Scraping the knee

I fell off my bike yesterday. Sucked. Some idiot in a Honda Civic was driving through my neighborhood in front of me and stopped at a stop sign. Then he started turning right, but stopped. I presumed that he had seen me behind him and then stopped, so I was going to go around him on the right. Douche proceeded to turn when I started to go, so I had to stop short. I couldn’t get my foot out of the clip so I fell to the right. My knee hit the pavement pretty hard and I got a nice scrape. My right foot also hit something on the bike and gave me a nice lump on the top of it. Civic Douche just kept on driving. Screw you, civic drivers everywhere. Learn to signal.

Yoda, my neice

Pauline had her baby on Saturday! No name as of yet, but she is being called yoda, or burrito. She has my nose, which is unfortunate. “Isn’t Phil’s nose big?” -Brad.

Apparently, I am white

I came across a blog called “Stuff White People Like”, and yeah, I fit the bill. The numbers that characterize me are (cross-reference to full list of stuff white people like): 5, 6, 10, 12, 18, 19, 25, 26, 28 (formerly, but I own one now), 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 49, 50 (I can’t get enough irony.), 54, 55, 57, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 73 (I gentrified my neighborhood), 75 (I want to move to Vancouver.), 77, 81, 83, 84, 87, 90.

I like this blog. It is snarky and silly. There are also posts like “White Problems – Should Children Drink Wine?”, and “White People In the News”. These people must be white and love irony.

Here is a list of reasons I’m not white:

• I’m Chinese
• Saving money through good deals (might be related to being Chinese)
• I know about circuits and stuff (again, the Chinese)
• I like to eat all God’s creatures (because I’m Chinese)

Well, I guess the only reason why I’m not full-blown white is that I’m Chinese. Zhong Guo, bitches!

Ken Lee

O man o man, this is comedy gold. Tulibu deeboo douchoo!

Where we will be

After 4 years of medical school, and one year of worrying about where Mandy will get residency, we have an announcement.

Denver health emergency medicine.

Neighborhood demographics

Somehow, I got to this site, which gives detailed demographics of neighborhoods by zip code.

I looked up my zip code, 80211, and read through the stats. Some were pretty telling of the condition of the neighborhood, namely, the data taken from tax returns. The average adjusted gross income (AGI) of my neighborhood is $39,383, while the state average is $55,014. This is a huge gap. Granted, this was from 2004 data, filed in 2005, so things may have changed with the gentrification that has been going on. Also, the level of education attained, where it was overwhelmingly skewed toward the “Less than high school”. This may be due to the large Mexican immigrant population, but it is still a very interesting statistic. Amazingly, the “Graduate or Professional” student enrollment is above the state average, but every other school-level enrollment besides Kindergarten is lower than the state average.

So where is my neighborhood going? Well, I think the demographics are going to split, into lower-income folks who have been here for a long time, and younger, more affluent people who want the proximity to the city but don’t want to live in an apartment or condo. Will public school enrollment increase due to these new “gentrifiers”? Most likely, no, because these new people will have the money to send their kids to private schools, and avoid the Denver Public Schools altogether. Maybe if we start to pay more property taxes (mine are sinfully low), then our school district might improve, but not in this decade.

Do I like my neighborhood? I love it. I like walking into downtown. I enjoy the church bells every afternoon. The catholic parade that comes through is quite interesting. Do I like my neighbors? Of whom I have met, I like them fine, but I just don’t like it when I get a chicken bone or corn-cob on my lawn. Certainly, the Mexican immigrants who can’t speak english are different from the young professionals across the street, and the alcoholic who sits on his front porch and sings is “colorful”, but I like the diversity. Even if it “kind of scares” my friends. This is where I chose to live. This is my home.

lonely

I wish my wife were here.

Soylent green is terrible!! You gotta tell ‘em!

I watched the Charlton Heston movie Soylent Green a couple nights ago, and have been singing its praises. When Heston goes down the stairs, stepping over sleeping people packed on the stairs, I knew I was going to be watching something amazing. The movie proved to be just as bad as I thought it would be. The future envisioned by people in the past is so ridiculous. I am setting upon watching all the movies that were made in the past and are set in the future. Global warming, overpopulation and the casual sex.

Sister!

My sister Pauline married her long-time boyfriend, Brad, today at the court house in New York City. I wish I could’ve been there. Congratulations, Brad and Pauline!

Strange sadness-inducing circumstances

I got sad today, for a very unexpected reason. Since Mandy is in Bangladesh, I’ve been alone in the house for the past week or so. I took out the trash last week, which was actually 2 weeks worth of trash. But this week, I looked in the trash can and it was only a quarter full. This is what made me sad. Why? I guess I just realized that in a week, I only produce about a cubic foot of trash. I don’t know why that made me sad, it just seems lonely and, well, kind of pathetic. Oh well, Mandy will be back on the 22nd, and we’ll make trash yet!