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| ok terisa, i'll spare you the pain of being historian and i'll recap this time. =) actually, i'm supposed to be at a meeting, but seeing as to how i am already 2 hours late, it's kinda pointless to show up, don't you think? i think so. i think i will just stay at home and blog instead.
friday: arrived in san jose around 11 p.m. stanley's flight was already in so we went outside to meet terisa. it was COLD. got to terisa's apt, which was totally spacious and excellent, met her roommie yuko, who was very nice (for some reason, she reminds me of H), and of course there were SNACKS! the thing i love about terisa is that she is always prepared snack-wise. even though it was supposed to be for great america, i still ate it. yum. =) i did not know about pirate's booty. that's good stuff. then stanley and i watched stardust, which i think there were a lot of parts i didn't remember from the book. it was pretty good.
saturday: woke up and asked terisa for the umptieth time time if we HAD to go to great america. pros: snacks, photo op with dora and sponge bob. cons: rollercoasters, possible rain and hail. terisa's counterargument: "it'll be fun...and i bought PONCHOS!" terisa made french toast, which was unbelievably good. to be honest, i think it was the best french toast i've had, and i'm not really one to exaggerate (much). post breakfast, we headed out to great america. it was not raining (though i kept silently praying for rain...oh wells). there were lotsa people already there...we got in...saw spongebob...took pix with spongebob. met terisa's friends, who really really are TALL (again, not exaggerating). i shall test my name memory skills: charles, cynthia, colleen and dave. whoo hoo!! i'm good. and then yuko and her friend, arwen, joined us too. tallness galore. the first ride was scary, even though terisa and stanley both said it wasn't. obviously, i felt very wary after that, and was distrustful of all subsequent roller coasters. i kept screaming, even though i said i wouldn't. actually, everyone else had a lot of fun it seemed. =) anyway, it didn't rain, so we stayed til early afternoon. i really wasn't being very enthusiastic (sorry), so i think terisa had pity on me and we went home to take a nap before dinner. HALLELUJAH!
oh yeah, terisa is officially inducted into the flake club! she told cynthia and charles we would meet them for tea and then proceeded to drive home and change into pajamas! i know what she's gonna say, that neither stanley or i reminded her even though we knew she "forgot"...uh huh. just the sorta thing a flake would say.
dinner...mexican restaurant. can't remember the name. good chips and salsa. ok guacamole (sorry....), rice was a little dry. i was already feeling sick so i got albondigas, but when the food arrived, everyone else's food looked BETTER!!!! waaah! i hate it when that happens. oh well, c'est la vie. after dinner, we said bye to everybody and continued on our way to the city. got there super early...so we went to the mall. SHOES! shoes can be so expensive. even the ugliest shoes can be tempting just because they're expensive. although i did try on a pair of glittery jellies that were adorable...unfortunately also $60 after a 50% price slash. that is just not even reasonable. wellz...then we went to some tea shop that sells dry tea leaves and then to this abercrombie-ish shop that had abercrombie-ish sized clothing. even stanley had to get xxl and we all agreed that he is not an xxl sized person in real life. next shop: BORDERS! even though i no longer purchase books, i still love borders.
margaret cho show: how can i describe it? 90% of it was stuff i'd never ever EVER repeat in public, in private, in my head, drunk, sober, awake, sleeping, here, there, anywhere, i will not repeat it sam-i-am, i will not eat green eggs and ham! oops, i mean, i will not quote margaret cho...to be honest...i can't remember a lot of it anyway. i was so TIRED. although in the beginning, there was a song about shoes. that i remember.
sunday: avatar day. so terisa always has some japanese/korean show that she's following that has a million episodes or something like that. avatar is actually on nick AND it's in english AND it's a cartoon! it reminds me of pokemon. it's pretty good. watched a few episodes in the morning. then went back to the city for famous chinese food. it was really delish--dry fried chicken wings (wet) [that's what it says on the menu], string beans, potstickers, shrimp dumplings...stanley uploaded all the pix onto his facebook so you can see it all there. oh yeah!!! the homeless man incident. so as we were parking we saw this raggedy man looking into this car's driver side window and terisa's all, "uh oh, why's that homeless man looking into that car?" we swung around to park and as we did, we saw the homeless man unlock the car door, and get in. stanley: "because the homeless man owns the car." apparently the quote of the day.
exploratorium. unfortunately, this was me again behaving un-vacation-like. i had a terrible headache and even though it was tres interesting and hands-on, i was slugging through it all. oh wait! the parking was fun! HAHAH! because we had such a difficult time finding a space and then somebody said "ooooOOOOOoooHHHhhh!" which set all of us into hysterics. hee. *wipe tear from eye* the joys of parking.
ok then we went inside the tactile dome with all these GIRL SCOUTS. sorry to be mean, but i only like girl scouts for the cookies...being stuck inside an dark, musty, unventilated, very small space with 15 of them while already having a headache is NOOOOO FUNNN. ok fine, it was nice that they were excited. i think it at least distracted me from my headache and how hot it was inside. anyway, the tactile dome guy (who seemed very bored) let us go in first, so as to not create some girl scout pileup inside the dome i guess. it was pretty fun. dark though. definitely gotta be careful about where your head is and where your hands go. and feet. terisa says she kicked me in my face, which i don't remember. i remember grabbing both stanley and terisa's feet. i remember hitting my head. and my elbow. and my knees. stanley started it, but eventually we all had to drink toilet water because it was so freaking hot and there was no other water available. don't worry though, it was CLEAN toilet water.
driving home. stopped for fro yo and tylenol. and pizza. home. more avatar. i was so out of it. stanley got like ten thousand messages from southwest about his flight being delayed. and delayed again. and moved up 15 minutes! then delayed again....again...again...
finished a lot of avatar. then terisa and i baked cupcakes. sometime in the evening the tylenol finally kicked in and i started being a normal human being again. terisa made these very martian looking cupcakes with little antenna and star sprinkle eyes. they were very cute. i shall upload pix. =) i especially like the "dummy" one.
i left san jose the next morning. yep, so that was the san jose trip, my POV. wow, v. long. good job finishing if you got to the end. =)
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| it's kinda sad to say, but i didn't really like january this year. =( my own birthday month! oh well, at least it's over now, and february is looking better (so far). last day of intervention tomorrow!!! never again will i sign up for THAT, no matter how much they pay me. (well, ok, maybe i'd do it again...just not anytime soon)
went to buy tickets for the color purple. =) i'm rediscovering my obsession with musicals. i have to be careful--every time i walk by the music center i'm tempted to buy tickets...
election day! i admit, i was not a very conscientious voter. i didn't read any of the literature they sent me. i haven't followed any of the candidates that closely...tried reading obama's book, but i'm still on the first chapter (sigh). too much conflicting info on the propositions, so i didn't know what to do about those either. being a well-informed citizen is a tough job...and totally time consuming! unfortunately, i didn't put much time and thought into voting for this election. maybe i'll get my act together by november.
i need to buy valentines. and maybe, fruit.
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| today's mood: musicals!
i watched high school musical, the first half of the old hairspray with ricki lake (when i realized it wasn't a musical i stopped watching), and rent.
thoughts:
1) i can see why girls are crazy about zac efron.
2) no singing in the old hairspray. booo!!
3) rent was kind of depressing. fantastic singing, though.
probably there were more productive ways to spend my time this afternoon...but i've put off thinking about all of them. and now i'm sleepy...so...nap?? yes, i think so. short nap. | | |
| This is a question that comes up (always) whenever I go on vacation from school: What am I going to do with all my free time??
If I'm in LA there's the onslaught of friends, eating, church, errands, reading, attempting to clean, attempting to work, etc, etc. I've always felt ambivalent about having time off in LA, as somehow it feels like it's not really time off at all. In a way, I'm just replacing work with a bunch of other activities. Granted I usually enjoy these activities much more than I enjoy going to work, but nevertheless...BUSY.
However, in the past year and a half, since my parents have moved to Indiana, vacations have been a bit different. Basically, I am spending weeks in a place where 1) it's cold, 2) I don't have access to a car or public transportation, 3) I don't have friends to hang out with. Last winter, I took it upon myself to write like, a zillion detailed Christmas cards (a feat never ever ever to be repeated again...well, not this year at least!) There was also Urbana 2006, which was followed by a period of (somewhat melodramatic) soul-searching and intense journaling. Result of Winter Break 2006: A tired hand and some paper cuts.
Summer 07: Well, my sister had Jacob then so I think we were all very busy with Jacob and Josie and navigating through a house with 5 adults and 2 kiddies. And we all rarely left the house (since no one is officially employed over the summer)...so you can imagine what that was like. =)
This winter break has actually been quite relaxing, to the point where in any 24 hour time period, I'm sleeping 12 and in my pajamas 24 (I confess I've been wearing the same pajama bottoms for the past three days, but as Rose says, so long as you're changing what's underneath...). During my awake times, I've been reading like it's going out of style. I actually planned for this to happen, as before I even arrived in Indiana, I had already started putting books on hold at the local library here. =) Somehow, I also ended up bring 5 books with me from LA, due to the fact that I am deathly phobic of getting bored on the plane (happens all the time: crossword's too hard, I can't sleep, someone's on my armrest and I'm too complacent to tell them to move please). Anyhow, I've finally crossed over to reading non-fic!! This is a big step for me as before, I would pick up a non-fic book and promptly drop into a coma...or something similar. Noteworthy, in particular: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; There Are No Shortcuts by Rafe Esquith; The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne; Better by Atul Gawande. Due credit is given to amazon.com since most of these books come from amazon's top 100 of 2007 list. (Honestly, it was so much easier to have someone else do the screening process for me...I love browsing in libraries, but I do get lazy.) But of course, I can't forget the fiction!! I've always been a fan of (well-written) fiction, regardless of genre. This winter, it was a bit touch-and-go--some were good, some were ok, one was absolutely blah (I had to go back to amazon and read the reviews, just to confirm others though it was as bad as I did). Let's dwell on the good: I highly recommend The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. In addition to the literary madness, I've also been helping my mom in the kitchen with all things doughy (wontons, bao zi, tan yuen, assorted breads). Mmmm, I really love playing with dough.
Well, now that vacation's nearly over, I'm starting to think about my return to LA (aka. my coming out of hibernation). Again, ambivalent feelings. I really get use to this kind of hermit-y lifestyle very quickly, which I guess is both good and bad. For the rest of the year, I don't have the luxury of sleeping half my day away, reading good books, thinking, pondering over the questions of life, having random conversations with my parents (incidentally, I think I act like I'm about 12 years old when I'm with my parents), wandering around the house looking for food. BUT...I don't regret for a bit the rest of the 48 weeks of the year, the insanity and fun and "never a dull moment" quality of it all. I look forward to being back and joining the meelee and the masses.
But before that, I'm going to enjoy a few more good books. =)
Take care, everyone.
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