Another busy weekend goes by. I was off on Friday so Art, Ed and I went back up to Bear Mt. From Saturday, we got some $10 off coupons for Sunday-Fridays and got to use them. The weather was nice and warm, and we got to the resort before the lifts started running. We had a great day and I ended up doing about 21 runs before calling it a day at 3 in the afternoon. Returning home on Friday, my HID conversion kit came in the mail so I spent roughly 20 minutes making the install to my car.
A few of us went and saw Alice in Wonderland on Saturday for which I felt was a better movie than the last Depp/Burton Wonka experience. Sunday was spent at ValleyCon trying win little plaques for model building. Unfortunately, my camera stopped working, I had put some batteries out of a brand new pack of batteries, and after testing my camera just now, apparently one or more of the batteries were bad. Oh well, lesson learned is to bring more batteries.
This was the first time I actually got to a ski resort and had to wait for the lifts to open. I’ve gone down completely untouched snow, but never have I tried out untouched groomed areas. With the warm weather, and lack of snow in the last few days, everything was a bit on the icy side. A completely different experience from the last time I was here which was 6 days prior. Still, it’s kinda cool to be the first one down the runs.
On the first lift up, while getting near the top, Ed decides it a good idea to try getting off the lift before getting to the download point. One would have guessed that by this time, he’d know when to get off the damn thing. We soon separated even after trying to keep together. No biggie, we set up a decent meet up time and location. The visibility is excellent, which can be a bad thing as we’re more brave when attempting to do stupid things. For example, Art takes a jump and ends up on his face and wrist. And we believe that it’s sprained; but he’ll go check it out to see if it’s worse than we think.
Art shakes it off and we continue. We hit some trees, but this proves to be a little much as Art’s running on a brand new board, boots, and bindings; as well as his injured wrist; so he decides to stick to the groomed runs. I do one more run down through the trees and I get my ass handed to me as it’s fairly icy and I’m hitting lovely little bits of tree roots and other small immobile objects buried just below the surface and work to put me on my ass as soon as either of my skis come into contact.
We meet up for lunch at noon and again have some lovely Chinese leek dumplings that my mom had picked up for me the previous weekend. We had finished off the ones we made on our last trip. Ed told us of his bashing of his head against the hard packed snow, for which he may or may not have gotten a concussion, and Art relays his story of hurting his wrist. Define irony – Ed has wrists guards but no helmet; Art has a helmet but no wrist guards. I’m not without my own story of folly. While getting on the lift with Art, I lifted my leg to tuck my polls under my leg as I normally do while riding the lift so that I don’t have to hold them – but as I executed the standard motion, my right ski dipped into the snow and WHAM! I was off the lift, tumbled face first into the snow as the lift moves past me and Art looks on questioningly asking if I was okay. I get up, grab my ski, and head past the lift behind the one I had just been ejected off; put my right ski back on, and sit down on the chair two behind Art. Good thing it was a Friday, early, and not crowded, so the embarrassment factor was low. I did get to deal with the folks on the lift I joined that enjoyed my fun little early escape from the lift.
After our quick refuel session, we headed back up, and ended up splitting up. Art hangs at the terrain park, Ed continues with what he was doing, and I run off chair 8 for the rest of the day just doing speed runs down the mountain. Towards the end of the day, the snow was getting pretty slushy, but more so at the bottom of the runs with all the noobs. Up at the top the bored ski patrol build an igloo. The views are pretty good, and a very nice contrast to the last trip.
We all meet up at 3, and get down to the car to load up. While getting out of my gear, I turn to hear and see Ed flailing his arms, bumping into the car parked next to us, then slamming into the pavement. Wondering what the hell he was doing that caused him to fall, he points to the plastic bags on the ground that he was attempting to catch and keep from falling onto the ground. Massive fail on all accounts.
The drive down was fairly uneventful, except the fun it is to watch Art use his left arm to help his right hand to shift. Getting home, my HID conversion kit came, so I have something fun to do even though it only takes about 20 minutes.
My old tC had retrofitted HID lights with projectors. The pre2008 tC headlights were reflectors and adding HID bulbs just look odd and only end up working to blind drivers as the light beams aren’t focused. The 2008 and on models for the tC have projectors; so an HID conversion is fairly simple. The kit comes with ballast and everything wired together. The new lights have a boob and the projectors are very nice.
My original lights are yellowish in color and the cut off is very distinct due to the projectors.
The new bulbs are a little longer than the original bulbs.
When the lights first turn on, they’re fairly blue, then it lightens up to a nice ice blue color. The cut off is the same as the original lights so no blinding other drivers while brightening my night driving significantly and also pushing my car closer to the ricer side of things.
ValleyCon was a little uneventful as I don’t have any pictures yet. Dan, Brandon, and Angel took pictures so when I get them, I’ll update this post with the link. I was lucky to pick up a second place for my Velvet. The GM Sniper Custom and Cosette didn’t get anything. Oh well, there’s always the next contest.
Anger management…
This is a venting rant, I recommend this get skipped to avoid the inane rantings of a mad man.
I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting easily set off of late by the smallest and simplest of things. They’re not without valid reasoning, but still, I’m just letting my anger get the better of me. This weekend I had a couple of these episodes in varying levels of intensity. Looking back, I think it all started with the plan to see Alice in Wonderland. I set up a time to see the movie at 1:40. Originally, I was just going to head over to Irvine earlier to eat and just hang out, but I ended up going to lunch with Helen and Art. A call from Helen was made to Christis and Terry to see if they wanted to join us for lunch, and they let her know that they were planning on meeting at my house between 12:30-1 so that they could carpool. Huh, this was fucking news to me, but whatever, I was with Helen and having lunch so I wasn’t going to be on my way to Irvine any time soon. Being that it’s opening weekend, IMAX, I figured it would be a pretty good idea to not be as late. Lunch finishes and I get home around 12:30. They’re not here, so I spend the time cleaning up the house for the later event that was happening there. At 1:15, I open my garage so that I can take off without the very late couple only to find that they’re walking up to the fucking garage. I don’t leave the house until 1:20. No apologies from either for being late, just an lame ass excuse of bad traffic. We pile in and I rush down to Irvine, and get there right at about 1:40. Being IMAX, there are no fucking annoying previews, so the movie just starts up right on time. Thanks to the two fuckwads for being late, I miss about 10 minutes of the beginning. I should have just left the motherfuckers when they weren’t at my house by 1:01. Lesson for next time. I was pretty fucking annoyed with the idiots so I just walked into the theater and quickly took the first seat I could find that was half way decent. I think it was a good thing that I didn’t see the two douchbags or my movie experience would have been completely ruined. Enjoying the movie calmed me down and I got to forgetting about being late. No need to revisit my displeasure, I’ll just take off. Hell, I was never informed that they were meeting me in the first place. Even if I know next time, fuck’em, they’re grown adults, they could use to learn a little lesson about reality.
So later that day, I get home and clean the house in preparation for the evening’s events; and after cleaning up, Art and I had gone off to the gym for a quick workout. Upon returning home, and a disrespectful and inconsiderate douche bag thought he was entitled to park in my goddamn driveway blocking me entrance to my garage. I wigged out a bit and just ended up squeezing my car into my garage while making as much noise with my engine as possible. I mean, WTF, some people just don’t have any fucking respect. They feel that they’re entitled, that they’re better than everyone, that they don’t have to play by rules of the FUCKING HOST’S residence, who has been nothing but helpful and accommodating. FUCK this, my patience, my hospitality, etc etc is just starting to wear thin. In all honesty, if I didn’t give two shits about my car, I would have rammed the fucker’s car off my drive way after putting it in my space in the garage. I have done much worse things to people’s cars who have show the same level of respect for when even parking next to me in public. I still kind of regret at least not smashing out a goddamn window or something.
I’ve definitely gotten more control over my temper flares, and logic and reason rule my mind fairly quickly after my outbursts as I realize I don’t want to completely ruin the poor asshole’s dinner night, nor cause an unnecessary scene. After getting into the house, I changed out of my clothes, calmed myself down, then headed back out and offered up my help for the cooking. And that pretty much ended that issue. I’m still miffed about the whole incident, and knowing this fucking tool of a human who thinks his shit don’t stink, it’ll probably happen again. It was his night, I didn’t want to make things worse, but I just patiently await the day that his ass releases it’s wonderfully tight hold on his head and he learns to be a half way decent human being. We are all like this when we’re young; and for a select few of us, we eventually learn. Granted, taking up my driveway is a little issue, but it’s more of a statement of attitude that I’ve tired of, and just sick of it wearing down my hospitality and fucking patience.
But move on to Valleycon. A deal is announced at the Brookhurst hobbies table, for 50% off retail prices. I pick up a nice 1/32 scale Zero kit from tamiya. And while running my credit card through the archaic credit card sliding machine, the fat minimum wage earning fucktard of a shit decides to just slam my credit card with absolute reckless abandon and I see my card get jammed into the machine. Mr I-haven’t-seen-my-penis-since-I-was-ten hands me my card and I look at the bend and tear in my card. REALLY? YOU FUCKING FAT FUCK. I quickly let the shit head know that he’s damaged my goddamn card, for which he just utters a quick, oops, oh well. Really? He finally gives me a half-assed apology and dismisses me. He’s visibly annoyed with me, like it was my goddamn fault his dinosaur like arms screwed up. So I step a little bit away from the table and audibly vent to Angel and Dan. The fat fuckwad hears me and gets up and in my face. He’s fucking huge, what, he’s gonna hit me? Fucking asshole. I’m venting, fuck you; sit back down and get back to selling fucking plastic kits you fat son of a bitch. Fuck brookhurst, this Zero will be my last purchase for those fucks. I could continue to blast away at that oversized $10/an hour virgin, but I figure he’s cursed enough. He’ll probably die of a massive coronary whilst trying to swallow some sort of processed food; still a pathetic minimum wage virgin.
Regardless, that was the last of my three little episodes. All little issues, but all dealing with the idiocy that is people. God I do I hate people. I’m gonna have to return to being a hermit again. My goddamn patience is just thin as tissue paper now and I need some time to rebuild my tolerance. Who the fuck knows, I could probably just need to get laid, just recenter myself, or take myself off the grid for a short period of time. I’ve noticed that little things are getting me agitated and triggering my temper more often than they logically and reasonably should. This is taking me back to my youth where little idiotic things would just set me off. Maybe this just goes to show that we never really ever change who we are, just that we have a better understanding of ourselves as we age. Or maybe, I should just limit my exposure to the fuckwad morons of this world. I need a fucking reset button.
