moving day catharsis

this morning when i drove out from the peaceful residential area near harvard square i understood why annual moving is such a necessity to me. even though having to rent a uhaul, packing mostly the night before, and recently, moving for three or four days straight in little trips every hour, is such a pain in the ass, it is a cathartic event. my old apartment is almost completely empty of my belongings. it's a way to clean up your life. maybe, to wipe clean all the surfaces, and leave an old room empty, and to eventually fill a new empty room. i dropped off steven at his bed and breakfast and the summer ended. i left behind all the chaos of subletting, packing, scheduling, making things workout and ends meet.

maybe it's also a bit different this year. for the next couple of weeks i don't have to worry about unpacking any of my old life. instead, it's going to sit in cardboard boxes and black trash bags in a basement, and i will probably drift on the graces of friends and my car. it's not nearly as a complete severing of worldly possessions as the epic trip of self discovery of our friend, the supersalsaman, zebo, but it does feel liberating to have nothing but an empty room and a futon to sit in. maybe i'll just throw away the boxes when i get my new place.

and what of next year? if i end up buying a house, i will have a place that i could nest down. but i dont think i'd do that. i can almost see my three year plan: i'd get tired of living in a small house in east cambridge, and move out next year to a large empty studio (much like 456 putnam, one of my favorite homes) and rent it to people. then the following year i'd get tired of boston and move back to san diego, leaving behind a mortgage (or investment). then i'd become lonely again in sd despite the surf and the fantastic korean bbqs, and finally move to sf. but there it begins again, the initial apartment that isn't as ideal, the upgrade that is financially sound, then the househunting.

without all the chaos, life would become stagnant. the reward of sacrificing a few days in your life before september 1 to reorganize, rebuild, and clean it up, is a calm, fresh feeling of finally having a place of your own (again).

interesting servsafe facts

I've been taking a training course to become ServSafe certified so I can work at a bartending job. Of course those training videos are silly and just a time sink. alot of the facts you learn either have to do with laws that usually go in one ear and out the other, or are facts you learn from older drinkers as a freshman in college. But i discovered some interesting facts that seem to go against popular thought, or have a weird reasoning behind it:

1) given equal conditions (body height, amount of alcohol in a drink) a fat person will have a higher BAC than a skinny person. apparently it's because alcohol will not pass through fat and thus will stay in the bloodstream while a skinny person will have more alcohol absorbed into the muscles.

2) an emotional person will have a higher BAC. this is because their blood is diverted to the muscles, so the lower bloodflow causes alcohol to build up in the stomach and NOT be absorbed in the blood. this causes them to continue to drink because they are not drunk. they, when bloodflow increases, they become more drunk.

i don't know how scientific or realistic these explanations are. but they are part of servsafe and as long as you test right, it counts.

3) how to read a license:
a - a driver's license number is always 1 letter followed by 8 numbers
b - the DOB always overlaps a ghost photo (a smaller copy of the photo)
c - the state seal overlaps photo and ghost photo
d - the state seal must be repeated in a pattern that changes color when angled (not present on MA license???)

epic surf

hurricane bill is hitting this weekend. that's the one weekend i had free to go surfing. perfect timing, or disaster?

i looked at a few surf forecast websites. surfline actually says "sunday forecast: EPIC. SURF: 10-15 ft. - 2-3 times overhead and epic conditions." this scares me just a little. even saturday conditions, 3 ft overhead, would have been terrifying for me.

the nantasket swell info says that a 2 pm, there are shoulder height waves (3.3ft waves). and the chart goes from a bright red to a calm green color at that point. i am a bit more confident from this website's forecast.

today's nantasket cam shows a very calm, bright sunny day in nantasket. what will it look like saturday?

sand art

damn

MIT Salsa Club Bon Voyage Social

MIT Salsa Club Bon Voyage Social

business cards

I got my bartending license from drinkmaster yesterday. i feel so empowered, independent, and entrepreneurial. i am now legally allowed to get people drunk for pay! but not only that, it gives me a drive to start looking for gigs. before, i could have looked for gigs, but it's much harder to go to a bar, restaurant, or even a private party, and say "i have lots of experience, bartending at my frat." but now it's like i can present them with a little business card that says "Bobby Ren, bartender" and they'll take it with much more confidence.

and this business card is awesome. i'm willing to bet, though, that almost every bartender who is new to the business has a similar one, and every old bartender has their own custom made one. or they just dont care anymore and get jobs through connections.



and one other thing i realized. craigslist is like a MUD or MMORPG quest board. you just have to go after as many gigs postings as you can, and eventually you'll level up. when you think of it that way, a job can be awesome. i tried to apply that feeling to a regular job, ie projects, but it just isnt the same when you're not looking at a one time "quest" with a specific payoff.

makeshift lunches

i have very little food in my fridge because i havent gone to haymarket recently. so to finish the rest of my food to prevent it from spoiling, and because i'm also out of costco canned soup, i've made two really really tasty salads. i'm completely over using salad dressing. you don't need it with these salads.

wednesday: avocado, bean and egg salad

• 1/2 head lettuce, chopped up


• 1 avocado, cubed


• 1 roma tomato, diced


• red kidney beans, white chickpeas


• 1 hard boiled egg


• alfalfa sprouts

thursday: tuna and hummus with corn salsa

• 1/2 head lettuce, chopped


• 1 can starkist tuna


• unflavored hommus


• trader joe's corn salsa


• 1/2 can of diced tomatoes and green chilies


• shredded sharp cheddar

for both of these i just ate them all mixed up in the gladware i brought it in. today i also had a tortilla so the first part of my lunch was a wrap.