Saturday Timeline
2:50am Go to sleep
9:30am Roll out of bed to feed Mobi.
9:31am Roll back into bed.
10:30am Wake up.
10:50am Walk the dog.
11:25am Shower.
11:45am Leave house.
12:15pm Pick up Uyen.
12:45pm Drop off Uyen at Lindsi’s.
12:50pm Meet Holly.
1:15pm Eat lunch.
2:25pm Meet Holly’s friend on the street at a Mike Levin endorsement event.
2:40pm Almost shake hands with Mayor Gavin Newsom.
2:55-3:20pm Tag along with Mike Levin, Gavin Newsom, and volunteer posse and take some pics.
3:40pm Arrive at theater to watch Brokeback Mountain.
6:25pm Get out of theater and start driving to dinner.
6:30pm-6:57pm Get lost. Ha!
7:10pm Find best parking spot ever, within seconds of deciding where we want to eat.
7:13pm Get fastest ever seating in a packed restaurant full of waiting people even without reservations because there were only two of us. Score!
8:15pm Drop off Holly.
8:25pm Drop by Lindsi’s.
9:45pm Leave Lindsi’s.
10:10pm Get home.
10:20-11:00pm Walk Mobi.
Tired. Had a great time though. 🙂 Will post the one good pic I got of Gavin Newsom (who turned out to be a remarkably handsome man in person, which was weird) and a review of my meal at Home, the restaurant in which Holly & I ate dinner.
weakened/weekend
I don’t know why, but my sleep pattern has really gone through a huge disruption recently. Last night, I went to bed at 11pm, but couldn’t fall asleep until 1am, then I woke up abruptly at 5, tried unsuccessfully to fall asleep until 6:30, then finally gave up and picked up a book to read. As a result, I feel really tired. The night before was problematic too.
A bug I had been obsessed with getting resolved for work has been resolved! You’d think all I worked on were bugs, since I only really mention work when I get stuck on a bug or am over it.
I called around to see who would replace our Civic’s headlight assembly and for how much, but the cheapest place is not open over the weekend, so that will have to wait. Again. Sigh. The other places are prohibitively expensive. Bleh.
Today, I had a makeup consultation because I know as much about makeup as a 12 year old boy, even though I have been trying to educate myself these recent months. I alternated between thinking I looked great and wondering if I was wearing too much makeup. I think I’ll ask the makeup person to use less when we really go for it, but over all, I was very happy with it.
Seppo took off this morning with his cousin and Joe to pick up some more people to head over to Tahoe for his bachelor party. They left at 10 in the morning, and by the time he called me to let me know he had arrived safely, it was already 6pm! 8 hours of driving to go what would usually take 3-4 hours. Yikes.
So yeah, I met Seppo’s cousin for the first time on Thursday. He’s really awesome and funny, and clearly so fond of Seppo that it would have been difficult for us not to get along. 🙂 There is a clear family resemblance in their profiles, but not in very much else. We watched “Fever Pitch” in fast forward to find the 5-6 scenes you can see him in the movie (he does background work). There is a great shot where you see him dead center of the screen for a good part of the scene. It’s awesome!
I went over to Uyen’s for dinner (delicious lo mein, which I had three helpings of, for the love of monkey) and stayed and chatted until about half an hour ago. Apparently, she and Lindsi and Dara are going shopping tomorrow for bachelorette party stuff, which only puts the fear of God in me. As for me, I am going to take a very long walk with Mobi in the morning then heading over to have lunch with Holly before going to see Brokeback Mountain together. Fun! I am hoping to keep Sunday completely free to clean and go grocery shopping. I want to make my braised short ribs for dinner, but for the first time ever, in a pressure cooker (an early wedding gift, for which I am buying thank you cards). Woo!
one
Only one girl/woman on AI has it all (for me): great looks, charming & sweet personality, great vocals, and a powerful presence.
That woman is Mandisa. Everyone else put me to sleep tonight. Sheesh. Try not to be so boring, ladies.
Melissa and Ayla pleasantly surprised me tonight, but not enough to really care. Someone take annoying Kellie Pickler off my tv screen.
packed full
This past weekend was insanely busy.
Friday night: Girls’ night at Becky’s. We ate a lot of great food (the cheeses were so very tasty) and generally hung out and made big dorks of ourselves. 🙂 It was hysterically fun. Nominally, it was supposed to be makeup night, but we never got around to that. Whatever happens at girls’ night stays in girls’ night, so I can’t say anything. Please kill me for writing that phrase. Heh.
Saturday: I drove into the city for my friend’s bridal shower. She’s getting married one week before me in Vegas then going on her honeymoon right away, so neither of us will get to attend the other’s wedding, so I really wanted to make it out to see her. I was only able to attend the brunch/bridal shower event of three (dinner and dancing was also on the agenda for the day), but it was so nice. A bunch of people came in from out of town, including her bridesmaids and sister. It brought together her various friends from different circles, yet the group was small and intimate enough that we all felt like we were finally putting faces to the names we had heard all along. We played a bunch of silly pre-wedding games and had fantastic tea at Lovejoy’s Teahouse. We wrote advice on little cards and made a scrapbook with polaroids we took with her. I also got to see a few people I had lost touch with from my old job, so that was nice too. Bonus! 🙂
We also did some grocery shopping at the Korean market, where I was able to get the info about their catering, since my mom wants to have some Korean appetizers at the reception as well. Mission accomplished.
Sunday: Seppo and I drove out to go to Nordstrom’s Rack and Men’s Wearhouse. I bought some cheap-o white shoes (I am thinking about using the shoes borrowed from Uyen anyway, since hers are so much cuter) then caught up with Seppo who was getting measured for a tux. After that, we were supposed to meet up with Becky and Uyen who were also at the same mall shopping, but our car’s battery had died. Luckily, we had jumpers with us and Uyen drove over Becky’s car and gave us a jump, while Becky ever-so-patiently waited for us where she was saving us a place at the eatery we were going to meet at, since Seppo and I had interrupted both their meals. Thanks guys!
variety
For some reason, Seppo and I were discussing alternate careers in the car. I remembered that when I was younger, I was very interested in becoming a family therapist/counselor. I’m actually interested enough to give it serious second thought.
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I’ve started posting on an Asian American hiphop message board. Hee hee. They thought I was a dude for a while. Oops.
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American Idol, Guy’s night assessment and boot predictions.
The Great:
- Chris Daughtry. Sang Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive”. What can I do when someone sings Bon Jovi and sings it well?
- Ace Young. Sang George Michael’s “Father Figure”. So many middle-aged housewives are having inappropriate fantasies about him now.
- Elliot Yamin. Sang Stevie Wonder’s “If You Really Love Me”. I can’t help thinking “meth mouth” everytime I see him, but he is undeniably great.
The Fun & Good:
- Will Makar. Sang Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”. I love the song and he made one of the best song choices aside from the people above, hitting the correct demographic for him: fun, young, and a little sentimental. He’s not as good of a singer as the people above.
- Gedeon McKinney. Sang “Shout!”, but I don’t know who sang it first/best/most famously. I love the song and it was fun, but he weirds me out when he talks and stares.
The Less Fun But Still Good:
- Kevin Covais. Sang Brian McKinght’s “One Last Cry”. The performance was awkward looking, but his singing was pretty good.
- Taylor Hicks. Sang Elton John’s “Levon”. I expected more from him. He wasn’t as great as before, but still very very good.
- Patrick Hill. Sang Melissa Ethridge’s “Come To My Window”. He’s clearly a great singer but something about the performance sucked and bored me silly.
The Horrible/Uncomfortable (even if good):
- David Radford. Sang what my guess is Michael Buble’s version of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”. His “crooning” is so fake that I just can’t watch him. And I felt bad for all the legitimate criticism he got, so I want him to just go.
- Bobby Bennett. Sang Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”. He was better doing Louis Armstrong with his gravelly voice; this was just schmaltzy lounge-y crapola on a stick.
- Jose Penala. Sang Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “Reasons”. All the singing was done in falsetto, which I just hate, so I can’t be objective. Seppo says he was flat throughout.
- Bucky Covington. Sang Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man”. I couldn’t understand anything he sang in his mush-mouth and overly-forced growls. He might have a good tone underneath, but I didn’t see it.
My guess is that Bobby and either David, Patrick, or Gedeon get it. I think Bobby & David should go, but Bobby & Gedeon will go because of lack of screen time.
Arrival!
My sister and her kids are arriving in the US (ATL, to be exact) next Monday. Woo!
definition
[noun]:
A person of questionable sanity who starts their own cult
‘How will you be defined in the dictionary?’ at QuizGalaxy.com
and
[adjective]:
Smelling like turnips at all times
‘How will you be defined in the dictionary?’ at QuizGalaxy.com
*snort*
social
My beloved friend from Boston came in town for a visit this weekend, as she was attending a wedding on Saturday. On Sunday, we got to spend a lovely day reminiscing and speaking lightly and deeply about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. It was great! 🙂
The thing I want to write about is tangentially related to her visit. On Sunday night, we went to dinner at Palomino with a bunch of her other Bay Area friends. Reservations and seating were a fiasco not of our making, but that’s not really the thing I’m trying to get at. At some point in the evening, while we were all sitting around the table, eating and conversing, I realized that I was unpurposely and unconsciously acting like a person who had had a few drinks. My face was flushed, I was speaking a little more loudly than usual, I was giggling and giggly at the smallest things, and in general, I was just amped up. It really weirded me out, not because this behavior was unusual, but because I had finally made a conscious connection between my disconnected symptoms and those of a slightly buzzed person. Hmm.
The other thing that happened is that since a bunch of us who had known each other since freshman year of college were there, as well as a bunch of transplants to the East Coast, we naturally got to talking about the differences in our behavior and attitudes as a result of our living environment. In particular, one of the people there had lived in Philly for a year, so she was speaking about how rough things felt there. And so my friend launched into a story about how I accidentally cussed out a British tourist when I was in college because I accidentally thought he was accosting us, not asking us for directions.
The thing I hate about that story is that it makes me sound 1) violent, 2) out of control, 3) hostile, 4) paranoid, or 5) all of the above. The problem is that given the context of living in Philly, behaving the way I had would have been accepted as perfectly normal by most Philadelphians I know. I learned to adjust when I moved to Boston, but it took time. And I learned to adjust when I moved out here, and it’s still taking time. But again, the thing I hate is that people listen to that story without having context of what a day-to-day environment in Philly was like growing up. It’s not that I had a chip on my shoulder; it’s that that’s the normal way to behave where I was. And since I moved, I have been adapting to the new waters. That’s what normal human beings do. To act as a Californian (very friendly and open) in Philly would piss off all the people I met and make them feel threatened because they won’t understand what is going on. You do as the Romans do.
Anyway, after we finished eating dinner, we had decided that my out-of-town friend and another friend (whom she was staking with overnight) would get dropped off by me, so we all walked over to our car. Given the stories that had been told, and given that we were all in a great mood from a fun evening of hanging out, when we encountered three people taking up the entire pavement, we were all smiles and soft voices and rueful apology and “Excuse me”s as we tried to pass them. Only they didn’t move at all, even with repeated excuse mes. So as we passed, I think I gave a very quite disgruntled “hmmph” but given the good mood I was in, I don’t even really think I did (but I have reflected on the incident a few times now, and really think there is a possibility that I might have), especially because I was trying to show my friends that I wasn’t like that story that was told about me. Then one of the guys turned around after we passed and loudly and rudely said, “You could have at least said excuse me!” I turned around, shocked and annoyed, and said, “We f*#$ing said excuse me like ten times!” and walked away. I was so annoyed. And my friend joked to me, “So is this what you meant by becoming soft in CA?” I know she was totally joking, and I saw the irony of the situation, but those people really pissed me off, that we were so nice, so polite, so sheepish about passing them, after having had a great time, and they’d be so rude. I don’t know. Was my behavior out of line? :-/
Because I do
Our officiant sent us her first draft of our wedding ceremony. It was simple and beautiful. Aside from a few small changes, I really like it.
On a completely unrelated note, I am calling Taylor Hicks, Paris Bennett, and Ace Young as making top 5 on this season of AI. The links will make it clear why.