yesterday, i took the big plunge.  i told one of my employers that i'm planning to leave in september.  she took it surprisingly well.  but she did make valiant efforts to convince me to stay even part-time.  whew.  one down, one to go.

week in review:
tuesday: lunch in the u-district at chipotle with kristie, shiv, and amy nish, followed by ice cream at the mix. kristie and i went to work out at 24 hour. that was me going against my natural inclination to be an asymptote.

wednesday: woke up in major pain - sore muscles...really sore. played volleyball at an open gym at blaine - which only added to my sore muscles.

thursday: went to work and then started the 2:7 series small group with bunches of people. it's really exciting.

friday: after work, claim jumpers dinner to celebrate chong's birthday with cupcake cake and ice cream at the nishimura household and a round of poker with no real money gambled. we were playing for pride...or losing and having to take shame.

today [saturday]: saw before sunset with shiv, helen, tiana, and tiana's friend. afterwards, shiv and i went to chong's house for poker night $5 buy-in. i came in second place and came away from with $15 [my original $5 and $10 in winnings]. woohoo! all in!

i am so tired. it's like non-stop activities, but it's great hanging out with friends. and tomorrow, my cousin gets baptized in lake sammamish. cool.

this was a wedding activity oriented weekend. on saturday, i spent the afternoon at a wedding rehearsal and then dinner afterwards with everyone from the rehearsal. our table was a fun table - so much amusement. after dinner, which was at top gun in factoria, we went to hang out at wing onn and joyce's house for chocolate chip waffles and nutella. we'd had a lot of food at the restaurant, but there is always room for waffles and chocolate. there was a poker playing group while the rest of us were a little more politically minded and chatted about bush and kerry and the november elections. no one is every around to hear the intelligent conversations such as these.

sunday was pretty much all about the wedding from after church and on. melissa and i had to book it to my house and get ready, then get to the church and curl flower girls' hair and set up the programs, the guest book/frame signing, the gift table, and the bubbles for afterwards. we had angela, the super fabulous wedding coordinator, aka monica from friends, who has become quite adept in helping out with all the other weddings (including her own) we've all gone to in the last year or so. the ceremony started late, due to lots of guests getting a little lost, and the candlelighting didn't go as smoothly as planned, only because the wicks didn't seem to be catching the flame from the candlelighters - more evidence that candlelighting is totally difficult and possibly a bad idea. aside from that, the ceremony went great and i think we all got a little misty-eyed when jeanette and lawrence hugged the parents. that part always gets me.

the reception was at salty's on alki and it was beautiful, with a deck and everything. the toasts were wonderful and funny, especially william, jeanette's brother. games were amusing...for us. the food was delicious and the dessert too. melissa and i had to run the gift table at the reception, along with the guest book/frame signing, so we kind of missed out on the cocktail hour of snacky foods and drinks. but, a lovely waiter came by to personally grab some drinks for us and offered us first dibs on the crab cakes and jumbo cocktail shrimp. he quickly became one of our favorite people. seriously, the entire staff at salty's was wonderful. i think they were having fun too - the people at the reception were pretty entertaining. and the dancing... goodness. you get chris, dan, tim, and parker and add a litte bit of drink and it's like lots of funny. i took some pictures, but not as many as wing onn [some 1600]. i'll post up the pictures soon.

so i mentioned that i was told that batteries do not magically come back to life after a period of rest. when abe arrived to help save the day, i decided to try and start my car before using the jumper cables. and you know what? it started! i looked at abe and was like...you (he) lied! he looked at me and was like...you (me) lied! it was pretty funny. apparently my battery does magically come back to life. also, i think we determined that two hours of leaving your headlights on does not drain your battery in its entirety. so instead, we kept the car running and drove it to safeway, where siobhan and i made abe sit in the car with the engine running [to help recharge the battery] while we ran inside for ice cream. then we spent lots of time watching vh1's i love the 90s - 1999. too funny.

my car battery died. my headlights were left on for the last two hours...while i was checking the house for criminals. i've been hoping that maybe turning off the lights and letting my car rest would magically help give new life to the battery. i have been told that this does not happen. i called kristie to make sure she had a set of jumper cables, and she does, but the cables are with her, and she's on her way to portland for a retreat. i called rockstar abe to save the day. abe has been kind enough to agree to stop by after his band practice to recharge the car battery. yay abe!

can i just say...it's pretty scary to come home and find your front door wide open and realize that no one else is home. i combed through every closet and possible hiding place with a swiffer stick as my weapon. some might say that it was excessively paranoid of me, but after hearing cora's story, i take no chances.

i'm an asymptote. years ago, back in high school, when i was loving the math, i decided that i exhibited asymptotic behavior [the definition of anasymptote. in so many pursuits...i get so, so, so close, but never quite there. one example: one morning, after i had decided to try and go running on a regular basis, i got dressed, put on my shoes, and even opened the door to leave the house, when, at the last minute, i wimped out and decided it was too cold and promptly went back to bed. i'm a 24 hour fitness member for the next two years [i think there's a blog entry from july 2003 about how i got roped into the membership] and i haven't stepped foot into a 24 hour fitness since the end of september...so bad. i'm hoping to get back into gym mode...very soon.

it's all about perspective. i have continually asked God to change me. well, by continually, i mean regularly throughout the last several years, but i would not say that it has been a daily request. and change can often be slow-going, as it has been for me, though i suppose some unwillingness to change probably impeded the progress just a little. :) it is a wonderful thing to realize, as i look back on the last 10 years, that i have indeed changed. ok...not as much as i would've thought 10 years ago, and not in the really big things that are obvious, but in the small things on the inside, which make all the difference. of course, that being said, there is still much work to be done - a work in progress, just like everybody else in the world.

it has been so much fun rehashing youth group days with wendy. it has also been quite entertaining recalling all the adolescent drama and ridiculousness associated with all that drama. yet within all of that, there are so many memories, both good and bad, that i wouldn't trade for anything. ok...there may have been one or two that i could've done without, but i suppose they're necessary too, because they've shaped me into who i am now - which could be good or bad...depending on how you see it. :D

so, for the first time, i like being 23. i liked it before, but i think i actually really like and embrace it now. why? because it's pretty darn awesome to be able to start getting over some of my more juvenile tendencies, like, for example, passive-aggressiveness, which is not just limited to juveniles, but extends to asians in general [a total generalization]. and it's a good feeling, bettering my modes of communication. and, it's kind of just great to be able to recognize/be more self-aware [more than before] of my own capacity for immaturity, not to be confused with the kind of immaturity that finds humor in streets named "arbutus" ...hahaha...because i'm so not giving that up because it is just too much fun to be so easily entertained. so...having to grow up...maybe it's not so bad after all.

i just finished watching l'auberge espagnole and now i miss spain all over again. although i didn't live in a shared apartment with other international students in barcelona, so many of the things in the movie mirrored my time in my little granada. the main character, in his narration, says that he had a list of things he wanted to see and do in barcelona that he didn't get to [keep in mind he was there for one whole year]. there was a ton of stuff i didn't get to either, but it's ok, because it gives me a reason to go back, and because i wasn't busy trying to check things off a list, i had time to just be in granada and live there, if only for a month or so. i think more people should spend some time traveling abroad.

from about gmail
4. Is Gmail available in other languages?

During this testing period, the Gmail interface is only available in English. However, we're committed to making Gmail available to as many people in as many languages as possible. And Gmail accounts can already be used to read and send email in most languages (even Klingon).

gmail is most definitely attuned to its audience.

*edit*
i also went bowling today for $.92 + tax per game at sunset lanes in ballard. bowling is even better when 3/4 times i score over 100. and then i bought myself a little treat in the form of batman the animated series volume 1.

here are two pictures from the day trip to bc i took on tuesday.

the second is what it really looked like, with that twilight blue sky. unfortunately, i have an unsteady hand and the camera function that allows this kind of photo needs something like a tripod, hence the blurriness.

and the promised pictures of abe and his cartoon counterpart.


and here's stone and abe at the basketball courts of greenlake:


for my second trip to canada this week, we added the night market:




independence day was celebrated with a bbq down in burien, where kristie is house-sitting. we watched several groups of fireworks from the living room and back porch. bbq was followed by a lovely strawberry log cake created by kristie.

post fireworks, we watched galaxy quest, a movie that is still funny, if not funnier, the second time around.

and today, we [kristie, wendy, dennis, stone, and maxine] visited the central library downtown. it was great. i love libraries and i love books, although i didn't love our uw campus libraries very much while i was a student, except maybe the suzallo reading rooms and some of the allen stacks.



and then there was lunch at bahama breeze down in southcenter and a showing of spider-man 2. i was not disappointed. i absolutely loved it. it's my absolute favorite thing when i get carried away in a good book or movie, when the real and concrete surroundings melt away for a little moment, and i get to pretend that it all could be real. imagination is a wonderful thing.

yesterday was a great day at work. i took my first step toward breaking out of my passive-aggressive asian nature. i unleashed all of my frustrations and anger about work unto my boss, which means that i finally verbalized about the difficulties that many of us at work have been having with the office manager. it felt good to speak up. i think i will try this more often. it's definitely better than internalizing and making myself sick. and plus, it was just a really fun day at work.

we put up our new water cooler and sadly, the water tastes like yucky plastic. so we called home depot and before we could even tell them what the problem was, the man said to run gallons of water through to rinse it out and get rid of the bad taste. we had to think of ways to get large amounts of water into the water cooler and also a way to catch large amounts of water and it's not like we keep buckets lying around for this very reason. we decided on using a watering can and an old brita pitcher. as i watered into the cooler, kelley emptied the water into the pitcher. we decided that our boss les was using this as some kind of competency test. i'd like to think we passed.

wendy arrived in seattle just about when i got off from work. she headed to my house to wait and i found her sitting on my ghetto lawn with a mat. some other people showed up [stone, dennis, and samson] and we sat around being indecisive before heading out to the broadway grill for dinner. rockstar abe met up with us at my house after dinner and we all went to pochi's and then to greenlake for a walk. it was a lot of fun to walk and talk and run from sprinklers in the dark. when we'd made it all the way around, we hang out a little more at the basketball court. we peer pressured abe to stand next to a face drawing because we thought it looked like abe. i'll post the picture later.

wendy and i drove up to canada this morning...late this morning. we met up with chris, david, and jenny and had sushi for lunch. we then met up with wendy and chris's parents in richmond and went to daiso [the second time this week] and shopped a little around the area. for dinner we went to a shanghainese restaurant and then to the richmond night market. wendy's dad said that in all the years he's been in the US, he's never seen that many chinese people. haha. there was an obscene amount of asian people. now we're sitting around chris and david's cute studio apartment watching SNL reruns.