efozzie

I cannot believe half of 2006 is over.

I was revisiting my New Years Goals tonight just to check in and see where I was at in accomplishing my goals.

Completed:
2. Go camping in a national park

I’m going to strike out the “national” and put “state.”

5. Meet new people
7. Mend past half-relationships
8. Go on more quality dates with quality people

Yes, yes and yes. It’s true.

In Progress:
1. Do something outdoorsy at least once a month

February – Hiking at Montebello Open Space Preseve
Snowboarding
March – NYC (that counts! I did a lot of walking…haha)
June – Surfing
July – Camping at Sonoma Coast State Beach
January, April and May – I swear I did something, but I just didn’t do a good job of keeping track. Or maybe I didn’t do anything outdoorsy? haha

6. Read at least 10 new books in 2006

I’ve read 3 so far: Middlesex, Letters to Montgomery Clift, All Marketers are Liars

9. Play at least one sport per month

I’ve been pretty good about this by playing tennis with Sal, surfing, snowboarding, and hiking.

11. Find a hobby

Surfing might just have to be it. It was so dang fun.

12. Love more

I think I’ve been doing a good job of showing love. 😉

Incomplete:
3. Run across the Golden Gate Bridge

The bridge is only 1.5 miles long, 3 miles roundtrip… I’ll do it soon.

4. Cuss less

I don’t think this one’s going to work out this year. Haha.

10. Finish Part 2 of my book, The Prediction

Again, I might have to table this…

So far so good. 6 more months till completion.

I like goals.

I didn’t.

Until the very last minute before 4th of July weekend. Sonoma Coast State Beach was literally the LAST available California campsite on www.ReserveAmerica.com.

The last!

Everything else had been booked days, weeks, probably months in advance. Of course. I should have known not to last-minute plan for this camping trip.

[Note to self: Plan ahead. Make reservations further in advance.]

Alas, busy lives lead to procrastination, and there I was on www.ReserveAmerica.com Thursday, June 29, franctically searching for an open spot that wasn’t designated for handicap access.

Yes, it was spontaneous, and surprisingly it turned out really well. My brother came along, and Karla was supposed to, but uncharacteristically, she flaked the day that we left. Spontaneously, again, I had invited my tita Cecille, tito Roly, and cousins from Tracy the day before–I had a feeling Karla would flake. And in the very last minute, they also decided to come, so they met me and my brother at the campsite the evening of.

Check it out:

“Tide pooling” at Bodega Head with Carlo. Did you know that “tide pooling” is an officially sanctioned fun activity by the California State Parks Department?

Francis taking a picture at Bodega Head

A camping trip would not be complete without vienna sausages and spam

Family Pic at Armstrong Redwood Grove. The redwoods were only about 15 miles east of the beach, so we had to take a trip to hike through them.

StartingBloc thinks so. StartingBloc is a nonprofit org that is dedicated to providing young professionals and college students the training necessary to drive social, economic, and environmental change through private sector careers.

Sounds like a grown up version of BUILD.

Yesterday was my Year End Review… and guess who got a raise and a bonus???

That’s right. Me!
😉

Celebrating by sleeping tonight. Haha and a day off today.

adj.
1 : influenced, moved, or guided by Third World country immigrant behavior
2 : Affected by cultural stylings or nuances from developing countries

That big wooden spoon and fork on your wall is so Third World Inspired

Why don’t your parents like using the postal service?
Oh because they’re Third World Inspired.

My sister visited us for her birthday and we had a blast. I’d never hung out with my siblings in that capacity in a long time so it was so much fun. I’m glad she got to visit.

This will be the first summer for me as a full-time employed man.

Perks:
-For the next 2 months I have Fridays off!
-We get to were casual clothes every day (i.e. shorts and flip flops)
-Exactly 22 work days (not counting staff retreats, College Summit, and other events)

Bummers:
-No kids around to hang out with
-TONS of summer projects to finish before the school year starts again
-Exactly 22 work days finish those summer projects

I love working in this nonprofit because I get to be as creative about the program as I want to be, but that also holds a huge responsibility to make sure that the program that I am running is perfect. We’ll see how all the planning goes this summer.

Summer trips planned:
Los Angeles – June 15 – 18
Camping – June 29 – July 4
Vegas – Hopefully sometime before the summer ends

I’ve been leaving this out of my blog for a while out of fear for any legal ramifications, but I feel that now I can safely assume that everything is fine and this information should be OK to post.

Several weeks ago, my brother took Utada, my beautiful Honda Element, out on a joyride without telling me. Actually this happened at 4 am on the morning that he was supposed to drive me to my office in East Palo Alto (about 35 miles away from where we live in San Francisco) because at 6 am I was supposed to be on a bus headed to LA with 25 of my kids. So here I was waking up at 4:30 am to get ready to go on our LA College Tour, and I go to find my brother but he wasn’t in his room. I call him and he gives me the horrifying news that a De Soto taxi ran a red light and hit him on the passenger side.

Thankfully, and I praise the Lord, no one was injured. However, Utada was not driveable, and I still had to be in East Palo Alto by 6:00 am. An $85-taxi ride later, I make it to East Palo Alto on time to go on the 4-day trip.

I realized that there was no use being upset with my brother because:
A) He would just play the I’m-upset-that-you’re-upset-at-me game, and would nullify my reason for being upset
B) Getting hit by the taxi wasn’t necessarily his fault, except for the fact that he was not allowed to use my car, and if he hadn’t been driving around, it never would have happened
C) Even if I got upset over it, that would change anything and would not help the situation.

So I decided to just let him handle everything from taking care of the insurance to taking care of the repairs. And since he’s a grown-ass adult, I figured he would be able to take care of everything.

Well, all I have to say is thank the Good Lord for insurance because if it weren’t for AAA, I don’t know who would’ve paid $8,500 for the repairs it took to fix my crumpled side doors, broken front axel and everything else.

And now after a few weeks of having my repaired car back, it doesn’t even look like anything happened at all to it! Good job Matt’s Auto Body.

Anyway, I’m ranting now, but I thought I’d just give you a slice of what I’ve been having to deal with in the past few weeks… and hopefully you’ll forgive me for not writing in my blog recently.

More to come soon.