* kiss my blog

tattoo #3

2007-09-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

from several days ago. starting to scab up so the color looks kinda dull. the two major scabs on the cherries fell off yesterday (which was really gross but also kinda cool) so the cherries look better but the stems are still scabbing like crazy. i've got more pics up on facebook. only put a few up there though. mike will put all of the vegas pics up on his webshots. you can see the theater for le reve, the view from the stratosphere, five million pussycat dolls pictures, shark reef pics, and more!

peas on earth!

2007-09-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

bipolar

2007-09-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

bought this from the david & goliath store at the venetian.

Maks and me!!

2007-08-31T23:43:00.000-07:00

Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, 8/29/07.

Maksim Chmerkovskiy from Dancing With the Stars! And me!!

I met Maksim Chmerkovskiy in Vegas!!

2007-08-31T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Vegas late last night. I would say it was probably the best vacation I've ever had. I know we go to Vegas all the time so nothing's ever really "new" but what it made so enjoyable was that I had a lot of fun and it was just me and Mike so it was very relaxing. (Psst...this post is going to be crazy long. So if you don't want to read the whole thing, just read Wednesday which is probably the most interesting day.)

Highlights:

- Le Reve
- Postrio
- tattoo #3
- Stratosphere rides
- MAKSIM CHMERKOVSKIY
- Pussycat Dolls Lounge
- Mandalay Bay Shark Reef

Monday, August 27

When we got to Vegas around 10 am, it was pouring rain outside. Mike saw some lightning. Later, we found out there had been lots of flash flooding in the area. We had to wait about ten minutes to get to the gate. Once we got all our stuff and left the airport though, all the rain had stopped and it wound up being pretty sunny for the rest of our time there.

We got to Sahara around 1130 and, thankfully, they allowed us to check in early - way before the 3 pm check-in time. So we chilled in the room for a bit then headed to Paris buffet for lunch. The lunch itself was alright. But the dessert (which is basically what I went there for) was YUM. Jo, Deb - you know that chocolate cake we had last time that was absolutely orgasmic? I found it again. And I ate two slices of it. And I didn't even feel bad about it at all. After that, we just walked around Bellagio and Caesars doing some shopping. Didn't get anything even though I was eyeing these Hermes bracelets ($400-$500) and Mike looked really good in a pair of Fendi aviators ($385).

Afterwards, we took the monorail back to Sahara to rest for a bit. We took the monorail quite a bit during the week which was pretty convenient because the last stop (or first stop, whichever way you wanna look at it) was right at our hotel. Only took the taxi a few times. Anyway, we went to see Le Reve at the Wynn. It's a lot like O (Cirque Du Soleil) - lots of stunning acrobatics in and above a big pool of water. What was nice about Le Reve was that the theater was round (with the stage being in the center and the seats surrounding it) and a bit small. So it felt a bit more intimate and it seemed like every seat in the house had a great view. We were sitting in the fourth row from the stage so we were pretty close (even got splashed on a few times). I would say O was an overall better show but Le Reve was a really great show itself.

Tuesday, August 28

Ate lunch at Planet Hollywood in Caesars because I had a $40 gift certificate. Ehh...the food sucked. Don't ever eat there. I can see why the place went bankrupt a while back. But hey, it turned out to be an almost free lunch. So whatever. Did some gambling at Casino Royale since I also had a 100 (dollar? credit?) promotional play certificate. Lost it all. Thankfully, not my money. Wandered around some more. I...don't really know what happened with this day.

I do know that Mike and I got pretty drunk at the Venetian. We decided to eat at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio and got some drinks at the bar while waiting to get seated. I had a vodka tonic which, combined with the lack of food in my belly, got me pretty wasted before the bread and water even arrived at the table. Once I finished that, I ordered a flirtini which was pretty strong. I don't know if being drunk had anything to do with this but Mike and I agreed that the food we ate at Postrio was just the best ever. I ordered the organic salmon and he ordered the pancetta wrapped meatloaf and it was just so so yummy. My mouth is watering just thinking about it now. The salmon was probably the best salmon I've ever had. It was so fresh and tasty. And the meatloaf had a sweet, light taste. Not too heavy. And the garlic mashed potatoes that it came with was really good. I could eat a whole plate of that by itself. Anyway, Postrio gets a big thumbs up from me and Mike. After dinner, we had gelato at Cocolini which is the gelato stand just outside the restaurant. Very yum. Walked around some more, sobered up.

While wandering around the Venetian, we stumbled into the Peter Lik Gallery. I had never heard of him but he does really amazing landscape photographs. Even just looking at the pictures in a book or a website doesn't do him any justice. You have to see his work in person, framed and enlarged, to really appreciate it. Mike and I have decided that once we get our own apartment or house, we're buying one of his pieces.

Wednesday, August 29

After eating lunch, we walked to Tattoo Heaven which was right in between Sahara and Stratosphere. I had read some pretty good online reviews for that place so decided to go there. There were like three guys "working" there (two of them were really just sitting on the couch watching tv) and no one else in the shop. I talked to one of the guys about how I wanted cherries on the inside of my right wrist. He pointed at a pair of cherries on the wall which were pretty cartoonish. And shaped like hearts. So I said "Um...yeah, something like that. But more delicate." And he was like "okay" and in a few minutes was able to sketch a different pair of cherries that looked pretty cute.

The entire process took about 20 minutes but it was really painful. I do not remember either of my back tattoos being this painful. I mean, yeah, it hurt and there were a couple moments for both where it was excrutiating but for the most part, the pain was bearable for both. The top one, especially, was not that painful. But THIS one....ohmygod. This one hurt like a son of a bitch. I wanted him to stop right when he started. Obviously, I didn't say that and I didn't like, scream or anything, but my entire body was extremely tense and I held my breath every time he started. My left hand was red from squeezing it into a fist and I had to close my eyes a lot to focus on staying calm and quiet. You can see this all in the little video that Mike recorded. When the guy asked me how I was doing, I said, "Um...it hurts a lot" and he said, "Yeah, it's more sensitive because the skin is a lot thinner on the wrist" which... why did that never occur to me? Anyway, it hurt a lot. And when he started coloring, I wanted to cry. (I didn't, of course.) There were only a few times towards the end when I got used to it and felt okay and not in too much pain (as opposed to my upper back tattoo where it was the other way around - mostly okay and only a few moments where it really hurt). I didn't even watch him doing it for most of it. I watched him at the very beginning and then couldn't take it and had to look away. I only looked back when he took little breaks to see where he was at.

Anyway, the end product looks quite nice. I really like it. I even got a couple positive comments on it from strangers the next day. Actually, the next day when I was in the bathroom at the Mandalay Bay Shark Reef, I was putting on some ointment when a girl asked me if it was a new tat. I said yes and she said "Me too!!" and showed me the phoenix on her upper thigh. She said hers was scabbing up and so is mine now so it looks a bit gross (totally normal though). And it still feels a tiny bit sore every now and then.

So after this, we walked to Stratosphere where I convinced Mike to go with me on all three rides at the top. It'll be too hard to describe each ride. I'll try but you should watch the youtube videos to get a good idea of what we went on. We went on Insanity first. It's basically a large crane with five legs (two seats to each leg) like a big claw that brings you over the edge of the Stratosphere and then spins faster and faster as the claw opens up. And as you're spinning, the chairs tilt forward 70 degrees. It was awesome! I think I enjoyed that one the most out of all three rides. I wasn't scared at all, I just thought it was pretty fun. I looked down the entire time and it was pretty insane. I mean, you're basically spinning around over the edge of a 900+ ft. tall tower.

Next up was X-Scream. It was a short roller coaster ride that shoots you over the edge of the Stratosphere, pulls you back, then shoots you back over and then drops you a bit. And I was sitting in the front! Next to a crazy Brazilian girl that put her hands up. Crazy girl!! Now this one, I got pretty scared because it jolted you forward and made you feel like you were gonna fall off the tower. With Insanity, even though I was pretty much looking down the entire time, the spinning kinda made me feel relaxed.

And last was Big Shot. Which is basically like Drop Zone in reverse. Instead of dropping you, it shoots you up, then drops you. Kinda self-explanatory I guess. This one is at the very top of the Stratosphere so now you're going up over 1,000 ft. The funny thing with this one is that, in the picture that the ride takes of you (they take a picture of you on every ride), I'm screaming and my mouth is open so wide, you can see my uvula. Anyway, all three rides were pretty enjoyable and I would highly recommend it to everyone. Even scaredy-cats like Mike. :) Just kidding. See, now that he's done these three rides, he can do anything! Because these were pretty crazy.

So after all that, we did some gambling then headed back to our hotel to rest a bit. Then we were out again to Caesars to watch the Pussycat Dolls. Here's where the coolest part of the trip was. Mike and I were sitting in the race & sports book area just outside Pure/Pussycat Dolls Lounge just chilling and digesting our dinner before going into the PCD Lounge. We sat there for maybe 20 minutes. Right when we got up, a man walked over and sat down in our seats. Mike did a double take and said, "Hey, that's Maks!" and I was like "Maks who?" "You know, Maks from Dancing with the Stars." "WHAT?!?/1!!!/???!!" It was MAKSIM CHMERKOVSKIY from Dancing With the Stars!!!! Ahhhhhhh!!!

I have a feeling that most of the people reading this blog won't know who he is but I've watched every single season of DWtS and have voted in each and every one of them. I've even voted for Maks a few times. He came on the show in the 2nd season and danced with Tia Carrere. Third season was with Willa Ford and last season was with Laila Ali. I voted for him when he danced with Tia and Laila. But not when he was with Willa because she was kinda stupid. (But not a bad dancer). On the show, Maks is a bit cocky and arrogant but he has the goods to back it up so it's mostly just amusing instead of annoying (at least to me it is). Plus, last season, Laila really knocked him down a peg or two which was totally fun to watch.

Anyway, we were standing about 15 ft away from him just staring at him for a while. I kept saying "No, that's not him. OHMYGOD THAT'S HIM. No...maybe....HOLY SHIT IT'S MAKS FROM DANCING WITH THE STARS." Finally, I figured that I would totally regret it if we didn't at least ask for a picture so...I made Mike do it. Heh. Because I was too chicken to do it myself. So we walked over and Mike asked him. Maks was very polite and gracious even after turning around and seeing that I was staring at him with an enormous dorky grin on my face. He took a picture with me! I touched him! He touched me! I smelled him!! He smelled really really good. So after we took the picture, I said to him "I really like you on the show!" And immediately after those words came out of my mouth, I felt like a total idiot. Just...could not look or sound any dorkier. Mike asked him what he was doing there and he replied that he was with friends (thank goodness he was alone, otherwise I don't think we would've approached him if he was with friends), they had just finished watching the Celine Dion show and he was waiting for them. I don't know how we got to the subject of the new season but he said that they had just started work on the new season. And right after he said that, I said "Oh, you're on this season?" Like, duh, of course he is if he just said they started working on it. My God. What was wrong with me? Mike asked who his partner would be and he said, "Uh...the Spice Girl chick" by which, of course, he meant Mel B (Scary Spice). It sounded so cute when he said it too because of his Russian accent. We thought it was pretty funny that he referred to her as "the Spice Girl chick." I don't know if he really couldn't remember her name or if he said that for our benefit (thinking that maybe we didn't know who she was). Then after that, some random middle-aged white guy came up to him and shook his hand and said "I love you on Dancing with the Stars!" and then I felt bad for drawing attention to him. But it was just that guy and no one else recognized him so it was okay. Thank God I had forced Mike to watch DWtS otherwise he wouldn't have recognized Maks and I wouldn't have noticed him because I'm pretty dense. So for the rest of the night, I would randomly squeal and shake Mike and cry "I took a picture with MAKS FROM DANCING WITH THE STARS! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"

Sigh. God, he smelled good.

Anyway, after that we got into the PCD Lounge with a free pass some girls were handing out outside the club. Good thing we got that cuz I had called earlier and they had told me that the cover was $10 for girls, $20 for men. Once inside, I had two more vodka tonics and got pretty drunk again. Plus, I was still on my high from meeting Maks. So...you know. I was pretty damn happy. The performance was pretty good. I think I like them better than the singing group. I want to be a Pussycat Doll now. Not the Nicole Scherzinger kind but the real Vegas kind. We also met a girl at the bar who was in town for some fashion convention (Magic convention? I totally thought that was like, the nerdy card playing game Magic) and was by herself. So we talked to her for a while. Unfortunately, I was pretty wasted at this point so I was struggling to appear lucid and not totally out of it. She was a really nice girl and we had a nice conversation, from what I can remember. Once she left, Mike caught up to me in drinks and we left the lounge to go wander the strip, tipsy and happy.

Man...a lot happened on Wednesday, huh?

Thursday, August 30

Aww. Last day. So sad. I hate the last day of vacation. I never want to leave. We started off with lunch at Mandalay Bay buffet. So good. Better quality and variety of food than Paris buffet, in my opinion. Not as great desserts though. I always forget how good Mandalay Bay buffet is. Now I know why we always eat there. After we stuffed ourselves, we walked over to the Shark Reef exhibit. Pretty interesting. They have a good variety of interesting and exotic fish as well as sharks and other...sea life. They have this one part where you look like you're in a sunken ship surrounded by water and fish and sharks.

After all that, we went back to MGM Grand and saw the lions. These two lions looked a bit young. They hadn't grown out their full manes and they were both pretty playful. They had just been fed two big bones and one of them was playing with it like a cat. Yes, I know, they're cats but it was just funny to watch them do all this because they were so huge. One of them was especially playful and was running around the exhibit and batting at his bone with his paws. He hit it too much and it fell into the river and he had to fish it out. He was also jumping up and down the rocks. Definitely the most active lions I've ever seen in real life.

Once we were done with that, we wandered back down the strip some more. Hung out at Bellagio for a bit until it was time to go back to the Sahara, get our bags, and get to the airport.

Wow, this post is super long. It basically took me all day to write. In portions of course. I feel like you should get some sort of reward for reading through this whole thing. But...I have nothing to offer you. Congratulations?

So, anyway. In conclusion, it was a really wonderful trip and I was really sad to leave. I had so much fun and was pretty happy and content for the entire trip. I don't remember feeling stressed out or upset at any point which, I have to admit, I've felt at least once on probably every vacation I've gone on. The best part of the entire trip, of course, was being with Mike and just really enjoying his company. When we were at the San Jose airport on Monday waiting to leave, he told me "Let's make the most of our trip." Which, I know, is kind of cheesy but, you know, we really did make the most of it. I don't regret anything and I don't feel like we missed anything. If I could do it all over again, I would. I definitely enjoyed all the stuff like the food and the rides and Maks and the tattoo and the shopping and Maks but what I'll remember the most about this trip is the overall sense of happiness I had of being with someone I love.

Ahhhh, so corny. Mushy mushy bleh bleh. I'm embarrassed for myself. Oh well.

Vegas again in less than a month!! Woohoo!

i knit a hat!

2007-08-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

okay, so it doesn't actually fit on my head (even though i followed the pattern for a medium size) and it's pretty damn ugly and there are random stitches sticking out everywhere (i don't even know how that happened) BUT it's my first non-rectangular knitting project! (not including my very first knitting project that was supposed to be a scarf but somehow turned into a wavy chunk of...nothing.)

i know what i did wrong so the next time i make it, hopefully, i will actually be able to wear it. but yay! i've FINALLY progressed from a scarf and a blanket. so this christmas, all of you will be getting knit hats from me. and they'll all be the same color. because i'm that cheap.

next up: making a hat using four double pointed needles and circular needles. SCARY.

i think my house is haunted

2007-08-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

weird things have been going on in my house lately. while i'm sure there are perfectly reasonable, scientific explanations for each of these occurences, i'm too lazy to figure each of them out and "my house is haunted" is an easy way to just explain everything all at once.

tonight, as i was sitting on the couch watching tv and reading a magazine, my tv started to turn itself off and on repeatedly. this happened maybe three times with the tv turning off and on three or four times each time. the remote was on the table and i hadn't touched it. the power hadn't gone off because i checked other appliances each time it happened. other weird things have happend in the past month as well. like the fan over the stove turning itself on for no reason (both fans were on the off switch). or the time when mike's xbox told us "you played better than derek!" in a little girl's voice after we had played a game of bomberman. that last one sounds weird but that's what happened! there was also that one time a couple years ago where i woke up in the middle of the night randomly only to see my bedroom door slowly open even though no one was there (my bedroom door is always closed. i use another door to go in and out.)

so either the electricity in my house is all wonky or my house is haunted. i have no idea about that door thing though.

too much guitar hero

2007-08-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

yay! blogging for the first time from my new laptop. i feel like carrie from sex and the city. except i'm not voicing over what i'm typing as i type it. or AM I? (hey, that last post was my 1300th post!)

how sad is it that the only time i have to play hours and hours of guitar hero is when my boyfriend is out at a party or a strip club on a saturday night? hmm. that sounds really sad, maybe i shouldn't have said that. since mike's xbox crapped out last month, all the work i did from the first time i played guitar hero went poof (i had beaten almost every level; i only had three or four songs left on expert). so i've used that as an excuse to go back and play everything all over again. even though i hadn't played in a while, things were a lot easier this second time. i got gold stars on 11 of the songs on medium! the rest of the songs, i missed like one or two notes on each but was too lazy to redo them. it was kinda frustrating, but in the end, laziness won out. i'm halfway through hard now and i have to take a break because my arms and eyes hurt. man. it's addicting.

(just so i don't sound like a total loser for posting about guitar hero, now i've gotta write about other stuff that's been going on.)

last night, we went out to etiquette for jen's bday. nice place, not bad. definitely been to worse places; wouldn't mind going back there again. had lots of fun drinking and dancing with the girls; man, felt like we hadn't done that in ages. i hadn't had a drink in like months (actually, i can't even remember the last time i had a drink) so i managed to get drunk off one raspberry kamikaze. cheapest. drunk. EVER. i could probably just smell the bar and get drunk. at least i didn't puke this time. felt like it, but i refused to. no matter how much it's true, i can't be known as "that girl who always pukes every time we go out." i think it's both funny and sad that jo was like "i have to go, otherwise who'll take cherry to the bathroom to puke?" anyway, we need to do this again soon. i need to rebuild my tolerance! to TWO drinks! bootie next month! and then vegas with the girls! yes! more exclamation marks!!!

speaking of which, i'll actually be going to vegas in a couple weeks with mike. and then, exactly one month later, i'll be going to vegas again with the girls. i'll definitely be all vegas-ed out after that. but i haven't had a vacation in a long time so...i need this.

okay, so not much else has been going on. i really am just a loser. i'm gonna go eat a chocolate toffee ice cream bar now.

crap!

2007-07-31T19:05:00.000-07:00

man, i lost my water bottle. my beautiful, pink, perfect nalgene on-the-go bottle. that held the perfect amount of water (for me) and had the perfect spout.

what's worse is how i lost it. i left it on the roof of my car and drove off. yes, stupid. this is the first time i've ever done that. usually, it's mike or david that's doing that. BUT...my excuse is that i had just come out of the gym and was holding my gym bag and my purse and my water bottle so i put my bags down on the ground, put my water bottle on the roof (NOOOOOOO!!!), fished out my flip flops, and sat down in the driver's seat to change out of my sweaty sneakers (eww). and then, i threw my bags in the car, shut the door, and drove off. i managed to drive through the parking lot with it still on my roof but once i hit the brakes before leaving the lot, i watched as my nalgene bottle rolled down my windshield and hood and landed in the middle of fremont blvd. i helplessly got out of my car, looked at it, and decided a $9 water bottle wasn't worth my life. i think i made the right decision.

so then i went to rei to buy another one but - dammit!!! - they don't have them there any more! why? why, rei?!? i don't know where else they sell them, i've only ever seen them at rei. and i refuse to go back to my other inferior water bottles. so i just ordered it online and will have it delivered to the store so i don't have to pay shipping. just have to wait a week and a half for it. sigh.

i know that was a really boring, useless blog but, for some reason, i felt compelled to blog about this and i know i haven't blogged in a super long time so i guess this is better than nothing. actually, nothing probably would've been better. you wouldn't have wasted your time. maybe this'll motivate me to blog about other things. yeah...

happy birthday or whatever

2007-05-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

From Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters by Annie Choi: (love this book! so funny!)

My mother doesn’t believe in coffee-flavored coffee. While I deliberated in agony between Supreme Holiday Pumpkin Cinnamon Cardamom Blend or Swiss Chocolate Raspberry Hazelnut Awakening, my father walked into the kitchen. He had on a red collared shirt and a yellow sweater, a gift I gave him last Christmas. He had on no pants. He did, however, have on underwear.

"Jesus Christ, DAD, put on some pants!"

"I can’t find any pants. I think they all dirty."

"How could they all be dirty?"

"No pants, I have no pants."

"Did you look in the laundry room? Can you at least wear a robe? Seriously, you’re killing me here."

I wrenched my eyes away from his scrawny, pale legs. As he’s gotten older, my father has lost weight in his legs, but gained in his belly. When he turns to the side, he looks like the letter P. He returned to the kitchen triumphantly, holding up a pair of blue and green plaid pants. They looked familiar.

"Uh, I think those are Mom’s pants."

"Really?"

He looked at the tag and went back to the laundry room, muttering to himself. My mother walked into the kitchen, fully dressed with hair and make-up in place.

"Anne, why you in pajama still?"

"I just woke up."

"Oh my gosh, it three o’clock! I already went church and come back. How you can sleep all day? Oh look you hair!"

I looked at my reflection in the oven. My dark hair was sticking straight out in a million directions. My head looked like a sea urchin.

"I just woke up, give me a break. Tell me, do we have any normal coffee?"

My father joined us in the kitchen, defeated. No pants.

"Ayoo," my mom groaned in Korean, "Have you no shame? Your daughter is standing here. Where are your pants?"

"He can’t find any," I answered in English, "Do you have any normal coffee? I don’t want pumpkin pie coffee; it’s disgusting."

"Anne, you can drink my coffee," my father said, skittering across the kitchen. As he reached up to open a cabinet, the bottom of his shirt raised to reveal a hole in the seat of his briefs.

"Oh. My. GOD! MY EYES! MY EYES! They burn!"

"Ayoo, shame! Shame!" My mother shut her eyes in horror and stamped her feet.

"What? What?" My father looked at us incredulously. "Everyone so LOUD! Stop scream!"

"Anne," my mother cried, "now you know what I see everyday. How I live like this?"

"I don’t know, but I’m glad I don’t live like this. You people are nuts. Dad, you really should wear pants when you come into the kitchen. It’s not sanitary."

My father scowled and handed me a jar of Sanka.

"Anne, you be nice. My coffee taste better than Mommy’s."

"Oh no way. This is instant coffee. I don’t do instant. No one should ever be in that much of a hurry."

"You complain too much," he told me.

"You’re not wearing any pants," I said flatly.

"Everyone so crazy, how I live?" my mother wailed. She looked up at the ceiling toward God, "How I live?"

"I bet God drinks regular coffee," I grumbled.

"Anne!" my mother cried.

"Where’s my pants?" my father demanded.

"Where’s the normal coffee?" I demanded. I felt a sharp pinching in my temples and a throbbing between my eyes. I started scratching my arms. I dug my nails deep into my forearms.

"Ok, everyone, pay attention," my mother snapped in Korean. She put on her drill sergeant face, the look that once instilled fear in my brother and me throughout our childhood. "We are leaving at five o’clock. Everyone get ready to go. Anne, you can wait until your uncle’s house for coffee. STOP SCRATCHING. They’ll have a bathtub full of coffee just for you. And you," my mother looked warily at my father, "I don’t know how you’ve lost all your pants. How do you lose pants?"

My mother marched out of the kitchen in search of pants.

knitting is hip!

2006-09-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

okay, i'm not an 80 year old woman, i swear. but i've recently picked up knitting again and i can't get enough!

i say again, but i should really say for the first time because this time, i'm learning how to knit properly. before, i only knew how to do one kind of stitch - your basic knit stitch. so basically, i only knew how to knit one way, the very basic way. and i could only make scarves. that was it. but now, i'm working on my very first non-scarf knitting project - a baby blanket! okay okay, so a blanket isn't that much further from a scarf, but i'm using two different stitches (knit AND purl!) and i'm using a different stitch pattern (seed stitch!). i'm a little intimidated by the sweater patterns and knitting on circular needles but...baby steps. which is why i'm starting out with this baby blanket. now, i just need someone to have a baby so i can give them the blanket when i'm done (christina and victor - i'm looking at you). or, i could just frame it and hang it up proudly as my very first non-scarf knitting project.

i'm so happy. and i feel a bit dorky. but mostly just happy. the blanket is coming out pretty well. but it's going to take me forever. but it's okay because i can't. stop. knitting. i'm pretty addicted to it. it's gotten to the point where i'm at work all day and the only thing that i can think about is going home and knitting in front of the tv. i don't care how weird or dorky that sounds; i'm fully embracing it! and i owe it all to this wonderful, wonderful book: Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook by Debbie Stoller. it's a great beginner's guide and the writing is very down to earth and also kind of amusing. she's like the knitting best friend i never had.

so does this mean i have a hobby now? i've never had a hobby before. seriously. i really wouldn't call tv and shopping hobbies. i just hope that i can bring my project on the plane with me when we go to vegas on wednesday. i know the flight is short but my fingers will be itching to knit. it's pretty much the main thing i do in my spare time now. i know i sound like some crazy old lady, but i don't even care. i just really enjoy knitting and wanted to rave about it on my blog. :)

anyway, that's all for the crazy knitting talk. some other updates: K's program has sadly ended. K was seriously the most adorable child i've worked with. i wish i could take her home and show her off to you guys because there is no way you would not be able to go "awww" if you saw her in person. no way. but her school district took her away just like every other school district. at least, with this one, i was able to go to school with her for a few days to help her transition. and the teachers liked me and invited me to come and visit any time so i'll probably do that some time soon. in the meantime, i picked up another client who lives just around the corner from K; i'll call him A. i've only worked with him a couple times but i'll be working with him more once i'm back from vegas. unfortunately, he, too, will also be going to the school district in november. sigh. it's like the same story every time. i've also picked up another client in fremont; i'll call him R. i started working with him a couple weeks ago. he throws quite a lot of tantrums. think of the stereotypical child's tantrum - throwing themselves on the ground, rolling around, crying, shrieking, wailing, pounding fists on the ground, banging their head on the ground, more rolling around, etc. that's basically R at the beginning of every session. and, if i'm lucky (heh), random times throughout the session. i have such a high tolerance for tantrums now. i can just tune them out. and think about knitting. :) and, in some good news, T and his family have come back from vacation and they have some banked hours with the agency. so his mother requested me to finish up the rest of the hours. which i look forward to because i really enjoyed working with T.

anyway, that's about it for an update. we're going to vegas on wednesday and coming back on sunday. i can't wait!! i'm going to get drunk and gamble and shop and eat! not necessarily in that order.

i won a trip to vegas!

2006-08-24T00:02:00.000-07:00

no, seriously. i did.

okay, so i had to sit there for an hour and a half while some guy (actually, salesman of the year. yay for me.) tried to sell me a vacation timeshare for like, the price of a car. but whatever. it was worth it. you know why?

cuz i won a trip to vegas!

the end. goodnight.

2006-08-16T23:44:00.001-07:00

my favorite picture of christina. so cute and happy!

2006-08-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

"now, are you SURE, christina? it's for the rest of your life!"

2006-08-16T23:43:00.002-07:00

mike and me.

2006-08-16T23:43:00.001-07:00

they're married!

2006-08-16T23:43:00.000-07:00

awww...

2006-08-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

you can't tell, but we're all melting in our pretty little dresses. say hi to chi, jen, deb, san, me, mar (in my dress!), di, jo, and ha.

2006-08-16T23:41:00.000-07:00

getting ready to catch the bouquet. what am i doing, you ask? why, dancing, of course. why am i the only one dancing? because there is no music and i am drunk.

2006-08-16T23:40:00.000-07:00

MINE, BITCHES!!

2006-08-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

drunkenly dancing around the bride.

2006-08-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

oh, david. he also got drunk. obviously.

2006-08-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

wee! end of the night, last group picture.

2006-08-16T23:17:00.000-07:00

haha. boys copying my travel journal pages.

2006-08-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

elliot and michael in my world studies class at wisdom (they were also in my english class).

2006-08-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

hahaha. jo and steven. rouge sf.

2006-08-16T23:13:00.000-07:00

drunkenly leaning on mike.

2006-08-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

T reading "The Very Quiet Cricket" by Eric Carle. and yes, i've read this book so many times i've got it memorized. this and like, ten other childrens' books.

2006-08-16T23:07:00.001-07:00

hee! T looks like a badass riding his tricycle.

2006-08-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

aww. now he's tired.

2006-08-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

me and T on our last day. sigh. i miss my boys.

2006-08-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

me and H on our last day.

2006-08-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

K! my newest client. the most adorable girl i've ever seen.

2006-08-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

at howard's bbq.

same blog. new address.

2006-08-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

just because.

also, pictures are coming but i'm having a hard time getting them up.

edit: ARGH! what is going on with my computer and/or blogger?! why can't i get all my pics up on one post? and even when i finally publish a post with several pictures on it, why won't the links work?!? why am i so computer illiterate? man. i'm gonna have to do this one by one.

oh dear...it's been too long.

2006-08-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

well. looks like i've skipped two whole months. guess this is gonna be a gargantuan update. don't worry, i'll add pictures to make it nicer. and, actually, no one has to read this whole thing unless they've exhausted every other website to fight boredom (gofugyourself, cuteoverload, thatvideosite, youtube, myspace, etc etc). so, rough outline of what i've been up to for the past two months:

- christina and victor's wedding. hurrah!
- teaching english at wisdom.
- yosemite.
- teaching world studies (africaaaaa!) at wisdom.
- finished T's and H's programs; started K's program.

okay, let's start with what was clearly the most exciting thing to happen all summer - christina and victor got married!! the first of us. hopefully, not the last. because that would just be sad. it was a very hot day, we were all sweating our makeup off in our pretty little dresses. but it was a lovely ceremony and i didn't cry... UNTIL. victor cried. and i am SUCH a sucker when it comes to guys crying. especially at their weddings. i don't even have to know the guy to get all weepy when i see him crying (same thing happened at lawrence and ginger's wedding, although it wasn't until i was watching the video montage at their reception). sigh. anyway, banquet was also very lovely. and, of course, i got drunk. again. and all i had to drink were two glasses of wine and a glass of champagne (really really YUMMY champagne). so the whole event was just happiness for me. and, oh yeah, i caught the bouquet. i was very excited. i REALLY wanted to catch that thing. i don't even know why. there's a great picture of it that you've probably already seen (hopefully, it'll already be posted before this post). mike captured the moment perfectly - i'm in mid-air (you can actually see that my feet are off the ground) and i've got a crazy happy look on my face. so yeah, the whole night was wonderful and i'm so happy for christina and victor. :) loved hearing about their married life at howard's bbq on saturday. ;D glad to know that all the lingerie she received at her bridal shower went to good use! ;D ;D ;D

so...the monday right after christina's wedding, debra and i started teaching english at wisdom. it went pretty well since we had planned almost everything out ahead of time. okay, truth be told, i can't actually remember much of what happened that week. it went rather smoothly. had some bratty kids, as usual, but some good kids too. a little over half of them were in my world studies class a few weeks later. oh! actually, something funny did happen the very first day. so debra's mother introduced us to the other english teachers on the first day. then an asian teacher walked in and debra's mother introduced debra and me and then said, "this is ms. wu." and the teacher looked at me with a funny look on her face then said, "oh! i know you! you're the one who caught the bouquet!" and i remember that it took me like a minute (okay, maybe not a minute, but there was a definite pause) to figure out what she was talking about. and then debra burst out laughing (more like CACKLING). and i was like, ".... yeah....that was me." so... yay! one of the teachers had seen me drunk and being all weird at the wedding!!

anyway, that week went by nicely. made some nice money. then the weekend after that, we went to yosemite. it was pretty fun. we got to use debra's new MASSIVE eight-person tent. like, it echoed when it was empty. and we were able to fit two full sized air mattresses in there with PLENTY of room to spare. camping is so much nicer with air mattresses. i woke up both mornings feeling happy and refreshed. we shall never ever go camping again without air mattresses. it is decreed. on the second day, we hiked up vernal falls again. and even though i wasn't sick, i still had a really hard time on the first half of the hike. i had a really tough time trying to breathe. it felt like i just...couldn't. but once we hit the halfway point (and debra, mercifully, carried my backpack up the rest of the way), i was fine. the waterfall was CRAZY this year. it was so strong that for almost the entire second half of the hike, we were soaked from all the misty water coming from the waterfall. by the time we got to the top, it was like we had just jumped into a lake with all our clothes on. even though i had a hard time going up the first half of the hike, i enjoyed this hike more than the first time. and i didn't lose my camera either! mike and i went back to the log where i had put it down two or three years ago, and wouldn't you know...it wasn't there. actually, i think out of all the camping trips i've taken (which haven't been that much really; i could probably count them all on one hand), i've enjoyed this one the most.

so, a couple weeks after the yosemite trip, i started my second week at wisdom (of my third summer doing this) teaching world studies again. and, again, it was africa. so, i was somewhat prepared since i had done it last summer. but, see, last summer, i had completely and utterly bullshitted (bullshat?) the whole thing. so i really didn't have that much stuff from the previous summer. i had a few notes, but that was it. so i was quite stressed out (again, like last summer) about this week. i was doing work every night of the week and preparing for the next day, but it was better than last summer because it wasn't like i was coming up with the whole day's lesson plan the night before. i was able to make a rough outline for the whole week and by the end of the week, i pretty much had the whole thing down. so if i do this again next year (although that's kind of a big if), i'll be completely and utterly prepared! but both weeks that i was doing wisdom, i was also still doing milestones. so it was just work, work, work during those crazy weeks. my daily schedule was: wake up, work at wisdom, work at milestones, eat, prepare work for wisdom, sleep. repeat. i was so tired. thankfully, it was only for a week. and, even more thankfully, it's over!

sigh. unfortunately, what was also over this summer were T's and H's programs at milestones. the evil, evil fremont unified school district cruelly and greedily yanked them away from milestones. T's program finished first, just before christina's wedding. i knew it was coming for a while so i was able to brace myself for it, but still. i was quite sad about it. he was my favorite. it didn't help that the day right after his program finished, he and his family went to taiwan for the rest of the summer. they should be back in a week or two though. so hopefully i'll be able to see him soon. and, hopefully, he won't have regressed. but i have a bad feeling that he probably has. and H's program ended at the very beginning of this month, just after my second week at wisdom ended. i grew really fond of H, especially towards the end. during the last couple months, especially, he sort of had a breakthrough and was starting to imitate basic sounds - he was starting to speak! and it's just sad that his program had to be cut just as he was really hitting his stride.

on the plus side, i did get a new client - K. this is different from my very first milestones client. this K is a girl K. and she's absolutely adorable. she's very affectionate and curious. when i first met her, she ran up to me, stuck her face right in front of mine and giggled. since then, she's been pretty attached to me. out of the four milestones staff working with her, it's pretty clear that i'm her favorite. but, then again, i'm the one who sees her the most often. and the fact that i look like her mother probably helps a bit. my favorite thing to do with her is to call her to me. it doesn't sound that exciting but it's quite a big accomplishment for her to follow direction and actually come over to us when we call her. and it's so cute because she used to come to us for some tangible reinforcer (like a toy or bubbles or something) but now she comes to us for hugs and tickles. she pretty much always runs to me now when i call her and she'll have a big smile on her face and i love picking her up and swinging her around.

so anyway, that's pretty much what's been going on in my life for the past two months. pictures to come. probably tomorrow. too lazy to do it now. update DONE!!

oh yeah. one last thing. i need a fucking vacation.

2006-06-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

it's totally blurry but i really like this picture for some reason.

2006-06-02T15:56:00.001-07:00

mike and me in front of the mission.

2006-06-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

thuy and me. i think that's his first drink.

2006-06-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

mike and me.

2006-06-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

hahahaha. brothers! guess which one is drunk.

2006-06-02T15:51:00.001-07:00

paul and angela. what a cute couple!

2006-06-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

thuy (drunkenly) pretending to be a waiter.

2006-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

thuy with our actual waiter (who i thought was kind of cute; there was also a waiter who looked like michael buble).

2006-06-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

the groomsmen at our table (thuy, gerald, norm, alvin), lawrence's father, and mike.

2006-06-02T15:48:00.001-07:00

table 31!! alvin, paul, amanda, angela, and me. (i'm a dork, i forgot the one).

2006-06-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

mike dancing with ginger during the money dance.

2006-06-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

mike, paul, mike.

2006-06-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

the bride and groom - ginger and lawrence.

2006-06-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

drinking!

2006-06-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

uptown girl!

2006-06-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

deb, me, and jacq. look, we're all wearing similar colored jackets.

memorial day weekend

2006-06-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

okay, so even though it's the start of a whole new weekend, i'm going to blog about last weekend.

to start off, during my (last) thursday session with H, i managed to catch a pretty nasty cough from him and his sick mother. fun. so the whole weekend, i was popping cough drops like crazy, taking non-drowsy cough medicine that managed to make me dizzy and drowsy, and taking drowsy medicine at night that totally knocked me out. and the best part was that i got mike sick on sunday night and he wound up with a fever on tuesday. oops. anyway...that was all the bad stuff. the whole weekend was actually a lot of fun. i'll put up pictures after i post this.

so, saturday was lawrence and ginger's wedding. the wedding was inside mission san jose. i hadn't been inside that place since the 4th grade. but it was quite nice. the chapel had a rustic feel to it. unfortunately, i was hit with a pretty bad coughing fit right before the wedding started, while everyone was lined up waiting to walk down the aisle. so i wound up taking like five cough drops throughout the whole ceremony so it wouldn't happen again.

the reception was in pleasanton at a very nice (and, i'm sure, very expensive) golf club. okay, two words: OPEN. BAR. god, i love it. even though i'm a total cheap drunk and only need like three drinks (okay, sometimes only one) to get me drunk so it's not as if i would spend a lot of money buying drinks. but, c'mon, i'm asian. and FREE things just taste so much better. right? right. plus, it got me and everyone else around me drunkity drunk drunk. seriously, our WHOLE TABLE was drunk. all ten of us. half of the groomsmen (one of which was mike's brother, thuy). sadly, all i had to drink was a cosmopolitan (although just that got me pretty buzzed) and two fuzzy navels. and i was drunk. told you i'm a cheap drunk. but on the plus side, it made me stop coughing. and it made everything so much more fun. a table full of ten drunk people can get a little loud. there was a lot of laughing and yelling and people staring at us. and one of the groomsmen threw up (good thing our table was located right next to the door outside). and the rest of the groomsmen took funny pictures with him. and thuy was very drunk and very entertaining. i love open bar. if i'm rich enough (hah, yeah right), i will totally have one for my wedding.

so that was all of saturday. sunday...i got drunk again. totally didn't mean to, but i did. we went to oakland for drinking and karaoke. unfortunately, the karaoke place that's right next to the drinking place closed. so we had to find a new karaoke place. it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. it was adequate. and, again, i got drunk off of like, nothing. okay, it wasn't nothing, but it was just soju. so yeah, karaoke was quite fun. the song selections were okay, but then again, we were drunk/buzzed so it was fun. the place had a cool light up tambourine that i wanted to steal.

monday, went to watch x-men with mike, david, and deb. it was okay. the whole trilogy was just...meh. like, i feel like i could've done a better job and that's just basing it off my fuzzy memory of the cartoon (and all the bits and pieces i pick up from my nerdy comic-book reading boyfriend). i really want to see the break-up. and the movie i'm looking forward to the most this summer is pirates of the caribbean. superman? meh.

okay, i need to get going to work out soon. so i'm going to end this and post pictures.

last weekend was a good weekend. :)

ROAD RAGE!!!!!

2006-05-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

if you're ever on automall parkway during the afternoon/evening rush hour and you see a silver celica with a girl inside who's red in the face and screaming, yelling, hissing, and spitting at the other drivers on the road, say hi to me. don't be shy.

i know it is sad that so much HAAAAAAAAAAATE has inspired me to update my blog but i needed to vent. i hate monday, tuesday, and thursday afternoons because those are the afternoons when i have to drive on automall to get to H's and S's houses and then back home. and, okay, seriously, why does EVERYONE HAVE TO DRIVE LIKE A FUCKING ASSHOLE ON AUTOMALL?!?! WHY WHY WHY WHWYWHWHWYWHWWHWHWAYWSE;ROIAJWEOIRAJ!!!r???/

i know it is pointless and stupid and harmful to my nervous system to be so consumed with rage while i am surrounded by dickfaces and obnoxious morons. i know there is nothing i can do and that screaming at them and wishing that a pail full of runny poop would fall onto their car will not accomplish anything or make them any less of an asshole. but...i can't help it. and it does feel marginally better than just sitting there and silently fuming. i'm sure i will get over this eventually but not any time soon. sometimes, i just want to get out of my car and punch all the other drivers around me.

i hate automall.

2006-03-28T17:02:00.000-08:00

deb, jo, and me, just before leaving for sf. and so our crazy night begins.

2006-03-28T17:01:00.000-08:00

christina and me.

2006-03-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

deb, steven, mike. steven is so red.

2006-03-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

this is my absolute favorite picture of the entire night. jo holding onto a drunken david by the back of his collar. i don't know why i find it so funny but i do.

jo: *sigh.* david.

david: hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

2006-03-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

ohhhh, deeeeebraaaaa. i looooaoijwaoirjoave yoououuuaouououo...

2006-03-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

david. david david david.

2006-03-28T16:49:00.000-08:00

i sure do like to give a thumbs up a lot when i'm drunk.

2006-03-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

saying goodbye at the end of the night. me, ha, jen, alisa. there were a lot of drunken declarations of love. :)

2006-03-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

mine?

2006-03-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

me and mike. there's alcatraz behind us. it was windy.

2006-03-28T16:40:00.000-08:00

fobbed up sign in a souvenir shop with the shot glasses. it gets better...

2006-03-28T16:39:00.000-08:00

mike and i seriously laughed for ten minutes at this sign. same shop, on the other side. i think the owners thought we were crazy.

shh...i'm sick.

2006-03-28T15:57:00.000-08:00

okay, not really. i just said that so i could skip this afternoon's session. yes, i know, i'm a horrible person. but it's raining and i'm lazy. perfect reasons to ditch work, right?

anyway, look! i'm actually updating within the SAME month. amazing! i think the reason is cuz i have some new pictures and i wanted to post them and i thought that i might as well blog while i do that.

last last weekend was deb/ha/di/alisa's bday bash at dragon bar. i had a lot of fun and it looked like those girls did too. :) this time, i had a whopping three drinks (a sex on the beach and two fuzzy navels) and got quite drunk. i threw up at the beginning of the night - right after finishing my third drink - and it was, embarrassingly, in the middle of the floor. good thing i was drunk and, therefore, immune to embarrassment. :) but that's never happened to me before. i'm usually quite good and can make it to a toilet. but i think what happened was that i thought i was just going to burp. it didn't feel like i was going to throw up. until i did. oh well. i was still drunk after that. spent the rest of the night dancing with my girls and some random guys. lost one of my blue earrings. oh well. stumbled back to the parking garage with mike just before 2. what a fun night. :)

this past weekend was my two year anniversary with mike. TWO YEARS. and that's not even the longest relationship out of everyone's. yeesh. we're old. and boy does time fly. when you're having fun, of course. :) so we spent sunday in san francisco to celebrate. it was a beautiful, gorgeous day. sunny and warm. got windy later though. and naturally, we got lost. fucking san francisco and their complete lack of very important signs. especially ones that say "STOP!! YOU'RE ABOUT TO GO ONTO THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE." sigh. we tried to go to the exploratorium/palace of fine arts but drove right past it because we missed the road to turn left and nearly drove onto the golden gate but got off it just in time. unfortunately, the road we exited was 19th ave which is a freeway and had NO LEFT TURNS. so we wound up driving all the way through golden gate park which is just so very far away from the exploratorium. so we said, fuck the palace of fine arts, let's just go to fisherman's wharf and eat lots of yummy seafood. so we eventually made a big circle back to fisherman's wharf. yay for map reading skills!

once we were at fisherman's wharf, we ate oysters, calamari and chips, seafood mix sandwich, and the BEST clam chowder ever (at chowders, how appropriate). walked around, saw the sea lions, took some pictures, visited some shops, etc. we also went to the wax museum and ripley's believe it or not since mike had never been. the wax museum was incredibly creepy. it was a little underground and there was NO ONE else there. just me, mike, and two dozen wax figures. i swear, they were all looking RIGHT AT ME. and i kept having that paranoid feeling where i would turn around and then turn back and, somehow, the figures would have moved closer to me. creeeeeeeeeepy. anyway, ripley's was neat too. and not as creepy since there were a lot more people there.

and...that's about it. aren't you glad i ditched work? i am. gonna post pictures now.

2006-03-03T00:05:00.000-08:00

yay! friends are home for christmas break. top: mar, san, chi, di, jen, ha. bottom: deb, chris, me (please note my normal appearance as opposed to my appearance in the pictures two down from this).

2006-03-03T00:02:00.000-08:00

sexy christina. david's keyboard never looked hotter.

2006-03-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

is chi happy or is chi sad?

2006-03-02T23:58:00.000-08:00

ohmygod...am i still drunk? (see, i told you i sway.)

2006-03-02T23:57:00.000-08:00

yes...

2006-03-02T23:56:00.000-08:00

...i'm still drunk.

2006-03-02T23:55:00.001-08:00

chewy in mike's hamper. just because.

2006-03-02T23:55:00.000-08:00

the fabulously decorated dinner table for valentine's dinner.

2006-03-02T23:51:00.000-08:00

david drunk in debra's car. in a safeway parking lot. not as sad as it sounds.

2006-03-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

drunk mike. looks happy. facial expression says: "heh...heh...heh...heh."

it's only been two months...

2006-03-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

...since my last post. maybe a little over two months. but it's better than my last gap between updates. the last gap was about four months. so i've cut the gap in half! yeah! i've lost all readers! yeah! i'll put up another long series of pictures after i post this to make up for the gap again.

anyway, let's start with events of the past two months. hmm...not much. so sad. had my birthday party which was very fun. what more can a girl ask for than to have all her friends with her drinking and dancing (more like swaying) the night away? oh yes, and presents. presents for everyone! then...let's see... jo came home! yay! few weeks later, we went clubbing. element in sf. small but good club with an awesome dj who played music we could actually DANCE to. imagine that. went with deb, jo, ha, jen, and david. and, sadly, i was the only one who got seriously drunk. ha almost caught up to me at the end, but drunk cherry was the entertainment for the night. and all i had to drink were a couple sex on the beaches. they said i only had one and a half but i contend that it was at least 1.75. and, in my defense, i hadn't eaten dinner and i had chugged those down really quickly. i remember singing to debra that i was drunk. and also dancing in the middle of everyone and sort of getting pushed around (well, they pushed me to keep me upright). and swaying. lots and lots of swaying. i tend to sway dance when i'm drunk. i did throw up but i was a good girl and held it in until i got to the bathroom (i even got it in the toilet!). so there was that. unfortunately, no pictures. boo.

february... got to see lion king and corteo. both very good shows. i've only seen two cirque du soleil shows but i think i prefer mystique to corteo. there was also the very nice dinner party that deb hosted (with much assistance from jo and ha) for valentine's day (although it was actually on the saturday before valentine's day). and we had two boy birthdays - mike (feb 22) and david (feb 26). old fogies. what else did we do in february? i don't know. it seemed like we did something every weekend but i'm too lazy to think about that. well, we did kind of do something for the guys' birthdays. a small group of us went to dave & buster's, got the guys kinda drunk, went to taco bell for munchies, and then wound up in a safeway parking lot getting the guys drunk. there was puking in the parking lot. successful birthday bash, i'd say.

as for everyday... it's been tiring. i'm exhausted almost every day i come home from work. i'm working 28 hours a week which doesn't sound like much but it's also the most i've done so far. and i'm working with four kids now - T (almost 3 years old), K (almost 5), H (just turned 3), and S (6 year old girl). it takes so much energy to work with these kids. you have to constantly be high-energy with them otherwise they won't pay any attention to you. at the end of the day, i just have nothing left for myself. i'm only working with K and S once a week and K's case will be ending this coming wednesday which will make life a little easier since my wednesdays were full days (three sessions: 9-12, 1230-330, 4-6. driving and eating lunch at the same time between 12 and 1230).

the agency hired a new tutor to work with T with me and...i don't like her. at first, i thought i was just being possessive of T and didn't want anyone who wasn't good enough for him to work with him. so i tried really hard to be more open minded and to remind myself what it was like when i first started out being in the exact same position as she is but...no. it's been over a month and she still sucks. she doesn't have that high-energy thing down and i realize there's a certain amount of faking it involved but she's just faking it way too hard and it's obvious and T is only two years old but he can totally pick up on that. plus, she suffers from a mild (yet, very annoying) case of know-it-all-ism. i fucking hate people like that. and a small (okay, big) evil part of me gets a tiny (okay, enormous) bit of satisfaction when T rebels against her and won't listen to her but will totally listen to and obey me when i ask him to do the exact same thing she just asked him to do. what's your fucking answer for that now, bitch? i'm so mean. i don't care. okay, well, i'm not a total heinous bitch; i did try to give her tips on how to handle his bad behavior and control him when he's throwing a fit but she's either dumb and not listening to me or she's just not taking me seriously because, i don't know, she's too cocky and won't take my advice because i look young even though she's younger than me and hasn't even graduated college yet? probably a combination of both. but hey, that's fine with me if she doesn't wanna listen to my advice. she's the one who has to deal with a two-year-old totally walking all over her. if she can't even assert her authority over T, who, btw, is the easiest kid out of all of my kids to work with, then she's gonna have major problems with other kids in the program. which, i would kind of like to see. because i'm kind of a mean bitch.

anyway, that was a long, boring rant and i don't know how that got away from me. sorry. i do feel a little better though. oh man... it's 1140 and i'm so ready for bed. okay, pictures and then bed for tired old me. yay, tomorrow is friday!

2005-12-25T01:28:00.000-08:00

deb and me boarding at boreal.

2005-12-25T01:21:00.000-08:00

me, deb, chris chen, ha, and jen. face masks and leg waxing. fun!

2005-12-25T01:17:00.000-08:00

YES.

2005-12-25T01:16:00.000-08:00

me and tiki at the olympic garden strip club. my first lap dance!

2005-12-25T01:12:00.001-08:00

all the girls about to go clubbing in vegas. jessica, chi, deb, jacq, jo, and me.

2005-12-25T01:12:00.000-08:00

and this little girl beat both of us to win first place. she killed me with four hula hoops.

2005-12-25T01:10:00.000-08:00

me and jacq getting ready for a hula hoop contest at fao schwartz in caesars palace. i won second place, jacq won third place.

2005-12-25T01:07:00.000-08:00

me riding jessie at yosemite.

2005-12-25T01:06:00.000-08:00

the bestest teachers and TAs at wisdom - david, ha, deb, me, san, and kuan.

merry christmas! happy birthday!

2005-12-25T00:07:00.000-08:00

to me! although, technically, i'm still 22 right now since i was born around 2 pm today.

i know i haven't posted in ages. this might be the longest i've gone without blogging, i'm not sure. i feel like i should blog now though since it's christmas and my birthday. there hasn't been too much to blog about. everyday has pretty much been the same. let's see, since i last updated, i:

- went to vegas
- picked up another kid at milestones
- just came back from reno

see? you didn't miss much. it's just been two vacations and more work.

vegas can be summed up nicely by saying that it was a quick, last minute trip that was loads of fun and ended with a trip to a strip club where all the girls got treated to hilarious lap dances (although, i feel that the phrase "lap dance" is far too much of an understatement for what actually happened) from awesome male strippers. and, yes, there are pictures. ;D

work...has been okay. it's work, you know? i've been working with milestones for about 5 months now and i'm pretty used to it. i have two kids i work with now - K and T. i remember feeling really overwhelmed when i first started working with milestones since it was the first time i'd ever really met a kid with autism, let alone work with one. but now i feel reasonably competent. it's been a little tiring though, working with both kids at once. i would work with T in the mornings (and some afternoons) and K in the afternoons. so i had pretty full days and it was just tiring working with these young kids. K is four and T is only two and a half. and, yet, they both have the ability to wear out all the grown-ups around them.

i do feel like my work is pretty fulfilling though. as cheesy as it sounds, it's satisfying to see that what i'm doing is actually making a difference in these kids' lives. it's the craziest thing to watch them actually learning and picking up so many things when i'm working with them. when we first started working with T, he would spend the majority of our sessions throwing huge tantrums and running away from us screaming at the top of his lungs. but now, T has taken a liking to me and he recognizes me and smiles at me. i love playing peek-a-boo with him; i run around the house and he chases me and laughs at me when he finds me whereas, before, he would completely ignore me and avoid me. also, when we first started working with T, he couldn't say any words, only gibberish. but now, he's picked up so many words and, with each day, it seems like he's saying more and more words. i feel quite proud of how far he's come along and the work we're doing with him.

and the last thing on the list to blog about is our recent trip to reno for 3 days of boarding. it was me, mike, deb, david, jacq, bobby, and steven. just got back yesterday (friday). first day, we boarded at squaw valley (met up with san, kuan, tony, and edward) and it sucked ASS. the resort itself was quite nice but the weather was incredibly shitty. it fucking hailed and was unbelievably windy. i would stand in place, without my board on, and the wind would literally push me forward. needless to say, i did not do well that first day. second day, we went to northstar (met up with christina chen and victor) where it rained all day. i did better at the runs but we didn't stay the whole day since it wouldn't. stop. RAINING. we were all soaked completely through by the end. i did have a few bad faceplants though. bad in that i fell face first (when i got up, my goggles were covered with snow) and then slid a couple feet down the hill with my arms outstretched. kinda funny, in hindsight. third day, we went to boreal where it was fucking crowded and hot as hell. i actually took my jacket off and wore only a long sleeve t-shirt and a short sleeve t-shirt over that. and i was still hot. i did better on boarding cuz the runs were easier but it was just. too. CROWDED. the lines for the lifts were insane and i walked up the hills with deb a couple times. anyway, by the end of the trip, i felt incredibly sore. my whole body just ached. my arms are sore from pulling myself up after every fall. my ass is sore from falling all the damn time. my legs are sore from plowing down steep hills. my neck is sore from...i don't know what. my knees and the inside of my right thigh are bruised (that sounds a little dirty). on the way home, i was so tired that i fell asleep and drooled. twice.

the rest of the time we were at reno, we did the usual stuff - midway games (my prize stash this year consists of two squirts [or crushes] from finding nemo, a mini hippo, a mini penguin, a neon green monkey, a mini christmas bear, and a big monkey hanging from a bar. okay, so most of those, mike won but i got a couple of them too), gambling, buffet, and prime rib at sweetwater. gambling was okay. i didn't win anything but i didn't have any major losses either. i played pai gow twice and each time i lost about $5. not bad. deb tried to teach me craps. we walked by an empty table and the dealers and pit boss hassled us into playing. they also hassled me into throwing the dice which was not a good idea. the first time i threw, i threw one of the dice off the table. the second time i threw, i think i hit one of the dealers with the dice. the third time i threw, everyone ducked or ran off. just kidding. the third time i threw, it was okay. but i did actually hit the dealer with the dice. oh well. all in all, a very fun trip. i got to use my new board (with new boots and new bindings!), my new pants, my new goggles, and my new camelbak. heh. yes, i know i have a problem.

anyway, hope everyone has a fun christmas. looking forward to the end of the week when i'll have my bday party/christmas gift exchange, go clubbing, and celebrate new year's eve. three days of partying. hope i can handle it. if i feel nice, maybe i'll put up some pics on this sad, starving blog. oh, actually, check out my yahoo pics. it's pretty much updated with all the pics from summer (rafting, fourth of july, raging waters, gilroy garlic festival, wisdom summer camp, and yosemite). the only things that are missing are vegas, a bunch of random pictures, and this reno trip.

merry christmas everyone! happy birthday to me!

freedom! sort of.

2005-08-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

it's been two weeks since wisdom has been over. it's just nice to not have to worry about that and to only have work in the afternoons. that's my kind of pace.

so, since then, i went camping in yosemite on august 12-14 with deb, ha, david, mike, steven. it was nice and relaxing. wished a few more people could have come though. but i loved the company i had. did NOT, however, love the caterpillars. ha, mike, and i pitched our tents under a couple of trees which was pretty much the worst place ever since caterpillars were constantly raining down on us and crawling all over our tents. it started with maybe like three caterpillars on our tent and just kept getting progressively worse until the last day when we had well over twenty caterpillars all over our tent. we'd flick them all off but then two minutes later, they would all be back. and they would bring their friends. so lovely. oh yeah, and these caterpillars supposedly cause allergic rashes on some people so i was a little freaked out most of the time despite their harmless appearance. yeah, i know, i'm a wuss. oh well.

on the last day of camping, deb, david, mike, and i went horseback riding. it was my first time! and it was not gentle. my crotch region was very sore for a couple days. so much that i winced a little every time i sat down. ouch. but it was definitely worth it. my horse was named jessie and he was such a sweetie. i adored him. i can see now how easily people get attached to horses. debra rode rumba, mike rode pedro, and david rode sheriff. they took us on a pretty interesting trail that, frankly, i don't even know if i would have hiked, let alone go on horseback. i'd definitely love to do it again.

so, since then, i haven't been doing much. well, i've been spending the money i made from wisdom. just on little shopping sprees here and there. sigh...shopping makes me feel so good.

i've been working with K for almost a month now. it's gotten a lot better since the last time i posted. i actually prefer working with him alone now (as opposed to when i work with him with the head tutor every tuesday). he listens to me and i have a firm and strict style that i use with him that's been pretty successful. he has his bad days like most kids but, for the most part, working with him has been good. i'm hoping that i can pick up another client once i'm settled with K. more money would be nice.

so i've got like a buttload of pictures to put online. like, the entire summer's worth. but i'm so damn lazy. maybe if i'm not feeling too lazy, i'll post some pics up on this blog. ehh...maybe.

now that i have a moment...

2005-08-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

...to breathe, i can blog.

so, before i get started on how stressed and crazy i've been lately, i have to start off this blog with some good news, the best kind there is! christina chen is engaged! the first one of my good friends to get married. aww. i seriously can't wait for the wedding even though it's over a year from now. that's going to be the best wedding ever.

okay, now onto my horrible past two weeks. well, not so much horrible. just...i haven't been so stressed out, frazzled, tired, hungry, cranky, and overwhelmed in a long time. the last time i was like this was probably during finals when i was in school. so for the last week and a half, i've been teaching the world studies class at wisdom. and when i say "teaching," i mean flying by the seat of my pants (or skirts actually). i only have two more days to go in this session and i just can't wait for it to be over. i mean, i do like these kids because they're really funny and bright but only on a one-on-one basis. when they're all together in groups of thirty, i just want to kill myself. honestly, i don't know how actual teachers do it. i have so much respect for them and am truly appalled at how underpaid and underappreciated they are. and my anger at asian parents has increased. it's easy to see how the bad behavior of certain kids gets reinforced at home. and, okay, i know that kids don't come with instruction manuals and it's not easy being a parent, but some of these parents just seem to lack common sense. like sending their kid to school without a pencil. i mean, c'mon, what are you thinking?! i know it's supposed to be a fun summer camp type school, but still. what do you expect your kid to write with - his blood? argh.

the second graders amuse me though. as wild and tribal and undisciplined as they are, they're still highly amusing and entertaining. yesterday (and today), we made african masks. david suggested that they play hide and seek with the antelope-masked kids and the rabbit-masked kids hiding and the hunter-masked kids seeking. it was pretty funny watching all the antelope and rabbit kids running to the SAME hiding spots as other antelope and rabbit kids. and then watching as all the kids with hunter masks run around like the wild, crazy hellions they are. i really like that word - hellion. anyway, two more days. i just have to survive two more days.

AND...on top of all of that, i got a new job last week. unfortunately, i got the new job right at the beginning of this last session of wisdom (last monday), so that definitely contributed to my insanely high stress level. i'm working at milestones which is an early intervention program for children with autism. i'm working part time at the moment, tutoring a 4-year-old boy. i'll call him K. i was definitely overwhelmed when i started because they pretty much just threw me in there to train me. not only that, but K is the first kid i've met with autism. so i've been training with his other tutors this whole past week and the beginning of this week. tomorrow, i start working with him alone. which is kind of scary. although i do feel a bit better about this now than i did at the beginning. i honestly started to feel like it might've been too much to handle and i didn't know if i was cut out for it. but i've been learning a lot from the other tutors and his parents and i've become a lot more confident. today was a good day. K is starting to listen to me a bit more. for the past week, he's just been testing me. pushing me to see what he can get away with with me. so he's been extra difficult just for me. you can see now why i've been so stressed.

so for these past two weeks, i've been working everyday from 9 to 5 with loud, crazy kids. i think once wisdom is over (two more days!), i'll definitely be able to handle K a lot better. it's just that i'm so tired when i go to work with him that i get stressed so much more easily. i work at wisdom in the mornings from 9 to 12 and then go over to K's house in the afternoons from 2 to 5 (or 230 to 530). and then, when i get home, i have to work on the next day's activities for wisdom. so i've just been working, working, working. i've actually been so stressed out these past couple weeks that i've lost weight. i mean, i wanted to lose weight but not like this. i've been so busy that, a lot of the time, i just forget to eat. that's how i know that i'm definitely stressed out. two more days...two more days... if i can just hold out for two more days, i'll be okay.

anyway, other than my working life, i've been okay. last last weekend (july 23), i went to raging waters with the wisdom group (me, deb, david, san, kuan, ha) and mike. that was pretty fun. i hadn't been to a water park in so long. actually, i think the last time i went was senior year of high school during that one school trip. so sad. but it was fun. my top flipped up when i landed in the water after going down this one slide. same thing happened to ha. both of us were wearing string bikinis. we landed in the water so forcefully that our tops just flipped right up. luckily, we were both submerged when it happened. i actually stayed down under water to fix my top, then swam up.

and then this past weekend, i went to the gilroy garlic festival with deb, david, ha, mike, chris, and victor. it was okay. i don't know if it was worth the traffic time though. it usually takes maybe 45 minutes to get to gilroy. it took us 2 hours. there was this one 3-mile stretch that took us half an hour. the food was good though and it wasn't TOO hot. ha and i had a little run-in with an old drunk guy though. we were in line waiting to buy loaves of garlic bread when old drunk guy (let's just call him ODG) taps me on my shoulder and asks me if anyone has ever counted all the stars on my back (from my tattoo). i say no and turn around. there's a long pause. and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he shouts, "39!!" i just ignored him. but i found him more sad than creepy. i think ODG was drunkenly trying to chit chat with us before the tattoo thing too. i don't remember what we were talking about. i do remember giving ha a look like, oh shit. and then the others said that when he was counting the stars on my back, he was leaning in really close and hella staring. gross. it's just sad though that ODG was, well, old and drunk and seemingly all by himself. but, still, gross. and, for the record, there are actually 40 stars on my back.

okay, i'm getting tired now. and this blog is probably incredibly long. and the text is probably still screwed up. ugh. oh well. i'll fix it later. or try to anyway. i want to end on a happy note so - yay, chris is getting married! chris is getting married! it makes me feel really old and really young all at the same time.

okay, so it's been a while...

2005-07-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

so i'll give an update because i feel sorry for this blog. and also, there's something screwy going on with the text size (it's bigger than normal) and the sidebar (it's all the way down the page!) but i can't figure out what the hell is wrong. i didn't change the template. and the weird thing is, if you change your browser's text size from medium to smaller, everything fixes itself. wtf? if someone knows what's going on, lemme know please. also, a solution would be nice.

anyway, i've been kinda busy with the wisdom happy kids summer camp thing. about to get even busier too with world studies coming up. from june 27 to july 8, i taught 2nd grade english (deb taught 3rd grade). there were a couple girls in my class who were just...so...ADORABLE. gracie has the most precious, cutest little girl face. and when she talks, i just want to hug her and give her lots of candy. she's always with her best friend emily who she met on the 2nd day of kindgergarten. oh...my ovaries. incidentally, they also both go to mission valley - my alma mater! is that right? can i say alma mater for an elementary school? oh well. there was also ashley who's just so...perfect. but in a cute, non-annoying way. she always sat up straight and had pretty little girl handwriting. man. too much cuteness. the boys, on the other hand, were, well...boys. you know. i yelled at them quite a bit. and the biggest troublemaker was alvin. so just imagine me yelling "ALVIN!!!" a lot. too bad there wasn't also a theodore and a simon. the cutest thing about all the kids though was that they all called me "miss cherry." aww. i didn't even tell them to call me that!

so anyway, now we're in the middle of session 2 and i am TA-ing ha's 4th/5th/6th grade class. i am merciless. (wait, why does that not sound like a word?) well, okay, i'm not that bad but i do feel like i'm starting to get just a little too mean. i don't know. these kids wear me out. they really do. i'm always yelling. and now i've been yelling so much that the kids are starting to copy me and are yelling at the other kids "BE QUIET!! SIT DOWN!!" which...i don't think is good. so now, not only do i yell "BE QUIET!! SIT DOWN!!", but i also yell "NO YELLING!!! EXCEPT FOR ME AND CHRISTINA!!!" it's just...chaos.

and in one more week, session 3 will begin and deb, ha, and i will all teach world studies. i'm teaching 2nd and 4th grade. 2nd grade will be africa and 4th grade will be australia. and...we're all totally screwed. prepared...we are not. my kids will all just be watching lion king, jungle book, finding nemo, and rescuers down under. and the sad thing is, i'm only half-joking. because it may just come down to that. i don't know. there'll probably just be a lot of blank staring. ai-yah...what to do..what to do.. if anyone has any ideas on fun activities for kids that involve africa or australia, pleeeeaaaase let me know. please.

okay, i think my laundry is done. good god, it's so hot.

tom cruise...still sucks.

2005-06-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

so, this post is actually in regard to my tom cruise sucks post which, surprisingly, got a lot of comments. more than i'm used to on this blog (seriously, where did all you people come from? how did i get this many comments on my little, insignificant blog?). and one of the comments (a good one!) was:

would you agree that some people are too quickly medicated for issues that could be treated in alternative ways and even when medication is necessary, finding the right medication mix for treating bipolar is an inexact science at best? we have to get past the black and white back and forth and move toward answers for the grey areas here..psychiatrists have one hammer in their toolkit, write an rx...if you go to them with a mental health issue, most of them will rx it as if it is a medical issue...let's have the deeper more complex discussion here... shields' and cruise's media grabbing back and forth only muddy the "deeper issues" waters more...would love your comments on the more penetrating answers...

my answer is yes, i would agree that some people are too quickly medicated for certain illnesses that could be treated in different ways (therapy only, or in conjunction with therapy) and that finding the right medication for mental illnesses can be an inexact science. i also agree that the whole issue of medication and mental illnesses is not black and white and it is a huge grey area.

however, i don't agree that psychiatrists treat all issues as medical issues and will only write you a prescription to solve your problem. and this is what bothers me about this whole thing. that a lot of people have this misperception of psychiatry and psychology as a crazy "pseudo-science" (thanks, tom) and that the only thing psychiatrists/psychologists will do is prescribe you a truckload of meds and send you on your merry, numb way. this is just not true. i'm sure that there ARE psychiatrists out there who do this but, just like in every profession, you have your bad seeds and these few psychiatrists, unfortunately, match the misperception that people have so they continue to believe that this is what all psychiatrists are like.

in fact, i don't know if most people know this, but i just feel like i should explain that the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists is that psychiatrists have a medical degree and are licensed to prescribe medication whereas psychologists are either researchers or therapists. psychiatrists and psychologists work together to treat mental illness. and, as with most mental illnesses, the issue is always a grey area that requires BOTH medication and therapy. in a lot of cases, of course, medication is not even needed and therapy or behavioral treament is sufficient. but i don't think there are many cases (if any) out there that would just require medication alone. if medication is used, i'm fairly certain that therapy or some other treatment goes hand in hand with it.

the one issue that a lot of people seem to have a problem with is ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) where a lot of people think that psychiatrists are "drugging" too many kids these days. this is still a controversial issue within the field of psychiatry/psychology. why are so many kids diagnosed with ADHD? is it because we've become better at recognizing the symptoms than in the past? is it because there's something that's "causing" or triggering these symptoms (moreso today than in the past)? or are we just becoming overzealous and ADHD has been the go-to answer for all "problem" children? obviously, there is no correct answer. it's still out there for debate even within the field. i don't even know where i stand on the issue because it's such a complex issue and i feel that i don't have enough facts to form an educated opinion. and this is what bothers me about tom cruise. that, as an actor who has never been educated in psychiatry/psychology, he feels that he can make grand, sweeping statements about evil nazi psychiatrists who do nothing all day but electro-shock and drug kids. i kid you not, this is his actual opinion. and, as a celebrity and a big personality, people, unfortunately, are more inclined to listen to what he says and not look up the facts themselves. (although, these days, the whole katie holmes issue is making tom cruise look like a nutbar - to put it kindly - so his credibility and popularity are sinking faster than the titanic).

this leads to another big misperception that people have regarding psychiatry/psychology. that it is an exact science and mental illnesses are just like medical illnesses. have the flu? take flu medicine. have hepatitis? take hepatitis medication. (yeah, i have no idea what any of these medicines are called. good thing i'm not a medical doctor). unfortunately, with mental illnesses, things are never that cut and dry. the brain is still the one part of the human body that we know very little about. we do our best to treat mental illnesses, not "cure" them. and this is what bothers a lot of people, i think. that we can't "cure" depression or schizophrenia or autism. we can only treat it. and a lot of people are simply unaware that with many of these mental illnesses, therapy or behavioral treatment (or some other type of treatment) is used with or without medication. it's almost never JUST medication. people make the mistake of assuming that suffering from schizophrenia or ADHD (or any other mental illness) is just like having a migraine and all they need is some anti-psychotics or stimulants to make it go away. but a lot of people don't see the therapy or the behavioral treatment that goes with it (and that, oftentimes, preceded it). and why would they care? therapy and behavioral treatment are unglamorous and, unfortunately, regarded as "unscientific" because they don't come in pill form.

i know this blog is getting long, but i have one more issue to cover and that is that a lot of people regard psychology as a "pseudo-science" (really, thanks so much, tom). and i can assure you that psychology follows all the scientific standards, principles, and methods that every "normal science" (chemistry, biology, etc). but people simply don't know this. they don't know about the countless experiments and trials that have led psychiatrists/psychologists to the treatments they have now. while psychiatry can't cure illnesses the way medical science can cure illnesses, it still follows the scientific methods that medical science does in order to find "cures." i think a lot of people still have that huge misperception of psychology in the 50's where electro-shock therapy was excessively used and crazy people were simply locked away. and it's true that psychology does have a dark history but so does medical science (or a lot of other sciences). doctors used to put leeches on people, bleed them, and operate on them in unsanitary conditions. it's an unfortunate trial and error, but without making those mistakes, we wouldn't be at the place we are now. doctors don't bleed people any more and psychiatrists don't simply electro-shock or lobotomize people.

okay, i know there's probably a lot more i can say about this whole thing, but for all your sakes, i'll end it here. and, seriously, kudos to you if you've made it this far because i know this can get really boring for a lot of people (especially since my blog is mostly for my own silly amusement and i almost never write about serious issues like this) but i do feel very strongly about this. and so that's why i've rambled on for a very long time. and i hope i've been coherent and made some sense. i got up early and couldn't sleep so who knows what i've been typing this whole time. anyway, that's all. my next blog won't be so long or boring, i promise.

2005-06-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

david and mike imitating the mystere cirque du soleil guys. so funny watching them prance along in their wetsuits.

2005-06-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

me and mike in our rafting getups. so i guess it's true what they say about couples who start to look like one another after a while, huh?

row row row your boat...

2005-06-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

okay, i know, not really the most original title, but i can't think of anything else other than "rafting." which, i guess, would be direct and succinct. but boring. anyway, i'm bored, so here's a recap of the weekend.

on friday, we all (me, deb, david, steven, mike, ha) met up at jacq's house as the l.a. people (chi, jacq, bobby) were home for rafting. we presented jacq with her bday gift which consisted of a tote, a towel, and a bikini (notice a theme?). we then made jacq try on the bikini which got a big thumbs up from bobby. ;D personally, i think it makes her butt look good. but that's what boy shorts do. anyway, then we went off to karaoke. had tons o' fun as usual. i sang a lot. more than usual. i don't know why. excess energy, i suppose. afterwards, we went to the next plaza over for some korean food for dinner. food was okay, but the company and conversation were the best. reminded me of old times in high school when all the girls would congregate and have silly, stupid conversations and laugh our heads off at things that really aren't that funny but for some strange reason we find uber hilarious. i can't even remember what was so funny. just that i liked laughing a lot. anyway, after dinner, we all headed back home to get to bed early (or at least try to).

on saturday, we all (me, deb, san, chi, jacq, bobby, david, mike, steven, kuan, paggy, l.a. mike) met up at deb's house at the oh-so-pleasant time of 530 am. i think we left around 6 and made it to camp lotus around 8. it only took us two hours to get there even though we gave ourselves three. waited around for an hour for the rafting people to meet up with us. got our wetsuits and had a jolly good laugh at how stupid everyone looked. actually, jacq, bobby, paggy, and the other mike all had the exact same wetsuit so they all looked like an impressive rafting team while everyone else just looked weird. i will definitely post up pictures after this entry.

so after getting into our wetsuits, we boarded a school bus and took a long drive to the river. i dozed off a bit on the ride there. was also mildly annoyed at the group of asian fobs sitting in front of us where a couple of the boys had their hair gelled and (as deb later pointed out to me) some of the girls were wearing makeup. also, almost all of them were wearing flip flops and they were speaking to each other in cantonese even though it was quite obvious that they knew how to speak english (quite well too). so. annoying. more about them later.

so, yay, we finally make it to the river, go over some basic safety rules (what to do when you fall out - heh. more about that later), etc etc and finally board the damn rafts. deb, david, san, kuan, chi, and steven are in one boat while me, mike, jacq, bobby, paggy, and the other mike are in another boat. unfortunately, the guides assume that because we're all asian, the fob group must also be part of our group. so they were with us THE ENTIRE TIME. EVEN DURING LUNCH. ohmygod. so. annoying. especially since they clearly sucked at rafting (really, how hard is it to row at the same time as the person in front of you?) and the girls screamed a lot. i was slightly offended at the assumption that just because we're all asian, we must all know each other, but at the same time, i know the guides didn't mean anything bad by it and were just trying to be nice and had good intentions. i think i was just more annoyed and offended by how stupid the fob group was. plus, i was a bit embarrassed by how they were acting. both of our boats pointed out to our guides that they weren't with us. it's really a shame that none of them fell out and lost all their flip flops and had gel and makeup running down their faces. i would've pointed and laughed. okay, maybe silently in my head, but still.

anyway, rafting was awesome. our boat was awesome. (i know, i know, i need a new word other than awesome.) our guide, zach, said that we were the best group he's had all season. i know, i know, he could just be saying that to be nice, but he sounded really genuinely impressed and, well, we really were pretty awesome (okay, you guys can stop rolling your eyes at me now). i, of course, would be the weak link, but still. i think i held my own well enough with the group. zach was a great guide too. very chill and relaxed. and had funny stories to tell us about a crazy toothless woman who chased him in a bar and threw her purse at him. for some reason, this reminds me of jen. hahaha, sorry jen, i don't know why i thought that all of a sudden. you are neither crazy nor toothless, jen (although, who knows what japan has done to you lately. kidding!). anyway, the only problem we had was the other mike paddling so hard on one of the rapids that he paddled himself straight out of the raft. he was sitting right in front of me so i saw him slip out of the raft in slow motion. the guide had to swing him around the other side so that he wouldn't get smooshed between us and a huge rock. ouch. bobby, jacq, and paggy eventually hauled him back up. this, as opposed to...

...the other boat that lost half their occupants. deb, david, and steven all got launched out of their raft on the troublemaker rapid. i'll let deb, chi, and whoever else tell this story. all i remember is that our raft passed theirs, and then zach said, "hey some of your friends fell out" and i turned around and saw a little yellow deb floating down the river away from her raft. the fob raft picked her up (eew) and all was well. they lost all three paddles as well. but our raft - being so very awesome - picked up two of them.

after the whole trip, we went to hotshots - a company that takes pictures of rafters going through the rapids - to take a look at those pictures and their raft has some really funny and crazy pictures of them going through troublemaker. you've gotta see it to see how insane it was. and it's cool because you can clearly see how david, steven, and deb fell out of the raft and how kuan (the hero!) held back chi and san so they wouldn't fall in. plus, kuan also pulled david and steven back in (steven with the help of david, but still). i think the funniest part (although, i'm sure, not that funny at the time) is seeing deb with her pink visor in one shot and then seeing her float away in the next shot. plus, the pictures of david and steven falling out with their legs straight up in the air are pretty good as well. as for our boat, the pictures came out nicely. we all looked like hardcore rafters, all in sync with one another. funny pictures include the vicious, angry look on bobby's face as he paddles and paggy posing in not one, not two, but three photos. she looks straight at the camera and smiles. it's so cute. anyway, we wound up getting the picture cds of both boats and i'm sure they will go up online once we get them.

the drive home was excruciatingly tiring and kuan had to take over driving for mike. got back home around 5, i think, and just lounged at deb's house. had takeout from the hawaiian bbq place at pacific common (ohana's, i think) for dinner. well, everyone else did, i had jack in the box because i was craving fast food. i wasn't very sore (i rowed with my body instead of just my arms) but i was pretty damn exhausted. slept quite well that night even though i had a really bad nightmare about aliens taking over the world (very war of the worlds). it's a recurring nightmare that i haven't had in a while. yuck.

so anyway, that was our little rafting trip. i enjoyed it immensely. and it makes me want to go camping now. who knew that i'd actually WANT to go camping? what's happening to me?! okay okay, blog over. pictures now.

haircut and movies.

2005-06-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

got a haircut yesterday (well, tuesday). scroll down for before and after pictures. my hair actually looks exactly the way it used to when i used to keep it short. i had been growing my hair out for over a year so it was a bit sad to part with it. i was accustomed to it and liked it, especially since it had been a long time since my hair was that long. but it was starting to get annoying and i figured the short hair would be easier to take care of. plus, i sort of missed my short hair. anyway, it's funny seeing people's reaction to it. my mom didn't like it. she gave me an upset look and said, "it's too short." i kind of agree, but still. i like it. and i'll probably end up growing it out again anyway.

so anyway, that covers the haircut part of the title. onto movies...

last friday, i watched mr. and mrs. smith. LOVED IT. crazy, hilarious, fluffy entertainment. brad and angelina are so goddamn sexy and good looking, it gives me a headache just to see the two of them sitting next to one another. it's like, i just can't fathom how two people can be so incredibly gorgeous together. it boggles the mind, it really does. anyway, there were some good funny moments in the movie and...i love brad pitt. yeah...not much coherence, but i guess that's what pretty and talented people do to your vocabulary. i liked adam brody, but he was just a little too seth cohen in the movie. the fight scene between brad and angelina in their home was pretty spectacular. definitely worth the price of admission to see them beating up one another. and i really loved all of brad's funny little reactions. he's great at quirky comedic moments.

tonight, i watched batman begins. really really good movie. just totally amazing. and totally makes up for those last two craptastic batman movies. i would say that it ties with batman returns for my favorite batman movie. and i love batman returns mostly because of catwoman (michelle pfeiffer is the definitive catwoman, in my opinion). but the story of batman begins was amazingly well written (yeah, i know i keep using the word "amazing" but i can't help it. i'm still thinking about brad pitt) and all of the actors were really good, especially christian bale, gary oldman, and cillian murphy.

the only two problems i had with the movie were katie holmes and the fight scenes. any time she showed up on screen, i always thought one of three things: 1) where's dawson?, 2) where's tom?, or 3) where's her shiny new scientology textbook? plus, katie holmes is just not a good actress. and she looks particularly lame next to people like christian bale, gary oldman, liam neeson, and cillian murphy. i mean, really. as for the fight scenes, they were shot way too close so no one could tell what was happening. as a result, i mostly tuned out during the fight scenes so i wouldn't get a headache from watching random limbs spazzing about (that sounds weird. oh well). i think what i really liked about the movie is how angry and pissed off christian bale looked as batman. now they just need to redo all the other batman movies with christian bale who i would say is definitely the best batman out of all of them.

man, i can't wait to get both of these dvds when they come out. i also wouldn't mind seeing both of these movies again at cinema saver or something.

anyway, that is my blog. haircut and movies. oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACQUELYN!!

2005-06-16T01:17:00.001-07:00

before!

2005-06-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

after!

i am xenu.

2005-06-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

okay, this is just too good not to be blogged about. so this whole scientology thing has been bugging me a little so i wanted to try to find out what it was all about. first, i went the scientology.org website and just got so bored with their fluffy bullshit. i did learn about thetans and about how we don't have spirits; rather we are spirits who have bodies. anyway, it's all really very boring. i just wanted to know about the aliens.

so i found xenu.com which is a website devoted to fighting against the church of scientology and boy do they have lots of interesting info (okay, so i realize i'm biased, but whatever). my absolute favorite part of the whole website is this essay by bob minton that describes the core belief of scientology. however, you can only learn about this once you've reached the level of OT III (OT = operating thetan). reading this information beforehand may cause you to become ill (specifically, you would get pneumonia) and possibly die. i'm not being sarcastic, this is what they actually believe.

so, okay, here goes: so 75 million years ago, there was an evil galactic overlord named xenu. he was responsible for all 76 planets in this sector of the galaxy, including earth (formerly known as teegeeack). all of his planets were overpopulated so he came up with a plan to freeze all these aliens and then dump them on earth - sorry, teegeeack - and trap them there. these alien spirits were then taken to huge multiplex cinemas that xenu had built beforehand and were forced to watch 3-d movies in which they were all implanted with a false reality (the reality that we know today). these movies also helped control all the alien spirits so that they wouldn't cause trouble for xenu again. during these films, many false pictures and stories were implanted into these spirits, which resulted in the spirits believing in all the things that control mankind on earth today, including religion. so, today on earth, all of these alien spirits have attached themselves to our bodies and are the root cause of the false reality that everyone except for the top level scientologists experiences. it is the job of all scientologists to remove this false reality from the world by auditing each and every space alien spirit and human on earth. and what about xenu, you ask? well, the loyal officers of the marcab confederation finally discovered how evil Xenu was and overthrew him. he is now locked away in a mountain on one of the planets and kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery.

all right, so did you get all that? i swear to you all that i did not make that up. go here to see a copy of l. ron hubbard's first page of this historic work (in his own handwriting!). and if you think it sounds like a really bad sci-fi novel, well, think about who it came from - l. ron hubbard, who is, in fact, a really bad sci-fi novelist. plus, brooke shields recently responded to tom cruise's criticism of her use of paxil to treat her depression. i don't think she's a particularly good actress but i love her so much for saying, and i quote, "tom cruise's comments are irresponsible and dangerous. tom should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them." at first, i thought she was referring to war of the worlds with the aliens comment but now i'm pretty sure that she's talking about both his new movie and his so-called religion. and that makes me love her. and now i regret not taking a picture of the scientology celebrity centre that we walked right by in new york. even better, i should've taken a picture with an alien mask on while holding up a sign reading, "i am xenu."

so, anyway, there you have it. you've gotta read the essay to get better details about how xenu froze the aliens and how he actually did a tax audit on all of his planets and what his spaceships look like. oh, plus, they calculated that each person on earth has approximately 2,200 alien spirits stuck to them (which, of course, causes you to be constrained by xenu's false reality). i think my favorite part is how xenu built movie theaters to brainwash all the alien spirits. awesome. i'm so glad i googled scientology. all of this makes me look at people like john travolta, tom cruise, kelly preston, and lisa marie presley just a little differently. especially tom cruise. i can't take his anti-psychology statements seriously now knowing that he believes in xenu, the galactic overlord. i mean, there's nothing wrong with believing in aliens (i'd like to believe we're not alone in the galaxy), but this whole story about frozen alien spirits and whatnot is just a little much, no?

oh, and sorry to any of you who get pneumonia and die from reading this blog.

new york pics.

2005-06-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

to see all my new york pics, click here.

to see all of deb's new york pics, click here.

once chi's pics go up, you can see them here.

and soon i'll create an album full of select photos that we all took for my yahoo photo album so it doesn't feel left out.