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.