2022.10.23
This week marks a change in my work relationships. It is nothing big, but I have squeaky shoes, which helped me be identified as I walk around. This is nice because I am very quiet, and I can sneak up on people and surprise them by accident. I have had these shoes for about two years, and the shoes are starting to hurt my feet. I bought new shoes yesterday. They may need to give me a little bell to carry around, so I don’t surprise people. One of my many nicknames is Squeaky.
The shoes that I got are of the Xero brand. Jessica discovered the company. It helps her because shoes are typically made too thin for feet. She highly recommends them. She thought that I can only buy them online, but I found them at REI.
2022.11.04
I finally made the invitations. They are personal, so they were not digital and generic. My little brother and I were thinking of having a Yu-Gi-Oh Tournament for our birthdays because we have been playing Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel for most of the year. The reception is good so far. I realized that Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel is hard to get into as my coworker is enthusiastic about it, but he hasn’t gone very deep in the game; therefore, I bought a card pool of one thousand cards last night, so we will all be on a level playing field depending of deck building skills. The tournament may extend to the following month.
I need to start writing notes on each day as reminders of my days on my Whoop app again because I remember having a lot to write about a couple weeks ago, and I missed last week.
I joined the Stake Choir last week. The chorister is very professional. We decided to hang out with Trevor on another day of the week other than Sunday to get to sleep at a better time. We hung out with Trevor Friday night since the temple is closed for maintenance. We played a game that he bought a long time ago. It is called Trails.
2022.11.27 Thanksgiving
It appears that I missed a week. All I remember about the week before last is that I delivered Finley, our fish to Trevor, and he helped me organize the Yu-Gi-Oh cards for our birthday tournament, staying up late, because he pre-ordered the new Pokemon game. The pick up time at GameStop was ten post meridiem.
I finished entering all the cards into a spreadsheet yesterday. Jessica was worried that we would only received eight hundred cards because the package had two boxes that said four hundred count. We ordered one thousand cards, and the final count is over one thousand one hundred.
Jessica and I are visiting my parents for Thanksgiving. They took us out to eat Friday and Saturday afternoons. We went to a Hawaiian restaurant on the Santa Cruz Wharf, which is called Makai. My stomach did not like the food, and I chose a mediocre dish. I don’t like it when a dish is defined by a sauce, and I fell for the trick again. I wanted a Tamarind dish, but the tamarind was resigned to a sauce in a small cup. I have a pet-peeve about American food defining or depending on sauces to be appetizing.
I ate barbecue from R&R a few months ago at work, tasting the meat without the sauce to see if it would have a good texture and flavor, but it didn’t. The texture of the meat was actually better the next day after microwaving it, eating it with the barbecue sauce. I told my coworkers about it, and they thought that I was odd for disdaining American food (Aren’t you American?). I was raised by a Thai mother, who put a lot of effort into flavoring a dish; furthermore, she would be offended if someone would modify the flavor of the dish by a sauce like barbecue sauce.
I enjoy receiving a well thought out dish that is presented well and is eaten without jumping through hoops. For example, the dish that I received at Makai was half pulled pork with a sauce. The other half was rice in the shape of a cup, some macaroni and cheese, and the Tamarind sauce in a small cup. I had to jump through hoops, and my family was wondering about my method of eating. First of all, I had to eat the macaroni and cheese because I couldn’t mix the rice and the pulled pork together, since the plate was full of food; then, I had to eat half of the pulled pork because the ratio of rice and pulled pork would be odd. Also mixing the pulled pork and rice was odd because their texture and shape didn’t match; then, after all this hassle; then, I could pour the sauce on the food, which barely tasted like Tamarind. The dish is not presented, thought out, or flavored well.
Trevor made me a Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, and it was an example of a well thought out dish. Large mushrooms were cut into long slices to match the long asparagus. The steps to eat the meal was not an obstacle course.
On Saturday my parents took Judy and I for our birthdays to Phil’s Fish Market. It recently moved to Castroville. We actually like the new location. It feels more “homey” and personable. The quality of food is the same too.
One thing that was unique about Makai is that they had the floor rotating about the bar.
After eating at Phil’s Fish Market, I received a voice mail from a stake high council member, and he said that he wanted to talk to me concerning a stake calling. When I told Jessica, I faked fainted for fun. She is excited to hear about the new calling. She looks forward to the vacation ending. Our bishop did say that God had something great in mind for me during Tithing Declaration.
The Hicken Thanksgiving had normal Thanksgiving foods. We also had guests which was nice.
2022.12.11
I finally started taking daily notes in my Whoop app this week as I wrote that I should many times. This week was actually note worthy, but I don’t really remember the previous week well. Let me try to recall it.
The previous week was my preparation for my birthday. We flew home on Wednesday. My mother loves shopping for us, so we can have what we need. Jessica and I don’t really shop for ourselves. Many of my clothes this past year have been deemed unwearable. I had only five sets of tops to wear for a while, and I ripped my second warm winter jacket recently after hanging out with Jesse Kaupert.
Jesse has been inviting me to go bowling, but the first time that I met with him he hurt his toe, so we just caught up at the BYU Dairy. I took the train down to Provo because I didn’t want to deal with the snow. Jesse drove me back to the train station. We had a funny moment with Apple maps.
It lead us to a wrong way. The road appeared a little sketchy, but we drove down it. There may have been a second sign that made it funny, but there was a sign that said that we go down to Christmas light display, a haunted house or something, making the moment feel like a start to a suspense film.
When we arrived at the train station, I saw that the train was sitting there. I ran, so I won’t miss. As I jumped off a curb, I didn’t know that its height was taller than normal curbs, and I fell on my face. It was good that I had a beard, so the scrap on my chin was not noticeable. My jacket was torn from the fall, if you don’t remember why I went on this tangent.
I worked on making a spreadsheet, listing all the cards for my Yu-Gi-Oh draft tournament birthday party. I found out that probably no one looked at it, but I got the most use out of it. My final draft of the deck worked as intended, comparing it to my original deck plan. I worked on it as if it was my full-time job during Thanksgiving.
The flight home was good. I got no stories for that, but Jessica and I played Sudoku. She made suggestions on a puzzle that I would not have finished as the flight was coming to a conclusion. I checked the correct answers, and she was correct.
When I got home, I went to work with not much to do, and my Vice President told me that I have to rework a Trimble model. He explained to me how he would like it to be reworked, and I know that he has been wanting models to be done a specific way, but the previous Trimble model person ignored his method. He was very happy that I finally am practicing his way, since the other person was doing their method for years. My Vice President is not overbearing. Be believes in self-discovery. If his workers don’t understand him, he won’t pound it into them. Last Wednesday or so I concluded my day with applause because I completed the model how he instructed me. I got a “medal” for my good work, and he said that I am the “employee of the week.” We don’t have employee of the month or week officially.
When we pick up Finley, our fish, from Trevor, I was concerned because it didn’t look like he was eating. When I was cleaning his tank, I saw a lot of his food left over. Jessica discovered that his activity may be low because he is cold. These fish are from Southeast Asia, and their room temperature is between 75 and 80 degrees. Our heater doesn’t work, so I wrapped the tank with a warm blanket at nights, and it actually helps keep the water warm. Finley is doing better, moving around more. I haven’t seen him eat yet though.
I haven’t wrote about how we acquired the fish. My coworker’s children were not getting along with it, so he brought it to work. My boss doesn’t like the fish smell, and he told him to get rid of it. Since he wasn’t going to bring it home again, he offered it to me.
My “stake calling” is to be an assistant ward clerk. There is typical two assistant Ward clerk one over finance and the other is over membership. I went to Sacrament; although, I had a fever and a runny nose to stand as I was being sustained, but I wasn’t sustained.
Jessica is currently at the Stake Christmas Devotion to sing, since we participated in the stake choir. It actually starts in about thirty minutes. I am not singing in the choir tonight because as I said; I am sick.
In the temple last Friday, I read first Nephi chapter nine. The last verse is very powerful to read. It says that Heavenly Father “hath all power unto the fulfilling of all his words.”* I actually wrote a note last week during fast Sunday, which is applicable to this segment. ‘Heaven Father’s work is based on the faith of Man.’ Heavenly Father knew that people/Satan would seek to destroy the work of publishing/translating the Book of Mormon, so Heavenly Father asked Nephi to write another more spiritual oriented record of his people. This record was used to replace the lost manuscript of the Book of Mormon, ensuring that the book cannot be proven to be the work of man, for the lost record could be shown to contradict a retranslation if it is altered.
Oh! I have another story about losing my iPhone. My mom gave us some string backpacks, and I thought that it would be useful to carry our workout shoes to not track dirt and water into our CrossFit gym. I have learned previously that string backpacks can tear easily, but I trusted these brand new ones. When I arrived home from the gym, I found that my backpack was torn, and my phone fell out of the torn part of the backpack. I thought that I was dumb because I turned it off. I couldn’t find it with the “find my” notifications. I turned off my phone because my battery was no high, and it runs out quickly. The phone being turned off seems to be inspired of God because someone found it the next day in some weeds. I think that the situation was intended to bless her too. When she turned on the phone, my work phone was notified that my phone was located, and I called my phone. I told her to call my wife, whose phone number I put on the phone. In the conversation of my wife and her texts, she revealed that she was broke, and she would like a reward of forty dollars. I was fine with that. It seems like she needed it. My wife met her at the local library, retrieving the phone. My phone would have died if I left it on.
I realized that I didn’t write about the actual birthday party. It was a little frustrating because Trevor wanted to do a day’s worth of work within the time of the party while I was reviewing Yu-Gi-Oh with people. He wanted to replace cards that were unusable and buff archetypes. Trevor can be stubborn, so I was a little passive aggressive to express my perspective. We would not have completed the draft, if my friend had not had more people skills than me. He rounded everyone up to sleeve cards and get the drafted started. We were barely able to complete draft. I put together my deck.
My people skill friend is named Michael Flindt. We did a exhibition duel to show people how to play, and I lost during that duel, playing Marincess. If I knew the deck, I would have won, but I only played the deck once in Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel. Michael played his deck, which was almost ten years old. He put his draft deck together, and we dueled. I won. Austin Lopez, my half brother-in-law, chose a card that I wanted, and he gave it to me for my birthday. White Night Dragon was the card, which inspired my deck, and my deck functions as I planned. Michael played an Umi deck.
Yesterday Trevor and I play tested our draft decks, and his deck appeared to be a functioning combo deck, and I lost. I played him again a second time, and I won against him with my dragon deck. He is playing a Fabled/Naturia deck with a small Krawler engine.