Archive: life

Every now and again, I get into these weird reflective moods and wonder how I ended up here. There's been so many wacky events that have taken me half way across the globe and back. Since I'm too lazy busy to post new posts, I thought we'd take a gander at what I was doing six years ago today...


3.23.01 - world wide wrestling

this morning lynda and i went to go look at a few flats. i hoping to find something that i like, that's not too expensive. we looked at 3, but nothing was the one. afterwards, we headed back into the office. for lunch we went to the wrestlers for thai food. apparently it's where they go every friday for lunch. thai food and pints. oh how i'm going to gain a beer belly. after work, a bunch of the guys were headed to the pub. i decided to crash the party and join them. but i was driving, so i didn't really want to have that much. so i only had a 1/2 a pint of cider. we sat and chatted for a long time until someone finally suggested food. originally i had wanted to go see groove armada, but i thought it might have been sold out. toby confirmed my thoughts, and so i decided to join the boys. we headed on into town to a pub called the castle. they had food and drinks. when we got there toby asked what i was having. i said a cider, (but the bartender heard a stella), so i had a stella. but then toby remembered that we forgot to stop by the bank. so i ended up buying. (not that i mind, it was just sort of funny). i also decided to order some dinner. i had the cranberry brie sandwich and some fries (called "chips" here) i think this is my new favorite sandwich.

Wild to think about it, isn't it? What were you doing 6 years ago today?

Oh, my bad, looks like I have been totally neglecting this site. I'm sorry. this seems to happen every year or so. I fall of the internet for a few months. I know, it's ridiculous, who in the hell falls off the internet?

Well folks, this time I am happy to say that I actually have not fallen off the internet, but I have been CONSUMED by it instead. You see, I took a new (amazing I heart it big time, but it takes all of my time) job and am now the editor of a new food site called YumSugar.com!

Yep, someone is paying me to ramble on about food and drink and cooking. I promise that once things settle down I will definitely be updating pocketpig again, but for now, please come check out YumSugar.com and tell me what you think.

note: Just so you know if the story says it's "by YumSugar" then I actually wrote it, if it says "by ---- (anyone else) --- " then I didn't.

xoxo,
-pocketpig aka sabrina aka yumsugar

so maybe you're wondering where in the hell have i been and why do i keep doing this? first i update all the time, then i dissappear, then i update, then i'm gone, and then i'm back. only to dissappear for weeks on end. i know, my updating times are more confusing than last year's lost scheduling. but those days, my friends, are numbered.

in just a wee while, i am going to be posting just about every single day, many times a day (although on another site, i'll list full details when it goes live). the lovely folks at sugar publishing have decided to hire yours truly to ramble on and on about things like elvis presley reese peanut butter cups, how to put together a cheese plate, specially priced tord boontje plates (seriously so cute), what food is in season, what to make for dinner, what kitchen contraptions are worth buying and all those other things i should have been telling you about but have been too lazy to do so.

so stay tuned.
and stay hungry.

and yes this means i'm leaving the cutlery. this is a full time gig!

Okay, so the whole phone posting on the go (which is what i depend on the most) is still a no go. Which is too bad, because then last night I could have told you about how we were seeing John Hodgman (yes you do know who that is, he's a very funny resident expert and oh yah, he's the PC in those mac commercials) at cody's. he was funny ha ha.

also if the phone was working I could have told you about how we then ate at the food court at the fancy new mall (it's across the street from cody's) afterwards. I had the spicy pork bowl from the korean bbq place and randall had some tritip sandwich with mashed potatoes. see? what kind of food court has mashed potatoes? obviously only fancy ones.

and if i could post on the go, i could tell you how I found amazingly fitting jeans at gap's new brand "Forth & Towne." and then immediately felt sad because i keep reading that it's targeted towards older women... but hopefully by older they just mean not 18 because I thought they had some cute stuff in there. although this young (probably about 18) girl came in and very vocally declared "there is nothing sexy in this store! i am out of here." so maybe by older they just mean non-hoochie. also samshrew would probably shop here and she is younger than me although she is going to "be a lawhyer" so she dresses more grown up anyway... but all joking aside, these jeans are fitting me amazingly AND bonus! they don't even need hemming.

another thing you would've known if the phone was working was that on wednesday i went over to the loverly bapril's (bill + april) house to watch runway and lost. also to eat way too many crackers, pears and TASTY tasty blue cheese smothered in honey (soooo good) and speaking of lost. whaaaa?? do you then benry ever leaves the island, like does he go on vacation? what is going on? why do they all look like they're from a (as cindy pointed out) j crew catalog!?!

i could have also told you about how on monday i didn't have to go into the office and got to play at the photo studio. and how that's way more fun that going into the office and how really i need to figure out how to do that everyday. even if it is just art directing inanimate objects for the cutlery.

but unfortunate for everyone involved, the phone network's broken so i couldn't tell you any of those things. boo.

today vinita (new coworker) and i decided to go get lunch. orginally we were going to go get sandwiches somewhere, but it was raining and we decided to go somewhere with an indoors.

somehow we ended up at the hunan restaurant on sansome.

from what i understand this place used to be great, but now it is just blech & mediocre. our waitress was this cute older asian lady, with a fro-perm thing going on, but all her cuteness couldn't make up for the yucky food. Diana's meat pie (which came with the special) has to be made with spam or some sort of canned meat (not that i have anything against canned meat i just wasn't expecting it to taste so blech). and the spicy beef dish i got was just blech and the beef was overcooked. it tasted like home cooked chinese, only by homecooked i mean something my morm would make had she forgotten that we like to eat things that are tasty and also she hates us for being ungrateful and so is pissed off and isn't trying very hard, and in fact is sort of punishing with something that is only edible & filling & nothing more because we don't deserve it.

i might go back, but i can't see myself ever suggesting we go there again. which is too bad, because i hear it used to be (in the 80s) a great place to eat.

sidenote: if you watch south park, you know what i mean by city chinese.

well hello. long time no talk to. sorry (as always). i just had to get my life in order. went thru a bunch of big changes, new job, new city, new routines. but i'm back and i'm ready to post. you'll see all the usual stuff, restaurant reviews, life stories, weird items and more. until then, you'll have to settle for a few lists. i don't even have any drawings of photos for you this time around. i'll work on it.

pathetically lame excuses as to why i haven't updated:

• we moved
  
• we didn't have internet at home for about a month
  
• i got a new job (i've mentioned it before, from forever on it shall be called "the cutlery") and needed to impress them and not be that new girl slacking off on the computer
  
• we finally got internet at home and the computer desk doesn't have a chair (still doesn't)
  
• i've been busy enjoying my new life.
  

some things i've done in the past 3+ months:

• moved to san francisco, new adventures and eateries await
  
• moved in with randall full time, we don't hate each other yet - amazing
  
• got a new job at the cutlery, so far i don't hate it, but i don't love it either
  
• been to some shows including an amazing return of the rentals
  
• had a fantastic housewarming, sorry if you couldn't make it
  
• got really super sick, sorry if i passed it on
  
• got a new library card and pass time on muni with audiobooks (avoid zadie smith's on beauty, it is extremely disappointing)
  
• reconnected with some fantastic old friends
  
• missed a lot of my sacto friends
  
• still haven't reconnected with some old friends, some of whom i probably pass everyday and don't even know it.
  
• fed the wild parrots of telegraph hill (one even landed on my head)
  
• saw several lit & decorated xmas trees, and that was way back in august
  
• actually went to the movies, most recently science of sleep, go see it
  
• went to the sfmoma and saw matthew barney's "drawing restraint 9"
  
• bought a sewing machine
  
• knitted a great t-shirt material scarf
  
• wished we had a dog (landlord says no)
  
• bought an awesome angela adams rug
  
• paid to have randall buddy-punched by sarah vowell (sidenote: anyone else see her on the premiere of that six degrees show???)
  

things i'm looking forward to

• neon's baby to be born
  
• the dears tomorrow at amoeba &popscene
  
• john hodgman at cody's next week
  
• bao turning 21 in november
  
• cutlery sample sale
  
• lost premiere (which is tonite!)
  
• this work day to be over
  
• meatoberfest (this happening still???)
  
• finding some sort of entryway bench where i can sit and put my shoes on as to not get shoedirt on the awesome new rug
  
• using my new cute yellow marimekko umbrella (which is probably going to happen today)
  

great things i've eaten

• yummy $12 entrees from 2023 (only on tuesdays)
  
• great salmon at tangerine
  
• burger with a fried egg on it at grumpy's
  
• cheap tacos from my new favorite taco truck
  
• some sort of chili flavored rice chips from costco (amazing!)
  
• fresh grape salsa with mint
  
• bbq items galore (randall got a new bbq)
  
• fried tofu sandwich
  
• fuji apple mentos from taiwan (thanks bao)
  
• cream puffs at beard papa
  
• gelato at the new mall
  
• sushi rolls with mango in them (my fave)
  
• bag lunches at myth (mostly for the baked treat)
  
• humboldt fog - a great goat cheese (thanks to cindy for bringing it)
  
• the official pocketpig breakfast: sesame bagels with cream cheese and sliced tomatoes, salt & pepper followed by a glass of fresh oj

as you can see, some things never change - including my laziness.
but i promise new posts, just needed a little break to settle in.

xo
-sabs.

they interviewed someone to replace me the other day. that was really surreal. especially if you consider i haven't given an actual notice yet.

at least i hadn't.

but i just did.
june 21 is the end.
then i will be joining MMLR in the city.

this is all so weird.

i've never left a job on my own before. all my jobs have been contract except for the last one where i got laid off and didn't really have a choice. so this feels wacky.

i think i'm excited.

hey there, i've been lazy.
okay actually that's not totally true. i am lazy is a true statement, but i haven't been totally lazy.

i've actually been spending all my free computer time hunting for a new job and trying to get my life in order. it's been in limbo/disarray for the last several years and i really want to fix that. we live between 3 cities now! that has got to stop.

during the last 2 months all sorts of exciting adventures happened (parties and train cars and fructy and nerd fair and randall's new job and so much has gone on i can't believe i've neglected it this long) i'll say that i'll talk about them someday, but we all know better, i never will. i'll try, but that rarely happens...

there has also been interviews in the city, interviews by the bay and interviews over the phone. they know about it at work now. i've got an offer on the table and i've countered, now i'm waiting to hear back.

oh and at work we have new "no blogging" policy. or so i hear, i haven't seen or signed the new handbook policy yet (it's on its way). so i guess i'm free until then or until i leave, which ever comes first...

it's weird to think i'll be leaving fun-thanklessmusic retail to join megamalllifestyleretailer in their onlinespamdept. wacky. oh and i will refer to it from now on as MMLR (in case they also have a no blogging policy), that is if they actually hire me.

when i got home from work yesterday randall said "woah, best buy is totally open" and then we wondered what else was open over there. a few miles away they built this brand new gigantic shopping center (the kind you can see from the freeway). i'd heard that it would all be opening in april, but i guess some of it is opening earlier. so now our neighborhood has a target, a costplus and a best buy. according to all the signs we'll soon have an old navy, linens n' things, pier1, sam's club and a bunch of other stores that don't have signs yet. the typical freeway strip mall.

but hey, it's something new, so we decided to go check it out.

while perusing the aisles of target juju called me back. she didn't get my call earlier because she was perusing the aisles of the other target. go figure.

after chatting for a few minutes we decided we'd meet her, wes & tuttle (aka mcd's) at the mayflower. tuttle ordered a pretty delicious bass. and we also partook in the orange spicy chicken (which wasn't that spicy and a bit soggy), walnut shrimp (which was too mayonaise-y), chicken chow mein, sweet & sour tofu, and the included in the meal fried spring rolls, potstickers and hot & sour soup.

while there tuttle told us about his new venture into office life. this means he's now got himself an internet presence and a new phone. yay for tuttut and his entry into the future!

sidenote: the mayflower is a chinese restaurant my mom used to like when i was younger. but later when i told her that's where i went for dinner she made a retching/gagging sound.

yesterday at lunch randall and i went to sal's in west sac for some lunch. we were starving and it was on the way home from doing family errands, so we popped in. besides i've always seen and always wonder what it's like. i ordered the carnitas quesadilla and randall had a carnitas taco and a cheese quesadilla. when our food arrived i realized that my order is like his order squashed together. and that this is how we usually order at taquerias. odd isn't it? as for the food, it really liked it. the tortilla came out in the right sort of crispiness, but i don't think it was worth the price. it was 5.99 for the thing AND they didn't have pico de gallo style salsa. boo.

last night we ended up heading out to the library (a bar/venue) for the animal collective show. the library is a tiny venue so it was a big deal. first of all a big deal that a relatively known band is playing sacramento. secondly a big deal because apparently this is the smallest venue on their tour (i'm pretty sure they're playing fillmore tonight).

the show was overcrowded and sold out. it was like a who's who of the sacto scene with special appearance from sf dave (last known sighting: july 2005).

i had been on the fence on whether or not i wanted to go to the show. when i first heard about it, i wanted to. then a bunch of time went by and i wasn't sure i wanted to. i was afraid it was going to be crowded and boring (in that way that even though i like the music a lot, seeing it live bores me, such as stereolab, modest mouse, broadcast, etc). then i heard that they were a really good live show so i figured why not. then i heard it was sold out so i figured oh well. then we found out they "came into a few more tickets" so we said sure why not.

and that's how we ended up at the library.

and sadly my gut reaction was right. the show ended up being lackluster and dull. more than just a little dissapointing. the kids up in front (and i say kids because they looked little like 13 or so) seemed to have a good time. apparently there was a mosh pit and crowd surfers. what?? i'm too old to be at a show with a freeking pit. but i'm not sure how pit like it was, we didn't see it. we were in the back in the window area at the bar. it was a good view until rosie perez & her short friend stood on a trunk and blocked our view. oh and the sound kept cutting in and out. i know they have an odd sound, but i don't think that was quite intentional. especially judging by the dumbfounded looks on the sound guys.

last week camille and i said our households should hang out more since we are of the meateating minority (there is a vegetarian dominance among our friends), so friday afternoon i asked if she and cr would like to join randall and i for dinner. we diliberated on where we wanted to go and eventually settled on sandra dee's. i mean what better place to go for meat feast than bbq house where vegetarians can't eat 99% of the menu?

when we got there we took stacey's advice. she had told me that her and kari liked to go there and split the 4 meat combo, so we decided to split 2 of them among the 4 of us.

for meats we had tri tip, rib tips, ribs, hot links, chicken, fried oysters, fried snapper & grilled shrimp. for sides we had mac & cheese, spicy corn, hush puppies, french fries & cornbread.

i ate and ate and ate. man it was tasty.
i liked the tri-tip the best. camille liked the chicken. the fried fishes were so-so, but man the meats in meat sauce. yum!

while we were there this awesome (and by awesome i mean mostly ridiculous lame) guy serenaded us like we were in some coffee shop. i thought that was a bit odd. oh and also, camille does not recommend the sweet tea. i tasted it and agreed. even though they said it was not from a can, it tasted like it was from a can. or maybe a bottle. but you get the idea.

afterwards we went to the bonn lair for some drinks. i ordered the chimay forgetting how strong it was. the tingle of pre-drunk ran up my neck pretty quickly. i don't know why, but that's where i tend to feel the alcoholic effects.

some things i meant to post last week.

last week i went and grabbed a burrito at lunch. chicken with all sorts, like everything behind the counter in it. when i brought it back to work, eduardo had me weigh it. it was almost 2 pounds. that is ridiculous

this thursday night katy and i went to see the goonies at the ua arden. they're doing a flashback movie each week. she'd never seen it on the big screen and my oh my the truffle shuffle just isn't as amazing unless it's on a big screen. you really get the full shuffle/jiggle effect. sidenote: i expected the crowd to be rowdier. boo on you crowd. you should have yalped and cheered more.

this is scottel via webcam. the portland weather and his hermit tendencies have kept him indoors for too long. his hair is going wild and his face is growing something odd. i think he thinks it's johnny depp pirate like, but really it's more orlando bloom rat like. har har har. sidenote: he just got a new puppy named jet. she has the cutest raccoon/panda eyes. i should have photographed that.

last friday night samshrew, jorn, randall and i went to pho'y for dinner. it's a pho place that we've never been too even tho it's really near our house in san jose. when we walked in the place smelled like amazing basil extravaganza. i thought that it was a good sign, but when we sat down and got the menu, even more AMAZING good sign. on the back of the menu was a flowchart algorithm of pho service (aka how to eat pho. WAH!! only in san jose. such nerdsor detail. i hearted it.

last thursday i went to mary's with kari, jeff and stacey. it was more work work talk talk, also the first time for momma to leave baby at home and go out. afterwards i cut out and headed over to liquid to meet up with carolyn and her drunks. one of them was dressed as a clown. a relatively drunk clown at that. he was trying to come up with a word like essence or epitome, but neither of those worked. he then gave me a very serious mission. i am to obtain the oldest dustiest thesauraus i can find and send him an email with all the synonyms for epitome. he's hoping i'll find his word.

today i got up early and ran a bunch of errands (library books, returns, etc). randall is still in san jose and it was weird to have a saturday with nothing planned and no one to ask "so hey whatcha feel like doing today." on one hand it was really nice and on the other it made for a quiet day.

yesterday alexis told me that she was selling bracelets at deep (a yoga studio). they were having a fashion flea market sellout-buyout like thing. i decided it would be neat to check out. so i went down there when they opened. i ended up scoring these two little guys. they're from south america somewhere (i'm too dumb to remember where the lady said they were handmade from) and they hold incense out of the top of their heads. we're not really incense kind of people, but i loved them and i couldn't decide who was cuter, so i took them both home.

afterwards i headed home and decided to have some snax. my cousin visited from taiwan last week (more on that later). she brought us some taiwanese items, including a bag of snacks. one of them was this dehydrated squid stuff that i like. it's like spicy squid jerky. and yes i know that sounds revolting, but bear with me here, this stuff is fantastic. while eating it, i happened to read the back of the package. it was all in chinese except for the "savory relishes to enjoy" also note that for the "Expiry date" you need to "Please see the sealed place" and for storage instructions, be sure to keep it at "Room temterature."

um. hello are you people serious? running out of candidates or something? because it's awesome and all, but really am i honestly worthy of EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH.???!?!?! i kinda feel not. it makes me feel guilty.

eduardo tells me it's like on office space once that guy stops caring everyone is like YES THEY ARE AWESOME. because i kinda stopped caring as much as i used to. don't get me wrong, i get all my work done, i'm just trying not to stay late to get it done and i'm getting here closer and closer to 10am everyday. and my heart's just not in it. but i guess my 40% devotion is still seen as eotmonth caliber. bizarre.

i mean today i got in and stacey said to me, "sorry to bother you right when you get in, but i have a meeting at 10"...oh i guess it was almost 10. hello you guys have been here for almost an hour longer. and we're going to leave at the same time. hello doesn't that bother you? is that really worth employee of the month... do you really want your employee of the month to put more importance on style channel's top 10 beauty tips of 2006 than they do in punctuality?? i mean, i couldn't leave the house before knowing that bold lips are in. so is brown eyeshadow. so is "rough hair" and also a sleek military ponytail. and also big eyebrows. but none of this at once.

sidenote: guess i better stick with the big eyebrows. it's about time something of mine was in.

sidenote2: here's my glowing blurb. it's all true, so maybe i deserve some recognition, but seriously tell someone else deserves congrats first, how can you be eotm when your heart doesn't care anymore?? "In addition to always seeming to know "the word on the street," [means i always know the office gossip] she has a major impact on just about everything we do online. [She] designs and develops all the graphics for our email campaigns, printed materials, and website. She is also an integral part of the site release process as she creates mockups that maintain our site graphics standards, consider customer ease of use, and provide a basis for the tech team to start development. In addition, in January, [she] was called on for several additional graphics needs and did a tremendous job in delivering what was needed in very short time frames."

gwah seriously. this makes me feel really guilty and somewhat ill. i don't even remember doing anything important in january.

yesterday randall went to the san francisco airport and flew to england. yep boys and girls. randar is in england right now. actually he's in cambridge (small world isn't it?). work sent him sorta last minute (he had a few days notice). he'll be there until early friday morning. crazy isn't it? i'm total jealous. so if you live in the cambridge, england drop me a line, i'll pass you on to him.

once randall was shipped off i went over to my morm's house. we were going to temple and then to put up a sign somewhere. when we got to temple we arrived during the "chanting class" so we had to wait in the foyer area for about 15 minutes. the foyer was a little bit awkward as it was really crowded and everyone was praying and following along with the chanting. i tried, but i couldn't understand anything, so i just sat there peacefully.

afterwards i asked my morm what they were saying during the chanting, but she said she didn't know, she just followed along...

once the chanting was done, we went inside and did the usual temple stuff. you can read about it in last year's temple entry (it's at the bottom). i always think i should go more often than once/twice a year. i didn't grow up going to temple, it's something that started when i went to college, but i really like it there. and again this year i felt totally ignorant. someday i should learn more about it.

after temple morm and i headed back to her house to grab the sign, the tools and to change our clothes. i mentioned that i was a bit hungry so she fed me her lunch leftovers. noodles with thinly sliced chicken and stir fried spinach. she handed me the large bowl and told me that i'd have to eat in the car as it was going to be dark soon and we had a sign to put up.

so i got in the car and ate a bowl of noodle soup. yes in the car. i found that amazingly fun and weird. we arrived shortly after i'd finished eating and put up a sign on a piece of property her client is selling. then we drove around a fancy pants neighborhood of custom homes where she pointed out the good and bad feng shui.

today i went home from work early. i've been getting these ridiculous headaches where it feels like the right part of my brain is gonna burst out. dr says it's tension/stress headaches. i say they suck.

after i left work i headed to the post office to drop off a package. then i went to the library to pick up some books on CD that i'd ordered. eduardo gave me the da vinci code a month or so ago (i don't think i'd have bothered to read it, but on audio it was fantastic) and now i'm hooked on audio books (just finished girl with pearl earring, now i want to see the movie). i always thought i'd be a snob and a reading purist, but i've changed my mind. audio books are awesome. and they're just in time as i've mostly run out of this american life episodes.

after the 3 minutes at the libary, i went to jamba juice for some enlightened smoothie passionfruit thing. i used to think they tasted weird (they being the enlightened kind) but then i found out today that the one i got was only 150 calories. that is 300 calories less than most of the other jamba juices. so hey for 300 calories i'll deal with not nearly as nice.

afterwords i went home, decided it was too cold for jamba juice (so i put in the fridge), ate some sweet potato bisque (from trader joe's i don't recommend it, it's way way way way way too sweet) and then napped for at least 3 hours.

when i woke up i talked to randall. his company just got bought by another. he survived the regime change layoffs and now he might be going to england for a week. if so he'll leave on sunday. what?!? LUCKY. funniest part is, he'll be headed to cambridge (where i used to live). double lucky. worst part is (well besides the fact that i can't go) is that i can't even think of anything i want him to bring back for me.

after talking to randall i ate some gorgonzola gnocchi (also from trader joes and very tasty, except that i used too much oil) and watched lost. HELLO. who are these people!? that's all i'll say for those of you still behind. WHAT WHAT? how can they give away so much and yet give away nothing at all. also jack's back story bores me.

and now a total sidenote: my number one choice for dogs has been chow chow (i will name him general tsao) for so long now, but i think corgis with their stunted legs have recently won me over.

so today there's been some weird "bubbling" water and blue flecks coming from the water cooler in the breakroom. so they called up the maintenance people and they came in and did some mumbo jumbo magic. turns out it was just the filter that needed to be replaced. because you know, the last time it was replaced was TWO YEARS ago.

two years.
let's just add that to the reasons why not column.

so killa just resigned.
talk about crazy!

this makes 3 hi-up resignations in 3 days.
is there something we should know?

in case you haven't noticed. today is a waste of a work day. i have very little to do right now (got a ton of stuff done this morning) and it's a bit frustrating. there are a few projects due soon, but i haven't received any specs, so i can't really do anything. and i know they're all going to arrive on my desk at the same time and i'll have to bust my butt to get them done in time. and i'll get really stressed and then have to stay late every day like i've done for the last month.

at lunch time i couldn't take the idling any longer and called juju to see if she'd had lunch. i told her that i just wanted to get out of the office for a bit (i think things are turning poison around here, it's weird feeling). so i met up at her new office which is in a victorian downtown. it was so ridiculously cute (that's it on the corner). then we went to olipom and le fun. there were some really cute dresses, but i ended up not getting anything.

after about an hour we parted ways and i went back to work where i ate lunch. bao had brought me some leftovers the other day. it was pretty good green pepper beef. only i think the green peppers were giant green chili peppers and not regular green peppers. also the meet was a little rubbery/overcooked, but that might have just been the reheating that did that.

i washed it all down with a baby can of diet dr. pepper and then i got the hiccups. cans of diet. dr. pepper always give me hiccups it's weird. eduardo heard me and gave me his technique. you sit up perfectly straight and put two fingers behind your left ear right at the jaw line and inhale/exhale deeply. it worked for me. i'll have to remember that trick for the future.

Friday was a half day. Matt strolled in at around 10, he didn't know. I thought to myself how nice that would be to think you had to go in for a whole day and then surprise! you get to go home at 12. but then i don't think i'd ever forget it was a half day. i mean if you can leave work early how can you forget? i mark that on my calendar as soon as i learn!

when i got home randall and i decided to get something to eat. i felt like sandwiches, but wasn't sure where to go. randall felt like soup and also wasn't sure where to go. randall ended up suggesting selland's. i thought maybe we could go try that other fancy pants cafe market in the pavillion's shopping center, but i couldn't remember what it was called and randall had no idea what i was talking about, so we ended up at selland's.

selland's is a fancy pants cafe market wine shop eatery. i've been there a few times and for some reason i can't find it on this site when i do a search, but i swear i've mentioned it before. the first time i went was with sue. we must have looked hopeless pathetic as they let us sample a trillion things. i had the carnitas sandwich then but totally eyeballed the chicken terriyaki thighs. the next time i had a different sandwich, but again eyeballed the chicken thighs. so this time, i had the chicken thighs. and they were tasty and juicy and exactly what i thought they would be like. they came with a side of perfectly golden and tasty butternut squash and a side of mac & cheese with fontina and parmesan. i totally heart fancy pants mac & cheese. even randall said it was good which is surprising, because even though he's a food snob, he hearts hearts hearts box mac & cheese.

we grabbed the only empty table inside and ended up sitting next to these people. i think she said 3 words the entire time. he seemed like a total cliche. i was trying not to eavesdrop, but it was difficult as i could hear him as soon as i walked into the place, so once we sat down it was as if he was talking at us also. he went on and on about his masters and travelling and some baptism in a small italian village in the old country. okay, so maybe he didn't use the word old country, but i felt like he should have. he seemed the type if you know what i mean.

sidenote: go figure, we learned about a new soup/sandwich place downtown AFTER we ate lunch.

we're a christmas celebrating family, so merry christmas. but if you're a non christmas family then i say happy whatever you celebrate or don't celebrate. hope you at least had a good weekend. mine was a bit much...

we didn't have a real tree this year (we have no furniture and i don't know if it's the weather or what, but it never felt like christmas, so we didn't get a tree. we did, however, take out our lego christmas tree and hang it on our ornament stand. looks a little festive next to the presents, no?

on christmas eve we woke up early and headed BACK to the mall area. i couldn't believe we were going to the mall area three days in a row, the three days before christmas. but when randall went to get the glasses they asked if he wanted to schedule an eye appointment and what do you know they had one available that morning. so he took it. luckily it was early enough and there weren't a lot of people out and about. i ended up spending more money on useless things though. but i did get a fun new skirt at anthropologie and wondered why i never remember to shop there.

after the eye appt we headed back to sacramento. we took the long route thru berkeley in order to pick up bao's xmas present. i got him a blue hoodie with a totoro face on it. now he can wear/be a totoro. oh and on our way home i totally saw mr "i went to cal" (he worked with me for about 5 months) getting pulled over on the freeway. i laughed maybe a little too hard...

when we got home we hung out for a while and wrapped some presents. then i made some chocolate chunk/flake (i was cutting from a large bittersweet chocolate bar) cookies for santa. then we wrapped some more presents. after the cookies finished baking i brought some over to the rivers house. my dad was the only one there so i hung out with him a while and then headed back home.

the next morning (christmas!) randall and i got up at 5:30 in the morning. this is not my idea of a great start to christmas. we had to be there by 8am. when we were about 10 minutes away a cop pulled us over. we were only going about 5 miles over the speed limit and i felt bad for laughing at "i went to cal" and figured this was karma kicking me in the butt. only the guy just wanted to give us a warning and tell us to slow down because of the fog and the deers (i guess there was just car vs. deer accident and he didn't want to see any repeats).

when we got to randall's sister's house we sat around and chatted. then we opened presents. then we ate a breakfast feast. after the feast (homemade augratin style julienned potatoes, sausage patties, egg casserole/quiche like thing, coffee cake, mimosas, coffee, bagels, and bread) we played a round of scrabble, watched randall sister's wedding photo dvd (we made it for them, so i knew it would be watched) and then said goodbye and headed to my parent's house.

on our way there we picked up james & sena (my mom's godchildren that i think we've inherited). sena told us that she had gotten a card from santa. i asked her to read it to me and she broke my heart. in the card it said that santa had run out of money and that he would get her two presents next year. their family isn't poor, they just don't really celebrate it. both of their parents immigrated from asia and grew up not celebrating. turns out james wrote the card when he realized there wouldn't be presents.

when we got to my parent's house we were just in time for a ham and turkey feast with stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, peas, salad, bread, spinach and rice. what's a meal without rice? dinner seemed an awkward affair. we don't talk as much as we used to. and it was the first time we'd sat down as a family around the new large table.

afterwards we opened presents. james and sena got a bunch of books and the rest of us mostly got money.

later that evening randall and i stole away to walgreens and bought sena a stuffed hello kitty doll. we couldn't think of any other place that was open. then santa left it on our doorstep for her with a "i got a loan at the bank. sorry i was late" card. sorta sadsors. okay actually really sadsors to me. randall says we can "adopt" them now.

last monday started with a halfday at work, a good phone conversation (i'll hopefully tell you more about it in the future) and then some mall shopping. the mall was frightening on monday afternoon at 3pm. i think we would have hurt someone if we went there during the weekend.

tuesday-thursday are a big work blur. i think i hate working in e-tail during the holidays. i never used to think that, but this year has been a nightmare. our numbers our up and things are going well, but the number of hours put into work are up and stress levels are up. they fed us on wednesday though. it's there way of saying thank you. it's a nice gesture, but i think i realized what's happening. they want us to get so fat we won't be able to get out of the doors. there was a full sandwich spread, cookies, salad, sodas, chips, a platter of homemade fudge and a cake.

after a week of hell at work (NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS need to be up! SELL SELL SELL!") i ended up taking friday off (we were getting a half day anyway). so on thursday night randall and i went to san jose. we arrived around 9:30 and randall asked if i wanted to go to the mall. we had a couple of stores we wanted to go to there and were planning on waking up early friday to go. the mall closed at 11, so we figured, hey let's go now, i bet it's not nearly as busy. WE WERE WRONG. there were a ton of cars there and a lot of people arriving. luckily we found parking right away, but when we went inside it was PACKED. we passed thru the food court and every seat was full.

when i was checking out at banana republic (randall needed another uniform shirt and i got a new black cardigan to live in for 10 bucks!) this girl fainted and hit her head crazy hard on the wooden floor. everyone surrounded her and shouts of "I KNOW CPR!" wrang out thru the store. i thought OH Dang! so do i! but then i also thought, wait, she's breathing and moving around and sort of talking, no one needs to use CPR here. they carried her over to the couch (she fainted again on the way there) and propped her up. i thought her neck looked all wrong angle on the couch and that they should position her differently. but there were too many people dealing with it already. and banana was just wanting to ring people up and get them out of their store. so we paid for the purchases and left the mall. randall found out his laptop was ready at the apple store, but he had to pick it up tomorrow. so much for not going to the mall tomorrow... oh, when we pulled out of the parking garage i saw an ambulance, the girl who fainted was inside.

the next morning randall and i got up and got ready to go out (after watching a saved episode of this season's curb your enthusiasm first). we had a bunch of errands to run. first half of the day was going to be for fun and the second half was going to be errands to run. there was nothing to eat for breakfast at that house so we ended up deciding to eat out for breakfast. we were trying to figure out what we felt like when i suggested mr. lee's. lee's sandwiches (as i mentioned before) are the tastiest sandwiches and oh so cheap. randall had a grilled chicken sandwich (with no sour vegetables) and i ended up having soymilk and yotiao (a chinese pastry of fried dough. you dip it in the soymilk, but man it's greasy). sidenote: there's apparently a "curious brain protien" named after it. weird...

after breakfast randall and i headed to the tech museum downtown. there's an exhibit we've been meaning to see called "Game On." it ends on Jan. 2 so we had to go before then. pretty much it's an awesome interactive exhibit about videogames and culture. it's pretty much my idea of a great date. tons of games to play. music from games (i wish we could buy the cds, i think they would have made great christmas presents for some people). i know it had a lot of stuff in it, but really i never wanted it to end. i wish all 3 floors of the museum was dedicated to this. i heart old video games. scottel once took us to a place in portland of all vintage video games. i wanted to go back every single day. oh and for some reason i think this scene (shown in picture) is amazing. youth and video games. i heart the future.

after the museum we strolled around downtown san jose (they decorate it up for the holidays every year, but during a rainy daytime everything just looked soggy and sad), then we went to visit grant and family. we were served tea and cinnamon rolls. i remarked to randall that someday i want to be as cute as they are and happen to have cinnamon rolls or baked goods on hand in case guests arrive. right now i don't even have mugs to serve the tea in let alone the tea.

after a few hours of visiting we headed back to the mall area. there are actually two malls one is outdoors and the other is a HUGE traditional indoor mall. they're across the street from each other. randall's eye place is in the outdoor mall and he wanted to pick out new glasses before the end of the year (insurance stuffs). so we went there and he tried on a trillion pairs. he finally settled on these fancy hand lasered wood frames. they're awesome looking, but i'm a little afraid that they'll get sat upon and snap.

afterwards we hit a few of those shops and then walked across the street to the regular mall. randall had to pick up his laptop from the apple store. he had to wait at the genius bar for a while because it seemed like there was only one genius on duty. i went and bought some ridiculous junk jewelry earrings a few stores down. when we were done with that we left the mall and head back home.

once again, exhausted.

exhausted.

weekend in a nutshell.
wake up, drive to sf (in traffic), party drink bloody mary's and eat bacon in celebration of cindy's birthday. visit with friends we haven't seen in a long time. including one that had been years. stick candles in a donut. sing happy birthday. watch presents opened. drink some scotch whiskey (i only took a sip i was the driver). drive back to sac (weather starting to turn drive took way to long), pick up samshrew and my dad and head to spataro (feeling total underdressed as we didn't get a chance to go home) for my dad's birthday dinner. eat too much. go back to the rivers eat birthday cake from freeport bakery.

go home.
collapse.

finish the first narnia book (had about 5 pages to go). try to start the third (already read the second). pass out before i even begin. wake up from ridiculous panic attack dream (i rocket launched off on a snowmobile and was a jillionty feet up in the air and was going to crash and die) it is pouring nasty weather, i clean up the living room discovering late bills. make a few phone calls. drive to southside is POURING POURING MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO CRASH sort of rain. pick up baby james and sena and then meet samshrew and dad at the movie theatre to see narnia. the theatre was too small and too crowded. seperated i sit next to sena and have to console her when the lion gets it. after the movie off to red robin because well "i want hometown buffet" cries of a 7 year old were appeased with that instead. eat dinner. drop the kids off. drive home. buy batteries for chirping smoke detector only to find we already have 4 of those kinds of batteries at home.

sit on the floor.
collapse.

for lunch jeff, stacey and i went to the nugget market. we were going to go visit mama kari, but we couldn't get a hold of her.

we got there and i decided to get a sandwich. i couldn't decide if i wanted one of their pre-determined panini options, or if i wanted to make my own. in the end i made my own. i had a half baguette (perfect softness on the inside, crunchy on the out) with cranberry, turkey, tomatoes, lettuce, swiss cheese and mustard. then i had them press it so it would be slightly warm. taste taste taste. the sensation is the blend of the cranberry and slightly warmed swiss.

no one really wanted to go back to work, so we sat down to eat our sandwiches. we were only there for about a minute when my morm called. she needed help printing a file from one computer on the other computer's printer. the printers aren't networked, but the computers are, so i had to walk her thru opening a file from one machine on the other. she kept closing the windows and not reading things out loud. that's what she does and then she gets frustrated when you can't find it for her. i swear if anyone needs a video phone it's her. then she could hold it to the screen so i could see what she's looking at.

it took 15 minutes. jeff said it was like watching a cross between a helpdesk & law&order. i'm not really sure how it was law&order like. maybe i sounded like i was interrogating her. WHAT DOES IT SAY? what does it say? JUST READ IT TO ME. i guess...

sidenote: during my call jeff went and bought a brownie from the dessert counter. then he kindly split it with stacey and i. it was a brownie layer with some sort of toasted coconut/chocochip layer on top. i asked him what kind it was and he said (no joke here) that it's called a "magic brownie". honestly. that's it's name.

last night randall, juju, wes, juju's niece and i went to a midnight showing of harry potter. the theater was packed (there were actually three screens of it, and they were all packed). in order to get good seats we arrived around 10:45. then we had to sit and wait. we were going to play cards (thinking we would be in a line), but it was too difficult to do so while seated. i started to knit a scarf, but somehow missed a big hole at the beginning, so i frogged it and started over. it was just waiting waiting waiting.

but at midnight the movie started. randall made me switch seats with him, the people on his left were the easily excited mildly chatty type. after we switched they were quiet though.

the new movie is pretty good. it's been a long time since i've read book 4 (not to mention my memory is so poor) that lots of part were a surprise. and i didn't get to notice (like juju) what had been left out. i still think i like movie 3 the best. it had the best overall feel and aesthetic. but this new one is definitely the most epic feeling of them all (even if some parts feel truncated due to the fact that the book is a bajillionty pages long)...but it's probably the most "entertaining" and i can see where it's going to be a lot of people's favorite. also it's really dark, these kids are starting to get old and totally earns that pg-13 rating.

oh and jarvis pulp is in it for about 2 seconds and that was wah! to me.

ps: juju brought mint & orange cream kit kat to the party. the mint is yum yum yum yum yum. now if it was only Dark choco mint...

yesterday was the new bossman's (the kertell replacement) first day. they brought us pizza and had everyone come stand around the pizza table to meet him. so far i get a good impression. his voice sort of reminds me of vincent price though. in that weird softspoken but i bet he could get real spooky sounding. he doesn't creep me out though and seems like he might be a good fit. i guess only time will tell. but hey free pizza lunch.

yay.

Tonite I went over to morm's house to help her with some photo stuff. i got her a camera last xmas and she's still learning how to use it. i think she's got the camera down, but now we've got to work on going from camera to computer to printer/internet. it's not going to be an easy task.

while there she was telling me how she couldn't believe i went to school for photography and yet none of my pictures are as amazing as hers. for example, had i seen her pictures of the house on farmhouse ct? i would be so lucky to get a picture this amazing. apparently this gigantic tree fell down on mother's day and blocked the whole house in. luckily no one got hurt.

"eh, can you picture yourself in that tree? five years ago they chopped the left hand side down because it was on the roof. then it started to lean and it was going to cost $1200 to remove it, but the owner said, 'why kill the tree, it's still alive and takes forever to grow.' then the tree just wouldn't take it anymore and BOOM! it's on the ground! and it still cost $1200 to move the tree even though it was already on the ground....oh good for jose. easy job." (jose is her gardener friend)

she also says that when she was a kid in typhoon season, all the village kids would climb the fallen trees. she couldn't believe there weren't any kids in that tree yet...but they didn't fail her, when she showed up to meet jose the tree was littered with children and she had to chase them all away because "this is AMERICA and you are going to get sued."

last nite samshrew called me around midnight.
i was like, what? who is calling at midnight? it is total beyond the cutoff time. but samshrew just wanted to share the fact that she TOTAL WON BLINGO! she actually won the "portable dvd player" for herself and one for me too. which both of us are trading in for the 175 buck visa card.

so see people do win this junk!!

so if you haven't joined blingo yet, please do so and be my blingo friend.
blingo is a search engine that uses google's backend, so your results are the same (there are a few more ads, but they're all text).

i can't say you'll win for sure, but so far i've gotten 3 free movie tickets and now 175 bucks.

and who doesn't like free stuff?

so be my blingo pal. if you win i win.
use this link to join:
http://www.blingo.com/friends?ref=mMwBCMg5sF%2BMvLzI42ijquxEtdc

just a little whine about how i really want to see this movie again. has anyone else seen it? i believe it came out in 1991. i remember thinking i loved it, but i've only seen it once or twice and my memory is horrible. i just know i want one of those devices to record my dreams...at anyrate it's nearly impossible to see. there's been no official dvd release and the vhs is out of print (but who has vhs anymore anyway?) i hear there's an italian dvd release that is 3 discs and 4+ hours long. but the non-english parts have no english. why won't they release that here? i don't want to pay some dude on ebay 50 bucks for the italian one. have you seen it? what are your thoughts of it?

just got back from casablanca. it's a moroccan restaurant on fair oaks. kari was having her baby shower there. the babydaddy is moroccan, so she thought it would be appropro for a co-ed moroccan food party there, and it was an amazing time.

the food. so taste. a little spicy, a little sweet, a lot of flavor. the honey chicken kabob was seriously amazing and there was also this date/fig/powdered sugar/filo dough pastry thing that was amaze.

i've never been to moroccan food before and i want to know why no one has taken me!! you eat with your hands! i got to be a pig in public! picking at everything with my fingers. man the food was so taste.

pretty much all of it was amaze. and the owner and the "conehead" waiter (as he called himself, due to his traditional hat) were so cute i thought i was going to pop. they danced and sang and joked and ate cake with us (kari's husband - yep, they were married on the sly - is friends with them so kari was treated like royalty).

when you walk into the place it's like one large room, decorated with dim lights and lots of fabric. sort of like you walked into a tent. there are seats all around the perimeter of the room and small round tables up against those. these are surrounded by huge plush cushions to sit on. right before you start eating they bring the water to pour over your hands and a towel for you to dry and use for the rest of the night. then they bring out the food and you dig in! there was also a belly dancer and loud music. and it was really just an amazing baby shower. i had such a fun time. and i totally loved the place.

i think randall would heart this place too, so we should go sometime. any meat eaters want to join us? vegheads are welcome too, but really do you want to watch me devour a whole small chicken with my bare hands? yah. i didn't think so.

yesterday around 4:30 i got a disturbing call from my dad. he wanted to know if i'd talked to my morm today. i asked him no and then asked why. he said that he had just talked to her 20 minutes ago, and that she thought she'd had a mild stroke, went to get an mri and was driving back to her doctor's office even though the doctor told her not to drive.

so he was panicking because he went to meet her at the drs' office (even though she said, "aiya. it's a nuthing. i see you later.") and her car wasn't there. and last he heard she was just "getting off the freeway." so he checked all the freeway exits near her drs' office and nothing. and now she wasn't answering her phone. so yes, had i heard from her and what should we do?

so naturally i panicked too.

then we got smart and i called her drs' office. they'd said that she'd been in that morning for an appt. and some tests but that she hadn't been back there. so that was also worrisome. what in the world was going on and where was my morm?

i left work immediately. my dad sounded a wreck. i didn't really know what to do, but i figured i could go figure it out with him. so i got in the car and i drove towards her dr's office and my dad drove towards their house to see if maybe she just hadn't gone home (she's stubborn). we also joked that knowing my morm she was probably at the asian grocery store near the drs' office.

when i got about 2/3 the way to their house, my morm finally picked up her phone. she was at the ER back downtown. i told her that we were worried about her and she said, "aiya. no one needs to worry." and i told her it was my job to worry and that i was coming down to the ER. then she told me not to bother because she was ah-oh-kay.

so i got off the freeway and turned the car around (also now is a good time to add that i am driving on a nearly flat tire with a nail stuck thru it, i was going to go get new tires after work today, the mini has no spare). i got to the er and found her sitting in the waiting room. she looked a little broken. mostly tired. but her face muscles didn't look off or anything and she was talking and was normal.

i asked her to explain what happened and why she didn't answer her phone and what was she doing at the ER when dad said she was going to her regular doctor?

long story: she didn't feel good, made an appt, went to the dr, dr was afraid it was mild stroke and sent her to er (told her not to drive and not to leave dr's office until she had a ride, but my mom apparently just bounced as soon as the dr. left the room and then drove herself to the er because she is STUBBORN), at the er they misinterpreted the dr's note - thought dr wanted an mri, went to get mri, waited, got some help from a friend she ran into, got the mri, waited somewhere, test results back, they sent her to go back to the dr with the results, she drove to dr's office, talked to my dad (this is where we lost her), dr called her back and said WTF? why are you driving and WTF? who authorized an mri? and WTF? why didn't you go to the emergency room? WTF?! why are you driving?? go back to the emergency room!! so she went back to the emergency room and they ask you to turn your cellphone off, so she did. and that is why we could not get a hold of her.

at the emergency room we waited and waited and waited and waited.
she wanted to leave ("eh! i don't even hurt anymore. i wanna go home."), but i wouldn't let her.

turns out in the end it was no big deal.
mri came out super clean. her brain is healthy despite her ridiculousness. they say she better get a better pillow and see a physical therapist. they think it's some huge knotted neckmuscle that could be pinching a nerve.

afterwards she told me "eh, you know, you gonna usea this story in a movie someday, okay?"

okay.

i'll have to post about the reunion later.
it was more fun than i thought it would be, probably because i consumed more alcohol last night than ever before. and then i don't remember several hours between when randall so sweetly agreed to drive a lot of drunk people home and when i got into bed. like seriously don't remember. i've never honestly blackedout before. scary.

then i totally paid for it all day. hanging out with my new pal the toilet. i was sick all day long. a realtor wanted to show our house between 2:30-3:30. i thought i'd be okay by then so said sure. at 2:30 i was mostly okay, so we just went to the cafe to read the paper while we waited for them to show the house. i figured iced tea would be okay to order. and well i couldn't keep that down either.

now i leave you with that mental liquid projectile image.
as i am exhausted and am off to bed.

Yes yes yes. i know. i've been neglecting the site for a while. right now i'm eating lychees. i used to hate them. now i heart them. they make me feel nostalgic and remind me of taiwan. i got these at trader joe's and they're imported from taiwan. although what i really want is fresh longyen (Dragon eyes).

anyway, here's a list of 20 things i did this past week.

1- Went to knitting last Sunday. I am crocheting a bag made of curling ribbon. Similar to the last one, only this one is going to be green and hopefully much bigger than the last.

2- Went to see the constant gardener on Monday (Labor Day), it was good but not amazing. i'll give it a solid B rating.

3- Watched bao and samshrew eat burrito pillows (giant burritos) for lunch. it's the first time in a while where the 3 of us had lunch or hung out just the 3 of us. we're like such a bad movie.

4- Helped bao pack up his stuff for his journey back to UCLA. i went to the rivers house for dinner and still don't understand how i got suckered into helping him fold every article of clothing he owns.

5- went to the farmer's market again. i'm going to be sad when it's over at the end of this month. i ended up buying lots of cute and colorful and tasty cherry tomatoes.

6- We signed up for netflix a few weeks ago (i want them to give me a job too) and so we've watched more movies in the last 3 weeks than we have all year.

7- i fell in love with "australian style" yogurt. i got wallaby brand yogurt at whole foods it was so amazingly close to drinkable. it's similar to the trader joe's organic lowfat yogurt (with the cute cow on it).

8- went shopping with juju on thursday. spent more money than i meant to, but at least i got to check the item "jeans" off the list (i've ripped the last two in really awkward, don't understand how that ripped, how do jeans rip there?!? kind of way)

9- i finally fixed my bike tire after 8 months of trying. rode around the block. the next day the tube was flat. flat. flat. and there's a hole in the actual tire.

10- went for a walk with randall, we played on the swings and then met wes, juju and tuttle for a taste of thai. randall and i split the special dish of the day "curry on the beach" it was a shrimp red curry inside of a coconut shell with lots of huge coconut hunks in it. the coconut meat was stranger than i thought it would be. sorta mushy, sorta slimy. i couldn't decide if i liked it or not.

11- made two homemade soups. one was a beef pho and the other was a squash. the beef pho was too salty (the beef broth used was too salty, i know i should make my own for pho, but really that takes too long). the squash soup was too squashy. i imagined it to be more chowdery like, but really it was just tiny morsels of summer squash and farfalle noodles hanging out in chicken broth.

12- went and drooled over the new apple nano. i wants it. i don't know why i didn't buy it. i think if the line at the apple store had been shorter it would have been mine. or not. i'm cheap.

13- drove around and went shopping for new uniforms for randall. his "uniform" btw, is mostly just clearance clothes from banana republic. i don't even think he shops anywhere else. and that's not a snob thing, that's a laziness thing. he knows the clothes there fit a certain way so he goes in and goes yah i'll get these. i make him try things on though (i'm the one with the br card, so i end up buying, so i get the yay/nay vote) and i think it irritates him. everytime we go i get nothing he walks away with more uniforms. also they are smart with their marketing, everytime i spend money they send a gift card, so i have to go back and spend more money. i hate them.

14- randall bought paper mario 2. now we waste even more time.

15- i still didn't put the photo book for my grandmother together. i am the worst granddaughter.

16- went to dairy queen to get a blizzard. ever since we saw batman i've been craving it, but it's always closed. we happened to be driving buy so we went and got one. then we came home and walked around the block as to not feel so guilty. i had the limited "turtle pecan" flavor. don't order it. the pecans are too salty. yuck.

17- drank the grape juice we made. it was thicker than i anticipated. more like nectar. i bet i could have cut it with water to make it more like the store bought "juice"

18- i got an email from steve almond. that made my week. read his book candyfreak.

19- talked to niki about a drink she invented. we can't remember the name of it. no one can. it's sad. it has ginger and lime and vodka. wanna name it?

20- went to fry's with my dad to help him get a new video card. then we dragged him to the taqueria where he bought us tacos.

21- like i said earlier. now i'm eating lychees. tasty tasty tasty.

work changed health providers recently. we had a choice between two, i changed and now i really really really really wish i didn't. i went to pick up my prescription for the first time today. with old plan it was a ten dollar co-pay. this new "BETTER" plan it was 51.38.

FIFTY ONE DOLLARS.
i don't even want to take these stupid things. now i have to pay 50 dollars a month??? 5 times as much?!?

SO PISS OFF.

this morning the bossman's boss called all the managers into an office, they chatted, then solemn faces came out and rounded up all the staff. with all the whatsits and rumors going on we all had to wonder what hushed voices and solemn faces had to say. is the place closing down? are we all fired? are we getting new bosses? what is this unprecedented (they never shut the phones down) round up for?

a few minutes later we found it. it was nothing like that. nothing so trivial. instead we received tragic news about co-worker casey (who is one of the sweetest hands down nicest guys i've ever met, even if he always seemed to have a hidden sad streak).

his wife passed away yesterday. no details were told out of respect. but it's really sad, they're really young. i'm pretty sure they're early 30s. and they've got a 4 year old (at least i think that's how old, could be younger). also i'm pretty sure she was a stay at home mom, i hope he has a big enough support group to pull thru. he always seems like the kind of guy that given the wrong kind of news could topple into a downward spiral of depression and drinking.

i hope i'm wrong.

after we were given the news (which i thought was really nice and on the up & up for bossman's boss to deliver the news the way he did, along with counseling #s if needed), four kinds of people walked out of the room. you were either so sad and teary eyed, unaffected because you didn't really know them, shellshocked but life goes on, or like me - shellshocked but sad enough to not want to go on with work, but not so sad that i'm bursting in tears. i'm more of the i have kleenex here take some, and have this hug too, you need it.

but, no matter which camp you were in, you have to admit, it sort of makes work look pointless.

woah. found out why bossman hasn't said anything about my moving away. looks like he's moving away. all the way to michigan, to work for the competition.

lucky.

so we've had these bagels for probably over two weeks. they're kept in the fridge and they're still fine. however, i just ate a jalapeno one with cream cheese and tomatoes.

and i'm pretty sure i should have stuck with my gut desire to peel the jalapeno's off of the bagel and throw them down the garbage disposal. but i didn't, i plucked it off and ate them instead.

now i want to vomit everywhere.

a little while ago jeff asked me how depressing it would it be to actually make a list of pros and cons about the job. i said it would probably be depressing to see all those cons. he asked if it would be more or less depressing than old & fat new order. i said it would be more depressing because hey, at least fat new order looks like they're still having fun. and work, well it's not fun anymore.

Now i am going to make the list of pros and cons.
I will be updating this as I think of others.

Pros

Cons

relaxed schedule (i can stroll in whenever/leave whenever) relaxed Environment (i can wear whatever i want to) don't have to prove myself (been here long enough, already proven it) no one watches over my shoulder my team members/the people not being the new girl the employee discount (especially on books) the in office shows (hey not my favorite bands or even bands i like, but it's a neat perk most people don't have) the free CDs/DVDs - even better if it's actually something i like the industry the free tickets

the pay (i make about 60% of the "average" salary in my field) the work load (I do enough work for about 2.5 people) no other designers to bounce ideas off of i don't care about the stuff I make anymore - don't find it challenging relaxed environment (it's a plus yes, but also, I feel you've reached some sort of low when flip-flops to work is a-okay!) the wishy-washy Do this today, did i say that i meant this way the tasks have been assigned lately meetings for hours and hours talking in circles contradicting the last meeting the timelines (work that should take several days is expected in several hours, it would be okay ocassionally, but the "just this once" happens at least once a week) busting my ass and staying late to meet my deadlines only to have things sit for weeks or months because everyone else is too busy throwing out all prior strategy just because of someone's daily whim the antiquated equipment (we apparently have "no budget" for a new computer (i am using one that is 5 years old and just plugs along somehow) however we'll drop 800 bucks on equipment for flavor of the month projects and also a customer care center supervisor gets a total sweet flat screen monitor that i can read text on from forever away --jeff says it's about 90 feet-- and i have a 7 year old monitor with several dead pixels and a line burned across it) the inability to grow as a worker - i've hit my glass ceiling the repetitiveness of the tasks. i used to have to think, but lately no more thinking required.

i know, i sound bitter. i don't mean to. but they've broken me. i used to be the give 6000% employee. now i only feel like giving 60. the saddest part is i don't care and that's not like me. i'm usually really passionate about what i do. i want to make it the best thing possible. i want to question how the customer looks at the page, how the customer thinks, what approach they'll take. i want to make things that are up to par and have a lot of thought behind them. now i just want to make things to shut the rest of the department up. that's not healthy for me and it's really not fair for them.

so i had planned on waking up and writing about 1) how suprisingly not tired i am, 2) how i'm glad i stuck around for nachos because it helped with 3)feeling sorry for myself due to the upcoming move and social awkwardness i've been experiencing/feeling lately.

however, i woke up this morning and npr was playing an orchestrated version of queen's we are the champions. right then i knew something was weird. i decided to not hit snooze and let the song play. when it ended they went into the news about london.

now my moving sadness seems so petty.

yesterday was katy's birthday. i text messaged her early in the day to say happy birthday. she wrote back saying that she was going to go to dinner with camille. i told her to give me a holler if she had room for dessert or booty shakin' later. she told me to just come along to dinner.

so around 8 camille, katy and i went to ernesto's for a birthday celebration. i had the carnitas enchilada and carnitas taco plate. the carnitas there are so tasty. i ate the whole thing. little piggy my clothes didn't want to fit afterwards.

there seemed to be a lot of birthdays going on at ernesto's. lots of singing and hoopla. camille asked katy if she wanted the hoopla. katy, blushed and childlike smiled a yes. so there was singing and birthday flan (which camille did not like the top of and can i just say the top was the best part? all the juices and cinnamon all soaked in). stuck into the birthday flan was a sparkler.

HELLO THIS IS THE ILLEGAL IN CALIFORNIA BANNED SEVERAL YEARS AGO SPARKLER. total contraband. which is too bad, these are the good kinds that really sparkle.

afterwards we headed over to suresh's house to say hello to the frenchmen, alice and suresh. but the frenchmen were gone so we chatted with alice and suresh for a while. we tried to convince them to go to lipstick but alice was too sleepy. suresh, however joined us for a while. i don't know him so well, but he seems like a really nice guy (sidenote: he went to ucsc too. only we didn't know each other then).

lipstick was sort of a bust. it was really dead when we got there at 10:30. we left around 12 and it still wasn't that full. also i wasn't enjoying the music and especially not enjoying the segues. i dunno. is it over?

oh funny, where is my brain anecdote. at one point suresh said he was turning 29. i said, "oh like me." chorus of "you're 29?" me: "wait, no, i'm lying. i'm not 29. i have no idea why i said that. wait i'm 28. no wait...i dunno how old i am. this is quite embarrassing..." we had to do the math. katy was born the same year as me, she just turned 27. apparently i also turned 27 this year.

how did i not know that?

okay, so we're moving.

i've been purposely not talking about it because i think i'm truly upset about it. sometimes excited. sometimes uncertain. a little frustrated. a tiny bit nervous. a tiny bit thrilled. sometimes strangely happy. but always lots of knots in my tummy when i have to think about it. it would make it a smidgen easier if i didn't like it here so much. and it would make it a LOT easier if the fruit would come a'calling.

so we're putting our house on the market today.
if you'd like to buy a 4 bedroom/3.5 bath in loverly Natomas (North Sacramento) just send me an email okay. it's pricey (as all real estate in the area has become). somewhere between 450 and 485. not exactly sure yet...but hey, BONUS! you could live in MY house.

anyways, so the last three nights i've been getting it ready - cleaning and scrubbing total thorough. on hands and knees - baseboards, floors, closets, cupboards, sinks, tubs etc. etc. i even gave away 4 giant bags of clothes and stuffs. and it's been exhausting. and i've mostly been doing it by myself.

last night i tackled the kitchen. it took forever to get the floor to sparkle. i think i wait too long between scrubs.

randall came home around 9:30. we were going to go to q-cup for q-pop chicken and ice cream crepes, but i didn't get around to calling juju and there was a miscommunicate. so that made me sad and i decided i didn't want to get dressed to go across town so they could watch us eat. because it seemed stupid. also i was filth from hands/knees scrubbing. and slightly grumpy from cleaning. and sick and tired of inhaling bleach for the third day straight.

so randall made us dinner. i was really hesitant. he's known in these parts as "the messy chef" and i had just gotten my kitchen to SPARKLE. so i kind of didn't want him to use it. but i also didn't want to go anywhere. and i didn't know what i wanted him to bring home. he tried panda express since it would be fast, but they had just closed.

so he made us pasta. and i stressed how i needed the kitchen to stay clean. while he was serving it out, he dropped a red-sauce-covered-spaghetti noodle on the sparkly lemon fresh floor. he didn't even have a chance to realize he dropped it let alone a chance to clean it before i freaked and went "GAAAH! i told you we have to keep the house clean!!!" and demanded he clean it that second.

after he picked it up he looked at me and mostly nice & calm like said, "i know, but you're going to have to calm down about this keep the house clean thing. we still have to live here."

i just looked at him and burst into tears.

The ditty bops stopped by our office this morning. They played us a few songs off their album and one that's new. I want to love this band. They are so ridiculously cute. You should check out their video. it's pretty freaking cute.

however, the whole thing is a bit too prairie home companion (i think jeff said that first, but i was total thinking it earlier) for me. johnny says that's because i like my music brooding and insistent. like a suicidal busdriver who keeps on going. a suicidal busdriver in a sharp suit and good tie. i'm not sure what to think about that.

scottel however, endorses the eyecandy factor of the dittybops. so if you like cute girls singing twee-twang songs while dressed in funny costumes while a crazy old guy plays a lapsteel guitar, you should check them out.

sidenote: the guy in front of me in the conference room. i swear his name is adam frost. we went to elementary school together. high school too (i think). i guess he works here now? i've seen him twice now. both times i didn't say hello.

i mean, what if it's not him?
and if it is, i haven't talked to him in 10 years plus.
and it's not like we were friends. so what's the point?

last night i had this weird dream.
i got a new job (i think it was at apple) and was starting my first day. i approached the campus (which from the outside looked like the infi-loop campus) and entered the courtyard where everything turned all weird harry potter 3 (the movie) looking. strange colors and all gothicy buildings instead of industrial technology campus. i had a folder in my hand that had all these papers i had to fill out (or get my new boss to fill out or something). i wasn't an official employee yet, the paperwork wasn't done.

i walked up this corridor and towards the largest building in the back left corner on the top floor (all the doors faced out of the building, like a motel) (this was so hp3 looking, and i realize it makes no sense to describe) and entered this completely cluttered from floor to ceiling room.

today carolyn and i decided to go grab lunch. we wanted to talk shit about work so we decided to avoid any regular lunch places where we might encounter co-workers. so we went downtown to chipotle. she used the cindy bring your hands to your face technique and decided it was definitely hands not untensils. she thought perhaps it was a sandwich but no, it was a burrito. i had the carnitas burrito and then wished i got the shredded steak. the carnitas is pretty flavorless there.

afterwards we went across the street to oli-pom. i'm looking for a new purse or a new something fun, but i didn't see anything that caught my eye. there were lots of cute things, but nothing that went YES. TAKE ME HOME. there were some cute clothes there too, but i felt too full and gross to even try on anything.

sidenote: carolyn is amazing and needs a new job in a new town. she's a print production manager and is total dedicated (hello people she had the big C and still came to work everyday). got a position for her?

On thursday my dad called to tell me that his lens fell (again). He just had surgery on his eye and it looked like he was going to have another one. since he couldn't drive anywhere i offered to come over and make him some dinner (morm and samshrew were headed to LA to pick up bao, so they were out). so after work i headed to the store and picked up stuff for a large salad and also some bbq porkins. we talked for a while and ate a big salad, i couldn't stay too long though, i had to go to girl band.

oh shit. bridget just sent me a link to the video for hey now now by the cloud room. so i start it up. not noticing the link. info she just said "lookie lookie!" so i clicked.

video begins.
i listen. i watch. i like.
a lot.
i'm thinking, who is this? this is FANTASTIC.
i'm about to IM her to find out who it is when the ending happens
and the band comes on screen
and i say

WTF?!?
is that...? no way.
furreals?!?!?

is that "mr. j" (as he's called these days)?

holy shit. it is.

that guy singing (which i'm honestly about to say is the best song i've heard all year long) is someone i went to college with?!?!

wow. at least someone is doing something with their life.

my turn.

this weekend was busy-bee.
so busy-bee that on sunday randall couldn't even remember what we did on saturday night. i reminded him, "um, your sister's wedding."

"oh yah."

that's right, his baby sister beat him to the wedding punch. for the record we were engaged first, but once she got engaged she called to tell us and to ask "so have you guys set a date yet?" that's when we told her, "just plan yours we're never going to get a plan together."

so she did.

today is the slowest day ever. i swear to you, the clocks are going backwards. just like they did in that one scene in the machinist. back and forth and back and forth. we watched that movie last night. it was pretty good. definitely worth seeing. also christian bale, my god he lost 65 pounds for the role. he is holocaust crazy skinny. but i won't say much else about it. wouldn't want to give anything away.

anyways, it has been in the 3o'clock hour for over 105 minutes. i know, because i've been counting them.

at lunch the art dept. went to the spaghetti factory for michelle's birthday. i know i should've gone (especially now that the day is DRAGGING), but i just wasn't feeling up to. besides, i hate paying for the spaghetti factory. i just don't see the point. so i stayed in the office and had lunch at my desk. depressing, yes, but i figure this way i can leave just a little bit earlier and not feel guilty.

at around 3 (which was at least 4 hours ago), heather asked if i wanted to go for a walk. i'm wearing the worst shoes for walking (tiny heeled sandals) but i said sure, why not. at least i'll get out of the office for a little while.

the moment i stepped outside i regretted having said yes. it was hot, muggy and the shoes were not meant for walking. i only wear them to work so that i can kick them off under my desk. they're not really good for much of anything.

oh, well wouldn't you know, it's finally 4pm.
maybe now time will resume back to normal.

here's a few more ways in which my job is cooler than yours.
(it's also the reason why my belly is larger than yours).

this morning kari brought in donuts. i had two.
a sugar cinnamon & a regular with chocolate glaze.

went to a meeting across the street where i walked in thru the junk room instead of going all the way around. scored myself a ridiculous 3 foot tall U2 saleboard thing. (i know, you don't think u2 is that cool, so just pretend it's some band you get nostalgic yeah! for, that's who i found in the junk room and took back to my desk).

went back across the street for a meeting with warner bros. they showed us the super secret (even no one at mtv has seen it yet) video for the next green day single. we also got to see some other videos while we ate (including one for some guy named darrin powder or something like that, i don't remember his name, his song was mediocre, but the video was cute and had some chick from the OC in it). for lunch they brought us in the tiny bottles of soda and water, deli wraps and mini crossaint sandwiches and cookies and chips. oh and fruit. i ate 4 pieces of the pineapple. i should have eaten more of that instead of an extra cookie. it was really tasty pineapple.

oh and during the meeting one guy from warner kept joking about the size of the online group (there were 4 of us there, sadly that is all of us). he kept saying there were too many. the thing is, all the budget cost-cutting guys were in there, so what if they were thinking, hhrrrrmm...maybe this random dude is right? maybe we have too many online people? which is ridiculous because we are about 6 people short of running at a full steam.

so at 2pm the four of us left.
okay, so we had another meeting, but still, i think it was kinda funny. we walked back over to our building where harmonia mundi was waiting for us. he brought us ice cream bars. when kari wrote him last week (when it was hot and not raining) she jokingly told him to bring ice cream. so he did. so i sat in the freezing conference room, listened to some world village music and ate ice cream. now i definitely need to go to the gym...

and now, now i get to sit here and listen to the rest of the american life internet show, slap some logos on some graphics, push some more pixels around and then call it a day.

sounds pretty good huh?

but i do need to point out, today is not a typical work day.
however if put all cynicism aside, it's a pretty decent place to work.

so now tell me,
why do i want to quit?
why do i want to walk into my boss's office and say
"Okay. enough. you win.

i quit."

so i'm at work right now (kari brought in donuts by the way, i had a cinnamon sugar thing).

lately, to make the time go by faster, i listen to this american life (it's sad, i think i'm going to run out of episodes soon). sometimes an hour episode takes a few hours to listen to (i always have to rewind because i realize i haven't been paying attention, or i get interrupted with work related stuffs). so it really helps make the day go by. and yes i've advocated it many times --- i do heart it so --- check it out if you haven't yet.

at anyrate i stumbled across an old episode from 1997. it's called tales from the net.

internet tales from 1997 (jennycam.com anyone?). god how naive we all were. it's interesting to listen to an era where only a small cross section of america had access and how we thought it was this great revolutionary thing --- oooh here's this internet coming to bring us all together! and do you remember when we we read our email? "oh looky i've got mail!"

well, i remember and it's making me feel crazy nostalgic. also like i somehow missed the boat (which i did due to my own laziness and naiveity).

so now, i ask you, what is next?
in an age where our attentionspans cannot handle the 3 minute interval needed to wait for the next jennycam update, what do we do?

okay it's no lie.
i haven't been able to focus at work lately.
i'm getting all my work done
(frantically and right before the deadline)
but i can't keep my brain focused on work.

working with some graphics right now and it's making my brain stumble across these two perplexing questions.

question 1: does anyone else think that opera diva renee fleming looks way too much like nbc diva katie couric? anyone? come on, i can't be the only one to notice. they have that same smiley smile too nice to be true face. and i imagine them both to be really sweet in public, but behind closed doors i imagine them both to scream because their water is 71 degrees instead of 70.

question 2: why on earth does billy corgan insist on putting his own face on his new album cover? it totally creeps me out. in fact, don't even look over to the right. it's too scary.

however, now that we've mentioned billy corgan, samshrew is pretty excited about his new album (who knew she even listened to music??) so i checked out a few tracks. sounds suprisingly promising. or as jeff put it "like depeche mode with an annoying singer." there's a track on his myspace page right now so you can judge for yourself.

today at 12:30 i headed over to the main building. michael tolcher was playing our conference room. it's not really the sound i'm in to, and to be honest, i was there for the free lunch. i know i shouldn't be so snotty. not everyone gets live music in their conference room. (nickel creek was here last week. i tried to post about it, but broken phone...)

but it's always just so awkward. we walk over to the conference room, the band is usually in the lobby waiting. i never know whether or not to make eye contact, or say anything. i know i should just say hi. it's their job to play music for us, they probably get bored travelling around playing conference room after conference room and maybe it's neat to talk to different people (i think i would find that part fascinating). but i don't know them, so why would i say hi? and i'm not a fan (i'm just here for the food) so i would feel guilty saying hi. and if i was a fan, then i would probably feel too lame to say hi.

so i just say nothing and walk into the room. grab my food. sit down. and then pretend to enjoy the show.

he wasn't so bad.
but jeff put it best, "um, did that seem like acoustic jesus rock without the jesus?"
and i would have to agree.
sweet and nice sounding, but it just rubs you the wrong way and makes you feel like, god am i such an awful person that i can't get behind this sound? like at all?

also, it's funny-bittersweet, i think there was once a time in my life where i would have said hi regardless of whether i knew them, or if i was a fan or not. just you're a person, i'm a talker. hello hello. let's make friends.

but i've noticed this trend lately:

i've either become shy or snobby.

i can't tell the difference anymore.

carolyn called me around 10:30 to see if i wanted to get lunch later today. i told her that i had an 11 that would probably run until 12:30 and then a 1o'clock afterwards. she told me to call her when i got out of my 11 to see if i would have time anyway. she thought perhaps we could have a quick lunch at potbelly.

i told her sure, why not, i'd give her a call. she sounded a bit frantic, like she had something important to say. turns out she just needed to get out of the office for a little while. a little venting is always good.

at 12:30 i got out of my meeting and discovered that the 1o'clock had been cancelled. so i called up carolyn and told her i would drive. we stopped at the gas station and then decided to try some place new.

yesterday, when driving to the rivers house to swap cars, i saw a taqueria i hadn't noticed before. so we went there. super taqueria garita.

it was better than the other taqueria we went to in west sac, but it wasn't super.

i had the carnitas quesadilla and a guava jarittos (they get bonus points for having that flavor on hand). and sad me didn't notice the salsa bar until we were leaving. that would have probably helped some.

i don't know if it would have made it super, but it would have made it spicier. the carnitas were a bit bland, more like cooked pork, not cooked pork in tasty flavor.

we ended up going to the gym a little before 10. when we got there we ran into katy in the parking lot, she was just arriving too. we worked out for about an hour and then came home. i can't believe how crowded it felt at 10pm. i guess it's because it's monday and people feel fat and lazy and need to work out after lazying/drinking/eating all weekend.

when we got home i remembered that i got a promo copy of stella (the new show on comedy central). I AM IN LOVE. that is, if you can love a tv show. i've been looking forward to it ever since i heard it was going to be put on the tv (i'd been trying to see it live, but failed miserably). this is by far one of the best things i've seen in quite some time, if not ever. it starts in a few weeks, be sure to look out for it (on comedy central).

sidenote: if you order something from tower.com this weekend (or go to a tower store), you can get the first episode for free too (catch is, you have to buy something).

it's 9:30 right now and we've broken the plan.
the plan was this:
step 1: come home from work
step 2: make dinner
(a lime sauce chicken which came out too sweet, almost like a jam coating instead of a crunchy lime/brownsugar tastiness- yuck)
step 3: eat dinner relax a bit
step 4: randall finishes homework, i finish some freelance & start editing icleand photos
step 5: go the gym (which is desprately needed, i've been feeling a bit of a fat cow lately, i think my skin is rolling in places it's not supposed to be)

only now it's 9:30 and we're stuck on step 4.
he says he's not doing in on purpose and i guess i believe him, but homework sure does seem like a good excuse to get out of going to the gym, don't you think?

oh well guess it gives me time to get the photos edited (we took 2800+).

and speaking of photos. my baby digital camera broke.
it will cost 150 to fix, that hardly seems worth it.

and the phone still won't send MMS messages to the internet.
stupid technology.
how i love you so.

pathetically does not open until 4pm on saturdays.

my mom's now the president of the Greater Sacramento Taiwanese Association. she's been heavily involved with these sort of things for years and years and years. usually we get suckered into going to some of the events, but not all of them. one of the ones we usually get a pass on is the annual summer picnic.

however, since she's president and running the show (so i believe), i figured it would be nice if we stopped by for just a little while. so around 1 randall and i headed down to the park.

when we got there, i saw some chinese organization having a picnic, but i didn't recognize any of the faces. so i called my mom to see what was up. apparently i was at the rival organization's picnic. hers was tomorrow.

oops. well i guess we've got time for lunch now.

okay so this weekend was a little on the lazy side. friday night started with the obligatory "what do you want to do tonite? i dunno. what do you want to do tonite?" questions. nothing sounded particularly interesting, we thought about going to the movies, but couldn't muster up the strength for that either. the what do you want to do questions were quickly followed by "what do you want to eat for dinner? i dunno, what do you want to eat for dinner?" questions.

there's a restaurant on broadway that i've been wanting to try for a while. it's a yellow building and it always catches my eye. it's called sweet fingers, it's a jamaican place.

yesterday when driving to girlband dinner & practice (sidenote: we met at jack's where i ordered a full salad and she only made a half and i feel i paid too much even if i did only get charged for the half) i noticed a big banner outside of sweet fingers that said "Lunch Buffet 11am-3pm". I decided that i would indeed go check it out sooner than later.

this morning, when i left for work i asked randall if he wanted to grab lunch. i remembered the sign and a little after noon randall picked me up and we headed down to sweet fingers.

this earl grey tea is making me crazy.
caffeeeeeeeeeeeeene used to not matter.
now it makes my brain go gwah GWAH GWAH.
pop.

so the phone doesn't want to send posts.
i decided to switch back to the treo.
only stupid stupid me forgot to plug it in before we left.
so it's dead.
not such a huge deal, plug it back in and charge.
only the BIG DEAL IS I NEVER SYNCHED UP.
didn't have the cable (it was a hand me down treo).
kept waiting for the cable.
tried to buy the cable, but fry's didn't have it.
never got around to ordering one.
and now, all my precious numbers and dates are dead.
irony = randall surprised me by ordering a cable yesterday.

*sigh*

also, the internet isn't working at home.
apparently some network password is incorrect.
what?

so that's why there have been no posts.
the internet hates me.

*sigh*
back at work.
and also the phone is not working for sending updates. great.

also, now in addition to the coffees we have for employees there are now boxes of tea. having just got back from vacation (where we drank tea about everyday) i felt the need to have a large glass (i'd show you a picture, but again, phone not sending updates. great). i've only made it a few sips in, but i feel total crazy.

my head is spinning.
i think my eyes are blurring.
and my head is woooozy wooz.
what the hell is in this tea?

oh i almost forgot.
at the bbq last night leon provided us all with his homebrew.
it was super tasty.
i don't know how i forgot.
maybe the homebrew was effecting my memory.
3 cheers for leon's homebrew.

arrived back in sacramento yesterday.
we have tons and tons (try over 2800) photos to go thru.
we were going to spend today doing it, but we ended up sleeping and then going to a bbq at neon's house. i forgot to take a picture while i was there, but it was total dog party. also, randall decided he wanted to make us lamburgers. total tasty. i guess he didn't get enough lambster in iceland.

also, i'll post a daybyday account of our icelandic travels soon.

it is not even 7am yet.
and i am awake
wide awake and dressed and just about ready for work even.
the alarm isn't even going off for another hour.
but i was lying asleep, in that weird dreamstage where you're easily awoken and what do you know HONK HONK HONK HONK.
someone's car alarm went off in full force.
and when that finally stopped the dogs started.
BARK BARK BARK BARK
i rolled over to look at the time and that was a mistake
6:25
and it was just bright enough that i couldn't go back to sleep.
so now i'm awake and i think i'll head in to work.
everyone will go into shock.

i was just watching tv when the national alert system (you know the kind that's not a test) just came thru saying that our area is under severe thunderstorm watch. then suddenly the sun went away and there were crazy black clouds and you could hear the thunder in the distance. then suddenly i heard the ice cream man drive down the street playing his song.

first of all, sorry dude, i don't think you'll get