Palisades Plaza

after ben's new year's party, i was up until 7am ish. q called me around 2 to wake me up. at first, i had a bit of a headache, but after a few minutes, it went away. i jumped in the shower and got ready to go to palisades.

on the way to palisades, q and i kept ripping into todd about how he could never be a fighter pilot because of his skill in ikagura and the way he freaks out about everything. we made the joke that planes go eight times as fast as cars, so the margin of error is that much smaller. thus, he would be crashing into everything, such as other planes and clouds. he claimed that it was hard for planes to crash into each other, so q and i countered w/ air traffic controllers, the most stressful job around. overall, it was a very nonsensicle argument.

as we approached the entrance to the parking deck, we saw cops who setup check points to enter the deck. todd was a little worried because we had a bottle of grey goose in the back seat and another bottle of absolut in the trunk. i daftly hit the goose under q's seat just in case. i wasn't worried about the bottle in the trunk. it was just odd to see checkpoints setup considering it was after new years. we had come to palisades a few days before christmas, and it was a lot busier than. so it was kind of odd to expect a bomb threat in the new year. todd made the comment that it was after september 11th. well, so was a few days before christmas.

the first store we hit up was the lego store. we were enthralled by the display windows of thousands of tiny shiny blocks. you would expect the lego store to have every single lego set on the market right now. sure, they had some of the more obscure sets, such as the snowspeeder model and the star destroyer model, but overall, they really didn't have that much. q and i were captivated by lego clone soldiers. we asked one of the clerks if they sold just lego men. unfortunately, they didn't. it would be so hot if they sold just the little men. i would build up an army of lego clones.

q and i were looking at some of the star wars sets, and we saw these small tiny ones that were just so cute. they were tiny tiny star wars vehicles, some not even two inches high. the one that i thought was the best was the at-st and snowspeeder. you essentially get an entire playset in a small little box. i decided that i could afford it since i would be working soon. q really liked it, and picked up one as well. surprisingly, we spent a really long time in the lego store looking at the different products and not really doing anything at all.

since the lego store was on the same level as the food court, we decided to stop by arby's to say hi to mr. soh. to our surprise, we saw mrs. soh there too! she told us to come around back. we said hi, and she offered us food. but it was still pretty early in the day, so we weren't hungry. not to turn down her hospitality, we just got some drinks. we felt a bit awkward and out of place standing behind the counter.

afterwards, we went to cvs to look for some of my manicure products. but they didn't have anything other than a nail file. i figured, i could just wait and buy it all together.

we stopped by ebx of course to see what gamecube games they had. all i wanted to see was the new ridge racer box.

we also stopped by lindt chocolate. the entire store was mostly truffles. they even sold individual truffles. i wanted to pick up a hazlenut for myself, but q decided to get a bag of hazelnut, so i would just get one from him. but i never got it.

we went up to the top level and saw all these people in line for the 4D movie. we didn't know the facination w/ such movies. if it weren't for the gimic, the movie would be pretty lousy.

we dropped into games workshop, the makers of warhammer 40k. i felt really out of place amoung all these nerds. just something about tiny figures and tons of dice and books out just seems kind of weird to me. i appreciate the skill that it takes to paint one of these figures, and soem of them were really well painted. but just watching them play, it didn't look like it was much fun. it seemed more trying than anything else.

we were pretty much done w/ the mall. sure, there were plenty of stores we didn't hit up, but we didn't really have any goals anyway. we had already picked up our little lego toys, so there really wasn't anything else. i had no need for clothes shopping because i would be working at banana republic soon. so we went to dave and busters to check it out. as we were walking in, q and i were talking about the battletech system at some of the arcades in the city. we really wanted to play it and were hoping d&b had one. as we walked in, we saw the huge sign for battletech in the back. we made a beeline for it. since this was our first time at d&b's, we didn't really know what was going on. apparently, you need "credits" which you have to have a card for. we walked around the d&b floor, looking for the dispenser to get said card. eventually, we saw the stand which was at the entrance.

q picked up a 25$ card, and we figured that we could just use his card instead of getting our own and pay him back later. we thought about playing the battletech game, but there was only the three of us. if we played, it would just be seven minutes of me and q pounding on todd. as we watched some of the videos of people playing, it looked like the game lacked the ability to strafe, which is key to such a game.

instead, we went to play pump, which is the 5 button verson of dance dance revolution. todd played the first round, but did terrible, ending w/ a D. i played the next two, scoring an A on the first one, and a B on the second.

q and i are both really into shooting games, as we have mad hack skills at paintball. shooting games are right up our ally because of our aim and reflexes. todd played some time crisis 3 w/ q, but died really early. for someone who likes hoarding things, todd used up a lot of his special weapons really quickly and early. todd's aim was terrible and his reaction was really slow so he died pretty quickly. i played his continue and just tearing it up when i started. i made the mistake of holding the gun like a paintball gun, so my wrist got prety tired pretty fast.

after we finished crisis 3, it was near 6pm est. todd had mentioned earlier that he had to be home by 6:30pm est. but since we were having a pretty good time, he said that we could get back at 7pm est instead. we decided, that in the meantime, we should pick up some food. we went down to arby's, at first, a little embarressed and awkward to ask for food, knowing that mr. and mrs. soh wouldn't let us get away w/o taking some. we spent several minutes, deciding who should approach, finally deciding that we should all just go up at the same time. q and i both had beef and cheddar, while todd had an roast beef. whenever i get food from the soh's, i always feel awkward because they're constantly offering us more when the amount that they give us is much too generous as it is.

before we left, q wanted to pick up another mini star wars lego toy. while we were looking at them, todd told us that he no longer had to get home. now that we no longer had to rush, we took our time. we spent a little more time in the lego store before deciding to go back to d&b's.

at d&b's we played a few more shooters, before we started playing this one game that spit out tickets. now that we had some tickets, we wanted more. we played random games, not getting much. as we walked around, i saw this one girl playing one of those coin shovel games. i looked at her feet and saw a huge pile of tickets just piling up higher and higher. she seemed content w/ the amount of tickets that she received and got up. i suggested that q play the game. in the span of about maybe 15 to 20 minutes if even, we collected about 700 points worth of tickets. we had tried some of the other similar machines, but they weren't as good. we actually emptied the machine of tickets. after the guy added more tickets to the machine, it spit out a few more.

w/ our huge pile of tickets, we went up to the prize section to take a look at what they had available. as usual, such places didn't have much in terms of prizes. uncontent, q added some more money to his card and played some other games. most of the other games that we tried required too much skill or random skill. we eventually got tired of all the flashing lights and the sound of coins dropping and dinging and left.


milkshake

the whole day, we were waiting for kelis's milkshake to come on the radio. we had commented on it on the drive to palisades, and now, on the way back, we revisited our quest in earnest. we had to drop off todd because he had some work to do. it wasn't until we were almost to ben's place that the song finally came on. we cranked it up, started moving to the beat, and sang as much as we knew. it was good.


ben's

on the way to ben's, q and i had made a wager about who could their lego toys fastest. i uped the wager, challenging him to build it sans instructions save the box art. so the first thing we did was we set out to crush each other. we spent at least 20 minutes trying to figure out how this thing came together. eventually, we decided to just give up. we compared our progress, and although ours were pretty similar, i officially won. go engineers!

nancy, q's girl called. q told her our quest for milkshake and she told him what "milkshake" meant. when he first told me, i didn't want to believe it because i liked the song so much. to give it such a dirty connotation really ruined the song for me. alas, after thinking about it and reading the lyrics, it was clear that she was right. milkshake was about booby shaking.

we called up brian, who came over to play some magic. i was having a few issues w/ my laptop, so while we waited for it to boot, we played a quick round of regular multiplayer. i played my cycling deck, ben played enchantress, q played gay fish, and brian played wake. m first target was ben because he was the only one w/ disenchant capabilities. it took me awhile, but i managed to get all my combo pieces into play w/ a little help from q's standstills. they let me build up my mana as i cycled my decree of justice for more and more soldiers each time. i already had my library of leng out, so i was in a fine position. once i had was setup, i killed ben in one turn. the next turn i killed q w/ 20 some odd damage. brian conceded in the face of infinite cycling and astral slide. i removed a ton of his angel tokens from his hard cast decree of justice. left w/ only an eternal angel that would never actually deal any damage, it was over.

the next few games were uneventful for me. now that they knew what i could do, they wouldn't let me put my combo together. it didn't help that q switched to rock which was full of pernicious deeds. brian also dropped two disenchants into his deck. we played two rounds of chaos before calling it a night. the last, brian won due to q's timely death chaos. if he hadn't started packing up, he would have been alive. but as it was, he chose tranquility and blew up my combo. i couldn't find my astral slide, and died.


sapphire

i get home from ben's and from the door, i can look into the kitchen. earlier in the day, my bottle of bombay sapphire gin was sitting on the counter. originally, i had it in a bag next to the love seat so that no one would accidentally kick it over. when i saw it on the counter, i figured my mom put it there to keep it out of the way. so when i didn't see the noticeable shape/glint of the bottle, i feared the worst. after looking through the recycle bottles, i found it. so one of two things could have happened. my mom got plastered w/ some of her friends, or she let the sink get plastered. either way, she should have talked to me first before going and messing w/ my stuph. i'm 22, it's not like i need to be treated like a kid w/ my stuph being taken away when i'm not noticing. the bottle was about 60% full too.

it's nost so much the loss of the alcohol or the monetary loss because the bottle wasn't too expensive. it was just the distrust that my mom has for me. it makes me sad that she can't talk to me about this stuph first w/o going and doing something rash. what if the bottle didn't belong to me? it's not her place to say what i can and can't drink. especially when i don't drink that often, nor do i have the money to afford any form of alcohol normally.

it turned out that my mom used the gin to soak raisins in. supposedly, the result will help you sleep and is really good for your ankle. regardless, my fears are allayed.