the neat part about school holidays is that i get to see friends that i haven't seen in forever! at church earlier today, i got to see patty [formerly a husky - now a duck], her boyfriend michael, and our friends tomo and gori. it was nice to catch up, but it was also another reminder that the old group that we hung out with all the time prior to all of us going to college is sorta gone. we've all got our own thing going on now and well, we're just not as close as we all used to be. growing up...a tad bittersweet. and i guess it doesn't help that i suck at keeping in touch with people - with me it's like, out of sight, out of mind. i should definitely make more of an effort to keep in touch with peeps.

eeeee...i'm using wendy's titanium powerbook g4 right now! it's so beautiful...so shiny...and all widescreen action. wow...i would totally get one if i actually needed something like this, but since i honestly have no real use for it... ah well.

i found something fun on the web today. so friends, try this: type in your name and then youaremyfriend.com in your browser's web address line. so, for example: http://bradpitt.youaremyfriend.com - but where it says "bradpitt" you would insert your own name. it's really quite fun. :D

gripe of the day: holiday and post-holiday shoppers and drivers. granted...since i'm out and about at stores too, it makes me one of them, but honestly, don't these people have other places to go?

i'm just trippin' because in times such as these, parking is such a hassle to find...even crappy parking. and for some reason, drivers are suddenly lamer than usual. for example...parking lots with rows of angled parking...it alternates between directions in which you drive - yet i encountered two separate drivers in two separate lanes who were going in the wrong direction, as in driving towards me head-on. i'm starting a new habit...keeping a pad of white paper in the car, along with a big black sharpie - so that i may write "helpful" notes to these sucky drivers - i see this as a community service. :) like...the other day, i was out with my mom and andy, and there was this jeep grand cherokee that was like *this* close to us...i mean supremely close - ridiculously so - and had i had the paper and pen, i could've written something like "i don't think you can get any closer to our car, so would you mind backing off?" i suppose i could just forego the whole note thing and go militant. perhaps a nice bb gun [is that even how it's written...bb? anyway...]

so to combat all the tension created by the whole bad driver encounters thing, i've taken up crocheting and started up with the knitting again. it's quite relaxing and i suggest that everyone try it - boys too [though for you boys, i wouldn't go around declaring "guess what??? i'm knitting!!!" because then people might start to give you funny looks...] plus knitting/crocheting is so much fun! gosh...if only my papasan chair was here at home with me - then it would be perfect! ok...that was my inner granny - i'm better now. but i did get wendy hooked on crochet and now she's like a crocheting machine. chris wanted to learn too, but i think she got distracted by something. :)

so ever since i saw the two towers (for the second time), i've totally been like "i need to know what happens!" [yes *gasp* i have never read tolkien before - no, not even the hobbit, although i saw the cartoon when i was in elementary school - does that count?] so i decided to finally start reading the fatty all-three-books-in-one book that i bought from costco last year after the first movie came out. progress is slow, but it's fun. but sadly, i'm only at the part where frodo has left the shire and encountered the elves on the way to his new house. so in terms of the movie, it's like the first half hour or something. but if you haven't read it, or if you have, but it's been awhile, you should read it! reading is fun and you should all try it. :D

oh yea, and i changed the look of my blog...the whole magenta/pink motif was starting to bug. i was lazy and used a pre-made template instead of making my own and the blue stripey thing is a bit sedate, but it'll do for now - at least until i feel like coding my own background.

gross finding of the day: a plastic to-go container filled with tortilla chips, what might have been a quesadilla, and a side of sauce - all of which was under the passenger seat of my car - and all of which was totally covered in fuzzy green and white mold.

yea...imagine my surprise as i climbed into the backseat of my car [my dad was driving and my mom was up in front] on our way to lunch and my foot bumps into this plastic container. i pick it up and both my brother and i were horrified at what was inside, and it smelled too. it was seriously disgusting. and i have no idea where it came from, but from the looks of it, it had been there for awhile - as in before i got home from break. and i can't seem to remember where it might have been from - but i do know that it's probably not mine since i usually drive my car and am not sitting in the back. thus, my conclusion is that somebody else left it in my car and forgot to take it with them when they exited the vehicle - which is fairly understandable, but still gross. blech.

something that amused me for the better part of 5 minutes: our home phone line has been going all wacky since christmas eve and we've had to call verizon like 3 times for them to fix it and it turns out that whenever the phone line was first installed [i'm thinking like almost 10 years ago], the guy who had stripped the plastic off the wires and stripped off too much and left the wires open to the elements, and plus, he did a crappy job of securing the plastic box in which the wires would be housed. so...as water got in, i guess it kept causing more damage on the line until eventually the dial tone turned into static. so over the last couple of days, whenever people would try to call, they'd just get static - no rings at all. ok...so the technician man fixed it today. while we were out, wendy [my cousin] called my cell and was commenting about how our phone line still doesn't work. i was like...oh...but the guy fixed it today. so i asked her if it rang [versus just static like before] and she said yes, that it just kept ringing and no one picked up. i was like...er...that's because no one's home. :) i had a good laugh - and now wendy will probably beat me down. haha...i went to dinner with her and che and i was telling che and we had another good laugh. :D [wendy sort of glared at us.]

and an end to a fun day - a second viewing of the two towers! yay! fun fun! again...maximus...so done. it's all about aragorn and legolas.

i found the following on some person's blog... [note: it has been edited for content]

LEARN KOREAN IN 5 MINUTES

1) That's not right..............................Sum Ting Wong
2) Are you harboring a fugitive..................Hu Yu Hai Ding

3) See me ASAP...................................Kum Hia
4) Stupid Man....................................Dum Gai
5) Small Horse...................................Tai Ni Po Ni
6) Did you go to the beach.......................Wai Yu So Tan
7) I bumped the coffee table.....................Ai Bang Mai Ni
8) I think you need a face lift..................Chin Tu Fat
9) It's Very dark in here........................Wao So Dim

10) I Thought you were on a diet..................Wai Yu Mun Ching
11) This is a tow away zone.......................No Pah King
12) Our meeting is scheduled for next week........Wai Yu Kum Nao
13) Staying out of sight..........................Lei Ying Lo
14) He's cleaning his automobile .................Wa Shing Ka
15) Your body odor is offensive...................Yu Stin Ki Pu
16) Great.........................................*edited word* Su Pah
17 ) England will win the World Cup................No *edited word* Wai
18 ) Whos been eating all the pies?................Yo Fat Wan Ka

and not to be all picky...but...so not korean. if anything...way more chinese sounding...can't you just picture an old chinese lady, very possibly somebody's mom or grandma? :)

anywho...the extended family feasted in chinatown, at golden horse...which ends up being the place we go to for all major holidays now, apparently. but it was good. our cousin jeff got a new digital camcorder and we had some fun with that. on a side note, he's growing his hair out, just for kicks i guess, but he looks just like harry potter - well, just like harry potter if harry potter were chinese, without glasses, 6-feet tall, weighed somewhere in the vicinity of 200 lbs and had conan o'brien's type of humor. :)

merry christmas to all!

in the wacky tradition in which my family does the untraditional, for christmas eve, jenny, jenny's friend sarah, chris, james, wendy, and i caught a movie...two weeks notice, which was funny - because sandra bullock is funny and hugh grant is funny. so, with the two of them together in one movie, makes for a very funny and enjoyable movie. hooray for romantic comedies that feed us more preposterous notions about relationships. one of these days, i'm really going to wake up and enter the real world - but not quite yet.

after the two hours of the fantasyland that is the movie-world, we ate random foods - which included iver's clam chowder and leftover noodles. this has the strong potential to sound sad, but it actually isn't - not so much anyway. every christmas eve for at least the last 7/8 years has been spent in random ways. when we were kids in youth group, a bunch of friends - the ol' jibc crew and friends - would congregate at chris and wendy's and just goof off until it was time to go home. we were the kids whose parents were working at the restaurant, or busy with church events, or busy hosting way too many people at their own house. it was actually tons of fun. the last couple of years have involved movie watching and then scrounging for food. but it's all good, because christmas day dinner is the big thing. the whole extended fam goes out to chinatown and we grub - i think maybe one year we did a potluck...oh wait...i think that was one thanksgiving 3 years ago...nevermind. anyway, anytime the extended family gets together for dinner it's fun, well, mostly fun, especially if the uncles and stuff get a bit sloshed...but it's more funny just because they're usually so proper. :)

and my little brother andy gets back from florida tomorrow - he went with his wrestling team - which i've been banned from making comments about. he doesn't appreciate when i make totally innocent comments about his little outfit...er...spandex uniform. but come on...he couldn't pick a different sport? one where there isn't a fear of getting ringworm and other weird fungi diseases? eh, i hope he got me a present from the magic kingdom :)

it's a little odd being home...but only because most of my time for the last 4 years has been spent in seattle. so when i'm here, i don't exactly have a "home" church, which means i just end up going to whichever church happens to strike my fancy. for christmas sunday, i went to antioch christian fellowship, out in tigard [that's in oregon]. it was nice - it wasn't exactly a traditional "christmas-y" message, but it was good anyway because it was about blessings and being a blessing to others. funny thing is that's two weeks in a row i've heard a message about blessings and such. last week a speaker at our church, rob schwartz, spoke about blessing and even used the same passage from the first few verses of genesis 12. interesting. afterwards, i dropped in a youth kids christmas party - which was a lot of fun, but that's mostly because these kids are just funny. we played guesstures and it was girls vs. boys - obviously the girls won. :) then there was the white elephant gift exchange - which was fun too.

today was much less eventful - a stop to costco to get my brand-spanking new tires onto my car and shopping with my dad for restaurant supplies - i think the checkout guy was horrified by the mass amounts of rice my dad bought. there was a brief stop at old navy - to help shop for a gift for project angel tree - a program that gets gifts for children whose parents are in prison, and some dinner with my parents.

it's very odd...christmas is in two days...yet it just doesn't feel like it's christmas time yet. i can't quite figure out why. maybe i should get off the computer and reflect on that for a bit. :)

...

wow...though it's been just a little over a week between blogs, it feels like much longer. in the last week - i still got no rest...busy...working, shopping, working, shopping, going to christmas parties... the plan for my vacation is to sleep as late as i can without dipping into extreme laziness, so in essence, sleeping till about noon everyday sounds good. :) it's been a fun week despite the lack the sleep.

the two towers added to my lack of sleep, but it was so worth it...so much fun and enjoyment! aragorn and legolas...enough said. i can't wait to go and see it again. and because i seriously lack any sort of patience, i'm going to read the trilogy while i'm at home...because i need to know how it ends and i can't wait another year until the third movie comes out!

i left for portland and i got home earlier this afternoon...after an extremely inefficient drive home. detour was the key word of the day. i guess being tired really doesn't help, since i kept missing the turn-offs and exits that i needed to take. but 6 hours later, after stops at krispy kremes and an ill-fated search for an alternate route to ikea - i made it home. yay! and then after getting all cleaned up, hitched a ride to a christmas party down in west linn. it was fun, with lots of good food, and very random company. my old roommates were there, and other friends who are back from school or wherever they moved to. and the hosts even prepared party games - with a fear factor type round, which involved caroling to ja hye's parents (who are korean and choir directors no less) to guessing a food purely by it's texture (it was tripe - good job mark!)

and...there are always those kinda funny things that happen at parties, like people... and their quirks...hehe.

double hooray for me again! my last presentation kicked booty. my group and i went down to airborne express headquarters, down near the space needle, and had our presentation in their executive board room - where we presented to our client, our prof, and some airborne people. it was awesome! we were totally smooth and poised, and fielded questions expertly. yay! i'm one step away from total freedom...at least for 3 weeks, until winter quarter starts. i just have to finish the report for the presentation we did today. and then i'm done with my last autumn quarter of undergraduate studies ever!!!

hooray for me! my spanish presentation was grr-eat! apparently i still had some leftover animosity that got translated into revved up energy. my classmates told me my presentation rocked - of course i think that their sympathy for the disaster on monday helped. :) so i've got tomorrow left and a paper to write over the weekend. i've definitely noticed that mood has been significantly more cheery with each thing that i finish and don't have to think about anymore.

and of course, there is always that good ol' remedy of retail therapy. yea, i said it. retail therapy. on my way home from the bus stop drop-off, i passed by gotrocks - a semi-new agey store full of rocks, stones, and jewelry, etc. and the pendant that i've been eyeing since before thanksgiving was just sitting in the window - begging me to buy it. it was my christmas present to myself! yay! so pretty...peridot, pink tourmaline, and blue tourmaline set in sterling silver on a black leather cord... fun fun!

academic countdown:

El nuevo cine latinoamericano Presentation

Take-Home Final Essay for Span 322 [Cultural Studies]

IS 310 Final Exam

I BUS: Importing - Company Presentation

I BUS: Importing - Company Report [8 pages single-spaced

and then it's FREEEEE-DOMMMMMM! [think william wallace - though in no way demeaning the historical and cultural significance of their real fight for freedom of the scottish against the english]

it's my blog...and i'll whine and complain if i want to...

i think today could easily be one of the worst days i've experienced in a long time. i had a presentation in my spanish class scheduled for today and i spent forever working on it and researching it - granted it was forever last night - until 6:30am this morning. [i think some of my best work is done under this kind of pressure.] anyway, so i only had two hours of sleep and all day long i've been building up my confidence to do this presentation - which was only difficult because it's in spanish and we have so many great spanish speakers in class who are mass intimidating. anywho...i skipped lunch too because i was so nervous and didn't want to take any chances.

ok, so my 1:30pm, i'm extremely tired, starving, and moody because i'm feeling all PMS-y [i'm sure nobody really cared to know that - but i'm on a rampage...] and there's like 4 people ahead of me who have to present - and each presentation is to be 10 minutes max. this is a two-hour class with a 10 minute break between hours. so...doing the math, all five of us should be able to finish with plenty of time leftover. during the first hour, three people did theirs and then we took a break. at the start of the second hour, this guy went up to do his presentation, which he made sound like it was too short because he mentioned he had a video that was two minutes long. so...he gets up there...and he start his presentation...10 minutes later, he's still going, and 10 minutes after that, still going. at this point, there's like 25 minutes of class left - still enough time for me. yea...like 35 minutes after he started, he finishes up and there's like 11 minutes left of class and i'm thinking, i can totally do my presentation in that amount of time...but no. he pops in his video and at this point i'm thinking...ok...two minute video...i can still finish mine in 9 minutes [with the whole fast talking thing].

yea...the video clip ran for 10 minutes, and then class was over. i was livid. i wanted to jump up onto the table and taking a flying body tackle at this guy and beat him to the ground until he cried. i know...violence is never the answer...but i was that upset [given my lack of sleep, food, and pms - not to mention the anticipation and nerves i'd had to deal with all day long - which i'll have to repeat on wednesday.] i mean...fury was oozing from every fiber of my being. this was supposed to be one more thing that i could cross of my list and not deal with and i was just a bit crazed that i didn't get to stop worrying about it. well, 15 minutes after class, all my anger evaporated and i was just annoyed. i think i can say a big thanks to God for the quick simmerin' down of the crazy mad. so...what i'm left with is resignation that i'm going on wednesday. *sigh*

academic countdown:

Bodas de sangre Essay - el teatro contra el baile contra el cine

IS 310 Web Services Presentation

IS 310 XML Homework

El nuevo cine latinoamericano Presentation

Take-Home Final Essay for Span 322 [Cultural Studies]

IS 310 Final Exam

I BUS: Importing - Company Presentation

I BUS: Importing - Company Report [8 pages single-spaced]

all of this...by thursday. it's a big lame. and now that i've whined and complained for all the world - or whoever actually skims this - i'm going to find a happy thought that hold onto that for awhile.