today was one of those tired kind of days. the kind of day where the pacific waves of concert band passionately crashing and retreating on the beach couldn't even stimulate me, and i was forgetting what i had done three minutes beforehand every four minutes. even in a six bar rest, everything got hazy and disconnected.

after musical rehearsal, i went out to dinner with my mom. we went to cpk, in westwood. we sat at the bar to beat the crowd of people waiting for a table (what's so terribly wrong with sitting on a highstool at a barely community table, when you also get a perfect view of the hdtv?). we began to talk to this lady and her husband, both middle aged, after she asked if my cherry limeade was good and was surprised at how young i was (she thought i was my mom's younger brother. or at least a ucla grad student). she told us about how her kids were at stanford grad school, paving their lives out in law/technology and biomedical engineering, respectively. she told my mom about how to savor her time with me while i'm young, as her son just told her he got a summer internship and won't be coming home for a while - it was bittersweet.

the finals game 5 was on, heat v. mavs. great game. what was even better though, was to be in the middle of a huge crowd of people of varying faces, sexes, ages, and personalities. now i understand why people go to sports bars to watch the big game with complete strangers. there's this unspoken camaraderie that is so much more powerful than anything you can get with your big fan of a best friend. we laughed and groaned together, cheered and fist pumped (except for the one poor, awkward heat fan that..got the heat from us [i'm terrible]). when terry put up the dagger 3 and the screen froze for a second, we weren't individuals watching a tv anymore, we were one conglomerate entity, despite not even knowing anyone else in the group by name, and we swore and yelled in disbelief until we saw the score change as the screen returned back to normal. we exploded in smiles and cheers and high fives and it was incredible.