We somehow decided to try spinning the air hockey paddles as tops and they turned out to be really good! Note how well they self-correct and save themselves from spinning out of control multiple times. Maybe top tips should be round instead of pointy.
stable top from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
I’m tempted to put some water in the center. Wouldn’t that be cool?
air hockey top from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
When I got my very own crystal cabin going up to Ngong Ping, I couldn’t resist lying down on the ground and enjoying the feeling of floating (kinda).
lying down in crystal cabin from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
Well, today started off kind of rough with a bunch of things I needed to take care of. For some reason I was feeling really cold and shaky as well, which didn’t help my concentration. I also realized that I really couldn’t find my voucher for a set of beauty services (a hair cut, hair coloring, manicure, and microdermabrasion) that I had bought at a steeply discounted rate. Bad news, since I hadn’t even used the microdermabrasion, which is the main reason I bought the thing.
Then Panda came online from the East Coast, where he is for a couple of days and he had a rough day. He didn’t really want to talk, which made me sad, because all I wanted to do was hear his voice. It made me sad that he was unhappy and not fully enjoying himself over there. It was also frustrating because he couldn’t tell me all the details of his day. So not only am I far away, I have to be distanced in other ways too.
When I returned to campus, another counselor was using Panda’s room for meetings with students, so I spent my time in the lounge and occasionally the hallway. Things can get awfully lonely though, and all I wanted to do was rest and chill. The hours dragged on slower than they ever have and I found conversation where I could. I didn’t even have an appetite to eat most of my dinner. It’s been a tiring day.
At least towards the end I had some fun hanging out with The Legend and some other counselors. Now my legs are achy and I just want to rest, but all I can think about is whether or not the salon will still let me get the service on my voucher if I can’t find it anymore. 🙁 I’ve checked my desk at work, my car, the room, and emptied out my purse multiple times. No luck. My last hope is that I somehow took it out while at home one weekend. It’s really not likely though, yet I haven’t a clue where it could have gone. How unfortunate.
And tomorrow is an early day. I’ve got to get up an hour earlier than usual. At least soon Panda will be back. 🙂
A little show at the LA County Fair. I wonder how many times those guys have flipped over in one of those things…
gravedigger monster truck from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
My phone slipped yesterday, landing on the cement floor at work. I’d never had a problem before, but this time I picked it up to find the glass had cracked. Dismayed, I immediately began to research whether or not that was covered in my warranty, and eventually found and article that gave me hope. It talked about how Geniuses are now allowed to replace the screen in store, so there was hope of getting it done for free! This was confirmed in a CNET article:
We’ve received reports from some readers who had success having their iPhones with cracked screens replaced free of charge by geniuses at the Apple Store, but don’t count on it.
I immediately booked an appointment at the closest Apple Store for after work. The guy who helped me told me it would normally cost $199 AND it would void my warranty to get it replaced. But lucky me, he was in a good mood and we had a good rapport going, so he decided to replace it for me for free. 🙂 It was a quick fix in the back, taking about 10 minutes. I signed some paperwork and was out the door, brand new screen in tow. Now I’m super paranoid about dropping it and I admire the smoothness of the glass all the more.
It’s a good thing I was able to get it fixed so easily (and for free)! Otherwise, I would have spent much of my time running my finger along the cracks, which would have inevitably given me a cut eventually. The top part where the cracking started is actually higher than the part with the cracks. If it weren’t for that, I’d be ok with not fixing it, but it had become a bit of a hazard for someone like me who likes to fiddle with things. I was lucky the cracking was in a rather unobtrusive place to begin with, and even luckier to have gotten the whole thing replaced!
Ok, not even, but I get one sound byte in this episode of MTV’s Hired. I got a sneak peek of the episode at Energy Muse’s 10 Year Celebration in a bar in Manhattan Beach. Hence the MTV logo on the cake. It was a yummy cake too! I love the ones with a fresh strawberry layer in the middle.
Panda’s building had a lot of fire alarms this year, seemingly due to a broken panel board? Well, the last time it was fortunate that I had just gotten a crepe at Crepes Bonaparte, which was parked in Westwood. I happily munched away as I waited for the firefighters to take a look inside. Thank goodness for that!
I spent a lovely holiday with Panda’s family having a BBQ, then going home to enjoy the night with my mom, but along the way, some strange things caught my attention.
It all started on my drive back home after spending the day at his family’s. I noticed on the opposite side of the freeway, a silver/gray Honda type vehicle on the side of the road, left side tilted up and that front wheel still spinning. Apparently it had hit a pole of some sort, which seemed to be the thing propping it up at that strange angle. The front of the car had a dent in the middle, with smoke coming out of the hood. It was a bizarre thing to see and I almost didn’t believe it, what with all the TV show crime and accident scenes I’ve been seeing. As I passed by, the driver’s side door opened slowly (remember that the car was tilted on its side, so gravity was working against them) and I saw an arm or a leg push out. As I contemplated whether or not I should exit and turn around, I noticed an SUV type vehicle pull over. It looked like they were getting help, so I continued on my way, but puzzled about that incident the entire drive home.
Then when I exited from the freeway and began to drive through my town, I noticed groups of people camped out on the lawns of businesses. It seems that they wanted to get a really good view of the fireworks that night, which I think were coming from the town center or the nearby amusement park. A couple of lanes of the road had been blocked off, which made no sense to me, since there was nothing there. The right-turn lane of the street I was on was blocked off, but traffic going in that direction wasn’t stopped, so I couldn’t figure out why coned it off! How bizarre. Were they saving room on the streets for patrol cars to use later? Were they actually going to block off all the roads in that area closer to the time the fireworks were due to start? Were they going to allow people to use the road to camp out too? Or maybe they were getting ready to set up traffic stops and sobriety checkpoints? Who knows.
Finally, I passed by our postal office and noticed that the flag was at half-mast. Pondering the situation, I couldn’t come up with any explanation as to why that could be. Independence Day is a holiday of celebrations, not commemoration, like Memorial Day would be. So it couldn’t be due to that. I figured someone must have died, but I wondered if it was a local thing or national thing. When I made it home, I did some digging around and discovered that President Obama ordered flags at half-mast for a couple of days, to commemorate the late Senator Robert Byrd. I hadn’t really heard of the man, so I wonder if they always lower the flag for Senators or if this man was a particularly special one. Apparently it was supposed to be raised to full mast for today (after all, it is a happy holiday), but seeing as postal workers are all off, it’s no surprise they just left it. Makes it easier, since it’s to be half-mast for Monday and Tuesday anyway.
And there you have it, a 50-minute drive full of peculiar things that I just about managed to figure out. This is how my curious mind works.
The first finals week after Undie Run at UCLA was cancelled, one of the many ways that students chose to rebel included this performance:
rooftop band performance from Mary Qin on Vimeo.
With 4th of July celebrations coming up, I thought that this would be a cool way to celebrate holidays too. Too bad you can’t always get a band together!
