Regrets

Four-elevenths of the reason this site hasn't been updated since June 2nd is because I spent a long weekend in Southern California, visiting family. As is always the case when I hang out with my mom's side, I had a great time with great people. It was truly the best span of 4 days that I've enjoyed in a long, long time.

I do, however, have a few regrets about the weekend:

1) Lynn, Tasha, Angela, and I wasted most of Saturday night trying to look for bars in the town of Corona, instead of going out somewhere in Orange County, or at least by Tasha's neck of the woods in Long Beach. Corona, for lack of a better word, sucked. It's just sad when a town that shares its name with Mexico's greatest export is so dead at night that by the time you've realized that all the bars there exist in the form of 8 by 6 shacks, it's already 1 o'clock in the morning, leaving you no other option but to stop by a 7-Eleven to pick up a 12-pack of Bud Lite to bring back home.

2) Aunt Lan administered an IQ test to me on Friday night, and although I didn't complete it, I'm pretty sure now that I'm not a genius. Sure, I can recreate patterns with blocks fairly quickly and I can repeat any 8-digit number perfectly backwards, but if you bust out one of those picture-word association things, well, Corky from Life Goes On might fare better than me on those.

Anyway, I'll tell you what exactly I regretted. My aunt had to stop me halfway through the test because dinner was ready, but she fully intended to resume the test with me later on. A couple times while we were eating, I excused myself to go to the "bathroom" -- which actually was me running downstairs to furiously memorize the answer key to the second half of the IQ test. Unfortunately, some other things came up that night and Aunt Lan never got to administer the rest of the test.

I regret not being able to fool my entire family into thinking that I'm the smartest 'tard since Rain Man.

3) I should have learned how to drive a stick shift in my younger years. I looked like a damn fool out there trying to ride Uncle Ken's motorcycle and refusing to go past the first gear and stalling the bike every 10 seconds because I'd panic at the sight of a stop sign and let go of the clutch and accelerator, as well as any trace of machismo.

4) I didn't pack any underwear for the trip, so I wore the same pair of boxers for 4 straight days. Unless you have a need for homemade smelling salts, you're not going to want to sniff my boxers.