained that he had to wait in line. As he walked away, he looked to the sky, threw his hands in the air and screamed “God can you help me?!” Answer: not if you’re booked with United. Then he stood in line for half an hour like the rest of us.

The guy at the desk spoke a few phrases in Tagalog and laughed a whole lot. Sort of like my dad. He got me a pass for standby at 9:00am. I said ok and made the long journey to the USO area, which was back at the other terminal. It’s always depressing in here. Since it’s all military, it’s usually full of lonely people on their way to see family but got stuck here by a cancelled or delayed flight. I left to find some food.

Later in the night, I decided to talk to an Alaska (who provided the Seattle to San Francisco flight) representative. I used to wonder what the big deal was about choosing an airline, aren’t they all the same? Now I know. For whatever reason, the lady was able to help me find a flight on United as well as one on Alaska. She booked me with United but I’d have to talk to them for the tickets. So I walked back over again.

Back at United, guess who helps me at the desk? The lady who told me I missed my flight. She asks what happened and I told her I missed my flight. At this point she recognized me. I showed her what the Alaska rep printed out for me and she got to booking it. Except there was some problem about linking the tickets so she called another rep for help. The new girl took a look at my itinerary and asked the first lady (rhetorically) how I missed it since it was delayed until 10:00. The first lady may have recognized me before, but this is when she truly remembered me. I could see in her eyes that she knew exactly what she told me earlier. Then the girl got me a seat on the same flight that I was put on standby on earlier in the night.

Terrible experience. Everyone I talked to was really nice and I’m understanding of how busy it was. What I don’t understand is why they were able to put me on standby without being able to see that my original flight was still around. I could’ve taken a taxi to a supermarket, made a sandwich, took a power nap, and still got on it with time to to make another sandwich. See you in Hawaii!

[Update: I'm about to board the plane. I'll never be this happy to leave San Francisco again in my life probably. Here's a video of me walking through the airport from the Alaska gate toward United. I ran out of space so I only make it about halfway. I'm not trying to trick you or lie to you when I say: this is a huge waste of time to watch.]

Unless you take summer quarter, then it’s four times. Nothing really beats finishing up finals week. Whether you kill your last exam or you wonder after whether you were even studying for the right class, it feels good to be done.

On the bus ride to school today (mad early), I listened in on a conversation between two older men. One of them was just going off about how great his daughter was. Senior in high school, AP classes, good test scores, “the real deal” he said. She applied to Stanford, MIT, Cal Poly, and other top schools. It was interesting at first, but he went on and on and soon I was thinking, “She can’t be that great.” I decided to take a guess at how smart this girl actually is by taking a look at her dad.

This bitch is smart, if my method of judging is half correct. Because I’m pretty sure it was John Hammond. Glasses, hat, cane, and all. I was ready to tell him how much I loved Jurassic Park, but I didn’t want to look dumb since there’s a slight chance that Jurassic Park isn’t real. And that John Hammond doesn’t actually work at a Seattle Children’s hospital these days.

By the by, I’m sitting in the airport, using this ballin-ass $7.95/day connection and trying to get the most of it. I’ll probably hit this up again in San Francisco. I don’t think there’ll be too much from now until then to talk about, except maybe the food I eat. I’m about to eat at Chili’s too!, so there goes like a dollar of my Internet time. But um, it beats starving.

We decided to do it again!

1:00AM – I saw Jayme spit gum into Junior’s hand and then he ate it. It was sort of fresh I think so it’s A-OK.

1:30AM – Drawing pictures. Decide that staying overnight at the library two nights in a row is a bad idea. Decide we’ll stay until 6:00AM.

2:00AM – Decide that 6:00 is a long way to go. Get six ranch snack wraps from Ronald McDonald and call it a night.

Notice how intently Junior is studying. He’s focused man. Then notice that he’s just reppin’ for Pac.

Here are my tips about doing this. There are other guides around and they all start with, “plan ahead and don’t do it if possible.” I agree. But if you’re writing a how-to guide that’s pretty much not helpful advice, because the reader (aka me) obviously hasn’t planned ahead and it’s just discouraging. Ok, here’s my guide:

1.Bring a friend. At best, this will keep you accountable. At worst, you won’t feel as bad procrastinating. Bonus: you’ll have a subject to draw.

2.Bring water. Having to go every hour will keep you awake.

3.Bring some real food. Meaning something where sugar isn’t the main ingredient. I wouldn’t know though, so that’s mostly a guess.

4.Caffeine. If you’re gonna do it up, make sure you have enough for the whole night. Have what’s necessary every few hours rather than all of it at the beginning.

5.Make sure you have time. It’s definitely gonna mess your sleep up for a day or two on top of the first night. It’s not that cool feeling like a zombie.

2:30PM – Got romped by another final.

8:00PM – Hit up Kenmore with Dan, Junior, and Jerry to celebrate the end of exams. Except, oh wait, I have one more! Nothing feels better than gambling away twenty bucks in five minutes. Except this list of things that feels better than handing twenty bucks over to a casino.

I’m at the library with Junior, trying to pull an all-nighter right into our exams. I’ve never done it before, so it’ll be good to see how it goes. We stocked up on nutritional foods to provide the best fuel for this situation. Candy and lots of it.

1:17AM – We’ve eaten a bunch of candy. And a bunch of cookies. And we watched part 1 of the Top 50 Most Spectacular Dunks. Seven hours until the beginning of doomsday. I read a bunch of “how to pull an all-nighter” articles earlier. Most of them re-iterated that it’d be best to not have to in the first place. That’s discouraging and not helpful at all. The best advice is to work 50 minutes and take 10 minute breaks. If I remember, I’ll add more to this in 50 minutes.

4:39AM – Body is breaking down. I’m working on my notesheets. The thing about notesheets is that you always imagine it’ll take 20-30 minutes since it’s just straight copying, but it usually takes a few hours. From 8 to midnight, time went by pretty slow, but after that it’s disappeared quick. A little more than three hours is left. We ate McDonald’s and I gotta give the thumbs up to the chicken snackers aka the mini-KFC twisters. P.S. Junior drooled on his notebook while napping.

7:55AM – Time to go! Twelve hours has never gone by so quick.

Cleveland, Atlanta, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Minnesota, New England, N.Y. Giants, Cincinnati, Washington, Tennessee, San Francisco, Seattle, N.Y. Jets, San Diego, New Orleans, Chicago

This was supposed to be my study break. It was supposed to be an uplifting victory to re-energize so I’d be motivated to dive right back into the books. Except 1) Gonzaga beat the hell out of UW and 2) you can’t have a study break if you haven’t actually started studying.

P.S. Heartbreak Kid has nothing on Bret.

Desmond Howard punt return against Ohio State. The Heisman Pose.

That aim conversation wasn’t supposed to go up here. I decided to write something up for that mistake. And I also decided to add up the totals for the NFL Picks. This is probably going to be random (aren’t they all) and a lot of the topics are out of date. I think of something to write about, then I type three sentences, and then I open a new tab and go on myspace or facebook then two hours later I forget that I was writing something. This is also how studying goes for me. And I’m about to do it again. Be back in a little to finish this.

Black Friday

After the Thanksgiving food coma, we went to the outlets in Marysville for the midnight madness event. That’s a great marketing opportunity (“Go to MMM–Midnight Madness at Marysville!”), but they’re called the Seattle Premium Outlets for whatever reason. Anyway, if you ask me, don’t go to the Midnight Madness event at the Seattle Premium Outlets. We walked into the Nike store first. Pretty much everyone in the store was in line. And pretty much everyone in Washington and Vancouver B.C. was in the store.

We grabbed some stuff in Polo but put it back after standing in line for ten minutes and moving five feet. Do you remember when everyone (except me) started getting cell phones and people were pretty good at the first generation Snake? That’s what the line looked like. Puma, Banana Republic, and Coach had Splash Mountain lines just to enter and I imagine it wasn’t any better inside the store. Sometimes you gotta leave Splash Mountain and settle for Matterhorn. A five minute walk was all it took to get to our Matterhorn–McDonald’s.

We weren’t the only ones affected by Ronald’s slick marketing campaign (shopping makes you hungry, but not as much as rollerblade-basketball!), because guess what? More lines! I’ll let my man Canibus explain.

Wit many lines, more lines than a million pair of Adidas
More lines than the bible quoted from Jesus
More lines than a African herd of zebras

I can’t leave him hanging like that.

Niggaz just ain’t fuckin wit the ‘cannabis seteva’

P.S., I’m pretty sure Dan used to work out in his room listening to this song back in High School.

Snow

It’s a week after, but it was nice to see snow again. What’s not nice is having a frozen face in the morning. Oh and the whole thing with Seattle in a gridlock. I didn’t drive on those days but the bus schedule was nonexistent. What matters in the end is that my midterm on Tuesday got moved to Wednesday. Well, that and an entire day of people slipping and being able to see a 100% fall about once an hour. That’s a wonderful rate.

Oak Harbor Football

I meant to write something before the game about how I’ve been reading the recaps of games every week at work and how great the season’s been. But I left for the game before being able to write that. About the game. Lobbestael is a machine. The highlight for me was him recovering the ball when it was bobbled by a Bothell player on a punt. Oak Harbor’s offense was leagues better. Our defense did the job. And our special teams probably could’ve lost the game by itself if given the chance. Bothell’s band was cool and they have some good fans. But our team took a nice souvenir back to the island.

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