Gallery Updated

I have gone through my computer and added many new photos to the gallery (and also to the home page random rotation). I don't feel that they are all my best, but I am happy with all of them. In general, all the photos in the gallery I took (currently, only one exception).

The categories that are totally new are:

• June, 2005
• Family
• Fun
• Hawaii
• The Sandias
• Utah

Edit: The new gallery page seperates the galleries for faster loading. The link was updated to jump to the correct gallery.

Nathan's

My friend Jeff sent this to me from his trip to Washington DC and NYC. I feel famous... Apparently they sell hot dogs there (my favorite).

Life

Life has been going quite well these last few days. I have been enjoying a wonderful energy and enthusiasm to go do new stuff, meet new people. In other news, I got a haircut today which is nice especially in the heat. And I discovered one of the most beautiful songs: Konstantine by Something Corporate. If you haven't heard it, let me strongly encourage you to check it out (you may download a copy from my shared music folder).

Yesterday I was driving down one of my favorite roads (Rio Grande Blvd, a long winding road that goes past many of the richest and most beautiful houses in New Mexico...its one of the few roads where I don't drive aggressively). And I came around a bend, and the cars in front of me were stopped in both directions. At first I couldn't figure out why, but as the passenger got out of a minivan, he walked out in the road and began rescuing little baby quail that were standing their with their mother. It just struck me as one of those special moments in life - the occasional moment when our ability to value life is apparent.

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Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption. - Mark Twain

Music

For those of you who are interested, I now have a shared music folder so that people can download some of my favorite songs. And of course, whenever I listen to any of the songs, a download link will appear by them on the music page. As time goes on, I will maybe post a few more...

Beach Sunset

A photo I took last weekend while staying on the beach. Cellphone cameras are crappy, but it does the trick.

California

I am off to California to spend the weekend at my families beach house tomorrow. It will be nice to just sit on the beach and enjoy the sun. But then again, life around here has been going exceptionally and I am having a really fun summer. Also, it turns out UNM is easy...it makes me appreciate USC a thousand times more.

In other interesting news, I got contact lenses yesterday. I feel like I am getting old. Even though my vision isn't that bad, its so worth it because I now see at a distance very well again, which is very nice.

As far as reading is concerned, I just finished The Reader, a creepy story about a childhood love "affair" that affects a man's whole life. I am not sure what I thought of it, but the ending was very intense and really impressed me as far as a daring story for a book. Next up, I am reading The Stranger (yeah, I am just going down those old class reading lists that I never read).

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Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their right ideas closer together. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Books

I have been doing a lot of reading recent. In the last three days, I have managed to read a book a day. They were:

• Virgin Suicides - Amazing story, because of the narration. Reminded me why I loved Middlesex so much (same author).
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Not necessarily the best book, but it leaves you with a great feeling.
• Of Mice and Men - Simply beautiful and very sad.

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"In the United States, thousands of people are killed every year by unsafe products, dangerous working conditions and illegal hazardous waste disposal, and these irresponsible corporate actions are not usually understood to be "homicidal" in nature. By excluding these acts of corporate violence from our analysis, we may be reinforcing the erroneous impression that murder is something done mostly by the poor and powerless rather than by the rich and powerful." - The Politics Of Injustice, 2nd Edition

Crash

I just got the soundtrack to the movie Crash. If you haven't seen it, I highly highly recommend it. It was one of the best movies I have seen recently, telling a very powerful and painful story from so many perspectives. It is such an experience to watch the film, you sit through it feeling so much attachment, so much energy that you come out exhausted. The soundtrack is also phenomenal, I specially the song "In the Deep" - Bird York.

Also, got a new cellphone today because my old one kicked the bucket. Its similar model, but with a few added features. It might take me a while to transfer over my contacts (not because I have to do it individually, more because I am lazy).

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"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." - Bertrand Russell

Classes at UNM

I have just started classes at UNM, where I am taking Statistics, Psychology and Macroeconomics. Its nice, because two of them are just four week terms meaning that it will go by very fast, but the psychology class is excellent. The other two are just mediocre.

Its nice to have an excuse to get out of the house and spend most of it away. As much as I love being around my parents, I need some sort of escape. That really goes for anyone, I guess. But instead of sitting around lazily, I have something to try to succeed at and give me drive. My appreciation for school goes up every semester.

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Did you know that men have a fertility cycle like women? Only its 21 days and it creates much more subtle changes. - Psychology 105

Being home...

The best part of being home is that in my little increasingly-suburban neighborhood, everyone waves to each other, whether just while walking around or passing another car. Its nice.

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"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein