I had one of the most satisfying weekends ever. Seriously, I’m in such a good mood right now, you can’t kill my buzz. You can’t.

First, I completed my first ever thing on 101 Things, which is to “help out a church.” I know, kind of random of me, but it’s one of the things I really wanted to do just to see if I can break out of my comfort zone. A week ago, I read in a bulletin that one of the churches nearby my house was holding a Hawaii themed fashion show to which I (nervously) volunteered as a model.  The fashion show took place last Saturday and I had a blast.

99% of the audience were women of 55 years and older, and I gotta tell you guys, the only kind of people I actually like showing off to is older ladies, because they can really make you feel like you’re the greatest gift to humanity; anything you do in front of them is quite possibly the most amazing thing they have ever seen in their entire lives. When I was eight I did a half-assed cartwheel in front of grandma once and she nearly had a heart attack, the good kind, since she told me I should’ve tried out for the Olympics as a gymnast. Thanks grandma.

As I was weaving through the tables, strutting my conservative-spring-like-Hawaii outfits for the audience, most of the little ol’ ladies were just in absolute awe.  It was quite flattering and adorable.

Second, I found a really neat museum in Santa Ana.  There were two houses and two separate gardens, and apparently nothing’s been changed since the Victorian era. Their gardens are breathtaking. The first one was rather small, half of it was a rose garden and the other half held rows of orange trees.

The second “garden” was huge that I don’t think it should be even called a garden. It had a lot of little hills which was mostly covered in a field of small sunflowers. As you walk deeper into the hills, there’s an area that looks much like a forest, and what’s amazing about this particular spot is it looked like it was snowing. I don’t know what it was, but the air was laden with either pieces of white bird feathers (there were a lot of plucked bird feathers on the ground it was really creepy) or those little dandelion fluffs.

Unfortunately my camera was not able to capture them, but I did get the sunflower fields:

And last but certainly not least, after the fashion show, Jules and I headed to a Street Fighter tribute art show and tournament called Jab Strong Fierce (thanks to Matt who I didn’t get a chance to see that night lol).

They had a really fun costume play contest. Each character had to introduce themselves to the crowd by demonstrating insane fight moves. One of the Chun-Lis though came out and just stood there and only said, “Hi, I’m Chun-Li and this is my outfit!” and spun around to show the rest of her costume. BOOOOOOO! While the rest of the Chun-Lis, the more thick and curvaceous ones, came out with a boom, they yelled shit like, “HIYA!”, power kicked and power punched the air and showed us what Chun-Li truly looked like. And the two who were tied had to fight it out for second place haha it was great.

Before the tournament you were allowed to play for fun and whatever you were playing was projected to a much bigger screen so that everyone else in the art exhibit could watch. Besides playing the original Street Fighter in first grade I’ve never really played it before, so I was not planning to play at all in front of a live audience, until the guy who lost the last round stood up and suggested that I take the controller. The guy who I was suppose to play against (mind you he’s in the tournament and he’s suppose to be really good) looked at me and pointed to the empty seat that was next to him.

“No..n-n-no,” I tried to put the controller back, “I’ve never played this before.” Jules, from behind, shoved me into the seat and I found myself playing SF for the first time with a SF tournament competitor while the world was watching (at least it felt like it). I told him to go easy on me so we started every round with his health only a quarter full while mine was completely full. I lost once, and wanted to facepalm in real life (photo below).

As for the actual tournament, it was very entertaining and is probably one of the most intense games I had ever witnessed in my 21 years of being on this earth.  I had fun.

Possibly one of the best burger joints I’ve been to, The Counter lets you custom build your own delicious, juicy, heart attack burger of death.

A few of my buddies and I went there for the very first time last Saturday and we enjoyed every single minute of it, from the moment it touches the tip of our tongues to the second it gets metabolize by our stomach acids (Dwight Shrute ftw!).  It is so delightfully fulfilling that it really feels like you’ve already eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner for the following day.

Here are the pictures of some of our uniquely crafted, individualized burgers:

Man, I really needed that.  It was the perfect plate to eat right before starting #10 on 101 Things: Eat only mom’s healthy and non-delicious food for two whole weeks.

Reading that nearly had my gag reflex kick into over-drive.

Gugh!

(What the hell was that?)

Gugh!

(That’s the sound of my gag on the internetz)

I eat out more than half of the time because I don’t like most of the food that my mom makes.  Sorry mom, I love you, but I don’t love your cooking .  The meat’s always dried and overcooked.  You like putting guacamole and tomatoes in everything.  You cook too much fish and it stinks up the whole neighborhood.  And the snacks and desserts offered to me usually consists of oranges, apples and broccoli. Broccoli.

Basically, her stuff is pretty bland and predictable.  The only good thing about all the food she puts together is it’s actually somewhat healthy.  There’s not a whole lot of grease/fat;  it’s just there for you to survive.  As a child, I was really thin, thin as a tooth-pick as most would say, and I put the blame on the food that she has been feeding me all these years.

But ever since I’ve been old enough to diss her cooking by getting my preferred food, I’ve been gaining weight.  And gaining weight for me isn’t really bad, it’s just the food that I typically eat is entirely the opposite from my mom’s…fattening and greasy, and boy do I indulge.

Since I should save money (I don’t really have a job) and eat healthy, my goal is to eat nothing but of her food for a minimum two weeks, by that time, I should be adapted to her stuff, thus eating more of it…gugh!

For the past two days, I’ve been eating this:

From left to right:

-Sad and dried “pasta” with dried chicken and chopped up tomatoes.
-Sandwich with ham and only ham
-Yet another sandwich with ham…but WAIT!  It’s got wheat bread and some lettuce this time.

Is that mouthwatering or what?

Left 4 Dead, though quickly followed by Team Fortress 2, is the first online multiplayer cooperative game that I’ve ever played.  Ever since I’ve been playing and interacting with hundreds of other players under those two games, I’ve noticed weirdly distinct and common traits that are only consistent among girls (largely influenced by the fact that they are the minorities) who play video games aka “girl gamers” or “gamer girls.”

There are three different types of girl gamers…sort of.  The first one can be found anywhere, including my Steam friends list.  They’re all exceptionally different but have one thing in common and that is to have fun and play a game, as it should be.

That’s the first type, awfully broad, but whatevez.  The other two types, on the other hand, are both painstakingly narrow! I’ve surprisingly witnessed and heard so much of it that I’ve decided to segregate them from the original group entirely and turn each of them into one cohesive character:

The Zealot (sometimes referred to as The Feminist Gamer) – “You just got pwned by a GIRL! Yes, a GIRL!”  The Zealot is a gamer who has a vagina and you bet your hp that she’s damn proud of it. Her MySpace, Facebook and Steam page bears the insignia of “GIRL GAMER” and she’ll go to great lengths to remind the gaming community that she is a GIRL GAMER by joining-or worst creating biased fan clubs, communities, and/ cults exclusive to other gamer girls, potentially building this terrifying, never-ending empire of zealots.

The Zealot is usually a veteran gamer, who apparently lived a hard knock gaming life demanding equality and respect in the gaming world. In the past, she was regularly shunned, belittled, and sometimes insulted by male gamers (predominantly made up of her older brothers and cousins) for simply being a girl gamer…which explains a lot.

But what the Zealot doesn’t know is how times have changed.  Girl gamers have already proven their worthy and competence, thus earning most of the respect of the guys.  To be overly and overtly proud of being a girl gamer is akin to being a proud female painter; it’s retarded and convinces everyone that female painters are in some way inferior to male painters.

The Chosen One (usually in multi-player/team games) – While the Zealot encourages more girls to play video games, the Chosen One wants nothing more in life than to to votekick all of them off but herself.  And unlike the Zealot, the Chosen One is more likely to be a newb.

When the Chosen One started playing video games, she thought she was the only special girl gamer who existed within her continent due to the overwhelming number of gamer guys that have given her the attention she had always craved for.  That is…until…another girl gamer joined in on the game and then another.  Typical girl gamers would react with excitement and relief when encountering their first girl gamer, but this had only brought darkness, rage and jealous tendencies to the Chosen One.

The Chosen One will do anything in her power to votekick off another girl gamer while ingame just so she can feel somewhat special and unique again, being the only girl gamer in a game of all male players.  She will either ignore the other girl gamer throughout the game and weep afterwards, or ragequit and weep should she fail at votekicking her competition off.