Goodnight world

1:30 am and I fall back into my freshly laundered sheets

starve a vampire

This morning I donated blood for the first time in 2 years and for the first time in a truck. I was pleased to find that my resting heart rate is 63 bpm despite my sedentary Floridian lifestyle. They (OneBlood) had a curious device that rocked the bag of blood back and forth as it fattened and was mixed with anticoagulant, like a baby rocking in a cradle. I was lying  next to a woman who was donating for her 57th time! And then I got this horrendous shirt. All afternoon I could feel my heart working harder than usual. представьте себе - up to three people walking around with my blood in their bodies.

Where should i be in December?

My extraordinary ability to agonize over a calendar should be added to my list of extra-special talents. 

Chens take Orlando

I'm in my parents' hotel room at the all stars music resort. It's nice to be in a bed that is bigger than a matchbox and feel like it's filled with one million slinkies. It's nice to probably not be woken up by a roommate wandering around the room in the dead of morning, opening all the doors and drawers. Ma and pa and me had a delightful fancy Africanish dinner at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and tomorrow we're spending the day at the food and wine festival, which will be my parents' first trip back to Epcot in 24 years.

WWWD40D?

I'm such a light sleeper that it isn't exactly altruism, but I bought a can of WD40 at Target and lubricated every squeaky damned hinge in this apartment, from my roommate's walk-in-closet doors from hell to our shared bathroom's rolling door and even to our roommates' regular swinging bathroom door and no one seems to notice or voice appreciation (except for Sinay, bless her). It reminds me of all the little things my dad did silently and thanklessly around the house all our lives to make us comfortable, like changed the air filters and pulled long girl hair out of the drains, like the time that I was in the garage about to leave for my hourly job at Disneyland and he watched me expectantly as I put on my work shoes and voiced his sadness that I hadn't noticed that he'd shined them for me.

It's alive

Though I may have intensely burned my finger with a soldering iron and the skin turned gray, I replaced a fan, thermocouple, and motherboard and got the Makerbot working today for the first time in almost two months.

surprise

almond milk is the fucking worst

todayland

Last night I bumped into my 2006 parade trainer in Epcot again and this time he was with a guy with whom I also used to work at that time, back when I was at Buzz and he was in a blue jumpsuit across the way at Star Tours. Epcot, the great unifier, across years and coasts. 

cliff and char

this baby is starting to look suspiciously like a grown-up

reboot

i wrote my first cron job this morning to run a python script on a raspberry pi.

Fire dreams

Last week I dreamt that I spilled acetone everywhere and my hands were on fire. Last night I dreamt that I had to cremate my own body. I only had a small fire and I was worried about the smell. Last week I bought concert tickets to see CHVRCHES on Tuesday and Lykke Li on Thursday and tonight I went to see CHVRCHES and on my way out was given four free tickets to see Lykke Li on Thursday?

after all

A treatise On how coincidences on coincidences build on coincidences

I was supposed to go to Typhoon Lagoon, one of the water parks, today, but I was feeling kind of sick again and spent most of the day drinking a frappuccino in the sun at Starbucks and then sitting on the floor of my living room watching Millionaire Matchmaker and Kendra on Top. My roommate, Sinay, was at Clearwater Beach most of the day and while today Mrs. Tuckersman was telling me about how it is fall turning winter over in New York, here in Florida my roommate came home sunburned and looking like a cooked lobster.

In the evening we spontaneously decided that we really needed dessert and, more specifically, chocolate. We decided to go to Epcot in search of chocolate and we wandered the World Showcase (Jefferson Starship was playing again, 'We Built This City') until we settled on Italy and Sinay would have a gelato cookie sandwich and I would have tiramisu. Our decisions had been made and we were getting in line when I decided that I wanted to find a bathroom, but the closest was over at the American Pavilion. Once we were there, Italy felt much too far away and carrot cake at the American Pavilion became an acceptable option. We got in line and at the register the cashier girl looked at my roommate said, 'You go to Miami!' and apparently Sinay had been an RA in her college housing back in Ohio. We took our carrot cakes to some nearby picnic tables and I looked at a table of people sitting and realized that one of them was Patrick, my parade trainer in Tomorrowland in 2006. I had literally found out via our dominant social network yesterday that he is now living in Orlando and here I'd spotted him sitting at a picnic table in the dark, over 2,500 miles away from where I'd last seen him. I was explaining to his friends that 8 years ago Patrick had taught an 18-year-old me how to work on the parade route at Disneyland when I realized that one of his friends was an Imagineer I'd had lunch with a few weeks prior, whom I'd sat next to and had pizza with as part of a work function, with whom midway through our conversation we had realized that I actually know his younger brother because we both worked in Shanghai at the Expo in 2010 together. I hate to say it but it is a small world _____ ___.   

friday funday

First thing in the morning yesterday EvilBetty and I tried to ride Toy Story Mania before starting work. We were almost at the front of the line when it was announced that the ride was down and everyone was funneled out. I spent the day working on rewiring and programming e ink displays with a raspberry pi, took a lunch break to go eat pizza at Flippers with our team, and then went back to nudging small electronic text around. Then EvilBetty, Yzma, and I got to go poke around at Fantasmic and see the control booth and watch the crew getting ready to put on the show. Went back to the office, started running a 15-hour print on the 3d printer, and then ended the work day by leaving for the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot.

There I rode Mission: Space for the first time, which is a notoriously intense ride that is a centrifugal motion simulator thrill ride simulation of a trip to Mars. "The attraction exposes riders to forces up to 2.5G, more than twice the force of gravity at the Earth's surface (effectively multiplying a rider's weight by 2.5). A few months after the ride's opening, motion sickness bags were added within easy reach of riders." The ride blasts you with g-force that really does start to take your cheeks off your face and compresses your chest until you think you might pop a little, and all the while you are in trapped under a chest harness in a very very small face (less than a foot of space between you and the wall of your enclosure). I started to panic during the ride because I feared that I would die and had to start doing slow breathing to keep my wits about me. And now I know why most people don't like Mission: Space.

After that we wandered around in a sea of tourists, heard the 80s band Jefferson Starship, the night's live performance, play 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now,' and occasionally snacked and drank expensive things. I had my usual blood orange margarita from the Mexico Pavilion's tequila bar. We rode Maelstrom, my absolute favorite ride at Epcot, which is tragically closing at the end of this weekend to make way for a new Frozen ride. At the end of the night Francus and I had delicious tequila flights by Mexico, I tried the sweet corn cheesecake and it was amazing, and we all watched the weird Epcot fireworks show, IllumiNations, before going home.      

my desktop

this week i acquired some high-end electronic candles to try out and, thanks to the raspberry pi, i also got yet another screen this week and now my cube is really running amok

elsa magic

The last time I saw Char, she wasn't able to say very many words, but she definitely knew 'Ana,' 'Elsa,' and 'snowman' and was able to sing along to 'Let It Go' in the car. She also had a Frozen t-shirt that was washed every night so she could wear it every day. Here she is demonstrating her Elsa magic this week looking very grown up in the dress that I bought for her and mailed to California.  

Uncertain life

Some friends are landing jobs and becoming drastically richer, others are breaking up, others are moving away. I'm living alone in a swamp and don't even know where or what I'll be in a few months' time. I can't help but wonder, what's going to happen to us? It's times like these that I go to sleep.