habits

No, this is not an entry about my joining the nunnery or anything. I have finally broken my dvd buying habit. I’ve weaned myself off the incessant book-buying too. On top of that, I’ve even broken my Survivor habit. Yay! Unfortunately, the AI habit rages on, taking over more and more of my weekday life. I just know it will be on five times a week at some point.

I call Bo to win this season.

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Yesterday, I went to the big shopping center in Walnut Creek with Uyen. It was a gorgeous day, so we ate lunch outside and generally lazed about. It was a good time. We found out much too late that Nordstrom’s was having a fashion show and makeover demos all day long. The first floor was littered with little makeup stations and people getting makeup tips. I am bummed I missed it.

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We took Mobius to the beach today. He’s a good doggy companion for us. I hope he learns to swim one day.

review

I just had my first review at my new (as of last June) job. I lucked out in that I didn’t have to wait a full year for my review, as the company had just moved to a single date for all employees.

I had been somewhat nervous about it, not because I suffer from some job confidence issues, but because I was worried that people had not had sufficient opportunity to experience my awesome greatness. Hee. I kid. I really was worried because I had been working in somewhat of a vacuum for a while on my own subproject, so I was not getting a lot of feedback on if what I was doing was even marginally on the correct path or not, and I assumed that other people were probably wondering if I was doing anything at all.

It turns out that everyone left me alone because somehow I had proven myself enough early on that they felt comfortable with me taking over without any help. My manager showed me the write-up that my ex-manager did before his last day, and it was, in a word, glowing. I frankly could not believe how good everything sounded on paper. There was even a random comment about my sense of humor. Weird. My current manager even told me that management team could not think of a single area of improvement for me. Whoa. No way. I could think of like ten right off. In fact, I did list some things in my self-assessment feedback.

Yay! I am so happy.

context

Man, I really hope I quote this right:

God! How close can I get to the booty without actually being able to grab it?! — Seppo while playing some video game involving loot

I laughed until I cried.

congratulations

Remarks by Governor Howard Dean Accepting the Chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee

Well done, Dean. I look forward to you kicking some booty as DNC chair. Just dropped a $50 contribution to the DNC as a show of support, which hurt a tiny bit less because I just got my state tax returns deposited to my checking account this morning. 😀

word

I’ve made up a new word. I googled it and I’ve checked the urban dictionary, and I don’t see it mentioned anywhere. So here it is: nerditia.

It is just what it sounds like: a militia-like group of nerds, or an organized group of nerds. Here is an example: “Tipped off by Slashdot that there was a free-after-mail-in-rebate TiVo + satellite dish + dishwasher + star wars dvd box set combo on sale, the nerditia descended upon Fry’s Electronics and stripped it bare.”

weekend update with ei-nyung and seppo

I guess we just don’t have the patter of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. I’ll live, I think.

We’ve really been on a cooking binge. Tonight, Seppo made a mushroom sausage risotto and bittersweet chocolate-dipped strawberries, and I made a butterflied chicken with a mushroom leek stuffing. The risotto is for later in the week, but we had the chicken and strawberries tonight. I’ve never butterflied chicken before, but DAMN, it made for a juicy, flavorful chicken with an ultra-crispy skin due to the much higher oven temperature that butterflying allows. I wish I had known the secret of brining + patting the skin dry + butterflying much earlier in life. Our subscription to Cook’s Illustrated has really been paying off.

My sister told me that she’s going to put her house up for sale (or possibly rent, depending on the market) a week after lunar new year. Lunar new year is February 9th this year! The mind boggles. I’m pretty excited, but trying not to get my hopes up too much in case things fall through. The plan, if things go the way we want, will be that she will move to the Atlanta house with the two kids soon afterwards, then her husband will come join her when he sells the factory. I’m amazed that they somehow got the in-laws to go along with this without a fight.

If my sister moves to the US, my life will change drastically in one way. We’ve already discussed that she and her husband will buy the Atlanta house from me — not right away, but in a couple of years after they are established. My sister wants to pay me rent starting right away, but I told her that I’d rather see her build up her savings a little first so that she and her hubby can be relatively stable before kicking in on the house. I think all of us are so used to living paycheck-to-paycheck that I’d really like them to be able to build up a little nest egg. And once they buy the house from me, or start paying me rent, I too can start back up on my savings, which I have been robbing from quite a bit lately. Then Seppo and I will be able to breathe a little easier.

It’s funny; it’s not like we are entirely broke or can’t go have a nice dinner once in a while or buy a dvd or video game or save up for a nice gift. We can do that easily. I think it’s just that having such a huge combined debt always makes us feel like any spare cash we have has to be thrown into our second mortgages, so we never have a comfortable amount of savings, which is more than a little scary. It’s also difficult to visualize a future where we can afford to have children or afford to not have roommates.

I think I can swing a trip over to see my mom and bros (and maybe my sister and her kids by then) in July, after attending a wedding in Philly at the end of June. My mom is going to consign her friend to make my wedding dress, so my homework is to try on a bunch of different styles and check out fabrics ahead of time so that when I go visit, I can get measured and pick out a design for her to make. We are planning for her to make it really early and maybe slightly big, then send it out here many many months in advance (I’m thinking like 3/4 a year), so that I can get it altered for a final fit locally, or possibly dump it altogether if it turns out weird or something. Heh. My mom called today, all worried that she won’t be able to be here long enough ahead of time before the wedding to help out, but I assured her that one week will be fine for her participation. I better tell her soon that Seppo’s mom plans to do the flowers, since my mom also had a florist shop for several years. The battle of the moms wouldn’t be such a fun event, I think.

I feel a little hectic at work, but I think I’m not too far behind. I worry a little that I’m out of my depth, but I think I always feel like this at this phase of any project, and I haven’t actually screwed anything up too badly yet, so I guess I’m ok.

We saw The House of Flying Daggers yesterday at the Parkway, with Colin, Joe T, Uyen, and Charles. It was a visually and aurally stunning movie. There were some elements that I think the general audience might find to be cheesy or overly dramatic, but I felt that they fit in perfectly with the emotionally wrenching tone of the story. They are entirely different movies, but I feel like this movie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind share a lot in the way of hyper-visualization of inner emotional conflict and in the way that they were just simply beautiful to look at.

We just acquired a free blue/green leather couch in fairly good condition. It’s several years old but had been babied by the former owner, so it is in good shape. And it is oh-so-comfortable. I keep falling asleep on it. The best part is that dog hair doesn’t stick to it.

being frugal

It’s been a long time since I’ve truly tried to be frugal, but I think it’s definitely something I need to do right now. We have a lot of things to pay for right now. I think the TiVo (and the various accessories I spent money on) was my big purchase for the year, so I’m not going to buy anything else for entertainment that costs anything near that this year.

Now that I have Netflix, I don’t spend any money on DVDs. I have been thinking about getting a library card instead of buying so many books all the time. I probably spend $50-80 every time I go to the book store. I will go this weekend to sign up for a card. The other thing that I should do is make a book donation while I’m there. I have tons of books that the library could use. I don’t know if I’ll have time to get a box together before I go, but I definitely should do hat. I also have clothes I need to sort through and donate.

Cooking dinner at home more often will help save money, as well as help us eat better, so that’s definitely something we’ve been trying to do more. I think that we have more than enough good kitchen tools now, so we have to aggressively halt any cookware-envy in its tracks.

Other than these things, I’m not sure where the hole in my pocket comes from. Well, there is the money I periodically send to my mom, my dad, and to my sister. But pretty soon, hopefully, I can stop sending money to my sister and my dad, for different reasons. And my mom now has two boarders living at the house, so she is generating a steady, albeit small, income, which is great news.

I think after plugging up those holes, I should be able to throw a lot more into my second mortgage (which is a variable rate), expecially if I lower my 401(k) contribution. I’m pretty certain that my 401(k) portfolio is not going to outperform the interest deficit created by my second mortgage and the one credit card I have a balance on, so I am going to lower my contribution and throw that money into those problem areas instead.

Seppo and I have chosen a date, but it’s not fit for public broadcast yet, until we are rock-solid on the date. It’s more of an internal deadline right now. Heh. All I can say is, I’m sorry, Joe. 😀

reflections on december

I’ve harped on this for months now, but I think I learned a lot about the writing process. I haven’t had this much of a learning experience in a very long time, so I keep coming back to it. Some things I learned were:

• You write by writing. Yes, it is a truism. Shush. Everyday, if you can. The “muse” is not going to inspire you if you don’t write. Most of the inspiration comes from having you having so many ideas in your head that some of them merge and meld and become a story. If you aren’t writing, you aren’t thinking about your story as much as you could be, so you are going to be short on this so-called inspiration.
• You shouldn’t be so afraid of writing a word that isn’t just perfect for the scene, because it’ll make you afraid of writing a phrase that isn’t just perfect, then a sentence, then a paragraph, then a scene, then a chapter, then a book. Then you’ll have nothing, rather than some good and some bad writing. There is a backspace key for a reason, so stop being a chicken. Leave a note to yourself to come back and fix that word/phrase/sentence/etc. but just keep going.
• I’m not so good without a general outline. I can write scenes and dialog ok, but I can’t come up with the actual story arc on the fly.
• I can make at least one reader laugh and feel sad at appropriate moments. It’s a really good feeling to hear someone chuckling as they read something you wrote.
  
• The editing process of a book is no less important than the editing procress of a movie. It’s not just replacing some words and fixing typos. Sometimes, you’ll have to shuffle around your scenes, some will need to be “reshot” and some will be dropped altogether. Many new scenes may have to be written to make the story flow correctly. The story might get cut in half, or grow to more than twice the original size.
  
• I’m definitely doing this again this year! I loved the feeling of accomplishment, and my first complete read-through made me think that it wasn’t all that bad for a first draft.
  

what’s that in the wind?

I believe it is called “change”, and not the kind that clinks around in your pockets.

I got an email from my sister on Saturday. She was clearly upset and had some sort of a fight with my father. He told her that he was going to have to remarry because he was too young to be alone. I almost just wrote a rant, but I decided against it. The bottom line is that my mom is finally willing to get divorced, since he brought it up. My dad wants $3K so that he can move out, but he asked MY MOTHER for the $3K on Sunday on the phone in the same conversation he said that he wanted a divorce.

Ok, I just had to repress another urge for a rant, but it’s passing now.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we (mom & older bro & sis) are trying to figure out if it’ll just be easier to fork over the money (which we can’t really afford to, by the way) so that the sis won’t have to live with the monster while mom & he are going through divorce proceedings, or if we shut down the money pipe now. I’d like to shut it down now, but on a pragmatic level, it keeps the sis trapped with him, and everyday with him is like another day of sucking on the tailpipe of a car. She is so stressed and tired that I don’t want to put her through his oppressive presence for any longer.

I told my mom that I was willing to put up my third of the $3K.

short catch up

Blogger just ate my post. Oh well.

I had written something about my sister coming to visit, my work environment going all topsy-turvy, receiving my CafePress order (and being quite pleased about it), and getting a TiVo stand-alone unit.

It’s been mostly good.

Seppo and I decided to pick a date by the end of this month. A meta-decision is better than no decision. 😀