Hmm. Where to begin? I finished the quarter but I didn’t do too well. On the other hand, I didn’t fail anything. And I suppose it was a learning experience. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Anyway, it’s over.
Spring break was nice. On Thursday, March 23rd, I took my last final and went home. I returned to UCSB on Friday night to pick up Kevin from the airport. We hung out in SB and returned to SY on Saturday. On Saturday afternoon we went to (Carlyle’s sister) Rosanna’s wedding. The wedding was very impressive and was a lot of fun. Doc Severinsen (the band leader of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show) played a few numbers with the jazz band and people enjoyed the evening.
For most of spring break, the three of us (Carlyle, Kevin, and myself) just hung out around the valley (Car was busy with work and it rained a lot so, um, yeah). We went to the beach for a barbecue, we went to Inside Man and Ice Age 2, we rented some other movies, we built a shed at Kevin’s house, and did a bunch of other stuff. Oh, and we practiced our parkour skills everywhere we went.
On Saturday my family received a gift which I was convinced was an April Fool’s Day joke. Amazingly, it was for real. An actual April Fool’s joke arrived a few days later. That’s right, I got punk’d by my RA of all people. Now I’m just trying to think of how to get him back. As far as school goes, this quarter looks promising so far. More to come later.
It’s really annoying when you have to buy something and you know you’re getting ripped off. You feel so helpless. If I had realized the books would be so expensive I would have definitely looked for them online. I figured they might be costly but I never imagined the prices would be downright insane ($90 for 500 pages?!). As soon as I got back to my room, I pulled all the paperback books off my shelf and checked the prices; the average price for a single paperback book of similar size, length, and quality was around $14 – not $50! And yes, the irony of the greed-driven publisher selling a book about ‘doing the right thing’ is extremely painful.
After completing the door modification, Car and I decided to move down to the lounge. Earlier, when we were at Home Depot, I bought a tree and upon return, hid it in my room. We planned out what we would decorate it with and then got to work. I carried the tree out of my room and down the stairwell, leaving a telling trail of needles all over the floor. Car brought the Christmas lights and the heavy-duty tree stand and we got to work setting the tree up. 
On Friday, I went to see Desmond Tutu at the Arlington. Desmond Mpilo Tutu is an Anglican Archbishop from Cape Town, South Africa and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. As Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches, Desmond Tutu lead non-violent opposition to the South African government’s system of 
Legal status of guide dogs in training
My family raised three puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind: Honeybear, Olga, and Glorianne. (Honeybear passed class, was not paired, and became a hearing dog; Olga made it to class but stopped cooperating; Glorianne was career changed in an early phase.) Puppy raisers take their dogs almost everywhere they go in order to provide exercise and socialization. The dogs wear coats that read “Guide Dog Puppy in Training” and users are issued identification cards to certify they are authorized to train the dog. Even with these credentials, occasionally teams are refused access to an area or mode of transportation. Read More »