Savor a happy day...

...like a glass of fine wine.

Thursday was a great day, I might even dare to say perfect day... thank God. I can't remember the last time I've had a day that was all around... good.

Shiv came early in the morning to pick me up from my uncle's house and she drove us out all the way to Santa Cruz. It was a long drive, but it was worth it... the weather was mild (not too hot or cold) and she showed me around the boardwalk area which was a sort of carnival / amusement park area - rides, those cheesy games with cheap prizes, arcades, etc.

She told me she hadn't visited here since high school, so we rode the biggest rollercoaster in the park - the Big Dipper. Standing in line, we were in the middle of a group of little Hispanic kids (probably 3rd or 4th graders0 all speaking excitedly in a mixture of English and Spanish... I could see Siobhan smiling as she was listening to their conversations, since between the two of us, she's still the only one fluent in Spanish, haha. The rollercoaster was a lot of fun, lots of yelling with the kids... where else in life can you go and just scream like a maniac and not get stared at?

After the rollercoaster we ate lunch - corndogs, garlic fries, and lemonade. Yum.

I think we both ate a lot, so instead of going on more rides, we decided to sit on the beach. The beach wasn't mindblowing or anything, but it was pleasant. It wasn't very crowded or noisy, so it was more peaceful than your typical Seattle visit to Alki, which is always swarming with people on a sunny day. Shiv dragged me out to the tide, but my weak feet didn't like the cold water... after all, it wasn't that hot out. We went back and just sat for awhile, playing around by making a sand castle with a moat using an empty cup from lunch to help dig out sand and shape the sand castle towers.

We probably could have just laid there on the beach all day, but Shiv had to pick up her Dad at work at 3:00, so we left the beach and went on one final ride - bumper cars. The bumper cars were kinda weak there, not very fast and you're only allow to go one way (boo, no head-on collisions!). I must have chosen the European Kia of bumper cars because not only did I have to sit on the right side (the accelerator pedal was on the far right), it had the saddest engine ever - on parts of the track it would just die and I'd be stuck there. Of course Shiv had no qualms about ramming my car from behind while it was at a dead stop to help me get going... haha.

Leaving Santa Clara, we went picked up Shiv's Dad and had a light dinner at her house with her parents, her grandma, and her younger sister. Besides laughing a lot at how Shiv and her sister Jaime complete each other's sentences / borrow each other's isms (YO, waddup, YES! with fist clutched), I got to watch some home videos of her dancing in high school in a production of "West Side Story"... fun stuff. Oh yeah, and I took a power nap on the couch too... I'm old. =)

Now if the day ended there, I would still be feeling as good as I do now. But there was more incident-free fun!

Night time, Shiv and I met up with all the NorCal IIStix / Chopstix people for sushi at San Mateo. It was a lot of fun, the sushi (and sake) was great. It was fun mostly because 75% of the people at dinner were people I've never met in person before... I've only known them via online on the message board. After dinner, we hit up a place for boba, sat around, and talked. I got my old standby (almond milk tea with lychee jelly) and half the others followed suit, heh.

Everybody was totally cool, so once again I can say I'm continuing my record of meeting generally normal people off the Internet... haha. Extra props to Kingway for organizing the gig and for Jeanie for hooking me up with a ride back to my uncle's house in the speedy Isuzu. Thanks goodness I took that little walkabout on Wednesday around the area or I dun think Jeanie could have driven me back, haha.

So yeah... it was a good day.

I guess it was that much more enjoyable since these past 18 months, I've pretty much just kept hoping for the best, but kept getting the worst. Nothing tends to color ones perspective of the world than getting repeatedly shafted by random, uncontrollable circumstances.

Now that waters of my little life are looking to calm down a little bit, I think it's helped me to gain a little bit more perspective on things (hopefully). When things in life happen that hurt, and they keep happening, you start to expect that it'll always happen - hence my cynicism. Not that I've lived the worst life possible for a human being to live, but I think I've taken more than my share of hard knocks. Yet when you get caught up in everything that's wrong with your life, you forget about what's right.

I should be less forgetful. Christians I think are especially vulnerable because it's easy for us to get hyped about what we percieve Christian life to be when we forget that Jesus, his disciples, and many other "holy" folks in the Bible lived very difficult lives - heck, 11 of the 12 disciples got martyred. Ouch. Yeah, I should be less forgetful.

I'm blessed with a soulmate who loves me deeply and she sees the best in me even when I can't see it in myself. I have family who never leaves me behind like my uncle who's willing to give me a place to crash for a week on short notice. I have friends who did everything in their power to help me find jobs, just keep busy, and keep me sane in the meantime. Most of all, I have a Savior who loves me and calls me His own even when I choose intentionally to ignore Him, even hate Him.

Lots of good things to remember. I need more days like this to help remind me not to be such a grumpy bastard.

Damn, this was a long entry. I guess I have to make up for the pages of stuff I've written when I've been unhappy.
posted by G at 3:05 AM   |

in?scrip?tion (n-skrip-shun)n.
1. The act or an instance of inscribing.
2. Something, such as the wording on a coin, medal, monument, or seal, that is inscribed.
3. A short, signed message in a book or on a photograph given as a gift.
4. The usually informal dedication of an artistic work.
5. Jeremiah 31:33