Family Matters

Ever since the crazy rained out spectacle at Wrigley Field last Monday, I really haven't had a lot of time for myself and this blogging business for a few reasons. One, I can get extremely lazy and not do it for long stretches of time, and two, family from California visited, and stayed at my house: 2 families of 5, including my grandparents and 2 little toddlers.

 It was good seeing all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins again. That Monday night, their flight got delayed for a few hours due to terrible weather in the city, so they didn't get around to flying in until 4 AM. I tried to sleep for a bit, but to no avail. Leanne, Marion, and Marc all greeted me on the couch, and in a dazed state, I got up, and hugged and greeted everyone. Shine came down next, followed by her two lil' brothers, Zach and Zion (aka Bullet or Nah-Nee [what he calls himself]). After showing off what I've been up to for the past few months (guitar playing and collecting all kinds of tuneage), we set up all the air mattresses. Now, you would think that having 16 people all stay in one house would get pretty cramped. In a way, you're right. But not for our casa. The master bedroom easily fit 9 people, and every other room took care of the rest. 

I always like it when family comes to visit, because we get to play tourist in our own city; it's a good chance to show off your local skills and whatnot. As an entire group, we hit up Navy Pier, the Sears Tower Skydeck (where we saw one hell of a sunset), Millennium Park, Wisconsin Dells (a 3-day vacation within a vacation which involved getting a few ticket jackpots in a local arcade, late night cap gun fights, getting grub at Monk's, and riding around in a 15-passenger beast van; it all kicked so much ass), Lou Malnotti's for bad-ass pizza, and Auntie Sang's house for a little family reunion with representatives from both my Mom and Dad's families. One day, Ate Jen and I brought our cousins downtown via the CTA; they thought it was amazing, due to the fact that they never take the train and they never rode a bus before. Imagine, they loved the CTA.....they do live in a suburb in California (Stockton), so I guess that makes sense. Anyway, we showed them Wrigleyville, the Magnificent Mile, and everything else in between. I even took them to eat in at Superdawg; they were shocked that ketchup was omitted on the blessed dogs, but they soon discovered that life is better without the red stuff, and a lot of hot peppers. 

At home, we kept our eyes glued on the Olympics. All I really have to say is that I'm crushing on Alicia Sacramone (though she did screw it up for the US team event), Shawn Johnson is my favorite, and Michael Phelps is fucking unstoppable. We also celebrated Marc's 15th birthday, and had an Eagles jam session into the wee hours of the morning. 

In all, having all the family over was a real good time. If anything, I miss having a full house; it's too quiet in here now. It was a really quick goodbye at the airport, since we had to take two cars and we couldn't really stick around at the drop off point for more than 2 minutes. Hugging 12 people in less than a minute is real slick work. And we (meaning myself, Marion, and Marc) pulled an all-nighter, so we were like zombies this morning.

During their visit, I was able to hang out with Andy, Huey and his girl, Charly, and Costa for a while on Monday. We mainly played with a Nerf football on the island by Andy's place, talked in Huey's backyard and Smyser's playground, and in honor of Mike, drank a 6 pack of cream soda on top of one of Wright College's hills. I felt like I was back in high school again, except with more talk of drinking, Cubs baseball, and oddly enough, high school.

I just woke up from my second nap of the day, and saw the Cubs steal a game from the Marlins and Phelps getting his 7th gold medal by a mere one hundredth of a second. I honestly have no words to describe how good he is and how the Cubs are playing ball this year, but I have a feeling I'm going to be trying to describe them in later entries.

Sad news: Dad told me last night that my Tatay, my great grandfather passed away. He was 104. As sad as I was, I was happy that he could go finally see Pampa in heaven. He outlived him, and hell, he had an amazing and full life. It's a pity I couldn't see him at least one more time.

Well, school starts up in a little over a week, and I still don't fully know what my schedule really looks like yet. I'm actually looking forward to all of my classes this semester, and working really hard on all of them. I've gotta make the grade, and kick huge amounts of ass, with less procrastination. I really hope this all works according to plan....but then again, I can't really expect anything. 

One last thing. High Fidelity the book > High Fidelity the movie. That is all.