kristie and i drove up to vancouver, bc for a day trip. generally at border crossings, i tend to overshare with the border patrol.

border patrol: what's the nature of your visit?
me: we plan on eating and getting some hair done.
border patrol: you're driving all this way for food? [said with good nature]
me: well, we'll have lunch and dinner. two complete meals.
border patrol: do you have any alcohol or weapons?
me: no.
border patrol: no pepper spray?
me: no, but i do have a small pocket knife on my key chain.

border patrol man has pretty much been laughing at me the entire time...on the inside. but i believe in the "tell them everything" method to prevent being detained and searched, and so far, it's worked. kristie laughed at me too. on the way back, it was pretty much the same thing when we were asked me we were bringing anything back. i listed one egg tart, one cream puff, and some office supply stuff i purchased at daiso...the greatest two-canadian dollar store. the man was like, too much information, but he did wave us on through.

we had dim sum for lunch with chris and jenny and afterwards, we sat at the salon with kristie for a little bit. since we knew she'd be there for at least 5 hours, we walked over to the two-canadian dollar store and to the new aberdeen mall. the mall is very hong kong mall-esque and has fountains that play "shows" like those bellagio fountains in the vegas. we walked around some more in the mall and then paused to have a snack break. we stopped by yaohan before heading back to the salon and crashing in their waiting area. dinner was good and cheap sushi in vancouver with a post-dinner walk around some bc coastline. i was shown this humongoid public pool near the beach. it's gigantic and it's totally for public use. everytime i visit canada, i find more reasons to like it.

i spent the weekend in bellingham at my church's retreat and it was a lot of fun. in all the years i've been at sfcc, i never went to a retreat until this past weekend. i think every year they've held it i've been out of town or unable to go. it was a lot of fun to get to know people in our english congregation that i didn't know very well before. we're not a huge congregation and sadly, there are many people that i still do not know. but, i did get to know one of the girls who attends the mandarin speaking college fellowship better and i found out that she lived in panama for 10 years! so, she speaks fluent spanish. how great it that? i really enjoyed the opportunity to be away from work for a whole weekend. and the speaker had some nice reminders for me about finding God's will, as in, having a balance and not being so consumed with figuring out God's will that we lose sight of the fact that we're where God wants us to be for the moment. like, if we're always looking forward, we forget to live in the present. i liked that. and at the same time, not just sitting back on your heels thinking, oh, whatever i do must be God's will for me since He knows my whole life, you know i mean?

i didn't have to work today, so i went over to james and joana's place to babysit owen. owen is just about 3 months old and he's so much fun. well, all he does right now is lie down like a lump, but, he's very cute, has a mellow disposition, and smiles a lot, especially at girls.

check out the cool hair. his mom says they get a lot of comments about how they've never seen a baby with so much hair...and such cool hair at that. owen and i played with his musical toy, listened to the bathroom fan which calms him if he's fussy, and bounced around a lot. he has recently discovered his fist, which he likes to keep raised, militant style. it's great.

i uploaded pictures from the boston trip, my brother's graduation, and the jason mraz concert. i'll probably write about those things later. i'm not feeling all that bloggy.

i've finally uploaded my photos from spain. you can view them here.

i still have some photos from my trip out to boston and the jason mraz concert. i would just like to say, jason mraz is great. i don't think it's possible for anyone to have walked out of the concert and not been just a little teeny bit in love with him and his music. i think his is the best concert i've been too, not that i've gone to all that many.

i've been back at work since wednesday and it's been good because they've been slow non-patient days. i find that i don't mind being at work as much as i used to. it could be the weather outside that has been so pleasant, or that kelley is back from WSU and working for the summer who can share in my frustrations about the downsides of work, or that i'm still having the mellow vibe i picked up in spain - which goes into hiding when family is around...but more about boston and family later. i love that summer is here! yippee!

do you ever get the feeling that you're assigned to fill a certain role? and that no matter what you do, you can't seem to fight your way out of it? what if you were to suddenly quit your role? what would that do to everything/everyone around you? how would it upset the so-called balance? wouldn't it be interesting to see how things/people would respond to your breaking out of your mold? would they even allow you to escape or would they push you right back in?

i felt more philosophical than usual, which would normally be not at all, well, very little anyway.

i watched super size me this afternoon with my brother andy. afterwards, i couldn't even stand the thought of eating mcdonalds, or any other fast food. andy, on the other hand, couldn't wait to have some mcdonalds for dinner. gross. i could feel myself dying inside just watching morgan spurlock eating all those burgers. i think it shall be long, long, long time before i eat mcdonalds again.

oi. all systems are out of balance. my sleep pattern has been off until maybe last night. my stomach has not been feeling good. yea...still doesn't feel good. my eating habits are starting to normalize. but i'm still trying to eat carefully since my stomach is at war against me. and nothing on my keyboard is where i expect it to be. i had gotten use to the spanish keyboard, which puts the @, ?, /, ', -, and some other things in different places. i think i've actually forgotten where those things are on our keyboards. and, i can't think of the appropriate words in english to express myself. lame. but on the other hand, it is kind of cool to think that i have words to express myself in spanish.

i miss spain. i don't think that it will fully hit me until i start going through my pictures that's i'm not there anymore. ok, who wants to go to spain? i'm already planning my trip back...it will happen.

the beach/coast trip was ill-fated. i should've figured from the way it started out on friday. so i mentioned that i was feeling slightly feverish on sunday...eh...turns out it wasn't just slight. 39 degrees celsius, which after some math conversion turns out to be 102.2 degrees. oi. no wonder my whole self was in pain. i missed out on the david bisbal concert; lauren had to scalp my ticket. and i flew into madrid still a little feverish. i checked into the hostel, taking the metro subway all by myself. i thought i would use my short afternoon to do some shopping. i had done research to find out where h&m and camper shoe stores were. sadly, it didn't matter. as soon as i set foot in a store, i would feel like passing out. so i gave up on shopping and found a bookstore, bought a book, found starbucks, got a fruit drink and sat. and then promptly went back to the hostel to lie down. how sad.

and now i'm sitting at the atlanta airport, where this internet place is totally committing theft by jacking my money in big amounts for little time. i just flew stinkin' 9 hours and i'm telling you now, i hate flying. someone, make those star trek teleporting thingies a reality.