talk is cold and burns like the sun

So the first 18 hours of today were pretty miserable; I was still at work at almost 1am last night, came home, got around five hours of sleep, and was back in the office around 8am. Then, I sat in meetings all day, and for most of them I was projecting from my laptop, which meant I couldn't IM with anyone without it being seen by everyone in the meeting.

Strangely enough, after 6pm, things suddenly got much, much better. This week has been extremely stressful at work for a multitude of reasons, and by this evening I was feeling somewhat downtrodden about everything. Not in an overwhelming way, but definitely not good either. However, I swung by one of our directors' offices to say hi, and ended up spending an hour and a half making crafts and talking to her. She has all sorts of craft-making supplies in her office - cool paper, ribbons, special cutting tools, lots of pre-scored ready-to-make stuff, etc. And she seems to genuinely care about what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, and what can be done to better support my team, which is great. She's pretty new to my organization, but she has tons of industry experience. She also assured me that I'm in no danger of getting fired (not that I really thought I was, but it's nice to hear), and she said lots of nice things about my performance so far.

One interesting side piece is that I asked her briefly about business school, and she thought that it would be redundant for me, at least for now. I think I agree with her - I can't imagine being in any other organization of this level of influence and scope where I would be allowed to do the job I'm doing now with less than four years of experience and no advanced degree. She said as much herself, and said that in most other organizations I probably wouldn't even get the chance to talk to her at all, let alone spend an hour and a half with her. That being said, a vacation from work would be nice, and I guess that's what I see business school as - although that would be an extremely expensive vacation, and I could probably live someplace for a couple of years for the same price and have more fun.

Anyway, I was going to go home, but when I went back to my office, Gyre and Matt were waiting for me - even though it was 7:30, they were hanging out because Gyre had come up with a great idea to help me out, and they were trying to cheer me up. So we talked about work for a little while, and then went to the room across the hall from mine, where they've installed a flatscreen tv and a Wii. I mainly watched them play, but I did try boxing, and it was a lot of fun. I had intended to stay longer and work, but Claudia and Vidya made contact with me around 9pm, and we ended up going to Peter's Cafe so that we could all hang out while I had dinner. I still can't believe that Claude's leaving in a month - she's one of my absolute closest friends at this point, despite the original wariness that we had toward each other when I saw her as some weird urban goth girl and she saw me as some hick from the backwoods. But hanging out tonight was nice, and definitely left me feeling more relaxed.

Now it's time for bed - I'm going to sleep without setting an alarm, since whenever I get up, I need to go to work and plow through the 134 unread work-related emails that came in over the last 10 hours. Yay. I hope you all have more exciting weekends than I will!

today is our independence day

I'm not going to write much, because I have to go to bed so that I can get up super early tomorrow and catch up on all the work that I should have done over the past two days. However, today was v. nice - I slept in, and then Claude and I went to the airport to pick up Adit, who was returning from a trip to India. We then proceeded to the evil city, where we picked up Vidya, and the four of us had a tasty and enjoyable late brunch in a cafe that was near the puddle of urine that I parked my car in. Vidya insisted upon studying after brunch, so we dumped her back at her apartment. We then proceeded to circle around the Fisherman's Wharf area for fifteen minutes or so, before getting lucky and finding free parking (as opposed to the $30 parking that they were trying to sell in the area, since the fireworks were being held there tonight, which gave the parking lot operators and opportunity to price gouge). We hopped on a ferry and went across the bay to Sausalito, where we hung out and watched the ocean and had ice cream for ~1.5 hours before getting on the ferry back to SF.

When we got back to Palo Alto, Adit decided to take a nap, but Claude and I went to my place of employment, where we were able to park my car and go to a nearby park to watch the fireworks at Shoreline Amphitheatre. The fireworks were nice, although I've come to realize that I much prefer fireworks when they are only one per minute (as they are at home)...it builds up more anticipation. Also, the sky doesn't get dark enough here. The fireworks tonight were nice, but suffice it to say that they didn't make it into my top three - the best display was at Incline Village in Tahoe in 2003; the most entertaining was for my birthday in India in 2005; the most nostalgia-inducing were at home, maybe in 2000 or 2001, when Katie, my brother, and I laid out on the dock at the reservoir and watched the fireworks from there.

Now I really must go to bed. However, I have some things to ponder - Adit asked me if I want to move in with him, but that would require moving to the evil city. I like my apartment here, and I love that it only takes 10-15 minutes to get to work...but after Claude leaves and Shedletsky moves to the city, Sri is my only remaining non-work friend on the peninsula (and even most of my work friends live in the city). Given how lazy I have become at making plans, and how much I hate driving up to the city on the weekends, it seems like a recipe for me becoming a recluse before my time. Adit had me drive through the neighborhoods that he's considering and they look v. nice - but that would make my commute at least an hour each way, and I would have to pack up all my stuff, and then I would be living in the evil city. Then again, I've always wanted to live with Adit, and this is my last chance. Decisions, decisions. I have a bit of time to decide, so for now I'm going to bed!

under the summer rain we burned away

Sorry I haven't blogged the past couple of days; I have no good excuses, although I didn't have my computer last night, so I suppose that might qualify. Sunday, I had a v. nice day with Claudius and her brother Marco - we went up to Millbrae with the intention of having dim sum, but when we got there, we realized that we didn't want to restart our dim sum addictions. So, to stay on the wagon, we went to Peter's Cafe instead, where I had steak and eggs - the steak was so rare that it was almost cold, which was delicious! Then, we spent a leisurely couple of hours buying toys for my new team. After wandering around Toys 'r' Us for far too long, we struck gold in the form of three different types of spy toys. We got night-vision binoculars, spy gloves (one glove has different lights to send coded messages, the other has a voice recorder), and message-bearing blow darts. I kept a package of darts to myself, and they are great; you can put a piece of paper with a message inside the nerf-style dart, then use the dart gun to shoot the dart to the person you want to give the message to. The gifts seemed to be popular with the team as well, so it was v. nice all around.

After parting ways with Claude and Marco, I did several loads of laundry, talked to my parents, and then worked for a couple of hours. Yesterday morning, I had to be in the office by 7:40 to put out the presents, and then I spent all day running around and putting out (figurative) fires...but yesterday was a major deadline/crossroads in the projects that have been keeping me so busy lately, and everything went surprisingly well. Granted, in the 24-hour period between yesterday at 5pm and today at 5pm, I got nearly 300 new emails, probably 100 of which require a response, so I'm not thrilled about that - but things could be much, much worse.

In fact, things were much, much worse this morning, when I woke up wishing that I was dead so that the pain in my head would go away. I made the fatal mistake of drinking two bottles of champagne last night, so this morning was unpleasant at best. My former manager (Lauren) had invited me and the other managers who use to report to her to come over for dinner. There were ten people there in total, including significant others and Lauren's roommate Jenni, and some dude who was visiting Lauren...and between us, we consumed 9 bottles of wine or champagne, and several 40s of beer. Lauren and I were the only ones drinking champagne, so I had roughly two bottles. Bleh. I have not read a single business or management book that recommends plowing through two bottles of champagne at a work-related function and then spending the night on your manager's couch, but that's exactly what I did. Luckily, Lauren is definitely the type who leaves work at the office and encourages hardcore socializing; if she wasn't, I never would have gotten so ridiculously intoxicated. I'm really going to miss working with her, but last night was a great sendoff.

Today, as you can guess, was pretty much a wash; I didn't get a lot done during the day, although I got to spend a lot of quality time with Excel, which I love - I've taught myself all sorts of random things, like conditional formatting and vlookups, and they came in handy today. Around 6pm, several of us (including Lauren and Jenni) used the leftover money from a team offsite and went to Benefit Cosmetics in Los Gatos - we paid them for a private party after their normal closing hours, and they gave us back $500 worth of cosmetics, split across six of us. I got all made up, and they threw in eyebrow waxing (which I've never had done before - she also trimmed my eyebrow hairs, which was nice since mine are curly and I'm afraid they're going to turn into old man eyebrows). I ended up spending more than my alloted $85 on cosmetics, but it's all good. Then I came home, watched some 'Scrubs', and played with Excel for the past three hours.

Tomorrow is going to come all too soon - I get to sleep in a bit, and then Claude and I are picking Adit up at the airport. Happy independence day!!!

you found me passed out in the yard again

After going to bed last night, I slept for eleven hours straight, which I apparently needed, given how tired I already feel again. I made it into work at 10am, where I stayed for ~4 hours to do some testing stuff that required my presence. I ran home to drop my stuff out, and then had an unproductive couple of hours in which I had intended to buy some presents for some people and some decorations for my new office, but after visiting four stores, I purchased nothing. Boo. That means that I will have to do some shopping tomorrow, in addition to tackling my rather desperate laundry situation, talking to my parents, doing some pressing/vital work, and having dim sum and hanging out with Claude and her brother. Hmm - that sounds like more than I can possible complete. We'll have to see how it goes, I suppose.

The nice part of today was that I reconnected with a guy whom I went to summer camp with in high school. He was a fellow TASPer, and also hosted me and several others when we reunited at Mardi Gras my senior year of high school, but we had lost touch when I was in college, since I was terrible at keeping in touch with old friends (Katie can attest to this, alas). However, he discovered that I was in the area and made contact, so I had dinner with him and his fiancee, before going back to their place and playing a board game. I had a really nice time, with very little of the awkwardness that you would expect while seeing someone for only the second time in the past eight years, so hopefully we'll hang out again. It's a huge advantage that he lives in Mountain View, since all of my other friends are leaving me (sniff), which bodes well for the future.

Okay, I'm going to go to bed; Claude's coming over at 10am, which only gives me nine hours to sleep tonight. Rough! Have a great night!

i should have shut my mouth, things headed south

I'm exhausted, so I think I'm going to go to bed after I write this, even though it's only nine p.m. on a Friday. Today was a bittersweet day; it's the end of the quarter and the official end of my previous job, and so I had to pack my boxes and get ready to move out of my awesome office. When I come in on Monday, I'll be in a different office, on a different floor, working full-time with a different team. Today actually felt quite a bit like the last day of a year in college - the nice feeling of accomplishment, thankfulness that the current situation is over, but serious nostalgia for all the great times of the past several months. For all the frustrations that I've felt at work over the past few months, I really loved the team that I was on, and I also really enjoyed sharing an office with Gyre. We'll hopefully keep hanging out, but I'm not holding my breath. We had a ritual of rolling these horoscope dice every day, which were amusing and frightfully accurate - one 12-sided die has all of the signs of the zodiac, and the other has 12 different fates, with the idea being that you will experience that fate with someone of the zodiac sign that you roll. This afternoon, I suggested rolling them one last time to determine the course of the rest of our lives. He rolled a Libra and 'work' - which is the sign of his unborn child, and he will probably end up working for that kid forever. I rolled an Aries (his sign) and 'conflict', which was pretty much perfect. Seeing the Aries/conflict combo made me laugh so hard that Terry could hear me on the floor below, which was embarrassing and also awesome.

After work, I had dinner with Shedletsky, came home, watched some Guns 'n' Roses videos in an attempt to motivate myself to do some work, and failed. So I'm going to go to bed - I have to go into the office for several hours tomorrow to do some testing for a project I'm working on, and I have enough work to occupy me the entire day. Boo. Sleeping will be nice, though. Goodnight!

mr. death's neighborhood

It's two a.m. and I've been working for the past 3.5 hours. I defiantly took a break from work from 7ish to 10:30ish, because Claude came over so that we could have dinner and a movie. We went to Mike's and shared a delicious tortellini w/pesto and tiger prawns, followed by their delicious bread pudding. Then, we came back here and watched 'Thank You For Smoking'; she hadn't seen it before, and we both enjoyed it (although now I kind of want a cigarette; too bad they smell so terrible).

I'm glad I took time out to see Claudius, since I've been missing my friends due to my insane work schedule recently. Tomorrow and Friday will be rough, and I have to go into the office for several hours on Saturday, but I'm trying to make some plans for Sunday, and I'm also trying to keep my Fourth of July relatively independent (ha!). Now, though, I should really go to sleep, since I have to be back in the office in less than six hours. Goodnight!

sweet child o' mine

Tonight was the quarterly offsite for my particular management level at work, and this quarter's offsite was a private karaoke party at Blue Chalk in Palo Alto. It was *awesome*...I sang not one, but three of my favorite songs ('Livin' on a Prayer', 'Walk Like an Egyptian', and 'Sweet Child o' Mine'...as well as 'Cecilia' w/a group of people), and everyone picked really fun songs to sing along to. Everyone in that group has been ridiculously busy and stressed over the past few weeks, and it was clear that we all needed to unwind, so karaoke was a pretty good way to go. Unfortunately my ears are now ringing and my throat feels a little scratchy, but it was totally worth it.

The rest of the day was pretty good too; I didn't feel like doing anything during my free hour or two this afternoon, so I ended up packing up my office, and Gyre and I were totally obnoxious in our attempts to blind each other by using reflective objects to shine light into each others' eyes. I also took a two-hour lunch with the smaller group of managers on my particular team; the six of us went out for Mexican food, where I was once again distressed by the fact that I can't eat raw tomatoes. However, in terms of days at work, this has been the best one in awhile. There's tons of stuff that I should do tonight, but I think I'm going to bask in my Guns 'n' Roses afterglow and go to bed instead. Goodnight!

don't point that gun at him - he's an unpaid intern

Craig Ferguson is having a bad night - the lights are off for some reason in his studio, and so he had to pick up his quill and write to Leslie Moonves (president of CBS) asking him to pay the bills so that he could have power again. Also, he just started singing 'Milkshake', which was pretty awesome. He also told a nice story about how he was on a catamaran and somehow got his swimming trunks ripped off his body - since he's Scottish and the hero of my romance novel is Scottish, I'm getting dirty ideas.

There is no time to act on those dirty ideas, though; it's one a.m., and while I wasn't horribly productive at work (I had meetings most of the day, and spent the rest getting 'trained' by Gyre, which meant watching him do some stuff while we made fun of each other), I still felt motivated enough to come home, watch an hour or so of 'Scrubs' as a break, and then work pretty much straight from 8pm until now. I feel so much more on top of my work as a result, which is great. I also put 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' in the background, which was as awesome as it always is. Now, though, I should really go to bed - the rest of the week is going to be pure chaos. I have an offsite tomorrow night, plans to watch a movie with Claude on Wednesday, dinner plans on Thursday, and then it's the weekend again. Sheesh. Goodnight!

it's bittersweet to hear you laugh

I had a thoroughly mundane weekend, except for the fact that I saw Felicia and Eddie - I only see Felicia ~once per year, and I hadn't seen Eddie in ages, possibly not since I was living with Walter in that hovel in Mountain View, and that seems like a lifetime ago. Felicia and Eddie are in town for an intensive dance camp at Stanford; after only a day, they seemed rather exhausted, so I will be interested to hear how it goes for them. They spent the night with me on Friday because they couldn't find the key for the house that they were supposed to stay in, but they moved out yesterday (after an early dinner of sushi at Sushi Tomo, which is near Fuki Sushi but approximately half as expensive).

But other than the couple of hours I spent catching up with Felicia and Eddie, the rest of the weekend was positively dull - which was somehow just what I needed. I read a romance novel Friday night while Felicia and Eddie were dancing, and I had a glass of wine in one of the absurdly expensive, absurdly heavy Waterford crystal wine glasses that arrived on my doorstep last week - I had ordered wine and champagne glasses when I was in Dublin in April, and they finally arrived. Seriously, drinking wine out of one of those glasses feels like I'm drinking wine out of a chalice, and I could see myself becoming an alcoholic solely for the decadent feeling of drinking wine from those glasses. Then again, if I become an alcoholic, I will eventually lose everything and end up drinking cheap gin out of a paper bag, which wouldn't be nearly so decadent, so perhaps I shall avoid that fate.

Yesterday, I slept in, went to the office briefly, got a facial, came home and did a quick cleanup of my kitchen, had dinner w/my houseguests, and tried working on my romance novel (but only succeeded in typing up the pages that I had written out on paper over the past few weeks). Today, I slept in, made myself some tasty eggs over easy, sat around, talked to my parents for three hours, and did about four hours worth of work. This week is going to be rather hellish, I think, but I've made plans several nights this week (which somehow simultaneously makes it more and less hellish...less because I will have more fun, more because I will have less time to complete things and so will probably have to stay up too late). Wish me luck!

always the al-smaid, never the al

I overslept until almost nine, which gave me six hours of sleep last night, which I suppose was okay. I took the time to shave my legs this morning (I know, you needed to know that), so I was able to wear this cute white skirt that I bought a couple of months ago but hadn't worn yet, with a black top and my shiny bright-red heels. The shoes drew a lot of compliments; while my family may know me as a shoe-collecting fiend, my tastes run toward flipflops (which explains why I have about twenty pairs that qualify as flipflops, in a variety of colors and styles), which doesn't really mesh with the more well-heeled (ha!) crowd of young women at my office.

I had meetings pretty much all day, including a meeting with my new manager, which went well. I thrive in situations where I feel that I have to prove myself against overwhelming odds, and my new job qualifies, so that's good. I may be bored again in a month, but right now I'm too busy to get in touch w/my feelings. After spending all day in meetings, I met Kim at Fiesta del Mar for a nice, leisurely dinner; she switched to a different department after coming back from Michigan, but we're trying to have dinner occasionally to stay caught up with each other.

When I got home, I relaxed by watching some 'Scrubs', and then I got back to work. I actually put 'Sahara' in again (sad, I know) - last night I was concentrating so much that I don't really remember seeing any of it, but tonight I actually caught a few of my favorite lines. I intend to force Vidya to watch it sometime soon - she doesn't realize it, but she's about to fall in love with Matthew McConaughey. Yay.

The movie ended in time for me to watch Craig Ferguson, which was nice, although I was sending out emails and so wasn't paying full attention. Now it's almost two a.m., and I should really go to bed - one more day, and it's time for the weekend! Goodnight!

p.s. Michael, the first year out of college pretty much sucks for everyone. Not that you want advice from me, but it's true.

you can stand under my umbrella

I have reverted to my true form - ever since high school, when I was cramming to finish up eight separate essays for my correspondence courses in literature through ISU, I've tended to like to listen to one song on constant repeat while focusing on my work. This tried-and-true technique carried me through various papers, take-home finals, and projects, culminating in the eight hours that I spent listening to 'The Gloaming' while writing my thesis in the 24-hour study room.

Tonight is no different; I came home and didn't accomplish much from eight to eleven, because I started talking to people online (particularly Tammy - we want to go to the Olympics next year, so if you're interested let me know asap). I was trying to accomplish stuff, and had put in 'Sahara' so that I had some familiar background noise, but it didn't work. I only really buckled down when I started listening to 'Umbrella' on constant repeat, which is admitted embarrassing because it's a terrible song - but it's no worse than Backstreet Boys' 'Shape of My Heart', and that song carried me incessantly through some pretty bleak days in college. Anyway, now it's almost 3am, and I finally feel like I'm prepped for tomorrow, so I suppose I should go to sleep.

Today was nice, though; I had a couple of free spots in my day, I had some delicious Diet Cokes (perhaps this isn't noteworthy, but the carbonation/syrup ratio was just right, the ice was perfect, and I added lemon wedges), I had some good 1:1s in which I felt that I had given some good advice, and I topped it off w/dinner with Lauren (aka Subz). We ate at some Italian restaurant that wasn't Pasta? in Mountain View; Pasta? was our original first choice, but they had some guy playing music, so we decided to move on. It was v. nice to see her; she's definitely a real friend, not just a coworker, which is v. nice. Now, though, I definitely need to go to bed - if I fall asleep in my meetings tomorrow, all this preparation won't do a bit of good. Goodnight!

you want to make a memory

Bon Jovi has gone country, and it breaks my heart. However, I still love him - true love grows and changes over time, just as we all grow and change throughout our lives. Yes, I'm crazy.

I don't know which is worse, so I'm putting it to a vote - is it worse that I downloaded 'You Want To Make a Memory' off of Bon Jovi's new country-ish album, or that I downloaded Rihanna's 'Umbrella'? She pronounces it 'um-ber-ella', and the main chorus is 'under my umberella, ella, ella, ey, ey, ey'. She performed it at the MTV Movie Awards for no explicable reason, and I like it for an equally inexplicable reason. So please feel free to weigh in and tell me I have terrible taste.

Today was a pretty great day (sorry Michael)...yes, I had to go into work, and I didn't sit down at my desk all day, but I still enjoyed myself. First off, I saw an allergist - that actually kind of sucked, because she confirmed that I'm allergic to bananas, tomatoes, and watermelons, warned me that I may be allergic to (or could develop a reaction to) avocado, kiwi, and red wine, wrote me three prescriptions for allergy medicines that I'm supposed to take every single day, referred me to get a skin test for allergies, and asked me to bring her pictures of my bedroom so that she can see what the conditions are like and whether it's clean enough that I can benefit from doing allergy shot therapy. I can tell her right now that it isn't, but I may take this as an excuse to hire someone to come in and vacuum/clean for me :)

Basically, I've ignored my allergies for years, thinking that it was a sign of stoicism, since I a) hate to acknowledge weakness and b) am usually too lazy to go to the doctor to get prescriptions renewed, even though I know that I need them. I've been aware of the reaction to bananas for years, but ignored it; I started noticing the reaction to tomatoes about a year ago, but ignored it; the watermelon snuck up on me (and my dad theorizes it is revenge for the watermelon I left in my trunk several years ago).

I probably would have continued to ignore it, but I decided I should get a medical opinion on the matter, and she told me that there was a risk that I could develop a really serious reaction in the long-term, rather than just having the small lip blisters and itchy palate/tongue that I currently get. I'm devastated, since I love raw tomatoes - that means no fresh salsa on my burritos, no greek salads, no BLTs...no fun. Luckily, the proteins that cause the reaction break down with temperature changes, so cooked/canned tomatoes are fine (preserving my ability to eat ketchup and pizza), and apparently I can have frozen bananas in smoothies. Bleh.

Anyway, after that, I had lunch (no tomatoes, sigh, just a tuna melt) with Heather, had some more meetings, and then left for my team offsite. We played bocce at a bona fide bocce court in Los Gatos - they're hardcore, and apparently they have league bocce nights, just like at bowling alleys. I'm way too competitive, and so even though I'm a manager and should be nice to everyone, I instead spent far too many shots just trying to hit other peoples' balls out of the way. My bad. After playing bocce, we had some delicious Italian food and some great conversation. My team surprised me at the end by giving me a token of their appreciation in the form of movie tickets, a gift certificate to Blockbuster, some movie snacks, a card, and a photo album with pictures of all of them. I was completely shocked and touched - I'm in the middle of a massive transition at work and so won't be managing any of them directly starting in July, so this was a nice way to say goodbye.

After that, I came home, watered my flowers (some of which were looking rather unwell--I apparently watered unevenly before going to Ojai), talked to my parents, my sister, and my niece Allie (who had a birthday today!), and then worked until now. Now it's time for me to go to bed - goodnight!

the odds will betray you...and i will replace you

It's ten p.m., and I'm going to go to bed as soon as I finish this - I managed to only stay at work for twelve hours today, and when I came home, I revolted against my laptop. In fact, I went so far as to leave it in my car, and I spent the last two hours finishing a romance novel that I had been reading on Saturday. Luckily (or unluckily?) for me, I have my personal laptop, so I'm still able to blog and check email without my work laptop, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of trying to disconnect from the routine.

So now that I'm back in the cold embrace of my job, I find that I'm unable to recapture the magic of yesterday's drive up the coast. You know how I am - I tend to get manically crazy for no apparent reason, typically some unholy combination of stress, exhaustion, satisfaction, and general giddiness about life. Then, my brain overloads from the attempt to be both stressed and happy, and I go off about something random, and stoke the fire of craziness until it burns out, leaving me v. tired. That's pretty much what happened yesterday on a deserted stretch of Highway 101 - just as we had decided that we were going to stop for dinner, we saw a sign that said 'do not pick up hitchhikers - next 9 miles', and the beginning of a strong fence on both sides of the freeway. There was absolutely nothing in sight, other than what looked like some military installations. However, we had agreed before we saw that sign that we would stop at the next exit with a fork/knife sign - which led me to ignore Terry's protestations and pull off in San Ardo. Turns out that San Ardo (named for some unknown saint who is presumably named Ardo) has only 501 people, and the restaurant was closed either because a) it was late, or b) the roof had collapsed. I was entertained, Terry was horrified, and Claude seemed to be enjoying herself - particularly when the next place we stopped turned out to have the 'Wild Horse Cafe', where I got to enjoy chicken fried steak, smothered in gravy, and sweetened by Terry's woeful sighs and the irritation Claude was clearly feeling over hearing the Fox News commentary playing on the tv.

After that, the rest of the ride was pretty boring, but luckily it only took a couple more hours to get home. And, the wedding had been lovely - Lisa and Doug are another great couple in the constellation of great couples whom I know, and their ceremony was outdoors at a gorgeous spa that is apparently one of the best hotels in the United States. Lisa works for a casting agency in LA, and the program was written like the credits for a movie - including an 'In Memoriam: Steve Irwin' line, since Lisa was in love with the now-deceased Crocodile Hunter. Now that I realize how blissful Ojai must be, I may have to go down there for a long weekend and blow an inordinate sum of money forcing myself to relax, since it's readily apparent that I can't relax on my own.

Now it's back to the grind - the amount of work coming my way is truly, staggeringly ridiculous, and would make me want to curl up in a ball and whimper if it wasn't for my masochistic nature and my inability to back down from anything that I view as a challenge. Sadly for me, I just checked my work email (I'm so stupid!), saw an email from my manager that had been forwarded on from the VP, which meant that I had to take care of it immediately...which of course triggered both my flight response and my 'yes, i'm important!' response, which left me confused and twitchy. I might as well stop fighting my destiny and go to business school--but it's so much more fun to experience all this angst about what my 'real', alternative destiny might be. No time to consider tonight, though...it's time for bed!

in which our heroine nearly leads her party to folly and almost certain death, before eating an unearned reward of chicken-fried steak

For those of you who have emailed, wondering whether I was still alive, I appreciate your concern. I most appreciate Tammy's reminder to pull the fluorescent handle if I'm stuck in a trunk someplace. However, I was not stuck in a trunk, unless a trunk can serve as a metaphor for the crushing load of work under which I was laboring last week. Then, I left Friday night for Ojai, the site of Lisa's wedding, and I just got back fifteen minutes ago.

There are many stories to tell, particularly of the awesome car-ride back, but I'm exhausted and have to be at work in eight hours. Suffice it to say that the vast stretches of 101 between here and Santa Barbara provide for endless amusement, particularly when set to the soundtrack of my own rather dubious musical selections. For now, though, it's time for bed - and I shall endeavor not to leave you hanging for so long again. I think this is the longest I've gone without blogging since around the time that I left for India, which is clearly inexcusable. Many apologies - and now, off to bed!

arm yourself because no one else here will save you

I have succumbed to addiction to another James Bond theme song. Walter doubtlessly remembers (unless he successfully blocked it; the brain is remarkably resilient) a certain drive to Davis in which we listened to 'Die Another Day' all the way there. I'm happy to report that I've moved on - Vidya and I watched my Netflix (great investment - I've been so busy that the same three movies have been sitting by my tv for two months) copy of 'Casino Royale'. I think Daniel Craig is brutally hot...but what's even hotter is the theme song. It's called 'You Know My Name', the lyrics are appropriately ridiculous, and the singer screams unnecessarily. In other words, it's perfect for me! I've already listened to it 16 times since I downloaded it tonight. Yay.

Today has been both fun and bothersome; I had presentation skills training this morning, which isn't giving me the practice that I need. The problem is that they ask us to tell stories to practice our presentation skills, but I love telling stories, and so they are so natural for me that it didn't really feel forced at all. Particularly the killing-turkeys-on-the-swingset story - I had them in stitches, and they asked me to finish the story even though I was done with the eye-contact exercise that went along with it. But, I like the group - which is good, since I have another four hours of it tomorrow.

I had meetings the rest of the day, then met up with Shedletsky and Joanna for dinner at the Creamery. I realized I haven't seen anyone in that group since Easter, which was a lifetime ago, and in the meantime, everyone has moved or is moving away :( But, dinner was nice - it was good to get caught up with them, even if we all seem depressed about the fact that we're growing up. It's rather upsetting that I've been out of college for four years now - bleh.

After dinner, I came home and started working. I was pleasantly surprised when Vidya called and asked to stay over. She and I both worked on our matching laptops while watching 'Casino Royale' (which you already knew, since I already blogged about the song). She went to bed about an hour ago, but I had some stuff that I absolutely had to finish, so I stayed up until now. However, I should really go to sleep - at this point, I'm going to get less than six hours :( Goodnight!

addendum

Also I just saw something awesome - there was this commercial about some razor that includes shaving gel or moisturizer or something. The main pretense was that your legs would be unbelievably smooth, and it showed mens' hands stroking the womens' legs in various locations.

The amusing thing is that these ad agencies are so careful to show that it's okay for such behavior to be occurring that they usually imply that the couple is married. So, the guy's hand always has a wedding ring on it. The best, though, was the last guy - his wedding ring was on the wrong hand, just to make sure it was visible to the camera. How ridiculous is that? Like anyone believes the commercial actors/actresses are married to each other - so there's clearly some 'sin' going on at some level, even if you try to cover it up with a fake wedding band.

That being said, the next time I grope someone, I'm going to wear a ring so that I don't get arrested.

allergic (to thoughts of mother earth)

Okay, so it's not a lyric, but it is a song title, and it's wildly appropriate for my current state. I came home tonight after a brutal round of meetings, and I spent an hour and a half planting flowers. It was very relaxing - far more relaxing and fulfilling than watching several 'Scrubs' reruns would have been.

However, I'm deathly allergic to the outdoors, and I like to pretend that I'm not - but since I'm also out of my allergy drugs and have to go back to the doctor to get signoff of having Allegra paid for by my insurance plan, playing outside isn't exactly smart. Within minutes, I'm sneezing and coughing and my eyes are itching. It's also making me more sensitive to allergens in general - I definitely have oral allergies to tomatoes, bananas, and watermelon, which is unfortunate because they're three of my favorite foods, and I eat them all regularly. My lips swell up, the roof of my mouth itches like crazy, and yet I persevere and pretend that nothing is wrong. I'm so stupid! And according to this wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_allergy_syndrome) I have other oral allergies to look forward to:

People allergic to ragweed may be allergic to:
* banana
* cantaloupe
* cucumber
* honey dew
* watermelon
* zucchini
* Potential: Dandelions or chamomile tea

People allergic to grass may be allergic to:
* melons
* tomatoes
* oranges


Bleh! Eh, whatever. I have to keep gardening - while I've planted ~35 plants, I still have ~50 to go. Yes, I went overboard. At this rate, my entire backyard will be full of flowers, which should be awesome. However, I have to get them all planted before the weekend, or else they will die because I won't be able to water them. Unless, of course, I took them with me to SoCal and babysat them, but that would just be silly. And also, gardening is relaxing, despite being spiced up somewhat by my nagging concern about whether I will continue breathing.

The rest of my workday was either annoying or boring; after sunset, I came inside and worked for the past four hours (while talking a bit to Walter, yay). Now, I should really go to bed - tomorrow morning, I have to spend four hours in presentation skills training, which is super annoying, because it involves being videotaped while the trainers yell at me for talking too fast, swaying from side to side while standing, etc. Anyway, wish me luck!

P.S. Roopa, when you return from Chennai, we will have a lovely garden party with tea, cucumber sandwiches, and deviled eggs!

claude cla-claude claude claude

Today was a truly lovely day, possibly excepting all of the manual labor in the middle of it. I failed to live up to my goal of getting up early to plant flowers, but I did mange to get up in time to meet Terry for brunch. I told her about my trip to Ukraine, she told me about her trip to Italy, and we complained about work--all in all, a good way to spend a couple of lazy Sunday hours.

After brunch, I did a couple of loads of laundry, filled my car up with gas, swept up my patio (the concrete part, not the garden part), and cleaned off my patio furniture. This was quite the undertaking - when I bought the table last summer, it was a floor model, and so when they shipped it to me, they taped the legs to the top of the table. The problem with this was that they used standard packing tape, which made certain areas of the top extremely sticky, and the stickiness trapped all sorts of dirt and detritus. So I first had to clean off the grime w/some standard household cleaner, and then I attacked the stickiness with some Goo Gone (which worked better this time, since I was more patient and actually let it sit for awhile rather than trying to tackle it immediately). But while I still have lots of flowers to plant, hopefully over the next few evenings, my patio now looks like someplace where people (especially myself) would like to spend time going forward.

I managed to take a shower, make cookies, and buy a watermelon before some of my friends showed up this evening for an informal dinner of take-out pizza. Claude was the first to arrive, and we were soon joined by Vidya, Sri, Oniel, Zach and Maggie (aka Mr. and Mrs. Stinkubus, long story). It was a delightful evening - it was good to spend some time with Zach and Maggie, since I saw them at their wedding two weeks ago but didn't actually get to spend any real time talking to them, and the rest of my friends were amusing as always. I'm sad that Zach and Maggie are moving to Yale and that Claudia will soon join them, but I suppose it will all work out. At least I still have Vidya, Sri, Oniel, and Adit...that's pretty good. And I have several good friends at work, and I would have several more friends if I spent more time with other people (I realized today that I haven't seen Shedletsky since Easter, which was forever ago). But I'm not going to spend time with anyone tonight; instead, it's time for bed!

with silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row

I awoke today and drove to the evil city, where I had brunch with Heather and Salim. Despite the fact that the city is completely dangerous and degenerate, I had a fun time - we ate at this place near their apartment that they had taken me to once before. We talked about nothing in particular, as I usually do with them, and generally had a great time. It was good to see Salim again - I see Heather at work almost every day, but I don't see Salim nearly as often, and seeing the two of them together (usually bickering about something) makes me very happy. We wandered around the neighborhood for a bit, and then I showed them my new car (which I still love!) before taking my leave.

When I got back to the safety and security of the peninsula, I went to a flower nursery and bought ~$100 worth of various flowering annuals. I got impatiens, begonias, snapdragons, lobelia, and salvia in several different colors (yellow, orange, purple, hot pink, white - basically, whatever struck my fancy). Thus committed to doing something about my patio, I came home and spent an hour raking up all of the dead leaves and old mulch from last year, filling six 39-gallon garbage bags w/detritus that I will now have to haul to Palo Alto's recycling/landfill site. I also successfully planted the snapdragons and some of the salvia around the big rock that is in the center of my garden. I had assumed that it was some dumb ornamental thing, but I was forced to revise my opinion (and dig more shallowly) when I unearthed the jawbone of what was probably someone's pet cat or dog. Ugh. Now that I know that the rock is probably a tombstone, I'm not quite so thrilled, but hopefully the decayed remains of whatever animal was buried there will serve as fertilizer rather than poison.

I should have kept planting, but I was tired and hungry by this point (the search for plants had occupied the better part of the afternoon since I went into the office to research partial-shade-tolerant plants, before spending an hour wandering around the nursery and then going to another store to buy supplemental gardening soil). So, I ran out to get a burrito, and when I got home I just really wanted to go to bed. Instead, I managed to take a quick shower, but now I think it's time to throw in the towel. I want to get up early tomorrow so that I can do so more planting before brunch with Terry, but we'll see whether my ambition overrides my body's natural tendency to hit the snooze button for an hour. Goodnight!

when i win your heart, i'm gonna paint it cherry red

Yay, I'm going to bed, and it's going to be AWESOME. I can sleep until 7:30, which is almost eight hours, which is almost normal, which is almost great. Vidya IM'd me to accuse me of being insane, which I thought was grossly unfair. That bitch.

You might think I am drunk, but I assure you that I'm not - unless one can be drunk on responsibility, stress, and career advancement. I suppose one can - I suppose that's the definition of 'workaholic'. I start getting all twitchy when I'm disconnected from the internet, which is why the BlackBerry was a great (and terrible) move for me.

Now I shall write Vidya a haiku:

her tombstone will say:
'i, vidius chandicus,
lowed to eat cookies.'

That's all I've got for now - I need to go to bed before the crazy completely overtakes me. Goodnight, and let's hope I make it to the weekend!

life is simple - it's either cherry red or midnight blue

I'm exhausted - but happily I just remembered about the great song 'Midnight Blue' by Lou Gramm, and that made everything better! Clearly there are days when I'm pathetically grateful for even the slightest bit of sort-of-awesomeness.

Actually, today was a pretty good day, except for the endless string of meetings (with more action items, yay). I met up with Claudia and Vidya for dinner at my place of employment; I'm pretty lucky to be working someplace where if I don't want to stand in line for the (free) pork chops and mashed potatoes, I can instead go for the quicker (and still free) pizza and pre-made spinach/bacon/strawberry salad. So we had a quick dinner, and then went to the movie theatre to see 'Knocked Up'. I really liked it; there were moments that were more serious than I expected, but they were completely appropriate, and were also outweighed by such classic scenes as when the two main guy characters did shrooms in Las Vegas. The supporting actor was Paul Rudd, whom I absolutely adore, playing a rather bitter married guy, which was nice - it shows that he's really grown up from playing lovesick single guys like he did in 'Clueless'.

Anyway, after the movie, I came home and worked for about two and a half hours. Such behavior should be outlawed, but instead it is encouraged. I definitely succumb to the carrot and stick approach - however, in this case the carrot is a promotion that I would probably get at some point anyway, and the stick is my own self-imposed fear of failure and imperfection. Sigh. But, I'm masochistic and thrive off pain and stress, so my new job is probably good for me. Now, though, I'm going to go sleep for six hours or so; I have a conference call at 8am, followed by meetings straight through until 5pm (when I get a half-hour break before another meeting at 5:30), so I should really get some rest. Goodnight, everyone!

yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!!!

I *love love love* pirates. Really, I do. I know, I'm silly, and perhaps I should grow up someday--but I can't let go of pirates, or my glitter eyeshadow, or my hot pink Kangaroos, etc. Anyway, back to the pirates. I came home tonight, ate dinner while watching some 'Scrubs', and then put in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' while doing some work. I was rather productive, and so didn't really watch the movie, so could watch it again soon if I wanted to. The first movie was so much better than the subsequent two, in my humble opinion, but in all of them I absolutely loved Jack Sparrow. I started to love Orlando Bloom more as he became more piratical as well.

Okay, but enough of that. Today, I had a bunch of meetings, did some work, gossiped with some people, im'd with some friends, contributed to a ridiculously long email thread regarding simultaneously planning to see a movie tomorrow and have dinner this weekend, and got more responsibilities and projects piled on to my plate with every conversation I had at work. Clearly I'm going to have to hide in my office for a couple of days to catch up on what I already have to do - but since people can dump projects on me via email, that's not the most effective strategy.

I could go on about all my work, or about my friends, or about my glitter eyeshadow, or about pirates, but I'm in a surprisingly good mood and so don't feel like brooding. I also want to go to sleep so that I can get up early and go into work. So, goodnight!

who let the dogs out?

I told Vidya today that I must have a brain tumor - that's the only thing that can explain why I got 'who let the dogs out' stuck in my head last night, or why I say silly things via IM. Or, perhaps it's just that I'm exhausted, but I like to pretend that something more dramatic is impacting me.

Today, I was at work from 8-7:30...the last hour was spent in the tech center trying to get my laptop to stop overheating. It's slightly less hot tonight, since it's not threatening to burn my thigh, but it's still hot enough that I feel vaguely overheated holding it. Then I came home, watched some 'Scrubs', and welcomed Adit, who's spending the night at my place. We had some quiet family time, watching tv while we both worked, and then went to Safeway to get ice cream and a spare toothbrush. Fun!!

Now I should go to bed - I feel slightly better because I caught up on email from 8:30pm-12:30am (with the break for ice cream), but work is going to keep getting insane. Every meeting I have at work gives me another major 'action item' (in other words, responsibility/task/chore), and in some cases gives me an entire project that my team will have to figure out. It's fun because I operate best under stress, but this is getting a bit ridiculous even for me. So now, I shall go to bed, and dream of the day when I'll be able to work 8 hours a day (or, even better, the day I can retire and spend my days drinking mojitos on a beach). Goodnight!

i only have eyes for you

The lyric for the title of this blogpost is courtesy of Vidicus Chandicus!

Today was a good day - the clouds of yesterday broke, letting in a bit of sunshine in the form of Claude and Vidya. We had a late brunch in Sunnyvale, at a place that was v. reminiscent of Marie Callendars (because the clientele was mainly ninety years old and v. decrepit). We sat around for a couple of hours, reminiscing about the past and talking about the future. I also drank four glasses of iced tea, which means that much of what I accomplished the rest of the afternoon was peeing. j/k.

Actually, I was fairly productive this afternoon--I talked to my parents, thoroughly cleaned my bathroom, cleaned out my fridge and did some dishes, took out the trash, bought groceries for the first time in approximately two months, made myself some greek salad, and was going to do all sorts of work. Instead, though, I got sucked into watching the MTV Movie Awards. Stupidly, I'm now watching them again, but this time I'm im'ing w/Vidya while I do so. While most of it was retarded, there was a great moment where Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen totally made out--the whole rolling on the floor, groping each other kind of making out. Now, though, I should go to bed--it's going to be another busy week!

maybe i shouldn't have started kindergarten when i was four

Standarized Testing - Education - Schools - Test Scores - New York Times

So I just read this article about how the kids who are the youngest in their kindergarten class tend to do the worst academically compared to their classmates for the rest of their lives. As I was reading, I thought 'hogwash!', considering that I was the youngest kid in my class (I made the cutoff by four days). My best friend and I were two of the youngest kids in the class, and now Katie's a lawyer and I'm working for one of the top companies in the US.

Then I got to the last section, where they were describing this test that a kindergarten teacher was giving to her students. The youngest kid in the class was a disaster at it; look at this extended quote:

----------
The teacher asked him to draw a person. To pass that portion of the test, his figure needed seven different body parts.

“Is that all he needs?” she asked a few minutes later.

The boy said, “Oh, I forgot the head.”

A minute later the boy submitted his drawing again. “Are you sure he doesn’t need anything else?” the teacher asked.

The boy stared at his work. “I forgot the legs. Those are important, aren’t they?”

----------

The sad thing is that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what those seven body parts are that are required to pass the test. I would have drawn a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso, for a grand total of six. Do eyes count? Is hair required? WTF?

Also, they may have a point - the other parts of the test were 'skip; jump; walk backward; cut out a diamond on a dotted line; copy the word cat; draw a person; listen to a story; and answer simple vocabulary questions like what melts, what explodes and what flies'. I would have probably gotten the textual/vocab questions, but skipping was beyond me for several years after kindergarten.

All in all, think of how brilliant I could have been if I had not a) stopped breathing for several minutes when I was born, and b) gone to kindergarten a year later. Then again, given how bored I was in high school, maybe it would have just made matters worse. And also, I was the kind of kid who sprayed paint into her eyes, and no amount of preparation for kindergarten could have stopped me from doing that.

he tastes like you only sweeter

There used to be a time when I wrote blogposts all in lower case, perhaps in an attempt to feign casualness, perhaps because I was so used to writing ICQ messages in lowercase that I couldn't be bothered to change my typing style. Now, I write in something approaching traditional American English, with proper demarcations between sentences and the appropriate capitalization of names and places. There also used to be a time when I was more honest with my communications, blithely posting what I felt and sending it out into the ether. Now, while I don't lie on my blog, I do tell a thousand lies of omission, whether to save myself from the cost of sharing too much, or to save others from the inadvertent pain of reading the small, fleeting betrayals that we all think but do not share. Or, perhaps we don't all think them, and I'm just a bitch.

Either way, it's hard to tell what I get out of posting here anymore. I do feel a certain sense of satisfaction that I have a written record of most of my life over the past several years, even if it doesn't include all of the emotional stuff beneath the surface of the parties, dinners, and work events. And, I do feel that it has helped to keep my family and friends more connected with what I am up to on a daily basis, since I am terrible at keeping in touch.

* * *

I think that the crux of my issue right now is that I get bored with the big picture too easily - while I can sit for hours and watch tv or reread the same book for the dozenth time or idly drive through the foothills, I get very unhappy when nothing major has changed in my life in recent memory. And, 'recent memory' for me is a very short period of time--it was less than a year ago that I got back from Ireland, less than a month since I went to Ukraine, and yet I'm already looking for the next fix of adventure and newness.

For that reason, I'm not sure that going to grad school is a wise move for me - if I get bored before finishing a PhD, I'm pretty much screwed. But then again, perhaps nothing is a wise move for me - any field that I move into, regardless of how interesting or impactful I find it to be, will eventually be something that I master, and once I master it, I will have no interest in continuing on with it.

* * *

I think Vidya is probably right that I think too much in terms of 'one thing or the other, but not both'; I got the same feedback at work recently as well. Despite all of my pride in my rationality, despite my desire to analyze things to death, despite how much I abhor letting emotion get in the way of logic, I can't help but see things in black and white - and I only admit shades of grey when they help me to win an argument (even if I'm only arguing for the sake of arguing). There I go again - there are probably lots of shades of grey that I admit to. But I for some reason am convinced that, just because I don't know my destiny now means I will never find it; that because I'm alone means I always will be; that because I wasn't loved once when I thought it counted, I will never be loved in the way that I want to be loved.

Yes, I know that this is all patently absurd, and in the morning I will feel better. But I suppose my need for adventure is driven in part by the fact that when I get bored, I start to think about my life, and when I start to think, I can't stop thinking, and as long as I'm thinking, I'm usually wishing that things were different. I had grand plans for getting things done today, but instead I spent the whole evening reading a romance novel, because they are the only things that are capable of getting me to disengage long enough that I stand a chance of calming down and breaking the cycle.

I suppose I should delete this, or write this in my private journal instead, since I don't like coming across as depressed or unhappy. But, I don't really feel like lying tonight by just saying what I did today. I just wish that I knew what I could do to make myself happier, more productive, more at peace with my work (or pursuing work that I could be satisfied with), more engaged with my friends, and less bored, less bitter, and less in mourning for the past. Now, though, I'm going to go to bed. Goodnight!

angels fall like rain, and love is all of heaven away

I was supposed to go up to the city tonight to hang out with Vidya and see a comedy show, but I was exhausted from the events of the past month and so decided to stay home. I left work with grand plans to start cleaning my apartment from top to bottom and perhaps make dinner; instead, I nuked a single-serving bag of popcorn and read 'A Wild Sheep Chase' from start to finish. 'A Wild Sheep Chase' was my first introduction to Haruki Murakami, whose books I have gone on to read obsessively over the past six years.

Strangely, when I first read it, I thought it was hilarious--I remember reading parts of it in the garden outside the Kingscote Apartments on Stanford campus, where John and I had gone to study (the book was for a Japanese pop culture class that we were both taking) and thinking that it was the most entertaining book ever. Reading it tonight, however, I can't see what I thought was funny about it - instead, I just felt overwhelmingly sad.

Perhaps reading it again just brought back too many memories of that spring; reading the book, I briefly fell asleep near the end, during the chapters in which the protagonist is waiting for the Rat to show up, and I had the strangest sense of deja vu that I had fallen asleep while reading the same scenes before. But my initial experience with the book was the springtime after my grandfather died, a time that seems hazy now but that I remember was a wild oscillation between feigned euphoria and serious, overwhelming heartbreak. I spent most of that spring ignoring my classes, reading books, and sleeping in the grass outside the library, wishing that everything would just go back to normal.

But I digress. Murakami's books are so heartbreaking, for me at least, because they tend to involved unnamed, bland protagonists confronting unrealistic, fantastic situations - but the situations are never the point of the stories. Rather, through the absurdities of the plots, the protagonists inevitably seem to draw deep, sad conclusions about their own mortality and their lack of meaning and connection; but, these conclusions are muted, as though they've been submerged in a deep well, because the protagonists are so incapable of connecting with others that they can't even express their disconnection because of the barriers that surround them.

In this book called 'The Secret Universe of Names', I read that the sounds of my name imply that I am, on one hand, multi-talented and caring, but on the other hand, I am pessimistic, sarcastic, and stubborn. Accurate, eh? I don't want to be pessimistic, but reading 'A Wild Sheep Chase' tonight made me consider again what life is supposed to be - and it lured me towards the edge of that abyss where all the dangerous thoughts about the meaning and purpose of life lurk. Perhaps I'm doubting the purpose of life right now because, if *this* is my purpose, I'm v. disappointed. Or, perhaps I'm doubting the purpose of life because I don't want to acknowledge that I need to make some serious changes, and those changes will require a commensurate amount of effort. Either way, there has to be more to life than this - I refuse to accept that life is just a string of meetings and emails followed by a quick and unexpected (or slow and painful) death.

We shall see - perhaps a year or two from now, I will look back at this post and laugh. Tonight, though, I should go to bed.

well, that's just maddeningly unhelpful

Tonight we celebrated Sri's birthday by having pizza in Menlo Park. Vidya was at dinner, so I suppose she deserves a mention here. Even better, Claude, Adit, Sri, a couple of Sri's friends, and I went to see 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'. Sadly, the movie is almost three hours long, so I didn't get home until almost 1am, and I have an 8:30am meeting. Boo.

I actually thought the movie was pretty good - there were quite a few moments that I thought were laugh-out-loud funny, and the ending didn't leave me with the same bad taste that I had in my mouth at the end of the second movie. However, the plot was unnecessarily silly and the end was about half an hour too long - but I think it's forgivable. Seeing the monkey wearing a little Chinese hat alone was worth the price of admission, not to mention the many other ridiculous moments. I'm also in love with Orlando Bloom (yes, I'm a twelve-year-old girl), and Johnny Depp is to die for, so I had a v. good time. Adit seemed to hate it and Claude was apparently bored, but Sri liked the first half about as much as I did, so it's all good.

Now I should really go to bed - morning is going to come too soon, and I have tons of stuff to do tomorrow. Goodnight!

i'm an alien, you're an alien

Today should have been more stressful than it was, but that's because I blew off some stuff that I probably should have done so that I could leave and have coffee with Vidya, followed by dinner with Subz (aka Lauren). I was half an hour late to coffee w/Vidya, but happily she seemed to forgive me, and we had a good (albeit depressing) conversation. Dinner with Lauren was also great...tonight was definitely a 'talk about my feelings' night all around, which was good, but made it impossible for me to motivate myself to work when I got home.

Even though it's ten p.m., I think I'm going to go to bed; part of my problem may just be that I feel exhausted. Something funny happened today as well--one of my coworkers took a stab at dividing some upcoming responsibilities between the two of us, and he took all of the projects that I consider most interesting/visible/intense, leaving me with projects that I don't think will really challenge me at all. What's funny is that this would actually be good for me in the sense that what I would be left with would give me a reasonable workload, and yet I'm still annoyed because I don't want to be bored either. Clearly, I don't know what I really want! Now, though, I think I should go to bed. Goodnight!

thanks for the memories even though they weren't so great

So I'm still in a brooding mood - it doesn't help that this weekend made me feel that there are aspects of my life that have now definitively passed me by. For one, I can never be a nineteen-year-old cocaine addict. For another, I'm officially well into my mid-twenties, which is neither a comfortable nor an exciting time. Anyway, I went to work today even though I woke up feeling nauseous and really just wanted to call in sick; I had too many important meetings to go to, including a forum talk that I had set up with one of my company's leading political lobbyists, which was v. cool. Setting up these talks has nothing at all to do with my core responsibilities, but it's kind of cool to force myself to take time out once a month to go to these talks (since I have to go, since I organized them--there are lots of great talks at work, but I usually don't make time for them).

All that greatness aside, though, I'm feeling distinctly unmotivated. I mean, I'm excited about my new role at work to some extent--lots of great challenges and responsibilities, and I love the people I'm going to be working with. However, I'm not really excited about a long-term future that involves my current ratio of work:friends, which is pretty much in direct correlation with my ratio of cash:leisure. I boycotted a little today by chatting online with Walter--it was the first long conversation I'd had with him in months, and we used to talk almost every day. So, I clearly need to figure out a next step that gives me more time to pursue things I'm passionate about.

I started thinking about phd programs again--not that I'm sure that's what I want to do, but I think I'm perhaps stronger at analytical writing than I am at creative writing, and so perhaps it makes more sense to apply for phd programs this fall rather than trying to take time off to write a romance novel. The problem is that if I try the romance novel thing and it doesn't work out, I'm a year farther behind in applying for grad school--and at this point, even if I apply this fall, I'll be 27 when I start, which makes me 33 when I finish, which is just depressing.

Bleh. Luckily there is still time to decide things, but right now I'm exhausted. Goodnight!

here comes a lie...we will always be true

I was in Salt Lake City this weekend for Zach and Maggie's wedding. The ceremony was absolutely lovely - it matched their personalities, and the love that they have for each other is a beautiful thing. It made me cry the whole way through, which wasn't so bad considering that I was in the back row (as opposed to when I cried all through Katie's wedding, which was worse since I was a bridesmaid). Of course, my tears were also hidden underneath my dark Versace sunglasses, and they were silent rather than wracking sobs, so it was all good.

The weekend overall was very nice. Claude and I got in on Saturday, spent the afternoon relaxing in the hotel, and then met up with everyone at the rehearsal dinner (although I don't know if it counts as a rehearsal dinner, since absolutely everyone was invited). I ate a lot of pieces of watermelon covered in goat cheese, and more importantly reconnected with a lot of old friends. Virtually everyone from that old group in my freshman dorm was there, and so it was v. nice to relive old times (which, scarily, were almost eight years ago!). Sunday, Claude and I went wading in the Great Salt Lake (smelly, shallow, and full of brine shrimp), had lunch at Chili's with the crew, and then went to the wedding. Happily, Adit also stayed in our hotel room with us, and so the three of us had some great family time before bed each night. Granted, the family time ended up being depressing, particularly the second night, since it's clear that we're not getting any younger and there was a pervasive feeling of doom and loss...but at least we were together.

Also, I had about five bottles of chardonnay and pinot grigio over the course of the two nights, so my decision-making was not the strongest, but I managed to keep myself out of trouble. A full weekend without my laptop and without thinking about work was devastating for my ambition, however--I came back completely unmotivated to go back to the office tomorrow, and my head is once again filled with dreams of grad school. This is probably fueled by the farewell dinner that I just had with Renee, who is moving to SoCal this week and will be pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at UCLA this fall...I'm so happy for her that she escaped the siren's call of my company and is pursuing her dreams, but it makes me wonder what happened to mine.

Anyway, I don't want to brood tonight, I did enough of that when I spontaneously drove to Half Moon Bay this afternoon. I'll save the brooding for another time..right now, I should go to bed!

you fight me for my love - lyrics

For some reason, my blog gets a lot of hits for this song called 'Fighting For My Love'. I've only ever heard it on this one episode of 'Scrubs' where JD and Elliot get together for a day or two, so I can usually tell if that episode has been repeated someplace by the flurry of hits that I get from a specific geographic location.

Anyway, I thought I'd post the lyrics, since it took me awhile to find it myself - this is for the randoms who make it onto my blog:

Nil Lara - Fighting For My Love

I was taught when I was young to share myself to show my love
Smile at everyone Oh to shine above the sun
Now I'm standing next to you I think I've changed my point of view
I've noticed you can tell
You're fighting for my love

For my love, yes you're fighting for my love
For my love, yes you're fighting for my love

Many times I tried to talk to let you know someday I'd walk
In me you found a drug an addiction to my love
I could swear I let you know I tried one day to let you go
You fight me all along
Yes you're fighting for my love

For my love, yes you're fighting for my love
For my love, yes you're fighting for my love

I know how it feels I've been burned one time before
I still feel the scars on my lips
When I touch when I love when I kiss
When I kiss

Now I'm calling back for you I figured out I'm missing you
You're nowhere to be found oh I've asked and looked around
Seems you found a better fish I must confess I had a wish
To love you all along
But you're fighting for my love
Fighting for my love

For my love, yes you're fighting for my love
For my love, yes you're fighting for my love

Fight me

Oh yes yes yes you're wanting my love
You don't know how you're missing my love
Oh yes yes yes you're needing my love
You don't know how you're fighting my love

Yay mormons!

Claude and I made it to salt lake city, where we attended Zach and
Maggie's rehearsal dinner tonight. It was awesome...I haven't seen
Chris Boyd in two years, and there are many people whom it is good to
catch up with. Tomorrow is the actual ceremony, which I am looking
forward to...Zach and Maggie are pretty much perfect for each other,
so I anticipate that tomorrow will be lovely.

Okay, time for bed...and here's hoping tomorrow's hangover won't be too brutal!

you aren't the wind beneath my wings

The good thing about working late, as I have mentioned before, is that I get to watch Craig Ferguson. His opening monologue was pretty good tonight, and there was one particularly funny moment (which won't sound funny here at all) when he was talking about how 'Pirates of the Caribbean' has led to pirates showing up all over the media, which then cut to the '60 Minutes' opening. The '60 Minutes' opening contained 'I'm Steve Kroft...I'm Leslie Stahl...I'm a pirate' (where the pirate was Craig Ferguson dressed in this ridiculous pirate get-up). Ha!

Craig made up for the fact that I also watched the local evening news. I really hate the local news in the Bay Area; it's all poorly-done and annoying. Case in point - there was one point in the broadcast where the newscaster said 'The FDA wants us to warn you that you should not eat any imported fish labeled 'monkfish'. It may actually be puffer fish, which is poisonous and could kill you. For more information, visit our website.' Aughh! If this is an actual, serious warning, why did they waste so much time discussing the avg. ounces and costs of all the major cereals (which was the lead story), when they could have been discussing puffer fish? This was clearly just a ploy to drive traffic to what is doubtlessly an annoying, overly-complicated website.

Work today was fun in the sense that I had lots of fun meetings, and annoying in the sense that I didn't have any time to check email. Coupling that with the fact that I ignored all email yesterday due to crunch time on the preso I gave last night, and also the fact that I still haven't read all my email from vacation, and I'm feeling seriously behind. I've decided to just accept that feeling--rather than work all night, I first had dinner w/Claude at Mike's Cafe. We split the lasagna and the bread pudding, both of which were delicious, and I'm glad I got to be there when Claude had her first enjoyable meal since taking her wisdom teeth out last week [I suppose I should say 'since having oral surgery last week', since my earlier phrasing makes it sound like she removed them herself with some sort of primitive cutting instrument in her garage]. After dinner, though, I did work from 9:30ish until now. Boo.

Tomorrow promises to be another fun day, and I have to leave work on time to pack, buy a pair of shoes to match my dress, and buy a wedding present for Zach and Maggie. So, wish me luck! Now it's time for bed.

some days when i'm far away in a lonely room in a cold seclusion

Despite the fact that I was so stressed that I could barely eat lunch (not to mention that I didn't really have time for it), today was a great great day. For one, I got up early so that I could blowdry my hair, leading to several compliments (which I chose to take as positives, and ignore the implied negative about how my hair looks the other 29 days of every month). For another, the cafe in my building opened, so I can have scrambled eggs every morning (which will do nothing good for my cholesterol). For a third, I got to work on not one, but two extremely important powerpoints today--basically, whenever I wasn't in a meeting, I was sitting at my desk with the door closed playing with slides and figuring out how to get my point across.

But the best thing was that in the meeting I had with the directors (conveniently scheduled from 6-7pm) they not only gave me what I asked for, but gave me the super-special bonus of fulfilling a request that I've been pressing them for repeatedly for the past two years. I just threw a slide in about it in the wild, desperate hope that I'd get 25% of my request, but I got it all! Yay!

This is the worst blog post I've ever written.

Anyway, I'm really excited about my new job at work, even if it means that I'm going to be overworked. I've kinda come to accept the fact that I bring this on myself, but at least now I feel overworked by something that I *want* to do, rather than something I feel *compelled* to do. So I guess that's a win, right?

I actually made it home by nine p.m., where I watched a little TV while working until now. I should really go to bed...I have two days of hard slogging to go, and then I leave Saturday for Zach's wedding! So, goodnight!

this ain't a scene, it's a goddamn arms race

Slogging is going to be the death of me - for someone who dreams of writing a romance novel, I sure do give way too much of my soul to my job. I was in the office until 10:30 last night, which is why I didn't blog; I managed to leave at 6:15 tonight, primarily because I desperately needed to do laundry so that I could wear something clean for the meeting that I have with the directors tomorrow night. The role I'm moving into now is going to be tons of responsibility and work, which is good for my career, but probably bad for my personal relationships.

To make myself feel better after that sad statement, I looked up that movie that I watched the last night that I was in Kiev - gentle reader, you may remember that I watched snippets of 'Volkodav' (sans subtitles, so I didn't understand the dialogue) and kept my brother awake from laughing so hard. If you want to see some screenshots and read a review, you can check it out here - I'm going to have to rent it if it ever comes out on DVD in America!

Also, it is understandable why this felt like a cheap ripoff of 'Lord of the Rings' - their entire budget was only $19million. I found this out from this story (http://news.rin.ru/eng/news///9300/6//). The English is waaay off--I wonder which auto-translation software suggested the title 'Sea rovers of Caribbean Sea: Damnation of black pearl'?? Anyway, $19million is nothing in the movie world, particularly since they were trying to do special effects similar to the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence, so I am now impressed with how much they actually did accomplish.

Okay, now that I have cheered myself up, it's time for bed!

UPDATE: you can WATCH THE TRAILER for "Volkodav" here!! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipyYXVn15mI&mode=related&search=

happy birthday swampuncle!

Sorry, I meant to say this on Saturday, but I didn't blog that night - happy birthday Uncle Mark!

we'll be the worst of best friends

What a crazy weekend! Friday night, I succumbed to my desires and bought a new car - a Toyota RAV4, to be exact, with all the trimmings. It's a 6-cyl 4wd with a sunroof, 6-cd changer, heated leather seats, bluetooth for my cellphone, the ability to plug in my ipod, tons of cargo space, etc. I'm in love! I loved driving my other car, but the time had come to upgrade, and this RAV4 is leagues beyond my Pontiac in terms of handling and smoothness.

So Saturday, I took my lovely new car up to the city and had a late lunch with Tom and Julie. I hung out with them the rest of the afternoon, and then met up with Vidya. We had coffee and cake, and then went to a dance performance that Vidya had wanted to go to. She was going to see one of her friends perform, and I went with her. The first dance was actually pretty good, particularly since one of the dancers was an amputee, which made it all the more interesting. However, the second dance wasn't a dance, it was more of a 'performance art' piece, and I despised it. Actually, I loved it because it was so bad and I knew that I could walk out and give Vidya a rough time for dragging me to a dance performance.

The basic gist of the performance was that there was the 'dancer', who also choreographed, some dude who 'danced' with her, and then a band in the background. The 'dancer' started off the show balanced horizontally on the back of a wing chair, while the lead 'singer' read some text about slaughtering pigs, and the dude shaved the 'dancer's' leg. After he finished shaving one leg, he sat down to read a newspaper, and the 'dancer' writhed around in the chair while the singer sang 'la la la laaaah' over and over again. Later, the dude got up and shaved the chick's other leg. Then she writhed around some more. Oh, and did I mention that she was only wearing a really short white nightgown and white panties, which she proceeded to flash through most of the performance? Call me prudish, call me Victorian, but I really don't enjoy watching someone wearing white underwear lean backwards over a wing chair and spread their legs as wide as possible, nor do I consider that to be 'dancing'. It would perhaps be 'dancing' if she were writhing around a pole while guys were putting money into her waistband, but I really hate it when performance art is provocative just for the sake of being provocative (which pretty much means I hate most performance art).

The third dance was good (traditional Indian moves set to slightly more modern music), and then we left at intermission. That means that we missed the second-half piece titled 'Blood of the Virgin', which is too bad, but I can only take so much fun for one night. I spent an hour or so chatting with Vids in her apartment, then came home. Happily, I managed to sleep until around ten a.m., which was key since I woke up yesterday at 6:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. I spent the day doing v. little - I had lunch, talked to my parents, and then conned Oniel into taking me to Fremont to pick up my old car from the dealership. I just watched 'Office Space' on tv, and now it's time to sleep. Goodnight!

nobody knows the trouble i seen

Today kinda sucked--I was really busy, and I'm also still jetlagged to the point that I'm about as competent as a singed grapefruit. I don't even know what that means, but the fact that that was all I could think about for a simile indicates my problem. So the worst thing that happened today was that I completely wiped out in the hallway, seriously bruising my knee and cascading my coffee all over the cube that I fell next to. The guy in the cube was seriously shocked, but luckily it didn't land on him. Also luckily I had put lots of milk in it, so it didn't burn my hand off in the process. But, it was not a particularly enjoyable situation, particularly since my next meeting involved someone who cried. Ugh.

Now, though, even though I have tons to do I'm going to go to bed - tomorrow's soon enough to keep stressing, and my brain will probably function better once I get some sleep.

can't you see these skies are breaking?

Happy 22nd birthday, Michael!! My little brother is all grown up :(

I'm so tired that I almost feel drunk from fatigue. I was supposed to meet Claude at Cafe Borrone for a late dinner, but was so tired that I accidentally went to Coupa Cafe instead, which is in PA rather than Menlo Park, despite the fact that I've gone to Cafe Borrone at least fifty times. Luckily it didn't take too long to rectify my mistake, so we hung out and I got the scoop on John's wedding (which sounds like it was fun, but couldn't have possibly been as much fun as drinking homemade herbal vodka out of a sprite bottle in Ukraine).

Last night was rough--I had to go to a work-related dinner at Nola's (which was much different from Tammy's birthday party at Nola's, let me tell ya), and then I wasn't able to sleep until midnight, and then I woke up at four a.m. and laid in bed until six. Ugh. Hopefully tonight will be better! Sleep is imperative - I got back from vacation with 800+ unread emails, and I'm booked almost solid in meetings for the next two days :( So, goodnight, and hopefully I'll get back in touch with the people in my life sometime in the next few months or something.

sleepytime

I made it back to my apartment--it's one a.m., and I somehow have to drag myself into the office in seven hours :( So, it's time for bed!

sweet like candy to my soul

I'm sitting in Minneapolis, in a Chili's' listening to Dave Matthews,
which is pretty perfectly Midwestern. I am also the proud new owner of
a fly fishing tshirt--I'm so dirty that I can't take it anymore, so I
bought the first available shirt that came in a color that vaguely
matched my pants. The shirt also has some vaguely sexual innuendos
related to fly fishing, so now I just look like I'm making a slightly
unfortunate fashion statement.

'Dani California' just came on, so things are getting better...and I
just discovered that the blackberry's predictive text considers
'validpenis' to be an alternative for California. Ha!

The sad thing is that my flight doesn't take off for another hour and
a half, and then it's four hours to san francisco, and then I have to
get my car out of long term parking and drive home. Since I woke up at
5:30 am kiev time, this means that I will have been traveling for
almost 28 hours when I walk into my apartment. This portends a rather
miserable day at work tomorrow...I don't know what my calendar looks
like yet, but I bet I have to be there by nine at the latest. Sigh!

But, kiev was fantastically fun...I will post pictures when I get them
off my camera. As long as my family makes it to Iowa tonight, I will
consider this a smashing success! Now it's time to eat...will blog
later.

amsterdarn

I went through Holland for the second time in less than two weeks, and
I once again failed to see Walter, strippers, or Walter and strippers.
Clearly my impressions of Holland are positive.

Our plane is taking off...when we land, we'll be in America! Or, a
watery grave, but hopefully America. Love you all!

Goodbye Ukraine!

When I blog again, I will be in the West!

an american in kiev

I just watched snippets of this awesome movie called, I think,
Volkodav. Basically, imagine that there are a bunch of really dirty
Russians wandering around in the forest, and whenever they have
trouble coming up with a plot device, they borrow shamelessly from
'lord of the rings'. The main characters are dirty blonde versions of
Aragorn and Arwen, and there's also a midget king with a tasseled
umbrella, some guy with a scarred face and missing eye, this awesome
scene with a mongol horde, etc. The main guy has a pet bat who saves
him at the end. The last scene is a dead ringer for the Bridge of
Khazad-Dum sequence...the hero supercharges his sword with a lightning
bolt, kills this monster made of rock and fire, dies himself, and is
then reborn. Awesome!

Then again I have to remind myself that I may have missed a lot since
I didn't understand the dialogue, but I have a feeling that I wouldn't
have enjoyed it so much if I knew what was actually going on.

It's time for bed...we are in kiev, but leaving for the airport early
tomorrow. I'll be back in the States by Tuesday!

i'm a big big girl in a big big world

I've quite enjoyed the musical selections in the restaurant where we
have been eating dinner...they've been a strange combination of
one-hit wonders from America and Russian or Ukrainian drinking songs
and rap. I haven't heard 'Lady in Red' this many times since the days
when I used to watch 'Dodgeball' every couple of weeks.

Today was very laid back...we wandered around the central market, said
goodbye to Vova's parents, and then spent the rest of the day sitting
around our house. Tomorrow we're going to Kiev to see Little Sergei,
and we're spending the night in Kiev so that we can go to the airport
early on Monday morning.

I'm sad that my vacation is almost over, particularly since I haven't
planned another one yet, but it will be good to be home. Now, though,
I should go to bed...Kiev awaits!

mclenin

Today was a great day for me, and perhaps a not so great day for my
family. We went to the great and ancient city of Kiev with Sveta, and
we walked around for hours, until I was afraid that my family was
going to mutiny. Lucky for me, I have all their flight information and
the only working internet connection, so they need to keep me close to
make sure that I don't cancel their flights!

We visited the Lavra, which is the site of some crazy Orthodox
catacombs. Then, we had a late lunch at McDonalds, which has taken
over Kiev...when we were here thirteen years ago, there weren't any,
but I saw at least three today. We wandered through the ongoing
revolution in the main square, went to St. Sophia's church, then
walked down one more steep hill lined with souvenir kiosks before
finding our driver.

We luckily got to see Sveta's two boys, ages 5 and 3, for a few
minutes...they are absolutely adorable. But, it was hard to say
goodbye to Sveta again...she really never expected to see is again,
and there are no guarantees that we will make such a trip again, so
the goodbye was sad.

You are spared my brooding and ruminations tonight because I can't be
suitably expansive and melancholic while typing on this ridiculous
keyboard, so I shall go to bed instead. But, when I get back to the
States, I shall post many pictures. Goodnight!

radio silence

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday...we had a bit of a mishap with the
phone, which led to sixteen hours without internet, which caused quite
a bit of panic for me and my brother, since we are truly addicted.
Anyway, we are all still alive...although that may change with my
astonishing rate of mushroom consumption. In fact, the woman who made
us lunch today even called her mushroom dish 'chernobyl mushrooms',
which made me laugh.

Yesterday was Victory Day (aka V-E Day in the States), and so Vova and
his family came out to our place and barbecued. Today, we had lunch
with Yuri and his wife...Yuri was our translator during our first few
weeks in Ukraine, and we always suspected that he was providing
reports on us to the KGB, but he's a really nice guy and it was good
to see him. Then, Vova's dad took us to this big park in Uman, which
is 100 km south of here. It was quite impressive, although I would
like to know how many serfs were killed in the construction of the
park...they basically constructed all of these rock formations and
waterfalls to look natural, which couldn't have been an easy task
using the tools available 211 years ago.

On the way back to Bila Tserkva, our van was making a terrible noise,
so we may have transportation problems tomorrow. However, that is a
problem for another day...right now, I should go to bed!

P.S. Aunt Becky, we didn't see the radioactivity counter in the city
center...either they are trying to move on with their lives, or the
levels are so high that they don't even want to bother. Lenin's statue
survives.

minor celebrity

I awoke today to the roosters crowing and the sun streaming into my
face...there's nothing I can do about the roosters (unless the rifles
on the walls of the restaurant in our complex still work), but tonight
I will have to wear my facemask to bed so that I don't get woken up by
the sun at five a.m.

We had our usual ham and radioactive mushroom omelettes for breakfast,
and then we went into Bila Tserkva to meet up with Svetlana (aka
Sveta). We sat in her mother's living room drinking tea for an hour,
and then we went on a bit of a walking tour. We saw a real Orthodox
church (gorgeous...if you have never been, I recommend
wholeheartedly...the icons and paintings are amazing and
simultaneously mysterious in a way that I can't explain). Then we went
to the church that the town is named after (Bila Tserkva means white
church). This church is catholic, and like other catholic churches
they seem to survive mostly on tourism...they charge an entrance fee,
and the walls are covered in paintings which are for sale, making it
feel more like a gallery than a place of worship.

After this, we saw the statue of Yaroslav the Wise, who founded Bila
Tserkva in 1032. Then we went to the local museum, which was a riot in
ways which I shall not try to explain now. We had a delicious lunch
nearby (it's amazing how many good restaurants there are!), and then
went to the canning factory to surprise one of our old acquaintances.
He gave us a large jar of birch juice, which is now sitting sketchily
on our counter.

Tonight we had another excellent dinner, this time with Sveta, as well
as Sasha and his wife Kate. Sasha used to bring us eggs and milk and
potatoes from his village to our apartment, and it was very good to
see them.

Tomorrow is Victory Day, the holiday marking the end of World War II,
and Vova and his family are coming out here to barbecue. So, i suppose
I should go to bed. Sounds like things are wet in Iowa, but I hope
everyone else is well!

good, better, best

'Allo, comrades! Today was a very lovely day in Ukraine. We awoke to
greasy, radioactive mushroom omelettes, which were delish. Then, we
went out to Vova's parents' dacha (country home), where we toured
their orchard and enjoyed a light lunch of crimean red champagne and
bread with ham and pats of butter so thick that I thought they were
cheese. Yum! We also tried to communicate with Gennady's broken
English, my father's broken Russian, and a russian/English dictionary.
I was amused or bemused or something when Gennady told me that he
didn't used to like me, but he likes me now. Is that a compliment?

In the afternoon, we wandered around Bila Tserkva for awhile and saw
many of the old places we used to hang out. Then we went for a drive,
but I got carsick because my feet don't touch the ground in the van we
have, and the ride was really bumpy.

After the drive, we had a delicious dinner in the restaurant at our
complex...they offered us lard and vodka, but instead we had pork
steaks, fried potatoes with garlic, this disgusting raw fish with a
mayo and mustard sauce, some delicious fried potato-and-chicken
patties (that may not sound good, you'll have to trust me), and topped
it off with some cherry iced concoction that tasted like frozen cherry
pie filling. So if my brother and I die tonight, it's because we got
poisoned by bad ice.

Tomorrow promises to be another fun-filled day! To aunt Becky...invite
me to your island someday, I want to see it. To everyone else,
goodnight!

you don't know how lucky you are, boys

My guidebook said to avoid mushrooms because of the high chance of
radioactive contamination...and both of the meals I had today were
chock full of them. And let me be the first to tell you that
possibly-contaminated mushrooms are even tastier than their safer
counterparts!

The first full day of our ukrainian odyssey was very relaxing. We had
breakfast, went to vova's apartment for tea, and then spent a couple
of hours wandering through Alexandria Park with Vova, his son, and his
parents. After our rambles, we came back here for lunch (or rather
dinner since the service was so slow), then went back into Bila
Tserkva for groceries, then came back to our house and successfully
kept ourselves awake until a reasonable bedtime.

Now, a few quick observations:

1. Living here now would be a breeze compared to thirteen years
ago...while my father used to buy meat in an open-air market and
judged its quality by looking at the teeth of the dead animal, today
we went to a bona fide supermarket with a nicer meat and fish counter
and more delicious bread than you can get in most places in the
States.

2. Restaurants also seem better...in twenty-four hours, I haven't been
served anything that tested my gag reflex. As a matter of fact, I've
actually enjoyed everything I've eaten.

3. We have yet to be forced to drink any vodka...Vova said that since
things are better now, people don't need vodka as much. We'll see if
that holds up when we hang out with people who haven't made a fortune
since the fall of the USSR.

Okay, I'm tired of typing on this tiny keyboard, so I'm going to go to
bed. Say hello to America for me!

back in the ussr

We made it to Ukraine on schedule, after many hours spent crammed into
small airplane seats. Vova and Little Sergei were waiting at the
airport for us, bearing flowers and an extra van to haul all of our
luggage, which was nice.

The drive from the airport to Bila Tserkva made it shockingly apparent
how much things have changed since we left thirteen years ago. For
one, there are gas stations everywhere, obviating the need to buy
petrol and carry it around with you. For another, there are billboards
for mcdonalds everywhere. For a third thing, the checkpoints are no
longer manned with soldiers toting kalshnikovs. Some things don't
change though...vova was speeding and a cop pulled him over (by
standing at the side of the road and pointing his baton at him), and
Vova got away without a ticket, presumably after bribing him. Ah, the
memories.

We had dinner at this v. nice place in Bila Tserkva, where we had
cucumbers, tomatoes, bread, and pork...very ukrainian. Then Vova
brought us to the house he procured for us, which is situated on a
lake outside of town. It's a hysterical mix of very nice and very
stereotypically nouveau riche post-Soviet decorating tastes, as
evidened by the contrast between the nice wood floors and the gaudy
crimson and hold satin drapes. Also, I opened the top drawer of my
bedside table and found three used condoms, so this must be quite a
popular place for affairs.

I have tons of impressions to share...remind me to blog about
politics, wild west capitalism, and other things when I'm safely home
and can't be arrested. For now, though, it looks 'the matrix', dubbed
in Russian, is on TV, so it's time for me to sign off. Goodnight!

and if you say this life ain't good enough i would give my world to lift you up

I got a message from Adit last night, who was calling from John's bachelor party to say that they were singing Rob Thomas' 'Smooth'. Yay!

Now I have to run, it's time to leave for Ukraine! I'll blog when I can!

i need you to need me

So it's back to blogging with my tiny keyboard...I am sitting in the
san francisco airport, after a mad dash to get to my flight. At work
today I had to give six performance reviews and attend several
meetings; I had intended to leave at 4:30, but instead I left two
hours later, and I had to do laundry and pack. The end result was that
I made it to the airport, but dinner waited until eleven pm and
consisted of a disgusting, overpriced sandwich.

This wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't faced with the prospect of eating
borscht and cabbage rolls for the next ten days. Actually, who am I
kidding...I love eating terrible stuff and doing ridiculous things, so
I should be quite happy. I may never be sane, but at least I am
enjoying myself! Now i'm gonna ditch the blackberry and read until my
flight...Iowa awaits!

i barely dreamt her yesterday

I love Craig Ferguson - he just said how it would be better to have an elephant as a pet than a cat, because if you die alone in the house, the elephant won't eat it - it will cradle you lovingly in its trunk and carry you someplace instead. It's almost upsetting how much I lust after Craig Ferguson - he has grey hair and is a recovering alcoholic, but then again he has a fantastic accent and makes his living mocking other people and telling long, ridiculous stories, so he's actually perfect. Mmm.

Not only am I apparently attracted to 44-year-olds, but I am sometimes embarrassed by how easily I start to love something which turns out to be completely awful. Case in point - I wanted to quote AFI's 'Love Like Winter' in my title, and so I was looking up the lyrics, and I found the YouTube clip of the music video. The video is absolutely ridiculous - the male lead singer has really long false eyelashes, bangs that hang into his eyes, and the whole band is playing in the middle of a blizzard. The fact that I bought this CD makes me sad, but the fact that I secretly love this song makes me even sadder.

Today kind of sucked--I was at work for eleven hours, then came home and worked from 9:30pm until now, while simultaneously watching some television and trying not to burn my thighs (my work laptop is having some heating issues). I would be sad, but I got to watch Craig, which means I will go to bed with a warm, fuzzy feeling (and no, that should not be taken in a dirty or lascivious way - despite my use of the word 'lust', my love for him is pure). But now I should really go to bed, since I get to sleep for around six hours before getting up and doing it all over again. Goodnight!