my shallow heart's the only thing that's beating

Wheeeeee. I've gone out for meals endlessly the past few days. Tonight, I had dinner with Tammy, Shedletsky and Claudia at Tamarine in Palo Alto; it felt very grown up, since we had dinner late (we got there just before they stopped seating at nine p.m.), I was wearing my 'professional' clothes (pinstriped pants and a subtle light pink sweater), we were able to successfully keep our laughter soft despite repeated references to sex, drugs, and the grunting noise made by the sherpa in Zoolander during the orgy scene, and the food was more expensive than I usually partake in on a Monday night (we had prawns, scallops, chicken skewers, and this surprisingly great soup w/wontons and coconut milk). Then, I went over to Ritu's for awhile, since I haven't seen her for ages.

So, the weekend. Friday night I had In-n-Out with Claudia, then watched basketball w/Terry and two of her v. amusing former residents. Saturday, I got my oil changed and my tires rotated (yay for industriousness), then had a late lunch with John, and then went out to dinner for Tammy's birthday (Gordon Biersch, mmm), and then ditched Tammy (badly done on our part, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing) to get ice cream w/Claude, Shedletsky and Michael at the Creamery. It was great fun because we realized we looked like we were on a v. mismatched double date (Claude and I were both wearing skirts/cute shoes, and the boys were wearing the traditional techie uniform). Also, I got to share an ice cream sundae w/Michael, and so there were numerous dirty references to cherries, and to hooking up, and to things that happened on the Loro ski trip (not that I hooked up with anyone on the ski trip, and that's especially important to point out to my dear parents, who read this religiously).

Then, we came back to my apartment, and I got to take Shedletsky's orange-mocha-frappucino-cherry, and by that I mean show him 'Zoolander' for the first time. It's fantastic to watch the movie w/someone who hasn't seen it, which is increasinly hard since I think just about all of my friends have seen it at least five times. Sunday, the dim sum club played the game, and we sat at dim sum from around 11 to 2:30. It was my turn, and I lucked out w/a scallop dumpling that I actually really liked. I sat around for a bit when we got home, went to Borders w/Claude and picked up two new romance novels (one of which I stayed up late and finished last night), then had a birthday dinner for Angela at a Thai place in Mountain View.

So as you can see, I'm quite the social butterfly. I intend to have an awesome April--beach trips, lots of dim sum, a housewarming party, Loro special dinner, etc., etc. Yay for socializing!

And for those of you who read romance novels and/or Jane Austen, I highly recommend Georgette Heyer's 'The Masqueraders'. She basically started the Regency genre, writing from the 1920s to the 1970s. This particular book involves two siblings who are swept up into their father's intrigues and so, to survive, switch sexes; so, Robin becomes Kate, and Prudence becomes Peter. It's so great, because they of course become friends with people whom they end up falling in love with, and then it's a huge mystery how it will all play out. Their father is fantastic--completely conniving, and so overbearingly confident in his own genius that he's just hysterical. There is no sex, for those of you who read romance novels for that, but the story is amusing and her dialogue is *fantastic*. You know that they have to be good, since Harlequin has started republishing most of her books, and romance novels typically don't have a 90-year lifespan.

Okay, time for bed!

like indecision to call you and hear your voice of treason...will you come home and stop this pain tonight?

I'm freaking exhausted. I stayed home sick from work yesterday, since I felt like vomiting (and by that I mean that I was nauseous, not just that I felt like doing some vomiting--that sounds like I 'felt like shopping' or something). But even though I was sick, I still worked from 11:30am to 11:30pm, with a couple of breaks to eat some oatmeal, make an eye doctor's appointment, etc. It was nice to work in my pajamas, though, so it wasn't all bad. Then I had to be at work at eight this morning for a conference call--but I rebelled and came home at six, and I took a bubble bath and read a few chapters of a romance novel. That was v. relaxing. Then, Claudia and I went to Mountain View and had coffee/cake with Vidya at Books, Inc.; the cake that Vidya got really sucked, so we left and got Verde milk tea instead. Vidya and Claudia got toast, which amused me for some reason. And now, me and my roommates are watching the Daily Show, and I think I'm going to go to bed. However, Jon Stewart just said 'piz-eace in the mid-iz-east', which I thought was funny.

Anyway, despite my exhaustion, life's good. I had fun seeing Vidya, and I love my apartment. I went to the eye doctor today (which means I probably looked like I was on drugs at work, since I came back from a long lunch w/chalupas from Taco Bell and completely blown pupils), and I ordered a new pair of glasses that I should get next week. I'm excited by that, since I never wear my glasses because I got them in high school and don't really like them; they also give me a headache because the prescription is old. So maybe I will look smart and intellectual with my new glasses, which will make David love me...er, I mean, I'm not that shallow [for those of you not in the know; David is one of the top people at the dim sum restaurant--and I want to seduce him into making us the pan-fried scallops with spicy sea salt that they used to have at the Palo Alto branch].

Hmm, I think I sound rather self-absorbed lately, mainly because I have nothing exciting to share, and so I end up talking about the minutiae of my life. I always talk about minutiae, but it feels stupider right now because there are much larger things that I'm not writing about. Anyway, goodnight! Good luck with deadweek, for those of you who are in it; and happy birthday to Tammy!

you go to sleep dreaming how you would be a different kind if you thought you could...but you come awake the way you are instead

I've been going crazy with zee shopping lately; ever since my review, in which I was encouraged to dress for a leadership position if that's what I want (and who knows what I want, I certainly don't), I have given myself carte blanche to buy obscene amounts of clothing. However, I have been very good in the sense that I haven't bought any shoes (oh yeah, I lied, a got a pair of sedate but still shiny gold sandals on Tuesday, but they were a great buy). Today, I went to Valley Fair, and came back w/two skirts, a pair of tan pants w/pink pinstripes, a sweater, and seven shirts. I only intended to buy five shirts, but then I found a skirt at Banana Republic that was cute but also...*blue*. Which is very difficult, since I don't wear blue and found myself at a loss as to how I would insert a blue skirt into my wardrobe. The answer, obviously, was to buy two blue shirts (one navy, one a brighter sky blue) to go with the skirt so that I can wear it twice in two seemingly completely different outfits. I am pleased that the answer didn't involve me putting the skirt back on the rack, because I like it despite its blueness.

So unless I miscalculate, after my week-long shopping spree, I now have five new pairs of pants, four new skirts, and several new tops. Yay. And I'm spent! I'm done shopping for awhile now, since I really don't like shopping all that much (although I would like a couple more pairs of shoes, since my extensive shoe collection tends more toward the sneakers-and-flip-flops side of the spectrum, rather than the high-heels-and-ballet-flats side that my new purchases require). Shoe shopping, however, is something I am always willing to do, so that will still happen in the near- to mid-future. And with all these purchases, I can now go at least two weeks at a time without wearing the same pants/skirts twice, and still look dressy (aka 'professional'). That makes me happy.

In other news, the weekend was pretty uneventful. I intended to start writing again tonight (after realizing that I was watching VH1's 'The Fabulous Lives of Hollywood's It Girls' for about the tenth time, and shutting it off in disgust), but then Claudia got home and I got distracted. However, I did read a book on Regency London on Friday night (I'm lame), which was nice. I also had tasty dim sum, and saw Ritu, although neither of those activities were as fun as they could have been since it felt too early to be awake, and the sunniness of the day was not exactly matched by the sunniness of anyone I saw. But, Terry went w/me when I took Ritu to the airport, and we hung out at Peter's Cafe in Millbrae while waiting for Claude and the gang to show up for dim sum--and Peter's Cafe was surprisingly good, despite the fact that we make fun of it nearly every time we drive past it on the way to dim sum. It's open twenty-four hours, they made a great mocha, and the french toast that Terry and I split was really really good. So, someday in the future the dim sum group may have to go there at four a.m. and hang out for a few hours until dim sum opens.

I need to figure out what I'm doing with my life, but I continue to put it off. Nothing like procrastinating like crazy--my room still isn't clean, I should have seen an eye doctor and a dentist several months ago, I've calculated my taxes but haven't bothered to file them, and the list of important things left undone goes on and on and on. To my credit, I did do laundry last night, which was key since I was about to run out of underwear--I'm not above digging a shirt out of the laundry pile if I know I didn't sweat in it the first time I wore it, and I'll sometimes wear jeans eight or ten times before I wash them, but I insist on clean underwear, so they're the limiting reagent in my wardrobe.

Wow, I've talked a lot about clothes tonight. I'm turning into such a girl. Yes, I know, I wear pink, and my femaleness is pretty obvious, but I typically don't talk about clothes all the time. Really, I'm just rambling, but at least I'm rambling about something fun rather than something depressing. So anyway, time for bed!

smile like you mean it

Work has been hectic, to say the least, and I have about ten hours of stuff to do this weekend that I would prefer to forget about. For those of you whom I've not been in contact with, I apologize; I'm so tired when I get home from work that I don't want to do *anything*.

In addition, I got my performance review for last quarter at the end of last week, and one of the suggestions for improvement was to dress up more so that I could assert myself as more of a leader. To this end, I went shopping on both Monday and Tuesday night so that I would have more 'business casual' clothes to wear to work. So, I now own pinstriped pants, and a cream-colored wool skirt, and a pretty pink sweater that is a sedate shade of pink, rather than a blinding shade of pink, and a pair of peach pants that would be capris on a normal girl but instead fit me just right without requiring annoying hemming. I have also been blow-drying my hair, and applying my makeup in a subtle and professional manner. However, today it was raining, I played DDR with Claude in the morning and so was running late, and then we were both drying our hair at the same time and so blew a fuse. Because of all those annoyances, I wore sneakers and jeans to work--and I did feel more slovenly than I had all week, so maybe dressing up is a good thing. So, more shopping this weekend? Perhaps--although doing laundry is also key, so that I can wear all of the clothes that I already have.

So, last Saturday, I bought an awesome couch and loveseat after eating dim sum; they were delivered on Tuesday, and I am in love. They are overstuffed, and covered in sage-green microfiber (so it feels like suede)--I'm not a fan of sage green, but it really works in the beige-and-cream color scheme of the apartment, and the couches are super-comfy. Yay for new furniture! The place is starting to look like it might possibly be inhabited by grownups, someday.

Sunday was Claude's birthday party, which wasn't the most exciting birthday party known to man, but it was still very entertaining. I had to work late on Monday, and then go shopping, and I also shopped Tuesday night. Wednesday night, I had to stay late at work again, then hung out with Tammy. Yesterday, I had Shari, Greg and Julie over for dinner; we made fajitas, and Claudia pressed the leftover chocolate fondue on them, and a good time was had by all. I really just like dinner parties, and I don't care who I'm feeding as long as I have the opportunity to do it, so I will have to plan more such gatherings in the future. Today, I worked, came home, ate a peanut butter and jelly sammich, and then read 'Regency London' while doing some desultory watching of the History Channel. The book wasn't entirely useful for my needs, since it spent much more time on architecture than it did on society, but it was still interesting.

Tomorrow, I'm taking Ritu to the airport, then hanging out someplace around South San Francisco/Millbrae while waiting for the kids to drive up and have dim sum with me. Then, perhaps we're going shopping for a bed frame for Claudia...and then I will be working furiously in an attempt to finish my work so that I can enjoy Sunday.

I feel like I'm retarded when it comes to my job; at the end of the day, I never expected that I'd end up in business, and I would still like to be a novelist, but despite all that I seem to be ridiculously ambitious while I'm employed, to the point that I'm changing my entire wardrobe just to ensure that my level of responsibility continues to increase. And yet, if that happens, I'll just have even more work to do, which seems ridiculous. Ah well, c'est la vie, and I have a passion for the role that I have despite the fact that I'm not enamored with corporate culture in general.

So, I'm tired, overworked, I think I'm getting sick, I haven't written anything in my romance novel, my room is a complete wreck, I need to clean my bathroom, and I have about five loads of laundry sitting in my closet. And yet, the fact that I'm always so strapped for time is, I think, a good thing--it keeps me from dwelling on those-things-which-must-not-be-named, and it ensures that I seize the small amusements where I can, rather than moping because something grand and adventurous is not occurring. Someday I would like to return to grand and adventurous (or at least moody and 'artistic'), but for now I'm happy where I am.

everyone needs a better day, and i'm trying to find me a better way

I'm ready to go to bed; I got to work by 9:30, didn't leave until 8:30, came home and should have done some more work, but instead I sat around and read up on Heath Ledger on imdb.com, then watched some 'Strange Love w/Brigitte and Flav' on VH1. Hahahaha I'm retarded. VH1 is sooooo trashy, but I love it if only because I don't have to think. And since I have to be back at work by 8am, not thinking is great.

Meanwhile, my friend Katie and I always suspected that Koko the gorilla killed her kitten; now, it turns out that she also has strange sexual desires. Why aren't all these concerned Christian groups going after the animal kingdom as well?

I'm ready for the weekend, even though I feel like the weekend just ended; I have no plans tomorrow, but dim sum on Saturday and Claudia's birthday party on Sunday. Hopefully I'll get the chance to clean the apartment...and I'll probably have some work to do...and perhaps I'll go crazy after listening to Counting Crows' 'All My Friends' on repeat one too many times. But in any event, it will be fun!

can't you see what you've done to my heart and soul?...this is a wasteland now

I've been obsessed with Interpol (the band, not the agency) for several weeks now. My parents got me the CD for Christmas, since I had put it on my list as a whim even though the CD medium is just about dead for me--if it wasn't for the CD player in my car, I would have virtually no need for them anymore (my CDs, not my parents). I don't think that I love Interpol; rather, I am so sick of the rest of my music that I get in the car every day, think 'I should put in something else,' realize that there is nothing else I want to listen to more (or at all), and so continue listening to Interpol. Since my commute has lengthened to 20-30 minutes each way after moving to Menlo Park, I can get through the entire CD on my way to and from work each day. I'm so lucky.

You should also check out SandHillRoadProject.net to see how much worse my commute will get when the construction on Sand Hill near my condo switches into Phase Two. Phase One is already a mess; I sat at the intersection of Sand Hill/Santa Cruz for about twenty minutes one morning a couple of weeks ago, although that has since improved, and will get even better when they finally open all lanes of Sand Hill. However, as soon as both of Sand Hill's lanes open, they switch to Phase Two--which involves shutting down the one-block stretch between Santa Cruz/Sand Hill and Santa Cruz/Alpine/Juniperro Serra. One block doesn't sound so bad, eh? Except that effectively cuts me off from the quickest route to Stanford/the boys' place in Los Altos, and eliminates my second-fastest alternative to the mess around Sand Hill and Santa Cruz. It also takes away the faster option for getting on southbound 101 (Alpine) and quick access to Page Mill.

Essentially, if you skipped that whole paragraph, it means we're pretty much fucked. The improvements to Sand Hill will help, but I'm not psyched about the closure of that one stretch of road (from April to November!!), since that means the only good way to get to campus is to go up Sand Hill to Stock Farm. Not terrible, but not ideal, especially for getting to east campus. Sadness.

Anyway, things are fine--I still haven't finished unpacking, but I made some progress tonight. I may go furniture shopping w/Terry tomorrow, depending on my ambition levels--I'd like to at least look at sofas, as well as a real dresser (significant upgrade from my current system of plastic bins, crates, and wire cubes). I had dinner w/Julie tonight, which was v. fun, and I'm sad that I haven't seen her (or any of that group) as much as I would like.

We had dim sum on Saturday, as usual, and it was Claude's turn to play. She got relatively lucky--she had to take from the cart of sadness, but she got the only non-scary thing on there (roasted pork). The only problem with the dish was that there was a lot of it, Claude doesn't really seem to like big piles of meat, and the top part of each piece looked like it had been caramelized and so it was a little too crunchy to suit our tastes. The waiters so obviously know that we're playing--the woman who served me feet last weekend walked by us with the feet cart, then backed up, looked directly at me, and asked if I wanted any. Then she laughed and walked away. And, the cart of sadness woman seemed almost disappointed that we got pork instead of feet or weird sea creatures. Dim sum was great, though, as usual.

Afterwards, we dropped Claudia off, and Tammy, Shedletsky and I saw a matinee of 'Constantine.' It was not great, but it wasn't bad either; some of the visuals were very appealing to me, and of course I have to give a shout-out to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, who had a lovely turn as Satan's henchman Balthazar. Keanu Reeves was somewhat terrible, but it was forgiveable. The only thing that truly bothers me is that this is the second time in only a couple of months that I have watched a movie containing the Spear of Destiny as a major plot piece. For the first, you can reread my review of 'The Librarian: Quest for the Spear', starring Noah Wyle and Bob Newhart (http://wampwamp.blogspot.com/2004/12/thumbprints-and-stressing.html). In 'Constantine,' the Spear of Destiny was found early on by the only brown person in the movie (other than Djimon Honsou, who played the owner of the ubiquitous neutral techno club for angels and demons...and the club had one shot that made me laugh, which involved a table of angels turning water into wine)...and the brown person proceeded to wreak havoc in his demon-encouraged attempt to take the Spear to LA for reasons that I cannot reveal without spoiling the movie. Or something. As soon as the Spear of Destiny showed up (less than ten minutes into the movie), I knew that I had picked a winner.

And now, after a rather long interlude of conversation with Claudia, it's time to go to bed!

i will bounce you on the lap of silence

I don't have much time to write, since I have to be at work for a meeting at 8am, but I miss the days when I used to blog frequently and I'd like to get back into the habit. I think I really did break my nose--it never became severely bruised or swollen, but it hasn't stopped hurting since Saturday and when I sneeze or move my face, it feels like something in my nose is moving abnormally. It's made it really difficult to concentrate at work, since it drives me crazy when I'm just sitting there staring at the screen--and it's driving me crazy now as well. Sadness!

But, I came home around eight tonight, sat mindlessly and watched some of the first Austin Powers movie on TV (and why is 'randy' better than 'horny'? ABC replaced the 'do I make you horny, baby?' scene on the revolving bed with 'do I make you randy, baby?'...which didn't seem like much of an improvement). Then I finally coerced myself into putting together the rest of my bookshelves and unpacking the rest of my books. I still have a lot to do to get my room in order, and I have a multitude of boxes that I need to unpack, but this was a good start. However, putting away the books took a lot of time, especially since I decided to organize all of my decent literature in chronological order by country of origin (that's three shelves of literature, which does not include the three shelves of romance novels, or the shelf containing the Anne of Green Gables series/a bunch of Agatha Christie mysteries/the Chronicles of Narnia/the Lord of the Rings series/the Dark is Rising series/several other favorites from childhood, or the several shelves full of philosophy/computer science/linguistics/psychology/sociology/history/totalitarianism/Germany/
the plot to kill Hitler). I need to start reading again--I have a whole bunch of books sitting on my shelves that I've never even opened, I just keep acquiring them and not finding the time to read them.

I also need to write my romance novel, but that's a story for another day. For now, I shall go to bed--and as sad as I am that I don't have obvious war wounds to show for my broken nose, I am happy that I will not be rivaling Owen Wilson for most distinctive face.

too many consequences for my actions!

Wow, what a weekend. I know that actions have consequences, but I hate when they happen to me. Saturday, I had dim sum w/Claudia, Tammy and Shedletsky, and it was my turn to play the game. And what did I get? I got ginger, egg, and pigs' feet in black vinegar, which was big enough to serve four people, and just happened to be the first feet dish of the game. There's some debate over whether or not it was a two-point dish, but I think that the 'feet' points go for chicken feet, so I'm only taking a point. It was pretty freaking gross...they let me get away without eating the huge pieces of ginger root, since that seemed like an abominable idea, and luckily I only had to eat one of the whole boiled eggs in the mixture since the rest of the group tried the other one. But there were several feet, and the only thing you can eat off of it is this rind of pure fat, so that was gross. And the egg was super-dry, and very difficult to swallow. To top it off, the black vinegar sauce was sickly sweet and nasty. The most ironic thing of all is that the waitress who served the feet had the nametag 'Fun', which just seemed so unfair.

We're pretty sure that they know that we're playing now, since we've gotten burned several times recently on stuff that we had absolutely no good reason to eat. In fact, one person came by and offered us something else disgusting, even though our plates had already been cleared away and we were paying the bill. And she laughed at us. Openly. We decided it would be awesome if the staff is now also playing a game with us, and trying to win by being the person who brings us the grossest stuff at just the right time. We didn't see the cart of happiness all day (it bypassed me right before the pigs' feet showed up), so I think they're messing with us.

Anyway, since they know we're playing, we're gonna start taking a camera so that we can document our wins and losses. When that happens, I'll either post to this blog or start a new one for the game.

Here's the most recent score update:

Tammy: 2.5 points after two rounds (bbq pork bun, deep fried shrimp w/mayonnaise, half of the tripe)
Shedletsky: -1 point after two rounds (shrimp/pork dumpling, refused to try tongue, refused to eat tripe)
Sara: 2.5 points after two rounds (pan fried crap noodle, pigs' feet, half of the tripe)
Claudia: 2 points after one round (marinated duck tongues)

I basically had to eat the feet, because I would have lost a point if I didn't, putting me at .5, and I was sure Tammy could eat it and pick up the point and an insurmountable lead. Ugh.

So later, I bought sheets for my bed, which was great. But then, I went out clubbing, which was a bad idea because I didn't want to go and so solved that dilemma by getting so drunk that I didn't care where I was. This resulted in a nasty hangover today (word of advice, do not drink a shot called the 'Three Wisemen'...it's a combination of Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, and Jose Cuervo, and it's enough to destroy your weekend). Also, my good friend Vidya and I had a collision in which her head hit my face, and at the time I thought she'd broken my nose, but it wasn't bleeding and I decided I was overreacting. However, in the haze of post-binging pain that I felt this afternoon, I slowly discerned that the alcohol-head-pain was different from the throbbing-nose-pain...and my nose is swollen and slightly misshapen, and has hurt all day despite frequent icing. Of course, my nose may have always been misshapen, but I don't know and now I'm sad.

But, the evening was good--I was feeling the need for some serious steak, so I had Tammy and Shedletsky over for dinner (steak on the George Foreman grill, and frozen fries cooked in the oven...mmm), and Terry and I had fun watching some of the Grammys w/them. I took Shed back to campus, Claudia came back from a visit home, and Tammy, Terry, Claude and I watched 'Napoleon Dynamite'. It was great...but Tammy's copy has been watched so much that it has turned into a decroded piece of crap, and she talked up the ending wedding sequence that was added after Claude and I saw the movie in the theatre--but then the DVD was ruined in that spot and we couldn't watch it. Sadness!

So my weekend was both awesome and terrible--I can either take away the great dim sum, the new sheets, the fun I had with the cute new top I wore clubbing (although Vidya pulled it down at one point and exposed my left breast, but that's not the top's fault, and I don't think anyone saw), and the steak and Napoleon Dynamite, or I can take away the pigs' feet, the three wisemen, the vomit, the massive hangover, the almost-broken nose, and the missing scenes from the movie. I shall deliberate over this decision in my dreams, I'm sure.

i'll subtract pain by ounces

Last weekend was really fun, and I'm so happy that the next weekend is only two days away! Friday I went to Ikea, then had thai food with Claudia. Saturday, we had to wait for Comcast to show up, so we couldn't have dim sum--to make up for it, we invited Tammy, Shedletsky, Joanna and Emma over for brunch. Claude and I made french toast, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs w/ham and peppers; it was all tasty, if I do say so myself. However, because there was no natural break after leaving the restaurant, for example, we just hung out in my living room all afternoon--'brunch' didn't end until 5pm. So it was very nice, but I didn't get anything done...I just managed to get the dishes washed when Terry and her mom showed up around 5:15. Terry's mom and the mom's friend took us to Celia's for dinner, where I had too many margaritas. Oh, and Lisa was visiting for the weekend, which was great; she lived on my floor junior year, then was on staff w/me senior year, and it was really fun to see her. Unfortunately, most of the time I spent with her involved me drinking, so it's not all entirely clear, but it was still good. Sunday was the Super Bowl, and Terry's friends were here to watch the game...unfortunately for them, my friends were here to eat and drink and be very loudly merry. The combination of Tammy, Vidya, Ritu, Maneesh, John, Jav, and Oniel is fairly loud, especially when we all started doing tequila shots in the back of the living room. Claude and I had fun cooking for it (I made deviled eggs, spinach artichoke dip, and a funfetti cake, while Claudia made a coconut cream pie and some phyllo-dough/spinach/bacon turnovers), and then we started drinking smirnoff ices and tequila, which made the afternoon even more pleasant. The people watching the game may not have been entirely happy, but the rest of us had a blast and a half. Then I watched Dodgeball with Claudia and Tammy while Tammy sobered up to drive home, and that was the end of my weekend!

Work is busy, as usual, and so I'm looking forward to the weekend so that I can get down to business with organizing my room. I have half my bookshelves put together, but until they're all put together I can't put away all my books because I can't organize appropriately--but I can't put together my bookshelves until I move all my books, since I have ten boxes of stuff in the precise location where the bookshelves belong. Sadness. My apartment is fantastic, though, and we have wireless again so I'm quite the happy camper.

So, I'm stressed about work, I haven't had a chance to write my romance novel for months, my room is a disaster, and I have yet to buy a couch or other furniture for the living room, but all in all life is fantastic. Yay for that. And now, yay for bed--I had a conference call at eight this morning, and the one downside of my new place is that it takes upwards of 30 minutes to get to work with traffic, since there's no good way to cut across between Sand Hill and Shoreline except to take all the old 'highways' like Page Mill, Junipero Serra, or Embarcadero, and none of them are particularly fast at rush hour. Oh well. Sleep well, everyone!

i'm taking the cure so i can be quiet whenever i want

It's eleven pm, and the fact that I'm posting means that I'm at my office, since I don't have internet at my new apartment yet. I got to work at 8:30 today, stayed until 6:45, had a quick dinner, saw 'Sideways' with a coworker, came back to the office at 9:45, and worked for the past hour to do some stuff for tomorrow. Freaking work. I also had this huge decision laid on me today that will affect my entire career here, I feel, and I was told that I had to come to a decision by 11am tomorrow. Snap! That's twelve hours from now. Think, Sara, think!!

In other news, the new apartment is great (although still sans internet), my new bedding arrived and it is lovely, and overall life is good. I'll talk to all my friends again soon, I promise! But now, I should go home and go to bed.

i'm alive...and how i know it

So my stomach has been hurting for well over a week, which I somehow always seem to take as something normal, despite the fact that my parents are encouraging me to go to a doctor. But I hate going to the doctor, and I haven't been to one here since I got my last inhaler prescription at Vaden, which I should probably replace at some point since that was well over a year ago and I used the last refill over the summer. Sadness.

Anyway, the stomachache, probably due mostly to stress/no sleep/last week's binge drinking, caused me to stay home Thursday and go home early on Friday. That means I am even further behind at work than I was. I also didn't get to rest that much, since I moved Friday (thanks to Jasmine and Ritu! and to a lesser extent Tammy and Shedletsky! for helping me). I have to go clean my old apartment now; I'm at work because I had some emails I needed to send out and I don't have internet at either place anymore. But by tonight, I will be done with the old apartment! Thanks for the memories, apartment--I enjoyed living with Walter, and there were some fun memories (the olympic rings cake, for example), but it has outlived its place in my life.

Now the fun will be trying to put the new place in some semblance of order, and with some semblance of quickness since Terry is having people over next weekend. This weekend was brutal--stomachache all the time, moving on Friday, the beach w/some of the mafia kids since I'd promised Jasmine I'd go and it was her last night here, then 'partying' in the Uhaul...then Saturday dim sum w/Tammy and Claudia (I cancelled on Shedletsky, then the three of us ended up going w/out him because I changed my mind and couldn't find him), then moving my computer, stereo, and all the other heavy things, then passing out at ten last night. Today I had brunch w/Ritu at Roble, which was great, and I saw Eric C, which was also great, then came to the office, and now I have to go clean.

After that thoroughly uninteresting update, I need to go so that I can finish cleaning while there is still daylight, since almost all of the lamps are at the new place. I will have you all over soon, I promise! And I will start writing interesting and ridiculous tings again as soon as I get settled in with the lovely internet at my fingertips.

It's sort of nice having wireless because it's like it's all around you all the time. I miss that security, and I can't wait to have it back. Comcast in coming on Tuesday! And then my life will be happy again.

i'm a driver, i'm a winner...things are gonna change, i can feel it

Oh, the joys of being employed. I was at work for what, eleven hours today? And eleven hours yesterday? However, I had rib-eye steak and gnocchi carbonara for lunch, and I had enchiladas for dinner, so it's not like I'm truly suffering. However, work is a) cramping my style (even if it does enable me to pursue a type of style in my leisure hours that does not involve living in a box and squeegeeing windshields under the bridge) and more importantly b) keeping me from finishing the move into my new apartment. It was all I could do to actually do laundry last night; and since I moved all my hangers already, all the clean clothes are sitting in one basket on my living room floor and another basket in the passenger seat of my car. Sadness. Tonight, I got home a little after eight, was going to move things, but instead did a little bit more work, watched TV with Terry (oh 'Scrubs', how I love you, and to think that I missed out on you when everyone used to watch you in the Loro lounge!), then decided it was time for bed.

I really need to decide what the next step is--not that I'm considering leaving work anytime soon (for my coworkers who read this), but I also don't intend to stay forever, and some overarching life goals would be good right about now. For instance, I was watching 'Sex and the City' tonight (another good show I never used to watch), and Carrie needed to buy her apartment, and realized that she had no money or assets. Now, at 23, I'm not worried about buying a house--but someday I would like one, and unless my dream of writing romance novels and getting rich quick comes true, I should be thinking more about the future. However, the future is so far away...and the beautiful kitchen gadgets at Crate and Barrel are achingly close.

To top it off, my oldest niece turned 13 today! That also seems impossible...I was ten when she was born, and now suddenly I'm thinking about assets and mortgages and financial goals and moving and jobs and career plans and life plans and all the things that being a grown-up is supposed to entail, and yet when she was born I was thinking more about Nancy Drew and the stars (i.e. hot gaseous masses, not the hot people I now watch on VH1) and why all the kids at school hated me and how absolutely adorable my niece was. I don't want to be ten again, which is good since you can never go back, but when I was ten I never expected that my life would be where it is now. When I was ten, I hoped I'd be an astronaut or something...but I secretly really just wanted to be a mom, and I expected it to start around the age that I am now. Now, I definitely don't want kids at this age, especially since I'm so far from knowing what I want...but we never know what we want, and I've spent so much time doubting myself and wondering about potential paths, never wanting to commit to any one thing, always 'committing' to the wrong thing/person because at the end of the day I knew it would never work and so I wouldn't really have to commit to it after all.

I've said this all before, reached the same conclusions before, and so I doubt that this will really help. But every once in awhile, I have to remind myself of it so that someday, I'll catch myself in the right moment when I'm actually willing to make the change. Until then, I am trying to maintain my childlike wonder for all things, and I hope that you will too. Despite my rather cynical, sarcastic side, there's a lot to enjoy about life. Actually, Terry said that when she saw me Thursday night (the night of the drunken post, see below), it was really strange because I was so happy and there was absolutely no cynicism, sarcasm, or biting wit at all. Not that that's the real me either--but it's interesting that when my inhibitions go, they take the sarcasm with them.

Okay, enough introspections, it's time for bed!

cocaine nosejob

Well kids, I'm back. I must say that being drunk is tres fun, but being sober is also a good time. I am currently exploring sobriety with a new, more appreciative attitude. After drinking to the point of either tipsyness or smashedness six night out of seven (and the only night I didn't drink was the night I spent four hours driving back from the Loro ski trip), my liver deserves a long, nutritious vacation.

So, to feed it, I went to dim sum on Saturday with the opium lounge club, and we played Shrimp or Feet. It was Shedletsky's turn, and he quite unfortunately picked tripe with chilies and ginger. That's right, tripe, as in "The rubbery lining of the stomach of cattle or other ruminants, used as food" (definition courtesy dictionary.com). Shedletsky, true to his selfish roots, refused to even try it; this failure, combined with his refusal to try duck tongues a few weeks ago, means that he is at -1 points after his second turn. Tammy, Claudia and I all tried it, and Tammy and I went the distance, splitting the dish equally for half a point each. It was pretty gross; the tripe pieces were about two inches long, the main piece was very rubbery/chewy, and each piece had four or five little wavy 'appendages' attached to one side. The appendages were more flexible than the main pieces, thinner, very bumpy in texture, and altogether quite strange.

Verdict: I'm not a fan of tripe. I am also more scared of the game than I was before, since the tripe came off of what I had previously viewed as a moderately safe cart that contains various types of dumplings. I also know for a fact that they serve some sort of tripe soup that one of us will get eventually, much to our continuing dismay. Also, no one has had feet yet, which is too bad. So, standings after 1.5 turns are:

Tammy: 2.5pts (baked bbq pork bun, deep fried shrimp dumpling, 1/2 tripe)
Claudia: 2pts (marinated duck tongue)
Sara: 1.5pts (pan fried rice noodle, 1/2 tripe)
Shedletsky: -1pts (shrimp/pork dumpling, refused to try tongue, picked and then refused to try tripe)

Right now it seems to be about 50/50 as far as the difference between good and bad; or, if you prefer, 2/2/2 for great/mediocre/hideous. Not particularly great odds, eh? Anyway, it's my turn next! And Claudia gets another turn before the end of the second round as well, so she should be solidly in first unless disaster (in the form of gelatin w/blood and sea creatures) befalls her. We also need to come up with some sort of suitable, awful punishment for Shedletsky, since he refuses to even try foods and clearly doesn't care if he loses right now.

In other news, I moved some stuff to Menlo Park this weekend, but I have so much stuff that it seems like I haven't made any progress at all. For most people, moving ten boxes of books, six tubs of clothing, several board games, a coffee maker, forty or fifty hangers, two pillows, and three boxes of souvenirs/keepsakes would be great progress; but for me, that's just the beginning. Ah, fun times. I can't wait to be settled in, though--our new place is lovely, and is such a step up from the car-repairing neighbors. So, if you need to get your car pimped, you only have another week to visit me and get my neighbors to do it; after that, I'll be in Menlo Park, where pimping is frowned upon. But that means that I'll be so much closer to campus! And campus = friends, and friends, as you know, I love (almost as much as I love the letter 's'). The one bad thing about my new apartment is that the fastest way to get to work is to cut across campus via Arboretum...and that means driving past Crate and Barrel every day. Please rescue me from myself! [Editor's note: it's too late for that; I ordered bedding from Crate and Barrel yesterday. yay.]

hooray!

oasy so that was really too much alocholiszzle
i am realy drunk
and this is not meant to worry and y of you
seriously
but i just ahd a lot of vodka
which in russian is water
lik e the water of life
and it is our friends
i love friens
ds
ythey are the bombdiggityss
and lik ethe lieesttser 's
'
it is our firensda s well
hi kids@!
i amon the ski trip
and by 'amon' i mean 'am on'
not hte god of eypgyt
you knwo wat i mean
pharousahs, gods
they are the same
in egypts
wheeee
hi kids
vokda and v8 = friends
and tahoe = friends
and sales vonfereances = friends
vonfereances =- conferences
you knwo what i mean
and we are all firends
friends
yay friends
yay new paartmenets whihc i will move into tomorrow
and yay for all the poeple who mena so much to me
claudia adn teytysedgrey (terrysgt)
emilay
wqalter
(ahaha walter will think its funny that i can
't sepell her name beczuse i'm tood runkg to see)
john and cris and zacdh and adita and ritu and reness and julie elien and greg and tom and rachel and sthari and doug and shed nd curt adn eric and sean (who is in cahrage!) and micahel adn jasungmen adn tammsy(TAMMY SO COOLS)adng wahtever i can't dstyeps anwyamore and tehr'es a itnotehre party that iwasnt to go toes so goodbye!!!)

too much alcohizzle

Hello, friends. I'm sorry that I haven't written since I got back to California; I know that I use the phrase 'insanely busy' a lot, but this time it is no exaggeration. In the past two weeks I have:

1) worked 12-14 hours/day for two weeks (ugh)
2) found a new apartment
3) attended a karaoke/dress-up birthday party
4) went to Tahoe with the Loro mafia kids
5) came to San Francisco for the sales conference

I will address all of these issues as follows...

1) Working 12-14 hours/day sucks. There's nothing more that can be said about that.

2) Claudia, Terry and I are moving next week! We signed a lease on a three-bedroom condo in Menlo Park, two blocks back from Secret Safeway in Sharon Heights. It's lovely--quiet, beautiful, tree-filled setting; sparkling pool; great bedrooms; jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom; wonderful kitchen; built-in display cabinets (and liquor cabinet!) in the dining room; patio; etc. And, it's v. close to Stanford for Claudia, which also means that I can visit Stanford people more easily. Yay! I'm moving my stuff starting as soon as I get back from Tahoe Friday afternoon (more on that in a second).

3) The karaoke/dress-up party was surprisingly fun; I normally don't have a fantastic time at the boys' parties, but this time I really loved it. I got drunk off of sangria made with wine and bacardi 151 (potent combination), as well as some vodka and cranberry juice that I had in a canteen labelled 'chemicals' (an homage to Gavin Rossdale/Bush's 'The Chemicals Between Us'). We sang a lot, and Bon Jovi was included in the mix. I saw all my friends, slapped Ritu's boyfriend (hard!) after a mock argument heated up, and sang 'Take Me On' by A-ha in honor of the two members of the School of Ruckus (!) who were present at the party [for those of you in the know, the School of Ruckus members there were Vijay the SLE tutor and the drummer whose name I can't remember]. Fun times were had by all.

4) The Loro mafia ski trip was everything that I could imagine it to be and more. I missed the cataclysmic final act, but I participated in all the good stuff--and the group had started drinking, which was really weird and unexpected, and meant that I've gotten tipsy/drunk 4 of the past 5 nights. We played 'never have i ever' as a drinking game, and interesting tings happened Friday night. Saturday, I hung out with Michael and Jasmine all day, and we had lunch with my friend John; then Jasmine made tasty enchiladas, and we played indian poker as a drinking game. Indian poker was ridiculously fun, considering how ridiculous it is. Then, Shedletsky, Doug, Curt and I played four-person mafia and kept the whole house up, much to others' chagrin and our absolute amusement. I hung out there all day Sunday, and made it home from the Nevada side of Heavenly in 3hrs 59mins. There are many many fun things that came out of this trip, but for the sake of sensitivity (which I don't use very often) I will not recount it here. Sorry.

5) Sales conference/ski trip is this week. So I got back from Tahoe at 1am Sunday night/Monday morning, slept for six hours, repacked my stuff, went to work on Monday, and then took a bus to San Francisco Monday night. I'm here now and am having a great time, although I'm tired, and I drank Monday and Tuesday night. Tonight is the closing banquet (banquet=alcohol), and tomorrow we take a bus to Tahoe (tahoe=alcohol). Then we come back Friday and I have to work Friday afternoon before beginning my third move in fifteen months. Ugh. I bought Dramamine to fight car sickness on the bus and drug myself into blessed slumber, so I hope it won't have a bad reaction to any leftover alcohol in my system :)

And that's all for now! Time to change for dinner. Take care, friends, and I'll start checking in more regularly in the near future.

arrival

I'm back in California. Walter picked me up at the airport. It was surreal. He slept on my floor last night and will again tonight, and may or may not leave tomorrow. We went to Pizza My Heart with Claudia, Adit and Terry, as well as Can, Shedletsky and Joanna (who met us there), and fun was had by all (I think) even though I was being even more obnoxious (i.e. mean) than usual.

Work was brutal, since I didn't go to bed until almost four last night; I got there at 9:40, which was pretty early considering how late I went to bed, and found out that I have a lot of work to catch up on. In fact, I have so much work that I decided to come home at six anyway, because there was no way that the dent that I could put in the amount of work would be sizable enough to be worth staying another hour. So, I have many fun and varied projects awaiting me for the rest of the week. Wheeee.

I have nothing else to report that is worth staying up longer for, so I shall go to bed. I hope that everyone else made it to their destinations safely and that all is well :)

massive attack

I'm too tired to write much, but it will be interesting to see if I get back to California tomorrow...an ice storm is currently beginning to move over my area, and is supposed to last all night. That could severely hamper my ability to drive the seventy miles from my house to the airport. Luckily I don't have to be there until 4:30 or so, so hopefully they can clear the roads...but I need to go to work on Tuesday, so I hope that everything works out okay.

However, it's been a great break, and today was a fitting end to it; my mom made vegetable stew (and by vegetable I mean mostly meat and potatoes, w/some corn, green beans, carrots, and tomato juice for color), and Aunt Becky and Grandma came over to eat. We tried to play hearts, but it's a bad game for six people, so we quit early. Then we played a quick hand of 'square dance solitaire,' which evolved over my vacation into an actual game of sorts; it started when I was playing solitaire after a game of hearts, and my dad was sitting at the table watching me and telling me what to play. This eventually developed into some sort of singsong rhythm, which turned into a rhythmic call-type 'song,' like move callers for square dancing. We built it up for my aunt, telling her she had to play square dance solitaire...and when my dad first started calling the moves, she laughed until she cried.

I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, then Lorena showed up with some books on Scotland that she wanted to loan me after I told her I was interested in Scotland, and she read us all a Scottish version of 'Three Little Pigs' in a Scottish accent. We also drank some champagne that I had brought back for new years eve and not opened, since I knew it would turn to vinegar if I left it here. Aunt Becky, Lorena, and Gram all left, but Katie showed up around 7:30. We didn't talk much, and instead watched a re-run of 'Cold Case' on CBS, followed by a network airing of 'Behind Enemy Lines.' I actually liked it a lot; the premise wasn't particularly great, the idiocy level was high (like when Owen Wilson called in to base to say that he was at the rendezvous point, lost contact in the same location, and the admiral was yelling for someone to 'triangulate his position,' which should have been completely unnecessary). They made effective use of completely unnecessary slow-motion, Owen Wilson was ridiculous in the serious role since he often appeared to have a Hansel-type pout (although I'm of course biased because I have seen Zoolander 300 times), and I completely loved it, of course.

So for a last day, that was pretty great--awesome soup, games with my family, square-dance solitaire, Scottish folk tales, champagne, quality time with my best friend, and a thoroughly ridiculous war movie. Yay. So, goodbye Iowa...I shall see you again around the Fourth of July. See you soon, California...I'll be back before you know it (unless I'm iced in, of course).

it's way too late to be this locked inside ourselves

Today was super fun--we had our neighbors, Ross and Lorena, as well as Katie and her dad over for dinner, an occurrence that is becoming something of a tradition. As I've mentioned before, Ross and Lorena are really awesome, interesting people; they were in one of the first waves of the Peace Corps back in the sixties (to Nigeria), and he is the Presbyterian minister while she leads the talented and gifted program at the jr. high/high school. And of course, any time that I can spend with Katie is good, although never enough, and her dad is entertaining as well, so a good time was apparently had by all. We made prime rib and crab legs...and the eight of us ate a ten-pound prime rib (that includes the bone, though, which we didn't eat) and five to eight pounds of crab legs (which includes the inedible shell, of course), as well as new potatoes, green beans, sourdough bread, salad greens, and my jam thumbprint cookies for dessert. Ah, everything was so tasty! We also had a bottle of zinfandel from the Valley of the Moon winery that I went to in Sonoma with Ritu and Maneesh--I really liked that wine, I had a bottle of it when I made the chorizo/garbanzo bean soup a couple of weeks ago, and so I brought another bottle of it home with me. I have a bottle of merlot that we didn't get around to drinking, so my parents can drink that sometime, but I insist on popping open the champagne I brought home before I leave, since it would be tragic to let it turn to vinegar. I may get the chance tomorrow, since Aunt Becky is coming down to play games (and eat more food, no doubt...I guess we're making stew or something...as my mother said, it would be a tragedy if I couldn't cook, since that's all my family does).

In forty-eight hours, I should be landing in the San Francisco airport. I tried to change my flight so that I would get in earlier, because I'm currently scheduled to land at something like 11:45pm, and I will have to pick up my luggage before I can go home, but Northwest wanted to charge me $800 to change my flight, which seemed ridiculous at best and robbery at worst. In some ways it's nice, because I don't have to be at the airport in Des Moines until 4:30 or 5, which means I can eat lunch at home and will have time to shower and finish packing...but it sucks on the other end, since I'll have to find a way home from the airport at midnight, which requires either a shuttle or a request for a ride from one of my friends. So, we'll see what happens. I'm actually more worried about the weather than anything, since it's icy here right now and may get worse before Monday...and I *have* to go to work on Tuesday, since I'm training people Tuesday morning. Bleh. It's been really nice to have a break; I've made a point of checking my email only rarely, and refusing to think about it otherwise. Vacations are wonderful things, aren't they?

However, I didn't write anything in my romance novel this break, which makes me sad. It also makes me angry at myself, truth be told, since I wanted to finish it by the new year, but lacked the will/inspiration. We'll see what January holds in regards to the novel. I do intend to read more about Scotland; the more I know, the more fascinated I am with their culture, and I feel like more information about Scotland (particularly the Highlands) can only help me to form a picture in my mind. I was talking about Scotland with Lorena tonight, and she was there several years ago before visiting her son in Kenya, and she was telling me about all sorts of books she has about Gaelic culture and customs, Scottish fairy tales and myths, Scottish spirituality, etc., that sound fascinating. She's supposed to give me the titles/authors tomorrow so that I can find them in a library or get them off of Amazon...so expect more information about Scotland, if nothing else, since I like to share the fascinating little tidbits that I pick up while reading.

I wanted to write my year-in-review tonight, but it's almost two a.m. and I need to go to bed if I have any hope of getting up early enough tomorrow to shower before my aunt shows up. I also have to start the brutal process of packing; I got lots of breakable or semi-breakable stuff for Christmas (like irish coffee glasses, candleholders, a cake plate that had belonged to my grandmother, etc.) that I have to package carefully. I also have to figure out what to have my mother send me later, like the waffle iron, my pizza stone, and the casserole dish that is the only really perfect dish for baked beans or pizza surprise ('pizza surprise' is what we call midwestern goulash--elbow macaroni, ground beef or sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese--because my dad was going to try to make us pizza in Ukraine once but realized that he didn't have the ingredients for it, and so we ended up with goulash instead, so it's pizza surprise because the surprise is that it isn't pizza). I got the casserole dish for Christmas last year but didn't want to risk leaving it in the kitchen when I was sharing with the two random roommates--the casserole dish is an antique, and it's the same as the one my mother uses, since she got it off of eBay. The casserole dish was an effort to forestall a blood feud over the inheritance of the real casserole dish, since all of my siblings would want the dish...so my sister and I got 'new' ones from eBay, and my brother will eventually get the real one. Seems fair to me, especially since I get to start using mine whenever I want. Too bad it isn't red, though...it's a light blue, so it doesn't match the rest of my stuff at all, but it produces awesome baked beans and so I can't complain.

Now I'm just rambling, and for no purpose whatsoever since a discussion of casserole dishes and pizza surprise is hardly interesting. Goodnight!

and they rode on in the friscalating dusklight

Happy new year, everyone!

Mine was not particularly exciting. I woke up this morning around noon, accompanied my mother to the next town over (~30 miles away) to pick up a prime rib for tomorrow night's feast (and also got to buy some awesome white skechers with hot pink/glitter trim), came home and made jam thumbprints, ate dinner, and watched 'JAG' and 'Without a Trace' on CBS (classic Midwestern television...I hadn't seen JAG for a long time). Then, my mother wanted to watched 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' which I had received for Christmas, so I popped it in the DVD player...and she of course promptly fell asleep, so I watched the last hour and twenty minutes by myself. It ended around 11:55, so I got to see the countdown (and chose to watch the countdown on Conan instead of Dick Clark/Regis' New Years Rockin Eve), and then sat around and watched the news. V. uneventful and boring...but I didn't have to clean up anyone's vomit, or fight crowds, or get mauled in a club, or try to decide who would be the designated driver (usually me), so there were definite advantages to this 'celebration.' And I *love* 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' so watching it again was great.

Tomorrow will be more fun...we're having our neighbors over, as well as Katie and her dad (which was a surprise since I thought she would be out of town tomorrow, but I'm glad she'll be here), for our ritual winter feast. We're having prime rib and crab legs, and perhaps new potatoes, but the focus is really on the meat. And the alcohol...I brought wine and champagne back from California, so I'll have the chance to enjoy some libations a bit stronger than iced tea.

Also tomorrow, or the next day, look for my recap of 2004...I was going to write it tonight but I'm too lazy. I hope that everyone else had merry and safe experiences tonight!

logic will break your heart

It's hard to believe that it's been a year and a half since I graduated from college. That's such a long time...and yet it doesn't feel like long at all. However, it feels like my life is slipping away from me just a little bit, and I don't get quite so many chances to indulge my random, senseless fun side as I did when I was in college. Without the ability to plan fun, random dorm events or engage in fun, random conversations with many and varied people, my life has lost some of the sparkle that it used to have.

I still have it better than a lot of people my age, or at least I think so--I've run into a couple of former classmates while home who have already been married and divorced, or who now have kids, and I have so many more options and less responsibilities than they do. And I still have a lot of fun, and I get to engage in infrequent but wildly memorable random acts of happiness, such as Coachella, or drunken watching of 'The Chronicles of Riddick,' or Germany vs. Austria night. I also have great plans for the new year...Claudia and I (and hopefully Ritu and Marco) want to go to Coachella again, and I want to have a 'Black Death' feast in April, and I have hopes for other fun activities. And of course I have the Shrimp or Feet game, which adds a lot of vim and vigor (and marinated duck tongue) to my life.

I guess my biggest fear, though, is that my friends are slowly maturing past my threshold of optimum craziness. Perhaps maturing isn't the right word...but they are slowly accruing responsibilities and relationships that make continued zaniness hard to achieve. Or, they are moving away, which makes them less useful for my purposes. When I'm thirty-five, I'd like to believe that I will also have a family to think about, rather than fun-filled trips to nowhere, but what if I don't? I can't just hang around college campuses forever looking for younger people to plan stuff with...but I also can't really kidnap my friends for extended periods of time to satisfy my needs.

Ah well, everyone has to grow up. It really is true that logic will break your heart...the cold hard facts of modern life, when looked at objectively and without false hope, are enough to dampen the enthusiasm of even the most idealistic individuals.

However, life is still good in Iowa; my family is really ridiculously functional. The four of us ate dinner together and then played a game of hearts, just like we did last night. So, I really can't complain at all. But, this idyllic little scene of familial 'perfection' makes me realize that it will be even harder for me to find a relationship and, ultimately, a life that will satisfy me, when there are so many ways that things can go wrong and so few instances where love works out. And it's those perfectionist tendencies, at the end of the day, that cost me the most.

Anyway, don't mind me, it's almost the end of the year and so it's a good time to reflect on what has come before and what may come in the future. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve, everyone!

tell 'em how your pleasure's set up on slow release

Due to the calamitous circumstances in the areas affected by the tsunami and my own morbid curiosity, I've been reading a lot of news articles lately related to the massive suffering and loss in the region. It really is impossible to imagine what's happening there, how much higher the death toll will rise, and how the survivors will ever be able to rebuild when the vast majority of them were uninsured and were already below the poverty level.

Of course, because I like to know as much as possible about everything, I started reading more about other possible geological catastrophes. In fact, this entire vacation has revolved around talk off apocalyptic events; when my parents took me out for lunch after I arrived in Des Moines, my brother and I told our father that he could engage in schemes where he borrowed money and promised to pay it back in 2013--the ancient Mayans had a 'long count' of 1,366,560 days, and archaeologists have determined that the ending of the current (fourth) cycle corresponds to the winter solstice in 2012. The Mayans had highly developed calendars, accurately predicting solar and lunar eclipses for hundreds of years, etc., and so there are some apocalyptic theorists who feel that the end of their long count (and the abrupt ending of all their calendars at the projected end of this age) indicates some cataclysmic change. So, this conversation eventually evolved to a hysterical image of my father saying 'Mayans!' to the banker after obtaining a loan, and then walking out without explaining his enigmatic comment.

So anyway, 'Mayans!' has become the punchline of my entire break, and I was doing some reading tonight and verified a rumor I had heard that Yellowstone National Park is sitting on top of a massive supervolcano that has erupted 1.2 million and 600,000 years ago, covering the western half of the United States in thick layers of ash and resulting in a worldwide 'volcanic winter'. The fact that it still has so much geothermal and seismic activity is somewhat worrisome, and scientists estimate that a vast magma chamber extends under almost all of the present boundaries of the park. Scary!

Even better, a supervolcano of some sort has erupted approximately every 50-70,000 years somewhere on earth, and the last one was ~70,000 years ago on Sumatra in Indonesia. Geneticists, working independently, discovered that human mitochondrial DNA has much less diversity than they expected based on the several-million-year history of our species--and they had determined that a 'bottleneck' had occurred in the past that narrowed our genetic pool to perhaps 5000 or 10000 individuals, before the expansion that led to our current billions. That bottleneck is estimated to be 70-80,000 years ago...coinciding perfectly with the eruption on Sumatra, which lowered global temperatures by 5 degrees Celsius and triggered a major ice age.

Now, isn't that all fascinating? I'm thinking I need to get out of the west coast; the two most likely sites for a supervolcano eruption in North America are apparently Yellowstone...and Long Valley, California (near Mammoth Lake/Yosemite), where a supervolcano erupted 760,000 years ago and volcanic eruptions continue. Then you have the Cascades, and of course all the earthquakes that California should just assume will come eventually, not to mention the freaking crazy people who inhabit California and are dangerous in their own right.

However, Iowa isn't exactly safe either--the New Madrid fault (in Missouri) had three 8+ magnitude quakes in the early 1800s, and because of the different geologic composition east of the Rockies, shockwaves from a quake of that size can travel much farther--the quakes in the 1800s were centered in Missouri, but damage was reported in Washington D.C., and church bells rang in Boston (1000 miles away!) As far as the human factor here, there is less crime, but the crime that does occur is often more bizarre--just across the line in Missouri, a body was recently found, decomposed to the point that only bones remained, and local speculation is that it was a gang hit from some criminals in Kansas City. However, it turns out that the guy was the brother or cousin (stories change frequently here) of another dude whom the Des Moines police shot earlier this year when he pulled a gun on them during a high-speed car chase...and *that* guy was later discovered to have been an arsonist who burned down a Des Moines church and several other buildings. To top it off, when the police investigated his house in Missouri, they found a stock tank in the garage with a heat lamp over it and three live alligators, which may have been used to dispose of other bodies. Weird!

So between tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, alligators, and the Mayans, I think we're all pretty much fucked. Life sure is interesting, though.

why can't we just play the other game?

Today was amazingly non-productive, in the way that all vacation days should be--I rolled out of bed around 1pm, sat around for awhile, made a sandwich, talked to my mom while watching 'As the World Turns', watched some Dr. Phil, was amazed and disgusted by my ability to watch Dr. Phil, which is even worse in some ways that watching another rerun of 'I Love the '90s', and so made a batch of my dad's favorite oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies. Then I ate dinner, watched some more TV, read a couple of issues of one of my mom's home decorating magazines, and surfed the net looking for sofas, kitchen gadgets, etc. Now it's half past midnight, and I should go to bed again, since I'm meeting some friends in town for lunch tomorrow. Yay.

I'm listening to Interpol's 'Antics,' which I got for Christmas; I really like it, which is good since I asked my parents for it solely based on the 'If you like this, you'll like...' recommendations on Amazon. I'd also heard the song 'Evil' when I switched iPods with a coworker a couple of weeks ago; we made mixes for each other and switched for the day, and I was a bit surprised/amused when I hit 'swampler's playlist' on his iPod and saw that 'Evil' was the first song. But, the song is really good, and I recommend it. I'm not sure that I'm happy that my taste is shifting to whatever style encompasses Interpol/Franz Ferdinand/Postal Service/Killers, etc., but I'm so sick of my old music that I'll take just about anything right now. So, I'm cycling between this music, techno, and Bon Jovi, and all is good.

However, I was watching the TV the other day and a song came on, and I found myself remembering how much I liked the song...only to realize a fraction to late that it was Beck's 'Lost Cause'. I have professed to hate a) Beck, b) the album 'Sea Change' that this song is located on, and c) the song itself, so I was annoyed that I admitted to myself that I like it before I recognized what the song was. Damn. I hate when I do that--professing an irrational hatred of something that is inoffensive at worst and actually fantastic at best, and then being caught in the lie later when I don't recognize the object of my prior hatred in time. The same thing happened to me with 'The Princess Bride,' which is just retarded. Whatever, I still hate Beck, he's such a scene. The fact that I have a Beck playlist on my itunes means absolutely nothing; it's only there so that I know to avoid all of those awful songs, like 'Loser' and 'Lost Cause' and that song off the 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' soundtrack. Beck blows.

Five full days of vacation left, plus almost all of Monday, since my flight doesn't leave Des Moines until late afternoon. Iowa is great--it was like six below one night last week, with unbelievable windchills, and then there was an unexpected, highly unusual heat spell and it was fifty degrees today. The weather here is always messed up and unpredictable, which is the way I like to lead my life, so it's kind nice. They even think there might be *thunderstorms* on Thursday, which is so crazy since it should be a blizzard instead. Oh well, as long as the airport doesn't get taken out by some freak act of nature, and the airlines don't mess up as badly this weekend as they did last weekend, I'll be a happy camper.

i ain't missing you at all

Merry Christmas, everyone. I've had a very enjoyable few days. Friday was Christmas Eve, and we celebrated with the traditional package-opening with my sister and her three kids, followed by the even more traditional dinner, church, and package-opening at my paternal grandmother's house. Unfortunately, we didn't have the traditional lasagna; instead, we had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, etc. But, I scored a cool watch from my very chic aunt (it's Paul Frank, so it has a monkey on the face, and the face is *red*, and there are three interchangeable watchbands in red, black, and white). I also got a designer mirror from my grandmother that is really lovely but unfortunately doesn't match anything that I have, nor does it go with my stuff :( It also says 'come home for love' on it, which is about as blatant as you can get with a plea to come home...I know she's not expressing anything that the rest of my family doesn't feel as well, but she isn't nearly so 'understanding' about my desire to stay in California for awhile as the rest of my family is.

Anyway, Saturday was Christmas Day, and it was nice--my parents, brother and I woke up and exchanged gifets, and sat around for awhile, and then my dad's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came over for Christmas dinner, as well as my grandmother. Aunt Becky had left early Christmas Day to go to her boyfriend's (!) parents' house, so it was a little strange not to have her around. Also, Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day dinner are at two completely different times; Christmas Eve dinner is always around 5:30 or 6 to leave time for church, while Christmas Day dinner is always around 12:30 or 1pm. Dinner in my family is really just the largest meal of the day, hence the different times. We had ham on Christmas Day, which was super tasty, and we played 90s Trivial Pursuit (VH1's 'I Love the 90s' helped me to dominate), then I took a nap in front of the fireplace in the living room while some people watched the Chiefs game.

Yesterday was my immediate family's 'perfect day' together; my mother was expressing sadness that we are destined to have very few remaining days together where it's just the four of us, and she wanted it to be nice. So, we spent it eating brunch: Dad made bacon, eggs, blueberry muffins, toast, and fried potatoes, with orange juice and milk on the side (you get the idea that all we do is eat? no wonder we're all overweight). Then we watched the pilot episode for the TV series 'Stargate: SG1' which my brother got on DVD; turns out that the pilot is two hours, so that took a large chunk of time. Then, while waiting to figure out what game we were going to play, my brother fell asleep, and my dad and I got engrossed in a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright on PBS. I was surprised to learn so many salacious aspects of his personal life; at one point he had a mistress with whom he was deeply in love, and she died tragically while he was in Chicago and she was at their house in Wisconsin--a disgruntled servant poured gasoline all around the house, bolted all the doors and windows but one, set the house on fire, and then slaughtered the occupants with a hatchet as they ran out the remaining door. The servant split the mistress' skull open, killed her two children from a previous marriage, and wiped out all but two of the workmen who had been in the house. Crazy!

So we watched that, and then my father made homemade pizza (I have a pizza stone that I got for Christmas last year that I need to have sent to me when I move; homemade pizza is so great), and then we played three full games of hearts. My mother was satisfied, despite the TV interlude during the afternoon, and despite the fact that she got trounced at hearts.

Today, my aunt, uncle and three cousin's on my mom's side came up from St. Louis, and we exchanged more gifts and ate lunch. My uncle on that side is paraplegic, so we had trouble getting him in the house; we ended up having to take the back door off its hinges, but he still couldn't progress any farther than the kitchen :( It's a bad deal for family unity that my grandmother on that side passed away; her house was handicap-accessible, but ours definitely isn't. Hopefully my parents build their new house soon; our house is very old, constantly shifting, and likely to collapse someday, and a newer, handicap-accessible house is just a better idea for them as they get older anyway. For instance, it's v. difficult to open and close the back door right now because the house has shifted to hamper it; however, the bathroom door downstairs was also nearly impossible to shut a few years ago and now is back to normal and shuts perfectly. Or, take the example of our icemaker, which worked fantastically when we first installed it, but no longer works because the pipe running water from the main water pipe to the refrigerator is now slanted uphill, rather than down, and so can't get water to the freezer. Isn't that great?

Anyway, the plans for the new house are really cool; a full deck off the living and dining rooms overlooking the pond, a walk-out basement with a home-theater type setup inside, a kitchen built around the antique woodblock that we still have from my great-grandparents' grocery store. But, I will still miss our house; we've lived here my entire life, and it has that cozy feeling that a house gets after being occupied for nearly a century that I can't imagine the new house will have. Not that I'm in love with my room in this house; it's usually full of junk from my brother's attempts at reorganizing his own junk, and it's like a little time capsule from six years ago, replete with my baby-pink bedspread and a calendar that still reads 'September 1999' and has the date when I flew to Stanford underlined in then-anticipation. But, whatever room is ostensibly mine in a new house will never really be mine; it will just be a room that I sleep in when I visit my parents, but it won't hold any memories of my childhood. Oh, well, all things must come to an end, and this house will not survive another thirty years, in my opinion.

I have lots of fun toys to play with when I get back to California, mostly kitchen gadgets--new red silicone kitchenaid spatulas and stirring spoons, a minature red kitchenaid cutting board, a meat carving knife and fork, irish coffee glasses, a bartending/mixed drink guide, a red kitchenaid skillet, a red griddle, a waffle iron, and some other stuff that escapes me at the moment. I also got some dvds and cds, and a beautiful diploma frame from my brother that may encourage me to actually display my degree rather than leaving it to languish in a box.

Oh yeah, and so we did Christmas with my mom's side of the family, then went to a wedding reception for my mom's cousin's son and his new wife. The girl was very sweet, and much too attractive for my smart but somewhat awkward cousin; being the nasty, judgmental person that I am, I figured that she's in it for the green card, but I could be totally wrong and needlessly cynical. Then I came home, took a nap, and went out around 11:30 for drinks with Katie, Elaina, and Katie's boyfriend James. I hadn't seen Elaina in years, since she's been in Spain and we haven't been here at the same time for a long time, I hadn't seen Katie since August, and I'd never met James. All in all, fun was definitely had; we sat at a tavern in town and had $2 bottles of Bud Light and reminisced about the 'old days.' Ha. We're getting together again on Wednesday, just me, Katie, Hannah and Elaina--it will be great to be back together again, since the four of us did everything together in high school, but have grown apart (or at least I've grown apart) since Hannah got married and Elaina's been abroad. Fun times!

This has turned into a novella, which is unfortunate since I should be writing my real novel instead :( Take care, everyone, and sleep well wherever you are.

nobody makes me bleed my own blood!

I'm back in Iowa, after an uneventful but very long trip back from California. I left SFO around 10:30 last night, and I had to fly through Detroit, which just happens to be in the Eastern timezone, and about an hour and a half east of Des Moines. So I got there around 6am, which was 3am PST, and sat in the airport for three hours waiting to board. The airport was freezing, since the heater was broken in the concourse, so I was happy to get on the plane. But then, my plane sat on the runway there for almost two hours waiting to be de-iced, since Detroit was in the midst of a snowstorm. To make matters even better, it was four degrees when I landed in Des Moines at eleven a.m. today. That's freaking cold! It's so cold that it actually hurts to take a breath. Luckily, my new down-lined hot pink bomber jacket with the fur-trimmed hood held up admirably under the arctic conditions, and was much more suited for Iowa than it is for the relatively tropical conditions of the Bay Area. And, I bought a hat, scarf, and mittens at the mall while we were finishing our Christmas shopping, so I'm ready for the worst. It's a couple of degrees below zero right now, with a windchill of -15 to -20...but it's supposed to get to a relatively balmy 35 or so over the weekend. Yay!

That's all for now...tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which is a big deal in my family; my sister and her kids are coming over for presents in the afternoon, and then everyone gathers at Gram Wampler's house for Christmas Eve dinner and more presents with my dad's siblings and my cousin on that side. I love that I spent an hour wrapping presents tonight and will probably spend a similar amount of time wrapping tomorrow--and then it will be unwrapped almost immediately. Oh, Christmas, how I love thee.

'suburban teenagers: the new prostitutes. next on oprah'

The above quote was a rather abrupt soundbite promoting Oprah at the end of a commercial break earlier today; it just wasn't a phrase that I was expecting to hear.

Hmm, the weekend. Friday Vidya came over and I made a lemon cake, and then she went home. I picked Claudia up after she went out with her coworkers and she spent the night on my loveseat. Yesterday, I watched a lot of VH1 with Claudia, then Claudia, Terry and I had In-n-Out for lunch, and then watched 'Goodbye Lenin'. It was a German film with a great combination of humor and pathos; basic plotline is that a woman who had devoted herself to the Communist East German state fell into a coma just before the fall of the Wall, and when she came out seven months later, her family was told that it was important to keep her from being shocked, and so they managed to pretend that East Germany still existed. Very good, and highly recommended.

Then I had a bunch of work to do last night, so I worked for a few hours. Bleh. I slept for twelve hours, which was *fantastic*...it was the first time in I don't know how long that I slept in and didn't have work, or brunch plans, or movie plans, or whatever. I finished my Christmas shopping this afternoon (yay), came home, made six dozen cookies and a cake for work tomorrow, and also watched the last two-thirds of 'The Two Towers' with Terry. I *love* that movie; I think it was my favorite of the three. 'The Fellowship of the Ring' has a lot of great scenes, and of course 'The Return of the King' has the climax of the whole story...but the battle at Helm's Deep, the drawing of Saruman out of Theoden, the scene where Elrond forsees Arwen's death, the oliphaunts, the shot of Legolas shooting wolves as the army rides up behind him on the hill (and then Legolas grabs the strap of the horse and inexplicably makes it into the saddle), Gimli getting tossed, the ent punting the orc, etc., etc....it's all so good. I also love the leitmotif for the uruk hai, which is most pronounced in this one, as well as the theme for Rohan, so all in all the movie rocks and I can watch it over and over again. Yay!

I'm excited for the extended version; I hope that my family follows tradition and gets me the extended version for Christmas, but if not I'm buying it for myself as soon as I get back to California. The only thing better than a ridiculously long movie is an extension of a ridiculously long movie.

So yeah, life's good, and I go home Wednesday night! Yay! I fly out of SFO around 10:30pm, to Detroit, which is unfortunate since Detroit so far east of Iowa that it's actually in the Eastern time zone :( I will sit there for approximately three hours, then get on a flight back to Des Moines, where I am scheduled to arrive sometime around 9am on Thursday. It's going to be a brutally tiring endeavor, but worth it...I'll be home for eleven days, since I don't come back to California until late on Monday the third, and I think it will be really fun. It will inevitably seem too short, but it will be great.

Now, to bed...I have a cookie exchange at work tomorrow (that's what the cookies are for) from six to eight, which means I will not get home until later :( Ah well. As long as I get a chance to pack on Tuesday, I'll be good to go. Goodnight!

get busy child

Today was fun; I had a conference call at 7:45am (boo), then worked all day, then came home. So maybe that wasn't the fun part. No, the fun part was when I got home and made dinner for friends. I made garbanzo bean and chorizo soup, which is a somewhat far cry from the beef stews of my childhood, but only if you are concerned by replacing beef with chorizo and potatoes with garbanzo beans. Anyway, the soup was easy to make, although it took a long time to cook; it required chicken broth, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and garbanzo beans, which cooked for like three hours, then some sauteeing of chorizo, adding that to the soup, seasoning w/fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, and then pureeing half the soup in the blender so that the finished mixture was more smooth. It was really tasty, especially when one dipped bread into it. It passed the 'would I make it again?' test with flying colors, so I should add it to my recipe box.

The strawberry shortcake also made me happy, and either my friends actually liked it smothered in half and half, or they were humoring me, but either way we all had a good time and I like my strawberry shortcake like my mother makes is, straight from the oven, covered in strawberries, and drowning in cream. Mmm. We also had a bottle of wine, although we only finished half of it, so we'll have to drink some more tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I should go to bed; I have much work to do, and the O.C. is on tomorrow night, which I will of course want to see. Ah, so much to do...and a week from now, I will be on a place somewhere between here and the Midwest! Yay. But that means I need to finish my Christmas shopping, and take care of errands here, and we need to start looking for new apartments, which means that I should start packing soonish. Damn. Oh well, it will be lovely to live someplace else! Take care, friends...and when in doubt, listen to techno. I've got techno in my car stereo right now, and I've been listening to a techno mix at work (in fact, the subject line of this post comes from 'Busy Child' by Crystal Method). I promise, it will make all your problems go away!

thumbprints and stressing

Let's see. Work continues to be hectic, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. However, I'm leaving for Iowa next Wednesday! That's v. exciting, and I'm hoping that it will be v. relaxing as well.

Tonight, Terry and I went shopping and grocery shopping, then came home and I tried a new cookie recipe. The recipe: jam thumbprints (shortbread cookies w/jam in the center). The verdict: decent, but won't replace my chocolate chip chewies as my favorite easy cookie. I need to figure out what I'm making for a cookie exchange at work next week, so maybe I'll experiment some more in the coming days.

Tomorrow, Claudia is coming over for dinner, and I'm making the garbanzo bean and chorizo soup that I had in Sonoma. The winery that served it sent the recipes out, and I really want to try it. So, we're having soup and wine, and I'm making strawberry shortcake, which Vidya may join us for (since she can't eat the oh-so-meaty soup). But first, I have a meeting at 8am tomorrow. That's in 7.5 hours! Damn. That means I should go to bed.

Luckily, 'The Librarian: Quest for the Spear' isn't on tonight; Sunday night, I ended up staying up until two because I got sucked into this awful made for TV movie starring Noah Wyle in a blatant ripoff of Indiana Jones. However, Noah Wyle wasn't a professor; he was the newly-chosen 'librarian' charged with guarding important artifacts, such as Excalibur and Pandora's Box. The Serpent Brotherhood showed up and stole one-third of the Spear of Destiny (the spear that stabbed Jesus on the cross). The other two parts were hidden in other places; for context, Hitler only had one piece, so imagine how powerful the Serpent Brotherhood would be with all three. Luckily, the clues to the spear were left in a book, written in the Language of the Birds, which is what we (and the birds) spoke before the Tower of Babel. Even more luckily, Noah Wyle was able to decipher and learn the whole language in seven hours without any comparative/Rosetta Stone-type assistance. To top it off, there was a hot girl sent to protect him, and they ended up falling in love, of course.

I will ruin the ending for you so that you aren't tempted to catch it on TNT when they show it again next weekend--even though only Noah Wyle was the only one who could find the pieces, and so you would think it would have been better to leave them alone than to lead the Serpent Brotherhood to them, they found one piece in the Amazon and the other piece in Shangri-La (oh, it's real). Of course the Serpent Brotherhood took both the pieces. But the only way to merge them back together was to use incredible power, some ridicuously high electromagnetic field--which supposedly, improbably, inexplicably, could only be generated by the full moon shining down on the Great Pyramid back when its original capstone was in place. Of course, some mad professor had just built a model, and the 1:100 model was apparently still big enough to pull off the necessary magnetic field. Just when all hope was lost, Bob Newhart busted out some nifty martial arts skillz and took out an entire regiment of Serpent Brotherhood members. And the bad dude got smashed by the capstone. And the Spear of Destiny returned to the library.

Isn't that special?

And aren't I special for a) staying up until 2am to watch it, b) staying up an extra five minutes to tell you all about it? I'm so stupid!

...it must be taken deep into mordor and cast back into the chasm from whence it came...

I'm watching 'The Fellowship of the Ring' on TNT right now, which is v. nice, even though it's four hours when you add all the commercials. However, commercials give me a chance to do the things that I need to do, like putting away my laundry (which I folded meticulously during the first hour). And, since I've seen it so many times already, I don't have to concentrate on the movie too hard, which means that I can do work, which is a little sad because I would rather be writing, but I had stuff for work that I had to do tonight. Too bad, but these things happen.

The movie just finished the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence, which I think is one of the most amazing sequences in the history of film. That's the non-expert opinion of someone who tends to like trash, of course. In fact, the other day Claudia told me that she preferred the redemption of Boromir at the end over the bridge scene, and I openly scoffed. We're still friends, but it may have caused an irreparable breach.

Anyway, this weekend...Friday, I took Claudia to Outback Steakhouse, because I desperately wanted steak and I wanted her to try the famed Bloomin' Onion (a whole deep-fried onion, for any of you who don't know). Then, we came back to my place, drank mudslides, and watched 'Dodgeball.' Donde esta la biblioteca, Pedro?

Saturday, I went up to the city to have brunch with a couple of my coworkers, which was v. entertaining. I came home, tried to do some Christmas shopping and failed, then had dinner with Zach, Claudia, and Geoff. We went to this Afghani place in Sunnyvale, and I was pleasantly surprised; it was really v. good. Today, I slept really late, then saw 'Ocean's Twelve.' I was mildly disappointed; the story focused far too much on how attractive and witty the stars were, and far too little on heists and robberies and hot, brilliant planning. The first part was entertaining, but then it started to drag, and it seemed like they were just filming it on a whim, which I guess is what it was. There were a few supremely funny shots, and I liked Matt Damon's character, and of course Brad Pitt was beyond attractive, but it didn't have much redeeming value beyond that.

Then, I went coat-shopping, and talked to my brother, and did laundry, and had dinner with Terry, and now I'm working and watching TV (and writing in my blog as a break). Isn't that exciting?

This week promises to be a trial by fire--two of the people I work really closely with both found out over the past week that they're transitioning to new roles in the next couple of weeks, and one of them is on vacation this week, so I basically get to figure out if I can handle everything they do myself. Yippee. We'll see how that goes--I'm sure that I can increase my efficiency levels if I try, and I'm pleased to have new growth opportunities or whatever, but I also like being able to go home and not have more work to do. So, we'll see what happens.

But, I go home in less than ten days! And, I will be there for eleven days, which will be amazing.

smack my bitch up

I saw 'Closer' tonight with one of my coworkers...I can't decide whether I liked it or not. It was somewhat depressing, not in a crying sort of way, but more an uncomfortable sort of way. It did open up a lot of internal questions for me, which I suppose is what art is supposed to do; but as someone who likes questionless films like 'Troy' and 'Dodgeball', I don't always like films that make me think.

The biggest question is how I deal with forgiveness. Or rather, how I don't deal with forgiveness. I really have a high level of acceptance for things that other people would probably not accept (ill treatment, selfishness, etc.), and I have been nice to a lot of people far longer than I probably should have. However, there is a point of no return...beyond which things will never be the same.

'Closer' dealt mostly with the bad parts of relationships, rather than the good ones, as evidenced by the fact that the plot skipped forward, sometimes more than a year, to get to another one of the moments that redefined peoples' lives. And when you see only the bad parts, it's so easy to say that some things just can't be forgiven, forgotten, moved past, ignored. Like, had I been in any of the relationships in the movie, seeing only the things that we saw, there's no way that I would have forgiven anyone. But, when there are tons of good memories sifted in with the bad ones, everything gets more complicated.

Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this, or rather, I totally know where I'm going with this, but I don't know what conclusion it leads to and I wouldn't document it here anyway. Sorry, kids.

Hopefully I'll find time this weekend to write; it's been over three weeks. Sadness. Work has been really hectic, but I shouldn't have to do anything this weekend for work, so writing is possible. I also just want to relax and sit around, so we'll see what happens!

wait...they don't love you like i love you

Nothing exciting happening; it's another fun-filled week of working, but I have some social plans that will make up for it. I had lunch with Vidya in Santa Clara yesterday, and then I worked until eight, came home, made mashed potatoes (w/sour cream and garlic) and a steak that was so bloody that it was merely warm inside, not hot, and there was a puddle of blood on my plate at the end of it. This amused and horrified Terry, who likes to cook her steak to the point of ruination, apparently. What an abomination :)

Today, Terry got hired full-time! That's very exciting, since it means that she will definitely be here for awhile. She took me out to dinner to celebrate--we went to Pasta? in Mountain View, and I had a surprisingly good spaghetti with mussels and calamari. Then we came home and watched 'Bottle Rocket,' which I rented a week ago and never got around to watching. It was really funny, in that offbeat way typical of Owen and Luke Wilson, and I'm even more psyched to see 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' when it comes out.

So yeah, that's life right now. Exciting, eh? Now if I could just find time to write my romance novel...

don't wanna be an american idiot

I watched VH1's 'Big in o4' "awards ceremony" tonight, where they gave trophies to the biggest things in 'o4, typically B-list celebs, etc. However, the whole thing was slightly too overly-politicized for my tastes; Michael Moore was on, but I don't know what he said because I vacuumed during his speech. I really dislike him, and I hated 'Bowling for Columbine' almost as much as I hated 'Fahrenheit 9/11'--I don't remember why, which is usually the way things go with things that I hate, but I do remember walking home from Flicks and being incredibly pissed off about it, but I didn't feel like discussing it with anyone because a) I was sure I was the lone dissenter, and b) I was an RA and didn't think that airing my political views was particularly appropriate. Anyway, I'll air them now--I can't stand Michael Moore. I respect his right to say whatever he wants, because that's the kind of freedom that America stands for, and I'm all for civil rights and free speech and all that good stuff. However, it drives me crazy that he reduces things to sound bites and sight gags, without offering any sort of constructive thoughts on how to make things better. He spent about five minutes in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' showing various Bush cabinet members getting their hair and makeup done before interviews. Anyone looks stupid getting their makeup done, and as I recall JFK was the politician who stepped it up a notch in the makeup department and beat Nixon in '60 as a result.

Deep breaths. Now is not the time for a tirade. Unfortunately, Democrats can write all the tirades they want about the election, but I feel that I can't say anything because it's rare that someone understands the point--they think that I'm either stupid or overreacting. So I'll engage in some self-censorship, which is what you really want, right? You can raise my taxes and use the money to 'help' me, and luckily you're so smart that you can figure out what I need without asking me, but you just hope that I'll be quietly, droolingly grateful without taking the time to vote against you. Ah, the American dream.

As for this weekend...

Saturday, we played 'Shrimp or Feet?' in Millbrae, and Claudia got *worked*. She technically won, earning two points and taking the lead at the end of Rount 1. However, it was really more like a loss...she ended up with marinated duck tongues. Like, 12 of them. Tammy and I both tried it, and it was disgusting. Shedletsky refused to try it and lost a point as a result. Claudia considered taking the loss, but instead she ate them all, which was amazing. They were really weird, and I think there's something philosophically hard about eating tongues--it really felt like you were biting off the end of someone's tongue, since the cartilage part was still in the back and you just had to bite off the front half where all the flesh was. It reminded me of the scene in 'Kill Bill vol. 1' where the Bride bites off the rapist's tongue. Alternatively, it reminded Claude of some gypsy ritual where, if a husband finds out that his wife is an adulteress, he repudiates her by kissing her in public and biting off her tongue. Gross!

Then Tammy, Terry, Claudia, Jackie and I went shopping in SF; I didn't buy anything, but we had fun wandering around. Later that night, we made cookies, and tammy came over and watched 'Austin Powers' with us. Today, I went to the office all afternoon to finish the thing I worked on last night, and then Terry and I did some desultory rearranging/preliminary decorating (I bought a small tree at Safeway, how exciting). Now I think it's time for bed! I wish I had written a couple of chapters of my romance novel this weekend, but it was too hectic, so we'll see what this week holds...

the holidays come early

Tonight was the Christmas party at work, and it was amazing, as expected. It was at the Computer History Museum (across from the Century 16 on Shoreline) just like last year, but to accomodate for our growth, there were two big, heated tents outside. The theme was some sort of tropical paradise theme, and the decorations were fantastic. However, the live entertainment was even better. They paid one dude to just stand in the entrance and tug on a rope so that palm fronds would fan us from the ceiling as we checked our coats. They had rune, tarot, and palm readers. They had multiple performance groups; I saw the African dancers, who later turned into a conga line wending its way through the party, as well as the Polynesian dancers, and I'm sure there were more. One room offered makeovers, hair styling, manicures, and fake tanning (they'd put a plastic bag over your dress and spray you down with tanner). I had sushi and also shrimp cakes and a barbecued pork sandwich from the Hawaiian area, and a barbecued pork bun from the Chinese area, although I missed out on the Mexican food. I also had a cocktail, and custard for dessert. And they were giving out free stuff all over the place--Terry got a grass skirt (I already have one from Mirlo in-house draw that I just never wear), and we both got good-luck voodoo balls from the rune reader, and fake tattoos, and giant bead necklaces when we walked in, and a smaller bead necklace w/a figurine on it (that went straight down between my breasts when the dude draped it over me, not surprising since the dip in my halter top was ridiculously low), and one of those white shell/bead/whatever things like Jimmy Lin has. They had karaoke in one room, and other music in another room, and I saw a lot of my friends from work and all in all I had a lovely time.

Still, it was all rather ridiculous; as Terry put it, it was nicer than most peoples' wedding receptions, and nicer even than the opera opening galas she's been to. We left a little after eleven because our feet were killing us, the shuttle took us back to the 'plex, and we stopped in one of the kitchens and got coffee before coming home. It was a fun night, so that was awesome.

Dim sum tomorrow, and shopping. And then? I'd like to write, but someone needs a whole bunch of stuff from me Monday morning, and didn't tell me this until this afternoon, and so I'll have to work on Sunday. Sadness. But we'll see, I'd like to write the next chapter at least this weekend...

stress case

I need to finish my romance novel. It is a) a matter of pride, since I want to do it, b) a matter of fulfillment of others' demands, since I hear about how it's not done or progressing from at least one person every day, c) a matter of creativity, since my creative side does not get a sufficient outlet at work, d) a matter of practicality, since I am not cut out for working in corporate America the rest of my life. Or at least, not doing what I'm doing. I mean, I got paid to skip lunch and watch 'Finding Neverland' yesterday (and they bought my ticket, and popcorn and soda)...but I also had meetings at 7:30am and 7:30pm both. Ugh. I'm *tired*. If I were psyched about what I was doing, it would be great. But, I don't want to be one of those people who gets fired for being disgruntled on their blog, so I'll shut up. And the people are still cool, so that sorta makes up for it. And I'm getting paid. And the Christmas party is tomorrow night! I'm taking Terry, since she's not full-time and so wasn't invited independently. And I bought a hot black halter dress tonight, so that will be fun.

This weekend...hopefully dim sum, then some Christmas shopping in the city, and perhaps some cookie baking, and very hopefully some writing. Yay for the holidays! I've only got 14 more work days to go before I go home for Christmas!