ChinoValdez.com

Random Questions and Thoughts

How pathetic are the Halloween costumes for women? I mean, really. It's like you have to be willing to look like a slut in order to participate in the damn holiday. Since when the fuck did Snow White shove her ass in fishnet stockings and parade it around town? If you've truly, truly got the body for it, by all means go for it. But if you're voice within tells you it's not looking right, please listen to it. Ask a friend...then ask another. Maybe you can be Kate Gosselin instead.

Why won't Sarah Palin go away? Really? You're going to have a public feud with a punk kid? Have some freakin' dignity lady. It's lame.

Do I go watch "This Is It"? It almost feels like HAVE to go...but not sure if I actually WANT to.

And speaking of the Jacksons, what the fuck is wrong with Jermaine and La Toya?! Seriously? Your brother died like not even four months ago. Quit being media whores with your random public appearances. Have you no shame? You two are a fucking joke.

Why don't we ever hear of celebrities helping out schools in America? I mean, can we buy OUR kids some computers? And on the real...what the fuck is an education in Malaysia gonna get you?

Is there really any shame in being a bandwagon Yankee fan since 2009?

Really? Halloween is this week?

And since when did I stop caring?

Incidentally...

I might need to start researching agoraphobia and how to stop it before it actually starts. I've actually begun to physically freak out in large crowds.

I'd like to give a Big Up's to the Octomom for actually looking pretty decent now. Not a total Betty but a vast improvement.

And a Big Up's to Facebook for giving my brothers and me a means to communicate successfully with each other. P.S. those fuckers are hilarious!

By the way, the T.V. cutback is now going pretty well. I now see that life is possible without Jennifer Love Hewitt every week.

Oh, La Shy Girl and I will be watching "In The Heights" on Broadway on Christmas Day. No big deal.

Weekend Update

The last few weekends, we've dedicated to spending time with friends and running errands. So, this weekend, we decided to dedicate to ourselves. Before we did, though, we had to go and give props to our boy,The Bro, who officially kicked off his retail venture, Art Zombies, with some buddies of his. The grand opening was on Saturday and it featured some freakin' awesome graffitti artists who we actually got to see in action. I've always been fascinated with graffitti art but usually only get to see the final product, so to see artists work on stuff was a pretty cool experience with me. We didn't stay too long as the wonderful city of Los Angeles awaited us. Had some fun there and capped off the night with dinner and drinks. Here are some pics from our Saturday...

These guys are so talented. I know graffitti art gets a bad wrap, but watching it happen, is actually pretty cool...

This is one that LSG and I really liked, but we didn't get to see the final product of. The Bro was kind enough to send us the picture....

After some sushi and drinks. I tell you, nothing beats spending one-on-one time with this lady...

My Wife Is Awesome

One day LSG and I plan on opening up a bakery/coffee shop. By one day, I mean like 20 years from now. But we even have a name for it already: [La Shy Girl's] Cup-A-Chino. Cute, right? So she'll handle the bakery part and I'll take care of the coffee shop part. It's a nice little dream we have for ourselves. But the fact of the matter is neither of us knew how to either bake or make coffee. So, La Shy Girl took it upon herself to learn how to decorate cakes. She signed up for classes a while ago and last night came home with her first creation. I must say, my Wife is pretty fucking dope. Sad thing is we can't eat the cake....

I Do It All The Time

Do you ever think about how much shit you say to someone without thinking you might be even slightly offending them? For example, just the other day, I was talking to La Tonka about the dog we'd taken in. She asked me what her name was and I said, "We're not sure yet. Her original name is Minnie. But, like, I'd have a dog name Minnie." To which La Tonka replied, "Hey, I had a dog named Minnie." My bad. But it seems like I pull that shit all the time. I think I've shared with you already that the night my dad died, one of my friends came over and we started talking about other shit to distract me. And when she asked if La Shy Girl and I were really planning on not having children, I went through a long list of reasons why we weren't having them. One of those being "what if the kid comes out retarded?" Yeah, I neglected to remember she has a sister with down syndrome. It's never meant to be offensive. I just forget to put on my filter. Innocent enough right?

Well, yesterday, as I'm having a conversation with someone about people in dysfunctional relationships who try and use marriage as a fixer, she mentions how what she really dislikes is people who live together before getting married. As she put it, "they're just playing house and setting themselves up for disaster." As you might be aware, LSG and I lived together for about a year and a half before getting married. So I had a choice, I could make her feel bad for saying that or I could not say something. I made the decision to quickly change the subject. And later I wondered why I didn't defend living in sin. In talking to myself I realized that I didn't defend it because I didn't feel the need to. Anyway, that's not the point of this post. I'm just glad to know that even someone who's been around much longer than me can still put their foot in their mouth. And yes, it's easy to get offended by what people say sometimes, but on the real...it ain't no thing. You can't please everyone

The 10 Minute Mile Challenge Recap

So, last week's 10 Minute Mile Challenge was not met. I naively thought I'd be able to get on the treadmill and complete something I had no previous training for. I am not a runner. I don't know what compelled me to think I could run a mile in under 10 minutes when previously I was barely pushing 13. It was an unrealistic goal for me...I understand that now. But I couldn't be happier that I tried it. I have always half-assed the exercise part of my health kicks. Exercising is by far not my favorite thing to do. And I used the fatness as an excuse for not doing it. Last week, as I pushed my body further than I've ever done so, I felt such a pure sense of accomplishment. I'd never been able to run for more than 10 minutes...and doing so felt absolutely incredible. So, no, I didn't meet my own challenge. But I certainly challenged myself to try something. And that was pretty sweet. I'll let you know when I finally do it. Guaranteed it will be sooner than later.

UPDATE: Just for kicks, today's time was 10:09. SO CLOSE!

Weekend Update

I'm giving you the weekend update on a Tuesday because I was out of commission yesterday. I'll get to that later. Let's just say we had a pretty interesting weekend. It began Thursday night. La Shy Girl and I decided it would be wise to take on a second dog. We kept thinking Little Farrah B. was lonely and could use a companion. So we got the chance to take on a little mutt for free. We jumped on it. And regretted it almost immediately. The poor dog had the most severe case of separation anxiety I've ever seen. Even when we actually were playing with her she was whimpering. Then, we were told she was fixed. The second day we had her, it became pretty obvious she wasn't. (I'll spare you the bloody details, but let's just say our white chairs were no longer so white.) Anyway, the bitch went back home on Sunday.

Friday, I went south of the border with The Mom's. It's time to put up our Day of the Dead altar and I needed to pick up a few things. Since I hate to haggle with the people of Tijuana, I like to take The Mom's with me. She is a pro at that stuff. Thanks to her, though, I was able to get a bunch of new stuff on my very limited budget...including a fantastic Michael Jackson calaca.  And it's always nice to spend some one-on-one time with that lady. It's freaky how even now she still knows me so well. And like the wise woman she is, she was able to warn me about taking on the new dog. I really should've known better.

Saturday morning, La Shy Girl and I headed out to a UCLA football game at the Rose Bowl (I know, right?) with our friends La Tonka and LC. Football was actually fun to watch live. It's a sport that you have to watch very carefully as the ball is pretty hard to follow live. I think my concentration translated into boredom to La Tonka. But I assure you, my friend. We had fun. Big Up's to you two for taking us along.

Sunday, was not a pretty day. I don't know what the heck happened, but I got the worst case of food poisoning or stomach flu or some shit. Whatever it was, it was not fun. I'll tell you that much. I never get sick! And it lasted all of Sunday and into Monday morning. It was terrible. I stayed home yesterday and watched about 10 Saved By The Bell episodes, so that was a nice benefit to being sick. But still, it sucked. And this morning, my poor little La Shy Girl was sick. What the hell?!

So, that was our weekend in a nutshell. I'll be doing a little bit more catching up in the coming days. In the meantime, here are a couple of pics from the game courtesy of La Tonka.

Chino y La Shy Girl...

Chino and La Tonka...

The 10 Minute Mile Challenge: Day 4

Today's time: 10:28. And it almost killed me.Remember when I was like, "This is the week I will run a mile in less than 10 minutes?" Yeah. Not going to happen. I had my buddy who does personal training by my side giving me encouragement and I realized it's going to take a few more visits to the treadmill in order to pull this off. Nonetheless, 10:28 if freakin' awesome for me. Still a personal best. I felt like my legs could have kept going, but my lungs were telling me enough was enough. I'm not disappointed though. I'm looking forward to finally meeting that goal, though. So close...

Today's Gonna Be A Good Day

Had my physical today. Besides feeling utterly violated, I left feeling like I was on cloud 9. Last time I went to see him, I weighed 270 pounds. That was in March of this year. La Shy Girl and I didn't go healthy until mid-July and I know our diet was not pretty between March and then. So, I am unclear as to exactly how much I weighed when we started eating healthy and exercising. What I do know is that now I weigh 233 pounds. That's 37 pounds down. FUCK YEAH!!! So I'm feeling pretty motivated right about now. It's day four of the 10 Minute Mile Challenge and I'm feeling pretty fucking good.

 

The Five: Five More Random Memories

1. When I was a kid, I hurt my ankle somehow. I think it actually only hurt for about two hours and then the pain was gone. However, I picked up on how much attention I was getting from my parents so I milked it for like three days. I think I was five at the time. I wouldn't even put on my shoe because of how much it "hurt." I distinctly remember my dad carrying me to school on his shoulders because I refused to walk. I wasn't even embarrassed to be wearing my shiny dress socks The Mom's had gotten me in TJ. Anyway, my parents clearly picked up on me faking it because they then turned on me with the ultimate fake out. They both got in the car and told me they were going to Disneyland. I, of course, knew of no better place so I waited for them to pick me up and load me in the car. The Mom's said they couldn't take me cause I couldn't walk. Lo and behold, miraculously, there was no more "pain" in my ankle. Good news...I was walking again. Bad news...we didn't go to Disneyland.

2. I didn't grow up in a racist household. In fact, I never even knew there was a difference amongst races until I was probably 6 or 7 years old when we were visiting my dad's side of the family. One of my aunt's was telling somebody how she went to some public pool somewhere but couldn't go in because there were black people in the pool and she was disgusted by them. I didn't quite understand what the problem was back then. Now that I'm older though, I can understand how her ignorance played a major part in that statement.

3. This one time, about eight or nine years ago, The Female Bestie and I were driving somewhere. As we were crossing an intersection, we heard a bunch of gun shots. When we finally realized what was going on, The Female Bestie stopped the car for what felt like three completely silent minutes. We turned back and saw that another car had pulled over to the side of the road. Instead of getting fuck out of there, our curiosity got the best of us and we circled the block one more time. There were three bloody young men in the car when we drove past it. Later we read that all three of them had died. And then even later, we found out that the shooter was actually someone both of us knew. His family had been close to mine for many years and she had played sports with the dude's sister. I believe he is now serving a life sentence somewhere.

4. This next one is completely distorted. It's one of those childhood things, where you're never really told what happened, so you create your own version. My aunt had a boyfriend in the 80's who died while she was dating him. No one ever told me or my cousins what happened. So we created this story that he was shot through the phone. Now that I think about it, I think an adult actually told us this. So for the longest time, this is the version we went with. Actually, as I was writing this I realized that I still didn't really know what happened, so I called The Mom's. She informed me that homeboy took a bunch of drugs and hung himself. So, not any less dramatic than getting shot through the phone, right?

5. Growing up, I always heard that the world was going to end in the year 2000. I must have been 8 or 9 when I was telling my cousin about my beliefs. I think I even told her if this was true, she'd be dead by the age of 21. Well, my cousin being the drama queen she continues to be decided to rat me out with my grandma. Grandma, being a crazy Catholic didn't like that so much.

The 10 Minute Mile Challenge: Day 3

I am taking a much needed day off. My body hurts. It's saying, "Dude, calm down. You may be less fat, but still fat nonetheless." So I'm letting it rest today. Which means, tomorrow is going to have to be pretty significant. I have to tell you though, I'm feeling pretty good about myself right about now. I finally get weighed at my physical tomorrow, so I'll get to see what my progress has been. My wardrobe needs a makeover, though. Nothing fits! So, that sucks. But you can't beat this feeling.