man, so many things happened in the past week. it is quite amazing how things went. let me give you a brief "story" of what happened during this past week.

Saturday:
1. errands & chores, loading & unloading my stuff into my car and mandy's car
2. ate a whole entire jimmy john's sandwich while walked in the garden by the library and talked to a middle-aged stranger about vietnam
3. drove w/ charlie to mitalee's place and ate dinner at her house...spent the night over at her place as well. Indian food was YUMMY.

Sunday:
1. had the yummy Indian tea that mitalee's mom made for us and pancakes from mitalee's family restaurant. yummy stuff again.
2. we drove from MI to York, Wyomine... we took pictures of the state signs that we passed by (Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyomine). The only sign that we didn't get to take was Indiana's... Either we didn't see the sign because it was hidden behind a truck or it was simply not there to be found. There were a lot of trucks on the road for sure.
3. dinner was at KFC... yep. it was pretty cold, windy, and rainy in that little town. we changed my car's windshield wiper just to be on the safe side in case if we hit more rain storms.
4. stayed at holliday inn where we got wireless internet... took a shower and went to bed.

Monday:
1. woke up at around 8:30am...got ready...took my stuff to the car...and woke charlie up at 9ish, since he went to bed kind of late. i jumped on the beds w/ kigo for a bit...hehe... it was fun. charlie took some pictures of me jumping around (unfortunately, the pictures are gone....yeah...but...it's ok. i'll remember it for the rest of my life.)
2. we had lunch at applebee's
3. wyomine is a big state. we drove for a very very long time in wyomine... i think wyomine is less boring than the flat indiana, illinois, iowa, or nebraska... i think.
4. we stopped at rock spring, wyomine, to get dinner at pizza hut and hoped to get into a hotel to get some rest... it was pretty late at night already when we stopped at rock spring... they had walmart! charlie wanted to get their roasted chicken, but...that didn't really happen. so we had to go w/ pizza hut. the waitress was really really nice....
5. we were wondering why all the hotels were full that night, apparently, ~600 families were being moved around.... we were told to go to Evanston, Wyomine, about 1.5 hours away from rock spring, to find hotels.... so we did. :)
6. going to evanston was long...tiring... i was falling asleep, but i didn't want to fall asleep, otherwise, charlie was going to fall asleep. can't let the driver fall asleep w/ all the trucks driving by us, can i? :) so i watched stars instead. man, there were soooo many stars. :) they were EVERYWHERE! i have never seen soooo many stars in my ENTIRE life... WOW. that was a big WOW... charlie told me to watch the stars for him as well, so i had to look at the stars very hard. :-p.
7. we got to evanston...stayed at best western... DUDE, 2 KING SIZED BEDS! WOW. the width of the bed was TALLER than ME! ha. i slept VERY well that night, no more scary black knights killing people and weird professor trying to study a special species that looked like elf-fairy in my dream from the previous night. anyhow.....

Tuesday:
1. charlie ate the leftover pizza from the previous night... yep. i let him ate the pizza since he is always hungry. the bottomless pit. i myself ate the simpson's smores instead.
2. we took some pictures at the vista point in mmm....wyomine or...utah...can't remember where anymore. once we drove through so many states, all the states just kind of melted together into one big messy thing. oh yeah, and i kept calling nebraska nevada on Sunday and Monday for some odd reason. I think it was because both states start w/ "N" in their names.... he laughed at me. and, if you can't tell yet, i took a lot of random pictures...A LOT of random pictures...like black cows in the fields, clouds, random signs, random pictures of myself and of charlie, etc.
3. i think we got to wash my car on Tuesday (or Monday, probably Monday)... we took pictures of the bugs on my car. we kept hitting bugs that were flying around on the highway... i killed a lot of bug families for sure. and fyi, pei once drove 80 mph on the highway, muwahahahaha.... dude, i LOVE the SPEED. no wonder some guys like to speed on the highway. the adrenaline, dude...the ADRENALINE! muwahahahahaha.... (except it can get a bit scary w/ the wind)
4. we passed by salt lake city and some flat salt lakes in utah. it was REALLY cold over there...i think it was probably in the 40s or 30s.... we stopped on the side of the highway rt 80 and tasted the flat salt lake... it was indeed salty. the great salt lake also smelled very very salty. it smelled like the ocean...
5. then we drove through nevada and had dinner at a mexico restaurant....real food for once (McDonald's for lunch. we sat at the children's playroom and watched some little girls and boy playing. McDonald's seriously has to redesin those slides and tuby things and put more windows in tubes for safety issue, in case of some accidents.)
6. we drove into california... i literally screamed in the car when we passed by the sign, and i took a picture of the california sign while charlie honked the car. :). people behind us must have thought we were crazy, but oh well. it is fun to be crazy once in a while. what's the odd of me driving with charlie (or vice versa) again from michigan to california? it's justified. :)
7. driving in california was a bit exciting and scary... it was SNOWING on the mountains... we drove through the curvy roads, the wind, the snow, the rain, and the mountains at night...with trucks around us. trucks were scary. they drove so fast in the snow. we couldn't even see the lines on the road anymore...so we just drove in the middle of the road, hoping that the wind was not going to blow us off the cliffs... i am glad charlie drove through that part. i would've brought us to our death beds...
8. we stopped at another great vista point for a few minutes to look at the stars after we passed the scary part. another wowing effect. :). it was great. it would've been better if it was warmer... but it was great. it was kind of "romantic" in a sense.... i wish there were some meteor showers going on that night. meteor showers are cool...i watched one once back in high school. :)
9. and we got home around midnight... i felt sooo bad for charlie becaue he drove a big chunk of the day...i only drove a few hours... poor guy. he must be exhausted, and he did look very very very tired....

Wednesday:
1. woke up and got ready...jumped on the CalTrain and got to SF probably by 10ish or so. we decided to have a SF trip...
2. went to powell station and hopped on the cable car because charlie had never been on a cable car before. we went to fisherman's wharf and the world's curviest street... :). took some great pictures as well.
3. lunch was at the rainforest cafe. it was a little bit expensive, but you can tell why it is expensive... look at the fish tank, and you'll know why. man...those fish are pretty amazing animals. i like the "jungle" sound, even though it was a fake jungle. i hope that i will be able to visit a real jungle one day in the future...it will be an interesting experience, although i know the weather will suck in a jungle....and the mosquitos.... ::shiver:: yeek.
4. then, we went to golden gate park... hehehehehehehehehehehe.... :) we went to the shakespeare garden and the japanese zen garden.... :D. :D. :D. yeah.... it was COOOOOOOOOL, yeah. not just "cool" but COOOOOOOL BEANS.... dude. yeah. yeah. yeah.... can you tell that i am kind of speechless? the japanese garden is 100000000X better than the one in MSU, seriously... i love the bridge there. then, we just sat on the bench for a while, enjoying the peaceful moment and world outside of the busy bustling san francisco city.
5. we went home...on the cal train...

TO BE CONTINUED...